King Lír kept petting me with one hand and trying to put me aside with the other, but I wouldn’t let go. I think I was actually trying to pull his sword out of its sheath, to take it away from him. He said, “No, no, little one, you don’t understand. There are some monsters that only a king can kill. I have always known that‌—‌I should never, never have sent those poor men to die in my place. No one else in all the land can do this for you and your village. Most truly now, it is my job.” And he kissed my hand, the way he must have kissed the hands of so many queens. He kissed my hand too, just like theirs.

Molly came up then and took me away from him. She held me close, and she stroked my hair, and she told me, “Child, Sooz, there’s no turning back for him now, or for you either. It was your fate to bring this last cause to him, and his fate to take it up, and neither of you could have done differently, being who you are. And now you must be as brave as he is, and see it all play out.” She caught herself there, and changed it. “Rather, you must wait to learn how it has played out, because you are certainly not coming into that forest with us.”

“I’m coming,” I said. “You can’t stop me. Nobody can.” I wasn’t sniffling or anything anymore. I said it like that, that’s all.

Molly held me at arm’s length, and she shook me a little bit. She said, “Sooz, if you can tell me that your parents have given their permission, then you may come. Have they done so?”

I didn’t answer her. She shook me again, gentler this time, saying, “Oh, that was wicked of me, forgive me, my dear friend. I knew the day we met that you could never learn to lie.” Then she took both of my hands between hers, and she said, “Lead us to the Midwood, if you will, Sooz, and we will say our farewells there. Will you do that for us? For me?”

I nodded, but I still didn’t speak. I couldn’t, my throat was hurting so much. Molly squeezed my hands and said, “Thank you.” Schmendrick came up and made some kind of sign to her with his eyes, or his eyebrows, because she said, “Yes, I know,” although he hadn’t said a thing. So she went to King Lír with him, and I was alone, trying to stop shaking. I managed it, after a while.

The Midwood isn’t far. They wouldn’t really have needed my help to find it. You can see the beginning of it from the roof of Ellis the baker’s house, which is the tallest one on that side of the village. It’s always dark, even from a distance, even if you’re not actually in it. I don’t know if that’s because they’re oak trees (we have all sorts of tales and sayings about oaken woods, and the creatures that live there) or maybe because of some enchantment, or because of the griffin. Maybe it was different before the griffin came. Uncle Ambrose says it’s been a bad place all his life, but my father says no, he and his friends used to hunt there, and he actually picnicked there once or twice with my mother, when they were young.