Lady of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Diana L. Paxson

more than they-” Caillean broke off, as if she had said more than she meant to. “I must teach you the things you do not know!” she added repressively. Then she turned and stalked away.
    When the priestess was gone, Gawen slipped from his hiding place and put his arm around the girl, who was weeping soundlessly. He felt anger and pity, but he could not help also being aware of the softness of her body, and the sweet scent of her bright hair.
    “Why?” exclaimed Sianna when she could speak again. “Why doesn’t she like me? And if she doesn’t want me here, why won’t she let me go?”
    “ I want you here!” he muttered fiercely. “Don’t mind Caillean-she has many worries, and is sometimes rougher than she means to be. Try to avoid her.”
    “I do try, but it is a small place, and I cannot always be out of her way.” Sianna sighed and patted his hand. “But I thank you. Without your friendship I would run away, no matter what my mother might say!”
    “In another year or two you’ll be sworn as a priestess,” he said cheerfully. “She’ll have to respect you as an adult then.”
    “And you will pass the first rank of your Druid training…” For a moment longer she held his hand. Hers had been cool when he took it, but now a warmth was growing between them. Suddenly he remembered the other initiation that came with adulthood and saw from her blush that she was thinking of it too. Abruptly she pulled away.
    But that night, as he reviewed his day before sleep came, it seemed to him that surely what was between them was more than friendship, and that a promise had been made.
    A year passed, and then another winter, so wet that the whole Vale of Avalon became a muddy sea and the waters lapped at the floors of the marsh men’s stilt-houses. Gawen, going down to visit Father Joseph, suppressed an oath as he slipped in the mud and almost fell. Since his voice had broken, he did not sing so often in their ceremonies, but Father Joseph had traveled widely in his youth, and knew not only the Jewish musical tradition but the theories of the Greek philosophers, and both he and the boy found pleasure in comparing them with the Druid lore.
    But when Gawen went to the little church, Father Joseph was not there.
    “He is praying in his hut,” said Brother Paulus, his long face lengthening with disapproval. “God has sent him a fever to mortify the flesh, but with prayer and fasting he will be purified.”
    “Can I see him?” asked Gawen, his throat aching with the beginnings of concern.
    “He needs nothing from an unbeliever,” said the monk. “Come to him as a son in Christ and you will be welcome.”
    Gawen shook his head. If Father Joseph himself had not insisted he become a Nazarene, he was not likely to be persuaded by Brother Paulus.
    “I suppose you would not convey to him the blessing of an ‘unbeliever,’” he said tightly, “but I hope you have enough compassion to tell him I am sorry he is sick, and give him my love.”
    After such a hard winter, all the folk of Avalon were thin, but nothing short of sheer starvation would have stopped a boy of Gawen’s age from growing, thought Caillean as she watched him at the ceremonies that marked the Turning of Spring. He was seventeen now, tall, like his mother’s kindred. But his hair, after a winter without the sun, had darkened to Roman brown. His jaw had grown so that his teeth were no longer disproportionate, and there was a suggestion of the eagle as well in the forceful nose and chin.
    In body, Gawen was a man, and a handsome one, though he did not yet seem to realize it. He played the harp for the ceremonies, his long fingers flickering with practiced certainty across the strings. But his eyes were watchful, as if he feared to do something wrong.
    Is this part of being his age, wondered the priestess, or something I have done to him, expecting too much of the child?
    Afterward, she called him to her.
    “You have grown,” she said, feeling