I rode with the king most of the time, sitting up in front of him on his skittery black mare. I wasn’t sure I could trust her not to bite me, or to kick me when I wasn’t looking, but King Lír told me, “It is only peaceful times that make her nervous, be assured of that. When dragons charge her, belching death‌—‌for the fumes are more dangerous than the flames, little one‌—‌when your griffin swoops down at her, you will see her at her best.” I still didn’t like her much, but I did like the king. He didn’t sing to me, the way Schmendrick had, but he told me stories, and they weren’t fables or fairytales. These were real, true stories, and he knew they were true because they had all happened to him! I never heard stories like those, and I never will again. I know that for certain.

He told me more things to keep in mind if you have to fight a dragon, and he told me how he learned that ogres aren’t always as stupid as they look, and why you should never swim in a mountain pool when the snows are melting, and how you can sometimes make friends with a troll. He talked about his father’s castle, where he grew up, and about how he met Schmendrick and Molly there, and even about Molly’s cat, which he said was a little thing with a funny crooked ear. But when I asked him why the castle fell down, he wouldn’t exactly say, no more than Schmendrick would. His voice became very quiet and faraway. “I forget things, you know, little one,” he said. “I try to hold on, but I do forget.”

Well, I knew that. He kept calling Molly Sooz, and he never called me anything but little one, and Schmendrick kept having to remind him where we were bound and why. That was always at night, though. He was usually fine during the daytime. And when he did turn confused again, and wander off (not just in his mind, either‌—‌I found him in the woods one night, talking to a tree as though it was his father), all you had to do was mention a white unicorn named Amalthea, and he’d come to himself almost right away. Generally it was Schmendrick who did that, but I brought him back that time, holding my hand and telling me how you can recognize a pooka, and why you need to. But I could never get him to say a word about the unicorn.

Autumn comes early where I live. The days were still hot, and the king never would take his armor off, except to sleep, not even his helmet with the big blue plume on top, but at night I burrowed in between Molly and Schmendrick for warmth, and you could hear the stags belling everywhere all the time, crazy with the season. One of them actually charged King Lír’s horse while I was riding with him, and Schmendrick was about to do something magic to the stag, the same way he’d done with the crow. But the king laughed and rode straight at him, right into those horns. I screamed, but the black mare never hesitated, and the stag turned at the last moment and ambled out of sight in the brush. He was wagging his tail in circles, the way goats do, and looking as puzzled and dreamy as King Lír himself.