Songs from the Wood

Oh, Pennchough, what wings do I hear beat the sky? What shadow passes?

I let your choughs fly over my briars, look in on my daughters and princes. Do you wake? Shall I sleep?

Who dares, who dares, who dares?

These lands are mine.

She is not to blame, although she carried hidden iron; it was hidden too skilfully even for her to know what she bore.

Another.

He would sometimes forget what he is, and the world may forget it as well; but the maker who fashioned this dart has remembered.

I have a memory longer even than that.

In the person of our little Queen there is much to be Admir'd, although I cannot myself Imagine living a Life so narrowly Focus'd on one Man.

I cannot Help but be Amused that she hath Finished what Abaddon and I did once Begin.

Erasmus, I Warn'd thee once and more than once that Year of thy Lord (and not Mine) 1748 that if thou didst not leave me be, mine own would make an End of thee and all of thine.

No more is the name of Pendry spoken in the World Arcane.

But take heart, Erasmus: thy Name is still carried by mundanes.

Perhaps there shall be wizards named Pendry again: and all of them lead-born.

(And the bishop she writes to is Ramsden! Truly there is no new thing under the Sun.)

I shouldn't be so amused.

But I am.

Of her own free will, she's becoming everything I ever wanted her to be.

Except a man. But I can live without that. Or rather I could if I were alive.

I can't say I think much of her choice in allies, but I have no control over that.

And while I dare say Nicodemo Malaspina would not like me, it doesn't mean that I can't like him.

So they will receive their Host to-day.

Rome must not be allowed to think that she rules us again, but we are better with a breeding Queen, whose grip upon her lands is firm, rooted in the soil and the stone and bound in her blood, her belly alive with the proof of her flight.

How my mortal lord would laugh, if he were alive!

But if he were alive, he would have reason to laugh.

I outlived him. I am further away than Avalon now, and may speak to my children only in dreams, but my trees still bear fruit and all my descendants know who they are. Who is revenged now?

I told you I would never marry you.

I wonder if Julian Delgardie knows he saved all of Britannia last night when he took the sword from my grandson's hand?

And yet I wish there were a way to invoke the kinslayer's curse upon Gregor without our bearing its force in ourselves, for even though he did not kill my son, he meant to kill my son, and with my son he meant to kill my grandson and my lineage and my country.

If I were alive I would surely destroy him.

But if I were alive this wouldn't have happened.

Damn you, Hephzibah...it always comes back to you in the end.