The fox did not speak during the walk.
Anastasia had expected her to.
She had prepared for questions.
Warnings.
Perhaps the particular kind of condescension very old things sometimes used when speaking to people whose lives could fit inside one of their memories.
None came.
The fox walked ahead through trees that had never been surveyed, never mapped, never cut into parcels and assigned numbers.
The nine followed around her without fully appearing.
Their light lay across the ground in long shifting bands, like moonlight disturbed across water.
Anastasia followed.
For an hour, neither of them said a word.
Then the fox stopped.
She stood at the edge of a small clearing.
And stepped aside.
There was a fire.
Lancelot sat beside it.
He looked up when Anastasia entered the light.
No surprise.
There never was.
Lancelot had always known things before other people realized there was something to know.
She had spent four years assuming it was training.
