Following the coast, he walked for three days, skirting villages where houses or fields were burning, avoiding other travelers. The night of the third day, he gazed up at the skies, watching a scimitar of light hang gracefully in the sky, accompanied by graceful flights of stars falling around it. He followed the blade of light to the east, and south, once more into the great dark wood.

Time smeared across his mind, and he forgot to count days or observe seasons. Avril hunted for him on days when he simply sat, caught up in the movement of time and fate and its currents around him. When winter came, he pulled his cloak tight around his shoulders, and wandered again.

In the mountains that rose through the mountain, he found himself standing at the base of a cliff, thick vines growing up the rough stone, tendrils seeking the sky far above, reaching for a familiar round tower. Reaching past the vines, touching the rock face, the bones of the earth resonated for him, telling him a tale of a giant who would bring home a wife to live in a tidy cottage built by the giant, his brother, and an itinerant blacksmith.

A dry leaf touched his face, and the bitter smell of the plant was the touch of jealousy and rage, a child’s hurt grown into a ladder to the sky. A feather was caught in the sticky sap where a tendril of the vine had been broken. In a heartbeat, the vines vanished, an illusion or portent or hallucination.

Stepping back from the cliff face, he turned down hill and skirted the shoulder of the mountain til he came at midnight to the sleeping village at the crossroad of the trail up the mountain and the path to the larger towns in the valley. The village had grown, but still he found Cormoran’s cottage with its sheltered garden. It stood cold and empty, a plate abandoned on the table, the bed rumpled. The dwelling was waiting for its master to return, and Weyland roused the fire, warming the stones and wood. Drawing water from the well, he set a pot to warm on the hearth, adding herbs and vegetables and a bit of rabbit that Avril had brought to him earlier in the day. He settled into the chair by the fire, his fingers trailing over the frame and strings of the harp standing next to the hearth.

As dawn touched the skies, the door of the cottage thumped open, and Cormoran entered, carrying someone wrapped tightly in a blanket. Weyland closed the door and poured water into the kettle to heat for tea. The giant accepted the help without comment, and when he pushed the blanket back, Weyland recognized the flaming hair around the deathly pale face of the merchant’s wife. Cormoran met the Smith’s gaze, anguish knit across his brow.

“She’s safe now,” Weyland said gently, and the giant covered his face with massive hands and wept.

They tended her for three days while she slept in the throes of a fever from a wound on her leg. Grahme brought herbs for poultices, and the midwife came and saw her twice. For his part, Weyland kept the fire stoked and Avril helped keep the stew pot full of fresh game. When they dressed Gretchen in a worn dress from the pack Cormoran brought home with her, Weyland found a small silver mirror and a harp with broken strings and cracked spine. The metal of the mirror whispered to him, and he slipped into his pocket when he went out to draw water from the well. The harp he quietly replaced with the one from his own pack, sensing that the broken harp and its story would cause more trouble than not.

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The mirror continued to call to Weyland, drawing his mind and energies in a low hum. He went to the village smithy late on the third day, the metal disk in hand. The journeyman blacksmith had already gone home for the night, but the forge was still hot. Weyland spun the disk between his fingers, and set to work. Under his sure touch and the borrowed tools, the mirror grew, drawn up and out, until it was near as tall as he was. Finding wood scraps that fit the mirror just so, he glued and clamped it into place, carefully carrying it back to the cottage.

The mare waited for him at the garden gate, her flanks plump and glossy. She nudged his shoulder with her nose, and then blew upon the clamped mirror, her breath fogging the metal. A light swirled on the surface of the mirror in response, like moonlight on water, coalescing in an image like fog on the moors of his youth..

He saw the face of a woman, tears filling her eyes, unshed, a lock of white hair at her brow. Like a lingering sweetness, he recognized the lines of the eyes and cheek of the girl he’d kept vigil over as he lay dying against the broken rock where she lay in a magical sleep. She reached towards the surface of the mirror, and behind her Weyland saw the familiar stone walls and high windows of Grahme’s tower, the bloom of a rose nodding against the window sill. She looked away, the scene vanishing like a thought. The smith shuddered and the mare lipped his collar, exhaling a warm breath against his cheek.

Entering, Weyland set the transformed mirror in a shadowy corner, covering it with an old cloak. Cormoran turned his head to look at his friend. “She is waking,” the giant rumbled quietly, his eyes red with fatigue and misty with emotion.

“Her mirror has been reforged,” Weyland replied, the weight of that remaking heavy in his mouth and in the ache of his hands from the working. “It will show her common things, like any mirror, but also some things of the past, and some things far away, and some things maybe a little in the future. It may show these things to others who have the touch, but for most people it’s just a mirror.” He put half a loaf of bread and some dried roots in a sack, rolling up his blanket and spare clothes.

“You’re leaving, then?” the giant asked, stroking the fine-boned hand of the woman on his bed.

“The mare has come for me. It’s time.” Weyland searched awkwardly for words, but nothing came to his lips and tongue, until a darker spirit provided them. “Your village smith is a good man, and will find he learns with remarkable speed. With you and your brother and your woman’s support, the village shall prosper, with heavy crops, fat livestock, and cows that give milk four times a day. Your milkmaids shall never suffer pox or ill health, and the goose girl shall find eggs with large golden yolks from her flock. Be welcoming but wary of strangers, and know that Grahme, too, shall find a woman driven to him by storms and fire.” Weyland shuddered at the last image, the strange woman’s face familiar, something from a dream of storms and wolves and blood.

“Peace in your travels, brother,” Cormoran rumbled, turning back to look at the woman. As the smith closed the door, the last thing he saw was her face in the lamplight, eyes opening to look up at his giant friend.

The mare tossed her head, excited as Weyland mounted and Avril leapt up to sit behind him. He tightened his knees on her sides, and she stepped out briskly, turning them to the south and west, and lands they had not yet seen.