A Meeting At Corvallis

fourteen; since then it had turned out to be a lot of work, though satisfying.
The other two with them were Alleyne Loring and Little John Hordle, both a few years older than the
Dunedain leaders, but still young men.
This will make a perfect Yule Log, Eilir went on. If we can get it through the door.
The log had been bigleaf maple, growing on the side of the canyon; it had fallen whole as it came
down, pulled out of the rocky soil by its own weight and falling across a basalt boulder a few feet above
the root-ball. Bigleaf maple was like stone itself, useful for furniture or tool handles or fancy carving and
yielding a pleasant, sweet sap in spring. This one had fallen about a year ago, to judge by the state of the
wood; it was grown with moss and shelflike fungi and the bark had peeled away, but the feel was still
solid when she stamped her boot on it. That meant it would be hard to kindle but would burn long and
slow, unlike the fierce, swift heat of Douglas fir or hemlock or the spark-spitting enthusiasm of Ponderosa
pine.
Astrid nodded solemnly, setting her long white-blond braids bobbing in the shadowed gloom, the
overcast winter sky shedding only a silvery-gray shadowed light through the branches and needles above
them. Then she looked up at Eilir, a twinkle in her strange silver-shot eyes; not many could have seen it
there, but they'd been inseparable since they'd met in the fall of the first Change Year, when the
Bearkillers came west over the High Cascades. Eilir's hair was raven black and her eyes green, nose
shorter and mouth fuller, cheekbones not so chiseled; apart from that they were similar in looks as well,
both tall at five-eight or so, moving with whipcord grace.
"It'd be hard work cutting this to a useful length," Lord Bear's sister-in-law said casually in the
Sindarin her Dunedain used among themselves, as if addressing the air. "We need about, oh, ten feet."
The thick bottom section of the trunk was fifty feet long before it frayed out into a tangle of crown, lying
half on the old state park trail and half off it. "We'll have to break out a whipsaw … too tough for
ax-work."
"Hordle and I can handle it," Alleyne said. "Shouldn't take long if we spell each other."
Eilir cocked one leaf-colored eye at Hordle, whose great hamlike countenance assumed a
woebegone grimace; that turned into a grin at her as she giggled silently.
I'm glad Astrid finally found a fellah, she thought, and pushed down wistful thoughts about
Alleyne's handsome countenance. Though it must be sort of frustrating for the poor guy, stuck on
first base while he's courting a skittish virgin. I'm pretty sure she still is, too, from the signs. I love
you dearly, anamchara, but that's sort of slow off the mark and he won't wait forever! Get your
legs locked around him before he escapes!
The two men stripped to the waist; it was cold, just around freezing with the ground a mixture of
melting snow and mud, but working hard in jacket and shirt just got you sweaty and then chilled. They
were down at the bottom of a cleft in the basalt rock, anyway, and well out of the wind; you could see
the banded layers in the steep slope to the north, and the creek ran behind them with clumps of ice
around the rocks in it. Streamside and slope and the rolling hills higher up were densely grown with big
trees; fir and hemlock on the upland, maple and cottonwood and alder lower, yew and chinquapin, with
the blackened stems of ferns sticking up out of the leaf litter and duff. The smell of decaying leaves and
needles was pungent as boots disturbed them, suddenly intensely aromatic as someone crushed the
branch of an incense-cedar sapling.
Eilir smiled at her friend as they moved the two-horse team they'd brought along and wrapped a
chain around the thicker base of the tree.
Got Alleyne to show off, hey? she signed.
You betcha, Astrid replied, with a smile of smug satisfaction. He's a wonderful guy but he's still a
guy, you know? Which means he's sort of stupid at times. Besides, he looks good with his shirt off.
Little John's smarter, Eilir signed. He saw through it.
He is not! Astrid's hands moved emphatically. Alleyne just has too noble a nature to suspect
anyone!
Yeah, blond, beautiful and dumb, like someone else I could name but won't—like for example
you, Eilir taunted. Astrid stuck her tongue out in reply.