From the cottage, the ground sloped gently down to the tarn, pulling lazily but inexorably at the cheery little brook from the spring where the hunter's got their water. Robird followed its course as it wound quickly out of sight from the little clearing, delving between moss-ridden boulders, patches of bilberry shrubs with only a few, withered berries left and gnarled, roaming roots of pine, birch and oak. A pine cone dropped by the spring could bob all the way to the tarn with barely any help.

No more than a few furlongs down through the wood, the brook spilled into the still, dark tarn. The wood hemmed it in on all sides and reeds grew like a fence all the way from the banks and a couple of fathoms out, but at the mouth of the brook they gave way to a little bay with a bed of sand and gravel, where one could wade out. On one side, there was also a slab of gray granite which offered a little space to sit basking in the sun on lazy summer homage days.

That was where Ylwi and Arnir could be found. Robird first heard their low voices, barely audible over the babbling of the brook, then saw their backs on the rock. Their heads were bent low over the edge and they were busying themselves with something in the water. Robird decided to try to sneak up on them. Perhaps this once he would...

"Come tell us what you think, Wildwonderer!" Ylwi called, not even looking back.

Shrugging at his inevitable failure, he walked the rest of the way down. "What about, Rainwish?" he asked at her back.

"See for yourself!" She turned and faced him with her broad, confident grin. Ylwi had earned her nickname by her love of rainy weather. She'd go out and dance under the tumbling drops, or shout her joy into the raging sleet. Wul claimed that since her birth, there has never once been a drought in these lands.

Now Arnir turned around as well. He had a smile that appeared why until you looked closer and noticed the quiet mischief underneath.

"Remember how the bark boats could never have properly tall masts?" he asked. Robird nodded. A passing sailor had once stopped for the night at the hunter's and repaid the hospitality with tall tales of the sea. While they had gasped properly as he spoke of sea monsters with manifold arms like snakes, or with maws sporting more teeth than a pack of wolves together, what has really fascinated them was the quite mundane recounting of his work with tack and sail. Especially going aloft on the rigging, all the way to the top where he could see the tops of the masts of ships under the horizon that was bending around him like a bow.

But whenever they had tried to fit their bark boats with masts as tall as the sailor's tales, they had only keeled over. In the end they gave up and contented themselves with the stubby little riggings they were used to.

"Well, have a gander!" said Arnir, nodding down at the tarn. Robird crept up between them and looked down.

From their treasure trove in a hollow beneath a great, cracked boulder, they had brought all of the dozen boats they had kept, the best of the innumerable ones they'd carved during their earlier years, along with the huge one that had been their last attempt at a tall ship. Then they had twined long withies together, making two light and flexible yet stable rods. These had been fastened as a cross to the mast of the bark ship, and all the smaller boats pegged to this cross, in front and behind and to both sides. As a result, the mast stayed upright. In the top, a little figure in the likeness of a man was tied fast with stalks of reed.

"Clever," Robird said in admiration. "But what if we make a little storm for the sailor?"

They looked at each other, remembering how they had shuddered as the sailor had told them off what it was like to be aloft in a storm. Then as one, they went in search of things to play weather gods with.

But when the great waves rocked the ship, thrown up by large rocks hurled in the water and thick branches whipping at it, the mast slowly toppled and dunked the poor sailor into the sweet brine. Robird shook his head.

"We need to stabilise it higher up, too."

And so they threw themselves into the task of making what the sailor, had he been around, had told them was called the stays of the mast. This was what Robird loved about their company. Not only were they entirely guileless, they also never outgrew their childhood games. Instead, they twisted them around into something new, challenging and intriguing.

When at last they were satisfied, looking down at the improvised tall outrigger that had passed the storm test, they sat back to admire their work. Then Arnir took up the sea shanty that the sailor had taught them. Robird and Ylwi joined in as best they could. Both could sing, but none of them could match Arnir's voice, not could anyone within a week's march. Wul's nickname for his son was Soarsong. His name meant eagle, but he sang like a nightingale.

Five verses they knew, and when they were through, they all say and listened to the Song of silence, as they called it - that mind's echo of a song just sung which soundlessly fills the heart.

"So what wonder have you brought us today, Wildwonderer?" asked Arnir after the Song of silence had faded.

For a brief moment, Robird was confounded. The game and the song has dispelled all other thoughts for the while, and he had come with a question haunting him rather than with a wonder to share. But he realised that he had brought a wonder after all.

"Did you know that most trees are both mother and father tree? Except for some, like hollies."

They looked at him in awe.

"Mother and father tree?" asked Ylwi in belief. "What are you on about?"

And so Robird explained what he had learnt from their parents about the flowers of trees. Then he told of the Oak princess, passing it off once more as a strange dream. When he had finished, they say quiet again while he waited for their thoughts about it.

Ylwi was first to break the silence.

"Was she very beautiful?" she asked.

It took him a moment to gather about whom she asked.

"Oh, the Princess? She was... terribly."

"What's terrible about being beautiful?" asked Arnir in jest. But Robird shook his head earnestly.

"Beautiful enough to make me both yearn for her and fear her." He chuckled nervously. "I call it fearning, that feeling. Makes you want to run away and towards her at the same time."

"You almost sound as if it wasn't a dream," Arnir commented, shaking his head with a wry smile. Robird blushed, but before he could stutter out a dishonest denial, Ylwi spoke again.

"I wish I could be that beautiful."

They both turned towards her. She had moved to the edge of the water and looked wistfully at her reflection.

"Oh, no!" Robird exclaimed. "Don't think that! You look fine just as you are, we wouldn't want you any other way. Would we, Soarsong?"

Arnir guffawed. "Sure we wouldn't. I mean, we wouldn't have gotten a lot of bark boats made if we had the Wildwonderer running back and forth wild with fearning anytime he came around."

"Oh, you!" Ylwi splashed a handful of water at her brother, who protested wildly and promptly dashed at the water to retaliate. Robird pulled back a little out of harm's way and tried to keep from laughing as the two engaged in a cautious water fight, neither wanting to get too much of the freezing water on them.

They soon tired of the splashing and contented themselves with pulling faces at each other. Robird saw his chance at surreptitiously edging in the question he had come with.

"I wonder if I'll dream that I marry that princess next. I wonder what would happen then."

Silence descended as the siblings racked their brains. Coming up with stories was one of their favourite games as Robird well knew. Between them, they could see a dozen endings to a tale where he could guess at one.

"The obvious would be that you'd be taken into that hill and spend your days there, forgetting who you are," Arnir said. "That's what happens in the otherfolk tales. But who cares for the obvious?"

"I don't," Robird agreed fervently.

"And then there's the other obvious," Ylwi chimed in. "You'd marry her and have a son, who'd do whatever the Oak King wants and bring you your fame and fortune. And you'd live happily ever after." She rolled her eyes. "Boring."

I could do with that kind of boring, Robird thought, nodding and pursing his lips. "So what's not obvious?" he asked.

Again, silence prevailed for a little while. Then Arnir snapped his fingers. "Let's play it out!" He pointed at Robird and Ylwi. "You'll be you, and you'll be the Princess. I'll be the King. Come on, line up!"

Ylwi and Robird glanced at each other. She shrugged, and they got to their feet with reserved smiles, standing side by side before Arnir who was spreading his arms out with a grave mien. Then he dropped the face and looked quizzically at them.

"How do oaks marry?" But before they could do more than open their mouths, he smiled. "Never mind, I'll do it like in the village and just change it a bit." Wherewith he redonned his Oak King face and cleared his throat.

"Are you, Robird Wildwonderer, here of your own free will to join with this Oak Princess..." he began in a voice uncannily like the creaking of boughs, then checked himself. "Does she have a name?" he asked in his ordinary voice, again answering himself before they had a chance. "Never mind... to join with this Oak Princess in blessed woodlock?"

Robird's eyes bulged. "Woodlock?"

"Tree version of wedlock, I guess," Ywli hissed from the corner of her mouth. "We should be grateful he didn't call it hemlock."

That sent a spasm of laughter through Robird's body, quenched to a choked gargle before it erupted between his lips. "I am," he croaked.

"And are you, Oak Princess, here of your own free will to join with this Robird Wildwonderer in blessed woodlock?" Arnir continued.

"I am," Ylwi sighed in an attempt of emulating wind moving wistfully through leaves. Another spasm racked Robird. It was actually rather similar to his memory of the Princess' voice and wildly different at the same time.

"Then I declare you husband and oak," Arnir creaked.

Robird turned to look at Ylwi, who in turn regarded him with a queer face. Her lips were drawn, her eyebrows arched, her nostrils flared and her eyes stared, wide open.

"Rainwish... I mean, Princess? Is something wrong?"

She deflated. "I'm trying to look both beautiful and terrible!"

That was the final straw. "You..." Robird managed before collapsing into helpless laughter, "you look as if you've eaten a whole raw garlic!"

With those words, the play ended and they all toppled to the ground, writhing until the laughter subsided.

"So..." Robird panted at last. "What would happen next?"

Ylwi waved a hand vaguely. "Oh, I guess we'd just go home and... you know."

"Make a little acorn," Arnir snorted.

Robird blushed. He had a vague idea about what happened after marriage, mostly based on rowdy tales among the other manorial worker. He could not reconcile such words with the image of the Oak Princess etched on his heart. "We won't play that out," he blurted out and immediately regretted it.

Ylwi turned, propped her chin on her hands and winked at him. "Why, am I so repulsive compared to the woman of your dreams?"

"No no no," Robird stuttered, "It's just... I mean... You're you!"

An unreadable expression flowed across her face like a wispy cloud past the sun on a windy day. Then she smiled and swatted at his arm. "I know, I'm just teasing you. "I'm me and you're you." Then she sat back and sighed. "I'm just getting old enough to start wondering with whom I'm supposed to spend my life, like mother and father. I'm not thinking about you, WIldwonderer," she added hastily, "just... with whom."

"Do you have to stick to one?" Arnir pondered. "Some change. Or have more than one. Or none."

"It usually gets complicated like that," Robird noted. "I've noticed a lot of people get upset about it. One of the others involved gets upset, or someone who's not involved. The elders seem to like it when you stick to one. Easier to keep track of people that way, I guess. Knowing who's who. Why, you want more than one mate in your life, Soarsong?" He couldn't resist teasing. "You sure have a bit of an audience when you sing at the feasts."

Arnir smiled impishly. "Who says I haven't already got some?"

"You just be careful so you don't make an acorn with someone," Ylwi admonished, half mocking, half serious.

"Ain't stupid," Arnir muttered.

"Never mind that," Robird said, eager to change bith away from that subject and back to the one at hand. "What about the story? How should it end if not one of the obvious ways?"

Ylwi shrugged, nipped off a straw of grass and put it in her mouth, teeth and fingers fiddling with it. It seemed she'd lost interest, so Robird turned to Arnir, who was scratching his neck, gazing into the thinning foliage in search for an answer.

"Good question. Who can say what oaks really want? Should it be a tale of warning to not go mixing with strange folk and be content to stick to your lot, or a tale of encouraging to dauntlessly seek your fortune?" He grimaced. "I could do with either. As long as it's entertaining along the way." He sat back with a lopsided smile. "Let us know if you dream it to the end, will you, Wildwonderer?"