Fourteenth day of Equos, darktime
We began weaving today. Ugh.
The weaving rooms are in the west wing, presumably so that weaving can go on as long as there is light. The chamber is a forest, a labyrinth of looms, with huge hanks of dyed, spun wool and flax hanging from the ceiling like stalactites, and the air is full of tiny floating fibers that glitter in the shafts of light from the casements. It hums with the clickety-clack of flying shuttles over the steady murmur of voices, although generally there is less chatter than in the sewing room. Perhaps weaving requires greater concentration, or maybe it's the general atmosphere of serious business going on. It seems Mona does most of its trading with textiles, which explains the proliferation of sheep on the island, and everyone is expected to be involved with the process. I even saw Elinor and Dwysan, two of the little girls from my deportment lessons, sitting at small looms, their tiny nimble hands flying like white birds over the threads.
I spent the morning watching Queen Teleria at the loom while she explained patiently what she was doing. It was rather fascinating to watch, but I couldn't make any sense of it. Her hands moved so quickly I couldn't follow at all; the shuttle seemed to dart back and forth of its own accord, and I still don't understand what the treadles at the bottom are for. I shudder at the thought of sitting down to it, and honestly I don't know if they can afford to let me try – surely I'll do no more than slow down the process, and likely ruin whole skeins of thread into the bargain. When I said as much, the queen tutted, and said I was clever enough to learn, if I didn't start out by complaining and dreading it. She pointed out the little girls, and said if they could do it so could I; I didn't feel it was wise to point out that they can also curtsy without tripping over their own feet, which I have yet to manage.
The only nice thing is that it gets me away from embroidery for a while, and although my white pig is coming on passably well, I shall be glad to lay down the needle and thread. Yesterday afternoon I had to pick out half of what I'd done that morning after realizing I'd been stitching in the wrong spot for an hour. I'd been quite distracted talking to Mae, who was telling me about her brother and sisters back home, and never noticed I'd been stitching an eye where a hoof should have been until it was almost done. I wanted to be furious but it looked so funny that I had to smile, and Mae made a comment about blue hooves that had us both giggling until Queen Teleria gave us the look.
She has finished with the mask for her twelve-year-old brother Talen, who sounds like quite a delightful scamp, and I'm trying to help her plot out how to scare him with it before she has to give it to him for the autumn festival, which is held here on Mona. It gives us plenty of time to think up something good, and there's no doubt that the thing could be grotesquely frightening under the right circumstances. It looks like something from the deepest pits of Eiddileg's realm.
This morning during my pre-breakfast ramble I think I discovered a way out of the grounds. I've never been much interested in exploring the gardens to their limits, or I'd have found it before, but since making my vow yesterday to find a way to the sea, I decided I ought to be looking a bit harder. Today I discovered that if you follow the herb gardens all the way to the back wall, there's a gate where they throw the garden rubbish out. It's half-hidden behind clumps of some feathery bushy thing, so it's no wonder I never noticed it, but that means it should also be easier to get to without anyone seeing. It may be locked, but it is worth a try; I think I'll attempt it tomorrow night if the weather is fine.
At the moment there's the most glorious storm going on over the water, and I'm sitting at my window and watching the lightning. I vaguely remember a legend of Llyr that dolphins were born when lightning first struck the sea, and that is why they leap so high, trying to return to the air from which they came. It's a lovely idea. We saw a few of them on the journey over from Caer Dallben – delightful creatures, soaring effortlessly in and out of the water. I remember Taran laughing out loud over their antics, and Gurgi nearly leapt overboard in his excitement at seeing them, squealing about the "shining great fishies," their "splashings and flashings", and their "friendly wide smilings."
I used to wonder how I could remember such legends, when I had no memory of actually living near the sea, or being taught anything about Llyr at all. On our journey to Caer Dathyl, after Flewddur played for us the first time, I had mentioned feeling at home near the sea, and how the white-capped waves were called the "White Horses of Llyr" by my people, and later one summer evening at Caer Dallben, Taran asked me how I knew that, if I couldn't remember anything of my life before Achren. I still remember the conversation, because it was the first time I realized how strange that was.
We were sitting out in front of the house on stumps, leaning up against the cool stone fence that surrounded the orchard, shelling peas. It was late afternoon, the time of day when the shadows grow long and the light turns greeny-gold, and there was a beautiful breeze dancing up from the spring, bringing the damp smell of moss and leaf-mould. Gurgi was sitting in the grass at our feet, eating peapods and occasionally trying to sneak shelled peas out of the pot.
I was humming snatches of an old song that I seem always to have known, about the swans and gulls leading the sea-folk and King Llyr to land, and when Taran asked where I'd learned it, I couldn't tell him.
"That's what's odd," he said, pointing a peapod at me. "You know stories and songs about Llyr, like that bit about the white horses you talked about that night after Medwyn's valley. But you say Achren wouldn't talk about Llyr to you. How do you know them?"
I shrugged, frowning, for I didn't like thinking about Achren. "I just do. I must have learned them before I lived at Spiral Castle."
"But you've said you don't remember anything before coming to Spiral Castle," he persisted. "Not even anything about how you came to be there. I don't doubt Achren was lying to you about it; you never truly believed she was your aunt. And if she were the only sort of parent you'd ever known, you'd have turned out just like her, not knowing any better."
I scowled at a shriveled pod and tossed it to Gurgi. It was true. I couldn't remember anything at all before coming to Spiral Castle; Achren had always told me that my family had sent me there after my parents' death, to learn magic from her. I had wondered often why they had sent me to her when it was so manifestly obvious that she was as black-hearted as a rotten oak…and then wondered how I knew even that, when I had no memory of anyone to compare her to. When I tried to think back too far, more than six or seven years, it just went blank, as though someone had drawn a misty curtain through my mind. Songs and stories, and a few hazy images, slipped through thin places in it, and in the very center of it blazed my own name. I am Eilonwy, daughter of Angharad, daughter of Regat…of the House of Llyr. But nothing more. Trying to reach beyond the curtain was useless, bringing nothing but an inexplicable sense of dread.
I came to myself staring blankly at Taran's face, or rather through it, for he was waving a hand in front of my eyes and glaring at me quizzically. I blinked, and looked away, muttering, "Sorry."
"You looked like you were seeing ghosts."
"Perhaps I was," I said. "I don't know. I don't know how I know some things. And I don't like to think about it. It makes me feel odd…like I'm trying to walk a cliff's-edge in the dark."
"Do you think-," he began, then stopped.
"What?" I said after a moment, annoyed.
"Nothing. You said you didn't like thinking about it." He crushed a pea-pod into the stone fence.
"But now I will, until I know what you were going to ask," I said in exasperation, kicking the pot accidentally and knocking out several peas, which Gurgi wasted no time cleaning up. "So you might as well do it. I hate when you don't finish what you start out to say. It's worse than spilling a drink halfway to your mouth."
He grinned briefly, a flash of white in the gathering twilight (the odd things I remember!), before looking at me seriously. "Do you think Achren bewitched you somehow, to make you forget?"
It was an idea that had occurred to me, but I had always pushed it away, not even putting it into words, not wanting to think about what it meant. Because if it were true, then there was something behind that misty curtain in my mind, something that she had desperately needed me to forget, something that filled me with such nameless horror when I tried to see it that I shrank away from trying. Not that I could have put even this much into words back then. Instead I got angry with Taran for prying into such a dangerous place, and, true to form, burst into sudden furious tears.
He was understandably bewildered. When he asked tentatively what was wrong, I screeched that I didn't know and to leave me alone and stop asking a lot of stupid questions. Gurgi was staring at me with his mouth open, and I sprang up, scattering my unshelled peas in all directions, and ran off to the orchard to get control of myself.
I suppose it was worth going through all that horror with Achren at Caer Colur to have an answer to all those questions. It wasn't nice having that curtain finally lifted, but it's as I told Mae yesterday…I'm glad to have found what was lost, even if only to lose it again.
How much of who we are is made up of what we've lost? That's a Dallben sort of question, and one I'll have to ask him when I get back.