He heard nothing, felt nothing, but when his tears ceased, he felt easier. He still did not know who had plotted against his mother and against him, but he was alive. He breathed in the fragrance of the violets that now carpeted the ground, rose from his knees to walk the circuit of the glade, touching trees, rocks, bending to touch the violets.

“We will camp here tonight,” he said.

“Here?” asked Berne. “Is this not a cursed place?”

“No,” Kieri said. “These trees, these flowers, even these rocks had no part in the evil done here. I know elves make no memorials to their dead, but I am only half-elf, and I would make one for my mother. Pitch the tent up there—” He pointed back up the slope. Unbidden, a wisp of melody came to mind, and he found himself humming it as he walked across the glade to the rock outcrop. He picked a few violets and laid them there.

After a few moments, the silence deepened; he felt enclosed in a space apart, though when he glanced back, he could see his Squires setting up camp. Was this leftover elven enchantment … or something else?

He waited, resting in that bubble of silence, of peace, until it slowly faded. Whatever it had been, he felt it was proof that the glade was not cursed, that he was right to be here.

Nothing disturbed them that night. Kieri woke a little before dawn, as usual, and as the first rays of sun filtered into the glade, he saw what he first thought was a vision. Where only violets had been the day before, a royal purple carpet, now a scatter of objects lay, glinting in the early light. And the rough rock on which he had laid his bouquet was now smoothed and shaped into the very shape he’d thought of having carved. The violets he had placed, still unwilted, lay on a polished shelf under an arch.

He walked over to the objects. He’d thought any jewels had been stripped from his mother’s body, but here lay a ring and a twist of ruddy gold. He’d been told her body had been laid straight in the way of elves; nothing had been said of these things the earth had now returned to him, baubles less precious than herself.