I was to grow accustomed to meeting with knights-errant three or four times a day. The rule of King Arthur’s reign was that knights were to fight each other and leave the common folk alone. Camelot was, as I have said, a castle under a spell; the whole realm was rife with knights blundering about, trying to find it, and they all seemed to be in foul temper.

Like this one. In full armor, he burst out of a rowan grove with his lance leveled, charging at me. “Sir, if you love your honor, prepare to joust!” he roared.

In that moment I decided that I loved other things, including my life, far more than my honor. He was taller than I, weighed probably eight stone more, he wore a great heavy sword fit to fell a tree with, and he had not given me time even to buckle on my shield. I couched my lance and met him, but I aimed at his horse’s head. Before his lance could reach me, his poor blameless mount fell down dead. He rolled free of the body and struggled to his feet, drawing his sword, bellowing with rage. “Get down from your horse, coward, and fight!”

“Thank you for the kind offer,” I told him, “but I think not.” I turned my back on him and rode away.

I was to grow accustomed to being called a coward. Three or four times a day.

That first day, however, I met no knights after noon. Blessedly, I left the Forest Perilous behind and challengers with it. I crossed a salty grassland, and—there was the sea. There were the rocks and the gravel shore and the gray glinting water stretching to eternity and oh, but I was glad to stand under wide sky again. In a sheltered cove, a kind of natural harbor, stood a quay, by which a coracle rocked like a cradle on the waves. Far overhead soared an erne, the eagle of the sea.

For three days I traveled along the sea, eating mussels and curlew eggs, falling asleep to the murmur of the waves, scarcely admitting even to myself whom I was seeking: a little boy named Tad, he who was the gift of Lyr, he who was happy.

On the third day, I thought I found him.

I rounded a point of rock and felt the pang in my heart before my mind began to comprehend. I looked down a stretch of shore like all others, gravel and sandpipers and rugged brown rock, yet my heart yearned like the crying of a gull; in my chest Tad awoke and knew these rocks as surely as if they were Fishermother’s coarse, kindly brown face.

A few more strides of my steed, and I saw the hut, and then I understood.

Seemingly all by itself, my mouth gave forth a soft cry like a sigh. I rode forward slowly, staring.