Percival's Angel by Anne Eliot Crompton Read Free Book Online

flash brightens river and forest, so Mary’s flash brightens Her clearing. But this lightning holds its glare. Stark light stronger than sunlight illumines Percy’s and Alanna’s upturned faces; and Sir Edik, who thought himself safe in the doorway; and a mouse who thought himself safe in Mary’s shadow.
    The clearing hangs in light deeper than sunlight for as long as it takes me to skitter down my yew and flee. Longer. For even as I dart away, heart pounding, from tree to tree and shade to shade I can still glance back and see that unearthly light above Mary’s clearing.
    ***
    Up and down the Fey river drums beat for the Flowering Moon.
    Gently we drift, Percy and I, in our bobbing round coracle, downstream toward the Kingdom. (Far enough upstream is also the Kingdom. Everywhere around our magic forest is Arthur’s Kingdom.)
    Percy and I have always been alone together, but never quite like this. This time we go alone together on a long trip, maybe an endless trip. So we bring our material goods with us: fire flints, Bee Stings, clothes. Alanna gave Percy her big soup kettle, to serve as a helmet; I wonder how she will cook soup, now. She’s used that kettle for longer than I’ve known Percy! Also, she made him a new tunic in a hurry, from three different-colored cloths.
    (Giggling, I asked Percy if she had made one like that for me. “Oh,” he said, “maybe she would have; but I did not tell her you were going.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    Percy blushed from the lump in his throat to the roots of his hair. “You know how she is…”
    Ah, yes. This very night, Alanna probably hides in her bower from the Flowering Moon drums.)
    We drift past Apple Island, where Lady Villa gleams moon-white through its creeping, sheltering vines. We drift carefully downstream from one drum to the next, because this way is the most silent. Percy mans the pole. Plop! goes the pole like a jumping frog, and we skim forward. Crrrsh! goes pole against bank, like a turtle bumping its shell, and we waver out into moonlit water. Another plop! brings us back under the safer shadow of overhanging trees.
    Behind us one drum fades. Around the bend, another throbs. Now we are close enough to hear pipes. Gods! We’re close enough to see firelight reflected from white birches on the shore! Red light leaps, interrupted by leaping shadows.
    Back in there they are dancing. All my friends, all my folk, dance tonight at this fire, or some other. Even most of the Children’s Guard have left their posts on the forest edges to dance tonight. (A good thing no Humans know this! Tonight they could invade with little danger—at least at first.)
    Percy and I chose this good night for our escape. Despite the Lady’s consent, we decided to escape, attracting no notice. Not all the Children’s Guard may have heard the Lady’s decision; and any way, we Fey are not known for obedience or cooperation! So we chose this Flowering Moon dance night.
    But I do not trust wholly to the Fey dance-lust. I also cast a very fine magic mist about our coracle. Any who may chance to notice it will rub their eyes and blame the moonlight.
    Back in the trees, the pipe wails like Alanna. Thump! Goes the drum, like my heart.
    Never since I was very young have I missed a dance! We children danced around the edge of the crowd. We learned the steps. We tasted the Grand Mushroom the dancers nibbled, and learned its uses. We watched the glances and gestures, the glidings away and drawings together. When the adult dancers had disappeared, two by two, sometimes three together, we slept where we dropped around the dying fires.
    Last autumn for the first time, a young fellow strutted up to me. And for the first time I observed that under his beautiful costume, he himself was beautiful.
    I wished he had been Percy! If only he had been Percy!
    Well I knew that Percy was shut away in Alanna’s bower.
    Come to think, I remember