Alistair's voice broke through her pain. He'd caught her up, taken her out of the garden, away from the crushed car, and she was the woman on the road, the knapsack crushing her.

He continued the story....His eyes slid down to her knapsack, knowing its weight kept her from lifting her hands off the road. Silently, he grasped its thick shoulder straps, pulling it off her back.  It was, indeed, very, very heavy and unpleasant, musty scents rose from its confines. In the silvered light of the night, he stood there beside her on the lane, gripping it in his hands. Again he inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, pressing his lips together tightly.  He had known it would be heavy, but this...this was already straining the sinew of his shoulders. 

She watched him, not yet able to discern fully his intentions, but strangely attracted by the moonlit beauty of his face.  Slowly, his lids opened, his lashes starred with his own unshed tears.  The corners of his lips turned up in the tenderest of smiles as he shifted the weight of the knapsack, moving it around and onto his back, settling the straps over his shoulders. 

"Why did you do that?" she asked in barely a whisper.

"So you could stand," he replied, once again extending his hand to her.

She felt his fingers, warm and strong, curl around her palm as she lifted it hesitatingly out of the dirt. At his touch, something inside her that had been pulled tightly all the long years, snapped, making her gasp. Her other hand flew to her mouth, clamping there, trying to muffle a cry that seemed half pain-half something else. Breathing rapidly, shallowly, she let him lift her to her feet.

"Where are you going?" he asked quietly.

"I...I'm going to the bridge," she replied, nodding down the lane.

He knew of the old stone arch that crossed the narrow stream a mile further on and said, "Ah, I am going that way, too. May I walk with you?" 

Side by side they made their way to the bridge, its dark arch resembling a cave in the night.

"I am resting here," she said, stepping off the lane. "You can give me back my knapsack  now."

"Is it not too heavy for you?" he asked, looking at her frail form.

"I have carried it all my life," she explained, "adding to it little by little and am very used to its weight." She looked at him carefully. "Do you not have a knapsack of your own?" she inquired.

"No," he responded, "I've never... needed...one." He followed her off the lane, down the bank to where a wide shelf of grass went under the bridge on one side.

"You are coming?" she asked.

If I may," he said. He stopped beside her, looking at her seriously in the soft light. "Do you wish me to come?" 

She turned her eyes from his to the darkness of the arch, imagining being alone. She was familiar with aloneness, yet somehow the thought of his leaving her now made the darkness seem strangely darker and solitude an unbearable thing. "With all my heart," she murmured, surprising herself with her sudden depth of feeling.

He sat, then, at the edge of the small stream, patting the grass at his side. "Come, sit," he invited...and she did.

Tearing off a piece of his shirt tail, he dipped it in the rippling water and began to wash the dirt and grit from her bleeding knees. Never had she been touched so gently and again her chin trembled as a silent tear tracked down her cheek. Then he gathered leaves, making her a bed just a bit under the curve of the arch. He sat down outside, leaning back against the stones.

"You did not lay down my knapsack," she commented, nestling into the leaves.

"I know," he replied.

An early morning sunbeam found its way under the bridge, waking her with its rosy brightness. She saw him then, standing in the grass near the stream, a loaf of bread in his hands. "You have bread?" she asked, amazed.

"I do," he replied, breaking off a large piece and handing it to her.

Just then a jogger passed by on the lane, his outfit new and expensive. "You have bread?" he, too, asked when he saw the man by the stream.

"I do," the man repeated, giving the jogger the rest of the loaf.

"You gave...him...your bread?" she said, frowning, when the jogger had run on toward the country club.

"He needed it," was all he said.    

Together, then, they walked as the day came. Without the weight of her knapsack, she carried herself taller and straighter and for the first time noticed there were pear trees along the lane. She laughed as he reached up, plucking her a piece of the fruit. She bit into the pear, letting its juices run down her chin. He smiled, delighting in her happiness, his eyes dancing with joy.

Seeing his face, she paused. "You...you...love me?" she whispered wonderingly.

He took a step toward her, wrapping his arms about her shoulders, kissing the top of her head. "I do," he replied, his heart filled.

She tipped her head up to look at him. "But you have no reason to love me." 

"Love both has and is its own reason," he said, but she did not understand.

She was, though, beginning to love his love for her. Now when they walked, she slid her arm through his, drinking in the sound of his voice, wanting him near. They sat in a field of daisies and she said, "I think I love you."

"I know you do," he replied.

"You know I love you or that I think I love you," she pursued.

"Yes," he said, closing his eyes.

She laughed, shaking her head fondly at him. "But you love me?" she went on.

"Without boundary...without end," he said.

She liked that. She wanted to be loved like that. "Thank you," she said playfully.

"You are welcome," he replied, but a sudden shudder shook his body. She was too happy, too in love with his love to notice.

They walked more and he picked grapes for her, and figs. "I didn't know there was so much fruit along this lane!" she cried delightedly. Then she smiled at him again.

"Not until you came," she added. "Not until you began to carry my knapsack."

"It is often that way," he said.

"I think I love you," she giggled.

"I know," he said, a tear welling.

"Will you love me no matter what?" she asked, dancing in a small circle.

"No matter what," he said, thinking of the meaning in 'what.'

A single lily grew beside the lane, its scarlet petals shading into peach. She plucked it, putting it in her hair, unaware of a brief pain crossing his face.

"It was lovely," he said, looking at the severed stem.

"I needed it," she replied, "to make me lovely, too."

"No," he whispered, touching one of its petals. "You were arrayed in love."

"I needed more," she said.

"There is no more," he smiled.

"No more than love?" she frowned.

"It is everything," he said, "the beginning...and the end."

"Love has an ending?" she asked, her frown deepening.

"Sometimes it may...appear...that way," he said so softly she could barely hear.

Throwing the lily to the ground, she stepped upon it.   "I do not like these words!" she cried.

"I know," he said.  

Looking across the stream, she saw a man in golden robes, holding a bouquet of lilies in his arms. "He will give me lilies!" she snapped at her companion.

"Yes," he agreed, "he will."

"Do you CARE that he will give me lilies?" she almost shouted.

"I care more than you can think or imagine," he said.

"How can that be so?" she replied, her eyes narrowing.

"It has been so...forever." 

"I doubt that," she said sharply.

"I know."

"STOP!" she cried. "I want no more of your knowing! Give me back my knapsack!"  She looked across at the dark-eyed man clothed in gold. "He," she said furiously, "will give me lilies and never say, 'I know.'"

Turning her back to the stream, she grabbed her knapsack, stumbling and surprised at its forgotten weight. She did not see the man in gold drop his lilies and draw his bow, aiming between her shoulder blades. Her companion did, and moving quickly, stepped around her, the feathered shaft lodging in his chest. As he fell, his hands gathered up her knapsack, holding it as he crashed to earth, its weight driving the arrow completely through his body.

Stunned, she looked down at him. "You would carry it for me even now?"

"Even now," he gasped, his mouth filling with blood.

"Why?" she shouted. "WHY?"

"It's why I came," he whispered.

"I thought you came to love me," she said.

"I loved you...before," his voice was fading.

"Before when?" she begged.

"Forever," he said, and died.

The man in gold across the stream had regathered his lilies and was holding them out toward her. How beautiful they were! How beautiful they would make her!

Her companion lay still now, his blood puddling beneath him on the grass, her knapsack lying on his chest, bearing its weight for her even in death. "I think I love you," she said, blowing him a kiss, then struggling to lift the knapsack in her arms.

The waters were cold on her feet as she waded across the stream, but the man in gold came forward, smiling, handing her dozens of lilies.

"You are beautiful now," he said, his black eyes glittering.

But the lilies seemed somehow to add to the weight of the knapsack and when he said, "Come, walk with me," she could barely stand.

"Please," she asked, her voice almost a moan, "will you carry it for me?"

Arching an eyebrow, he replied, "I do not carry knapsacks, my dear."

She looked back across the stream at the quiet form. "I know," she whispered, "I know."