She dreamed that night, as she always did in the dark of the moon - one of her vivid, sharp-edged dreams; but not, for once, a nightmare.
In it, she stood once again by the fountain where she'd spoken with Gwydion, and had just pulled her bauble out to show him when it slipped from her hands and rolled away, just as it had done the day it had led her to Taran's cell.
Only this time, when she chased it, it kept rolling, on and on, over flagstone and turf by turns, ever out of reach. Presently it reached the bottom of a steep slope, and instead of stopping, began to bounce up the grade. When her surprise made her pause and look up, she realized that she was no longer in Caer Dathyl. The castle and its surrounding lands were nowhere in sight. Instead, an expanse of wild, rolling green moor, criss-crossed by low stone walls but unbroken by tree or shrub, stretched to the horizon in every direction save the one directly in front of her. To her right, the sky was kindled to gold and scarlet by the setting sun. The slope rose in front of her feet; as she gazed up its expanse, a silver sliver of the moon peeped over its topmost edge. The air was sticky; she took a long breath, and salt prickled in her nose and mouth. The pleasant sting of it rippled through her like a current, quickening her blood, tingling at her fingertips and toes. She sucked it in again, and threw herself in a mad scramble up the slope, following the mocking firefly path of her bauble.
The ground was so steep she had to bend almost double, grabbing at clumps of marsh grass, finding handholds upon the craggy limestone that jutted from the ground. Her bare feet dug into the soft turf; the rich, green smell of bruised moss and displaced earth mingled with the brine of the air and somehow the combination filled her with inexplicable longing. Almost she paused to examine it, but her bauble was flitting very near the top of the slope, and the pull to see what was over the edge was inexorable.
As she neared the heights, the sun slid beneath the lip of the earth and the brilliance of the western sky faded to turquoise and lavender. But the sliver of moon visible over the slope had become a wedge, and then a half-circle, and, as she crested the top and the land fell away at her feet, a great, milky-white disc, impossibly enormous, whose bottom rim floated upon a dark, white-flecked mass that seemed to fill the whole world beneath her.
Eilonwy stopped short with a gasp. A blast of wind coated her face in salted mist, flinging her tangled hair wildly upon its waves, jerking at the tatters of her gown. The dark mass below was a roiling tumult of liquid and foam and spray, ever shifting, its roaring in her ears a continuous ebb and flow like the fathomless breath of the earth itself. The sound tore through her, thundering, pulling an answering cry from her own throat, though she did not know if she laughed or wept.
Moonlight glinted upon the cliff face; a steep, rocky footpath, hugging the wall, beckoned her downward. She stooped to snatch her bauble from the edge where it had finally rolled to a stop, and without hesitation set her feet upon the wet stone. The height was dizzying, but she felt no fear, only a fierce, primal elation. She strode downward; the black rocks at the base grew nearer; billows of water crashed upon them, shattering into glowing explosions of spray that flattened her against the cliff face, exuberant, ecstatic. She raised her arms toward the water and watched the droplets quiver and sparkle on her skin. They clung to her, curious but familiar, like the embrace of a loved one long absent.
The pathway twisted downward until it ended in the riotous surf; whatever beach lay at the bottom of the cliff, it was swallowed up beneath the tide. For the first time she hesitated, but within moments a wave swept in, enveloping her ankles, her knees, dragging at her robes. But its pull was a welcome, an invitation; she stepped into it willingly, and the water buoyed her away from the rocks, immersed but floating at the surface, light as foam.
The last pale light of the sun had burned away, but the brightness of the full moon filled the horizon and cast its glow through the dome of the sky, blotting out all but a few bright stars furthest from it. All around her, the water and sky and she herself were sapped of color; the whole world was silver and grey and black.
The cliffs and land had disappeared, the roar of surf upon rock had melted away into the soft, languid song of water yielding to water. Before her the moon seemed to sit at the edge of a bowl, half-enveloped in the water, casting a shifting pattern of liquid light upon its surface. No sooner had it occurred to her that this looked exactly like a pathway than she found herself standing upon it.
She looked down in surprise. Water splashed at her instep and ankles, and nothing beneath her feet felt solid, yet she was standing, the sea spread around her in a rippling circle. It was an indescribable sensation.
The path of light winked and beckoned. She stepped carefully, half expecting to sink, but nothing changed. Another step, and another; there were no pebbles underfoot to pass over, no solid objects to mark the passage of space; the water shifted too constantly to use it as a bearing, and she could not tell whether her feet propelled her forward or merely moved in place.
She kept moving because there was nothing else to do, and could not tell how much time passed. It may have been hours, or minutes, but presently she saw that the moon looked larger, as though it were coming nearer. In a few more steps she knew it was nearer; it was brilliant, and the shadows that usually speckled its surface were blotted out in the glow. It towered over her head, as big as a cottage, a castle, a mountain; its edges blurred and were lost in a mist of light, until she could see nothing but whiteness all around.
Directionless, she stopped walking and stood still in expectation. There was a presence here that she felt certain would reveal itself, and she waited for it, patient beyond her wont.
She did not wait long. In front of her the light coalesced, became somehow thick and solid, became a discernible figure, walking toward her.
Eilonwy squinted, perplexed. The figure was of a girl, robed in white, whose build and height were so similar to her own that for a moment she thought she was looking into a mirror. But the face was not hers; at least, she didn't think so, though she could not say exactly what she saw - as though she could not remember the features from one moment to the next; but only a pair of bright and eager eyes. The girl smiled a friendly, familial smile, and held out a slim hand in welcome.
Instinctively, Eilonwy reached out and took it, and then stared at it, startled. The hand that closed around hers was not the slender paw of a girl but the strong, long-fingered grasp of a grown woman, one who stood now in the girl's place, tall and regal and glorious. Her long silver-white hair streamed nearly to her feet; silver and pearls gleamed at her brow and temples. The indescribable beauty of her face made Eilonwy suck in her breath, suddenly ashamed of her own shabby state in the presence of such a queen, and she trembled and nearly fell. But the woman's eyes were proud and kind, and she reached out and caressed her cheek with her other hand.
Mother, she thought suddenly, unwittingly. No, of course not. But...
Both white hands cupped her face, and the woman bent over her and kissed her brow. The long curtain of silver hair blew about her like a snow flurry, carrying a smell that was like nothing she could describe. It made her heart swell and then break, made her want to laugh and cry and sing and go to sleep all at once.
She blinked, and shook herself, and the hair fell away, only now it was wispy, its long silken curls thinned into remnants like shreds of grey cloud. The hands that cupped her cheeks trembled a little, and as they pulled away to clasp her hand again she saw, with a shock, that they were twisted and bony, gnarled like tree roots. The face that had hovered over her a moment ago now stared at her, wizened and wrinkled, from her own height; but the crone's bright eyes were the same eyes as the woman's and the girl's, though softer, perhaps, and shrewder.
Eilonwy stood still, breathless, unsure what was expected of her. Her bauble flared suddenly and she glanced at it, startled; she had forgotten that she still clutched it, and she held it up before the old woman, who took it gently, smiling. In the gnarled hand it flared again, and the light held steady and waxed brilliant, almost too bright to look at. As its rays fell upon the woman her figure glowed almost as bright, and trembled until Eilonwy could not tell which one of the three it was, or whether it were all three at the same time. Though the bauble's warm glow usually gilded whatever it illuminated, it seemed powerless to do so now; the woman remained silver-white, untouched by any hint of gold.
There was a hand on her cheek again, a light touch upon her hair, and suddenly the light flickered and went out.
It was as abrupt as death. Eilonwy sat up with a gasp...and saw daylight filtering in through the casement of her chamber at Caer Dathyl.
Twisting out of the sheets, she tumbled out of bed and scrambled to the window as though expecting to see the moors and the cliff and the moon rising over them. When only the familiar treetops and rolling farmland met her eyes, she slid to the floor with a sob and wept onto the carpet.
Weeping had the unintended effect of fully waking her up. Presently she scoffed at herself, and sat up, sniffling. Crying over a dream! It was all very well to cry after a nightmare, but...Llyr! All the same she kept sniffling as she crawled back into bed. Disappointment, she decided, was to blame - frustration that something so lovely had ended so suddenly, with no warning. It was worse than having your dinner snatched away when you were only halfway through.
Desperately she clung to the fragments of the dream, trying to commit it to memory before it dissolved. The cliff and the sea, the foam on the rocks, treading upon the water up the path to the moon...a lovely bit of poetic nonsense, that. She'd not dare tell it to anyone; it sounded daft. Taran would probably laugh at the whole thing, and ask what she'd eaten the night before. She felt irritated with him, just thinking about it.
Her bauble sat nearby on its table by the bed, and she looked at it dubiously, halfway wondering if it was in exactly the same place she'd left it.
Restlessly she burrowed deeper into the bedclothes, frowned when she sensed something amiss about them, and threw them back. She stared, horrified, and looked down at herself. How had she not noticed this?
There was blood on the sheets, blood on her nightshift and all over her own legs.
Ugh. This. Achren had warned her of it; had, in fact, made a particular point of demanding to be notified the first time it happened, with that special sort of ominous significance she reserved for plans that were particularly unpleasant. It had made an already strange concept even more unappealing, but thank the gods she wasn't with Achren now. Or...well, thank somebody. It didn't seem exactly their domain; things like this never happened to them, did it? Eilonwy scowled, disgruntled with the entire aggregate of divine maleness; thought of the lady in her dream, and felt marginally better.
She was wondering feebly what to do with the soiled bedclothes when her nurse arrived, bustling in with no warning as usual. In this, however, Eilonwy was pleasantly surprised, for she seemed to have stumbled upon the one area that touched the sympathies of the woman. To be sure, there was rather a dreadful lot of benevolent exclamation and fuss made over her, and gritting her teeth when the nurse called her "sweet lamb" and "poor dear"; several embarrassing questions turned out to have even more embarrassing answers; and she was left, more than ever, feeling blessedly thankful to be out of Achren's clutches, afraid even to wonder what would have happened otherwise.
But eventually she was cleaned up, brought tea and breakfast and...oh, joy, a pile of books...and told to stay in bed as long as she liked, all with a deference that the nurse had not heretofore shown her. When she called her "milady" now, it sounded like she meant it, and she acquiesced to every request without a negative remark. The only point on which the nurse was adamant was that Eilonwy must stay in her chamber, but this was not worth arguing over, as she had no desire to mingle with her companions anyway. Which was curious, but - perhaps the least of all curious and upsetting things this morning.
Eilonwy shoved it away to examine it later, balanced a teacup on one knee, and picked up a book.
I should maybe have titled this one "How much tropey symbolism CW can cram into one chapter" and I apologize to any male readers if this gets a little too earthy for you; it's our lot in life, you know, and it had to happen sometime. Better here than with nothing but a bunch of guys at Caer Dallben!