Chapter 32

I was walking along a path through the trees, dappled in sunlight. The air was warm and it tickled the bare skin of my arms and legs. I quickened my pace and looked ahead. I could see a little house in the woods, just down the slope and around the bend. Like a little house at the heart of a story. A place that lay in wait. I could feel morning coming, that undercurrent of wakefulness, and I pushed it aside and skipped lightly down the path and into the clearing. Rowan straightened, looked up at me and I danced into his arms as he caught me up laughing. I woke to the sound of his laughter.

*

Toby and Sulamith were fighting over the bathroom and I was glad that I'd gotten in there before either of them were awake. “Sulamith! You've been in there for over an hour. I need to shower too!” He started pounding on the door.

“Tobeeey! Stop it. That's not going to make me go faster it's just going to make noise! I'm trying to be fast but I have three feet of hair and I want it to look nice!” came Sulamith's shrill irritation, blessedly muffled by the bathroom door.

“Yeah well, someone ought to institute a hair tax!” Toby yelled.

“We do seem to have teenagers don't we?” Evan muttered as he adjusted his tie in the dresser mirror.

*

I told Toby that he could wear whatever he wanted so he wore a good shirt and tie, paired with Evan's old leather jacket, jeans without holes—he went to pains to point this out to me—and combat boots. We climbed into the car and sat in uncustomary silence as Evan drove us to Stanley Park. The way was so familiar. It was a strange thing as the feelings and memories mingled. We'd spent so many rainy afternoons at the Aquarium with the kids that driving to the park felt ordinary. For all of us. But this time we weren't going to the Aquarium.

Evan pulled into a spot and paid for the day's parking. We walked a little way down a tree lined path. The weather was clear and mild and had been for days, saving us from having to contend with the rain and mud typical of a Vancouver December. When we were far enough along the path I looked at Sulamith and asked her, “Will you help me with this?”

She nodded and took my hand and I could feel her reaching for magic as lights and colours danced around us and I pulled us through into the other world.

I looked at Sulamith and she smiled, but I could tell how nervous she was. Evan and Sheila looked around in amazement and Toby whooped and yelled, “Holy shi . . .cow! That was fff . . . that was amazing!” He ran ahead then ran back, “Where are we?”

“This is the world where my parents were born.”

He nodded, suddenly solemn, and walked with us more calmly as I pointed the way to the castle.

Could I approach a place that had once demanded so much of me without mixed feelings? Actually, I was surprised at how distant the knocked up teen-aged girl who had once ridden to this place on the back of a unicorn had become. But somehow, it wasn't me for whom this had become “the place that lay in wait.” We came around a bend in the path and the castle came into view. Sulamith walked out ahead of us. I had made her a fitted cream velvet jacket to wear over the dress and her long dark ringlets hung against her tiny waist in vivid contrast. She had bought a pair of red suede ballet flats to go with the dress and I could see the ruby flicker of her feet at the hem of her dress as she out-distanced us. Evan looked at me for a panicked moment as she disappeared through the gates of the courtyard. “She'll be okay,” I told him, but took his hand as much for my own comfort as for his.

We followed Sulamith through the gates and across the lavishly decorated courtyard, in through the castle doors and up the wide sweep of stairs, to the great carved doors where Sulamith stood looking in over the threshold at the throng within. I could almost see myself on Rowan's arm, walking into that room so many years ago. “It's alright,” I told her, coming up behind her. “You can go in. I'll be right here.”

She looked at me, her dark eyes full to brimming with something that I couldn't quite identify at first but then I saw it, hope and wonder and love and happiness, all of the things that I'd hoped she would have. “Go,” I whispered. “I'm right behind you.” And she stood tall and stepped into the great hall.

She went slowly, turning this way and that, looking around her in amazement. At the fairy lights and the ladies in their beautiful dresses. At the fairies who were strange and uncomfortable to look at as well as the ones who reminded her of home. She turned her head quickly and stared up at a tall angel and I saw her smile in profile for the briefest moment. There was a hush as she advanced and I could see to the end of the huge hall where my brother and sister sat laughing at the table at the base of the huge fantastical Christmas tree. I saw them look up, and saw a girl of about seventeen with long ash coloured hair turn from her seat and lock her vivid blue eyes on Sulamith. The room was quiet. Another head turned and although I hadn't seen him in nineteen years, and he had been a small child then, I knew that it was Thaylum's oldest son Quinn. He too locked his eyes on Sulamith, and I wished for a moment that I could see her face. I had the funniest most heartbreaking feeling that I might have just lost my daughter to him. The girl with the ash coloured hair rose from her place looking at Sulamith, she could have been my twin. She was Nimue and Liam's daughter, I knew just looking at her. She stepped lightly and quickly across the room going to Sulamith and taking her hands so that coloured lights danced around them and I heard the other girl laugh as she drew Sulamith, who was smiling broadly now, further along into the great hall.

We had followed Sulamith part way into the room and as her cousin drew her further in I could see my sister. I could see Nimue's eyes searching for me where I stood, clutching desperately at Evan's hand. Nimue rose and started around the table towards me. “Go on,” Evan looked down at me. “I'm right here too. I'm right behind you.” He smiled that charming bone melting smile at me and I turned and ran to Nimue.

We almost smacked right into each other and I worried momentarily that I was holding her too tightly but then realized that if I was holding her as tightly as she was holding me then it was fine. She was sobbing uncontrollably and I could feel the rain start to fall and I pulled back saying to her and trying to wipe her face, “Don't cry. No no, don't cry,” but my own tears fell so fast that I knew it was pointless to tell her not to cry so instead I drew in magic from all around me and turned her raindrops to cherry blossoms that rained down their petals all through the hall.

“Oh I'm so happy you're here, I'm so glad you've come, oh you came, you came,” Nimue babbled over my shoulder then tried to pull me down the aisle to the table at the end.

“Just a moment,” I smiled at her and drew her back to where Evan, Toby, and Sheila were standing together waiting, then we made our way up to where Sulamith was surrounded by a throng of cousins and the other grown children of the friends that I'd known during that life. A delicate looking punked out adolescent girl in jean shorts over black leggings covered in skulls sauntered up to Toby, “Hey! I'm Fionnuala. I'm your 'sort of' cousin. That's my dad.” She pointed to a tall blond man, and then dragged Toby away and over to a group of kids about his age at one end of the table. I looked back at the blond man not sure for a moment if I was crazy, and then realized that I wasn't. Leif stood there in jeans and a blazer. He'd shaved and cut off his dreads. He smiled at me and he looked just like our dad. Raphael was standing and grinning at me too, with Fenna next to him. Thaylum was there smiling, looking from me to Sulamith to his son, who couldn't take his eyes off of her.

I was drawn up into so many hugs and must have spent an hour saying, “This is Evan,” and then watching him get wholeheartedly hugged too, and then we were introduced to so many children. Leif and Raphael took care of Sheila all evening long. They told the story over and over again of how she had let them into her house without batting an eye and then cooked for them. Eventually room was made around the table and we sat. Sulamith was across the table from me sitting with Lilly, my niece, and they were flanked by Quinn, and on Lilly's other side, Raphael and Fenna's oldest son Gabriel. Toby was down a ways, still with Fionnuala. I could hear him laughing. I was sitting next to Evan in between Liam and Nimue. A meal was set out and wine was poured. There was a hush and Liam stood. “So . . . I'm not going to drag this out because, well, he wouldn't want us getting all sad and . . . He'd be here for the party anyhow . . .” Liam looked down at me for the briefest moment, and it was the only time that evening, the only moment that I felt that old sorrow, then he raised his glass and said clearly, “To Rowan.”

Glasses went up and the chorus went round. Tears fell, but eyes were bright. I looked across the table at Sulamith and she looked momentarily stricken. Our eyes met and I smiled sadly at her to show that I understood. She pressed her lips together and nodded to me in unspoken agreement as a tear escaped her lashes.

I sat next to Evan and we watched Lilly and Gabriel helping Quinn teach Sulamith to dance and they laughed and laughed together. She was so happy. We sat and talked with family and old friends, hearing their stories and catching up on life, and life had been good in Nova Britannia . . . after I'd left.

“So strange to watch them isn't it? So very much of us in them and yet . . . so very much their own selves,” Fenna murmured later on, watching wistfully as our oldest children, the ones who had been born and conceived in the throes and wake of the war that had affected our own lives so dramatically, danced.

I watched, seeing a strange reflection of the past. Lilly looked so much like me. And Gabriel? Well, Fenna had always looked like a female version of Rowan and Gabriel was her son, but he looked like his father too . . . like Raphael. In the same way that Sulamith was so obviously both my daughter and Rowan's. I would leave it up to her to discover that she and Quinn shared a great grandparent in the sylph line of the family, the way Rowan and I had in the Dryad line. That great great grandmother who was the source of my own and Nimue's, and Quinn's and Lilly’s deep blue eyes. “It's almost hard to look at them,” I admitted, and it was.

“But they're happy Krista. So happy. They have everything that they should. This world is theirs. You and Rowan did that for them,” Fenna told me earnestly.

I looked back at Fenna and she smiled and took my hand.

The day wore on. Afternoon had turned to evening and evening to night. It was time to go home. “Toby? It's time to go,” I called.

“I'll call you tomorrow, I promise,” Fionnuala reassured him with a smile as he got up from the table where they had been playing some kind of card game. Toby came and stood by Evan and Sheila. I looked to Sulamith who was still hovering next to Lilly. “Would it be okay . . .” she paused and started over, “Would you mind very much if I stayed behind?” She looked into my eyes and I could see how much she wanted to stay.

“It's up to you,” I told her. “You're too old to need my permission.”

“That's, not so much what I was asking,” she came close to me and rested her forehead against mine. “Will you be okay . . . if I stay?”

I would and I knew it. I had Evan and Sheila to help me through, and a happy home to go back to. But there was no hiding the emotions that what she was asking brought up. “I'll be okay,” I whispered to her. “Stay.”

“Mum?” She looked at me and I knew that somehow in those moments that her childhood had truly ended. She said to me, “I'll be back on the weekend. I have a commission that I need to finish. I promised Sophie that I would spend the day with her at the art gallery. I can't just leave her in the dust. I'm not abandoning my life back home. I just want . . . the best of both worlds.” She looked confident as she stood before me.

I nodded and reached into my pocket and pulled out the chain that held the two rings that her father and I had worn . . . once upon a time. I placed them in her hand and folded her fingers around them. “They want to be in this world. Keep them safe for me,” I told her, and then turned. I took Evan’s hand and started walking out of the hall. I turned and looked back and waved once, but I'd said my goodbyes and I had promised that we would all be back by the next winter solstice at the very latest, so it wasn't really goodbye.

As we walked to the spot near the car Toby prattled away about his cousins and the friends that he had made that day and I tried to think of what I was going to cook for dinner on Sunday as I seemed to have roped myself into cooking for Lief, his girlfriend, and their daughter Fionuala, as well as Yuka and her partner. I pulled us through into the world that was home and just as that world rematerialized around us a unicorn, my unicorn, stepped out of the haze of magic. “Oh!” I gasped, and then, “My friend!” The unicorn nudged my fingers with its muzzle and I stroked its velvety coat. I motioned to Toby and he slowly approached, looking like a very tall little boy as his face lit up in the unicorn's lilac glow. He tentatively stretched out his fingers. The unicorn snuffled against his palm and nuzzled his cheek briefly. He smiled, a very happy childlike smile, as he smoothed the silvery mane and ran his fingers over the unicorn's neck. I looked over the unicorn's back and caught Evan's eyes. I'd never seen his face so full of wonder. I smiled, and he smiled back. The unicorn gave Toby's face one last nuzzle and then stood in front of me for a moment, “So you want to be in this world now?” I whispered, looking up at the impossibly beautiful creature. It gave a whinny of triumph and then reared up and galloped away, into the woods.

“Well, I guess I've seen just about everything now,” Sheila murmured.

“Nah Grandma. We still gotta find Dragons,” Toby grinned at his Grandmother.

We got in the car. For several minutes Evan drove in silence. Sheila was likewise quiet and Toby seemed to have fallen asleep. Evan turned briefly to glance at the sleeping teenager and then said to me, “So, Toby is dead set on going to a month long surf camp in Tofino this summer, and Sulamith . . . well, I guess she can take care of herself. So I was thinking . . .” he turned to Sheila, “Hey Mum, do you mind going to Tofino with Toby?” he asked Sheila. Sheila said that she didn't mind so Evan continued, looking at me as we waited at a light, “I was thinking, lets you and I go to England? I've always wanted to walk across Exmoor and see the ocean views from there. We could rent a cottage and have uninterrupted sex.”

“I so did not need to hear that Dad,” came Toby's muffled drowsy voice from the back. We ignored him.

“Lets do it, lets book the tickets tomorrow,” I smiled, and Evan held my hand the rest of the quiet ride home.

*

Home is full of such simple magics. The magic of hot milky tea and falling asleep on a lover’s shoulder, of smiles and warm meals. Those things that we sometimes take for granted but really shouldn't. I'd gotten a rare hug from my giant teenaged boy and said goodnight to him, finished my tea, and all I wanted was to lie down and fall asleep next to Evan, looking forward to that brief moment just before waking when I would see Rowan's face, and then find out what the new day held. What beauty did life have in store for me next? I tried to imagine.