She chose a dell encircled by sighing elms. “Fire first,” she said as she slipped down from her mount and lifted me down to stand wobbly legged beside her. “Help me gather wood, Mordred.” She held the flame in one hand while she heaped my arms with sticks, and then she knelt and laid the fire and lit it with a touch. When the campfire blazed, she closed her hand and the flame in her palm was gone. She unsaddled the horse and hobbled it, then sat by the fire and cuddled me against her side with her left arm and said, “Now be quite still, and I will cozen us some supper.”

I was terrified of her, I adored her, and my awe of her made my dread of the forest seem less. Fear had worn me out, and her warmth and the warmth of the fire comforted me—or perhaps she had put a small spell on me. I lay in her embrace and dozed. I awoke only when—

I sat up and my eyes widened. I had never seen such a thing.

A peacock, a shimmering blue peacock, squatted by our campfire with its long neck stretched down, its head on the ground, its golden eyes fixed on Nyneve. The firelight gilded the great fan of its tail feathers, lifted to salute her. She left my side, bent over the bowing peacock, took it in her soft white hands and with one easy stroke cut off its head with her dagger.

She saw me gawking. “Go back to sleep, Mordred,” she said, and I did so. At once.

Some time later she awakened me and gave me roast peacock to eat and sweet purple berries and mushrooms the size of bread loaves.

After we had eaten, Nyneve gave me her cloak for a blanket. Then, with no covering for herself except her green gown, she lay down on the other side of the fire from me and slept. But I could not sleep again. Night in the Forest Perilous echoed full of voices. I heard owls conversing, a fox’s chuckle. The distant song of wolves. Somewhere, the dark baying of a hound—

Nyneve sprang to her feet. “To horse, Mordred, quickly!”