Upon reaching solid ground at the end of the causeway, Charis urged her mount to speed and the gray lifted its hooves to race up the slope, sending a family of hares bounding to safety. She crested the rise and started down the other side, Taliesin behind her. Thus, they rode, flowing over the hills in a breathless chase under a bright, cloud-dappled sky. The soft green of new grass, tinted with myriads of tiny yellow sunblossoms, covered the earth.

Charis led him through the valley and along a swift-running stream. The valley narrowed and they came to a hawthorn thicket that stretched like a wall across the further end. Here Charis turned into the stream and passed through the thicket where it thinned to accommodate the river.

The birch wood beyond the hawthorn was dim and cool, noisy with the chitterings of a host of red squirrels, thrushes, and blackbirds. The earth was damp and soggy with leaf mold and overlaid by a carpet of woodruff and Bellflower; honeysuckle draped the nearer shrubs, infusing the air with its sweet intoxication. Four red deer raised their heads at the sound of the riders’ approach. They stared at the intruders for a moment and then, turning as one and leaping into the green shadows, vanished.

Charis and Taliesin rode slowly deeper into the wood, bending their way among the slender trunks, silent in one another’s company. Now and again Charis could feel Talie-sin’s eyes on her, but she would not look back on him, afraid to return his glance.

They came at last to a place where a huge black stone reared from the earth. At some time in the ancient past, two other stones had been leaned against it at angles and the tops of all three capped with a great stone slab. The quoit stood in the center of the wood, its square sides covered with gray and yellow lichen so that it appeared more vegetable than mineral, an enormous mushroom dominating the wood with its darkly brooding presence.

Charis brought her gray to a halt, stepping lightly from the saddle; she dropped the reins and walked to the quoit, putting her hands on the rough stone.

“I like to imagine that this is a cenotaph,” said Charis after a moment, “that in this place, a long time ago, some great event or something very tragic occurred.” Her eyes flicked to Taliesin, who sat leaning on the pommel of his saddle, watching her. “Do not tell me otherwise, even if you know.”

“Undoubtedly,” Taliesin replied, sliding down from his mount. “The world is made up of events both great and tragic. Some are observed and remembered, but others… others take place away from the eyes of the world and remain forever unknown. But tell me, what is it that you imagine happened here?” He stepped toward her.

Charis put her ear close to the stone and closed her eyes. “Shh,” she whispered. “Listen.”

Taliesin heard the sounds of the active wood around them, the buzzing of insects, the trilling of birds, the ruffling of leaves in the breeze. He gazed at the woman before him, thrilled by the sight of her. She was fair as a sun-bright summer day, with eyes as deep and clear and ever-changing as the sea; slim and regal, her every movement was endowed with grace. She wore a simple white garment with a green and gold girdle at her waist, but they were the raiment of a goddess. He had never seen a woman more beautiful or more beguiling. Merely to see her was to gaze upon a mystery. He felt that he would gladly give his life to simply go on looking at her as he stood looking at her now, knowing he would never discover the mystery.

“What do you hear?” Taliesin asked.

Her eyes opened and she said candidly, “There was a woman…” Pacing around the quoit she continued, “… who came to this place from a realm beyond the sea. Her life was hard, for the land was harsh, and she could not help remembering all that she had left behind. She longed to return to her home across the sea, but it had been destroyed by a great tumult of fire and she could not return. She grew lonely, and to ease her loneliness she rode her horse among the hills, searching for something-she knew not what.

“One day she met a man; she heard him singing here in this wood. He sang to her and captured her heart as easily as a fowler catching a bird in a silken snare. She struggled to free herself but could not. She was captured too well.

“She might have been happy with the man; she might have given all she possessed to remain with him… But it could not be.”

“Why is this?”

“They were of different races,” explained Charis sadly, and Taliesin heard in her voice the resignation of one abandoned to her fate. “Also, the woman was of a noble house whose dynasty extended back to the very gods themselves.”

“And the man? Was he not of a noble house as well?”

“He was…” she answered, stepping away from him again. She moved slowly around the quoit, feeling the cool surface of the upright stones with her hands, as if tracing symbols carved there long ago and now obliterated by wind and time.

“But?”

“But his people were coarse and uncivilized-as their land was coarse and uncivilized. They were a warrior race, given to violence and passion. They were everything that the woman’s race was not, and so there were things he would never understand about her.

“And while it is true that the woman’s heart was captive to the man, it was also true that they could never be…” She paused.

“Happy?” he prodded.

“Together. This knowledge caused the woman great distress, and greater sadness. It made her exile more bitter.”

“What of the quoit?” asked Taliesin.

“The man left,” said Charis simply. “In time he went back to his own realm far away, taking the woman’s heart with him. She could not live without her heart and so began to die. Each day she died a little more, and eventually the day came when she did not awake. Her people mourned, and they carried her body to this place where she had met the man. They buried her here and raised this cenotaph of stone over her tomb.”

Taliesin began moving slowly around the quoit. “Indeed, that is a tragic tale,” he said after a while. “Certainly if the man had loved the woman more he might have found a way to save her. He might have taken the woman with him, or they might have gone away together to a new place…”

“Perhaps,” said Charis, “but both had responsibilities-responsibilities which bound them forever to their people and to their places. Their worlds were too far apart.”

“Ahh,” sighed Taliesin, and sliding to the ground he leaned his back against the stone and closed his eyes.

Charis watched him curiously.

Presently his eyes blinked open and he said, “Being dead and buried, the woman could never know what became of the man.”

“I suppose he found another to take her place. One of his own, no doubt,” replied Charis.

Taliesin shook his head gravely. “Not at all. He lived on miserably for a time, half-maddened in his anguish and torment. But he came to himself one day and returned to the woman. When he arrived, he heard that she was dead; so he went to her tomb and there he took his knife and laid open his breast. He took out his heart and buried it with the woman, and then he lay himself down…” Taliesin fell silent.

“What happened to him?”

“Nothing,” replied Taliesin sorrowfully. “He waits there still.”

Charis saw the glint of a smile in his eyes and the sly twitch of his lips, and she began to laugh. The doleful mood created by the unhappy story was shattered by soft laughter.

“It is no good trying to cheer him,” Taliesin warned. “His heart lies with his lady, and he feels neither pain nor pleasure evermore.”

Charis knelt beside Taliesin. He offered his hand and she took it in her own. He drew her hand to him and raised it to his lips. She watched as he kissed her hand. She closed her eyes and in a moment felt his lips on hers.