Hood is hedging his bets, but it is a gamble that, if it does not pay off, will simply be a vast inconvenience, as opposed to resulting in anything particularly dangerous. As it happens, luck is on his side.

Not that anyone is looking, but if they were, situated as they must be to see this phenomena, in a once secret chamber beneath the Library of Aspartemane, they would see a large glowing circular pattern of interwoven lines and colours slowly appear on the north wall, followed by a strange dissolving of the section contained within this circle, and then from its depths a short hooded figure, carrying a satchel on his back and carrying what looks like a carved wooden mask in hand, stepping forth.

Hood steps silently into the chamber and looks about, specifically upwards towards the ceiling where a large circular opening emits a dim light into the slow growing darkness of where he stands, the glowing circle of light behind him slowly dimming. Hood sighs a sigh of relief for there was no guarantee that this exit would still be available.

In the moons that have passed, Hood has grown in energetic power and also in skill and efficiency meaning his abilities as a wizard have increased more than two-fold. With a swift murmur and a turn of his fingers he rises silently into the air, feeling the currents ripple his robes as he ascends, slowing as he nears the circular exit, to rise cautiously up into the Library above him. His caution, although not misplaced, is unnecessary for there is no one there.

Hood summons a small purple orb and lets its light blossom in the darkness, pushing away the gloom somewhat to allow him to see what’s what. Where once there were thousands of books there are now only a few empty stacks pushed up against walls. The thick dusty carpet has also been removed to reveal the smooth circular hole in the floor that he has just risen through. Gone are the tables and chairs, and a light, chill breeze wafts the room, entering from the north wall through the remains of the shattered rose window, where the soft drip of water can be heard, the night’s rain slowly seeping in. In short the once great Library of Aspartemane is no longer a library but a ruin. Standing in said ruins, Hood contemplates with irony that the place would have fared better had the barbarians actually gained access to it, instead of himself and his companions. He looks regretfully once more about the bare chamber and realises that the worst of it is that that atmosphere of stone soaked silence is no longer present.

Standing there, an off thought arises. It is an off thought, but one which presses silently his mind, a nagging, tugging thought that instinctively he follows, leading him down the centre of the room to the north wall to gaze again at the now shattered central window. Why not? He considers - it would certainly be a test of his skills, but why not - it was a thing of great beauty and it would be worth the effort. Hood sets his satchel and the mask by his feet and stands gazing at the damage, looking at the twelve petals that ring the central rose. The petals themselves are intact and moving the purple orb about them, he examines the story they tell…

It is a familiar story, yet one which does not burn brightly in Hood’s memory, so the petals act as a timely reminder. It begins he recalls somewhat vaguely with the tears of Time - two teardrops shed by Time, both of which fall into a river and are swept downstream. Hood searches the petals carefully, finally identifying a petal at the bottom left hand side of the rose, which depicts, somewhat abstractly, he must say, the starting point of the story. Moving clockwise the next petal indicates the meeting of the sacred deer and of Hemenestia at a ‘place where the waters run slowly’. Hood strains his memory trying to recall a poem that he once read…

From opposite sides, the two creatures approach

And each set aside their usual reproach

A woman, noble in lineage, Hemenestia

And the queen of the forest, a sacred white deer,

Both to drink from waters divine

And both to imbibe a teardrop of Time.

…well it was something like that anyway. The woman, Hemenestia, although a hunter, recognises the sacredness of the deer and thus bows her head to acknowledge the deer but also to show she means no harm. The deer responds with a similar gesture - a dip of her antlered head - acknowledging the prowess of the woman. It is an old story but there were always specific points within it which were emphasised in its telling. For example, both came to the waters’ edge in peace and both, at the same time, drank, and raising their eyes from the water locked their gaze on the other unbeknownst to either that they had both at the same time drank Time’s tears and in doing so had fallen pregnant. Thinking about it Hood finds the attention to these small details quite fascinating.

Hood continues in his half recollected, half informed manner, moving the orb to the third and fourth petals which show Hemenestia returning to her village, and the sacred white deer returning to the forest, each giving birth to a daughter: Hemenestia to Diometer, the deer to Aspartemane.

Hood recalls the time the ‘storyteller’ arrived at his village, he must have been no more than about four or five, sitting in the dirt with the other children, listening spellbound, to the wrinkled faced vagabond who sat before them all, regaling them with the tale:

‘And Diometer had hair as glorious as the sun, and Aspartemane eyes as blue as the sky on a clear and cloudless day.’

Hood smiles at the recollection, smiles at his childhood self, momentarily lost in memory, before turning his attention back to the window and to the next petals in the sequence.

The fifth petal shows Diometer growing into a strong and beautiful young woman who is taught the ways of the huntress by her mother Hemenestia, and gifted a bow. The sixth depicts Aspartamane who is taught the ways of the forest and the wisdom of the wild.

Being birthed from a deer Aspartamane can take both human and deer form. As a deer her eyes remain those of a human, blue and sparkling, whilst as a human, although beautiful like her sister Diometer, she retains the antlers of a deer.

Hood moves the orb, it is now hovering above the central rose, illuminating the seventh and eighth petals which depict a slightly older Diometer who, having taken a lover falls pregnant with twins. During her pregnancy however she lies asleep near a fire and burns herself, a disfigurement which causes her lover to abandon her. Having to fend for herself and needing food, the ninth petal picks up the story, as Diometer ventures into the forest with the bow bestowed by her mother. Hood recalls the story again from a different vantage point, remembering it now from a book that he read in his childhood home. He remembers the painted pictures and how Diometer tracked the deer for three days in a row. Each day becoming hungrier than the last:

On the first day, amidst the shadows of trees, Diometer glimpses a deer with strange blue eyes, but it eludes her and disappears, drawing her deeper and deeper into the forest. On the second day she glimpses the deer once more and this time stalks it, hunting it down, following its hoof prints and finding its hair on the snapped branches of treelings and saplings that it has brushed past, but the deer is swift and it is all that Diometer can do to track it. On the third day, after dusk has turned to evening, the deer arrives at a sacred grove where it stands amidst the beams of a full moon, its eyes raised up to the sky. From the shadows of the trees Diometer breathes deeply as she has been taught by her mother, stretches back the bow till its string exceeds her heart, breathes out slowly, as she has been taught by her mother, and gently lets fly the arrow to streak the air. But in taking aim, and releasing her arrow, Diometer swears that she has directed it not at a deer but at a human woman - one which, if truth be told, looks strangely familiar to her. With this vision, a shock pierces Diometer’s heart, just as the arrow pierces its target, and Diometer not knowing if the scream that she hears is her own or that of the woman panics - tired and hungry as she is - at what might have occurred, for hunger has gnawed at her and her mind is confusion. It is this image of Aspartemane, as a woman, standing resplendent amidst the sacred grove, her antlers illuminated in the soft moonlight, as if wearing some crown of divine might, that formed the content of the central rose, the image now broken and shattered - the shards, and twisted lead framing, amidst which, Hood now stands.

The final petals and Hood’s memory bring the story full circle:

The shock and confusion of Diometer causes her waters to break and in the sacred grove she gives birth to her twins, who like chestnuts packed within the same shielding are bound and pressed to one another. Separating them, she notices a strange birth mark that each possess, a mark that she herself bears upon her breast above her heart. Thinking nothing of it she sets a fire and wrapping her children in a blanket, begins to prepare a meal. Going to the deer, she realises that it is still alive. In the pain of her child birth she has failed to slit its throat and pray for its swift and painless death, the ritual that her mother taught her to carry out whenever she must take a life. Approaching the deer she swears she hears it calling to her. “Sister my sister. Sister my sister.” And going to pull the arrow from its heart, the moonlight beams again, as the clouds, swept by the wind, move away. The deer is bathed in the moon’s creamy glow, but the deer is no longer a deer but a beautiful woman - the image of Diometer herself, if not for antlers which spread like branches from her head. Looking down, Diometer sees that the arrow is not only piercing the woman’s heart but thrust through the centre of the same mark that Diometer herself and both her children bear. Seeing this mark and staring at what is tantamount to her own reflection, Diometer realises what she has done, realises that she has murdered her sister, a sister she never knew she had. Reeling from guilt and shock, in utter despair she slits the throat of her sister and then turns the knife on herself.

A typical old story gore fest - Hood remarks to himself at the recollection - if you want bleak tragedy look to the classics.

But the tale is not over yet, indeed some would say it is never over, and never will be. No, Time, seeing all of this play out before it - within it - sheds two great tears, so saddened is it by the actions that reveal themselves. The tears fall and whilst they fall, the twins, both girls, are taken by wolves. One to a village, where the babe is taken in by the village leader. The other, taken by the wolves to Mother Moon, who transforms the baby into a sacred white deer. And as the years flow by, the tears fall into the river of time whereby two creatures, sisters, hot and thirsty, find themselves on opposite sides drinking, staring into the eyes of the other.

Hood breathes deeply, recalling the final words of the ragged storyteller:

“And so you see my children, Time cries itself into existence.”

It had seemed at the time a meaningless comment for the assembled children, a weird culmination to what had been an entertaining telling of the tale, but recollecting his words now, Hood chews them over in his mind, believing them to perhaps possess a somewhat more weighty profundity than he had previously thought. ‘Time cries itself into existence’. Hmm, If this is true, if time does cry itself into existence, then how does one go about dispelling such misery? But Hood pushes this question aside for the moment, as he turns himself to the task in hand.