Once Upon an Autumn Eve Read Free

off to one side Handmaiden Zoé marveled at the skill of her tall and lithe auburn-haired mistress. And even though the sun was nigh gone, still in the long shadows lying across the sward the princess did not miss.
    Finally all the arrows were spent, and as Liaze stepped to the standing haycock and retrieved her shafts, Zoé glanced at the disappearing limb of the setting sun and then at Autumnwood Manor and said, “My lady, the dinner mark approaches. Would you have me draw a bath and lay out a gown?”
    Liaze sighed and stood a moment, then peered up at the waxing half-moon and said, “I think this eve I will bathe in the pool.”
    “The pool?”
    “ Oui. I feel the need for solitude.”
    “Oh, my lady, that place is”—her brown eyes filled with trepidation, Zoé looked toward the cluster of great willows among which the pool lay, hidden by the drooping branches reaching all the way down to the ground, their autumn gold leaves ablaze in the last rays of sunlight—“is, well, I don’t know, dark in some manner, I would say.”
    “Dark?” said Liaze. “But Zoé, how can you think of it being dark among all those bright leaves?”
    “I don’t know,” said Zoé. “Perhaps instead of ‘dark’ I mean it feels, umm, ‘closed in,’ as if . . . as if—Oh, it’s just that you can’t see out or in, and things can come creeping through the branches unseen. Regardless, my lady, instead of seeking solitude, I think you need cheerful company about.”
    “Company?” Liaze frowned, puzzlement in her amber—some would say “golden-brown”—eyes. “Why so?”
    Zoé turned up a noncommittal hand. “Well, for these past three weeks, ever since the wedding—on the journey from Summerwood Manor all the way here and in the days since—you seem . . . um, how shall I say . . . morose? Oui, morose.”
    Liaze slipped the last of the arrows into the quiver. “Morose?”
    “Saddened, somehow,” said Zoé, brushing away a stray lock of her own brown hair.
    Liaze shook her head. “No, Zoé. Not saddened. Reflective instead.”
    “Reflective?”
    Liaze took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Yes, reflective. I have been pondering the ways of love and the way I would have things be. My brothers, you see, have found their heart mates, whereas Celeste and I . . .” Her words fell to silence.
    “Ah, pishposh,” said Zoé. “You are so beautiful, my lady, and one day the right man will come along and—”
    Liaze held up a hand to stop the flow of Zoé’s words. “One day, you say? Well, Zoé, for all of my life these one days have flown by and still he hasn’t appeared.”
    “Oh, Princess, do not be dejected. Perhaps this is the very day, or tomorrow, or the next—”
    “Hush, Zoé, and leave me to my reflections. I shall bathe at the pool and treasure my solitude.”
    “As you wish, my lady. Shall I ready a change of clothes? One of your splendid gowns should cheer you up.”
    Liaze looked down at her hunting leathers and sighed and then turned to Zoé and forced a smile and said, “The pale green one. I’ll come in a candlemark or so.”
    As Zoé walked toward Autumnwood Manor, Liaze unstrung her bow and then set out for the stand of willows, where she pushed aside the dangling branches and made her way inward, the gold of the leaves fading to bronze in the deepening twilight. As she passed through curtains of foliage and among the great boles, behind her the swaying branches of her passage swept the ground, as if to eliminate her track. Finally she came to the very center of the grove, where the trees gave way to a small open glade, and there, among great, flat white stones, lay a broad, deep pool, limpid and welling with spring-fed water, a rill flowing out from one end to dance and sing between mossy banks on its journey to a distant sea.
    Liaze strode past a small stand of cattails and to one of the horizontal slabs, where she set down her bow and unslung her quiver, and then quickly doffed her