[Envinyatar]

The soft light of an early evening filtered in through the open windows of the stable. Elf as she was, still her footsteps had stirred up the dust and chaff as she drew near, and now the fey bits danced in the light and the faint wind of her coming.

‘She looks so very young,’ he thought, as she stepped close, extending her trembling hand toward him. And in a trick of light and shadow the finely carved feathers of the crane seemed to ruffle in the air, as if to fly free of the flesh it rested on. Grace was in its form and a certain capturing of spirit; and he wondered, as he looked into her face, if she understood that these qualities had come to it through her hands, her own spirit giving voice to the wood.

A few words passed between them as he studied the carving. And then a sudden memory assailed him. They had come back to the Vale. The ragtag few who had survived the war. Memories of lost companions followed in their wake. The forever silenced footsteps of the sons of Ringló ringing hollowly across the marshy grasslands.

It was late summer and a pair of mated cranes had built their great nest near the marshy edges of the river. The small band of men came near, passing by slowly on their way to their own homes. Protective of their young, the pair had risen up and called out a warning in unison. ‘Stay clear!’ came their cry. And they stood tall among the grasses and the reeds, beating their great wings in the air as emphasis. The westering sun had shone through their feathers in a fiery blaze. The men had stood in awe of this spectacle, and bowing slightly to the pair had given wide berth to their little family.

‘We should have stayed near our families, too,’ he murmured. Then, catching himself, caught also the last of her words.

‘I know it is a small thing, and by no means the work of a master, but it is a beginning,’ she said. ‘I will find other ways to thank you Derufin, and prove you right in your trust.’ His fingertips moved softly over the fine work of the feathered wings. ‘I hope it is to your liking.’

He smiled up at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling in delight. ‘Yes,’ he said, his hand coming up to adjust a stray bridle that threatened to fall from her arm. For a brief moment his fingers grazed the inner surface of her wrist. He dropped his eyes, withdrawing his hand to turn the carving once more upon the palm of his other hand.

‘Yes, Vanwe. I like it very much.’

She had gone then, to see to the horses, the jingling of the bridles trailing her footsteps.

Derufin placed the small crane on the barrel head, among his own creations. They seemed crude and ungainly as they stood next to hers. He smiled ruefully at them. And yet hers did not overshadow them, he thought, but lent them a certain grace and light, calling them out of their lumpish existence and into the promise of a gentler world.

An old scrap of poetry, wrought by some passing bard came back to him:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

The shadows in the stable lengthened as he sat there, his hands resting on his thighs. Standing, then, he gathered up his carvings, placing them carefully in the box he had made for them. ‘Tomorrow,’ he thought, making his way back to his room, ‘tomorrow, when the light is good, I will work on these again.’ He slid the box beneath his bed, along with the knife he was using.

His little crane he placed carefully on the stand beside his bed, where the soft light from the candle lantern there would catch it, should he wake, as he often did, in the night . . .

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with thanks to Wendell Berry for the poem