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Ithilwen stopped in the clearing.

The silence that followed was not the silence of the forest, not the silence of the thing that had been waiting beneath the silver tree, but the silence of a chasm that neither of them knew how to cross. Norland stopped behind her, the ring still warm in his closed fist, the heirlooms still burning against his thigh, the weight of the dream still pressing against the back of his eyes.

She did not turn around.

She stood with her back to him, her hair falling past her waist, the colour of moonlight on moving water. She did not speak. She did not move. She did not give him any indication that she knew he was there.

Norland waited.

He had been trained his whole life to fill silence with words, to fill silence with negotiation, to fill silence with the careful accounting of what was being said and what was not being said and what could be said if the price was right. He opened his mouth.

Ithilwen said, "Do not."

Her voice was not loud. It was not sharp. It was the voice of a thing that had heard every excuse, every explanation, every carefully constructed justification that a man could offer, and had grown tired of them before the first word had left his mouth.

Norland closed his mouth.

She knelt.

The movement was slow, deliberate, the movement of a thing performing an act of witness, an act of showing, an act of making visible what had been invisible. She knelt in the moss that was the colour of the honey-light that had been fading, the moss that had been the colour of the things that had not been changed. She pressed her palm flat against the forest floor.

The moss did not dim when she touched it.

It remained the colour of the honey-light that was fading, the colour of the things that had not been changed, the colour of the things that were still holding on to the shape of what they had been before he had arrived.

She lifted her hand.

The moss where her palm had been was grey.

Not the grey of the ash-coloured robes of the elf beneath the tree. Not the grey of the stone that had been the path. Not the grey of the light that was not light but presence. It was the grey of a thing that had died. The grey of a thing that had been killed. The grey of a thing that had been touched by something that did not belong and had been drained of the thing that made it alive.

The shape of her hand was stamped into the forest floor.

A brand.

A signature.

A witness.

Ithilwen said, "This is what your kind leaves behind."

Her voice was not cold. It was tired. The tired of a thing that had seen the same shape pressed into the same ground so many times that the shape had become the only thing that it could see, the only thing that it could remember, the only thing that it could expect.

Norland looked at the grey handprint.

It was exactly the shape of her hand. The fingers, the palm, the space between the thumb and the first finger, the curve of the wrist where it had pressed against the moss. It was the shape of a thing that had been alive and was now dead, the shape of a thing that had been touched and had been changed by the touching, the shape of a thing that had been killed by the proximity of a thing that did not belong.

He had seen a deer die from a single brush of his hand. He had watched a branch blacken where he had pulled it aside. But this — this was not an accident. It was a mark. A signature he had not signed but could not rub away.

He said, "I am not my family."

The words came out the way words come out when a man has been saying them so long that they have worn smooth, worn the way a stone wears when it has been carried in a pocket for years and has lost every edge, every corner, every distinctive shape that made it a thing that could be recognized.

Ithilwen looked at him.

Her eyes were the colour of the sea before a storm.

She said, "Nor are you separate from them."

She did not say it cruelly. She said it the way a thing says a fact of stone, a fact of ground, a fact of the moss that had been killed by the shape of her hand.

Norland felt the ground shift.

Not the ground of the clearing. Not the ground of the forest. The ground of his self-understanding. The ground of the story that he had been telling himself for so long that it had become the only ground that he had. The idea that he could choose what he inherited and discard what he did not want. The idea that he was the exception. The one who had escaped.

Ithilwen looked at him with eyes that did not blink.

She said, "Inheritance is not a choice. It is a wound that is passed down until someone takes the knife and cuts it out."

Norland felt the words land in his chest the way a stone lands in water that has been still for so long that the water does not remember how to ripple.

He stood in the clearing. The moss was grey around Ithilwen's knees. The honey-light was fading. The dream was behind him. The ring was in his hand.

He held it up to the light of the sky that was not the sky of the forest.

The light of the clearing fell through the ring.

It fell on Ithilwen's face.

Where the light touched her skin, it did not glow.

It dimmed.

It aged.

It turned the colour of the moss that had been stamped with the shape of her hand. The colour of the moss that had been killed by the touching. The colour of the moss that had been the shape of the thing that did not belong.

Norland's breath caught.

He saw it.

The ring was not elvish.

It was human-made. Human-made the way the ledgers were human-made. Human-made the way the bank was human-made. Human-made the way the world he had left behind was human-made. And it had learned to feed. It had learned the way a vine learns to feed on a tree, the way a thing learns to feed on a living thing that has never learned to defend itself against the thing that does not belong.

They were not heirlooms.

They were wounds.

He was carrying open wounds.

Ithilwen said, "Your ancestors took the songs of this world and trapped them in metal and stone. And now the songs are dying because they cannot breathe."

Norland looked at the ring in his hand. The gold of the ring was the gold of the leaves of the silver tree. The same gold. The same colour. The same light that had been the light of the dream. The same light that had been the light of the thing that had been stolen.

He said, "I did not do this."

The words came out the way words come out when a man wants to say that he is not guilty, that he is not responsible, that he is not the thing that is the same as the thing that has been accused.

Ithilwen looked at him.

She did not accuse him of guilt. She did not accuse him of anything.

She said, "I am not telling you that you did this. I am telling you that this is what the world is."

Norland heard the difference. He heard it the way a man hears the difference between the sound of a thing that is being placed on the table and the sound of a thing that is being thrown at his chest.

But he could not feel it.

He had been trained his whole life to hear accusation in every truth.

He stood in the clearing with the ring in his hand and the grey light of the ring still falling on Ithilwen's face. He asked her the question that had been pressing against the back of his throat since the moment he had seen her reflection in the ring's surface, the reflection that had been softer, sharper, more alive than the woman standing before him.

He said, "Why did you come to me in the dream?"

Ithilwen looked at him.

Her eyes were the colour of the sea before a storm. In them he saw something that might have been pity or might have been grief. The same thing he had seen in the eyes of the elf beneath the tree. The same thing he had seen in the eyes of the queen when she had said that he was a vessel of vice.

She said, "I did not come to you."

Norland felt the words land in his chest the way a knife lands in a thing that has been expecting the knife but has not known where the knife would come from.

She said, "The artifact in your pocket dreamed you. And I was in its memory."

Norland felt the ground shift again.

The ground of the dream. The ground of the thing he had been holding onto. The ground of the thing he had been using as the evidence that he belonged here, that he was wanted, that he was the thing that had been chosen.

He had been holding onto the dream as if it were a gift. A sign. A proof.

And now he understood that the dream was not a gift.

It was a leak. A seepage. A thing that had been drinking this world for centuries and learning its faces, its names, the shape of its beauty and the shape of its sorrow and the shape of the thing that it had stolen.

The artifact had dreamed him.

And in its dream, it had used her face.

Her face, which was not the face of the dream. Which was not the face of the soft thing that he had wanted to be true. Which was the face of a stranger who had been borrowed by a thing he had carried across the world, a thing he had carried across the veil, a thing he had carried into the heart of the forest that was dying because of the thing that he had brought.

Norland stood in the clearing.

The ring was in his hand.

The dream was over.

The woman before him was not a dream at all. She was a stranger. A stranger who had been borrowed. A stranger who had been used. A stranger who had been the thing the artifact had used to call him, to lure him, to bring him to the place where it could feed.

His hand was shaking.

He did not know when it had begun to shake. He gripped a tree root, felt the bark press into his palm, a small pain that was real.

He said, "How do I stop it?"

The words came out the way words come out when a man has been asking the same question for so long that the question has become the only thing that he has left.

Ithilwen looked at him.

She said, "You do not stop it. You end it."

She held out her hand.

Not to touch him. To take the ring.

Norland looked at her palm. It was not grey like the moss that had been stamped with the shape of her hand. It was the colour of moonlit water. The colour of the light that had been in the dream. The colour of the thing that had been waiting for him to see what she saw.

He placed the ring in her hand.

The moment the ring left his fingers, something in his chest broke.

Not loudly. Not painfully. Not the way a thing breaks when it is shattered, when it is destroyed, when it is reduced to pieces that cannot be put back together.

It broke the way a thread breaks when the tension is finally gone. The way a thing breaks when it has been holding on for so long that the holding on has become the only thing that it knows how to do, and then the thing it has been holding onto is taken from its grasp.

He understood.

The artifacts were human-made. Human-made because humans were the only beings who made things that outlived their love for them. Human-made because humans were the only beings who took the songs of the world and trapped them in metal and stone and then forgot that the songs were there, forgot that the songs were alive, forgot that the songs were dying because they could not breathe.

The elvish world had been dying for centuries. Dying under the weight of a love that was never returned. Dying under the weight of a thing that had been taken and had never been given back.

Ithilwen closed her fingers over the ring.

She said, "Now you understand."

There was no scorn in her voice. No judgment. No accusation. Only the exhaustion of someone who had been waiting for another soul to see what she saw.

Norland nodded.

The nod was not an answer. It was a surrender. The surrender of the story that he had been telling himself. The surrender of the dream that he had been holding onto. The surrender of the ground that he had been building his life on.

He stood in the clearing. The moss was grey. The dream was over. The ring was in Ithilwen's hand.

And he was exactly where he was, which was nowhere he had ever been before.