The sun had set on their first day away from Caer Dallben forever. In the flickering of a snapping campfire, Eilonwy was cleaning the last of the dinner plates with some of the women from the Commots. King Smoit had commandeered Taran shortly after the meal, and she could see her husband standing in the clearing just beyond, head turned sideways to make out something on a map that Smoit was gesticulating about with fervor.
The Commot women were surprised at her ease with dishwashing, and startled when she told them how many years she had been at it. "Why love, didn't you grow up in a castle, didn't they have people for that?" one asked her in surprise, and she faltered a moment.
"Mostly I grew up at Caer Dallben—with Taran," she responded softly, and the women clucked at the charm of this, and started in with more questions about how on earth a princess found herself on a small farm away from her kinfolk.
Fortunately, at that moment, Smoit and Taran strode back to the campsite, Smoit holding a bulk of linen triumphantly under his arm. "My dear," he bellowed, "I present the greatest wedding gift any couple could ask for!" Taran, she noticed, was looking studiously at the ground.
"Oh, peace and quiet?" she asked innocently, and when he stopped in confusion, she assisted: "Please tell—what is it?"
He held it up and beamed. "A tent!" He pushed it into Taran's arms, and spread his own arms towards her in good cheer. "I remember what it was to be newly married, if you can even believe it. And with a little privacy, eh, what comes next?" He glanced almost expectantly at the Commot women. "A little heir!"
Smoit threw back his head and laughed, as Taran nearly dropped the tent and busied himself intently pretending to readjust it.
Eilonwy rose gracefully while repressing an urge to kick Smoit in the shins. "Why, thank you," she said, a little more tartly than she meant to, helping Taran with the tent folds. For truly she appreciated the gift, as the idea of huddling next to Taran on open ground—even as many times as they had done it before—had lost its appeal now that the possibility of doing more than just lie next to him was always a beckoning window.
She turned back to Smoit, and with a twist of the stomach, remembered that despite the merry eyes, he himself did not have an heir. She took his hands in hers and kissed his cheek. "So thoughtful a gift—you have always been so kind to us."
"Ah," he tutted, turning away as his face began to match his beard, "Enjoy it, the both of you. Here I go back to my own tent with only pissing and spitting soldiers for company."
As the Commot women chuckled and put away the remaining dishes, Taran caught Eilonwy's eye and gave a faint nod. The mist of faces that had spilled over Caer Dallben in the last week had been enlivening but overwhelming, and she still half expected to look over and see Gurgi collecting firewood, or hear the thrum of Flewddur's harp through the campfire smoke. A familiar face—and an old friend—was by far the greatest gift.
That night, as she placed lanterns around the little tent and smoothed their bedding on the floor (included with the tent, though she feared somewhere there were a couple soldiers grumbling on their cloaks that night), she noticed that Taran was unusually quiet.
She chatted to him about the day as she bustled about the space, and he responded with hm's and oh's as he unbuckled his sword and tugged off his boots. Finally she turned with her hands on her hips: "Out with it, Taran of Caer Dallben."
She feigned a look of sternness, but her heart was knocking at her chest, as she already suspected what was knitting together his dark brows.
He looked up at her—"Oh." He glanced about him and finally sat down on the pallet, becoming intensely interested in small hole opening up in his sock. "Well, I just…are you…have we…well, what of children?" he blurted out—still not looking up.
Eilonwy waited in vain for him to meet her eyes, and a corner of her mouth twitched up. "Oh, children," she replied. "They are quite fun, don't you think? Unless of course they are fussing or crying over some lost toy or some silly slight—and naturally I know I was also a child once, so it's like making fun of your own face—but still, how clever of nature to make them so plump and tickly when they are so trying at other times. I myself haven't known many of them up close, though I dare say there were enough at Dinas Rhydnant that one could—"
"Eilonwy!" he interrupted in exasperation, cheeks reddening.
"Yes, darling?" For once, she was not going to help him.
He let his foot and its fascinating sock drop to the ground. "You said that you…you could feel your monthly courses coming on today…and so I didn't know…after that…"—reddening again—"well, we can't continue on as we have been without thinking about it, no?"
So there it was in the open, and she didn't know if she felt grateful or frightened or both. In truth, she had learned something of the art of timing these things from those otherwise interminable court conversations at Dinas Rhydnant. There was one young wife who had been despondent over her failure to conceive after six months, and the mothers at the court plied her with guidance so detailed that Eilonwy sometimes feared they would give a demonstration. She had been embarrassed to realize that she was listening to these discussions more intently than she usually did, and with a certain green-eyed pigkeeper in mind.
But in the last week, all thought of the potential results of a new marriage had burned away in the fire of discovery, and when the familiar cramps gripped her stomach as she swung onto Lluagor that morning, she nearly laughed with surprise (and perhaps, she wondered, some relief). But in her head, she made a note about the date, and vowed to be less brainless in the future.
And now, to hear him form the word out into the air—children—her head began to buzz, and she eased herself down next to him.
"Yes," she said, looking into his querulous eyes and drifting a finger down his cheek. "I have thought about it a little. Mostly in loving you so much as to want more of you somehow. And of course I would never have pledged myself to someone I did not see as the father of my children." She laughed softly, and her eyes were far away. "And you know, it was always you I pictured as that father, even if more in dreams than in thought, even before I would admit as much to myself."
Her eyes returned to his. "Yet the little I did look ahead to this month, I hesitated. So much is new for you—for both of us—I suppose I wondered at the wisdom of adding to your responsibilities so soon after becoming king."
He blew out a breath and then suddenly grinned quickly, like a spark of light in the dark. His cheeks smoldered as he looked at her quizzically. "So by this do you mean to say that it—that we might, perhaps…choose when it happens?"
She was relieved to cut the tension with a sharp giggle, which made him blush even further, and she pushed him back onto the pallet. "My darling farm boy," she murmured, "How incomplete is your education."
"Hey!" he laughed in mock indignation, pushing back at her, "It's not like I was charged with the reproductive schedule of Hen Wen. And if you have any complaints about my education after this week, well…" He seized her waist threateningly, and she burst into most unroyal giggles, suddenly intensely grateful for the tent.
Eventually, she pulled back and became serious again. "So—there are some days when it is more likely," she admitted. "And if a woman keeps careful track, it may be possible to…hold things off for a while. Such is my understanding from those dreary blatherings among the court ladies—at least something useful came out of them. Though I admit, it seems that regardless of one's intentions, there is always an element of chance."
"But what of life is not chance," he smiled, and his eyes trailed out towards the flap of the tent. "When it comes to more…responsibility…I should not be surprised that as usual, you managed to guess my feelings, even before I knew them myself. But as much as I would love children," and he looked back at her, deeply into her eyes, "your children—I must admit that I fear the timing." He took a breath. "For so long, all I wanted was you, was to care for you as my first concern." He looked down at his dirt-stained hands, almost if questioning their capacity. "And now to care for you and for this whole…this whole kingdom, I wonder how I might manage with yet another thing that rules my heart."
She was silent for a moment, understanding his emotion but involuntarily catching on his wording and thinking wryly, "Though you did make the kingdom your first concern." She sat quietly and thought about his question of timing.
But Taran's sharp intake of breath made her look back, and his eyes were round in distress. "What did you say?" he murmured, and she realized with horror that she must have muttered the thought out loud, distracted by the rawness of his confession.
She grabbed his hands, and in willing the tears away from his eyes, her own overflowed. "My darling, I love you for it," she swore, sincerely, but to her dismay, the tears kept streaming down her face and dropped almost audibly into her lap. Taran seemed to be holding his breath, and the air between them vibrated with intensity like a plucked string.
"Yes," he said finally, gravely. "I chose this kingdom over you—though of course, not as king. I chose that. But you cannot think that in so doing, I was choosing anything but the sundering of my own heart." He continued with warm force behind every word. "You were then, and always will be, my first concern. I could only let you go knowing that you would be happy in the Summer Country—though I knew it meant that never again would I be happy here."
Torn by his pain, she caught him up in her arms, and they clung together and cried. How close she had come to not having this—had her departure not been possible to question, had she not possessed the ring that enabled the question, had she somehow turned away and accepted his decision like a dark anchor of fate. And more than that—had he not survived the contest with Arawn, had he fallen at the battle of Caer Dathyl, had he placed a wrong step in the slim divide between life and death at any number of points in their journeys both together and apart. She shivered at the terrifying line between heart-wreck and the long future together she imagined for them now—and even beyond the two of them.
Slowly, she drew back and wiped a thumb over the tears on his cheek. "The Summer Country sounds frightful," she whispered, and they laughed shakily in spite of themselves. "But believe me, love, that we can have something that outlasts us all the same." He looked searchingly into her eyes. "Perhaps not right away. But we shall."
He played a finger over the coppery swerves of her hair in the candelight, and an unbidden vision of a little girl with the same fiery hair filled his mind. "I hope they have your eyes," he heard himself say, and she arched an eyebrow.
"Hmph, I don't—after all, what was the point of my marrying someone who looks like you if the children don't take after you?" She interrupted his laugh. "But don't give yourself a big head, goodness knows they should take after me in every other respect if they're to survive a day outside the castle."
Before he could protest, she pulled him back down to the pallet, and the flames of the lanterns fluttered around them against the dark.