Darkest Night, First Light
This fic needs some introduction. Two years ago, when I started writing stories about Prydain—and particularly about my favorite character, Adaon—I scrawled a rambling longhand account of Adaon's death from Eilonwy's perspective. The idea of Eilonwy confiding in a journal was inspired by CompanionWanderer's wonderful Princess Diaries, which helped introduce me to the glorious possibilities of Prydain-based fanfiction. After all this time—at CompanionWanderer's urging, and following her own brilliant account of Adaon's death in ch. 30 of Princess Diaries—I dusted off the legal pad and massively revised, if not almost completely rewrote, my earlier scribbling. So here it is. As you can see, it's not only about Adaon but about Eilonwy, who has not yet been at the center of my fics but whose psychology I have been pondering thanks to CompanionWanderer (who also beta-read this—thanks!).
Obviously, I didn't invent these characters; endless thanks to the master story-teller who did. Rest in peace.
1. Nightmare
Llyr, I'm having the nightmare again.
Of course, given my past, I should specify which nightmare. What does it say about my relatively short existence that I am already haunted by more than one hideous dream? And what does it say that these dreams are not fearful fantasies of what might be, but memories of things that actually happened to me?
The nightmare that just woke me is not the one in which Achren reaches her hand to pull me from the boat when Magg brings me to Caer Colur, her soft false voice torturing my nerves the way a silk gown snags on a rough fingernail as you're pulling it on. Nor is it the dream in which I relive the agony of throwing the book of spells onto the stone floor of my ancestral home, fire spilling from the parchment as freely as floodwater gushes inside the walls once the castle gates are opened.
This nightmare isn't the one where the Horned King falls apart in flaming chunks (ugh! I hate that one!). Nor is it the one where the Cauldron Born, marching implacably as they did when they pursued us near Spiral Castle, stretch skeletal hands towards me. Nor is this the dream in which I'm falling ever so slowly and inexorably into the yawning mouth of the vessel in which Morgant plans to turn Taran and Fflewddur and Gurgi and me into Cauldron Born ourselves. Nor is it the nightmare where I see Ellidyr's face—haughty no longer but pitifully young and humble—as he lies amidst the shards of the shattered crochan.
No, this is another nightmare memory from the Cauldron quest. Somehow, it feels the worst, as if the anguish and fear of all the other memories were concentrated in it:
Taran and I, Lluagor between us, running wildly through the Forest of Idris, brambles and branches tearing at our faces, bodies, clothes—Gurgi stumbling behind us holding Melynlas's bridle—icy wind searing our throats—fear swelling within and choking us as we keep Adaon from slipping off Lluagor's saddle . . . I hear our panting as we race blindly, but worse, I hear Adaon's harsh ragged breathing, reminding us that he's terribly wounded, that a Huntsman's cruel curved dagger has just pierced his breast . . .
In one way only is the dream worse than reality. In the dream, I can't see at all. In reality, I could at least glimpse the forest through the tangle of brambles, but in the dream everything is black; I can only feel and hear. The dream always ends when I drop into a pit deep as a grave or the gaping maw of the Crochan—and I cry out and wake up, gasping as if I had been running all night. . .
I wish I could never have that nightmare again. I wish I could cut it from my brain, with all the other horrid memories . . .
But if I did, what would become of me? Would I still be Eilonwy, to whom these things happened, whose memories make her what she is? If I cut them out, would it be like giving Orddu, Orwen, and Orgoch a summer's day in exchange for the Crochan? One wouldn't want to lose a summer's day, I'd argued at the time; it's part of you. Are the horrible memories part of me too? If I lose them, would I lose myself?
These are not the sort of questions I ponder in broad daylight. But it's not daylight yet. Lighting this parchment, my glowing bauble rests on the table in my chamber, while night suspends the humdrum life of Dinas Rhydnant a few hours longer. In this gap between darkest night and first light, I'm going to make myself remember the memories behind that dream and write them down. I don't know why I'm doing this; perhaps I owe it to someone. Could it be Adaon, whom I would never want to forget, even if remembering means reliving the horror of his death? Or do I owe this to myself? But if so, why?
Enough. Let me take a deep breath, and remember. Time enough later to puzzle out what it all means.
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2. First Meeting
Of course, to remember Adaon, I'd have to start—thank Belin—on a day before the one on which he died, a happier day, at least one not yet filled with danger and death, the day Gwydion held the council at Caer Dallben and everything began to happen.
I'd have to start after I'd thrown a rather large crockery bowl at Taran.
I didn't actually mean to hit him. Even in my rage I threw it to one side, so it would smash on the lintel as he ran out. I didn't want to brain him with the thing—well, I don't think I did—so much as punctuate the message I was sending in his direction, the way your voice climbs to a shriek at the end of an angry sentence.
He'd dared tell me that the warriors on the quest to destroy the Crochan couldn't be burdened with "a girl." Obviously he hadn't remembered the time I told him, during the quest the year before, that I hated being called "a girl" and "that girl" as if I hadn't a name. He also seemed to have conveniently forgotten that I had done quite well on the earlier quest, saving Dyrnwyn from Spiral Castle, rescuing him and Fflewddur, and enduring all the rigors of the whole dangerous experience. No, now I was simply "a girl," a female encumbrance to be shed so he could go out and prove with his shiny new sword what a great warrior he was.
Is it any wonder I was furious? I am still, just thinking about it. Thank goodness, Taran's learned some sense about what girls can do since then. At least I hope so. At least he'd better have.
To return, however, to that day and the shattered bowl.
After Taran fled, hunching his shoulders against the rain of crockery, I'd run right out of the scullery after him. I don't know what I intended to do. Scream at him some more? Find something else to hurl? Before I could do anything, though, I collided with someone. Hard. The wind was knocked right out of me, and probably out of him as well.
It wasn't Taran (lucky for him). It was someone else, someone tall. When I got enough breath back to notice, I saw at once that he was young and—well, beautiful.
That sounds silly, doesn't it? Does one use the word "beautiful" to describe men? Am I getting all dewy-eyed about this one man whom the term truly did fit, better than any bland label like "handsome"?
I know, I could easily have had a crush on Adaon. I didn't—I swear. For one thing, I'd already started to be aware of my feelings for Taran, for all his exasperating views about girls. For another thing, there wasn't enough time to have a crush on anyone. It makes me dizzy remembering how fast everything went on that quest, how it wasn't even a fortnight between that day and the day we started back for Caer Dallben, though at the time it seemed like a hundred years of danger and suspense and heartache.
And—I'm not sure how to explain it—I couldn't have had a girlish fancy for Adaon, anyway. The feeling I had for him was more like awe. And yet awe makes him sound like he was unapproachable, when he was anything but. Oh, bother. Why try to explain it? Best get back to the embarrassing way I met him.
It was embarrassing, running into a stranger full tilt like that. I was also uncomfortably aware that I was on the verge of tears, angry tears, but tears nonetheless. I desperately didn't want to cry, because that's what the kind of silly chit Taran thought a burden would do, wasn't it? And this man was dressed like a warrior, one of the menfolk who supposedly wouldn't want anything to do with that sort of girl.
Looking at the stranger, though, provided a welcome distraction from the awful prospect of bursting into tears. The thing that struck me—beside his being tall and having black hair down to his shoulders—were his eyes. Taran has said that's what he first noticed about Adaon too, his eyes, gray and clear and deep and seeming to see right into you, not in an intrusive way but as if he saw you, who you really are. There I go again—I don't know how to describe it.
But at that moment the gray eyes looked questioning, concerned. I must have looked quite upset—though of course I tried to hide it, to act as if I often ran headlong into people and it was nothing to worry about.
To my amazement---for I was dressed in the plain garb of what Ellidyr would call a "scullery maid"—he swept me a graceful deep bow.
"Princess Eilonwy?" he asked. "I hope you are not hurt?"
"No," I replied quickly, then blurted out not "Are you?"—which would have been polite—but "How do you know my name?"
He smiled. "The bards of the north have heard of the brave Princess Eilonwy and how she helped defeat the Horned King."
"Glad to know they have," I cried. "Some people around here could stand to be reminded."
I should have stopped, of course. I should have remembered my manners—which, as Queen Teleria is only too happy to tell me, I frequently forget—and apologize for running into him. But somehow, I sensed not only that he—unlike certain Assistant Pig-keepers!—would not laugh at me, but that he would listen, and even possibly understand.
"Yes," I continued hotly, "some people around here think women aren't good for anything, that they should just wait at home for the stupid men to return from doing the really importantthings . . . "
I had to stop there, dashing at my eyes while pretending to be neatening my hair—as if that's something I do without being reminded.
The young man—I still didn't know who he was—waited a considerate moment for me to sniff loudly and regain my composure. Then he smiled the half-grave, half-wry smile that, I soon learned, was habitual with him.
"It does seem unfair," he admitted, "that women's courage is not prized as it should be. You are not the first brave woman to complain of that arbitrary arrangement." Another wry, and I think affectionate, smile flitted across his face. "Still, Princess" he went on, more seriously, "I can imagine that those who care about you are grateful that you will not be in great danger. It is not a condition," he added softly, "that anyone, man or woman, should eagerly seek."
Even then I had an inkling he had someone very specific in mind when he mentioned brave women, but of course I had no idea who she might be. Now I do. What was the name I heard him say as he was dying? Arianllyn, I think it was . . . his betrothed. Had she, too, protested at being left behind while he went on the quest? How did she take the shattering news Gwydion brought back to her? And what is she doing now? How do you lose someone like Adaon and survive?
I do not know the answers to these questions. And I am also getting ahead of myself. Back to the few days following my meeting with him, when Arianllyn's betrothed was still very much alive.
3. Neither Love of Life Nor Fear of Death
Adaon wasn't thrilled to see me when Gurgi and I caught up with his group several days after they left Caer Dallben. He seemed quite worried when he told me that I shouldn't have followed them, not that this prevented him from kindly offering me food after my rough journey. Another case where his manners were a definite improvement on those of certain Assistant Pig-Keepers . . . But I can see why Adaon would have been dismayed at my entrance on the scene, not because he entertained silly notions of how women belonged at home, but for the reason he'd given at our first meeting—that the quest was terribly dangerous, and the fewer people in that much danger the better.
From where I stand now, I admit he had a fair point. At the time, of course, I didn't see it that way. I still believe it's unfair for women to left out of quests like that, but I also don't see battle as an adventure anymore. Oh, I know, my first evening here I regaled the court ladies with an enthralling account of our first encounter with the Huntsmen, making it sound like a great lark. I enjoy shocking those clucking hens with tales of my unwomanly past! But I know better deep down, truly I do. When Gurgi and I hurriedly left Caer Dallben that day—not tidying the scullery any too well beforehand, I'm afraid—we had no idea we were rushing into such deadly peril. We had no idea that we'd have an extraordinarily good chance of being killed by Hunstmen, no idea we'd be threatened with being turned into toads at the Marshes of Morva, certainly no idea that in less than a fortnight we'd be tied up, waiting to be tossed into the crochan and made into Cauldron Born.
And we had no inkling that within a few days of our joining the others we'd be digging a grave—mostly with our bare hands—for someone we had in all too short a time come to love and admire.
That's what made the Cauldron quest more horrible than the one the year before. Then too we were in peril—being chased by Cauldron Born, and almost being killed by the Horned King—but none of our band actually died. We saw death—the flaming Horned King, the bodies of the guards crushed by the stones of Spiral Castle—and that was ghastly, but we didn't die. That sounds heartless, as if death only matters if it happens to you or someone you know, which isn't what I mean. It's just that it's easier to shut out the reality of death if it doesn't hit home, as it were. For warriors, death is everywhere and nowhere: you know it's always possible that you or a comrade may die, but you squeeze that thought inside you, somehow, or you'd lose your nerve. When someone you know dies—and worse, someone you care about—you can't hold the horror and grief at bay anymore, and the floodgates open as they did at Caer Colur, when the waves swept us choking and drowning into the deep sea.
No, we had no inkling of how bad things were going to be on the Cauldron quest. But Adaon did. That haunts me—that because of the magic brooch he had a dream foretelling his death, and yet chose not to avoid his fate. It's hard for me to imagine anyone making such a choice; it's hard for me even to comprehend it was a choice. Since Taran explained it, the whole thing makes my head ache: if something is your destiny, how can you escape it? How can you create another destiny? And yet apparently that's what Adaon would have been able to do; by retreating to Caer Cadarn instead of continuing on to the Marshes, he could quite possibly have survived. But he let Taran decide which way to go, and accepted the consequences. I am far from sure I could have done the same.
You know, it all reminds me of a line in one of the more interesting of the endless books Queen Teleria keeps giving me to read: the lay of a hero who went on a perilous quest even though he initially balked. No wonder the story stuck in my head: it's not often you come upon a hero of legend who has doubts or fears. Usually they blithely plough ahead as if the prospect of death or dismemberment doesn't bother them in the least. But this hero didn't want to go on the quest at first; he had too much—his home, those he loved—to lose. But he decided to go anyway, because finally nothing could hold him back from doing the right thing, "neither love of life nor fear of death." That line reminds me of Adaon—not just the fear of death bit, but even more the part about love of life. If there was anyone who loved life, it was he. Very few people love it as truly and fiercely as he did.
You might ask how I know this. After all, I couldn't have gotten too great a sense of his interests while we were fleeing Huntsmen! But I did know. Taran knew too: he had a whole day, the first of the quest, in which he talked with Adaon about his experiences and travels, and even heard Adaon sing a song he'd composed. How I would have loved to have heard that! But, if I didn't hear Adaon sing, I did hear him talk about himself, when he and Fflewddur and Doli dropped by the kitchen for supper the night before they left on the quest. Fflewddur obviously looked up to Adaon very much—so much that he forgot to exaggerate his own exploits in urging Adaon to talk about his. Adaon, though, chose to talk not about battles but about the crafts he'd learned in his journeys through Prydain. Even Doli was fascinated—he kept forgetting to scowl, and then catching himself and trying to look like no human clodhopper could possibly impress him.
The danger in writing this, I know, is making Adaon sound like an impossible paragon. Maybe that's easy enough when someone of great promise dies young. You had to know Adaon to see how he could be both admirable and human at the same time. For example, although he showed much more restraint with Ellidyr than I ever managed, I did see him give Ellidyr several exasperated looks that suggested he was close to losing his temper. (Ellidyr did have that effect on people.) And that evening at Caer Dallben Adaon was relaxed and cheerful—as cheerful as anyone could be with that quest starting the next morning. As he spoke of the things he'd learned and still wanted to learn, he looked—well, joyous is the best word I can come up with, so intensely excited about the world and all that was in it.
I never even noticed the iron brooch at his throat, at least not consciously.
That must have been the night he had the dream foretelling his death. How long did it take him, I wonder, to figure out what it meant?
And it haunts me too, that he had to struggle with that knowledge all alone. And it was a struggle. I heard snatches of what he said as he was dying—how he'd thought of going back to Caer Cadarn, how he wanted to be with Arianllyn again. I guess that was what he was thinking at Gwystyl's waypost. Oh, if only I had known at the time! Or stopped to think about why he was acting so strangely, letting Taran decide which way to go when he himself was in command. I was standing across from him while the rest of us were wrangling about whether to go to Morva, and even in my annoyance at the silly way Ellidyr and Taran were acting I was struck by Adaon's expression as he gazed at the fire. He had this distant look, as if he were far away in some place he didn't want to be. At one point—though he never moved the muscles of his face—he even looked as if he were in pain. This expression passed so quickly, though, that I didn't really think any more about it, not with everything else going on. And even when Taran was disturbed about Adaon's behavior after leaving the waypost, and asked him to describe what he had dreamed about himself, we didn't guess the truth then either. Adaon's dream sounded so beautiful—lying in a glade with flowers and trees—that I never imagined it could portend anything bad. Oh, if only I'd tried harder to work it out! If only I'd known!
I know Taran feels the same way. And yet, even if either of us could have guessed what was at stake, would we have succeeded in persuading Adaon to turn back to Caer Cadarn? I don't think so. I suspect that, in his own noble way, Adaon could be just as stubborn as Taran. When he was dying Adaon said things had to happen just as they did, as if his death were part of some larger plan.
It must have been easier for him to see that, with those clear gray eyes, than for any of us to see—or accept.
Note: The words "neither love of life nor fear of death" are a slight revision of a line from a marvelous historical novel, Alice Harwood's The Lily and the Leopards (1949), which is about one of my favorite historical figures, Lady Jane Grey (1537-54). Harwood is quoting words actually written by Lady Jane in a prayer book given to her sister Catherine at her death. This probably says something about the kind of character I favor (you tell me what!), but there are distinct similarities between Adaon and Lady Jane: both were highly learned people who could have saved themselves from untimely deaths but chose not to. (Lady Jane was offered her life by Queen Mary I if she converted to Catholicism; a steadfast Protestant, she refused and was beheaded at age 16.) Lady Jane, in fact, wrote something else that's relevant here, and which captures the interplay of dark and light, tragedy and hope, that I'm trying to convey in this story. On the wall of her prison she scratched the Latin inscription " post tenebras lucem spero" (after darkness, I hope for light).
4. Flowers and Stone
Outside my window the sky is a shade lighter, the first hint of dawn. How my hand aches, writing for so long. But that ache is as nothing compared to the one in my heart, for I have come to the hardest part of my story to tell.
That second battle with the Huntsmen—it was so confusing, bewildering as the wind tossing leaves before our eyes and flinging our arrows off the mark. Taran and Gurgi and I were stationed at the edge of the clearing with our bows, while Adaon charged into the midst of the Huntsmen; a few detached themselves to take on Fflewddur and Doli, who attacked from the rear. The skitter of leaves and the frightened whinnying of horses, not to mention the clash of steel against steel, made my head spin.
Taran threw down his bow when our arrows went astray, calling out that he was going to help Adaon. I was about to follow him when I noticed three Huntsmen had forced Fflewddur and Doli into a thicket, effectively trapping them. I wanted to help them too, but first glanced in Taran's direction to see how much he needed me. And froze.
A Huntsman, who appeared to have stumbled, was on one knee with his arm drawn back, about to throw his dagger right at Taran, who looked as petrified as I was.
Everything happened fast, very fast, almost all at once.
A reddish-brown blur that was Lluagor charged in front of Taran; the silver sweep of Adaon's sword toppled the Huntsman, and then I heard a terrible sound, the thud of a blade finding its target in human flesh.
There was a cry of pain—Taran's.
I tried to move forward, frantic, not yet able to wrap my mind around what I thought had happened.
Then Lluagor moved, and I saw that it was not Taran whose hand was scrabbling at the hilt of the knife buried in his chest, but Adaon.
For the space of a heartbeat molten relief flooded my body, followed at once by horror. And, when I had time to think about it later, by shame. I still feel badly that even for an instant I was relieved it wasn't Taran who was mortally wounded, though I guess it was only natural.
What would Arianllyn have felt?
Time, now, to relive the nightmare race through the entangling woods. Gurgi whimpered in terror as he followed us with Melynlas, while Adaon clung to Lluagor's back, his face hidden in her mane. Several times he almost slipped off, and it was hard to keep him from falling while we were running. I feared that by the time we could stop it would be too late. I knew that Adaon was still alive, though, by his hoarse breathing, as if he couldn't get enough air in his lungs. Once, when Lluagor stumbled on uneven ground, jolting him, I heard him groan. To see such a beautiful, dignified man reduced to a gasping, tortured body was more earth-shattering than I can begin to convey. It was as if the ground shifted under my feet as I ran.
Then, suddenly, the wind stopped stinging our ears, and we were in a protected glade. The sun even broke through the clouds, and for a moment I thought it all had been a bad dream, and it was time to wake up.
But when Adaon raised his head, signing for us to stop, I felt as if a dagger pierced my own breast. His face was ghastly grey, sweat beading his brow. Worse, when we lifted him from Lluagor to carry him to a hillock, we saw that the front of his jacket, where he'd ripped the knife out, was drenched in blood. Lifeblood—now I know why they call it that. Ice seeped into my own veins, but I tried not to think, only to move, to work to save him though I could not see how we possibly could.
Taran tried to convince himself of this too. As I ran to the saddlebags to get things for steeping herbs I heard him babbling feverishly about healing Adaon's wound. Then Adaon murmured something, and I heard Taran cry "Adaon! This is what you dreamed!"
It hit me all at once, as it had Taran. This was it, the sunny glade surrounded by howling winter, and even as I realized I heard wind sighing in the distant trees. "You knew, then!" Taran cried, and it was only with difficulty that I kept my fingers moving, opening the saddlebag, searching for the metal basin, the water flask, though my fingers shook so much I spilled some of the water as I was pouring it.
The glade was not so large I could not hear most of what Adaon said. Though heartwrenchingly weaker, his voice was calm and clear, as if he were drawing on some secret reserve of strength near the end. I took in his words without actually understanding them all until later, but I heard about Arianllyn, and Caer Cadarn, and how he had decided that the choice of going to the marshes could not be his.
As I walked back to the hillock, carrying the basin carefully so I wouldn't spill more water, I saw Adaon pressing something, a bit shakily, into Taran's palm. Only later, when I connected his words to his actions, did I realize he was giving Taran the brooch. When I came nearer and glimpsed how peaceful his face was—eyes closed, the drawn look smoothed away—I saw at once that he was gone. Taran, who was taking the basin from me, only saw when he turned back.
For the second time that day, I heard a cry that seemed to rip apart the world. "Adaon! No!"
It was that howl of utter anguish, I think, that made Taran a man. Oh, he'd talked about manhood before everything started, telling me he'd become a man when he'd attended the council and gotten his sword, but that seemed such idle posturing—and so boyish—compared to this confrontation with what battle really meant. He was different from that moment on, truly he was, and he's stayed that way ever since, even after giving up the brooch he only remembered he had that evening, when he thrust his hand into his jacket after we buried Adaon.
The burial. I don't know how we managed it. We were so exhausted, worn out by grief on top of days of inadequate sleep and traveling and terror. I don't know if we could have done what we needed to do—for there was no way we were going to leave Adaon lying there—but for Gurgi.
Poor Gurgi. He had been riding behind Adaon on Lluagor, after all, and Adaon had been so good to him. Not everyone is; people often don't know what to make of Gurgi, half-human, half-animal as he is, and some, like Ellidyr, can be cruel. (Ellidyr called Gurgi the Thing, as I recall.) But Adaon treated Gurgi not only with kindness but respect, and Gurgi was devastated by what happened. The tears spring to my eyes—all this time I have tried so hard to keep from crying!—when I remember how Gurgi gently placed the saddle under Adaon's head when we laid him down, and how he crept closer to Adaon's side (he'd been hanging back while Adaon and Taran were speaking) after his death. His face wet and wrinkled with misery, Gurgi placed his hand lightly on Adaon's shoulder, as if afraid of waking him—and yet sadly aware he no longer could. And, finally, I broke down. Up till then I had been numb with the horror of it all, unable to comfort Taran in his overwhelming grief, but suddenly I was weeping, and then we all were weeping together instead of separately, holding on to each other as if our lives depended on it. How like Adaon, that even in death he brought people closer.
It was Gurgi who helped us most digging the grave. We hadn't shovels, of course, and we did much of the work with our bare hands, as well as any tools we could devise. A few days later, as we were yoking the cauldron to the horses to drag it from Morva, I glanced down at my nails and shuddered when I saw the dirt still under them.
But Gurgi could do amazing things with those long hairy arms of his, and he worked tirelessly, while we did our best to keep up. After what seemed an age we finally had the grave ready, and it was time to say goodbye. We each did a last service for our friend: Gurgi found flat stones with which to line the grave, while Taran and I carefully wrapped Adaon in his cloak. I can't dwell on how wrenching it was to lay him in the grave and fill it in.
Drained as we were, we were somehow able to make a proper mound of some boulders. Once we'd rolled them into place I sank down exhausted and rested my cheek on one of the stones. It felt cool against my hot skin. Suddenly I realized what should have struck me earlier, that if the man lying beneath these stones hadn't saved Taran's life, this would have been his grave. Somehow, I felt I had to do something more to thank Adaon for that sacrifice. Leaping up, I spotted a flash of color at the far end of the glade—some wildflowers not yet touched by frost, the sort of simple beauty Adaon would have loved.
As I scattered purple and blue handfuls on the grave I seemed to hear Adaon's voice describing his dream, in which flowers sprang from bare stones.
There—I've written it down. Have I made anything better?
Outside the castle, dawn is blossoming in the pale sky.
Surely, too, there is some light of hope even in this sad tale. But I only feel the hollow ache of loss. It's like having a well inside you so deep you can scarcely hear a stone hitting the water when you drop it in.
Yes, grief is a well. When the stone strikes the water, ripples circle out from the place where the surface is broken. Adaon's death reminds me of other losses, of my parents, who must be dead though I know nothing of their ends. Who dug their graves? Who marked the place with stones, scattered flowers? Was it someone who loved them?
Oh dear—my tears are smudging the ink. I must stop, at least for a bit.
I'm back now, after a good cry. Good cry—that's a funny term. But crying can be good. When you're done, you're drained, but also peaceful, like we were that evening after burying Adaon. We cried until we had no tears left, then got up the next morning and did what we had to for the quest.
No, I do not have Adaon's clear vision. I cannot fully grasp the larger plan in which his death would fit instead of being a jarring note. And yet there is a pattern, even though, as Adaon said, it is not always given to us to see it. I remember Orddu, Orwen, and Orgoch, that night we saw them in their cottage, spinning the thread, measuring it, cutting it. Weaving it.
And yet Adaon's story is not just about fate: it's about choice. Not only the choice of when to die, but of how to live. I think of the Huntsman who took Adaon's life: he, too, made choices, but his choices were made out of hatred. Adaon's choices were made out of love. Brooch or no brooch, dream or no dream, finally he died not for some abstraction but because he shielded Taran from a mortal blow with his own body. Ripple upon ripple spreads from that choice. Because of it, the growth of my love for Taran is possible, as is his for me. And who is to say that Adaon's spirit does not yet breath on this earth? He changed Taran's life forever; I think Taran will always strive to be like Adaon. Adaon touched all our lives, even in the painfully brief span he was given.
Perhaps the gap between darkest night and first light is not so wide as I thought.