◇ Darkrose and the Diamond

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標題: darkrose and the diamond               silverharpe(轉寄)
時間: Fri May  7 08:12:48 2004


DARKROSE AND DIAMOND
A BOAT-SONG FROM WEST HAVNOR
Where my love is going
There will I go.
Where his boat is rowing
I will row.
We will laugh together,
Together we will cry.
If he lives I will live,
If he dies I die.
Where my love is going
There will I go.
Where his boat is rowing
I will row.
In the west of Havnor, among hills forested with
oak and chestnut, is the town of Glade. A while
ago, the rich man of that town was a merchant
called Golden.
Golden owned the mill that cut the oak boards for
the ships they built in Havnor South Port and
Havnor Great Port; he owned the biggest chestnut
groves; he owned the carts and hired the carters
that carried the timber and the chestnuts over the
hills to be sold. He did very well from trees, and
when his son was born, the mother said, "We could
call him Chestnut, or Oak, maybe?" But the father
said, "Diamond," diamond being in his estimation
the one thing more precious than gold.
So little Diamond grew up in the finest house in
Glade, a fat, bright-eyed baby, a ruddy, cheerful
boy. He had a sweet singing voice, a true ear, and a
love of music, so that his mother, Tuly, called him
Songsparrow and Skylark, among other loving
names, for she never really did like "Diamond." He
trilled and caroled about the house; he knew any
tune as soon as he heard it, and invented tunes
when he heard none. His mother had the

wisewoman Tangle teach him The Creation of Ea
and The Deed of the Young King, and at Sunreturn
when he was eleven years old he sang the Winter
Carol for the Lord of the Western Land, who was
visiting his domain in the hills above Glade. The
Lord and his Lady praised the boy's singing and
gave him a tiny gold box with a diamond set in the
lid, which seemed a kind and pretty gift to Diamond
and his mother. But Golden was a bit impatient with
the singing and the trinkets. "There are more
important things for you to do, son," he said. "And
greater prizes to be earned."
Diamond thought his father meant the business --
the loggers, the sawyers, the sawmill, the chestnut
groves, the pickers, the carters, the carts -- all that
work and talk and planning, complicated, adult
matters. He never felt that it had much to do with
him, so how was he to have as much to do with it
as his father expected? Maybe he'd find out when
he grew up.
But in fact Golden wasn't thinking only about the
business. He had observed something about his son
that had made him not exactly set his eyes higher
than the business, but glance above it from time to
time, and then shut his eyes.
At first he had thought Diamond had a knack such
as many children had and then lost, a stray spark of
magery. When he was a little boy, Golden himself
had been able to make his own shadow shine and
sparkle. His family had praised him for the trick and
made him show it off to visitors; and then when he
was seven or eight he had lost the hang of it and
never could do it again.
When he saw Diamond come down the stairs
without touching the stairs, he thought his eyes had
deceived him; but a few days later, he saw the child
float up the stairs, just a finger gliding along the
oaken banister-rail. "Can you do that coming
down?" Golden asked, and Diamond said,
"Oh, yes, like this," and sailed back down smooth
as a cloud on the south wind.
"How did you learn to do that?"
"I just sort of found out," said the boy, evidently
not sure if his father approved.
Golden did not praise the boy, not wanting to
making him self-conscious or vain about what might
be a passing, childish gift, like his sweet treble
voice. There was too much fuss already made over
that.
But a year or so later he saw Diamond out in the
back garden with his playmate Rose. The children
were squatting on their haunches, heads close
together, laughing. Something intense or uncanny
about them made him pause at the window on the
stairs landing and watch them. A thing between
them was leaping up and down, a frog? a toad? a
big cricket? He went out into the garden and came
up near them, moving so quietly, though he was a
big man, that they in their absorption did not hear
him. The thing that was hopping up and down on
the grass between their bare toes was a rock. When
Diamond raised his hand the rock jumped up in the
air, and when he shook his hand a little the rock
hovered in the air, and when he flipped his fingers
downward it fell to earth.
"Now you," Diamond said to Rose, and she started
to do what he had done, but the rock only twitched
a little. "Oh," she whispered, "there's your dad."
"That's very clever," Golden said.
"Di thought it up," Rose said.
Golden did not like the child. She was both
outspoken and defensive, both rash and timid. She
was a girl, and a year younger than Diamond, and a
witch's daughter. He wished his son would play with
boys his own age, his own sort, from the
respectable families of Glade. Tuly insisted on
calling the witch "the wisewoman," but a witch was
a witch and her daughter was no fit companion for
Diamond. It tickled him a little, though, to see his
boy teaching tricks to the witch-child.
"What else can you do, Diamond?" he asked.
"Play the flute," Diamond said promptly, and took
out of his pocket the little fife his mother had given
him for his twelfth birthday. He put it to his lips, his
fingers danced, and he played a sweet, familiar
tune from the western coast, "Where My Love Is
Going."
"Very nice," said the father. "But anybody can play
the fife, you know."
Diamond glanced at Rose. The girl turned her
head away, looking down.
"I learned it really quickly," Diamond said.
Golden grunted, unimpressed.
"It can do it by itself," Diamond said, and held out
the fife away from his lips. His fingers danced on
the stops, and the fife played a short jig. It hit
several false notes and squealed on the last high
note. "I haven't got it right yet," Diamond said,
vexed and embarrassed.
"Pretty good, pretty good," his father said. "Keep
practicing." And he went on. He was not sure what
he ought to have said. He did not want to
encourage the boy to spend any more time on
music, or with this girl; he spent too much already,
and neither of them would help him get anywhere
in life. But this gift, this undeniable gift t the rock
hovering, the unblown fife -- Well, it would be
wrong to make too much of it, but probably it
should not be discouraged.
In Golden's understanding, money was power, but
not the only power. There were two others, one
equal, one greater. There was birth. When the Lord
of the Western Land came to his domain near
Glade, Golden was glad to show him fealty. The
Lord was born to govern and to keep the peace, as
Golden was born to deal with commerce and
wealth, each in his place; and each, noble or
common, if he served well and honestly, deserved
honor and respect. But there were also lesser lords
whom Golden could buy and sell, lend to or let beg,
men born noble who deserved neither fealty nor
honor. Power of birth and power of money were
contingent, and must be earned lest they be lost.
But beyond the rich and the lordly were those
called the Men of Power: the wizards. Their power,
though little exercised, was absolute. In their hands
lay the fate of the long-kingless kingdom of the
Archipelago.
If Diamond had been born to that kind of power, if
that was his gift, then all Golden's dreams and plans
of training him in the business, and having him help
in expanding the carting route to a regular trade
with South Port, and buying up the chestnut forests
above Reche -- all such plans dwindled into trifles.
Might Diamond go (as his mother's uncle had gone)
to the School of Wizards on Roke Island? Might he
(as that uncle had done) gain glory for his family
and dominion over lord and commoner, becoming a
Mage in the Court of the Lords Regent in the Great
Port of Havnor? Golden all but floated up the stairs
himself, borne on such visions.
But he said nothing to the boy and nothing to the
boy's mother. He was a consciously close-mouthed
man, distrustful of visions until they could be made
acts; and she, though a dutiful, loving wife and
mother and housekeeper, already made too much
of Diamond's talents and accomplishments. Also,
like all women, she was inclined to babble and
gossip, and indiscriminate in her friendships. The
girl Rose hung about with Diamond because Tuly
encouraged Rose's mother the witch to visit,
consulting her every time Diamond had a hangnail,
and telling her more than she or anyone ought to
know about Golden's household. His business was
none of the witch's business. On the other hand,
Tangle might be able to tell him if his son in fact
showed promise, had a talent for magery...but he
flinched away from the thought of asking her,
asking a witch's opinion on anything, least of all a
judgment on his son.
He resolved to wait and watch. Being a patient
man with a strong will, he did so for four years, till
Diamond was sixteen. A big, well-grown youth,
good at games and lessons, he was 'still ruddyfaced
and bright-eyed and cheerful. He had taken it
hard when his voice changed, the sweet treble
going all untuned and hoarse. Golden had hoped
that that was the end of his singing, but the boy
went on wandering about with itinerant musicians,
ballad-singers and such, learning all their trash.
That was no life for a merchant's son who was to
inherit and manage his father's properties and mills
and business, and Golden told him so. "Singing time
is over, son," he said. "You must think about being
a man."
Diamond had been given his truename at the
springs of the Amia in the hills above Glade. The
wizard Hemlock, who had known his great-uncle the
Mage, came up from South Port to name him. And
Hemlock was invited to his nameday party the year
after, a big party, beer and food for all, and new
clothes, a shirt or skirt or shift for every child, which
was an old custom in the West of Havnor, and
dancing on the village green in the warm autumn
evening. Diamond had many friends, all the boys
his age in town and all the girls too. The young
people danced, and some of them had a bit too
much beer, but nobody misbehaved very badly, and
it was a merry and memorable night. The next
morning Golden told his son again that he must
think about being a man.
"I have thought some about it," said the boy, in
his husky voice.
"And?"
"Well, I," said Diamond, and stuck.
"I'd always counted on your going into the family
business," Golden said. His tone was neutral, and
Diamond said nothing. "Have you had any ideas of
what you want to do?"
"Sometimes."
"Did you talk at all to Master Hemlock?"
Diamond hesitated and said, "No." He looked a
question at his father.
"I talked to him last night," Golden said. "He said
to me that there are certain natural gifts which it's
not only difficult but actually wrong, harmful, to
suppress."
The light had come back into Diamond's dark eyes.
"The Master said that such gifts or capacities,
untrained, are not only wasted, but may be
dangerous. The art must be learned, and practiced,
he said."
Diamond's face shone.
"But, he said, it must be learned and practiced for
its own sake."
Diamond nodded eagerly.
"If it's a real gift, an unusual capacity, that's even
more true. A witch with her love potions can't do
much harm, but even a village sorcerer, he said,
must take care, for if the art is used for base ends,
it becomes weak and noxious.... Of course, even a
sorcerer gets paid. And wizards, as you know, live
with lords, and have what they wish."
Diamond was listening intently, frowning a little.
"So, to be blunt about it, if you have this gift,
Diamond, it's of no use, directly, to our business. It
has to be cultivated on its own terms, and kept
under control -- learned and mastered. Only then,
he said, can your teachers begin to tell you what to
do with it, what good it will do you. Or others," he
added conscientiously.
There was a long pause.
"I told him," Golden said, "that I had seen you,
with a turn of your hand and a single word, change
a wooden carving of a bird into a bird that flew up
and sang. Pre seen you make a light glow in thin
air. You didn't know I was watching. I've watched
and said nothing for a long time. I didn't want to
make too much of mere childish play. But I believe
you have a gift, perhaps a great gift. When I told
Master Hemlock what I'd seen you do, he agreed
with me. He said that you may go study with him in
South Port for a year, or perhaps longer."
"Study with Master Hemlock?" said Diamond, his
voice up half an octave.
"If you wish."
"I, I, I never thought about it. Can I think about
it? For a while-- a day?"
"Of course," Golden said, pleased with his son's
caution. He had thought Diamond might leap at the
offer, which would have been natural, perhaps, but
painful to the father, the owl who had -- perhaps --
hatched out an eagle.
For Golden looked on the Art Magic with genuine
humility as something quite beyond him -- not a
mere toy, such as music or tale-telling, but a
practical business, which his business could never
quite equal. And he was, though he wouldn't have
put it that way, afraid of wizards. A bit
contemptuous of sorcerers, with their sleights and
illusions and gibble-gabble, but afraid of wizards.
"Does Mother know?" Diamond asked.
"She will when the time comes. But she has no
part to play in your decision, Diamond. Women
know nothing of these matters and have nothing to
do with them.
You must make your choice alone, as a man. Do
you understand that?" Golden was earnest, seeing
his chance to begin to wean the lad from his
mother. She as a woman would cling, but he as a
man must learn to let go. And Diamond nodded
sturdily enough to satisfy his father, though he had
a thoughtful look.
"Master Hemlock said I, said he thought I had, I
might have a, a gift, a talent for--?"
Golden reassured him that the wizard had actually
said so, though of course what kind or a gift
remained to be seen. The boy's modesty was a
great relief to him.
He had half-consciously dreaded that Diamond
would triumph over him, asserting his power right
away -- that mysterious, dangerous, incalculable
power against which Golden's wealth and mastery
and dignity shrank to impotence.
"Thank you, Father," the boy said. Golden
embraced him and left, well pleased with him.
THEIR MEETING PLACE was in the sallows, the
willow thickets down by the Amia as it ran below
the smithy. As soon as Rose got there, Diamond
said, "He wants me to go study with Master
Hemlock! What am I going to do?"
"Study with the wizard?"
"He thinks I have this huge great talent. For
magic."
"Who does?"
"Father does. He saw some of the stuff we were
practicing. But he says Hemlock says I should come
study with him because it might be dangerous not
to. Oh," and Diamond beat his head with his hands.
"But you do have a talent."
He groaned and scoured his scalp with his
knuckles. He was sitting on the dirt in their old playplace,
a kind of bower deep in the willows, where
they could hear the stream running over the stones
nearby and the clang-clang of the smithy further
off. The girl sat down facing him.
"Look at all the stuff you can do," she said. "You
couldn't do any of it if you didn't have a gift."
"A little gift," Diamond said indistinctly. "Enough
for tricks."
"How do you know that?"
Rose was very dark-skinned, with a cloud of
crinkled hair, a thin mouth, an intent, serious face.
Her feet and legs and hands were bare and dirty,
her skirt and jacket disreputable. Her dirty toes and
fingers were delicate and elegant, and a necklace of
amethysts gleamed under the torn, buttonless
jacket. Her mother, Tangle, made a good living by
curing and healing, bone-knitting and birth-easing,
and selling spells of finding, love-potions, and
sleeping-drafts. She could afford to dress herself
and her daughter in new clothes, buy shoes, and
keep clean, but it didn't occur to her to do so. Nor
was housekeeping one of her interests. She and
Rose lived mostly on boiled chicken and fried eggs,
as she was often paid in poultry. The yard of their
two-room house was a wilderness of cats and hens.
She liked cats, toads, and jewels. The amethyst
necklace had been payment for the safe delivery of
a son to Golden's head forester. Tangle herself
wore armfuls of bracelets and bangles that flashed
and crashed when she flicked out an impatient
spell. At times she wore a kitten on her shoulder.
She was not an attentive mother. Rose had
demanded, at seven years old, "Why did you have
me if you didn't want me?"
"How can you deliver babies properly if you
haven't had one?" said her mother.
"So I was practice," Rose snarled.
"Everything is practice," Tangle said. She was
never ill-natured. She seldom thought to do
anything much for her daughter, but never hurt her,
never scolded her, and gave her whatever she
asked for, dinner, a toad of her own, the amethyst
necklace, lessons in witchcraft. She would have
provided new clothes if Rose had asked for them,
but she never did. Rose had looked after herself
from an early age; and this was one of the reasons
Diamond loved her. With her, he knew what
freedom was. Without her, he could attain it only
when he was hearing and singing and playing
music.
"I do have a gift," he said now, rubbing his
temples and pulling his hair.
"Stop destroying your head," Rose told him.

"I know Tarry thinks I do."
"Of course you do! What does it matter what Tarry
thinks? You already play the harp about nine times
better than he ever did."
This was another of the reasons Diamond loved
her.
"Are there any wizard musicians?" he asked,
looking up.
She pondered. "I don't know."
"I don't either. Morred and Elfarran sang to each
other, and he was a mage. I think there's a Master
Chanter on Roke, that teaches the lays and the
histories. But I never heard of a wizard being a
musician."
"I don't see why one couldn't be." She never saw
why something could not be.
Another reason he loved her.
"It always seemed to me they're sort of alike," he
said, "magic and music. Spells and tunes. For one
thing, you have to get them just exactly right."
"Practice," Rose said, rather sourly. "I know." She
flicked a pebble at Diamond. It turned into a
butterfly in midair. He flicked a butterfly back at
her, and the two flitted and flickered a moment
before they fell back to earth as pebbles. Diamond
and Rose had worked out several such variations on
the old stone-hopping trick.
"You ought to go, Di," she said. "Just to find out."
"I know."
"What if you got to be a wizard! Oh! Think of the
stuff you could teach me! Shapechanging -- We
could be anything. Horses! Bears!"
"Moles," Diamond said. "Honestly, I feel like hiding
underground. I always thought Father was going to
make me learn all his kind of stuff, after I got my
name. But all this year he's kept sort of holding off.
I guess he had this in mind all along. But what if I
go down there and I'm not any better at being a
wizard than I am at bookkeeping? Why can't I do
what I know I can do?"
"Well, why can't you do it all? The magic and the
music, anyhow? You can always hire a bookkeeper."
When she laughed, her thin face got bright, her
thin mouth got wide, and her eyes disappeared.
"Oh, Darkrose," Diamond said, "I love you."
"Of course you do. You'd better. I'll witch you if
you don't."
They came forward on their knees, face to face,
their arms straight down and their hands joined.
They kissed each other all over their faces. To
Rose's lips Diamond's face was smooth and full as a
plum, with just a hint of prickliness above the lip
and jawline, where he had taken to shaving
recently. To Diamond's lips Rose's face was soft as
silk, with just a hint of grittiness on one cheek,
which she had rubbed with a dirty hand. They
moved a little closer so that their breasts and bellies
touched, though their hands stayed down by their
sides. They went on kissing.
"Darkrose," he breathed in her ear, his secret
name for her.
She said nothing, but breathed very warm in his
ear, and he moaned. His hands clenched hers. He
drew back a little. She drew back. They sat back on
their ankles.
"Oh Di," she said, "it will be awful when you go."
"I won't go," he said. "Anywhere. Ever."
BUT OF COURSE he went down to Havnor South
Port, in one of his father's carts driven by one of his
father's carters, along with Master Hemlock. As a
rule, people do what wizards advise them to do.
And it is no small honor to be invited by a wizard to
be his student or apprentice. Hemlock, who had
won his staff on Roke, was used to having boys
come to him begging to be tested and, if they had
the gift for it, taught. He was a little curious about
this boy whose cheerful good manners hid some
reluctance or self-doubt. It was the father's idea,
not the boy's, that he was gifted. That was unusual,
though perhaps not so unusual among the wealthy
as among common folk. At any rate he came with a
very good prenticing fee paid beforehand in gold
and ivory. If he had the makings of a wizard
Hemlock would train him, and if he had, as Hemlock
suspected, a mere childish flair, then he'd be sent
home with what remained of his fee. Hemlock was
an honest, upright, humorless, scholarly wizard with
little interest in feelings or ideas. His gift was for
names. "The art begins and ends in naming," he
said, which indeed is true, although there may be a
good deal between the beginning and the end.
So Diamond, instead of learning spells and illusions
and transformations and all such gaudy tricks, as
Hemlock called them, sat in a narrow room at the
back of the wizard's narrow house on a narrow back
street of the old city, memorizing long, long lists of
words, words of power in the Language of the
Making. Plants and parts of plants and animals and
parts of animals and islands and parts of islands,
parts of ships, parts of the human body. The words
never made sense, never made sentences, only
lists. Long, long lists.
His mind wandered. "Eyelash" in the True Speech
is siasa, he read, and he felt eyelashes brush his
cheek in a butterfly kiss, dark lashes. He looked up
startled and did not know what had touched him.
Later when he tried to repeat the word, he stood
dumb.
"Memory, memory," Hemlock said. "Talent's no
good without memory!" He was not harsh, but he
was unyielding. Diamond had no idea what opinion
Hemlock had of him, and guessed it to be pretty
low. The wizard sometimes had him come with him
to his work, mostly laying spells of safety on ships
and houses, purifying wells, and sitting on the
councils of the city, seldom speaking but always
listening. Another wizard, not Roke-trained but with
the healer's gift, looked after the sick and dying of
South Port. Hemlock was glad to let him do so. His
own pleasure was in studying and, as far as
Diamond could see, doing no magic at all. "Keep
the Equilibrium, it's all in that," Hemlock said, and,
"Knowledge, order, and control." Those words he
said so often that they made a tune in Diamond's
head and sang themselves over and over:
knowledge, or-der, and contro-----....
When Diamond put the lists of names to tunes he
made up, he learned them much faster; but then
the tune would come as part of the name, and he
would sing out so clearly-- for his voice had reestablished
itself as a strong, dark tenor -- that
Hemlock winced. Hemlock's was a very silent house.
Mostly the pupil was supposed to be with the
Master, or studying the lists of names in the room
where the lorebooks and wordbooks were, or
asleep. Hemlock was a stickler for early abed and
early afoot. But now and then Diamond had an hour
or two free. He always went down to the docks and
sat on a pierside or a waterstair and thought about
Darkrose. As soon as he was out of the house and
away from Master Hemlock, he began to think
about Darkrose, and went on thinking about her
and very little else. It surprised him a little. He
thought he ought to be homesick, to think about his
mother. He did think about his mother quite often,
and often was homesick, lying on his cot in his bare
and narrow little room after a scanty supper of cold
pea-porridge -- for this wizard, at least, did not live
in such luxury as Golden had imagined. Diamond
never thought about Darkrose, nights. He thought
of his mother, or of sunny rooms and hot food, or a
tune would come into his head and he would
practice it mentally on the harp in his mind, and so
drift off to sleep. Darkrose would come to his mind
only when he was down at the docks, staring out at
the water of the harbor, the piers, the fishing boats,
only when he was outdoors and away from
Hemlock and his house.
So he cherished his free hours as if they were
actual meetings with her. He had always loved her,
but had not understood that he loved her beyond
anyone and anything. When he was with her, even
when he was down on the docks thinking of her, he
was alive. He never felt entirely alive in Master
Hemlock's house and presence. He felt a little dead.
Not dead, but a little dead.
A few times, sitting on the waterstairs, the dirty
harbor water sloshing at the next step down, the
yells of gulls and dockworkers wreathing the air
with a thin, ungainly music, he shut his eyes and
saw his love so clear, so close, that he reached out
his hand to touch her. If he reached out his hand in
his mind only, as when he played the mental harp,
then indeed he touched her. He felt her hand in his,
and her cheek, warm-cool, silken-gritty, lay against
his mouth. In his mind he spoke to her, and in his
mind she answered, her voice, her husky voice
saying his name, "Diamond ...."
But as he went back up the streets of South Port
he lost her. He swore to keep her with him, to think
of her, to think of her that night, but she faded
away. By the time he opened the door of Master
Hemlock's house he was reciting lists of names, or
wondering what would be for dinner, for he was
hungry most of the time. Not till he could take an
hour and run back down to the docks could he think
of her.
So he came to feel that those hours were true
meetings with her, and he lived for them, without
knowing what he lived for until his feet were on the
cobbles, and his eyes on the harbor and the far line
of the sea. Then he remembered what was worth
remembering.
The winter passed by, and the cold early spring,
and with the warm late spring came a letter from
his mother, brought by a carter. Diamond read it
and took it to Master Hemlock, saying, "My mother
wonders if I might spend a month at home this
summer."
"Probably not," the wizard said, and then,
appearing to notice Diamond, put down his pen and
said, "Young man, I must ask you if you wish to
continue studying with me."
Diamond had no idea what to say. The idea of its
being up to him had not occurred to him. "Do you
think I ought to?" he asked at last.
"Probably not," the wizard said.
Diamond expected to feel relieved, released, but
found he felt rejected, ashamed.
"I'm sorry," he said, with enough dignity that
Hemlock glanced up at him.
"You could go to Roke," the wizard said.
"To Roke?"
The boy's drop-jawed stare irritated Hemlock,
though he knew it shouldn't. Wizards are used to
overweening confidence in the young of their kind.
They expect modesty to come later, if at all. "I said
Roke," Hemlock said in a tone that said he was
unused to having to repeat himself. And then,
because this boy, this soft-headed, spoiled, moony
boy had endeared himself to Hemlock by his
uncomplaining patience, he took pity on him and
said, "You should either go to Roke or find a wizard
to teach you what you need. Of course you need
what I can teach you. You need the names. The art
begins and ends in naming. But that's not your gift.
You have a poor memory for words. You must train
it diligently. However, it's clear that you do have
capacities, and that they need cultivation and
discipline, which another man can give you better
than I can." So does modesty breed modesty,
sometimes, even in unlikely places. "If you were to
go to Roke, I'd send a letter with you drawing you
to the particular attention of the Master
Summoner."
"Ah," said Diamond, floored. The Summoner's art
is perhaps the most arcane and dangerous of all the
arts of magic.
"Perhaps I am wrong," said Hemlock in his dry, flat
voice. "Your gift may be for Pattern. Or perhaps it's
an ordinary gift for shaping and transformation. I'm
not certain."
"But you are -- I do actually --"
"Oh yes. You are uncommonly slow, young man,
to recognize your own capacities." It was spoken
harshly, and Diamond stiffened up a bit.
"I thought my gift was for music," he said.
Hemlock dismissed that with a flick of his hand. "I

am talking of the True Art," he said. "Now I will be
frank with you. I advise you to write your parents --
I shall write them too -- informing them of your
decision to go to the School on Roke, if that is what
you decide; or to the Great Port, if the Mage
Restive will take you on, as I think he will, with my
recommendation. But I advise against visiting
home. The entanglement of family, friends, and so
on is precisely what you need to be free of. Now,
and henceforth."
"Do wizards have no family?"
Hemlock was glad to see a bit of fire in the boy.
"They are one another's family," he said.
"And no friends?"
"They may be friends. Did I say it was an easy
life?" A pause. Hemlock looked directly at Diamond.
"There was a girl," he said.
Diamond met his gaze for a moment, looked
down, and said nothing.
"Your father told me. A witch's daughter, a
childhood playmate. He believed that you had
taught her spells."
"She taught me."
Hemlock nodded. "That is quite understandable,
among children. And quite impossible now. Do you
understand that?" "No," Diamond said.
"Sit down," said Hemlock. After a moment
Diamond took the stiff, high-backed chair facing
him.
"I can protect you here, and have done so. On
Roke, of course, you'll be perfectly safe. The very
walls, there...But if you go home, you must be
willing to protect yourself. It's a difficult thing for a
young man, very difficult -- a test of a will that has
not yet been steeled, a mind that has not yet seen
its true goal. I very strongly advise that you not
take that risk. Write your parents, and go to the
Great Port, or to Roke. Half your year's fee, which
I'll return to you, will see to your first expenses."
Diamond sat upright and still. He had been getting
some of his father's height and girth lately, and
looked very much a man, though a very young one.
"What did you mean, Master Hemlock, in saying
that you had protected me here?"
"Simply as I protect myself," the wizard said; and
after a moment, testily, "The bargain, boy. The
power we give for our power. The lesser state of
being we forego. Surely you know that every true
man of power is celibate."
There was a pause, and Diamond said, "So you
saw to it...that I..."
"Of course. It was my responsibility as your
teacher."
Diamond nodded. He said, "Thank you." Presently
he stood up.
"Excuse me, Master," he said. "I have to think."
"Where are you going?"
"Down to the waterfront."
"Better stay here."
"I can't think, here."
Hemlock might have known then what he was up
against; but having told the boy he would not be his
master any longer, he could not in conscience
command him. "You have a true gift, Essiri," he
said, using the name he had given the boy in the
springs of the Amia, a word that in the Old Speech
means Willow. "I don't entirely understand it. I
think you don't understand it at all. Take care! To
misuse a gift, or to refuse to use it, may cause
great loss, great harm."
Diamond nodded, suffering, contrite, unrebellious,
unmovable.
"Go on," the wizard said, and he went.
Later he knew he should never have let the boy
leave the house. He had underestimated Diamond's
willpower, or the strength of the spell the girl had
laid on him. Their conversation was in the morning;
Hemlock went back to the ancient cantrip he was
annotating; it was not till supper time that he
thought about his pupil, and not until he had eaten
supper alone that he admitted that Diamond had
run away.
Hemlock was 10th to practice any of the lesser
arts of magic. He did not put out a finding spell, as
any sorcerer might have done. Nor did he call to
Diamond in any way. He was angry; perhaps he
was hurt. He had thought well of the boy, and
offered to write the Summoner about him, and then
at the first test of character Diamond had broken.
"Glass," the wizard muttered. At least this weakness
proved he was not dangerous. Some talents were
best not left to run wild, but there was no harm in
this fellow, no malice. No ambition. "No spine," said
Hemlock to the silence of the house. "Let him crawl
home to his mother."
Still it rankled him that Diamond had let him down
flat, without a word of thanks or apology. So much
for good manners, he thought.
As she blew out the lamp and got into bed, the
witch's daughter heard an owl calling, the little,
liquid hu-hu-hu-hu that made people call them
laughing owls. She heard it with a mournful heart.
That had been their signal, summer nights, when
they sneaked out to meet in the willow grove down
on the banks of the Amia, when everybody else was
sleeping. She would not think of him at night. Back
in the winter she had sent to him night after night.
She had learned her mother's spell of sending, and
knew that it was a true spell. She had sent him her
touch, her voice saying his name, again and again.
She had met a wall of air and silence. She touched
nothing. He would not hear.
Several times, all of a sudden, in the daytime,
there had been a moment when she had known
him close in mind and could touch him if she
reached out. But at night she knew only his blank
absence, his refusal of her. She had stopped trying
to reach him, months ago, but her heart was still
very sore.
"Hu-hu-hu," said the owl, under her window, and
then it said, "Darkrose!" Startled from her misery,
she leaped out of bed and opened the shutters.
"Come on out," whispered Diamond, a shadow in
the starlight.
"Mother's not home. Come in!" She met him at the
door.
They held each other tight, hard, silent for a long
time. To Diamond it was as if he held his future, his
own life, his whole life, in his arms.
At last she moved, and kissed his cheek, and
whispered, "I missed you, I missed you, I missed
you. How long can you stay?"
"As long as I like."
She kept his hand and led him in. He was always a
little reluctant to enter the witch's house, a
pungent, disorderly place thick with the mysteries
of women and witchcraft, very different from his
own clean comfortable home, even more different
from the cold austerity of the wizard's house. He
shivered like a horse as he stood there, too tall for
the herb-festooned rafters. He was very highly
strung, and worn out, having walked forty miles in
sixteen hours without food.
"Where's your mother?" he asked in a whisper.
"Sitting with old Ferny. She died this afternoon,
Mother will be there all night. But how did you get
here?"
"Walked."
"The wizard let you visit home?"
"I ran away."
"Ran away! Why?"
"To keep you."
He looked at her, that vivid, fierce, dark face in its
rough cloud of hair. She wore only her shift, and he
saw the infinitely delicate, tender rise of her
breasts. He drew her to him again, but though she
hugged him she drew away again, frowning.
"Keep me?" she repeated. "You didn't seem to
worry about losing me all winter. What made you
come back now?"
"He wanted me to go to Roke."
"To Roke?" She stared. "To Roke, Di? Then you
really do have the gift --you could be a sorcerer?"
To find her on Hemlock's side was a blow.
"Sorcerers are nothing to him. He means I could
be a wizard. Do magery. Not just witchcraft."
"Oh I see," Rose said after a moment. "But I don't
see why you ran away."

They had let go of each other's hands.
"Don't you understand?" he said, exasperated with
her for not understanding, because he had not
understood. "A wizard can't have anything to do
with women. With witches. With all that."
"Oh, I know. It's beneath them."
"It's not just beneath them --"
"Oh, but it is. I'll bet you had to unlearn every
spell I taught you. Didn't you?"
"It isn't the same kind of thing."
"No. It isn't the High Art. It isn't the True Speech.
A wizard mustn't soil his lips with common words.
"Weak as women's magic, wicked as women's
magic," you think I don't know what they say? So,
why did you come back here?"
"To see you!"
"What for?"
"What do you think?"
"You never sent to me, you never let me send to
you, all the time you were gone. I was just
supposed to wait until you got tired of playing
wizard. Well, I got tired of waiting." Her voice was
nearly inaudible, a rough whisper.
"Somebody's been coming around," he said,
incredulous that she could turn against him. "Who's
been after you?"
"None of your business if there is! You go off, you
turn your back on me. Wizards can't have anything
to do with what I do, what my mother does. Well, I
don't want anything to do with what you do, either,
ever. So go!"
Starving hungry, frustrated, misunderstood,
Diamond reached out to hold her again, to make
her body understand his body, repeating that first,
deep embrace that had held all the years of their
lives in it. He found himself standing two feet back,
his hands stinging and his ears ringing and his eyes
dazzled. Thc lightning was in Rose's eyes, and her
hands sparked as she clenched them. "Never do
that again," she whispered.
"Never fear," Diamond said, turned on his heel,
and strode out. A string of dried sage caught on his
head and trailed after him.
HE SPENT THE NIGHT in their old place in the
sallows. Maybe he hoped she would come, but she
did not come, and he soon slept in sheer weariness.
He woke in the first, cold light. He sat up and
thought. He looked at life in that cold light. It was a
different matter from what he had believed it. He
went down to the stream in which he had been
named. He drank, washed his hands and face,
made himself look as decent as he could, and went
up through the town to the fine house at the high
end, his father's house.
After the first outcries and embraces, the servants
and his mother sat him right down to breakfast. So
it was with warm food in his belly and a certain chill
courage in his heart that he faced his father, who
had been out before breakfast seeing off a string of
timber-carts to the Great Port.
"Well, son!" They touched cheeks. "So Master
Hemlock gave you a vacation?"
"No, sir. I left."
Golden stared, then filled his plate and sat down.
"Left," he said.
"Yes, sir. I decided that I don't want to be a
wizard."
"Hmf," said Golden, chewing. "Left of your own
accord? Entirely? With the Master's permission?"
"Of my own accord entirely, without his
permission."
Golden chewed very slowly, his eyes on the table.
Diamond had seen his father look like this when a
forester reported an infestation in the chestnut
groves, and when he found a mule-dealer had
cheated him.
"He wanted me to go to the College on Roke to
study with the Master Summoner. He was going to
send me there. I decided not to go."
After a while Golden asked, still looking at the
table, "Why?"
"It isn't the life I want."
Another pause. Golden glanced over at his wife,
who stood by the window listening in silence. Then
he looked at his son. Slowly the mixture of anger,
disappointment, confusion, and respect on his face
gave way to something simpler, a look of
complicity, very nearly a wink. "I see," he said.
"And what did you decide you want?"
A pause. "This," Diamond said. His voice was level.
He looked neither at his father nor his mother.
"Hah!" said Golden. "Well! I will say I'm glad of it,

son." He ate a small porkpie in one mouthful.
"Being a wizard, going to Roke, all that, it never
seemed real, not exactly. And with you off there, I
didn't know what all this was for, to tell you the
truth. All my business. If you're here, it adds up,
you see. It adds up. Well! But listen here, did you
just run off from the wizard? Did he know you were
going?"
"No. I'll write him," Diamond said, in his new, level
voice.
"He won't be angry? They say wizards have short
tempers. Full of pride."
"He's angry," Diamond said, "but he won't do
anything."
So it proved. Indeed, to Golden's amazement,
Master Hemlock sent back a scrupulous two-fifths of
the prenticing-fee. With the packet, which was
delivered by one of Golden's carters who had taken
a load of spars down to South Port, was a note for
Diamond. It said, "True art requires a single heart."
The direction on the outside was the Hardic rune for
willow. The note was signed with Hemlock's rune,
which had two meanings: the hemlock tree, and

suffering.
Diamond sat in his own sunny room upstairs, on
his comfortable bed, hearing his mother singing as
she went about the house. He held the wizard's
letter and reread the message and the two runes
many times. The cold and sluggish mind that had
been born in him that morning down in the sallows
accepted the lesson. No magic. Never again. He had
never given his heart to it. It had been a game to
him, a game to play with Darkrose. Even the names
of the True Speech that he had learned in the
wizard's house, though he knew the beauty and the
power that lay in them, he could let go, let slip,
forget. That was not his language.
He could speak his language only with her. And he
had lost her, let her go. The double heart has no
true speech. From now on he could talk only the
language of duty: the getting and the spending, the
outlay and the income, the profit and the loss.
And beyond that, nothing. There had been
illusions, little spells, pebbles that turned to
butterflies, wooden birds that flew on living wings
for a minute or two. There had never been a
choice, really. There was only one way for him to
go.
GOLDEN WAS immensely happy and quite
unconscious of it. "Old man's got his jewel back,"
said the carter to the forester. "Sweet as new
butter, he is." Golden, unaware of being sweet,
thought only how sweet life was. He had bought
the Reche grove, at a very stiff price to be sure, but
at least old Lowbough of Easthill hadn't got it, and
now he and Diamond could develop it as it ought to
be developed. In among the chestnuts there were a
lot of pines, which could be felled and sold for
masts and spars and small lumber, and replanted
with chestnut seedlings. It would in time be a pure
stand like the Big Grove, the heart of his chestnut
kingdom. In time, of course. Oak and chestnut don't
shoot up overnight like alder and willow. But there
was time. There was time, now. The boy was barely
seventeen, and he himself just forty-five. In his
prime. He had been feeling old, but that was
nonsense. He was in his prime. The oldest trees,
past bearing, ought to come out with the pines.
Some good wood for furniture could be salvaged
from them.
"Well, well, well," he said to his wife, frequently,
"all rosy again, eh? Got the apple of your eye back
home, eh? No more moping, eh?"
And Tuly smiled and stroked his hand.
Once instead of smiling and agreeing, she said,
"It's lovely to have him back, but" and Golden
stopped hearing. Mothers were born to worry about
their children, and women were born never to be
content. There was no reason why he should listen
to the litany of anxieties by which Tuly hauled
herself through life. Of course she thought a
merchant's life wasn't good enough for the boy.
She'd have thought being King in Havnor wasn't
good enough for him.
"When he gets himself a girl," Golden said, in
answer to whatever it was she had been saying,
"he'll be all squared away. Living with the wizards,
you know, the way they are, it set him back a bit.
Don't worry about Diamond. He'll know what he
wants when he sees it!"
"I hope so," said Tuly.
"At least he's not seeing the witch's girl," said
Golden. "That's done with." Later on it occurred to
him that neither was his wife seeing the witch
anymore. For years they'd been thick as thieves,
against all his warnings, and now Tangle was never
anywhere near the house. Women's friendships
never lasted. He teased her about it. Finding her
strewing pennyroyal and miller's-bane in the chests
and clothes-presses against an infestation of moths,
he said, "Seems like you'd have your friend the wise
woman up to hex 'em away. Or aren't you friends
anymore?"
"No," his wife said in her soft, level voice, "we
aren't."
"And a good thing too!" Golden said roundly.
"What's become of that daughter of hers, then?
Went off with a juggler, I heard?"
"A musician," Tuly said. "Last summer."
"A NAMEDAY PARTY," said Golden. "Time for a bit
of play, a bit of music and dancing, boy. Nineteen
years old. Celebrate it!"
"I'll be going to Easthill with Sul's mules."
"No, no, no. Sul can handle it. Stay home and
have your party. You've been working hard. We'll
hire a band. Who's the best in the country? Tarry
and his lot?"
"Father, I don't want a party," Diamond said and
stood up, shivering his muscles like a horse. He was
bigger than Golden now, and when he moved
abruptly it was startling. "I'll go to Easthill," he said,
and left the room.
"What's that all about?" Golden said to his wife, a
rhetorical question. She looked at him and said
nothing, a non-rhetorical answer.
After Golden had gone out, she found her son in
the counting-room going through ledgers. She
looked at the pages. Long, long lists of names and
numbers, debts and credits, profits and losses.
"Di," she said, and he looked up. His face was still
round and a bit peachy, though the bones were
heavier and the eyes were melancholy.
"I didn't mean to hurt Father's feelings," he said.
"If he wants a party, he'll have it," she said. Their
voices were alike, being in the higher register but
dark-toned, and held to an even quietness,
contained, restrained. She perched on a stool
beside his at the high desk.
"I can't," he said, and stopped, and went on, "I
really don't want to have any dancing."
"He's matchmaking," Tuly said, dry, fond.
"I don't care about that."
"I know you don't."
"The problem is..."
"The problem is the music," his mother said at
last.
He nodded.
"My son, there is no reason," she said, suddenly
passionate, "there is no reason why you should give
up everything you love!"
He took her hand and kissed it as they sat side by
side.
"Things don't mix," he said. "They ought to, but
they don't. I found that out. When I left the wizard,
I thought I could be everything. You know -- do
magic, play music, be Father's son, love Rose.... It
doesn't work that way. Things don't mix."
"They do, they do," Tuly said. "Everything is
hooked together, tangled up!"
"Maybe things are, for women. But I...I can't be
double-hearted."
"Double-hearted? You? You gave up wizardry
because you knew that if you didn't, you'd betray
it."
He took the word with a visible shock, but did not
deny it.
"But why did you give up music?"
"I have to have a single heart. I can't play the
harp while I'm bargaining with a mule-breeder. I
can't sing ballads while I'm figuring what we have
to pay the pickers to keep 'em from hiring out to
Lowbough!" His voice shook a little now, a vibrato,
and his eyes were not sad, but angry.
"So you put a spell on yourself," she said, "just as
that wizard put one on you. A spell to keep you
safe. To keep you with the mule-breeders, and the
nut-pickers, and these." She struck the ledger full of
lists of names and figures, a flicking, dismissive tap.
"A spell of silence," she said.
After a long time the young man said, "What else
can I do?"
"I don't know, my dear. I do want you to be safe.

I do love to see your father happy and proud of
you. But I can't bear to see you unhappy, without
pride! I don't know. Maybe you're right. Maybe for a
man it's only one thing ever. But I miss hearing you
sing."
She was in tears. They hugged, and she stroked
his thick, shining hair and apologized for being
cruel, and he hugged her again and said she was
the kindest mother in the world, and so she went
off. But as she left she turned back a moment and
said, "Let him have the party, Di. Let yourself have
it."
"I will," he said, to comfort her.
GOLDEN ordered the beer and food and fireworks,
but Diamond saw to hiring the musicians.
"Of course I'll bring my band," Tarry said, "fat
chance I'd miss it! You'll have every tootler in the
west of the world here for one of your dad's
parties."
"You can tell 'em you're the band that's getting
paid."
"Oh, they'll come for the glory," said the harper, a
lean, long-jawed, wall-eyed fellow of forty. "Maybe
you'll have a go with us yourself, then? You had a
hand for it, before you took to making money. And
the voice not bad, if you'd worked on it."
"I doubt it," Diamond said.
"That girl you liked, witch's Rose, she's tuning
about with Labby, I hear. No doubt they'll come
by."
"I'll see you then," said Diamond, looking big and
handsome and indifferent, and walked off.
"Too high and mighty these days to stop and talk,"
said Tarry, "though I taught him all he knows of
harping. But what's that to a rich man?"
TARRY'S MALICE had left his nerves raw, and the
thought of the party weighed on him till he lost his
appetite. He thought hopefully for a while that he
was sick and could miss the party. But the day
came, and he was there. Not so evidently, so
eminently, so flamboyantly there as his father, but
present, smiling, dancing. All his childhood friends
were there too, half of them married by now to the
other half, it seemed, but there was still plenty of
flirting going on, and several pretty girls were
always near him. He drank a good deal of Gadge
Brewer's excellent beer, and found he could endure
the music if he was dancing to it and talking and
laughing while he danced. So he danced with all the
pretty girls in turn, and then again with whichever
one turned up again, which all of them did.
It was Golden's grandest party yet, with a dancing
floor built on the town green down the way from
Golden's house, and a tent for the old folks to eat
and drink and gossip in, and new clothes for the
children, and jugglers and puppeteers, some of
them hired and some of them coming by to pick up
whatever they could in the way of coppers and free
beer. Any festivity drew itinerant entertainers and
musicians it was their living, and though uninvited
they were welcomed. A tale-singer with a droning
voice and a droning bagpipe was singing The Deed
of the Dragonlord to a group of people under the
big oak on the hilltop. When Tarry's band of harp,
fife, viol, and drum took time off for a breather and
a swig, a new group hopped up onto the dance
floor. "Hey, there's Labby's band!" cried the pretty
girl nearest Diamond. "Come on, they're the best!"
Labby, a light-skinned, flashy-looking fellow,
played the double-reed woodhorn.
With him were a violist, a tabor-player, and Rose,
who played fife. Their first tune was a stampy, fast
and brilliant, too fast for some of the dancers.
Diamond and his partner stayed in, and people
cheered and clapped them when they finished the
dance, sweating and panting. "Beer!" Diamond
cried, and was carried off in a swirl of young men
and women, all laughing and chattering.
He heard behind him the next tune start up, the
viol alone, strong and sad as a tenor voice: "Where
My Love Is Going."
He drank a mug of beer down in one draft, and
the girls with him watched the muscles in his strong
throat as he swallowed, and they laughed and
chattered, and he shivered all over like a cart horse
stung by flies. He said, "Oh! I can't --!" He bolted
off into the dusk beyond the lanterns hanging
around the brewer's booth. "Where's he going?"
said one, and another, "He'll be back," and they
laughed and chattered.
The tune ended. "Darkrose," he said, behind her in
the dark. She turned her head and looked at him.
Their heads were on a level, she sitting crosslegged
up on the dance platform, he kneeling on the grass.
"Come to the sallows," he said.
She said nothing. Labby, glancing at her, set his
woodhorn to his lips. The drummer struck a triple
beat on his tabor, and they were off into a sailor's
jig.
When she looked around again Diamond was
gone.
Tarry came back with his band in an hour or so,
ungrateful for the respite and much the worse for
beer. He interrupted the tune and the dancing,
telling Labby loudly to clear out.
"Ah, pick your nose, harp-picker," Labby said, and
Tarry took offense, and people took sides, and
while the dispute was at its brief height, Rose put
her fife in her pocket and slipped away.
Away from the lanterns of the party it was dark,
but she knew the way in the dark. He was there.
The willows had grown, these two years. There was
only a little space to sit among the green shoots
and the long, falling leaves.
The music started up, distant, blurred by wind and
the murmur of the river running.
"What did you want, Diamond?"
"To talk."
They were only voices and shadows to each other.
"So," she said.
"I wanted to ask you to go away with me," he
said.
"When?"
"Then. When we quarreled. I said it all wrong. I
thought...." A long pause. "I thought I could go on
running away. With you. And play music. Make a
living. Together. I meant to say that."
"You didn't say it."
"I know. I said everything wrong. I did everything
wrong. I betrayed everything. The magic. And the
music. And you."
"I'm all right," she said.
"Are you?"
"I'm not really good on the fife, but I'm good
enough. What you didn't teach me, I can fill in with
a spell, if I have to. And the band, they're all right.
Labby isn't as bad as he looks. Nobody fools with
me. We make a pretty good living. Winters, I go
stay with Mother and help her out. So I'm all right.
What about you, Di?"
"All wrong."
She started to say something, and did not say it.
"I guess we were children," he said. "Now...."
"What's changed?"
"I made the wrong choice."
"Once?" she said. "Or twice?"
"Twice."
"Third time's the charm."
Neither spoke for a while. She could just make out
the bulk of him in the leafy shadows. "You're bigger
than you were," she said. "Can you still make a
light, Di? I want to see you."
He shook his head.
"That was the one thing you could do that I never
could. And you never could teach me."
"I didn't know what I was doing," he said.
"Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't."
"And the wizard in South Port didn't teach you how
to make it work?"
"He only taught me names."
"Why can't you do it now?"
"I gave it up, Darkrose. I had to either do it and
nothing else, or not do it. You have to have a single
heart."
"I don't see why," she said. "My mother can cure a
fever and ease a childbirth and find a lost ring,
maybe that's nothing compared to what the wizards
and the dragonlords can do, but it's not nothing, all
the same. And she didn't give up anything for it.
Having me didn't stop her. She had me so that she
could learn how to do it! Just because I learned
how to play music from you, did I have to give up
saying spells? I can bring a fever down now too.
Why should you have to stop doing one thing so
you can do the other?"
"My father," he began, and stopped, and gave a
kind of laugh. "They don't go together," he said.
"The money and the music."
"The father and the witch-girl," said Darkrose.
Again there was silence between them. The leaves
of the willows stirred.
"Would you come back to me?" he said. "Would
you go with me, live with me, marry me, Darkrose?"
"Not in your father's house, Di."
"Anywhere. Run away."
"But you can't have me without the music."
"Or the music without you."
"I would," she said.
"Does Labby want a harper?"
She hesitated; she laughed. "If he wants a fifeplayer,"
she said.
"I haven't practiced ever since I left, Darkrose," he
said. "But the music was always in my head, and
you...." She reached out her hands to him. They
knelt facing, the willow-leaves moving across their
hair. They kissed each other, timidly at first.
IN THE YEARS after Diamond left home, Golden
made more money than he had ever done before.
All his deals were profitable. It was as if good
fortune stuck to him and he could not shake it off.
He grew immensely wealthy.
He did not forgive his son. It would have made a
happy ending, but he would not have it. To leave
so, without a word, on his nameday night, to go off
with the witch-girl, leaving all the honest work
undone, to be a vagrant musician, a harper
twanging and singing and grinning for pennies --
there was nothing but shame and pain and anger in
it for Golden. So he had his tragedy.
Tuly shared it with him for a long time, since she
could see her son only by lying to her husband,
which she found hard to do. She wept to think of
Diamond hungry, sleeping hard. Cold nights of
autumn were a misery to her. But as time went on
and she heard him spoken of as Diamond the sweet
singer of the West of Havnor, Diamond who had
harped and sung to the great lords in the Tower of
the Sword, her heart grew lighter. And once, when
Golden was down 'at South Port, she and Tangle
took a donkey cart and drove over to Easthill,
where they heard Diamond sing the Lay of the Lost
Queen, while Rose sat with them, and Little Tuly sat
on Tuly's knee. And if not a happy ending, that was
a true joy, which may be enough to ask for, after
all.