Chapter 11

Rowan returned late the next evening. He looked at me, calm and grim. “I . . . We . . . Need to speak with you.” I nodded and followed him to a small council chamber. I knew immediately that whatever it was that needed to be discussed was heavy. All of the highest ranking most trusted officers were there. Yori, Brian, Lief, Thaylum, Liam, Fern, Mikail, and Nuriel. Gwydion, Caitlin and Yuka sat at one end of the table and to my surprise Nimue and my father Lugh were present as well. I hadn't seen my father since I'd left the Stronghold some months earlier. He smiled his sad, elegant, sardonic smile and nodded. I took a seat next to him. Rowan looked to Liam. “Would you do the honours?” he asked in a quiet serious tone.

Liam sighed but nodded. It seemed that it was often Liam who got to be the spokesperson for unfortunate facts. “Okay, so, as you know, what we have going here is some kind of ugly guerrilla attrition thing, and we're at a point where Darling Uncle just might win if we don't change our tactics, cause we can't fight what we can't catch and can't find. We have to place ourselves in a position to use his weaknesses against him, and he has them, but we need to draw him out into the open. We need some bait. Something that he won't be able to resist. We want to use you,” he looked at me then changed his focus to my sister, “Or more specifically, we want to use Nimue disguised as you to lure him.” Liam licked his lips and looked around the room before continuing. “Now, Rowan here hates this idea, even though it was his, but he says it's our best bet. We'll need to lay the plan carefully and we're pretty sure we can pull it off with minimal risks to Nimue. Seamus is nearly out of weapons and according to our intel the elves are pretty much useless now. They can't cross the boundary between the worlds or perform any other works of magic. We just need to get them out into the open so that we can end this thing. Once and for all.” He levelled his gaze at me once more. “What do you say?”

I looked to Nimue who spoke immediately, “They've already asked me and I've already agreed to it.”

I turned to Rowan who spoke reluctantly, “I told them that I wouldn't agree to it without telling you first. I do think that it's our best chance though, even if I hate it.”

My stomach churned and my heart constricted but I nodded, “Do it then,” I said. “End it.”

*

I was in the last trimester of my pregnancy. I felt heavy, stretched taut, both physically and mentally. I didn't attend any of the war councils. It bothered Rowan and every other overprotective male in my life to see me there, so I kept to my rooms and my long grey hallways. Raph kept me up to date on everything that was happening. My Guardian Angel, he was almost always with me. Rowan didn't trust anyone else to be able to protect me, to make sure no one got to me somehow. The days dragged by and I hated every minute of it.

Plans were patiently and carefully laid, webs woven, traps set, forged letters 'lost', spies planted. All too soon the battle was being fought. It was loud enough for me to hear it from the castle. There was nothing for me to do because what does a little gardener Fairy do in a war? So I paced my halls, the cold grey stones almost comforting in the heat of the summer solstice.

*

A week before the summer solstice it had been announced that I had given birth to a daughter. I hadn't, but it was all a part of the plan. The section of the castle that I tended to keep to was cordoned off and no one save family and close friends were allowed in. I stayed quiet as I was in theory, lying in, although I wasn't showing any signs of going into labour yet. It was a strange time. In some respects I was relishing the privacy but I wasn't sleeping well. One part pregnancy, two parts pure anxiety. I woke one night from the same dream I'd been having since since I'd first come to Rowan's world. It was a shapeless formless dream of fear and sadness, nothing more, just feelings, but I woke with a cry and found Rowan curled protectively around my back. Nimue was asleep on a cot against the wall and Raphael was sitting in the window half asleep.

“It's alright, you're fine,” Rowan whispered to me pulling me closer to him.

I was too uncomfortable to go back to sleep. The baby was kicking and squirming inside my tight sore belly. I had vivid red stretch marks that itched and burned. I could feel Rowan's hand resting there, feeling that little life in me as she kicked and rolled. I drifted off eventually and when I woke Rowan was still with me. The sun was only just rising, filling the sky with a gold, pink and soft blue glow, reminding me of another morning nine months earlier. Rowan had still been with me that morning too. He smiled at me as if he weren't about to ride away again. “My morning glory,” he said to me. “You truly are.”

I smiled back and kissed his mouth, his forehead, stroked his hair. And then he said to me. “Are we doing the right thing? Maybe we should have just run? Maybe I could have kept you safe that way.”

“I don't know,” I said to him. “I don't know the end of the story. But even if we had run instead of making a stand, could you have lived with yourself never knowing if we were safe, and all the while knowing that a terrible war was being waged that we had the potential to end? As much as I hate it, this is about more than us . . . And I don't think that we ever truly had a choice.”

He put his arms around me and held me like he would never let me go, then slowly released me and looked at me with such an expression of helplessness in his eyes. “My love . . .” he said.

“Must you?” I whispered.

“I have no choice. I must go.”

He kissed my mouth, my belly, let his hand linger there for a moment, then he was gone and I felt like a giant dark pit had opened up inside of me.

*

The night before the Summer Solstice, I dreamt. At first I didn't realize that I was dreaming as I looked around the bright white room. The furniture was sturdy simple pine, and the linens on the bed upon which I sat cross legged were white as were the curtains that fluttered in the windows. Sunlight poured in as it dawned on me that they didn't have the chemical process for pure white linens in Rowan's world. The closest they could come was a rich cream. That was when I realized that I was holding something in my arms and I looked down at the newborn baby asleep there. Dark eyelashes against delicate pink cheeks. Little wisps of molasses coloured hair. She was so tiny . . . so precious. I gazed at her astounded, and leaned back against the headboard of the dream bed. “Oh my little girl,” I whispered and kissed her gently and breathed in her sweet baby smell. I wondered for a brief moment if I was dead but then decided that I didn't care and focused my attention back on the little bundle in my arms. I smoothed my thumb down her cheek and took her tiny hand so that her fingers automatically grasped the tip of my index finger. She bunched up her face and squirmed then gave a great baby sigh and relaxed again. She was wonderful.

A door that I hadn't realized was there opened and Rowan stepped into the dream looking confused until his eyes focused in on me and what, or, I should say, who, I was holding.

“Oh Rhiannon. Look at her,” he breathed as he lowered himself, sitting opposite me on the bed and looked down into her little face. He was, like me, astounded.

“Here.” I softly and gently transferred her into his arms. He took her and cradled her against his chest as she squirmed then settled and slowly peeped her dark little eyes open for a moment or two, looking up at him, before letting them close and going back to sleep. Rowan did as I had and gazed at her, put his lips to her downy little head, breathed her in. He touched her little hands and cheeks and tucked the woven blanket she was wrapped in around her, making sure she was safe and warm. He sat for a while like that, in quiet rapture, not speaking, lost in the beauty of the moment, for it was beautiful. After a time he looked up at me. He looked so young. Life was so new in that moment as we sat together with our baby. I looked down at her and leaned forward, kissed her again and turned my face, brushing my cheek gently against her downy head before looking back at him.

He looked into my face and smiled, placed a hand on my cheek. “I'll never regret the time I've had with you. I need you to know that. I wouldn't trade this or change the things we've done for anything. Not for all the worlds.”

I took his face in my hands as he so often did mine, kissed him, and told him, “I love you. I could never regret you . . . or this.”

He blinked rapidly and then asked me, “Can we name her Sulamith?”

Strangely, we had never talked about names before that moment.

“Yes,” I nodded unable to say more, then whispered, “Sulamith.” And stroked her tiny brow lightly with the backs of my fingers.

“Rhiannon. I love you,” he said, and then his face twisted and tears streamed down his cheeks. More tears than was fair for a father holding his child for the first time. “I have to go. The sun is rising,” he said and his voice broke. He reluctantly placed Sulamith back in my arms, took my face in his hands and kissed me. “I wish this could be forever,” he whispered, then rose.

And as the dream faded I woke with a cry. “Rowan!” I called out. But he wasn't there, and the Summer Solstice had arrived.

*

I stood next to Nimue as we looked into the mirror at one another and she slowly wove a glamour around herself, concentrating on my face and holding Raphael's hand, drawing on his reserves of magic. I think that when she was done maybe only Rowan would have been able to tell us apart. I placed my hands on my belly trying to ease the stretched, burning, taut feeling as Nimue walked to the bed and picked up the bundled cloth doll glamoured to look like a real baby. We didn't have anything to say to one another that hadn't already been said, so Nimue kissed my cheek and looked to Raphael, “I will wait for you in the hall.” She left Raphael and me alone.

Raphael took my hands in his and looked down at me then, feeling awkward, knelt, “You gonna be okay?”

“I don't know Raphael,” I said and my shredded composure slipped further. I felt my eyes and nose start to run and my bottom lip quiver. I looked at him, realizing full force how much I had come to depend on him despite our strange cranky relationship. The idea of having my favourite bodyguard away from me left me feeling stripped and vulnerable, but the queen wouldn't leave the castle without her favourite bodyguard, would she . . . ? And I didn’t trust anyone else to keep her safe. So Raphael had to go with Nimue.

They would leave together in a closed carriage so that all could see the queen step from the castle with her new baby in her arms and her guardian angel by her side, at which point they would ride to an undisclosed location where she would change carriages, but she would not really be in the new coach. She would drop the glamour, make herself invisible and slip out as Raphael would open a doorway to the other world and they would be left behind by the coach unknown to Seamus' spies who would be left with the impression that they had a perfect opportunity to both take the castle, and capture the queen.

“Nimue and I will be back by lunch time, you'll see. I won't let anything happen to her.” He looked at me seriously, his golden eyes trying to will me to be calm.

“Come on Rhiannon, take a deep breath,” he said to me as if I were a hysterical child, but oddly it helped.

I drew in a breath and nodded. Raphael put his arm around my back, kissed my forehead and the top of my head. “Lunch time. I promise,” and he strode from the room.

*

I don't know how long I'd walked that hot summer solstice, wandering in a world of hope, fear, memories and long grey corridors, before I realized that I was having contractions. Sarah and Morgana had told me many times what to expect. I wasn't in a panic, she was my first baby, she wasn't likely to come quickly so I continued walking up and down and as the hours past and as the battle that was being waged somewhere outside got louder, the contractions grew stronger. When they started to get bad I would lean my elbows against the wall, look down at the floor and count the cracks.

It was Nimue who found me like this. She turned the corner to my chosen corridor, nodded at one of the many invisible Glaistig who had replaced Raphael for the morning, then turned and called over her shoulder, “It's alright. She's here.”

Raphael appeared just behind her as she exclaimed, “Rhiannon!” paused then asked. “Are you . . .?”

I looked up and nodded as the contraction passed. I looked behind her at Raphael who suddenly looked as if he would rather be somewhere else. I looked back to Nimue, “Walk with me.”

“Alright, but let's at least go and walk in the hall outside your room.”

We walked until my water broke but the contractions had gotten much harder and faster after that so Nimue helped me to my bed where I knelt, clinging to the foot board and bed post, as the pain had been unbearable when I'd tried to lie down. I was getting tired by then and in between contractions I would cry like a baby and ask for Rowan. Nimue had gone to fetch our grandmother and I felt a childlike relief to have her there as she shushed me and said, “Not much more now. Just a little longer.”

Time must have passed I suppose, although it seemed meaningless, when suddenly Morgana said to me, “Listen Rhiannon . . . Listen . . .” just as a contraction had released me.

I was dazed. Spaced out. I looked at her confused. “I don't hear anything?” I said.

“The fighting's stopped,” she whispered just as I was gripped by another contraction.

Then it wasn't much longer before everything changed. I felt it immediately. Suddenly the pain was gone replaced by an overwhelming urge to push. “She's coming,” I gasped as a powerful contraction literally began to move my baby down and out of me. I pushed hard still clinging to the bed post and began to feel a burning ache as the widest part of her head made it through. I stopped to breathe before another contraction hit and I gave a final push then reached below me where I could feel the beginnings of a tiny shoulder emerging. I hooked my thumb under and pulled her the rest of the way into the world and, clutching her to my chest, let myself fall back exhausted onto the bed.

*

I had eyes for her only. She was amazing. I wiped the white vernix off of her face as she gave a hearty little bellow of life then began searching me with her face. “Rooting,” Morgana called it. It took me a couple tries but I got her latched on and for a time all was right in my world. I vaguely remember pushing out the placenta. Morgana healed me as much as she could from within the walls of a stone castle, stopping the little trickle of blood that I otherwise would have had to put up with for a few days, and taking the edge off of the sting from the little skid mark that my little girl had left as she'd passed through me. I remember lying on Nimue's cot while she washed me with clean warm water and helped me into a fresh nightgown. My bedding had been replaced although I don't remember anyone doing it. I just gazed at my tiny precious child and marvelled at her. I looked into her dark eyes as she peered up at me and we made eye contact for the first time. I'd held her in my dream only that morning, but to have her in my arms again . . . There was a rightness to it. She was my child.

I was lying on my side resting, still sore and exhausted but calm, looking into that little face as she slept tucked into the curve of my arm. Nimue was sitting on the bed behind me working industriously on the knots in my hair. “She reminds me of you,” I said to my sister.

“That's because she looks like her mother, but she has her father's dark hair,” Nimue said softly, which was true. Nimue and I are very much alike with the exception of her black and my ash hair. The differences in our faces are slight. But Nimue had said it, “Her father.”

“Rowan . . . ” I sighed. “Oh please . . . please . . . please come.”

The battle was done and we'd had news of victory so I lay there as Nimue worked doggedly at my hair. I lay there with my baby and I loved . . . and I hoped . . . But I know that you know. I know that you've already figured it out. I haven't been able to keep it out of my voice, even though these are only words on a page. We heard footsteps in the hall. The clink of armour. My heart . . . Oh my heart . . . I know that you can tell. I know that I don't need to say it. It wasn't Rowan on the other side of the door. Rowan . . . even now . . . writing it. I know that I don't need to tell you. Rowan wasn't coming home. He wasn't coming back to me.