Legend

Luna Aiana’s Lilies of the Valley grew beneath the alders by the lake, where the sun never reached, not even at noon. Their tiny bells smelled sweetest on damp mornings, while a grey haze still hung over the water.

In their flowering season a girl came there who was to be married in two days. Her bridegroom lived far away, beyond the mountains, in a village she had never seen. She sat on a stone, plucking at the hem of her shawl.

“Everything there will be strange. No one knows me. Even the air is different.”

Luna crouched beneath an alder and dug out a lily root with her fingers, a clod of damp earth still clinging to it. She wrapped it in a leaf and gave it to the girl.

“Plant them in the shade.”

The girl turned the little bundle over in her hands. The earth was cool, and the scent stayed on her fingers all the way home – and the next day too, as she climbed onto the cart.

“A lily of the valley doesn’t ask where the sun is,” said Luna. “It blooms wherever someone plants it and waters it.”

In many villages beyond the mountains, lilies of the valley grow in the shade of the houses. People say it is a sign: a woman from Luna Aiana’s lake once came to live there.