Chapter 9

It was dim and soft. She could smell fresh air, and the ocean. She tried to remember where they had gone to sleep that night but, no matter, Rowan must be beside her. She told her arm to move. It was a little slow but it reached out. He wasn't there. She tried his name but it came out as a moan. She tried again. “Rowan?” she whispered. Something was nagging at the back of her mind when she remembered that she had eyes and that she could open them. There was a girl with very familiar deep blue almost cobalt coloured eyes and long thick coal black braids smiling into her face. “You're awake!” the girl said.

“Rowan?” In her muddled state she seemed capable of only one word. “Rowan!” she called, hearing the hysterical edge in her own voice.

“It's okay,” the girl told her. “He's close by. He just went out for some air.”

And Rowan came striding into the room and straight to her putting his arms around her so tightly that she couldn't quite breathe. But that was okay, breathing was overrated. At that particular moment, she didn't really need to breathe. He released her a little so that they could see into one another's face. His hair was loose making him look a little wild. He stroked her brow. “Do you have any idea how worried I've been?” He was looking into her face, smiling in relief as his eyes glistened. “They kept telling me you would wake up, but it's been four days.” He kissed her forehead and let her go a little further.

“The last thing I remember is tying the ring to the unicorn's horn then lying down next to you. I had gotten the bullet out of your shoulder and given you herbs. I cleaned the wound and built a fire. I didn't know what else to do. I thought you were dying.” She took a deep breath before asking, “Why have I been asleep for four days?”

Rowan smiled at her, “This is Nimue. She's your sister. She can probably answer that better than I can.”

The girl was looking into her eyes and smiling. “You tapped into the life force of the forest to heal him, but instead of letting just the life force of the forest flow through you, you also let your own life force flow out of you. You healed Rowan completely. There isn't even a scar but you almost killed yourself. Luckily you were right behind the stronghold and we found you only minutes after Rowan woke up. You would have died if my father hadn't been there to heal you, and even after that there was still damage to your life force. You have been using your magic in fear and frustration and this is very wearing. But you will recover, and we will teach you, so you won't hurt yourself again.”

She reached up a hand to the girl who looked to be about two years younger than herself. The girl, Nimue, her sister, reached out her own hand tentatively and they let the tips of their fingers touch. It was like touching the unicorn. This was something that was, in the life that she had lead as Kristabell, supposed to be impossible. A Fairy. Her sister. When their fingers met an aura that almost looked like butterfly wings intensified behind Nimue. It was then that she noticed the soft green iridescent pattern of ferns and vines starting on her hand and travelling up her arm. “What's this?” she motioned to the markings.

“The forest left its mark on you. There are many dryads in our lineage. You must take after them,” Nimue answered then asked, “You must be hungry. Shall I bring you some food?”

“Yes please.” Then, looking out at the darkness, she asked, “Has it been night long?”

“No, not long,” Rowan answered. “It's only a little after the evening meal.”

“My father is in a council meeting, but he is very anxious to meet you. Shall I send word to him that you are awake?” Nimue asked.

She laid there and thought about it for a moment. It wasn't that she didn't want to meet her father. She did, very much so, but it seemed too soon. She had just woken up. She was still lying in a bed and he was in a meeting. Perhaps it would be best if for now he simply knew that she was awake and they could look forward to meeting in the morning. “Would it be very horrible of me if I asked you to wait until morning? If I could have the night to get my equilibrium back? I wish very much to meet him, but I'm a little overwhelmed.”

Nimue nodded, “Rowan has told us the whole story. I understand and so will our father. I will go get food.” Nimue left, closing the door softly behind her.

Pulling herself up to sitting, she looked around the room. It wasn't so very different from the rooms at Rowan's home but this room was perhaps a touch more fanciful. There were reminiscently First Nations carvings around the room, in the door and the window sills, and there were stained glass doors leading to what she guessed was outside—where Rowan had been—all in themes of suns, moons birds, and animals. The doors would be beautiful when the sun was up. She was sitting in a big four-poster bed with carved posts, a deep, dusky, purple gossamer canopy, and deep blue and purple wool blankets. Rowan was sitting next to her on the edge of the bed. She leaned into him, trying to breathe in his solidity, and sighed as his arms closed around her. “We're here. We made it.”

“You can't imagine how relieved I am now you're awake. I was so worried. I thought I was losing you,” he said to her.

“Where's Leif?”

“When we came back across you fainted so I kept the horse and headed straight for Lugh's stronghold with you. I didn't realize that I had been shot until I had ridden some distance but I couldn't keep going and you were unconscious. If I had realized that I was injured sooner I wouldn't have sent Leif off, but I was anxious to send word to King Liam of our return, and I needed to make sure that someone I trust is in command of the army. There aren't many people who I trust more than Leif.” Rowan smiled then, “I have some good news,” he told her, “The band of men and elves who were desecrating the grove were attacked by a contingent of Fay knights only moments after we disappeared. Two of the six who were with us didn't make it but Brian and three of the younger men are here recovering from their injuries.”

“They're alive! Here?”

Rowan nodded

“It feels like I've been gone for a long time. So much has changed but it's only been six days since . . .”

Just then Nimue came back in with a tray of food. “I brought enough for all of us,” she said. “I happen to know that Rowan has barely eaten in the last four days and, well . . . I'm always hungry,” she grinned. “I hope you don't mind if I stay and eat with you?” Nimue placed the tray on the bed and, sitting cross legged at the foot, proceeded to prepare plates for each of them that consisted of what looked like blueberry muffins and little dishes of baked apple topped with roasted hazelnuts and dried fruit with clotted cream and honey. “The hazelnuts are from your house,” Nimue told them as she buttered the muffins and passed them each a plate.

They ate and talked. Nimue was effervescent and charming and each time she became excited about something the winglike aura behind her became brighter. “Did you notice that we have the same eyes!?” Nimue exclaimed excitedly.

“I did. It was the first thing that I noticed about you. Are they from our father or are they a throwback from a grandmother or something like that?”

“Our grandmother,” Nimue said, then, “It's so much fun to have a sister. I didn't have any siblings before, and I know that you've had a hard time of it in some ways, I cried my eyes out when Rowan told us about you, but this feels really wonderful to me.”

“It feels wonderful to me too. I've never met someone who shares so much of the same blood, and it is rather wonderful to me too.”

Nimue touched her fingertips then said, “I'll see you in the morning, and if you're well enough maybe I can show you around?” She picked up the tray and said goodnight as she glided out the door.

And they were alone. The silence after Nimue left was uncomfortable. Rowan shifted and turned to her, suddenly boyish and uncertain. What unspoken words were hanging in that silence? He looked down and pleated the blanket with his fingers then smoothed it out. He repeated the action and then said to her, somewhat awkwardly, “I know that, you said you needed to get your equilibrium back. I don't know . . . Maybe you wanted to be alone . . . or you're tired? I can go . . . if you want me to.”

She knew that it wasn't what he wanted. She knew that he was only asking because he was uncertain. Because in six days so much had changed. Because now she knew she was a Queen. She could hear in his voice that he would go if she asked him to, but she could also hear in his voice, that he hoped that she wouldn't. And she didn't want him to go. “My equilibrium is fine. I've never been more sure of you, and everything that I was worried about six days ago is in the past. I don't need to be worried about those particular things now. I have new things to worry about.” She shifted so that they were face to face. “Everything is going to change tomorrow, but . . . we don't need to think about that now. The past is dead and the future hasn't happened yet. Tonight . . . I want . . .” She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes, blushing as she worked up the courage to say what she meant. “This is hard to ask for . . . I love you, and I want to be in your arms. You asked me to be your wife and I said yes. I want you to be my husband. We have tonight. Let's make it so that no one can take this away from us.” And a kiss was the only possibility in the silence that followed.

Tentatively at first, their lips touched, as if gently seeking out possibilities and then finding them, little sparks that leapt and flared until the fire was lit and then they were simply two people desperate to be together. Rowan stopped kissing her for a moment and told her, “When I first found you in the forest, I didn't know that I would love you, but I remember looking at your face and thinking, When this girl wakes up I want her to be lovable. And when you woke up, I knew you were my match.”

The sensation of his warm skin against her whole body was like the summer sun. If she were a tree she would have stretched her branches up to him but as it was she was a young woman so she put her arms around him and kissed him back as if she could drink his warmth into her and grow with it. She wondered briefly, fleetingly, what she felt like to him. Was it just Rowan? Was it the two of them together? How could something as simple as touching be so sweet? She looked up into his eyes. The feel of his body on hers was making her dizzy. She felt as if she were evaporating, as if her edges were flying apart, like dandelion seeds on the wind. “I trust you. I love you,” she whispered, drawing him in and finding something delicious and pure that moved through her and beckoned her to follow, like a clear stream flowing deep into the heart of the forest. She felt an urge to rock her hips against him and she followed it, matching his rhythm. She stroked his hair, chest, shoulders, and reached up to meet and return his kisses, like rich soil taking in the rain. All she could think of, all that mattered, was Rowan's mouth on hers, their bodies moving together, and the strange beautiful feeling that was urging them on and higher to some as yet unknown but much desired place when suddenly, there it was, singing through her, incandescent, like being filled with golden light, like the sun through spring leaves. She couldn't help crying out wordlessly as the feeling carried her away. Rowan closed his eyes, and for three of four heartbeats, gripped her tightly, his rhythm abruptly changing, and then they were still.

He rested on her for a moment or two then rolled, pulling her with him and cradling her against his chest. “Rhiannon,” he whispered. They lay there together bathed in the comfort of each other's bodies, the feeling of their skin touching, and the uncomplicated rightness of what they had just done. Rowan's lovemaking had that same sweet innocence that was so much a part of being with him. “There,” he whispered. “Now it's binding. We're just two half breed fairies who love each other. I'm your husband, and you're my wife, and that's the way it is.”

“Whatever else happens, I love you,” she smiled at him with her chin on her hands and her hands on his chest, looking into his face.

He stroked her cheek. “Rhiannon,” he said the name again and when he said it it felt like her name. Not, she thought to herself, that she felt defined by his use of the name, and not, she hoped, that she was letting him define her. If anything it was the other way around. In agreeing to spend his life with her he was quite possibly giving up the chance to go home, grow barley, make babies and be happy like he wanted. Although the baby thing, she supposed would happen inevitably, regardless. But it still felt good when he said her name. “It feels right to hear you call me that. It feels like my name now. It's as if Kristabell died in the house fire with her parents and Rhiannon is the person that I am now. It feels like a good way to move on.”

“It's the name that I gave to your father when he asked who you were.”

“What is he like, my father?” she asked.

“Well, most of the time he's pretty self contained, sometimes even stern, but now that I know more about his past, I'm not so sure that it's his true nature. He has a sense of humour that comes out every so often, and over the last few days there's been a softness to him. I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable but he's spent every spare moment of the last four days watching you sleep.”

“Is he like Nimue?”

Rowan shook his head, “No, not at all. You and Nimue are like a cross between Lugh's mother and your own mothers. Nimue's mother was a selkie, but she found her skin and left when Nimue was about six. Lugh takes after his father who was pure water Fay; undine, nymph, Gwragedd Annwn, but his mother is half Dryad half Sylph. The Dryad and Sylph show more in you and Nimue than it does in Lugh and the sylph line is where those deep blue, lose myself for hours, eyes come from.” He smiled as he traced the line of her brow.

“And you? Tell me about you?” she asked.

“Oh, my grandfather is a Dryad. Our great grandfathers were brothers. One settled with a Sylph and the other met another Dryad. That's why my grandmother begged my mother to call me Rowan when I was born. She said that it was obvious even then that I had taken after that branch of the family. When I was sixteen and my grandmother told me about my grandfather, it was in part because, what happened to you, unintentional bouts of magic, only much smaller scale, were happening to me. Turning all the milk in the dairy sour, making trees bloom out of season,” he rolled his eyes. “Typical fairy stuff. So she took me here, to Lugh's stronghold, and asked if they could teach me how to use my magic and control it. I stayed here for a couple of months and learned what I could do and what I couldn't. It was a good time.”

“So what can you do?” she asked, tracing a pattern of ferns and vines that spiralled over his shoulder and chest now, and trailed down his arm. The markings were the same as on her hand and arm and they hadn't been there before. They originated in the place where the gunshot wound had been.

“It marks me as Fay,” he said watching her hand move over the markings. “Your magic spilled over, but it wouldn't have stuck if I hadn't had magic of my own for it to cling to. In a way it's for the best. No more hiding, no more pretending. But as for your question, my magic isn't as strong as yours. In fact not many can do what you've done. I'm not much of a healer, but I can become nearly invisible as long as I'm near trees. I can track almost anything through the forest—except for another Dryad—just by feel. I'm faster and stronger close to the forest. I can hear, taste, touch, smell, see better in the woods. The only thing that was throwing me off the day we ran into Seamus' men were the trees, as you put it, screaming in our heads. I couldn't hear a thing over their cries. It crippled me and it made me realize how much I depend on my Fay senses.”

“I know what you mean. In the other world the forests are so diminished. I felt like I was deaf in that world with only the noise of cars and televisions to make things worse. When I'm here I feel awake and receptive. I feel more alive.”

“Being with you makes me feel more alive,” Rowan whispered lacing his fingers into her hair. They kissed softly and melted, once again, into each other's arms.

*

It was some time in the wee hours of the night, cradled in sleep's warm arms, when all is still and wrapped in velvety star pierced silence that Rhiannon opened her eyes to the dream. It was unlike any dream that she had ever had before. Her dreams tended towards stressful, down the rabbit hole, chaos. This was not stressful. There was no chaos. It was a peaceful void that stretched into infinity and the feeling of it reminded her of the scene at the end of the old movie that had been made of 'The Never Ending Story' in which the Childlike Empress is sitting in the darkness with Bastion holding the last grain of sand that was once Fantasia, and it glows like a tiny star, casting a beautiful light on their faces. The dream was like that. A beautiful hopeful light in a darkness full of possibilities. After a time she realized that somehow Rowan was with her and it was she who held the light in her hands. “It's beautiful,” she whispered to him, looking into his eyes. “What is it?”

“It's . . . life,” he whispered back serious, incredulous.

“Did we . . . Do that?” She felt that the dream deserved more eloquence, but those were the only words that presented themselves for her use.

“I think so,” Rowan replied.

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“It means that we have something worth fighting for.”