Part 5 (1/2)
I took a careful breath, focusing my senses as I had been trained to do. In my first days on Avalon everything had seemed much morealive than it did in the outside world. Now that sense was intensified a hundredfold, and I understood that as the moon was to the sun, so was the magic of Avalon to this realm which was its source and its original.
The sash had come loose from Eldri's collar, but it no longer mattered. The little dog was a glimmering shape that danced ahead of me, and white flowerets starred the track where she had pa.s.sed. Did I see the dog this way because we were in Faerie, I wondered, or was it only in Faerie that her true nature was revealed?
The path led to a copse of hazel, like those that I had been tr.i.m.m.i.n.g-only this morning-when Becca almost drowned. With a pang I realized that I had nearly forgotten why I had come here. Time ran differently in Faerie, I had heard, and it was easy to lose one's memory as well as one's way.
But these hazels had never known the touch of iron. And yet, though untrimmed they might be, surely some mind had guided their luxuriance into this interlace of supple branches in which there was only one opening, through which Eldri had disappeared. For a moment I hesitated, but if I could not find Dierna, I might just as well lose myself in Faerie, for I would surely never dare to return to Avalon. Only the thought of Aelia, anxiously waiting, kept me going forwards.
As I pa.s.sed through the opening, there came a sudden singing, as if the branches hid a chorus of birds, and yet I knew, and I had been trained to notice such things, that these were no birds I had ever heard on Avalon. I looked up in delight, hoping to see the secret singers. When I lowered my gaze, a strange woman was standing there.
I blinked, finding it curiously hard to focus, for in the lady's mantle were all the s.h.i.+fting pale golds of the leaves of the willow when autumn comes. Red berries were strung like a diadem upon, her dark hair and across her brow.
She looks like Heron, Ithought in wonder,or like one of the little dark folk of the Lake village ! But no woman of the Lake people had ever stood as if her surroundings had only been created to be her setting, stately as a priestess, n.o.ble as a queen. Eldri had run to her, and was leaping up against her skirts as she did to me when I had been away.
Stifling a pang of jealousy, for Eldri had never shown such affection to anyone else before, I sank down in the obeisance due to an empress.
”You bow to me, and that is well, but others will bow to you one day.”
”When I become High Priestess?”
”When you fulfil your destiny,” came the answer. The Lady's voice held the sweetness of bee-song on a summer's day, but I remembered how swiftly that music could turn to fury if one threatened the hive, and I did not know what might anger this queen.
”What is my destiny?” heart pounding, at last I dared to ask.
”That will depend on what you choose...”
”What do you mean?”
”You saw three roads when you came here, did you not?”
The Lady's voice remained sweet and low, but there was a compulsion in it that turned my memory to the scene, and at once it was before me-the path that led back through the mists, the rocky road, but the middle way was broad and fair, bordered with pale lilies.
”The choice that you must make lies in the future-to seek the world of the Romans, or the Hidden Country, or Avalon,” the Faerie Queen continued as if I had answered her.
”But I have already chosen,” I answered in surprise. ”I will be a priestess of Avalon.”
”So says your head, but what does your heart say?” the Lady laughed softly, and I felt a p.r.i.c.kle of heat flush my skin.
”I suppose that when I am old enough to think about such things I will know,” I said defiantly. ”But I am sworn to give myself to no man save as the G.o.ddess wills, and I will not break my vow!”
”Ah, daughter-” the Lady laughed once more, ”be not so certain that you understand what your vows mean, and where they will lead you! This much I will tell you: only when you understand who you truly are will you know your way-”
From somewhere, words came to me. ”Eilan I am, and Elen shall guide me...”
The Faerie Queen looked at me and suddenly, unexpectedly, smiled.
”Just so. And if you know that much, then you have set your feet already upon the path. But enough of such serious matters-for now, you are here, and that is a thing not given to many mortals. Come, my little one, and feast with us in my hall!” Gazing at me with a sweetness that touched the heart like pain, she held out her hand.
”If I go with you... will I be able to return to Avalon?” I asked hesitantly.
”If you wish it,” came the reply.
”And will I find Dierna?”
”Is that what you truly wish?” the Lady asked.
”With all my heart!” I exclaimed.
The Faerie Queen sighed. ”The heart, again! I tell you now that if you find her, you will lose her, but I suppose you cannot understand. Come and be happy for a little while, if that is the only gift that you will accept from me...”
Then the Lady took me by the hand, and led me by ways winding and unknown, and we came presently to a hall all built from wood, not cut and pegged, as I had seen in the lands of men, but woven and grown all together, so that the beams were of living wood, roofed with branch and leaf of living green. Jutting branches held torches along the walls, their pale flickering light dancing in the bright eyes of the folk who sat at the high table there.
They gave me a sweet, yeasty drink in a cup that was neither silver nor gold, and as I drank, I found my weariness dissolving away. There were baskets of strange fruits, and pies with roots and mushrooms in a rich sauce, and bread with honey.
The food refreshed my body, although, as I remembered tales I had heard about the Faerie country, I wondered if it were illusion. But the harping fed something in my spirit that I did not even know had been hungering. A young man with merry eyes and a wreath of golden wheat upon his dark curls took my hand and swept me into the dance. At first I stumbled, for this was nothing like the stately measures that were thought suitable for the maidens being trained on Avalon. The rhythm was like the drumbeat that came from the Tor when the initiated priestesses danced with the Druids at the Beltane fires and the girls in the House of Maidens lay in the darkness listening, their blood pulsing to a beat they did not yet understand.
I laughed and let the music lift me, but when my partner would have drawn me away from the dancing into a leafy bower, I knew it for another temptation and slipped from his embrace and back to the feasting table once more.
”Was not the young man to your liking?” asked the queen.
”I liked him well enough,” said I, and felt my cheeks grow hot with a betraying flush, for though his beauty struck no answering chord in my heart, his touch had stirred my senses in a way I did not entirely understand. ”But I have stayed here too long. I hold you to your promise, Lady, to lead me to Dierna and thence back to my home.”
”There is time and enough for that. Wait just a little: the greatest of our bards is about to sing...”
But I shook my head. ”I must go. Iwill go-Eldri! Eldri, come to me!” I looked around in sudden terror lest the little dog, who had after all brought me to this place, should have abandoned me. But in the next moment I felt the drag on my skirts as the dog pawed at them. I bent to scoop her into my arms and hugged her fiercely.
”Yes... your will is very strong,” said the Lady thoughtfully. ”What if I were to tell you that by returning to Avalon you will take the first steps on the path that leads away from it, and in doing so, you will set events in motion that will end by forever separating it from the world of men?”
”I will never do so!” I cried angrily.
”The wind that is stirred by a b.u.t.terfly's wing may cause a tempest half the world away... in the Hidden Country we do not think on the pa.s.sing of time, and so for us it runs slowly, or not at all. But when I look into the world of men, I can observe the results of actions that you swift-living mortals will never see.
Learn from my wisdom, daughter, and stay!”
I shook my head. ”I belong to Avalon!”
”Be it so,” the Faerie Queen said then. ”This much comfort I will grant you: that however far you may wander, so long as you have your hounds you will find your way home... Go then, with the blessing of the Elder Folk, and perhaps, from time to time, you will remember me-”
”I will remember you...” said I, tears p.r.i.c.king my eyes. I set Eldri on the ground once more, and the dog, after looking back to make sure that I was following, trotted towards the door.
We pa.s.sed into the leaf-filtered light of the faerie wood, and then, between one step and another, into a darkness in which the glimmering white shape of the dog ahead of me was the only thing I could see. And then I felt the cold touch of mist upon my skin and slowed, s.h.i.+vering, testing each step before I trusted my weight to it to be sure of keeping to the path.
I could not be certain how long I continued in this way, but gradually I became aware that the mist was brightening, and then it thinned, and I pa.s.sed through the last of it and onto the gra.s.s of the Tor. The moon still rode high-as high, nearly, as it had been when I set forth. I stared at it in amazement, for surely in Faerie the feasting, and the dancing had gone on for hours. But here I was back again, and it was the same time of night as when I had gone. But was it the same night, I wondered in sudden fear? Or the same month, or year? Did Aelia wait for me still?
I started forwards, looking anxiously about me to see if anything had changed, and sighed in relief to see before me the hazel hedge, still half-pruned as I had left it. Something pale stirred in its shadow-Eldri, sitting beside a curled heap of clothing that on closer inspection proved to be the sleeping child.
I fell to my knees beside her, heart pounding in my breast. ”Blessed G.o.ddess!” I breathed, ”never again will I doubt you!” And then, when my pulse had slowed nearly to its customary beat, I gathered the child into my arms.