The Measure of the Magic by Terry Brooks Page A

she knew this, but it was irrefutable. Something important was about to happen, and she knew she would never again experience its like.
    The light was very close now, and she could see that it emanated from one end of a strange metal cylinder gripped by the hand of its bearer. Yet even though the light was directed, it seemed diffuse and all-encompassing, spreading out in ways she had never witnessed, brightening a world that only moments before had been dark.
    “Good day, Prue,” the bearer of the light greeted her.
    It was a man of indeterminate age, neither young nor old, but some part of both. His features were unremarkable, his size and build and weight average, his voice quiet and soft around the edges. He was wearing robes that were white and silver, garments meant not for common use but ceremonial occasions. It did not seem wrong or unusual to find him wearing such garments; instead, it felt perfectly natural, although Prue could not have said why.
    “Hello,” she said. And then added, “Are you the one who brought me here?”
    “I am,” he replied. “Do you like my gardens?”
    “I do,” she said. “They make me feel safe.”
    It made him smile, which in turn caused her to smile in response. “They are my home,” he said. “I tend them, and in turn they tend me. Here, all is in balance, a harmony that is lacking in so many other places. Do you know who I am, Prue?”
    Amazingly, she did. She knew it instinctively. “You’re the King of the Silver River,” she said. “The legend of the Hawk speaks of you. You are an ally of the Word and a child of the Land, they say. My mother told me of you.”
    “I am what they say, but mostly I am things that no one knows. Secret things. I was a Faerie creature once, in a time long ago. I was caretaker of the old world, of the world that disappeared when the Faerie folk gave way to the coming of Man and everything changed. My space has become much smaller since then, a fraction and no more of what once was given to me. I keep it hidden now from all, but it is still here, part of a better time and better world.”
    She looked past him to the gardens. “Your flowers are beautiful. They seem to grow everywhere, as if the gardens never end.”
    “In one sense, they don’t. When you walk within them, there are no boundaries. You cannot leave or become lost or reach a point where you can see what lies beyond them. Would you like to visit them? Will you walk with me?”
    He reached for her hand, which she gave to him willingly, and he led her away from where they had been talking and into the gardens. Once there, they strolled down pathways formed of flat stones here and crushed rock there, of mossy earth and deep grasses. Hedgerowsbracketed their passage at one point; vines grown thick on trelliswork shadowed their quiet walk at another. All around, the vast sweep of the flower beds formed blankets of color that radiated in a sudden wash of sunlight, their myriad scents filling the air.
    “This must take an awful lot of work,” Prue said to him finally, unable to conceive of how he could manage.
    “It takes everything I’ve got to offer, but not more than I wish to give.” He pointed. “See the rainbows formed by the sunlight reflecting off the moisture from the dew? There, where the scarlet and gold meet? I cannot imagine life without gardens. Can you?”
    The way he said it told her he already knew the answer. There were flower beds and gardens in her world, but nothing like this. Mostly there were only the forests, meadows, and rocky heights of the mountain peaks, and for her people beauty such as she saw here was solely the province of the imagination.
    “The legends say you were alive at the beginning of things when the old world was born,” she said. “That would make you very old. But you don’t look old.”
    “I don’t always look the same. This is how I look to you, but to others I look different.”
    She studied him a moment. “Am I safe here?