In place where hill and dale ran free
I found a one to love
He was mine, man as spirit of a tree
And guiltless as a dove
But in time where wit and words ran foul
I lost a part of me
Smothered by a vile suitor's scowl
But I will not lose the valley
I will not forget…
The Place I called My Valley
CHAPTER ONE
When I was a little child, every day of my life I would wake up and see the sunrise come through the wood slats of my cottage window and open my brown eyes with its radiant beams that were like fingers. When there was rainfall it would come, slicing the falling water and touching my dark lashes to wake me. Even past the cold snow it would come, down to my little window, and tell me of the morning.
I loved the sun, the sky, every part of nature, and as I would emerge from my cottage like a little butterfly from its cocoon every sunrise, I could look down the dale and see My Valley sweeping in the distance, green and lush and beautiful.
It was not always mine, but it seemed as though it had always been there… so green, so bright, and it seemed also as though it was what sent me the sun during the harshest weather.
On Nurse's lap as a tiny thing the tales of the Nymphs and Sylvans had been whispered into my growing ears, and as I grew wise and beautiful, they never left. There were all sorts of myths living in My Valley, and they could not escape the boundaries of their great green home even far below the dale, for my mind held them captive.
Past my dark, red-brown ringlets, behind my deep brown, nearly black eyes, there was a mind that lived in Arcadia, and would always long to truly be there.
My fantasies were not broken in my childhood, but more so increased, for I was nourished richly with fine food, but just enough to keep me slim and swift, and I was given privileges that kept me from slaving daily over what I would eat and where I would sleep (this was seen to by Nurse), though I did work well enough to keep me fit and healthy.
The reason for my more privileged life was simple, but not revealed to me until I was somewhat older – the answer was that I was the daughter of the King.
I was told this at the age of perhaps ten or twelve years. After my knowledge (which I handled in my usual fantastic way, dreaming of what would come of it), my father began to visit me sometimes, shortly each time, and far apart from each other, but pleasant, spoiling visits.
I never brought him down to My Valley; he never asked to go.
But after he began to visit me, I felt a loneliness that I had never known before. If there was much more to the world than my father and I and Nurse, I wanted to see it. Father said that the world was a dreadful place, dangerous and loathsome, but I hardly knew the meaning of those words, for naught frightened me. Not wild dogs, nor poison snakes, for physical harm seemed no threat. But my mind, I think, was what wandered more dangerously, and with it my emotions and unrealistic dreams. I think, if one human had known me then, that they would have found me strangely knowledgeable on subjects that should not be known of in an isolated life.
When I found this loneliness, I began to wander. When sunset came, Nurse would call me from the top of the dale, away from My Valley. In those days it truly became mine – I wandered in its woods, I slept at the foot of its trees, and I invented poetry, which I spoke to its leafy rooftops. I did not know a regular forest, and did not think it odd that there were no birds or critters that climbed the trees, nor shrubbery around the roots of the trees, all that lay in the valley was very green grass, green even out of season, green that would stand out from beneath snow, and trees that were not supposed to be evergreen, but all the same, trees that never dulled or lost their green foliage.
Nurse was afraid of My Valley. When I climbed the dale and entered the cottage beneath the sunset, she would whisper words such as: "enchantment" and "spirits" to herself, and hurriedly close the door behind us, as though bad fortune would follow me up the dale and enter our little cottage.
I grew hardly conscious of my father's restlessness before My Valley, and ignorant of Nurse's fear of it. It was mine, and in it there was no evil.
Years passed, and my loneliness grew. Father would come and go, promising always another visit, but never another home.
I asked him questions: Who was my mother? Why was I hiding?
He would answer me calmly, but in a hidden way: She was a beautiful woman. Your life is in danger, there has been a war, and you must wait to come out until you are of age to have a husband, who can protect you.
But I secretly wished that he would take me to a great stone palace on the other side of My Valley, so that the sun would still wake me in my rich chamber in the mornings, and I would visit the trees, and he would be my protector himself.
One day my father left and did not return for a great amount of time. I was very worried; I though some harm had come to him.
I must have been about the age of sixteen or seventeen, very beautiful (or so I was told) and young.
Nurse could not console my fears, and daily I escaped from her gaze and fled to My Valley, wanting consolation from the trees.
They would sing to me, their sweet rippling song that they conducted as a great orchestra with the wind playing their leaves like magic harp strings, and one day, I decided that I would sing with them.
I sat in the lush grass, the sun slipping down to the east behind me, and opened my mouth in a sweet song that had never escaped my lips before but in the cottage, for It had seemed before so very unlawful to sing in the somber presence of the trees. But that day I did sing.
I was born with an enchanted voice, I think, one that needed no practice, but just the wind in the trees to accompany its beautiful song.
It issued from my mouth like a lark's natural song, or a graceful eagle's cry, but outdoing both in natural strength and passion.
I was no longer lonely, nor afraid, when I went to My Valley, for there was someone else there at that moment that I sang.
I had closed my eyes as soon as I started to sing, and then I opened them as my song faded away, and saw him.
The first thing I saw of him were his piercing green eyes, bright and light like the radiance that came in through my window every morning. Then I saw his pale, white-ash colored hair, ragged and yet still, like the wild white bark of a tree of the valley. His skin was light, almost white perhaps, but not sickly, but rather the opposite, for no matter how light colored it was, it could not mar his air of perfect innocence, naivety, and yet peaceful knowledge mingled with simple strength.
And I stared at him.
For a minute, the green light of the fading afternoon seemed frozen in time, but then our eyes connected as though pulled together by an unseen force of light and beauty, and I could not pull my gaze away from his.
I never felt my own lips move, nor saw his do so either, but a voice seemed to distantly echo in my head.
Song maker, one with breath more beautiful than the willows, come again to my haven.
And then he was gone, and I was also.
I overtook the sun's shadows in a race to flee gracefully and mindlessly back to the cottage.
When I opened the door, breathless, I found that I had caught Nurse in mid action; stirring a small pot of stew.
She looked up, and was very frightened, for, as she told me afterward, I looked paler than my white dress and cloak.
I hardly thought how awkward I must have been in that moment, for as I caught her gaze, the world that I knew before seemed to spin back into place, and yet somehow I was no longer satisfied with it, as I slipped aside and sat on a fur skin rug, breathing heavily and thinking of green light and swirling pictures.
Nurse tried to tend me, but I told her I was only somewhat ill, and wished to see my father.
But she could do nothing for me in that matter, and so sent me to bed.
I did not visit My Valley for many days.
I lay pale and breathless on my bed, jumping every time I thought of green. I slept, and dreamt gripping, brooding, nightmarish (somehow my mind had named them that) dreams that I could not shake.
A green force seemed to be in a struggle against me, but I did not know what I was myself, and therefore what it fought for.
Nurse came to me, sometimes, in the night, when I would toss and turn in my sleep, and sat with me, speaking of things I did not allow to become quite real in my mind. She whispered barriers against the valley; that I should not return to that haunted place, and leave the nymphs and sylvans alone. She murmured that they had power against me, and that I lay before her pale as merely a warning.
But I did not see the forest curse she thought of, did not feel wrongdoing in the midst of haunting and imagination. Hardly anything made sense, and yet everything did.
I could see the cottage in my sleep, warm and decent and isolated from distrust and war, from the high noses of the rich and the pleading or stubborn eyes of the poor. Then I could see the valley, My Valley, bright and green and lighter than any other place I knew.
The green force I had dreamt of seemed unconnected with the valley or the cottage. It was only there, and seemed dark at first, trying to pull me somewhere I did not want to go, and yet my heart slowed at the thought of it and gave in to an utter opposite of refusal, letting me lay there and wander and wonder in my mind, what it was, what it meant, a green force of darkness, green eyes, green light...
I finally found myself one morning, when the green light slipped through the wooden slats of my window and awakened me, pale faced, with my very long, dark, wavy hair streaming all around me on my bed sheets and pillows and over my shoulders.
I think I might have smiled, as I saw that the green darkness was not dark or evil, but trying to catch me and uphold me to a truth I had never known before. It was the same as the green light, and the green eyes. My Valley was mysterious, but no longer a mystery to me.
I closed my eyes and slept in light, no longer with fear or darkness or confusion, and the color, I think, returned to my face, making it a little less pale.