Chapter 9

January through March I didn't see Rowan at all. He was gone. Fighting. I tried not to let it show just how much it bothered me, shook me, tore at my heart, to have him away. It wasn't as if I was the only one whose loved ones were away fighting, but the thing was that my 'Darling Uncle' knew that he couldn't win now, so instead he was just going to torture us from a distance. Even though he was faceless to me, it was personal. He'd hated my mother and he hated the fact that I was alive and well, and living up to every dream my mother had ever had for me, and he hated that despite his best effort to crush her, somehow, even in death, she was winning. So he was doing as much damage as he could. It was more along the lines of guerrilla terrorism. Hard to fight. Hard to predict, and I knew that he was doing it to make Rowan and I miserable, to deny us happiness. He was a psycho.

His attack on Fiannasmere proved that. Rowan arrived just in time to prevent the village being looted. Rowan's grandfather, Merlin's Shadow, had gotten Bronwen, Fenna, and Dunstan out just before the attack and taken them to the Broad River Stronghold, but the attack was brutal. The castle itself was quite stout and if they had seen it coming they would have been better able to defend themselves. Rowan's father was badly injured but survived, he had been a soldier in his youth, although in times of peace, but Rowan's Uncle, his cousin Lewis, and Gareth who had just turned sixteen didn't make it.

Like I said, Seamus was doing it to hurt us. He didn't care about winning anymore.

Rowan spent the following weeks trying in vain to isolate and destroy the exiled prince's army, and I had my long grey halls. I paced while Raphael begged me to stop. “Rhiannon stop this. Sit by the fire, rest. Go sit and sew with Sarah,” he always called his mother by name, “or visit with Nimue.” It was mid February. I'd been pacing for weeks.

I didn't want to think about Nimue so I asked Raphael a lame philosophical question instead. “Do you believe in fate?”

He gave me a 'You've got to be kidding me' look. “If it has somehow been predetermined that I am going to spend my days watching you walk up and down a blasted hallway, someone's gonna have to pay!” his tone was caustic.

I ignored it and asked, “So you figure that if fate is predetermined, that someone is in control?”

Raphael shook his head and snickered, “I think fate is the stupidest idea anyone has ever come up with and I find the idea of my life really disturbing when put in the context of fate. I mean honestly, I'm the last Angel. Although,” he winced, “With the way my parents are going at it these days, that just might change.” He sighed and pushed a hand through his golden hair and looked at me from the end of the hall where he was leaning against the wall with his ankles crossed. During the weeks that Rowan had been there to act as my body guard, Raphael had disappeared a few times and managed to find a pair of black leather pants and a long sleeved tight black shirt that showed off his muscles. “No one has control over our lives except for us. We're responsible for our actions and there is no one else to blame or to absolve us when things go wrong.”

I gave a slight ironic smile at the idea of an atheist angel and wondered what someone from the other world would think of that.

Raphael gave me another look, “Don't tell me that you believe in fate?”

I shook my head vehemently, “No, I'm with you on that. The idea that this was predetermined is completely insane.”

I couldn't shake thoughts of Nimue though. Even asking Raphael stupid questions couldn't distract me from her that day. She wasn't well and, although there had been a breakthrough of sorts during the time that Rowan had been back, she was slipping away. She had no interest in living and had sunk into a deep depression, but it wasn't that simple either. She was a fairy trapped in a stone castle. She was used to having the natural world touchably close and almost feeding off of it. Morgana had admitted to me that if the roads hadn't been so dangerous that she would have taken Nimue home to the Stronghold. I knew what Nimue was experiencing. I'd felt it myself living in the other world. But why had I coped there? Then something occurred to me. “Come on,” I said, pushed off the wall and starting for the stairwell.

“Thank you,” I heard Raphael's dry irritated tone as he followed.

I was still pretty nimble despite the growing belly and I skipped down the stairs lightly with Raphael behind me calling, “Rhiannon slow down. If you fall on the stairs Rowan will kill me.”

And me calling back, “I'm not going to fall Raph. I'm not clumsy. You know that.”

I turned and passed through an archway and down the hall to my rooms with Raphael close behind and started rummaging around. I dug through trunks and finally found what I was looking for in the drawer in the bottom of an armoire. I pulled out the package and held it in my hands. Raphael looked at it curiously. He was oddly sensitive to anything from the other world and he was drawn to the plastic wrapped books that I held in my hands. Plastic, I thought. It felt strange under my fingers. Plastic had become alien to me. The packing tape was sticky and unnatural as I pulled it off of the plastic bag and took the books out of their wrappings. I held them, feeling their soothing weight in my hands before I spun on my heel in the direction of Nimue's room with Raphael trailing along behind.

“I'm going to read you a story,” I told her. I didn't get much of a response. She spent most of her time staring out of the window lately. I opened the smaller of the two books. “Peter S. Beagle. The Last Unicorn.” I read the title of the first novella in the volume knowing that I wouldn't have to translate. It was the Dryad blood. Apparently we all operate on a sort of tree frequency. I started reading, holding the book in my hands and walking up and down the length of the room.

After two chapters I stopped and looked up about to say to Raphael, “Would you ask someone to bring us some lunch?” but he was looking fixedly at Nimue. I shifted my gaze and met her eyes. She was sitting forward. “Keep reading. Please?” She spoke for the first time in three days so I kept reading. I wasn't quite sure that a story about an incompetent wizard, a red bull, the last unicorn in the world and the hero who gives his life to save her, was quite what Nimue needed, but she was enchanted by it. When I finished she looked at me with wide eyes and said, “So there is Magic in your world then?”

I smiled. “I lived there so I suppose that there must have been a little. I've heard about other Fay living there, but I think that we all stayed pretty much hidden in the woodwork.”

“But the story?” she said, confused. “It feels true.”

“It's a novella,” I explained. “Just a story made up by a man to make us think, to make us cry, to entertain us or, I don't know . . . to get us out of our own heads for a while . . . Or maybe back into them.”

“Well then, the person who wrote that story must have a kind of magic that I've never heard of before,” Nimue said firmly.

And that was how we spent our days—Not that I could entirely give up my hall walking. I read to Nimue from the only two books that I had, and at night she slept beside me because my nightmares weren't quite so bad if I wasn't alone when I slept.