For I was not born among the unicorns. In that, the Renegades were right. I come from a place far to the western south, beyond the shallows of the Summer Sea. But I fled away in time, and found the unicorns in their Vale. Their beauty, when first I saw them, was so great I ached to join them. But I held back, sick with longing, for I was not like them—until I learned of a sacred well across the Plain that makes the unicorns what they are, and a young prince told me the way.

But that is another tale.

“What are you?” whispered the prince’s son, falling back a pace to gaze on my beardless chin and single hooves.

I tossed my head. What could I tell him? He wanted it all in a word, and I myself only barely understood what it was I had been, and was now, and was yet becoming. Still, I tried to answer him.

“I am the midwife,” I told him, “who stands between the womb of Alma and the world. I do not make, but I help what has been made to be born.”

Did that make sense to him? I studied his face, but what he made of my words I could not tell. I tried again.

“I am a dreamer, and a little of a magicker. There is a race of two-footed creatures, Aljan, great movers and builders. They keep many burden-beasts to haul and carry for them.” I could not quite keep the bitterness out of my voice as I said the last. “I was such a bearer once, until I came away.”

Then the young prince surprised me. “I saw you,” he told me, soft, and did not draw away from me, as others do. “I saw you among the two-foots in my vision.” And I knew then, for him to have seen that, he must be a far-dreaming seer indeed. He looked at me. “But your coat was another color, then. It was roan.”

I smiled a little. “The blossoms of the milkwood which I ate made my coat this color, and the bitter waters of the Mere gave me a horn.”

“So you are the Red Mare the Renegades spoke of,” Jan answered quietly. “They said my father helped you somehow.”

I nodded, remembering. “He was very like you then—wild, hotheaded, and proud, though not so clever or far-seeing by half. Though it was against all custom, he told me the way to the unicorn’s Mere and, in doing so, broke the Ring of Law and opened himself to a wyvern’s spells. I kept them at bay, barely.”

The young prince stood, not seeing me, looking inward then. I told him, “And afterward, I sang much of that memory out of your father’s mind, just as I once sang away your dreams. One day perhaps I will give it back to him—if he will have it back. He is not a seer, Jan, and has no understanding of magic and dreams.”

The other’s dark eyes pierced me then, urgent and fire bright. “Give me the tale,” he whispered. “I must know. Sing me the tale.”

“I will give you the tale,” I replied, turning away. “But not just now. Another time.”

The prince’s son said nothing then, watching me.

“Are you not cold, little prince, with your coat still full of water?” I asked him. Behind me I could hear Tek beginning to stir. “Shake off,” I said, turning to rouse her. “The afternoon grows late.”

Jan shook himself. He was cold. The water from his coat showered onto Dagg, who stirred and at last got groggily to his feet. I roused my daughter. She stood up, draggled and chilled, and shook herself. Jan came near us, and though from time to time I caught his eyes darting guardedly at me, full of questions—a thousand questions—he seemed willing to curb them, for now.

“Drink,” he told us, bending again to the pool himself. “The water’s sweet.”

“Sweet?” I heard my daughter say as she waded out into the Mere. “I tasted it this dawn. It’s bitter salt.”

Jan shook his head, gazing at her again as he had gazed at her for the first time in the milkwood grove, with new eyes. “Sweet now. Taste it.”

When first I had sipped of the Moon’s Mere, years ago, it made me ill. Then I could stomach no more than a half-dozen swallows before I began to shiver and sweat, and stagger a little in my walking, so strange had been the taste, so mineral. But now as I bent my head with the others to drink, the water was cool and without taint. It washed the bitter taste of the wyrm’s blood from my mouth.

Jan felt his strength beginning to return. He no longer felt hollow, famished, though he had not eaten in more than a day. The water alone seemed to satisfy him. The rosebuds plastered to his nose and heel had long since sluiced away. His fetlock still felt sore from the wyvern’s sting, his brow tender from the firebowl’s burning. But even those aches were beginning to fade. His forelock fell thickly into his eyes.

“It is,” Dagg was saying, raising his mouth from the water. “It is sweet.”

I heard a little noise behind us suddenly and turned, glimpsed something drawing near through the milkwood trees. Then the prince of the unicorns emerged from the grove. I and two of the others started. I had not been expecting him. Only Jan seemed unsurprised.

His father stood a moment, open-mouthed, and stared at us, seeming almost more astonished to see me than he was to see his son. But it was Jan and the others he spoke to in the end, ignoring me as though I were some haunt or dream.

“What game is this?” he snorted, stamping his hooves as he always did whenever he was baffled or made uneasy. “Where have you been, the three of you? Traipsing these groves at some colts’ play while your elders and companions ran themselves to rags hunting you.”

He was all terrible thunder and princely affront. I started to speak, but the princeling stepped past me. He would need no mediator ever again. Approaching, he stood before his father without flinching and said, “No games. Tek, Dagg, and I have been killing that, lest she rouse the wyrms to fall upon us all.”

He nodded toward the wyvern skin, which lay still floating on the pool. My daughter and Dagg dragged it from the water and spread it out upon the sand. The prince fell silent then, staring at it. Jan turned away, and I stood off with Korr a few moments, telling him from my daughter’s account what had befallen his son in the wyvern’s den.

The young prince and his two companions meanwhile had raised the skin and shaken off the sand. They let the wind lift it streaming into the air and laid it upon the low branches of the near milkwood trees. Like a great pennant, a banner, it blazed and shimmered in the hot spring sun.

I left off with Korr, and he said no more to Jan, either in praise or in rebuke. I think it puzzled him to have suddenly a son who neither trembled at his frown nor needed his approval to feel proud. Instead the prince of the unicorns gauged the sun.

“Come,” he said at last. “We must be off. The hour is late, and the others wait for us upon the Plain.”

“I’ll leave you then,” I said, shaking the silence from me.

Korr stared at me. “You’ll not run the journey home with us?” he began.

I shook my head. “Someone must go before you, and sing the tale.” I gave him no time to argue with me. “Farewell, my prince, my brave daughter, Dagg.”

And oh, the look Tek gave me then, as if to say, “Off again? Off again, Mother, and only just met.” Would she ever guess why I had left her to be raised in the Vale by the one who calls himself my mate, or ever trust that there are reasons for everything I do? I glanced from her to Jan—then shook such thoughts from me. I could not stay.

To the young prince, I said, “I’ll leave you with your father now, prince-son, but one day, in a year or two year’s time, you must come away with me. I’ll teach you things a prince should know.”

He barely understood me. I did not mean him to. That day was yet a long way off. Then, giving to none of them time to stay me or make reply, I tossed my head and wheeled away, galloping off through the flowering milkwood trees, until their boles and the distance hid me from their view.