She awoke, startled, with the distinct sensation that she could smell everything around her.
Not just the smoky scent of campfire, nor Gurgi's wet-wolfhound reek. Everything. The layers of leaf-mold, aging richer the further down it went; the trail of the mouse that had walked over it hours ago; the musk of a bear den over the next rise; the warm, tangy blood of birds asleep in their nests above, the dampness on the air; the dried sweat on her companions' bodies and the anxious thread of hunger on their breath. It was overwhelming, and she sat up, gasping for air.
Like a dream vanishing upon waking, the sensation fled, leaving her with only the sharp, wild awareness of its presence - a presence that now flitted and flashed in her mind's eye, drawing her gaze to the trees around them. It was early morning, chill with a grey mist that subverted any attempt to see more than a few yards. No movement, no sound broke the shreds of fog, and yet somehow, she knew…they were watched.
Yet she did not feel very frightened. The presence that had touched her mind was one of intense curiosity, of wary alertness, but no predatory intent…at least, at the moment. She squinted into the mist, straining to see, her scalp crinkling, but saw nothing, and said nothing, even as her companions stirred and rose and made preparations to pack up the camp.
It did not take seeing the gray shapes flickering among the trees or hearing the occasional bark and yip to reveal what she already sensed. The wolves trailed them through the woods throughout the morning, slinking always out of bowshot range. Taran looked back often, his brow furrowed.
"As long as they don't come any closer we needn't worry about them," he said once, but doubtfully, as though he were asking for confirmation.
Fflewddur shrugged. "Oh, they won't attack us. Not now, at any rate. They can be infuriatingly patient if they know someone's wounded. For them, it's only a matter of waiting." He glanced meaningfully at Gurgi.
"Well, I must say you're a cheerful one," Eilonwy answered. "You sound as if all we had to look forward to was being gobbled up." He looked at her in surprise, and she frowned a little confusedly at her own odd defensiveness. Yet she could not make herself believe that they were endangered by the creatures that trailed them. The occasional flashes of consciousness that brushed hers still conveyed nothing but wary alertness, as sharp and bracing as a breath of winter air.
"If they attack, we shall stand them off," Taran murmured. "Gurgi was willing to give up his life for us; I can do no less for him. Above all, we must not lose heart so close to the end of our journey."
"A Fflam never loses heart," Fflewddur pronounced, " come wolves or what have you!" But he took a firmer grip on Melyngar's bridle, and his long strides were as swift as he could make them.
Much good it did them. At midday, while they stopped to rest, he admitted that they were getting nowhere, pushed too far east, walled in by cliffs too rugged to breach. Eilonwy, rubbing her sore feet, hungry and rather cross, grumbled at this. "The wolves didn't seem to have any trouble finding their way."
He looked a little indignant. "My dear girl, if I were able to run on four legs and sniff my dinner a mile away, I doubt I'd have any difficulties either."
She had a mental flash of Fflewddur, long nose to the ground and limbs akimbo, scrambling on all fours through the underbrush, and giggled in spite of herself. "I'd love to see you try."
Taran straightened up from the stream where he'd bent to drink. "We do have someone who can run on four legs!" he exclaimed, "Melyngar! If anyone can find their way to Caer Dathyl, she can."
Fflewddur snapped his fingers. "That's it! Every horse knows its way home! It's worth trying — we can't be worse off than we are now."
"For an Assistant Pig-Keeper," Eilonwy said thoughtfully, "you do come up with some interesting ideas now and then." He looked sideways at her, as though unsure whether she meant to compliment him or not, and she bit her lip, realizing how it had sounded, and gave him a deprecating half-smile.
Melyngar, given her head, set off without hesitation, and they had to trot to keep up with her. The day wore on as she wove her way through the trees, over rocky barrens, up ridges. It was late afternoon when she disappeared into a high ravine, so far ahead that Taran ran forward anxiously, calling out to her, and scrambled around an outcropping and out of view.
There was a yelp, a scuffling noise, and she and Fflewddur scrambled up in time to see Taran born to earth beneath the huge body of a wolf. Eilonwy screamed as another gray shape leaped toward the bard, tumbling him to the ground; a third creature lunged toward her, though it did not attack. It stalked toward her, locking her gaze with its eyes - mist-gray and crystalline, flecked with shards of gold.
Eilonwy backed away until a cliff-face brought her up short. Her heart raced, and time seemed to slow as her limbs turned to ice, spellbound by both fear and awe at the powerful grace before her. The silver eyes held her gaze, deadly and beautiful; she thought wildly that to be eaten by such a creature would be a nobler fate than many others - it wasn't their fault, was it, that they were hunters? —just what they did, no more travesty than any flesh that had come between her own teeth. Yet her breath hissed out in a whimper as the black nose nudged her thigh, her mind spinning away on instinctual fear, and she raised her hands protectively to her throat.
A deep voice broke into the blankness of her thoughts, speaking words in a strange tongue, and she jerked her gaze away from the wolf's and toward the source; at the end of the ravine there had appeared a huge, robed figure of a man. The animal before her turned and darted toward it, wagging its plumed tail, and she slumped against the stone at her back in sudden weak relief.
Taran was scrambling up as the man strode toward them, the wolves gamboling at his heels. "You saved our lives," the boy panted. "We are grateful."
The big figure paused, his hands resting on a wolf head to either side. Deep-set, frosty grey eyes surveyed them all, beneath a narrow band of gold set with a winking blue jewel. White hair fell to his shoulders, a snowy beard to his waist. "From these creatures your lives were never in danger," he said quietly, in a voice like the rumble of distant thunder. "But you must leave this place. It is not an abode for the race of men."
Taran raised his hands in supplication. "I'm sorry. We don't mean to intrude - but we were lost. We'd been following our horse…"
The grey eyes widened in surprise. "Melyngar? She brought me four of you? I understood young Gurgi was alone." His broad hands spread out in welcome. "By all means, if you are friends of Melyngar…it is Melyngar, isn't it? She looks so much like her mother; and there are so many I cannot always keep track of the names."
Eilonwy looked at Fflewddur, who wore the same puzzled frown she felt on her own face, but Taran gave a little start of recognition. "I know who you are!" he exclaimed. "You are Medwyn!"
The man's face broke into a calm, furrowed smile. "Am I now? Yes, I have been called Medwyn. But how should you know that?"
The boy had taken a step back and bowed politely. "I am Taran of Caer Dallben. Gwydion, Prince of Don, was my companion, and he spoke of you before—before his death. He was journeying to Caer Dathyl, as we are now. I never hoped to find you."
Medwyn shook his head. "You would not have. Only the animals know my valley; it was Melyngar led you here. Taran, you say? Of Caer Dallben?" He stroked his forehead thoughtfully. "Let me see. Yes, I have visitors from Caer Dallben, I am sure."
"Hen Wen?" Taran cried, so hopefully that Eilonwy felt her own heart swell with anticipation. But Medwyn looked at him blankly.
"No," he answered. "Were you seeking her? That is curious. No, she is not here."
"Oh," Taran said, his bearing slumping visibly. Seeing it crushed her heart into her toes again, and Eilonwy clenched her fists, wanting to throw an arm about him in comfort, yet somehow…why couldn't she?… Taran sighed. "I had thought that…"
"We will speak of her later," Medwyn broke in decidedly. "Your friend is badly injured. Come, I shall do what I can for him." He beckoned to them as he turned in the direction from which he'd come, and they followed - somehow, without thought of danger or deception, though the oddness of this only occurred to Eilonwy later.
The giant before them strode on bare feet down a narrow path, unperturbed by sharp pebbles or stones, his movements powerful and deliberate. Melyngar waited for them around a bend in the ravine, and he gathered up the unconscious Gurgi from the saddle as though he weighed no more than a rabbit. Murmuring quietly over him, Medwyn continued on, through a cut in the cliffs and out into…
Oh, what was this?
A green valley spread out before them, the late afternoon sunlight filling it like mellow wine. A cluster of white cottages nestled among stands of tall hemlocks, full of the flickering movement of birds. Near it, a lake shimmered in an azure reflection of sky, surrounded by turf as lush as velvet, scattered with wildflowers in streaks of white and yellow and rose. Grazing cattle and sheep speckled the green, ignoring them; alert deer, grazing likewise, raised their heads and stared, then walked on calmly with a quiver of their tails. The air was gentle and mild, infused with the honey-sweet perfume of flowers, and full of the trill of birdsong.
Eilonwy stood, stunned with the intensity of her sudden longing for this place, as though the valley itself were a quilt in which she could wrap some part of her that had never known warmth. Tears sprung to her eyes and a lump formed in her throat, and she tried to scold herself over such inexplicable sentiment, but her feet carried her forward with almost trancelike delight, and every breath of summer-gold air filled her with sensation almost painful in its sweetness.
She had nearly forgotten the existence of her companions, and was startled when Fflewddur spoke. "I must say the old fellow's well tucked-away here," he whispered - strange, the urge to whisper; she felt it too, as though this were a sacred space upon which they intruded - "I could never have found the path in, and I doubt I could find the path out." She glanced at him happily; the haggard look he had worn for the past two days was gone; his head was thrown back, hazel eyes glowing almost argent, his face suffused with wonder. Taran, next to him, looked…
Looked what? She could not place his expression. Peaceful, happy? —certainly…but neither was enough, even combined; he looked almost as though he were recognizing a place he knew, a welcome as familiar as greeting an old friend, one he hadn't seen in ages and hadn't expected to see again. His eyes danced from one vision to the next, full of both hunger and satisfaction; his cheeks were flushed over an unconscious and serene smile. He looked…
He met her eyes then, a gaze warm with affection and joy, and it came to her in a flash of understanding. He looked home. That was it.
Maybe they all did.
But how? It made no sense - to recognize, and long for, a place you had never seen. She gazed around the valley again, watched the lazy hop of rabbits away from their very feet as they treaded the soft grass, the flutter of butterflies above the fragrant flora. Somewhere nearby, a hidden stream burbled and chuckled, a music lovelier than plucked harps. The lump rose in her throat again, and she breathed it out, slowly, wishing she could drop right there in the warm grass and cry for the pure beauty of knowing, just once, that there were places like this anywhere in the world.
Movement from the cottages caught her eye and she gasped. "Oh! There's a fawn!"
A long-legged, speckled creature, with ears absurdly large for its head, trotted toward Medwyn, blissfully ignoring the wolves, and frisked about the hem of his robes before turning to observe them with dark and limpid eyes. Instinctively Eilonwy dropped to her knees and held out a hand to it; the fawn jumped away, looked back, and danced nervously in a circle. Step after cautious step, the delicate creature approached, curious, its slender neck craned, until its wet black nose bumped her fingertips and she let out her held breath in delight.
"I've never seen one so close," she whispered, the tiny muzzle sliding under her palm. "Achren never had any pets—none that would stay with her, at any rate, and I can't blame them."
Taran had crouched beside her, and she sensed his sudden stiffening, the turning of his mien from happiness to protective indignation, a swerving that made her cheeks flush, a confusing fluster. She had not been fishing for sympathy, and yet it felt…good, to get it, even silently, even unconsciously. "It's lovely," she said, falteringly, barely certain of what she was talking about, staring at his brown hand as he reached out toward the little head nuzzling her wrist. "It makes you feel all…tingly. As if you were touching the wind."
His eyes met hers quietly, full of questions, and she held her breath, but the fawn suddenly rammed its head into his chest, and he sprawled on the ground amongst the mixed spill of all their laughter. She rose to watch Medwyn carry Gurgi into the largest cottage, tingling still with something she could not name.
Wandering aimlessly through a patch of dandelion, brushing the tufted spheres until they erupted in floating clouds, she heard Taran cry out in delight, saw him rush over to a henhouse where a flock of chickens pecked…Dallben's chickens, evidently. Medwyn appeared again, laden with a basket filled with food, and explained that they had shown up unexpectedly several days previously.
"They and the bees flew away the same day Hen Wen ran off," Taran told him, "when the Horned King was making his way to Caer Dallben."
The old man nodded. "I imagine they came straight here, then. They were petrified with fright; I could make no sense at all out of them. Oh, they settled down quickly enough, but of course by that time they had forgotten why they flew off in the first place. You know how chickens are, imagining the world coming to an end one moment, then pecking corn the next. They shall all fly back when they're ready, have no fear. Though it's unfortunate that Dallben and Coll should be put out in the matter of eggs."
His familiarity with the names, with the inhabitants of Caer Dallben, and Taran's casual acceptance of it, struck her with something that felt like envy. What was this place, what was that place, where everyone seemed to know of one another? What was it like, to come from a place whose existence wasn't a nightmare? Whose name would make a stranger less strange the moment it crossed their lips?
I am Eilonwy of Llyr, she thought vehemently. Of Llyr. Not Spiral Castle.
She swallowed the lump in her throat, feeling suddenly hollow. She hadn't needed this valley's proof that you could be homesick for somewhere you'd never seen. She'd known that as long as she could remember.
Oops. Yes, another "missing chapter"...spawned because my posting this story on Wattpad made me realize how much was missing for newcomers to the series, who would have been totally lost at points where I glossed over certain scenes. I had originally done so out of a desire not to rehash things word-for-word, but I now see that the omission weakened things, and although such literal transcription is still not my favorite part of this process, sometimes it is necessary. It gives me an interesting challenge to see how I can still insert Eilonwy's thoughts and feelings into a scene even when she's not a major player in it - something I'm running into a lot in my Black Cauldron rewrite.
BE AWARE: there is also a little bit of addition to the chapter just before this, toward the end, so if you're invested here you may want to recap that bit.