The Reluctant Champion

1. The Quest

In the shade of the wood, where twilight anticipated the coming night, a princess stood gazing doubtfully at the road before her. That she was a princess we must take on faith; in her tattered and travel-stained rags she had little of the princess about her. Except-she stood so upright in the shadows, poised like a dancer before the coming evening. In her delicate balance there was a hint of the grace that might once have enchanted a ballroom. But whatever that indefinable air was, it vanished as she swayed into motion once more. Once, she had floated over a parquet floor; but after a journey of a thousand miles, princesses walk much like anyone else.

The first hundred miles our princess had walked in elegant boots of red leather. The second hundred miles she walked in serviceable brogans. The third, in rags bound around torn and bleeding feet. Now they were callused and hard, and she walked in simple leather slippers that had shaped themselves to her feet. She had walked all those miles, even the hardest, with a brisk, unhurried step that matched the determination of her spirit. But now she contemplated the end of her journey, for good or ill, and her steps began to falter.

Ahead the country road she followed unrolled among wheat fields and pastures. Stately oaks marked its line. A bare half-mile away, the road ended at a farm-a small cluster of buildings around an enclosed courtyard. The stones of the buildings glowed like cream in the light that spread across the fields and cast golden shadows up into the eaves. The farm looked prosperous, but her eye-the eye of a true princess, who knows how her people fare-picked out signs of neglect. Tasks had been left undone and some fields abandoned. The land was in good heart, but the owner was lazy or lacked workers.

The sun slipped over the edge of the world as she walked her last half-mile, the trees on her right and left hand counting her steps. The twilight swarmed out from under the trees behind her and spread across the fields, deepening the sky and sending a chill breath across her back. She entered the courtyard with the last of the light and found it deserted except for one black cat trotting purposefully along a wall. It seemed the farm had already settled in for the night.

There is a reluctance to a journey's end. Traveling creates its own separate existence, time out of time. The anxieties of the start and the hopes of the destination are held equally at bay. Success and failure are both suspended. So our princess crossed the cobblestones to the farmhouse's big front door slowly, and hesitated a long moment on the threshold. Then she lifted the knocker in her hands and banged it down once, twice, three times, surprising the starlings from their nests in the ivy.

The silence stretched out. The starlings returned to their nests with loud complaints. The princess laid a hand upon the knocker again, but before she could lift it the door opened, its hinges groaning in protest.

A man stood there. In the shadows of the hall she could not make out if he was old or young, fair or homely. He said nothing.

Her voice was husky with disuse. "Excuse me. I am looking for Galen-Galen Owen's son, of the farm at riverside. Are you he?"

"Aye," said the man. He sounded hoarse, as though he, too, were out of the habit of speech.

She closed her eyes, took a breath, then re-opened them.

"I would speak with you. May I come in?"

"Aye," he said again, and moved back from the door. Then he added in speech thick with the dialect of the country, "Come through here. What's in the kitchen won't wait. Eaten, have you?"

She swallowed before answering. "No. No, I haven't eaten."

"I've to spare," he said, and then kept silence while he led her through the dark house.

The kitchen was bright and cheerful by contrast. A fire dispelled the evening's chill; a cast-iron pot hung to one side of the large hearth, bubbling rich steam into the air. Loaves of unbaked bread sat on a board ready to slide into the oven at back of the hearth. In the light, Galen was revealed to be a young man, of medium height and medium build, with pleasant brown eyes that betrayed little of his thoughts.