The concert was an unqualified success as I recall, though to speak truth, everything about the scheduled events of that night is rather dim in my mind just now. What I do remember is the quiet of the evening around me as I made my way beyond the crush of congratulating parents and excited students and out of the school's aging but still serviceable auditorium. I was heading back to the convent for Compline. It was an ordinary enough evening. The snow which had fallen thick and fast earlier that day had now ceased, and the night was still and clear. At least, I imagined that it was a clear night. No wind moved the branches of the pine trees lining the pathway between school and cloister, and the absence of snow seemed to indicate that there were no clouds. However, all I could do was try to imagine the winter stars hanging low in the frost-filled sky or the moon sailing proudly like a ghost-ship bound on some preternatural errand. What I knew for certain was that there was utter silence around me as I walked beside my guide-dog along the bricks of the path, and after the flurry of activity which had preceeded the school's annual Christmas concert, I was glad enough of that silence, especially since it was the last moment of true peace I was to know for a long time.
I am, as my reader will hopefully have gathered by now, a teaching nun at one of the few convent-schools remaining in the north-eastern United States. I am known in religion as Sister Katherine, but I am known to my friends and relatives in the world as Kate Matthews. At least, that is how I am known to my friends in this world, but more about that in a moment. For now, let it stand that I have led a life which would seem to the casual observer to be qualitatively different from what most people would consider to be normal. Very well. I will not gainsay it, but what I intend to do is to write down as clearly as I can the events which began on that peaceful winter's night in as logical a progression as possible. I will let my reader judge whether I ought to be believed or not, but I will say this. If you do read this and disbelieve it, you do so at your own peril and at the peril of humanity as a whole.
So, to begin at the beginning then, the night was still. The air was cold. The path had been cleared of snow and as I made my way along it and the noises of the school faded behind me, I could hear the bell for Compline ringing softly. I longed for the warmth of the chapel and the familiarity of the evening ritual. The concert had been a success, it was true, but only at the cost of several sleepless nights and many stress-filled rehearsals. The students had all done their best and I was proud of them as only a teacher can be, but I was grateful that it was now over all the same. The holidays were coming and the students were heading home, and we at the convent, thank the merciful Lord, could have a few days of prayer and rest, where we could exist simply and solely as nuns. Indeed, the Christmas holidays were one of the only times in the year when our way of life began to approach that of a more contemplative order, and as such, I looked forward to them every year.
Indeed, when I was deciding which order to join as a postulant, my heart had been torn between a life of Benedictine contemplation and the intellectual pursuits of the order of St. Agnes. As I reflected often on nights like this, despite the often mind-twisting juggling act to keep both the healthy prayer-life and the top-notch professional reputation which Agnes's order demanded, I have never regretted my choice. I have been able to use all the gifts I've been given in the service of God and I have been privileged to know some fine, strong women who have been my role-models and even, as far as the strictures of the religious life will permit, my friends. I've been in this life for over fifteen years now, and for much of that time, I've been allowed to stay at this convent. It has become my home in many ways, so I do not leave it lightly, not even to see my family from whom I am estranged. Still, I do have another family, a family of the heart rather than of the blood, and for them, I would do anything that lay in my power. This is the story of how I was induced to leave my home at the bidding of this family of the heart, and it all began on that peaceful evening on the shortest day of the year.
As we came to about the halfway point on the path, Ruby, my guide-dog, stiffened at my side and began to growl deep in her throat. For a moment, I thought she must have seen some nocturnal animal foraging for food in the woods to either side of the path. However, this suspicion was proven false when I felt a chill deeper than that of the night around me. It seemed to creep inside my skin and to clutch at my heart. I tried to pray, to make the sign of the cross, but I was unable to do either. Instead, I just stood there, Ruby still as a statue at my side, and wondered if I was about to die. You see, I had experienced this chill before and I knew what it meant. I was being attacked by a malevolent and utterly inhuman being, and while I was still rather unclear as to the exact nature of these beings, I had no doubt that they existed in a world which lay intimately intertwined with the world which most of us considered to be the whole of reality.
God help me! I thought this but could not speak it aloud, and then I thought of another name, another person to whom I could turn. As this name came to my mind, I remembered another strange night. Years ago, I had spent one Midsummer's Eve in a wood near the boarding school where I received my formative education which was supposed to be haunted, and there, I had encountered a being just as unearthly as this presence which now seemed bent on taking my life. However, this being had not been malevolent, and as I learned later, she was in fact a being of incredible courage and compassion. As I brought her to mind, I found myself able to speak at last, and though I spoke only in a husky stage-whisper, I was able to pronounce the name by which I knew her:
"Evangeline!" I said. "Evangeline!"
"She cannot hear you," said a cold and merciless voice in my mind. "Your life belongs to me now!"
"I think not," said a strong and melifluous voice at my side, and all at once, I saw a brightness all around me, and where once I had felt chilled to the very marrow, I now felt warmth and strength flowing into me again.
"Thank you, Evangeline," I said, uncertain how to continue.
"Do not thank me yet, Katherine," said the voice which was as unmistakable to me as a well-loved melody. "The battle is only beginning. Take my hand!"
I could now tell that Evangeline stood beside me, but as she had appeared, her voice and her presence had seemed to envelop me just as the other being's had done. I reached out, wondering whether I would in fact touch anything but air, and to my surprise, a strong hand was slipped into my own and the feeling of warmth flowing into me was intensified.
"You will be alright now, Katherine. Try not to fear, but be wary. We won a victory the last time, but we have not yet won the war. You will be needed. You will be summoned to battle very soon. The dark ones knew this and were trying to prevent it."
"But what do you mean? How will I be summoned? What must I do?"
"You will know when you are meant to know. The fisher of shadows will need you. More than this I cannot say now."
"Will they try to harm me again?"
"They may, but you must call me if they do. I will come."
"Well, I mean, must it always be you who comes? Surely you have better things to do than to help me." I remember I laughed when I said this and then regretted it immediately. "I mean," I went on by way of explanation, "who am I that any of you should help me?"
"You are Katherine, and you are needed," was all her reply, and suddenly, with a dimming of the brightness and a sudden swirl of wind, she was gone as though she had never been there.
As the night returned to its former calm and the bell still announced the hour of prayer, I spoke reassuringly to Ruby, trying hard to keep the fear from my voice and manner. It had been three years since I had been in the company of the one whom Evangeline had named the fisher of shadows, and though it shames me to write this, a part of me feared to see that person again. It was three years ago last August that the strangeness had truly begun. On what I had hoped would be a rather ordinary vacation with my old school-friend Ellen Mitchell, I had learned things about her and about her life which I sometimes, especially now, wish I had never known. I had kept secret from her my encounter with Evangeline in the woods on that long ago Midsummer's Eve, and though she forgave me for it when I finally told her about it, I still felt sorry for having lied to her. However, above and beyond that was the fact that she had actually undergone a change in those August days for which I had not been prepared. Ellen, who so far as I had known was as human as anyone, had turned out to be the daughter of the being known as Evangeline, one of the beings which I had come to call the undying ones, and by the time that vacation had ended, she had come into her own as a member of that being's strange kindred. Now, it had been three years since I had been in contact with her. What would she be like if I saw her again? Would she still be the woman I remembered, or would she too talk in riddles as Evangeline had just done?
Well, I thought as I reached the door of the convent, I suppose I'll find out soon enough what she'll be like when this summons comes, and trying unsuccessfully to put the matter from my mind, I walked into the venerable old building and toward the sound of singing which I could now hear drifting from the chapel's echoing vastness.
I have always loved the lofty and soaring sound of true Gregorian chant sung well, and though our convent choir is of modest size, I must say that we know how to do this beautiful music justice. Taking my usual place in the choir that night, I longed for nothing else than to let the chants of Compline, so familiar to me now that I likely could sing them in my sleep, wash over me and drown out the terror of that dark presence. However, even as I sang my favourite hymn of all time, the Salve Regina, my thoughts returned again and again to Evangeline's warning. When was this summons going to come? What could I possibly do to help these magnificent and immortal beings of light against their menacing counterparts?
I knew from my most recent encounter with these beings that the dark ones sought to destroy or to dominate mortal humans for some mysterious purpose, but I had been told that though they were beings of great power, they were not those whom I might call demons. I had also been told in no uncertain terms that the undying ones of light such as Evangeline and her daughter were not angels. For three years and more I had pondered what this meant and how it might fit with what I believed as a Christian was the nature of reality, and the conclusion I had come to was this. The myths about gods, goddesses, fair-folk, elves and the like were based upon profound truths. These beings of light and of shadow were their true source. They existed, I believed, in a reality which could, from time to time, impinge upon our own, but they were created as the entire cosmos had been created. Their reality, I knew, must be beyond anything the human mind could comprehend, but I knew that something vital in their nature kept them tied to the changing fortunes of our own world. Their realm was neither a heaven nor a hell. It simply lay entwined with our own and the two often became entangled at pivotal points in history. Evangeline herself, for instance, had told us that she had been the true being behind the Arthurian tales of the Lady of the Lake, and that set me wondering whether the dark undying ones had intervened in similar ways during, say, Hitler's rise to power or the Kennedy assassination. All this was educated speculation at present, but I hoped that whatever else would come of my next adventure with these strange folk, I would learn more about their nature and about why they considered me a target of either their malice or their mercy.
These ruminations were brought to a halt by Mother Clotilde pronouncing the benediction in her regal and bell-like tones. By now, Ruby knew that when these words were spoken, it was time for her to enjoy her last constitutional of the evening and then to lie down contentedly by the side of my bed and be congratulated for a good day's work. Accordingly, as the words of the blessing faded into silence, and as the nuns filed softly through the chapel doors and into the hallways of the cloister proper, she stood up, her paws slipping on the polished hard-wood floor, and pulled on the leash to let me know that it was time we should be going. As we hurried along the aisle, I suddenly felt a slight tug on my sleeve. I knew this for a sign that one of the sisters wished to speak to me. So, turning without a word in the direction of the tug, I stood expectantly as the rest of the sisters filed out past me.
"You had a call, Sister Katherine," said Mother Clotilde, her clear voice pitched low in the practiced art of silence. "I explained that Grand Silence would be starting after Compline, but the woman sounded very distressed. You have permission to use the phone in my office if you wish. The woman's name is Ellen Mitchell. I took down her number." I nodded my thanks and together we traversed the twisting passages until we came to the Mother Superior's small but orderly office.
"Do you need me to tell you the number, Sister?"
I shook my head no and Mother Clotilde, who was, I felt, truly born to be an abbess, left me in the office to use the phone in private but stood, I knew, not far away so she would be at hand if I needed to speak to her.
I hoped desperately that she had not registered the fact that my hands had begun to shake and my palms to sweat at the mention of Ellen's name. I wanted to appear worthy of the habit I wore, but all I could think about was that ever-encroaching chill and the way it had stopped almost all thought and had enveloped me in a clinging fog of unrelenting terror. Was Ellen aware of the attack which I had suffered? Had Evangeline told her about it or had she perceived it on her own? Had this telephone call been the source of the summons? I was certain that all my questions would be answered once I picked up the receiver and dialed Ellen's number, but it was all I could do to make my hands obedient to my will. Soon, however, I managed to dial the number, and after only one ring, I heard my friend's voice. She sounded as she had always sounded, but ever since she had learned of her true nature, I found that her voice had taken on a strange and lovely resonance which it had not had before. Her speech too had become more measured as though her thoughts no longer moved to the rhythm of a human heart or a human brain. Yet in that eternal-sounding voice still lay the core of ellen Mitchell as I had known her, and as I heard her voice now, I found that I longed to be with her more than anything in the world.
"Kate," she said, "is that you?"
"It's me, Ellen," I said, trying to keep my voice even. "I'm glad you called! I was going to call you in a few days to wish you a merry Christmas."
"Listen, Kate," she said. "Can you come to see me? I mean, is it at all possible for you to get away?"
"Perhaps for a few days after Christmas," I said. "Is everything alright, Ellen?"
"There's something I need to ask you to do for me," she said, "but you have to be here to do it. Have you been alright lately? I mean, has anything odd happened?"
"I met Evangeline tonight," I whispered so Mother Clotilde would not overhear, "and there was another as well. It was like--"I struggled for a way to explain in a way that would not cause my Mother Superior to question my sanity. "It was like the incident at the arch," I said, and to my great relief, Ellen took my meaning at once.
"I don't think you should wait till after Christmas, Kate! If I came to get you tomorrow, could you get permission to leave?"
"I don't want to lie," I said, "but perhaps there is a way for me to augment the truth somewhat."
"Good," said Ellen. "I'll be at the convent gates by noon. For now, sleep well, and if you have any dreams, try your best to recall them."
"I'll do that," I said, and we ended the call.
"Well, Sister? Is your friend alright?" Mother Clotilde was an exacting person, but she was also capable of genuine compassion and sympathy.
"I'm not sure, Mother," I said as she entered and took a seat behind her desk.
"Well, why don't you sit down and tell me about it?" I took her suggestion, taking the chair across from her, Ruby curling up in a little ball at my side as I did so.
"She wants me to come to her for a few days," I said. "I'm not sure why exactly, but she seems really distressed. She doesn't have any family and I've been her best friend since we were school-girls. She wants to come and pick me up tomorrow at noon."
"Well, Sister, you are required to take a minimum of three days leave every two years, and it's been three years and more since you last left this place. Believe me when I say that this requirement was not always in place. There was no such thing as a leave when I started in this order. I've watched you lately, and I know that the stress of classes and the concert has taken its toll on you. If your friend intends on coming here tomorrow, I give you permission to be with her when she leaves. We'll miss your voice at Midnight Mass, but we also don't want to see you break under the strain of the fine work you've been doing. I only ask that you do your best to observe the hours of prayer and to attend Christmas services at a local church. Send me daily reports on how things are going. You may return at any time, but the most I will allow is two weeks. You must be back before the students return from their holidays."
"Thank you, Mother," I said and was surprised to find tears in my eyes as I uttered these words.
"Go with God, my child," she said kindly, and I made my way from the room without another word.
My sleep that night, when it was vouchsafed me, was untroubled. I had no dreams that I could recall later, though I did wake several times in the night in a cold sweat, fancying I felt the fingers of that creeping chill clutching at my heart as they had before. However, the morning finally came with its round of rituals both spiritual and mundane, and by the time I sat alone in my empty classroom completing some end-of-term paperwork, I found myself looking forward to seeing Ellen again despite the seriousness of the situation. Since that August three years ago, I had only spoken with her occasionally by phone and had sent only perfunctory emails to tell her how I was doing. She had been changed by her experiences at that time to such a degree that I felt it best to let her pursue her life unhindered by my own cares and worries. Of course, as soon as I heard her voice on the phone in Mother Clotilde's office, I realized how much I had missed the easy rapport which had existed between us from the time I first began attending St. Sophia's (pronounced "so-fie-uhs") Academy at the insistence of my parents, who had decreed that no daughter of theirs would be caught dead attending a state-run school for the blind.
My first years of schooling were spent at home, my parents having hired a private tutor for me. This had afforded me a liberal and broad-ranging introduction to all things academic, but little in the way of friendships with children my own age. As a result, I grew bookish and sullen and even, I blush now to recall, a trifle snobbish toward others who were not reading the kinds of things I was reading or who could not name a piece of classical music if they heard it on the radio. Mercifully for the world at large, my father realized these developing flaws in my character and put them down to a lack of proper socialization, and though my mother worried about me being away from home, she too eventually decided that a boarding school for privileged and gifted children was where I belonged.
It was Ellen who first made a serious effort to befriend me when I began attending St. Sophia's. She too, I soon found out, was somewhat marginalized by the other students, as she was the head-master's niece and was able to attend because he himself paid her tuition. They felt, quite wrongly of course, that she had no business breathing the same rarified atmosphere to which their legacied and dainty constitutions had become accustomed. In her company, I knew at last what it was to have a friend, and a friend moreover who would chide me for being a prig if chiding was warranted. She made my attendance at the academy fun, and her uncle Arthur, the head-master, took me under his wing, wishing I think to mitigate somewhat the challenges which I encountered as the only blind student among others whose vision they took for granted. By the time Ellen and I left the school, Uncle Wart, as I called him, was one of my dearest friends and perhaps my harshest critic save for myself. He was, in short, a man to be thoroughly trusted, and his niece was by that time a true comrade-in-arms who would do anything she could to help me and for whom I would give my life if necessary.
So why then had I lied to her about my meeting with Evangeline on that long ago Midsummer's Eve? The truth is that Uncle Wart had begged me to keep it secret until such time as Ellen would be ready to learn of her true nature. That time had come during our most recent vacation together. We had both gone to see Uncle Wart because he had asked us to come, though Ellen only found that out later. Due to a series of odd dreams she had been having and due to Arthur's growing certainty that evil forces were closing in on her, she had to venture into the realm of these beings of light and to learn of her true heritage as one of them. I was only a bit-player in that adventure, but now, it seemed, I was actually needed for some specific reason. I pondered and pondered as to what that reason might be as I finished my work and took inventory of the musical instruments whose care and maintenance was my solemn duty, and before long, the noon bell was ringing and a call came for me over the public address system, summoning me to the front gates of the convent to receive a visitor.
I went to my cell to retrieve my bags and on the way out of the cloister, Mother Clotilde met me and, taking my hand gently in hers, said quietly:
"Remember, Sister, that while you may be going into the world for these few days, you must endeavour not to be of it. You are a bride of Christ and therefore his emissary so long as you wear this habit."
"I'll remember, Mother," I said, and soon, Ruby and I were out on the gravel drive and walking toward the gates through the crisp air of the second day of winter to where an idling car stood waiting to take me on a journey which would turn out to be both stranger and more terrifying than anything I could have imagined in my wildest dreams.
As I reached the car, Ellen, with a quick word of greeting, popped the trunk so I could stow my things. I found it curious that she did not get out of the car to embrace me as she might have done in the past, but I figured there was a good reason for this, and so, having secured my belongings for the ride and having settled Ruby in the back seat of the small two-door, I climbed into the seat beside my friend and soon, the car was in gear.
"Well," I said once we were on the road, "where are we heading? To the Palace of Art?"
"That's where I live now," said Ellen flatly, "though lately it seems more like a haunted palace out of Poe rather than out of Tennyson." This was my friend's usual rapier wit, but something in her tone lent a positively funerial timbre to the literary play on words which was not habitual with her.
"Are you alright, El? I mean really alright?"
"I promise I'll tell you everything when we get where we're going. For now, it's all I can do to keep the car on the road. You don't--you can't understand what it's like for me now, Kate. I'm sorry."
"They're here then," I said, and it was not a question. Again I felt the chill which had plagued me the night before, but now it was as though I was perceiving it from a distance. I was aware of it, but its presence did not affect me.
"They are everywhere," she said, "and they're looking for me. I'm beginning to think that my choice to stay in this world may have been a bad one."
I recalled when she had made that choice. Uncle Wart lay dying in his cottage with the Tennyson-inspired name and Evangeline had told us sadly that there was nothing she could do to help him. Because of the ordeals which both she and Ellen had been through, she had been able to bring Ellen to our world for one last word of parting before taking her back to live among her own kind, but Ellen had suddenly taken her uncle's hands and had used some of her native power to revive him. Then she had asked Evangeline to take him with her so that he might be freed from the Cancer which would, in time, consume him, and in return, she had said that she would stay hidden in our world to spy on the dark ones who, Evangeline had told her, were even now trying to pass as humans and to interfere with us and to change us for the worse. Evangeline had reluctantly agreed to this, but she told her that her new-found strength would wane the longer she stayed cut off from its source, and that one day, the dark ones would return to seek vengeance upon her. Was this what was happening now? Had Ellen's day of reckoning come, and if so, how would I be able to help her?
"Ellen," I said, suddenly indignant, "what was all this testing for? I mean, they can't leave you to fight this alone. At least, surely she can't! I mean, she's your mother, isn't she?" Of course, I reflected, when was the last time I had seen my own mother? She and my father had long ago washed their hands of me and I, it must be admitted, had done the same. We had disowned each other the day I had taken my noviciate vows and we had never spoken since.
"No one's left me alone, Kate. I have spent long hours in Evangeline's company over these past three years, but having made my choice, I have been unable to shed my humanity and to enter that other world on my own."
"Shed your humanity? That's a rather poor choice of words, isn't it?" There was an indifferent and distant tone in her voice which had begun to trouble me.
"I mean my human form. Here," she said, putting her hand into mine. "Can you feel a pulse?"
I did feel a pulsing of sorts, but it was not the pulse of blood being pumped through veins and arteries. It was more as though beneath the mask of skin, bone and muscle which I now touched there lay another essence of life, one more akin to electrical energy than to blood.
"I chose to confine myself within this flesh," she said, "and here I've stayed, but I'm not the same person you knew anymore, and this body of mine is not the same body. It is more like a cloak to be worn among strangers. Most people would not be able to tell that I am not like them except," and here she sighed deeply, "if they touched me. I've stayed here, Kate, and I've managed to keep up my disguise, but it's been a very lonely life."
"Well," I said, squeezing that hand which, though it felt solid and real enough, was merely part of the fleshly facade covering the blazing being whom I knew as Ellen Mitchell but who was called by her kindred the fisher of shadows, "I'm here now and I'll do whatever I can to help."
"You have no idea how glad I am to see you, my friend," she said, and now I heard that peculiar lilting and resonant tone come into her voice, that tone which reminded me so much of Evangeline but which I had never heard until she had returned from that other world.
"You're still you," I said, marveling. "I was hoping that you were, but well, I suppose I wasn't sure what you'd be like."
"I am still the Ellen Mitchell you knew before," she said, "at least in part, but my senses are deeper, truer, unclouded. I could, if I chose, reach into your mind and steal your darkest secrets. Of course," she said with a sudden clear laugh, "I'd never dare to do that to you without your express consent, but you get my meaning I trust."
"I--I suppose I do," I said, though in truth, her words which were meant to be reassuring, had begun to frighten me.
The rest of the drive was uneventful, except that the silence into which we had fallen made me so uncomfortable that I suggested we listen to music. Ellen obliged me readily enough, but again, I noticed that something which would have been as usual for her as breathing three years before had been reduced to a mere after-thought. However, once I had brought it to her mind, she came to herself as though waking from a dream and in a moment, the car was filled with the sweet sounds of a King's College Christmas Eve service of Lessons and Carols. As the organ and the choir made their way through several well-beloved seasonal offerings, I began to feel somewhat easier in my mind, but Ellen was still uncommunicative or only spoke in monosyllables to answer any questions I put to her. I got the feeling as we continued to drive that she was focusing all her attention on this one task while other forces were pulling her in different directions. Ah well, whatever the source of the extreme silence in which she had wrapped herself, I finally decided to let it be and to stop pestering her.
Still, I had so many questions which I felt needed answering. Was she to be trusted? Had these last three years being cut off from her fellow-beings perhaps driven her slightly mad? She had mentioned that she was unable to interact too much with other people in this world lest they learn of her true nature. That could not have made for a very happy existence, I reflected. She had become like some princess out of a fairy-tale who was locked up in a tower and longed only for love and companionship. Or, I thought ruefully as we turned a corner and the blacktop of the main highway gave way to gravel, perhaps she was more like a mad-woman locked up in an attic for her own protection. Then suddenly I wondered if she was hearing my thoughts and attempted to halt them in mid-step. However, there was no way for me to do so by this time. Had she walled herself off from humanity for her own good or for theirs? Was she frightened of her newly-revealed nature, even despite all the discoveries she had made during her sojourn in that other world? I decided that there was no way that I could answer these questions until I had spent some more time in her company.
The cottage which she had inherited from Uncle Wart would tell the tale, I thought. He had always kept it homey and comfortable during his residence there, and I thought that if Ellen were still capable of doing the same, then she was still human enough to be understood by me. I hated to be so cold about all this, but my natural reaction to fear often seems to be a kind of hyper-rationalism which sometimes trumps my emotions for a while. I had often envied Ellen's ease in expressing her emotions, though of course that had come at a cost. Her temper had always been her downfall and had caused her to make impulsive decisions on more than one occasion from which no amount of rational consideration on my part could dissuade her. Still, as I considered my friend now, I realized that I was beginning to look at her as though she was some new specimen of insect that I had never encountered before rather than my best and dearest acquaintance, and that gave me pause. Was I truly the person she needed to help her? Was I capable of bridging the gap which I had come to realize now lay between us? Only time, I thought as we pulled into the driveway of the little cottage and got out of the car, would tell.
It was evening by the time we stood on the porch of the cottage which Ellen's uncle Arthur had cornily named 'The Palace of Art,' and as always happened when I allowed the atmosphere of this place to soak into me, I wished fervently that I could see the sun setting over the lake as Ellen and Uncle Wart had often described it to me.
"You'll be cold, Kate," said Ellen as she took my bags from me and unlocked the door. "We'd better go in."
As soon as we had shut the winter evening out and were in the small sitting-room, her manner underwent an instantaneous change. Where before she was cold and distant, she now became welcoming and warm, and we embraced as we always used to do.
"I'm sorry for my remoteness during the drive," she said. "This place has protection on it. I am safe here, at least for now, but if I leave here, the dark ones try to attack me and I must use all my strength to keep them off."
"Could you not have sent someone else?" I started to say this without thinking and then changed my tack. "I mean, perhaps Evangeline or someone could have somehow--uh--brought me here?"
"No," said Ellen, "I had to come to get you. I had to see you out there first, to see if they had marked you in any way. I have to tell you now, Kate, that they have. The dark ones know you now and they will try to take you or to destroy you. They'd like nothing more than to crush my resolve."
"You've been busy then?"
"I have ruined many of their schemes by being a listening-post in this world. My people have never had that before. Till now, any of them who existed in this world only barely did so, and even Evangeline, when she was exiled here, found that her perceptions were dimmed so long as she kept human form. If you recall Uncle Wart's story, it was almost too late for her by the time she realized the dark ones had found her."
I did recall this. Evangeline and Uncle Wart had met by chance when he was lost in the woods around St. Sophia's, and after she was attacked and driven from the cabin which had been her home, she had come to live for a time in this very cottage. She likely would have lived here as long as she could, but the dark ones had found her and had forced her to spend much of her power to drive them from both Arthur and from Ellen, the baby for whom she had also sought protection under this roof. I wondered if the painting which Uncle Wart had done of her during that time still hung above the fireplace. I was about to ask Ellen this very question when she forestalled me.
"You must be hungry! I've got some stew simmering in the slow-cooker."
I could smell it and so, I think, could Ruby. She sat beside me as prim as any landed lady, but the illusion of nobility was not carried to full effect as she kept licking her chops with doggy delight at the scents of meat, vegetables and herbs drifting out from the kitchen.
"Half a minute while I make up the fire," said Ellen, "and then you can eat."
"What about you? Aren't you hungry?" Again I felt I had erred as an awkward silence greeted these questions.
"My nourishment comes in other ways now," she said, and as she began laying and lighting the fire, I suddenly knew that for all its homey hospitality on this occasion, this house was simply a base of operations, a soldier's barracks rather than Ellen's true home. She was on campaign here, and the veneer of comfort which she had erected for my benefit was only that, a veneer. She was trying as best as she could to make me feel at ease with her, and as the first crackles of the fire punctuated the silence, I realized this and loved her for it.
"It was difficult for you to bring me here," I said. "I mean, it's difficult for you to really think like--like a human now."
"I ought to be better at it," she said. "I mean, Evangeline and her companions went to a lot of trouble to make me understand their world from a human's point of view, but once I lost the last vestiges of the humanity which I had acquired by never knowing anything different, well, it just wasn't the same. She said that this path would be a difficult one. I only wish I had really listened to her!"
"But she's been with you, you say? She's supported you?"
"Oh definitely! She's helped keep me sane! Still, I think of that world I experienced, and despite all the terrors I felt, I long to be there again. Once I saw it for what it was, experienced it on its own terms and unfiltered, well, it both frightened me and drew me in somehow."
I knew exactly what she meant. When I had first really felt that I had to pursue the religious life, I was both compelled and repelled by the thought of it. Could I really give up all the things which a single woman could take for granted in this day and age? Could I truly put myself beyond the pale of my family's compassion by taking this step? In the end, of course, I did take the step and have never regretted it, but I wondered how Ellen had found the courage to dawn that human cloak of hers and to remain among us while having to stay continually aloof.
"Still," she continued, "I couldn't let Uncle Wart die if there was anything I could do to prevent it. He loved Evangeline so, and he'd taken care of me when he could have turned his back on me if he chose."
"I'm just glad that you were able to convince him to go."
"As I recall, Kate, it was you who finally convinced him to yield to the logic of the situation," and then Ellen laughed for the first time that day, and it was as though the sun had come out from behind looming storm-clouds. The room was filled with the wonderful sound of true happiness, and again I knew beyond a doubt that she both was and was not the Ellen Mitchell whom I knew. No human laughter could be so sweet or so wildly-beautiful as that which now came from my friend as she sat across the room from me and the fire crackled merrily as though taking energy from her unbounded joy. Even this joy was inhuman, I realized, for even the truest contentment that we can experience seems always to be tinged with some tempering sorrow, whether or not we are able to perceive it at the time.
"There's plenty of time to discuss serious matters," she said now. "Come! The stew should be just perfect by now."
It was, and when I had finished eating, fed Ruby and taken her out, I returned to the sitting-room to find that Ellen and I were no longer its only occupants. The moment I stepped into the room, I was suffused with a sense of well-being almost painful in its intensity. I also saw a soft light filling the room as I had seen it on the convent-path the night before, and I hesitated in the doorway, uncertain whether to intrude. Then Evangeline herself came over to me and took my hand.
"Come, Katherine," she said. "Do not fear!" and she led me to my usual seat next to the grandfather clock and then sat in the chair which had been Uncle Wart's favourite place for reading or for listening to music.
"Now," she said, "I wish to hear you play." I knew exactly what she meant by this, for next to the stool on which I was seated stood a magnificent harp. This harp had been her own once upon a time, and though it had been given to me by Uncle Wart himself, I had never before played it in her presence.
"I've not touched a harp in three years," I said, "but I will certainly see what I can do. Would you like to hear anything specific, Ellen?"
"This isn't my show, Kate."
"You should play whatever comes to mind," said Evangeline. "All will become clearer soon. For now, I simply wish to hear what you can do."
"Very well," I said and drew the harp toward me. Playing it and expecting to have to spend hours tuning it, I was surprised to hear that every note I struck rang absolutely true.
"At least this little lady has not been neglected," I said with a smile.
"It has been kept in honour for you, Katherine," said Evangeline in a tone of pride and--yes, I was certain!--even deference.
Strumming a few chords, I suddenly found myself playing and singing a song in Irish Gaelic which was called in English "Dream-song." Its melody had always enthralled me and I had taken great pains to learn the words a long time ago in university. However, I had not thought about it for many years, so when it began to come from my fingers and when the words formed themselves in my mind, I was surprised and elated to have remembered it.
"God, Kate!" Ellen breathed when I was finished. "Your voice just gets better and better!"
"There is a great power in it," Evangeline said solemnly. "Your voice has the ability to ring between the worlds, Katherine. That is likely how the dark ones found you in your convent. Only a few others of your kind have had voices like yours, and it is this ability which will be needed in the coming struggle."
"But surely there are those among your people with such an ability?" I was thinking of herself. After all, this harp had belonged to her.
"Let me have the harp," she said, and feeling my knees begin to tremble as I approached her, I gave it to her and listened in astonishment as she began to play and to sing. She sang, to my utter amazement, the very same song that I had just sung, but as the beautiful yet simple melody filled my mind, a curious sensation accompanied it. I felt taken up by the song, utterly spellbound by it, so that when she had finished, Evangeline had to speak a word in her own strange language that would release me from the sheer ecstasy into which her singing had led me.
"You see? Our voices are too powerful for you to endure, and the songs which you will learn if you agree to be taught how to use your unique gift must be able to be heard by your people as well as by mine. Too long have we existed apart from each other. Too long have we remained indifferent to your struggles while the dark ones have entwined themselves intimately with you and have robbed you, little by little, of what makes you truly yourselves. Too long, also, have you remained inured to their influence, insensible and asleep while they have plundered your world of its riches."
"Riches? What do you mean?"
"Something far more precious than gold," she said, and her voice seemed to echo off the walls of my mind as she continued. "You were created to be a noble race, a kindred before whom the very angels of God would kneel. You were created to be both stewards of your world and of ours, and we were to be your helpers. Our worlds were created originally as one world, but when your ancestors listened to the whispers of the demons and cast themselves out of what you call Eden, our worlds began to drift further and further apart. As your world fell, so fell ours, and some among us began to wish to make you into slaves, resenting your weakness. The last time the dark ones almost succeeded in this was when the one you call Noah was spared from the floods which destroyed all the humans who were thoroughly controlled by them and had lost themselves completely."
"But surely since Christ came--" I began, but Evangeline went on for me.
"Since Christ came, the dark ones have hidden in certain corners of your world and we have tried our best to mitigate their influence upon those still susceptible to them, but ever and anon, they manage to elude us. It is only through an alliance between our worlds that we can seek to destroy their foothold in your world forever, and for that alliance, we need an emissary from your world to seek for those humans who will understand what is at stake and will wish to help."
"That sounds like an impossible task," I said. "Wouldn't Ellen be a better choice than me?"
"There is one thing more," said Evangeline. "Many in my world have been lulled asleep as well by their own contentedness. They must be awakened, and you must be the one to awaken them. You are a human, yes, but when they hear you sing the songs that I will teach you, they will remember your race as it was first created. They consider you now to be a lost cause, and though they have not joined the dark ones, perhaps their indifference is worse than any will to dominate and to enslave. You must learn to speak for your people so that they will hear you, and you must also learn to speak for our people so that yours will know that we wish to stand with them in battle when the battle comes. Already you are sensitive to us. I could not have appeared to you that night in the woods if you had not been. You can see a light when I am present, yes?"
"I can," I said.
"Would it surprise you to learn that if another of your kind were to look at me now, they would see only a woman such as they are?"
"But your voice, Evangeline! It is--it's so beautiful and so--so thrilling!"
"It thrills you, Katherine, because you have the ears of the heart to hear it. Others of you still possess this ability, but it has grown rarer as your days on this earth have lengthened. Arthur only saw me as I was when I had no other choice. Otherwise, all the time I lived here with him, he knew me only as a woman."
"But why do I not see Ellen the way I am seeing you?"
"She is hiding from you. Why is this, daughter? It would take great strength to keep yourself veiled from one such as Katherine. You need not do so!"
"I don't want her to--I don't want her to be in awe of me, mother," said Ellen, tears coming into her voice as she spoke. "She would kneel before you if she dared, you know! Any of them would!"
"And yet," said Evangeline, rising and walking slowly to where I sat, "it is I who must kneel before her. If you accept the task that I have given you, Katherine, I pledge you my service and protection." Here, she did kneel and took my hand in hers.
"The path I ask you now to take," she continued, "will not be an easy one to tread, but you will not be alone on your journey. You must travel to our world and learn of its ways, and then you must return and gather the people around yourself and Ellen who will help you when the dark ones finally show their hand."
"I--I'll do whatever is in my power," I found myself saying. "I accept the task. Was this what you wanted to ask of me, Ellen?"
"It was," said my friend, "but I wasn't sure how to go about it. I didn't know if you'd wish for such a burden."
"Well," I said sardonically, "I can't say that I've wished for this, and I certainly can't pretend to understand it, but neither can I stand idly by while these--these monsters are free to do what they will."
"Very well," said Evangeline, and taking my other hand as well, she said clearly: "I meant what I said. You will not be alone! Ellen had to be alone during her testing because of my weakness, but because of her courage I was saved and so were all those who fight with me. You will meet them, Katherine, and you will learn from them much as Ellen did."
"But why me? Why am I so sensitive to your kind?" I had begun to form hunches as to the answer to this question, but I wanted to hear it from Evangeline before I jumped too far ahead.
"Before our worlds became almost completely estranged," she said, taking her seat again, "your kind and our kind often met together. Even your Bible makes mention of it, calling us sons of God." This was the very passage I had thought of, the passage in Genesis where it talks about the sons of God lying with the daughters of men.
"Alright, and?" I prompted.
"In some of your race, the lines stretching back to those far-off times have run more truly than in others."
"In other words," said Ellen, "you're part fairy!"
"I wonder what my father would think," I said with a laugh, "if he knew he had what amounted to fairy DNA in his genes?"
"DNA isn't quite what it is," said Ellen, "but it'll do for a start. In time, I think you'll know more than you ever wanted to know about our race. Perhaps," she said softly, "you already do. I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to leave, you know."
"I said I'd help, didn't I? Now, for the love of all things lemon-scented," I said, hoping that one of our favourite school-girl expressions would reach her, "stop hiding from me! Stop being ashamed of who you are!" I had begun to notice that Ellen was actively blocking me from seeing her true self. I know it sounds crazy, but it was as though I could feel my mind being stopped by some intangible shield. Of course, it took no great effort for me to perceive Evangeline. She seemed to assault my senses at every turn, but with Ellen, it was as though I was hearing her through a thick blanket, as though she was deliberately filtering herself for my benefit.
"She's right, daughter," said Evangeline. "Come! Lower your guards!" There was a breathless pause, and then Ellen came toward me and took my hand.
"Alright," she said, and immediately I knew at last that no matter how human-looking she might be to the average person, Ellen Mitchell was no longer truly of our world. A blazing light seemed to envelop me as we stood facing each other, and I suddenly felt veils upon veils begin to fall from her.
"I thought," she said, the resonance of her race now clearly ringing in her voice, "that you'd find it too painful. I remember when I was in that world and the companion I called Gwydion came to me. He tried to put on a human disguise, but he just couldn't manage it and it nearly drove me mad, the way my senses couldn't make sense of him."
"I can't deny," I said as my whole body trembled, "that both you and Evangeline being here does play havoc with my very molecules at times, but I think I can learn to get used to it."
"Like calls unto like," said Evangeline, "and as you are more and more in Ellen's presence, your kinship with us will become more apparent and will inure your human senses to our very different mode of being. You will never be truly one of us, alas, but you will be able to journey between your world and ours in a way that very few of your race have ever been able to do. Now, daughter, do you feel better?"
"I do," said Ellen, and letting go of my hand, she resumed her seat. "Our drive could have been so much more pleasant if I had done this earlier!"
"If it all gets to be too much for you, Katherine," said Evangeline, "I can teach you a technique for shielding yourself from us. It will certainly help to shield you from the dark ones. They too can assault your senses as you know."
"Thank you," I said. "So, what do we do next?"
"You will first be taken into our world through dreams," said Evangeline, "but you will remember them when you wake as though they were true events, for they will be true events. We will begin tonight. I will guide you myself."
"And what about the days?"
"Why," said Ellen, "we're going to have Christmas together! I think I will be able to provide you a Christmas worthy of your richest Dickensian fantasies."
"Well, we've already got the otherworldly visitors," I said, and we all, even Evangeline herself, began to laugh.
"I'm so glad you're here, Kate," said Ellen. "So glad!"
"You have been greatly missed by our fisher of shadows," said Evangeline, "but the parting has only made the meeting sweeter in the end, has it not?"
"It has indeed," I said, and despite the power that now pulsed from her, I got up and hugged my friend in the old familiar way.
Just then, I thought about Ruby. I had all but forgotten her during our talk, and when I called to her, instead of coming, she thumped her tail excitedly on the floor, and I soon realized that she was sitting beside the chair in which Evangeline sat, and when I went to her, I found her basking in the touch of that beautiful being's hands.
"She seems to like you," I said.
"She too may have a part to play in all this, Katherine. She is a gentle being with a courageous heart. If she ever warns you against anything, heed that warning!"
"I will," I said, "but now I think I need a cup of tea."
"You know where everything is," said Ellen. "Nothing's changed since Uncle Wart left."
"Alright," I said, and went out to the small kitchen to work my own brand of magic.
Making tea has always been a very sacramental experience for me. Ever since Uncle Wart had begun my apprenticeship in this art, I had become a student of all things tea-related. As I listened to my two companions talking softly and gravely in the other room, I busied myself in preparing what I hoped would be the perfect pot. I knew that I would be the only one to taste any of it, but I wanted to be certain that I had done it well. Carefully spooning some of Uncle Wart's superb Earl Grey into the pot which I had just scalded, I set the kettle to heat and waited until its shrill whistle demanded my attention. Then, after pouring the boiling water over the leaves and letting it steep, I found another tea-pot into which I decanted the now very fragrant tea through a strainer. Uncle Wart did not hold with infusers as a rule. He preferred this method of using one pot to make the tea and another to serve it. It was time-honoured, so he said, and I had no reason to discontinue it. Indeed, being careful to observe all of his traditions made me feel as though a part of him still lingered here, and this made me smile as I worked.
"Ah," said Evangeline's voice from the doorway. "I see that you too are an expert in brewing tea! May I partake?"
"Of course," I said, "but I thought that you--well--couldn't."
"Oh, we can. Ellen could eat your food if she wished. I can taste your tea. It will not, it is true, be the same as when Arthur made it for me, but I shall still enjoy it."
"I must confess that it has always felt wrong to me to brew tea just for myself," I said. "It is such a drink of hospitality. It's meant to be shared."
"Quite so," Evangeline said, and placing the pot and three cups on a tray I had found, carried it before me to where Ellen still sat.
"We'll drink the ceremonial draft before going into battle," she said, handing cups to both of us, and together we did just that, toasting our friendship and drinking each other's good health.
"You still have the touch, Kate," said Ellen with a sigh. "I've missed this!"
"I'm just glad I didn't have to drink the whole pot myself," I said. "I have to be able to fall asleep if I'm to begin dreaming of this other world of yours."
"Don't fear that," said Evangeline. "I myself shall be the harbinger of your dreams, but first, I believe you have some prayers to say?"
"You're right," I said, and rummaging among my things to find the Braille text of Compline, I stood up and began. To my astonishment, I found Evangeline ready with the responses for all the psalms and for every other bit of verse, and during the Salve Regina, I found her voice blending with mine in a high and pure chant which not even the best Gregorian choir could rival.
"How did you know how to do that?" I asked.
"It was no great matter to find what I need in your mind," said Evangeline. "There is great power in these prayers. I was privileged to be able to participate in them with you."
"The honour," I said, "was all mine."
The tea things having been cleared up and the fire having been allowed to die, I took Ruby out for her last walk of the evening and then went along the hall to the room which I had always shared with Ellen when we had stayed here in the past. Now, of course, it would be my room alone, and as I sat on the bed brushing my hair, I fell to thinking of all the happy times we had spent laughing and joking and trying in vain to sleep. Would we ever be able to do anything like that again, I wondered? Was our simple and open friendship gone forever? No answers were forth-coming, and as I lay down in the bed which was under the window, I heard a light step coming toward the door.
"Evangeline?" I called softly.
"Yes," she said and entered, placing a chair and the harp at the side of the bed.
"I'm ready," I said, though in truth I felt about as unready as Ethelred had before Cnut's advancing armies.
"Very well then," she said, seating herself. "Let us begin!"
From the first note that Evangeline struck on that first night of wild dreaming, I knew that it was no ordinary music I was hearing. Her playing was beyond excellent and her voice, as it filled the small bedroom, seemed to be made of the purest crystal. I floated away on that sound as though it were a soft current of air, and it followed me through the gates of sleep and into--where? At first, I was uncertain if I had in fact fallen asleep, for as my mind cleared and settled, I felt that I still lay in my bed. This suspicion seemed to be proven fact when I got up and felt the familiar carpeting which covered the floor. I thought briefly of lying down again, but then I felt that peculiar urgency which only dreams can provide. I knew I had to get up and go somewhere. I could still hear the sound of Evangeline's playing from a distance, and I suddenly knew beyond a doubt that I had to find its source.
So, walking out of the bedroom in my bare feet, I traversed the length of the little cottage, though it did not seem so little anymore. The cozy sitting-room had become a vast and pillared hall, and the hallway leading to it from my room was a tortuously-complex maze through which I knew I had to go in order to find Evangeline. It was, however, a maze which reflected sound off of every wall, and this for me was as discombobulating as a hall of mirrors would be to a person with sight. I was forced to use my hands to grope my way among the various branching passages in order not to be tricked by the echoes, and then, once I finally found my way into the sitting-room, I realized that it was a huge and open space and that Evangeline was not there.
Finally I crossed the temple-like structure and found my way outside. Once I had done this, however, I regretted it. The day outside was not as it might be in the waking world at this time of year. It was a sultry summer's day and a strong sun beat down upon me as I walked. Moreover, I knew in a little while that my feet were leading me up a very steep incline, and by the time five minutes had gone by, I realized with dismay that this was no mere hill; it was a mountain up which I would have to clamber eventually on hands and knees. However, even as I began to stumble and to fall, I still heard Evangeline's clear voice singing in her beautiful language, and I knew that this dream would be fruitless unless I found out where she was.
The mountain-path soon became too steep on which to walk upright, and it was only now that I realized that I was still in my bare feet. How had I not been cut by the rocks and tree-roots in my way, I wondered? Still, as is the way with dreams, this normally-important question was driven from my mind by the simple need to keep going. So, now crawling and now pulling myself from ledge to ledge, I eventually came to the summit where a gate barred my way. I knew beyond a doubt that Evangeline was waiting on the other side of the gate, but as I reached it, I felt so tired because of the heat and the climbing that it was all I could do to stand upright on my feet and to make my voice obey me enough to say:
"I've come, Evangeline! May I come in?"
"Lay your hand on the gate," I barely heard her say through the blood pounding in my ears, "and it will admit you." I did so, and the gate seemed to melt under my hand and to be changed from a thing of adamant to a feeble thing of air, and before I knew it, a hand clasped my own and I was taken beyond that boundary and into a place of heart-piercing sweetness. The heat had been left behind, and now it seemed to be a misty spring morning.
"Your journey was a bitter one, I think," said Evangeline, who now led me to a stone seat by a fountain, "but you took it and did not turn back."
"I knew I had to find you," I said. "Everything depended on that."
"This is not how I intended your first journey into our world to be. I intended to make the journey with you, but the dark ones found a way to separate us."
"You mean the maze and the hall, the mountain and the heat, those were not your doing?"
"No indeed," she said sorrowfully. "I seek not to confuse but to clarify! They, however, seek to prevent you from becoming who you are destined to become. We can do nothing tonight unfortunately, but I will do what I can to heal you."
"Heal me?" It was true that I had been exhausted by the journey but as I sat in that lovely place and heard the fountain playing cheerily beside me, I thought that all in all things had not gone too badly. However, as I began to relax and to drop my defences, I felt a thousand knives of pain in my feet and hands and though I tried very hard to stop them, I soon found myself in tears and sobbing, for the pain was worse than any I had ever felt before.
"Come," said Evangeline, leading me gently by the hand. The turf beneath my feet was soft and springy, but even it seemed to sting me as I walked on it. "You must bathe in the stream of which this fountain is the source."
"Alright," I said, and allowing her to lead me along the bank of the little stream which I could now hear bubbling its way through this lush land, I was soon in the water and feeling the pains of my journey falling away. I longed to remain there forever, the water felt so wonderful, but before too long, Evangeline again took my hand and led me up again out of the stream and onto the short but thick grass.
"I will be with you again tomorrow night," she said, "and we will begin your training in earnest. They know now that they cannot hinder you by separating you from me, so I do not think they will try that trick again. However, make no mistake that we have beaten them. They have marked you, I'm afraid, and they know how to find you. This place is safe. This place will always be safe for you, and before too long, you will know how to come here yourself without so much trouble."
"I used to come here a lot," I found myself saying without thinking. "I've dreamed of this place! I called it cloud-land because the sun never seemed to shine, but neither did I feel that it was exactly gloomy. What does this mean?"
"It was your mind's way of interpreting the calling of your soul to the ancient ways of your ancestors, Katherine. You carry a distant echo of our mode of being within you, and you have been in our world in dream upon occasion. This place was the best approximation that your human mind could conjure up of the memories of us that you still possess buried deeply inside. It is my task to awaken that part of you to its fullest potential and to allow you to merge the two parts of yourself into one being. No, you will never have the powers to which Ellen can lay claim, but you will be able to understand both humans and our kind better than anyone else."
"Do we have to end things now? After bathing in that blessed water, I feel I could do anything."
"Nevertheless, when you return to your world you will realize how tired you are. Come now, it is time we were going," and taking my hand again, she led me out through the gate, and before I knew where I was, I lay safely in my bed and I could hear the dry sound of snow being whipped by a furious wind against my window.
"Lie still," said Evangeline, "and I shall send you to sleep." Again she sat by my bed as though she had never left, and again she began to play the harp. She sang the 'dream-song' which I had sung earlier that night, and while the ecstasy of her voice filled me, I found myself relaxing into the covers of the bed, a pervasive sense of well-being filling me from head to toe. If the dark ones had weakened me, I thought, then this being of light had made me strong.
"Thank you," I murmured as sleep began to claim me.
"Sleep well," she said tenderly. "I will be with you again after sunset."
After fifteen years, the rhythms of convent-life had become an integral part of my body and mind, so despite the strangeness of my sleep that night, I found myself coming wide awake at 5:00 AM. Remembering Mother Clotilde's admonitions about prayer, I got up to say the morning Angelus and to recite Lauds. My body did feel extremely weak, but I was able to subdue it to my will to perform my monastic duties. However, by the time I had fed Ruby and was making the morning tea, my hands had begun to shake and I realized that I must have a slight fever.
"Before she left," said Ellen, coming quietly into the kitchen, "Evangeline made you something. I've kept it hot for you," and as I poured a cup of tea and went to the table, I found a bowl of steaming and fragrant oatmeal waiting for me. As I tasted it, I recalled a dream which Ellen had experienced during the beginning of her acquaintance with her mother. In it, she had been given oatmeal like this which had caused her waking self to be delivered from a strange and sudden fever which had been caused by an attack of the dark ones.
"Was this what yours was like?" I asked. "Indeed it was," she said with a laugh. "You'll be alright again once you've eaten it."
As she sat across from me and waited for me to finish my breakfast, I noticed again the light which surrounded her. It was not like sunlight or any other kind of natural radiance, for when I closed my eyes, I could still somehow see it. I understood now what Evangeline had meant when she had said that few other humans could see such a light. It was not really something one saw with the eyes, but rather with the mind. Something in me responded in sympathy with Ellen's nature, and that response was manifested to my physical eyes and my material mind as light.
"Well," I said when the oatmeal had been eaten, "what shall we do today?"
"I think we should decorate this place for Christmas. I've brought a bunch of ornaments down from the loft, and besides, I don't think you should be doing anything too taxing after what happened last night."
"Did Evangeline tell you about it?"
"I knew about it," she said, and for an instant, I thought I caught the hint of fatigue or fear in her voice, but that was driven away when we turned on some Christmas music and began hanging garlands and untangling lights.
"Should we have a tree?" I asked.
"I can't in good conscience cut down a living tree and bring it in," said Ellen. "I've come to know many of them around here. Still, there may be one who will give his permission." One thing that Ellen had learned about herself and her kindred was that they defined individual things and people by their natures and not by name. Evangeline had only been named thusly by Uncle Wart, for instance. So, for Ellen to agree to take the life of any living thing was very difficult, because she only had to touch it with her mind to know of its whole existence and its life.
"No," I said. "We don't have to have a tree. We can simply find a fallen one and burn a yule-log tomorrow night.
"That seems a good thing to me," she said. "Let's do that! I know where a fine old pine was felled recently by a storm."
The rest of the day was spent, therefore, in hiking deep into Benet's Wood, the wood where I had first met Evangeline on that Midsummer's Eve, and laboriously dragging the fallen pine to the car on a makeshift sled. It had been a long time since I had hiked in winter woods, and by the time we got home, I was chilled to the bone but perfectly contented.
"Ellen," I said after we had laid the monstrous tree in the mud-room to dry, "is the arch still standing?" The arch was a relic of St. Swithun's Boys' School where Uncle Wart had worked before it and the Sophia Benet Academy for Young Ladies had merged and he had come to be the new entity's head-master. He had brought the arch of the venerable old school to stand as a memorial to his meeting with Evangeline, and it had stood in the middle of Benet's Wood ever after. It was at that arch, in fact, that the incident to which I had referred during my phone-call with Ellen in Mother Clotilde's office had taken place. There, we had been attacked by dark forces, and there, Ellen had first been able to reveal herself in her true form for an instant.
"It does," she said, "but it's not always visible anymore. I mean, I can see it and I think you would be able to find it, but to the average person walking in the woods it often shifts location and sometimes cannot be seen at all. That bit of land has become untethered from ordinary reality. I suppose it was never meant to be a doorway between the worlds in the first place, but I wouldn't trust it now. Whenever I go near it, though I can see it plainly, it seems to make me dizzy somehow."
"I didn't think you could get dizzy anymore," I said with a laugh.
"Well, it's not like being dizzy at all really. That's just the best way I can describe it."
"Well," I said, "whatever it's like, I don't want to have anything to do with it if I can help it. I always thought it was, well, a sacred place, especially when Uncle Wart told me that he had had it moved to Benet's wood in order to honour a woman--an immortal being--someone he loved very much."
"And so it has been," said another voice softly, and with a sudden warmth and a blaze of that strange light, Evangeline was once again with us. "But does it follow that sacred places are always safe?" I pondered this while Ellen laid the evening fire and Evangeline played softly upon the harp.
"You reminded me of Uncle Wart when you asked that," I finally said and Ellen laughed.
The night passed companionably enough, Evangeline asking me to play and to sing again and Ellen listening silently as we spoke. However, toward the time when I was ready for bed, I became aware that her silence was not being kept out of mere politeness only. I perceived when I asked her a question and she gave me a short answer that she was struggling with something.
"Daughter?" Evangeline was at her side in a moment. "What is it? Is it the pain again?"
"What pain?" I was indignant. "Are you in pain, Ellen?"
"It's nothing you can help me with, Kate," she said. "It comes sometimes. That's all. It comes and I have to deal with it."
"It is a sign that you have been away from us too long, daughter," said Evangeline. "Still, perhaps your struggles will soon be at an end."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"A crisis is coming," said Evangeline. "It's exact nature is hidden from me, but it is coming, and it will decide all of our fates one way or another. Katherine, will you play and sing again?" I nodded and put my fingers to the strings of the harp, and almost before I knew it, waves of sound were pulsing from the instrument such as I had never heard before, and my voice was raised in a strange but beautiful song in what I took to be the language of the undying ones, and just as I felt that I was on the point of catching the magical key to that language and understanding it, the song sank into silence and the last vibrations of the harp faded away.
"What I have helped you to do now is what you shall learn to do by your own will," said Evangeline. "That was a song of healing, and through it, Ellen was connected for a time to our world."
"It's true, Kate," my friend said. "Evangeline has helped me in this way before now. The pain is gone, and I think it's time for you to head for bed."
"Prayers first," I said, and after reciting Compline, Evangeline again aiding me, I went quietly into my room and closed the door.
This time, however, I did not prepare for bed right away. Instead, I sat and pondered what Evangeline had said about sacred places and safety. She was correct, of course. The very holiness of a place could make it dangerous for the fragile constitution of a mortal such as myself. There were many stories of places where the veil between the worlds was thin and where people had been driven mad. I had read many of the Celtic myths of Ireland and of Wales long ago and it was strange now to think that I was in the company of actual people from the undying lands and that the St. Swithun's arch had now become one of those peculiar places in our world. These thoughts were interrupted by a quiet knock on my door, but before I could invite the knocker in, I found Evangeline beside my bed, the door never having been opened.
"You must learn more of our ways," she said by way of explanation. "Even as I could come through that door unhindered by bolt or catch, so can those of the dark. Your mind is also easily entered," and though I had no will to do this, I suddenly found myself standing on one foot in the middle of the room. I tried with all my might to resist Evangeline's influence, but it was only when she chose and when my leg trembled with the effort that I was able to relax and to return to the bed.
"Believe me when I tell you that those of the dark would torture you to the limits of your sanity and beyond." As she said this, she grasped my hand and I suddenly found myself experiencing pain beyond belief. It was strange. I knew that I was not the one in pain, but I felt the pain nonetheless as though it were my own.
"What--what is it?" I managed to say.
"It is what they did to me before Ellen was able to free me. I did not know you would feel it so directly, but it proves beyond a doubt that what I have been saying is true. You have a connection to our world which you must learn more about before it is too late. The dark ones may also seek to use that connection for their own purposes."
"And what exactly are your purposes?" I suddenly felt great anger welling up inside me. "Am I just a piece on a Chess board to you? Was it me who decided to spend that night near the arch or was it you who decided for me? Was it my parents who sent me to the school where I met Ellen or did you arrange it all?" This had been a growing suspicion in my mind ever since Uncle Wart had first told me about Evangeline the day after I had met her and she had told me of Ellen's destiny.
"This is difficult for you, Katherine," she said now, and I truly felt that she understood me. "I am sorry for it, but you must believe me when I tell you that I had no direct hand in arranging the course of your life. You were drawn to the wood because of who you are, and when I found that you could hear me, I was both surprised and grateful. That night was the balance-point, the tipping of the scale in our favour. Now, are you ready to make another journey?" I nodded my head and got ready for bed, and by the time I lay down, Evangeline had already begun playing.
The music was soft and sweet, and as she began to sing, I tried hard to hear her language as I had begun to earlier that evening. I knew that it was a language of naming which was truer than any language of our world, and I began to feel that its key lay not in how it sounded but in what it made me picture. However, just as this thought assumed primacy in my mind, I found myself drifting off as I had done the night before, and again, as on the night before, I found myself lying in my bed. Evangeline was with me this time, however, and taking the hand she offered me, I rose and followed her out the door of my room.
This time, without any intervening passageways or mountains, we stood on the short grass of that secluded meadow and I could hear the fountain falling perpetually into the small stream.
"Now," said my companion as we sat again on the stone seat, "tell me what you thought as you fell asleep?"
"I remember thinking that your language is not so much about sound," I said. "It is more as though the sounds have a power in them to convey the truth of things to a mind which can receive it."
"You are correct. The sounds you hear when I speak with my people's voice are not words as you would understand them. They are vibrations which ring in sympathetic harmony with the vibrations of all created life."
"Then what about the dark ones? Do they not speak with--"I stumbled on the phrase she had just used in trying to make sense of it, "with your people's voice?"
"No," said Evangeline sadly. "They have lost the ability. That is what makes them dark. In turning from the path which was appointed to us, they lost the ability to dwell in harmony with life. The ones you call demons found them then and completed their transformation by encouraging them to think of us as unjust overlords and of you as mere animals to be enslaved. The real tragedy of the dark ones is that our language is now a terror to them. If they hear it, it does not call them home but rather causes them to flee farther away from us."
"I see," I said, though I was not certain whether I truly did. "And you wish me to learn how to speak with your people's voice as you put it?"
"You will be able to learn, Katherine. Of this I am certain. We will try now."
I recall every detail of what followed this pronouncement, but I must confess a singular inability to state it clearly in words. I beg my reader, therefore, to be patient as I attempt to describe my first real lesson in the language of the undying ones. First of all, I can say with certainty that this was not like any other language lesson that I had ever been a part of. I was never asked to repeat phonetic sounds, to decline nouns or to conjugate verbs. It was as though I was learning to access some hidden part of my mind and to allow it to do the speaking for me. I remember that my first achievement in this skill felt very strange. I felt, as I heard the music of that language coming from my own lips, divided in two for an instant. I was simultaneously the speaker and the hearer. While one part of me moved surely and deliberately from sound to sound, the other marveled at the complex imagery that these sounds were creating.
"If you are not careful at this stage," my patient yet inexorable tutor said, "you will trap yourself in a web of sound and image and you will never be able to stop speaking. I will teach you as we progress to allow your whole mind to be engaged in this process, but for now, we must proceed slowly."
"But what good is this to me?" I said. "For you and Ellen, this language seems to be the key to unleashing your power."
"That is what it does in your world," said Evangeline. "In this world, it is the key to full communication. We of the light are constantly in touch with each other in our minds. It is only rarely that we actually speak that language aloud. However, those who have retreated into their own silence, those of the twilight who have not yet been fully corrupted but who are, nonetheless, remote and distant from both yourselves and us, must be spoken to with the voice of our people coming from a human's lips. They must realize that you are not a lost cause and that there is still hope for both our races."
"But surely this has happened already," I said. "Surely Christ has come to them or they have at least heard of what he has done."
"He came to reconcile your race to Himself," said Evangeline gravely. "You are to be the emissary from your race to ours. There are only some of us who have taken either the light or the dark path. The vast majority have allowed themselves to fade and to grow dim. Your fall was a pain to us all. Some of us resisted that pain and some of us rebelled against it. The others, however, allowed it to become part of their being to such an extent that they have forgotten the ancient truths and have refused either to reclaim their voices and join us or to listen to the lies of the demons and join the dark ones.
"There is one more thing I would tell you, Katherine. My own daughter is in danger of sinking into the twilight. She knows too much of the dark ones to be taken in by them, but the way she has chosen to realize her destiny as the fisher of shadows has caused her to know the pains of your fallen world in her own being. If she is lost, then all of what we have done will be in vain. I tell you now that she, and not I, will be the leader of our people in the coming struggle. I have done what I could, but I am not a warrior."
"No," I said agreeing. "You're like me. You would rather sing."
"It is true," she said, and again I heard a note of deep sorrow in her words. "It is you who must learn what I have to teach. That path is not for Ellen, but every war-leader must have a counsellor and every great battle must have its chronicler. That, my dear Katherine, must be you."
"I'll do what I can," I said, and knowing that this was the end of the lesson, I rose and allowed Evangeline to convey me back to my bed.
"The new day will dawn soon," she said. "I will see you again, though it may not be for a while. Till I come, do your best to look after my daughter. Remember what I said about the people of the twilight."
"I will," I said with a yawn, and before I was aware that Evangeline had left, I felt my eyes beginning to close and my body beginning to slide into sleep again. When I woke next, it was Christmas Eve.
Christmas Eve, did I say? By the time I had finished my morning prayers and was taking Ruby out for her own early ablutions, I felt as though I must still be among the undying ones. Some odd caprice of the local air currents had produced a day of incredible warmth and sunshine. Snow tumbled in great lumps from the trees by the lake and the sound of dripping water could be heard from every quarter.
"Can you believe this weather?" I yelled this as I came through the kitchen door and began drying Ruby's paws. "At least it isn't raining anyway!"
"It will rain by tonight," said Ellen matter-of-factly. "Has this weather ruined your Christmas spirit?"
"I don't know," I said. "I hardly know how I feel just now. My time with Evangeline last night was--well--very strange."
"Well," she said as I got out the tea-things and put the kettle to heat, "we'll be alone this evening. Evangeline has told me how well you did during your last meeting with her. She thinks it's time you had a break."
"That reminds me," I said, suddenly remembering my religious obligations. "I have to attend midnight mass in town. Could you drive me?"
"Far be it from me to keep you from your appointed duties," she said with a laugh. "Now, how shall we spend the day?"
"Do you remember that time when my family went abroad and I decided not to go with them? Spending Christmas with you and Uncle Wart was one of the happiest experiences of my life."
"It was quite fun, yes. Are you proposing what I think you're proposing?" What I was proposing was that we spend the evening before heading to mass reading aloud from Mr. Dickens's 'ghostly little book' about Scrooge and his supernatural adventures.
"Well," I said, "we do have that large log to burn and we might as well do something to pass the evening."
"Alright then," said Ellen, "Dickens it is then! Till then, I propose engaging in some Christmas baking."
"I'll help," I said, "but you were always the best baker of the both of us, so I will yield gratefully to your culinary expertise."
As the day progressed, except for the strange luminosity which surrounded Ellen, we laughed and joked together as in days of yore. Ellen baked like a woman possessed, seeming to revel in such material things as mixing, measuring and tasting the uncooked concoctions.
"I doubt we'll eat all this," she said as the last batch of gingerbread came out of the oven, "but I've enjoyed today immensely!"
"And the best is yet to come," I said, though as the evening descended and Ellen's prediction of rain came true, I found that the prospect of reading Dickens by the fire had lost some of its magic. At first, I thought this due to the wet weather and the clinging dampness which began by degrees to seep its way into the cottage, but as we dragged the log we had rescued the day before to the fireplace, I knew that something more brooded in the silence. For one thing, I fancied that I saw the luminescent aura radiating from my friend grow dimmer and somehow colder. Was she perhaps growing weaker or experiencing pain again? Should I try to do something to help her? I almost felt myself able to access that strange language after last night's lesson with Evangeline, but not knowing enough about it, I thought it best not to try. Besides, Ellen seemed in good spirits so far as I could tell, and once the log was crackling merrily on the hearth and I had prepared a pot of tea and a heaping plate of Christmas treats, she began the reading in a clear and strong voice.
We each took about half a chapter or 'stave,' and neither of us had to tell the other one where to stop. We knew instinctively where to make the switch. While one read, the other either partook of the fair provided or else replenished it, and by the time we had finished and Scrooge had again become a thoroughly changed man, the log was burning low and the rain still fell in undiminishing torrents.
"Oh no!" I said after taking Ruby out. "The temperature's fallen again! The roads will be like skating rinks! Maybe we shouldn't chance the trip to town for midnight mass."
"Nonsense," said Ellen. "The car has snow tires on it and I won't have you missing Christmas Eve mass on account of a little ice!" There was determination in her tone but also something else: a kind of manic intensity that I did not like much.
"Really," I protested. "Mother Clotilde won't--"
"This isn't about Mother Clotilde," she said cryptically. "It's about you and I doing what we have planned to do despite--despite everything!"
"Well," I said uncertainly, "I'm game if you are," and before I knew where I was, Ellen was driving away from the cottage and toward the little town of Benet's Corners at what I thought an almost suicidal rate of speed.
Something was definitely wrong with her, for by the time we reached the church and found a parking-spot, I could tell that it was taking great force of will for her to do even the simplest tasks such as making sure all the doors were locked. As we walked across the parking-lot, I could feel her close beside me, and every now and again she would put a hand on my shoulder to steady herself.
"Oh!" At first I thought she had cried out in pain, but in a moment I realized that the exclamation was one of excitement. "Your friend the priest is here!" I knew whom she meant right away. We had both seen Fr. Peter at a Sunday mass during the August I had last been here.
"Sister Katherine," he said as he now spotted me. I heard the tapping of a cane as he came nearer.
"Have they made you a Bishop, then?" I asked him, "so that you must carry a crozier?"
"Ah," he said, taking my hand. "Nothing so lofty as that, I'm afraid. Before you stands a retired priest with arthritis and a rapidly-deteriorating knee."
"Well," I said. "Will you accompany two ladies into church?"
"Your friend seems ill," he whispered in my ear. "Are you alright, Miss?"
"I'll be fine, thank you, Father," said Ellen. "A migraine."
"What a wretched time to have one of those," he said sympathetically. "Perhaps it's this odd weather we're having that's caused it."
"Perhaps indeed," she said, and we were soon forced by the press of people to make our way into the church.
The mass was lovely, though it was nothing compared to what Mother Clotilde and her choir would have planned. At the convent, I was always filled with the awe and majesty of what this holy night signified: the incarnation of the Word of God as a man. Here, I got the sense that a small baby named Jesus had been born and that it was a very beautiful thing, but there was no sense of the incomprehensible love and condescension which God had visited upon us when He had allowed Himself to be born of a mortal woman. The priest, a young man by his voice, gave a nice little sermon about how we should love one another and make room in our hearts for our fellow-men, and then the choir sang 'Oh Holy Night,' and after a few rousing choruses of 'Jingle Bells' and 'Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer' for the children, we began to file out.
Ellen had been silent during the mass, though at times I thought I heard her sobbing softly, and now that we were again in the parking-lot, I knew beyond a doubt that this trip had been ill-advised. Saying a hasty good-bye to Fr. Peter, I managed to get her into the car, though I knew she was in no shape to drive. Her hands shook and she seemed completely disoriented, and the more I asked her if there was anything I could do, the more angry she became.
"I've got to get home," she kept saying. "I've just got to make it home!"
"Alright," I said. "Maybe we can find someone to drive?"
"No!" she said, almost growling the word. "No one else must be involved! I'll--I'll be alright in a moment, Kate." Her voice had softened by now and I knew she felt remorse for her earlier angry outbursts, and indeed, after a few minutes, she did seem to recollect herself and was able to start the car.
She drove slowly now, however, as though she was finding it difficult to see where she was going. Luckily the road we took out of town was unpopulated by traffic, because Ellen was finding it difficult to keep the car on a straight trajectory. Thankfully, her decision to drive slowly mitigated the damage we would have suffered when what I knew would eventually happened finally did. She swerved the car violently to take a rather nasty bend, but it skidded on a patch of ice and we found ourselves a few seconds later stalled against the side of one of the massive trees of Benet's Wood which bordered this stretch of road for several miles.
"Ellen?" My head was reeling after the spinning slide we had just taken, but otherwise I was unhurt. "Ellen?"
Frightened at hearing no answer from her side of the car, I touched the driver's seat and was dismayed to find no one there. Worse than this, I could feel the approach of that ominous chill which betokened the presence of one of the dark undying ones and I knew that there was no escape. The car still remained upright, but to say that it had come out of the accident without a scratch would be to tell a lie. I found that try as I might, I was unable to open the passenger door, and when I tried to disengage the seatbelt, I found that likely due to the jolt of hitting the tree, the release-button had somehow been bent and twisted. It felt fine on the outside, but when I tried to press it to remove the belt, I found that it would not work. What was I to do now? Where had Ellen gone? These questions were brought to an abrupt halt by the paralysis of fear and panic.
"God!" I screamed. "It can't end now!" And as though in answer, a sudden blaze of light filled the little vehicle and both doors flew open. I knew beyond any doubt that it was Ellen who had managed this, but before I could thank her, I heard her urgently whisper:
"That's all I can do, Kate! You have to run and you have to run now! You'll be alright. Just go into the wood!"
"Are you mad?" But she was gone before I could ask this and Ruby was now whining to be let out. I remembered what Evangeline had said about Ruby and I knew that she could still sense that the dark one was near. So, despite feeling numbed with both cold and shock, I decided to do what Ellen had told me to do. Ruby and I now out of the car, we began to run, crashing through trees and into low-hanging branches as we went but not caring, just so long as we could get farther into the shelter of the wood and away from what I had come to consider the threatening road. Somehow, I thought, the trees would protect us. Still, as we moved deeper and deeper into their midst, I began to feel uneasy. What Ellen had said about Uncle Wart's arch had come back to me, and I found myself, in a very few moments, standing uncertainly beneath the dripping boughs, afraid to go on and yet more afraid to turn back.
Then, as I stood there trembling, I suddenly thought I heard a voice singing. It was singing that same song in Gaelic which I had sung on my first night in Ellen's cottage, and though it sounded faint and far away, I knew to whom it absolutely must belong. Evangeline had been true to her word and had not left me alone. So, with the soaring song to guide me, I set out once again. I knew before too long that I was being guided to the very arch which had occasioned my earlier trepidation, and I further knew that this fear was not without reason. The night I had spent in the clearing by that arch had been the first night I had met the undying one known to me later as Evangeline. Then, three years ago, had occurred what I referred to in thought as 'the incident at the arch,' in which Ellen and I had been attacked by the dark ones and when I had first caught a hint of her true nature as she had banished them. Now, according to Ellen herself, the place had slipped the moorings which held it fast to this reality. It was now truly a place between our world and the world of the undying ones, and if it made her feel whatever might be the undying ones' equivalent of dizziness, then for a mere mortal such as myself, being in close proximity could not but spell utter disaster.
Still, I reflected as Evangeline's voice drew nearer, that being would not do anything to harm me. She had always shown herself as a brave and compassionate person, and though no doubt her ways were strange to me, I had come to learn that she had a keen sense of honour and love. After all, she had stood between Ellen and danger for as long as she could, and as Ellen had told me, that singular devotion to her duty had almost cost Evangeline even her extraordinary life. Yes, I mentally concluded, even undying ones could die, but only at each others' hands, and Evangeline had taken the full force of the assault that the dark ones would have leveled squarely at her daughter while she had still been in her mortal guise. She was, therefore, someone to be trusted, and I was able to assert this to myself even beyond any emotional considerations. It was logical to trust someone who would have given their life for someone else, so despite my fear of it, I continued walking steadily toward the arch and whatever might lie beyond it with no further hesitation.
A hush lay over everything as I came to the edge of the strange clearing. Evangeline's voice had ceased its song and I stood, Ruby at my side, breathless and trembling. It was only now that I noticed that the sleety rain had ended and that instead, a light snow was falling. The scent of pine was sharp in my nostrils and though the air was cold, I could feel an inexplicable warmth suffusing my entire being. I stood between two trees, absolutely knowing that as soon as I took another step, I would be leaving my world behind me. I could see Evangeline's brightness filling the entire space before me, and while a part of me longed to step into it, I felt very strongly that this place was not meant for such fragile creatures as myself.
"Katherine," the bright presence waiting for me finally said, "do you fear me?" At that, I felt very ashamed.
"It--it isn't you I fear exactly," I said. "It's what will happen to me if I come into the clearing."
"Nonetheless," said Evangeline tenderly, "it is you who must make the step. I cannot force you to come."
"What about Ruby?" I felt this to be a stupid question, but just then the dog at my side had become for me an anchor of solidity in this world of shifting lights and strange beings.
"She may come into the clearing, but further than that, well, we shall have to see."
Suddenly, Ruby herself stiffened and tugged on the harness. At first, I thought she was afraid, but she soon began to whine quietly as though she had seen a familiar person and wanted to go to them.
"Alright, Ruby girl," I said, taking courage from her. "Alright. We'll go," and walking purposefully while she strained to run, I stepped out of the shelter of the trees.
"Good," said Evangeline, now coming to me and taking my hand. "Now we can begin doing things."
"Doing things?"
"Yes, Katherine. We are beginning sooner than I had thought to begin, but necessity compels us."
"Where's Ellen?"
"It is you who will find her, I believe. All I know for certain is that she was taken by the dark ones."
"She seemed to be weakening tonight. I should never have made her come to church with me!"
"It is a good thing she did, however. I am sure you would have gone on your own if she had not been able to accompany you, and if you had, the dark ones would have found you and taken you, or worse, they would have destroyed you. Ellen went with them so that you would be free."
"Then how do we--how do I--find her?"
"You must have aids and allies, so you must come with me and meet some friends who were helpful to Ellen on her journey. However, their help will not be enough. There are others who must be brought to our circle, and only your voice using our words can rouse them from their dreaming."
"So what of Ruby then?"
"You will not need her services where we are going, but neither can you leave her behind. I will find a guardian for her whom she will trust and who can protect her. Now," and here I thought the light flowing from her grew even brighter, "let us go!"
So, with Evangeline on my right and Ruby on my left, I began moving closer and closer to the arch. As we walked, no wind moved. The snow had stopped falling. The St. Swithun's bell which hung over the very centre of the arch, and which I thought might ring at Evangeline's merest tread, was silent. However, as we came under the capstone, I suddenly began to understand the impression which I had received from both Evangeline and Ellen and which had eluded me before. It was an impression of vastness deliberately held in check. I thought that if this being's native power were truly let loose, nothing mortal would be able to stand before it, yet here I was, walking hand in hand with her.
"Now," said my guide as we stood directly beneath the capstone. "Will you go onward? This is the last point at which you will be able to turn back."
"If I can help Ellen by coming with you," I said, "then that is what I must do."
"Very well then," she said, and taking a few more steps, we came out from the shadow of the arch and found ourselves in the last place I would have expected, by the shores of a lake on a crisp autumn day.
The sun blazed down as we stood on the sand, and the lake's small waves lapped at our feet. I was surprised to see that I still wore my winter clothing, and this, as much as anything could have, convinced me that I was not dreaming. I could hear trees moving in a strong wind behind us and Evangeline allowed me to investigate. Walking a little way up the slightly-sloping beach, I came to the trunk of a well-grown birch tree. Touching it, I was surprised at what I felt from it. It too seemed to pulse with a strange kind of energy, even as Ellen's hand had done when I had first held it in the car on the way from the convent.
"It's so alive!" I said quietly, "and yet the leaves are falling! Surely winter never comes here?" As I said this, I picked a leaf out of my hair.
"This scene was built for another," said Evangeline. "It is autumn here because that is how this other sees this realm. He has, moreover, the right of it, for although we seem bright and vibrant to you, once our worlds have drawn closer together for a time and once our great task has been accomplished, then it will be our job to diminish, to decrease as you increase. For this is the strange thing that we have learned. While you are mortal now, you are destined to become immortal, and while we are immortal, our brightness will one day be overshadowed and eclipsed by yours. However," she said with a gentle laugh like the quiet lapping of the lake upon the shore, "you need not grieve overmuch. This time is not yet awhile, and even if it were to come sooner than we expected, it is the way of things. Now, I believe it is time we meet the master of this place."
Stepping down again to the edge of the lake, I soon heard the sound of oars being maneuvered and a boat being pushed down the beach. Once it was half in the water, Evangeline guided me to it and I got in, managing by some miracle to settle Ruby amidships. Then, giving it another shove, my guide took her place in the stern and began to row. The lake was calm as we rowed, and I wished desperately that I could see so that I might row for Evangeline. It seemed wrong to let such an august being as herself labour in this manner, but, I reflected, it was nice to feel the movement of the water under the keel and to hear the many birds singing their songs in the trees roundabout. The rain in the mortal world had depressed me, but this autumnal scene was worthy of the best Keatsian ode, and though I felt myself out of place dressed as I was in my winter things, I nevertheless felt a deep upwelling of joy. There was also, I thought as we continued, an indefinable sense of familiarity about everything, as though I had been here before. This familiarity was intensified as Evangeline finally landed the boat on another beach and we began climbing a winding pathway.
I marveled as I stepped over tree-roots. Ellen had told me of a different path she had trod in this world which had been carpeted with a kind of strange moss, soft to the feet and exuding a fragrant oil as it was bruised. Myrrh-moss, she had called it, but here, the path felt very ordinary to my booted feet. I wondered why this was and was on the point of asking Evangeline about it when all of a sudden, the path ended and we walked through a wooden gate and across a small enclosure where a fountain played. Then, all at once, we were climbing some wooden steps and a door was flung open welcomingly, and the one who held it open was addressing us with kindly words.
"Well, so you've got here at last! I'd hoped you'd manage it!" At these words and at that voice, I began to weep with uncontrollable joy. Only one person could have quoted such an obscure bit of Tolkien (Bilbo's words of greeting to Frodo as they met in Rivendell) at such an appropriate moment, and as I stepped forward and Ruby nearly pulled me off my feet in the exuberance of recognition, I stepped across the threshold and into the arms of none other than Uncle Wart himself.
In a flurry of hugs and exclamations of joy, he led us into his sitting-room. It seemed very familiar, and indeed, as I explored its contours, I realized that it was an exact reproduction of the sitting-room where Ellen and I had sat just a few hours before to read Dickens.
"Well, Sister," said Uncle Wart, "you can sit in your usual place," and finding my stool by the clock, I did so, having let Ruby off the leash to scamper excitedly about and to finally settle beside Uncle Wart's chair as had been her wont.
"And you, my lovely one," he said to Evangeline as she came quietly in, "was the journey taxing for you?"
"No, Arthur," she said, surprising me by sitting at his feet. "Bringing Katherine into our world was not as difficult as I thought it might be."
"It's the vision, Sister," he said. "It plays the very devil with their attempts to make this world palatable to us wooden-headed humans. Be grateful that you don't have it! It took a lot of strength to build me this little island of humanity, but I try to be useful to them in small ways. One young lad comes to me for human lessons. Can you believe it?"
"Human lessons? From you? You seem so much a part of things here though!" He did. Though no light came from him as from Evangeline, he seemed young and strong, though he had not lost the venerableness which had come with advancing age. He seemed, in a word, ageless, and though I had always liked to think of him thus, it was nice to actually see it realized. His hands still felt wrinkled, it was true, but they no longer shook and I felt instinctively that if he had to, he could pull a tree up by the roots, so strong and vibrant did he seem.
"If you refer to my new-found vitality," he said, "there is nothing especially immortal in it,, or if there is, it would leave me as soon as I returned to my native soil. Indeed, one might say that I have been born anew here, so that the life of this realm has become my life."
"Is that going to happen to me?" I was suddenly frightened.
"No," said Evangeline. "I can see now that your link to us is very strong. Arthur's was rather tenuous and it needed Ellen's power to allow him to enter our realm. You, however, have done so without any such intervention. This says much for the strength of our line which dwells within you. You must, when need allows, be able to come and go between the worlds and yet remain as you are."
"I understand, I think," I said, "but all this talk isn't helping us find Ellen, is it?"
"No," said Evangeline, "but neither must we be too hasty. The beginning of your transition has been easier than expected, it is true, but you must remain with Arthur for a little while so that you can become accustomed to our world and so that your rhythms can begin to move in time with our own.
"Don't fear, Sister," said Uncle Wart. "Time here is only for our benefit. Days and nights may come and go for you, but you shouldn't think of Ellen suffering for those days and nights. I must confess an inability to completely understand this, but I have known it to be the truth. So, try your best to relax, grace me with your presence for a night, and then I'm sure my beloved Evangeline will have plenty of tasks for you to accomplish."
"It is even as Arthur has said," said Evangeline softly. "You have cheered his heart with your coming. Let him attempt to do the same for you."
"We'll begin, I think," he said, standing up and heading toward the kitchen, "with a good cup of tea!"
The day passed in amiable companionship. I had thought that Evangeline might leave us humans to ourselves, but she surprised me by not only staying but also helping Uncle Wart prepare the evening meal. I suddenly could see the truth behind his story of their living under the same roof during that seemingly-idyllic summer before the dark ones had found her. They seemed to weave around each other as they attended to household tasks in a curious and graceful way which was a joy to behold.
"Do you live here?" I asked of her when we were alone, Arthur having gone out to pick some mushrooms.
"We are not tied to any one place," said Evangeline. "To me, though I can see this place as Arthur's house, I can also experience it as our realm. For us, there is no difference between our realm and our mode of being. We do not live anywhere. We simply are. To put it in terms that you can understand, I am always where I need to be." In fact, I did not truly understand this, but I thanked her for her valiant attempt to explain. Then I thought of something else.
"But you are distinct beings, I mean you are all separate selves, right?"
"We are, yes," she said. "We have distinct personalities and natures, but we share a common existence, and it is this which binds us together and runs ringing through our world. You were once more like us than any of you knows."
"So you're not," I pursued, ignoring this reference to unfallen man for the time being, "a collective consciousness as such. You do not cease to have your own wills."
"That is correct. However, if we are not a collective consciousness, you might say that we share a kind of collective sentience. We are ourselves because we are a part of the whole. If we were cut off from the whole, we would cease to be our truly individual selves. We can only be individual by virtue of the whole. We can only fulfil our purposes when those purposes are directed toward our entire race or toward the pattern of things of which we can occasionally se glimpses."
"The pattern of things," I mused. "You said that King Arthur's coming to your world to live was woven into the pattern of things, but those who judged you guilty of interfering with us seemed not to see it."
"They refused to see it," said Evangeline sadly. "Even then, many of our people had begun to drift into the twilight. By punishing me, they thought they were doing what was right for our race, and to make matters worse, there were dark ones among them who had not yet shown their true natures but who could, I think, see the opportunities for mischief if I and those who aided me were deemed guilty by the tribunal."
"And you want to help these people of the twilight even though they basically caused all the trouble we're in now."
"Their aloofness from us is like a wound. Whereas the dark ones cut themselves off from us completely, these people remain connected to us but it is as though we are bleeding slowly from a wound which has become infected. We need to be healed if we have a chance of defeating the dark ones."
"I think I'm beginning to understand," I said. "You and those with you are the keepers of the flame, the last bastion of your civilization. Those you say are of the twilight are the ones who have grown decadent and forgetful."
"Do you see them as Roman Britain then?" Arthur had come in with his mushrooms by this time and had joined us at the kitchen table. "I actually think that rather an apt comparison."
"Then maybe they need a King Arthur, eh Uncle Wart?"
"If I'm not mistaken, Sister Katherine, you have come here to learn to be a kind of Merlin for their fisher of shadows."
"But first," Evangeline chimed in almost chanting the words, "our Merlin must waken the very stones with her song."
The supper which Uncle Wart had been preparing as we talked was at length got ready, and as we ate and drank, I began to notice something peculiar about this place. While the cottage we sat in was every bit as comfortable as its counterpart in my own world, it seemed to be transfigured and overlayed with a strange kind of grandeur. The grace and dignity with which both Arthur and Evangeline conducted themselves seemed to have infused the very air with itself, so that I felt it necessary to speak in subdued tones and to bring all my nunnish deportment to bear. Indeed, I thought as Evangeline handed me a simple glass of water with a solemnity befitting a queen in her own house, this was how Uncle Wart had always made me feel, what he had made me want to aspire to. Had Evangeline's influence while she lived with him changed him in some way? Would it change me?
Again I felt the familiar fear which I had first begun to feel on realizing that I had a call to the convent. I had been frightened that the changes that Christ might make in me would be so radical that I would lose everyone who was dear to me, yet I had known also that the call was, for all that, undeniable and must be pursued. To what was I being called here? Who would I be if and when I rejoined my fellow beings? Was I now going to carry that strange unearthly quality I had first perceived in Uncle Wart about with me? When I was a child, I had longed for an adventure just such as this, but now that it had actually come, I had no idea if I was up to whatever challenges it might present. I finished the simple meal of fish and fried mushrooms and sighed heavily.
"What's the matter?" Uncle Wart was speaking to me in the tone he had usually reserved for Ellen.
"Oh," I said, "I don't know exactly. I feel as though this is all too big for me, I suppose."
"Thank goodness that you've not been asked to accomplish anything by yourself then!"
"I suppose you're right," I said, smiling at his keen and swift repost. "I must remember that what I do is only a part of the larger tapestry."
"Spoken just as well as if Evangeline herself had said it! Now, shall we adjourn to the sitting-room?"
We did so, and Uncle Wart told some amazing stories of his sojourn here. The young lad who often came to him for human lessons was none other than Ellen's companion in adventure who had most often been for her benefit a winged unicorn and whom she had christened Gwydion.
"How have you endured his practicing?" I asked. "I thought that every time he attempted to take human form it made Ellen's head spin and caused her to faint."
"I don't deny that it has been an arduous process, and he has still a long way to go, but he really does do animals very well. I have seen him flying as a hawk, diving into the depths of the lake as a fish, running as a deer, but somehow, our form still eludes him and it seems to be the one he most wishes to take."
"Will I meet him?"
"You will indeed," said Evangeline. "We shall hold a council tomorrow in a secluded place. Arthur will stay here and see to your loyal companion."
"It will be an honour to attend upon Mistress Ruby," he said with a laugh, but I wondered whether he felt a little left out of things all the same.
The evening passed comfortably enough, but for all our friendly conversation and witty repartee, I knew that we were all worried about Ellen's whereabouts and what she might be enduring at that very moment. Still, knowing that nothing could be done until the morrow's council, we attempted to cheer each other as best as we could. Uncle Wart wanted to hear me play and sing, and I was about to protest the absence of a harp when I reached out instinctively, and there, to my pleasant surprise, was a beautifully-carved and perfectly-tuned harp. It was even more ornate than the one which Evangeline had kept with her during her mortal exile, and it seemed to vibrate under my hands as though its strings rang perpetually in unheard song.
"It sings in sympathy with the one for whom it is meant," said Evangeline as I pulled my hand away as though it had been burned.
"What?" I said. "This is meant for me?"
"To speak the truth, until this moment I did not know for certain that you were the one we needed. However, since the harp has accepted you, your destiny has now been entwined with that of the undying ones irrevocably."
I had no response to this, but my heart began to thrill as I again touched the harp and then drew it to me and placed it against my shoulder. My fingers began to move upon the strings, and while a part of me knew that my will was not behind what they played, another part of me knew that I was rendering into music the sound of that strange language which I had first begun to learn in a dream that was not a dream. I soon found myself singing as well, and while the words I sang were in English, they were no words I had ever heard or sung before, and they were set to that same music that I was playing on the harp. This is how a fragment of them ran:
"Fear falls like shadows in the dusk, and darkness descends like death upon the world, but life and light await the dreamer of dawn, and the minstrel of twilight shall call him forth to fight. The fisher of shadows will surrender the sword and the people of the light will come together to see the preparing of the way for the warrior to win his spurs."
I seemed to sing and sing, losing all sense of time and place, until eventually my fingers were stilled and I sat motionless on my stool, drained and exhausted beyond belief. What had I just sung? What was this demonstration supposed to prove to Evangeline? Why wouldn't anyone say anything? Just when the silence was becoming unbearable, Evangeline came over, and gently taking the harp from me, she said solemnly:
"Well done, Katherine! You have heard the truth in your mind and you have spoken it. This is what you must do as you continue your journey through this world."
"But I hardly know what I sang or what it meant!"
"You will," was all her reply, "but now I think you need some sleep. Your usual room is prepared for you."
"Goodnight, Sister," said Arthur, and as I walked slowly and none too steadily down the hall to my room, I realized that I had not said Compline and I did not have the prayers with me to say. Feeling instinctively the reproaches of Mother Clotilde as I lay down, I managed to stay awake long enough to say a rosary, and as I finally gave myself up to sleep, I noticed the gentle breeze blowing through the open window. On it was a scent I could not identify. It seemed to be made up of every kind of flower I had ever smelled, and yet there was about it the pungency of the holiest incense. It was, I concluded, the smell of the breath of this world, and I gratefully drank it in as I lay in the comfortable bed.
My sleep was unbroken by dream or waking, and when the first birds began to sing in the trees, I was fully awake and ready for whatever this new day would bring. Saying a quick Angelus, I got up and explored the bedroom. It was very like the room at the 'Palace of Art,' but as with the dinner last night, there was a hint of grandeur amid the comfortable surroundings. The wardrobe that stood in the corner was carved with fantastically intertwined branches and leaves, and when I opened it, I found robes and other items which were both like and unlike my usual nun's attire.
Feeling certain that I was meant to dress in these for the council, I withdrew the velvet clothing from the recesses of the wardrobe and began to lay them out. There was a robe, a belt made of linked metal leaves, a dagger in its bejeweled sheath, and a pair of sturdy but lovely shoes. I was about to dress myself when I heard a light knock at the door.
"Katherine?"
"Come in, Evangeline," I said.
"Ah," said the other, stepping in and closing the door behind her, "I see you have found your clothes. Good. I have come to dress you!"
"Dress me?"
"Yes. It is true that you are not a knight, but you are a bard, and as you said of me once before, so am I. I am here to dress you as a courtesy. At the council, you will be looked upon by everyone present and they will judge whether you should become a part of our group, but until then, you have my sponsorship and my hands to see you robed as befits your destiny."
"Are these things like Ellen's armour was? Will they protect me?"
"What you see here is clothing. The dagger is a dagger. For you, this world is what you sense it to be. You must not look beyond the veil we have placed between you and our realm as it is. It will crush your mind and break your spirit if you do."
"So," I said, trying hard to understand what she was saying, "you have all agreed to exist in this environment for my benefit?"
"Once we leave here," said Evangeline, "as long as you are with one of us, the world around you will be stable. In this house, it is a different matter. You could stay here with Arthur and be unhindered by the ultimate reality of how we undying ones live. However, if you leave these grounds and are not with one of us, you will eventually fall prey to the shifting perceptions and unsolvable riddles that our existence presents to a mortal mind. Do not forget that the realm of the fair-folk is always both beautiful and perilous in your myths, and this is the truth behind it."
"But I have some of your--your essence in me," I said.
"This is true, and that is why you will be safe if you are with one of us. We can amplify that essence and use it to keep you anchored. However, if it is left free to respond to our world unaided by us, it will soon find a way through the veils we have placed around you for your protection, and taking over, it will destroy your mortal mind and flesh simply by being what it is."
"Very well," I said. "It would be an honour for the Lady of the Lake to dress me."
Giving one of her clear laughs, Evangeline began the task of doing just that, and with a solemnity that I did not expect. I felt that in putting on these clothes, I was dawning some kind of uniform, and that here at last I was truly leaving my former existence behind. Where would the next few hours lead me? What would this council be like? Who would be on it? Evangeline had mentioned Gwydion, Ellen's strange companion, but who would the others be? I pondered all these questions as Evangeline slipped the robe around me and then placed a mantel over my shoulders. Then, girding the dagger on my hip and holding me at arm's length to regard me, she said:
"Good! Now, let us go and have breakfast."
When I entered the kitchen, Uncle Wart turned from his tea-making and stood completely still.
"My goodness!" he breathed. "You truly have dressed the part!"
"Really?" I said. "I have no idea what I look like."
"The green velvet of the robe and the mantel suits you very well indeed! Indeed, I have seen Evangeline dress much as you are dressed now."
"I suppose there is not a coincidence in this choice of clothing," I said.
"You are very astute," said Evangeline, "but we will talk of that later."
The breakfast was lovely and light. Again there was the oatmeal mixed with fruits and spices, and one of Uncle Wart's best cups of tea to wash it down. There was also some sliced fruit and at the end, a glass of pure and absolutely refreshing water.
"I am afraid that this is not the nectar and ambrosia of the gods," said Uncle Wart, "but I trust it will buoy you up for the day's proceedings. Besides, I believe that where you're going, you'll have food even more nurturing to the soul than to the body."
"Have you ever attended one of these councils?"
"Alas no," he said, "but I too have my purpose here. I am a kind of liaison for any humans who happen to stray into this place by accident."
"And have any come here?"
"You, my dear, were the first. However, my job is to keep the kettle boiling as it were and to keep a candle in the window, and so I try my best to do."
"Doesn't it get lonely? I mean, do you regret coming here or miss home?"
"It is too beautiful here to regret much of anything," he said. "And when Evangeline blesses this house, I am at peace. Do not fear for me, Katherine," he finished. "I am alright, and I shall take care of your silly Ruby for you while you're gone."
"Then," said Evangeline, "if you are ready, Katherine," we should depart. Do you wish to carry the harp?"
"I think I can manage," I said, and Evangeline handed me the harp which was wrapped now in a lovely and richly-worked case.
"Will we be walking?" I asked.
"Not exactly," she replied. "Take my hand," and without even exiting the cottage first, she rose from the ground and I rose with her, floating gently high above the trees for a moment, and then we were suspended in a strange and eternal silence for an indeterminate time.
"Where are we?" I tried to say this but could only think it, but thankfully, Evangeline had heard my unspoken question and replied aloud:
"I am taking you through our realm. We are covering distances which to you would seem more like units of time or thought. When we get to where the council will be held, things will resolve themselves."
I felt comfortable enough, but the airless and soundless void was beginning to weigh on my spirit. I knew that I would not suffocate, but at the same time, I felt as though I had no right to be breathing when it seemed as though no air was moving past me. I could see neither darkness nor light, and I could hear absolutely nothing. We had floated away from Arthur's cottage and for a while, the wind had played with my hair and I had heard the birds and the rustling of the trees as they cast their drifts of leaves, and then, as though the world around me had been turned off via some master-switch, the silence and stillness had crept in and had swallowed up everything familiar in one gulp. The only reassuring part of this strange journey was that Evangeline's hand was always in mine, her presence calm and unwavering like a beacon in the darkness. However, as all things inevitably do, this timeless and lifeless floating came to an end, and without a clear sense of actually landing, I found myself standing on solid ground again.
For an instant, I thought something had gone wrong, because where we stood now seemed almost identical to where we had stood after stepping through the arch in Benet's Wood. We were again on the shore of a lake, and it seemed as though it was still morning. Birds cried overhead and the air was cool and sweet, and even though everything seemed the same as the lake which lay before Uncle Wart's cottage, there was some indefinable difference as well. It took me a while to place that difference, but as I took in the scent of the air and felt its coolness upon my skin, I realized what it was.
"It's spring here!" I said excitedly.
"Indeed so," said Evangeline, "and here it is we must await our transportation to the meeting-place."
"Can we not simply come there ourselves?"
"No," she said, "for it is a very distant place. Only its keeper can take us to it, and here she comes now!" As she said this last, I could hear the dip of oars as a boat made its way toward us, and before long, a woman's voice cried across the intervening water:
"Greetings to you both! You are the last to come and I am glad to meet you!"
The voice was as lovely and clear as was Evangeline's own, but in it I could hear a difference. Where Evangeline's voice was serene and steady, this woman's voice had a touch of ringing steel in its serenity, and as the boat drew nearer to the shore, I thought I knew to whom it belonged.
"You are Katherine?" asked the woman, helping me into the boat with a light and strong hand.
"I am," I said, "and would I be right in addressing you as Tara?"
"She is perceptive, Mistress," said Tara to Evangeline with a hint of pride in her tone. "That bodes well!"
"Indeed it does, my friend," said Evangeline. "Thank you for waiting until we came to begin."
"When the fisher of shadows was taken," said Tara gravely, "we feared your loss as well, so we were glad when we knew that you would be coming."
As our new companion rowed out into the lake and beat a steady stroke across the water, I fell to thinking about what I knew of her. During Ellen's time of testing in this realm, she had freed this being from a strange imprisonment into which one of the dark undying ones had cast her. In order to gain back her full connection to this world, Ellen had had to assist Tara to regain it from that dark one. To Ellen's still human senses, this precious and essential thing was represented as a beautiful sword which the dark one, who was in the form of a serpent now, kept with him. Ellen had to kill him so that Tara could take the sword, and in the battle which had followed, the serpent had bitten her heel.
"Tara," I said tentatively, "I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, but I was wondering about that wound of Ellen's. Was it ever fully healed?"
"Alas no," she said. "Nothing any of us could do would heal it."
"Such wounds," said Evangeline slowly, "have been known to tempt us toward the twilight way."
"And I suppose it would have made her even more vulnerable to the dark ones," I said.
"Indeed it did," said Evangeline. "It was because of this that I wished her to remain with us. While we might never have fully healed the wound, we could have watched over her."
"But you did. I mean, you came to her when she felt that pain, didn't you?"
"We have certainly tried our best, Katherine, but it is for others to try now." Here, I felt the gaze of both the undying ones burning me and I knew beyond a doubt whom Evangeline had meant.
As the boat's keel scraped upon the sand of another shore, I suddenly felt my heart pounding with some unnameable joy. Here, I thought, must be the place where Ellen had fought with the serpent, but it did not seem like the place she had described to me. There was a sweetness in the air which seemed even more pungent than that surrounding Arthur's cottage, and as I stepped out, my foot touched not rock as Ellen's had done, but something infinitely soft and yet springy. With a joyous shout I immediately removed my shoes and stockings to test the assumption I had made, and as my bear toes touched the fragrant carpet, I knew beyond a doubt what it was.
"Myrrh-moss!" I exclaimed. "Just like Ellen said! But it wasn't here when she was here. It was in--in another place."
"No," said Tara. "It was not here then. Then this was an island where a dark thing lay imprisoned, and though he could not conquer it fully, his influence did make much of it desolate, but it was not always a prison. Long ago, it was where I dwelt, and having become once again its keeper, I have been able to bring it back to thriving life. I believe you should put your shoes back on before we continue our journey," she added in an admonitory tone.
"Why?" I was in a happy, almost manic mood. Touching the myrrh-moss was like being able to touch the colour green. Everything about it seemed somehow to be essentially green. I have no way of describing this idea so that it makes any kind of sense, but you must just take it that I learned by touch on that day what the colour green is, and I have never forgotten it. "Surely I'll not be hurt here!"
"No," said Evangeline with a light laugh, "but it might be better for you to appear appropriately dressed at council."
"I suppose that's true," I said, and reluctantly and with a kind of sadness for the loss of that luxurious green feeling, replaced my footwear and prepared to move on.
I recalled from Ellen's description of this island that a steep hill lay in front of us, but as we began to ascend, I did not feel a sense of steepness. Indeed, the higher we climbed, the lighter seemed my limbs until I was running, Tara and Evangeline keeping pace with me and holding both my hands. I wondered what it would be like if I let go of their hands in that mad rush of speed, but as I did so, I felt the world tilting beneath me and all my senses becoming confused.
"Katherine," said Tara as she caught me round the waist, "you must not let go of our hands until we tell you it is safe to do so. This is a strange place for you to be traveling. Here, you are not filtered against the truth which lies behind this thinnest of veils. Only we can shield you."
"Right," I managed. "Sorry," and Evangeline once again coming on my other side and both of them taking my hands in theirs, we moved further and yet more swiftly up the hill.
As we reached the top, we began slowing at last, and when we stopped, I marveled at the fact that I felt neither the least bit tired nor out of breath. In fact, I felt as calm and peaceful as though I had just stepped out for a sniff of the cool morning air. Before us was a high wall, that much I could tell at once, and as I reached out my hand to investigate, I discovered that it was climbing with all manner of creeping flowers which gave off the most wonderful fragrance. Further investigations revealed a gate made of some indomitable stone, and for an instant, I thought as I put my hand upon it that it might be the gate to the strange land where Evangeline and I had made our first forays into the language of the undying ones, but as it did not melt at my touch, I doubted.
"Are we supposed to go in?" I think I asked this because the silence in this place was almost deafening. The peace was almost oppressive.
"We are indeed," said Evangeline softly, "but not until we are called."
"Called?"
"Do you wonder at that, Katherine?"
"I suppose it is difficult for me to imagine you having to be called or ordered to do anything, Evangeline," I said stupidly.
"Nonetheless," she replied, "we must wait here until--" Her words were cut off in mid-sentence by the clear sound of a bell tolling. I had a strange fancy that it was the bell which hung from the St. Swithun's arch back in Benet's Wood, but as I listened to it, I realized that no bell on earth could have sounded so merry, so pure and yet so solemn at the same time. As its peals rang through the still air, they seemed to echo strangely in my mind, and here, I thought, was the truth behind what we humans had tried for centuries to achieve with our different casting processes and varied chiming styles. This, I found myself thinking, was the sound of what the ancients used to call the music of the spheres, the very song of creation's ecstatic dance, and all at once, I realized that what I was hearing was not in fact a bell at all. It was only meant to sound like a bell to my human ears, but I felt that if I continued listening to it, I would at last hear its true sound and know its true nature. Just as I came to this point in my thinking, however, the chiming ceased and the gate, upon which my hand still rested, suddenly melted and became a water-fall all misty and cool upon my face, and then, on a sudden fresh breeze from beyond the sweetly-falling curtain, the mist was blown away and there was now no barrier between myself and the place of the council.
"Once you enter," said Evangeline, "you will need no aid from us to keep your senses steady. This place has been prepared for your coming. Enter now," and leading me through the empty gap in the wall, she ushered me into a place which I can only describe as utterly and completely holy.
As I stepped beyond the enclosing wall, I thought at first that I had entered some medieval romantic poem, for I stood in a garden. The earth was soft beneath my feet and the air seemed all made of morning sweetness. I knew beyond any doubt that this was the place where Ellen had fought with the serpent, and my suspicions were confirmed when Tara herself took my hand and welcomed me graciously to her dwelling-place.
"This," she said to the others assembled around a stone table to which I was led, "is Katherine, the companion of the fisher of shadows. She has come and is vouched for by the one who was long in exile, the one whom the humans have lately called by the name of Evangeline!" As I listened to this speech, I could understand every word, but again as with the bell, I felt that this translation of sorts was being done for my benefit only. I felt as though Tara was not truly speaking aloud at all, and I wondered what would happen if I were called on to say anything.
"First," Tara continued, "I will make you known to everyone here, Katherine. Evangeline and I you already have some acquaintance with. The one whom your friend named Gwydion is also here."
"It is an honour to meet you," said the loveliest male voice that I think I have ever heard," and a hand was slipped into mine briefly which seemed to be made of living fire but which, I am happy to say, did not burn me with its touch. "I have been honoured to serve the fisher of shadows on her journey, and if I can assist you in anything, you have only to ask."
"Thank you," I said, but in truth, all I wanted him to do was to continue speaking. His voice was deep and resonant, ringing with truth and honour. I could tell that he was no stranger to fighting, but there was a deep gentleness in his tone as well which quite undid me for a time. What would Mother Clotilde think of me? I found myself thinking this out of habit but then I found that I did not much care.
"There is also another whom Ellen met on her journey here," said Evangeline, "and she decided to call him the Philosopher King."
"No," said a voice from across the table, very business-like, "that's where you're wrong, my dear lady! She found my name, for I had made it for myself long ago."
"Very well then," said Evangeline with an indulgent laugh. I wondered how she could be so cordial with this man, for when Ellen met him, he tricked her and imprisoned Gwydion and set her what he thought was an impossible quest.
"Tara," I whispered, for she was closest to me at that moment. "Why is he here?"
"For a very important reason," she said, "which you shall know soon."
There were many others at the council, but as their voices tingled or boomed along my nerves, I rather lost track of who each of them was, until I heard the last to speak. Ellen had named her Cerridwen and she had been a part of the most mysterious adventure which my friend had experienced. She had brought her to the very brink of madness and death as a harsh crone only to heal her with a touch and to outfit her for her final battle for Evangeline's life as a beautiful and gracious queen. This last form was the one she now wore, and her voice as she spoke to me thrilled me even more than any other voice of the undying ones that I had yet heard.
"Katherine," she said, giving me the softest hand I had ever felt, "I greet you. Your friend once named me Cerridwen, though I am no goddess." Her laugh as she said this went to my heart like new wine.
"I may be rightly described as a queen of sorts, I suppose," she continued. "Many look to me as such, but I will not always be thus. My glory will be in my diminishing, for there will be another to take my place one day. It was I who called this council. The fisher of shadows was also to be present, but as we all know by now, circumstances have changed and we must now mount a rescue."
"For that," put in Evangeline, "we need others. We need those of the twilight, and this is why we have asked our friend the Philosopher King to be here. We did not know until Ellen met with him," and here I caught a hint of smouldering anger in her voice, "that he was no longer truly of our company. However, he did bring his bell with him, the only thing of the light that he still possesses, so we take it as a pledge that he will help us."
"I still do not understand," the Philosopher King said, "what this mortal is doing among us, nor why she carries a harp made by our esteemed queen here!" There was a barely-perceptible note of scorn in his voice as he mentioned Cerridwen.
"That harp," said Cerridwen softly, "was made long ago. All of you know its fashion, for it is woven throughout all of our songs and rings through our deepest dreams. Show it, if you would, Katherine," and at that, Tara led me to a seat at the table and I carefully removed the lovely case from the lovelier instrument.
"Now, if you are the one for whom we have sought for so long," the venerable being continued, "will you play for us?"
"This is not a hall of feasting," said the Philosopher King, "but a council of war! What need we of all this harping and idle word-weaving?"
"Be still," said Evangeline, placing an encouraging hand briefly upon my shoulder, "and listen! Then perhaps you will understand more."
Setting the almost-living harp on the ground between my knees and placing it against my shoulder, I began just as I had the night before to play and to sing whatever might come. I think I spoke much the same enigmatic words as I had then, but as I sang, I heard other voices weaving in and out of my own. Evangeline, Gwydion, Tara and even the venerable Cerridwen herself were following me. I knew in that strange and eternal moment that I was their touch-stone, that my music had led them to discover a deeper music, to render into sound their whole pattern of existence. Soon, and almost against his will I thought, the Philosopher King joined in the odd song, adding his phrases along with the others. At first they sounded discordant, but as he continued, it was as though he was remembering something he had forgotten, because his song was soon taken up into the master-melody and blended seamlessly with it as everyone else's did.
"I don't believe it," he said as the song sank naturally into silence. "I don't believe that this mortal woman could make me remember myself so truly!" As he spoke, I realized that he had gained back all the usual resonance that I heard in the voices of the others at the table, but it was only now that I heard his true voice that I realized just how false it had seemed before.
"If I may do anything to rescue your daughter, dear lady," he said to Evangeline, "I will do it in repayment for almost destroying her. And you," he said, coming and taking my hand, "are a wonder! I know many whom you could help with your song, and I will take you to them if you like."
"Patience!" said Cerridwen, her musical voice ringing through the air. "We run too quickly! Now that she has proven herself, Katherine needs no sponsoring. She is one of our company unreservedly. Evangeline, what do you say?"
"She is the one, my lady," said my sponsor in a voice both soft and sad. "What has been written will not be erased, but neither now will it be the end of the tale."
"But what does that mean?" I was genuinely perplexed.
"What it means is this," said Evangeline. "Ellen is my daughter and heir to what I can give her, but you, Katherine, if you are full willing, will become my successor one day."
"Your successor?"
"Indeed," said Evangeline. "For do you know what my true name would be if I rendered it into your language and if we used such names? Have you not guessed it yet?"
"Not, I suppose, the Lady of the Lake," I said.
"No indeed," she said, "Who I am by nature you shall become by teaching and testing."
"So," I said slowly, trying to take in this new revelation, "I will become what you already are? The Minstrel of Twilight is you?"
"That is the nearest to the truth of who and what I am that you can touch with your words, yes," said Evangeline solemnly. "You will know more in time."
"She has done what she could," said Cerridwen, "even in her exile. She has guided her people well and has been my most trusted counsellor, but it will soon be time for others to take up the tasks we have begun."
"But you can't die, surely!" I was indignant. "Neither of you are going to die, are you?"
"None can tell how the words of prophecy will shape themselves," said Evangeline, "but a change is coming. We have both foreseen it. Only time will show us the truth of that change."
"But what about the harp? You told me it had never been played. If you are Minstrel of Twilight, isn't that harp yours?"
"It would have been," said Evangeline, "if I had not been exiled. What you have come to quickly I would have come to by long and difficult paths. It is not just anyone who can play a harp like this, and what I might have been able to do long ago had I remained here is now beyond my skill or beyond any skill of the undying ones. It needs, as I have said, a mortal voice to stir the hearts of those left cold and pitiless by their despair and bitterness, so while Ellen is heir to my being, you are heir to what I might have become, and so will be the truer version of that nature."
"Will you accept this role, Katherine of the mortal lands?" Cerridwen spoke these words, and there was such a deep solemnity in them that I hardly knew what I would say as I rose shakily to my feet. Then, from the deepest part of my being came the words which I had said when I decided to answer God's call to the convent.
"I will do so," I said, "with my whole heart."
After this pronouncement, the council broke up for a while and Tara took me on a tour of her garden. She showed me where Ellen had defeated the serpent, and by a fountain we sat together and she gave me some fresh water and some fruits from her orchard. I took a bite of an apple and almost sang for joy. It was crisp and sweet and strangely filling as apples on earth could never be, and as she observed my joy, Tara herself was gladdened.
"I was sorry," she said as we sat on the ground, "that I could not help Ellen more than I did. I hope to be able to help her now."
"What will the plan be do you think?"
"I know not," she said, "for we do not know where she is at present. Indeed, I have tried every way I could to find her. Gwydion has done so as well. Indeed, he is likely off searching as we speak."
"And what of Evangeline?"
"I am sure she is in conference with Cerridwen. When we reconvene, we will talk more about our plans."
"And what will happen to me? Am I to go on this quest?"
"Perhaps," said Tara. "That much I cannot tell at present. All I know for certain is that your being here is proper. It is correct. It harmonizes, perhaps you would say, with the pattern of things as we sometimes glimpse it."
"I suppose that is meant to be comforting," I said.
"It would comfort me if I heard it," she said, and somehow, this confident and ready answer commended her to me as nothing else had heretofore, and I suddenly found that I loved her.
"Alright then," I said, getting to my feet. "Shall we be allies, you and I?"
"We are already," she said stoutly, "and friends as well into the bargain. Come, I think the bell is calling us again." Indeed, as she was speaking, the ringing of the Philosopher King's bell could be heard, and in its tone I could understand how Ellen had been able to choose it correctly from a mass of other bells around her during the quest he had set for her. She told me that she had touched it with her mind and that it alone had responded in sympathy to her touch while all the others had remained mere pieces of cold metal. That thought led me to wonder if I would ever fully understand the language which I was able to interpret so well with my music. Others could hear it as I played and sang, but to me, it remained both mysterious and incomprehensible, and yet there was a tiny part of myself which I thought could make sense of it if it were only given the chance to do so. How could I ever hope to become Evangeline's successor when the very method of communication that those of her kind used was only a fountainhead for my mind to tap and never a stream which I myself could direct?
I was full of doubts as Tara and I walked back to the table and took our seats, and as Cerridwen began to speak, my doubts only grew in intensity.
"My friends," she said as we all fell silent, "this is the difficult part of our business here today. Our Fisher of Shadows has been taken, sacrificing her own liberty for that of her friend. In this, she has shown herself to be virtuous, but we must all remember that she is not invulnerable to the influences of either those of the twilight or those of the dark. The wound she received in this very place was dreadful and deep, and nothing we could do would truly heal it. I believe that it will one day be healed, but only at a great cost. Now, however, it remains for us to find her and to rescue her, for as she aided us in our recent time of trouble, so we must aid her."
"It is only right," said the newly restored Philosopher King in his newly resonant and rich voice. "But how shall we find her? No one has had any word from her I think?"
"That is correct," said Evangeline, "but I hold out hope that we may yet have some clue. Yet, even though we know not where she is, we may still make some plans."
"That is so," said Cerridwen, "and we will begin by rousing as many of those who are in the twilight as we can. Evangeline and Katherine will do this office."
"And I will go with them if I may," said the Philosopher King.
"No," said Cerridwen, "I think not, for you would use arguments to try to rouse your friends. They must be stolen upon almost unawares and surprised from their slumbering. You will go and make ready your castle and hall as a place of safe retreat and I will go with you. Gwydion's job will be to scout out the dark ones and to see how they are moving. Do they plan to assault us? This he will find out and will bring word to us. He has done this before and he is apt for the work."
"But there must be a protector," said Gwydion in his deep and sonorous tones, "for the mortal maiden. She cannot go unguarded, saving your reverence of course, Mistress Evangeline."
"We have given thought to that, young Gwydion," Evangeline herself replied, "and we will ask Tara to be Katherine's companion. Your task is to stay with her at all times, Tara. Do you understand? Even should we be separated, you must stay with her, or our world will press in upon her and destroy her."
"I understand and willingly accept," said Tara."
"First," said Cerridwen, "before you set out, you shall be feasted and well-rested, and you shall drink the cup of parting among friends. You shall come to my halls which, though not built of stone, will do honour to you nonetheless. Will you join us, self-styled Philosopher King?"
"I would be honoured, my lady," he said, and after discussing a few more plans, the council finally broke and Tara asked if she might begin her services to me by conducting me to the queen's halls.
"I would be honoured," I said, "but should we not go down to the shore again?"
"There is no need," she said, and all at once her presence beside me seemed to grow stronger and more--more massive, and of a sudden, I was carried off in what I took to be her arms, but as I analyzed the sensation further, I realized that it was the sheer force of her being itself which had somehow enveloped me. It was as though she were carrying me inside her, and as we flew or floated or moved along, I knew that we needed no words to speak to one another.
"We are going," she said in my mind, "to a place where Ellen has never been. It is long indeed since I have been there myself, but if you find my dwelling to be a beautiful place, you will find Cerridwen's halls beautiful beyond telling! She is ancient and powerful, soft as a stream and indomitable as a rushing torrent."
"Like Evangeline," I said without words.
"Indeed yes," said Tara's mind to mine. "Very like Evangeline," and I thought I caught a hint of knowing laughter in the flow of her thoughts, but I decided to ignore it and simply to luxuriate in the feeling of her surrounding me. In one way, it seemed a shocking kind of intimacy, but in another, I felt it the most natural thing for an undying one to do. Indeed, had not the dark one tried to do the same to me back at the convent?
I wished that I could see out from the shelter of this vibrant and living cloak, but I knew that even if I could, I would not be permitted to do so. Light and warmth pressed in upon me, and I knew that it was protecting me from the truth of where we were. I knew that we must be traveling over great distances, and that to do so with such speed meant that the world could not be resolved properly into anything that my senses could take in, so Tara had made a little pocket of sanity for me to ride in by using her own self as a shield. I found this incredibly moving and was almost brought to tears by the peace I was feeling in her presence. However, there did come a moment, the first moment of time that I can clearly remember after beginning this strange flight, when I felt as though the ground were shaping itself to fit beneath my feet. I can put it no plainer than that. I did not feel that I had landed on the ground, but rather it was as though something immaterial had become material as I stood upon it, and before long, Tara stood again at my side in her wonted form and I could hear the booming of the sea before us.
"Now what do we do?" I asked, a little dizzied as the world resolved itself into the cries of seabirds and the scents of salt and seaweed.
"We must await the coming of the ship," said Tara. "Cerridwen dwells on an island far out to sea. Indeed, while it takes no great effort for her to come and go across this sea, even we undying ones require a conveyance."
"But she is one of you, is she not?"
"She is one of us, but she is the only truly unfallen one left of our race, and so is possessed of strange powers that we ourselves do not very clearly understand. Her ship will come when all who are going aboard have arrived."
"Indeed it will," said Cerridwen, appearing as far as I could tell from nowhere, "and I myself shall go before to speed it on its way," and without another word, she was gone again as though she had never been.
"She will wish to speak with you, I think, during your time in her halls," said Tara. "I do not very clearly understand what she will wish to talk to you about, but you must be prepared. It is no easy matter to have an audience with her."
As we waited, I listened to the heaving of the breakers against the shore and thought I could hear a deep sadness in it. Then I wondered if in fact the sadness I was hearing was that of my own heart as I fell to thinking again of where Ellen might be now and what sufferings she might be enduring. If only I could find her somehow, I thought. If only all this feasting and talking would end so that we could get to actually doing things.
"You yearn for the quest I think," said Tara softly, slipping her hand into mine. "I do as well, make no mistake, but I believe that you will not find this stay in the halls of Cerridwen a vain one."
"No indeed," said Evangeline as she appeared, "and you have not long to wait, for Gwydion and our recently reclaimed friend are not far behind me."
"We are no longer behind you at all," said the Philosopher King as he too materialized, "and we would have been here quicker but that my dear young companion insisted on questioning me a hundred times over in order to test my mettle. It seems he is still a little suspicious of me."
"Of course I am," said Gwydion, "though I know that Cerridwen will probe you far more deeply than I have been able to do. Beware, therefore, if you prove a liar!"
"I do not understand," said the Philosopher King in a softer tone, "how it was that I could not see her fully until now."
"None of us have truly seen her fully," said Evangeline, "but I believe we shall do so before we leave her island. Ah, and here is the ship coming to meet us. Katherine, this ship is very dangerous for you. Stay close to one of us at all times."
"It is even a dangerous place for us," said Tara, "to speak the truth," and as it came closer and clear voices hailed us aboard, I suddenly knew that it was a dangerous ship. This was the ship which had borne the questing knights toward the city of the grail. The light which spilled upon me as I stepped upon the gangway did all but confirm this, and the deck-hands and ministering maidens who did us honour solidified the comparison in my mind to such a degree that I wept.
"It is indeed beautiful," said Tara, who was ever at my side. "They have not had a mortal among them for many and many an age! Cerridwen's people are fallen members of our race who have found their way to her and whom she has taught in the ancient ways of our people."
"And yet neither you nor Evangeline are of her people?"
"Alas no. We would have been. She would have rewarded us richly for bringing the dying king to her to be healed and prepared."
"Dying king? You mean Arthur?"
"Indeed yes. He sleeps somewhere on her island. Perhaps you will see where he lies."
"That will not be yet a while I think," said Evangeline. "It is enough for Katherine to meet with the one who will truly show her the path she must take."
"All I really wish to be shown," I said, "is where Ellen is and how we can find her!"
"Yes," said Evangeline almost to herself. "Yes, and I believe you will be the one to find her as well."
The ship bore us across the swell of the sea in shining splendour. You may wonder how I could use such words, but I assure you that from every hand which offered me a cup of wine and from every spar and rope and pin of the ship itself, in short, from every direction, I could see and sense a brilliant light falling like dew. The ship had no oars to guide her as far as I could tell, but every now and again an order would be shouted and ropes would be hauled and masts would be climbed. Indeed, I say that the orders were shouted, but when they came and when their receipt was acknowledged, it all sounded more like music than like speech, so that after a while, I sat in a dream of lovely sound which added to the impression of shimmering beauty which I had already received.
Then, faint and far off, I heard the fall of rain, and as we moved toward and under it, I felt as though it was a curtain and that once we had moved beyond it, we would indeed be near to the blessed shores of Cerridwen's island. As we came beneath the rain, sudden thunder and lightning came all about us, and the sea seemed to boil with the intensity of the storm. Then, just as suddenly, we moved out of the tempest and into a calm such as I can hardly describe. The air seemed to be filled with the sound of bells as the hiss and boom of the storm was left behind, and once the ship found its way to its jetty and was made fast, the bells seemed to ring out even more clearly. Up onto the jetty I was guided by many hands, and one of the people of the ship whispered something to me as we parted.
"You need have no fear here, mortal one," he said. "You may wander where you will in this place." I wondered if he meant that I would be alright even if I was not with one of the undying ones, and just as I feared that I might be wrong, my companions found me and reassured me.
"Whether you are with us or not," said Evangeline, "makes no matter here. To you as to us this is a sacred and perilous place, but as we are here at Cerridwen's bidding, then all shall be well."
Up from the shore of the island we went and climbed a winding path. The island and everything on it seemed to shine with its own inner brightness and to speak out in its own unique voice. I cannot truly give you the sense of what I mean, except to say that I could tell by the sounds that the trees made when they moved just what sorts of trees they were and how long they had stood. At least, I fancied I could do this, though upon later reflection, I do not think that this was due to any extraordinary ability of my own, but rather to the island's pure and living presence itself. Everything simply forced itself upon me in its true nature whether I wished it or not, and I wondered to myself whether Eden had been like this.
At the top of the path, we stopped for a few moments for everyone to catch his or her breath, for this is something peculiar about Cerridwen's island. Whereas in Tara's land I felt not the least bit of fatigue, here, everyone seemed to have been tired by the climb, everyone that is save for the shining people from the ship of course. As we stood still for a moment, I saw before us a welling brightness far greater than I had yet seen.
"Are we going into that?" I asked of no one in particular.
"Yes," said Gwydion softly, "and long have I desired to enter that shining vale!"
"You have never been here either?" I asked.
"Only Evangeline and myself among us all have ever been here," said Tara.
"It is true," said Evangeline in a far away voice, "and I never thought to see it again!"
"Come then," said Cerridwen from beyond the wall of brightness, "and see it better! You are all richly welcome here," and with one accord, we all stepped forward into the blinding light and after descending a gentle slope all covered with grass and flowers, we found ourselves beneath the eves of what turned out to be a vast woodland.
"So these are the halls not built of stone,! I breathed in wonder.
"Indeed they are," said Evangeline, and I would have sworn by the trembling in her lovely voice that she was crying with joy to be among those tall and immeasurably ancient trees again. "For Cerridwen's people, there is no need of anything but the earth and sky."
"So this is truly itself then?" I asked. "I mean, what I perceive here is exactly what you perceive?"
"Yes," said Evangeline. "Here, there is no need of a veil. Cerridwen herself makes it possible for us to be here without hurt to our senses."
"It would be a great discourtesy if I did not," said the queen as she came and took my hand in greeting.
On and on we walked, slowly and silently through what I took to be the falling of the day. The birds still sang, but it seemed to be their evensong voices that I was hearing, and all around me was simply the feeling of coming night. I knew that before too long, stars would appear in the sky, and I found myself wondering if I might hear them singing to one another as they heralded the dawning of a new day. Soon, however, my reverie was brought to a halt when we reached another gentle slope downward, which, as we climbed down it, I realized led us into a clearing. Here in this dingle were set tables and chairs and food enough for many guests, and I was further confounded by Cerridwen herself leading me up onto the dais that stood near the far side of the little dell and placing me to the right of Evangeline. The Philosopher King she seated to her own left, and Tara and Gwydion filled up the remaining chairs at the high table.
"My friends," she said, "one chair stands empty. Let us toast before we begin to feast the Fisher of Shadows! May she find her way safely to us once more!"
"Indeed!" Everyone responded and glasses tinkled.
"Let us also welcome among us the mortal woman Katherine! Her coming is to both our worlds a joyous thing!"
"Katherine!" they all shouted, and I felt my face growing red with the attention.
The feasting began soon after this, and there was so much food and music that I can scarcely bring a clear picture of it before my mind. I recall that all of the food was very good, but I do not remember any meat being present. However, neither did I feel the lack of it, so varied and interesting were all the dishes. I remember that Evangeline was bidden to play the harp, and a strange hush fell as she was handed one of the harps of this place and began to sing. The words were in her own people's tongue, and though I could not understand them, I seemed to fall into them and become a part of them somehow. Images of great battles and beautiful times of peace shaped themselves in my mind, and when she was finished, Cerridwen surprised me with the following words:
"Today, my joy is full! Today, one who has been lost to me has now truly been found. Today, my daughter has at last returned from her long exile! She has learned much in her time away from this place, and now that she is with me again, my heart can rest easily! Welcome home, my daughter whom the mortals have lately named Evangeline!"
"It has been a long and bitter road," said Evangeline sorrowfully, "and though I have wandered far afield, the memory of this place has always remained unclouded in my heart. I gave up my right to be called your daughter, mother, but my daughter did me proud and showed you that your lessons had not all been lost on me. It was Ellen who brought us together again, and I am glad that we are united in our quest to rescue her."
"And you who are called Tara," said Cerridwen. "You stood with my daughter on the day she left here for the last time. You both chose to take the punishment of your own people rather than remaining here in safety. This decision perplexed me for a time, but I believe I understand it now. You both wanted to stand against the encroaching darkness. For that noble decision, you must be rewarded."
"I need nothing," Tara began.
"But you shall have something, and so shall my daughter. Some of you, take them to the changing-place. The rest may go where they will, save for the mortal woman Katherine. Her I would speak with in my grove."
All having eaten and drunk their fill, the crowd was soon scattered hither and thither, and Cerridwen herself came to lead me away.
"We will go together to my grove," she said, and taking me by the hand, she led me out of the dingle on the far side and further on through the stately woods.
As we walked, I found that my feet made no sound. The pathways were smooth and level and the trees grew tall and straight overhead, neither root nor fallen limb impeding our progress. On and on we moved, past one branching pathway and down another, through glades and in and out of hollows like that in which we had feasted, until at last we began to ascend a hill. Up and up the hill we climbed until I thought it might be a mountain like the one in my dreams, but almost as I despaired of reaching its summit for its steepness, we were there, and before me was a shimmering radiance. The light was not bright like that at the entrance to the valley, but it seemed to pulse with intensity for all its softness.
"No mortal has ever come here," said Cerridwen softly, "save one, and that was when he lay dying. I cannot tell what effect this place will have on you, but I believe you will be able to bear it," and with these not very reassuring words of reassurance, she took my hand more tightly in hers and led me through the soft glow. As I passed through this wall of sorts, I felt a wind beginning to rise and my whole body beginning to tingle, and as Cerridwen led me to a seat and sat beside me, I suddenly feared her very much, for here at last, I knew there was no veil between my senses and the truth of what she was, and while I knew I could maintain consciousness in her fully-revealed presence, I did not know how I would be able to speak with her or to answer her questions. Her voice alone when next she spoke seemed to rumble and ring with the force of her presence, and I found myself longing to kneel at her feet as the wind of her power whirled gently but relentlessly around us.
"You have come here," she said now, "to be shown the truth, but you have also come here to show it to me."
"I--I will do what I can," I said through trembling lips.
"That is well. Firstly, so that we may understand each other, I will begin. I was one of the first of my race to come into being. I knew your Adam and your Eve and I was told how they fell."
"You were told?" I managed to ask.
"That is correct," she said patiently. "I have at times had encounters with those whom you would call angels. As time went on, I realized that the wound your race had done to itself was spreading among my people, and though I tried everything I could to staunch it, it was impossible. Then it was that I learned a curious thing. The fall of your race was also to be its rising. I had no clear understanding of how this was to be achieved, but as I commune with you now, I begin to see how it was done."
"Yes," I said. "God Himself came to take human flesh and so freed us from the ancient curse."
"Though that freedom is also a voluntary one on the part of every human soul?"
"Yes," I said, "or so far as I understand it that is the case."
"My daughter took the fallen path," said Cerridwen, "and yet she has returned to me."
"But she was not evil," I said. "She was never of the dark!"
"No indeed, but she was diminished by her choice, and yet the only way she could eventually return to me was to allow herself to be further diminished and to bear a human form and to give birth to a daughter in that form. She went what I thought was the long way around, and yet it was the right path for her to take. This is a strange and wonderful mystery. Do you not think so?"
"I do," I said.
"You are a woman of the Christ," she said, "a woman devoted to His service."
"I am," I said, and then amended: "I try to be at least."
"You are then a servant of hope, a handmaid of mercy."
"That is what I strive to be, yes," I said, a little ashamed.
"Then perhaps you will understand the thing I would say to you if I put it in this wise. In this great doing of ours, this great awakening of both this world and that in which your race dwells, it will be your part to be the summoner, the servant, the forerunner."
"To prepare the way," I said, remembering the prophetic words I had sung earlier that day. "I think I understand that a little, but for whom is the way being prepared? For Ellen?"
"No, for she too is a forerunner of sorts. She must pass the lessons she has learned on to another, but your wisdom will be needed as well."
"Wisdom," I said, smiling. "If it's wisdom you want from me, I think you've come to the wrong place."
"Not so," said Cerridwen, "for wisdom, it is said by your kind, comes from experience. This world of ours will teach you many things if you allow it to do so, and from those teachings you will learn wisdom."
"We also have another saying," I found myself chiming in almost against my better judgment. "In much wisdom there is much grief."
"And that is no less true a saying in this world, though whatever is marred we will always try to mend as best as we can. I would like to show you an example of this."
"Very well," I said. "Lead me where you will!"
With that, she rose and again taking me by the hand, led me out of her grove, but as we passed again through the wall of radiance surrounding it, I thought perhaps to see her again as she was at the council, but still I felt a wind surrounding me as we walked and could not deny the awesome force of her presence.
"My lady," I began, not knowing how I ought to address her.
"Yes, little one," she answered with a deep and maternal tenderness. "What would you ask?"
"Only," I began, "why it is that I still sense your unveiled presence even outside of your grove. I had thought that the grove was some kind of protection for me."
"No, Katherine. You did not need to enter the grove to know me as I truly am, but you did need to trust me and to trust yourself. The world beyond this island is a place of shifting shadows and strange paths. Oh, there are places of truth within it, but they are not everywhere and no path runs straight to them. Here, however, you and I have been able to touch minds and souls for a time in a place unclouded by deceit or misdirection, and now that you have stood upon these shores, you shall have my protection upon you when you go hence. Now, be silent as we come into the clearing before us, for here you shall behold wonderful things."
I dared say no more after this, but my mind still reeled with questions. What did it mean that I would have her protection upon me? How would I be changed by having visited this island of truth, as she called it? I thought perhaps that I knew the answers to some of these questions, however, for as I continued to walk with her and as I still felt awed in her presence, I no longer felt fear. I no longer wished to crumple at her feet in abject servility, but neither did I feel that I could speak with her as an equal. I knew beyond a doubt that this being was far above me in many ways, whereas even though Evangeline and Tara had strange powers and existed on a level that went beyond my understanding, I somehow felt us to be equals, struggling people filled with doubts and fears, and yet determined to keep struggling for as long as the fight would last. While I knew their virtues to be far superior to my own, I also knew that the path they walked was even more precarious than my own, for they were immortal, and the choices they made affected their vary natures down through eternity. As I reflected upon this, I thought that never before had I felt so happy to be a mortal woman. How would it be, I wondered, to be consigned to this strange and eternal existence once you had made some irrevocable choice to sever yourself from the interconnected dance of your fellow beings? Would it not be a kind of living suicide? I found myself praying fervently for Ellen's safe and speedy rescue as we entered the clearing in which Cerridwen had told me that I would behold wonderful things.
The night was all about us here, and I thought I could hear the gentle lapping of water against stone or some other hard substance. As I sniffed the air, I found it charged with the unmistakable odour of myrrh-moss, and when Cerridwen bade me take off my shoes and go barefoot, it was all I could do to restrain my tongue from crying out with pure joy.
"You are come," she said softly but clearly, "to the changing-place. Only those who are truly ready for what it will work in them are allowed to partake of its perilous waters. Below you is a pool and in its depths is confronted the absolute truth of the nature of anyone stepping into it. I have brought you here that you may witness what happens when those who are deemed worthy of the change emerge from their transforming bath." I nodded in acknowledgement and continued to stand, letting my feet be caressed by the balsam which seemed to breathe continuously from the lovely carpet which covered this place.
Then, as we stood silently, I heard the water begin to churn and froth, and for an instant, I feared that it would spill over its banks, but as the foam and spray struck my face, I heard someone walking up some steps near at hand, and before long, a firm hand was slipped into mine in joyous greeting, and Tara stood before me, completely unveiled as Cerridwen was. She could have been like a woman or like a hundred fires all burning at once. I found that it did not matter. I could touch her hand and know her for herself, and even though she too seemed to stand at the centre of a gently-whirling wind, I still knew her for the friend with whom I had lunched and who had guided me to the shores of the great sea.
"The pattern, Katherine," she said. "I see it more clearly than I have ever done before, and it pleases me to know that you and I are bound together within it. Will you still have me for a friend even after such a change?"
"Have you? Why of course I will," I said. "I'm glad you have become one of Cerridwen's people at last!"
"Come now, my Sword of Truth," said that woman, giving Tara what I thought must be the spoken human equivalent of the unspoken truth of her nature, "and stand by me. We shall await the coming of your guide and counsellor."
"And how shall she be changed, My Lady?"
"We must be patient and see. None knows how the changing pool will affect another, not even myself."
At length, the waters were troubled again, and I thought that amidst their roar and rush, I heard a clap of thunder overhead. This frightened me for an instant, but then a familiar voice spoke and a familiar presence, or almost familiar, stood before me.
"Well," said Evangeline, unveiled to my senses at last. "At last we greet each other properly, Katherine of the mortal lands!"
"So we do," I said, and found myself thinking of the painting which Uncle Wart had done of her in her human form. It was a scene at sunset and she was standing by a lake. "So we do," I repeated, "my Lady of the Sunset," and she clasped my hand in approval.
"She learns quickly, Mother," she said to Cerridwen.
"So she does, Daughter. You will need that instinctive knowing, Katherine, when you go among the twilight folk, for they have forgotten much of their true nature and it will be your task to bring them to a right remembrance of it."
"But wait!" said Evangeline now fearful, and the thought of that calm voice full of fear made my blood run cold. "I must tell you something! I fear--I fear we are betray--"
The last word died on her lips as the waters once more were troubled, and this time, I unmistakably heard not only a peal of thunder but felt a rising wind and that familiar creeping chill which I thought I had left behind me in Benet's Wood.
"But how?" Tara rose to her full height and prepared to confront whatever would emerge. "I thought this place was protected from the darkness."
"Alas," said Cerridwen, "if the darkness lies sleeping under a cloak of light, even my keen eyes may be blinded."
"Indeed they may," said a deep and thunderous voice which I both knew and did not know, "and indeed they have been! I greet you, fair ladies. Congratulate me upon my most glorious transformation!" There, within a circle of hissing and flashing fire, stood none other than the Philosopher King, now grown to an immense height and utterly forsaking any pretense at seeming human. His voice came down from high above my head, as though the very sky itself would speak. Beside him, even the venerable Cerridwen seemed small and feeble in comparison.
"What?" he purred hugely. "Do none of you know me? I have at last found what I wanted, even though I could not get it when I stole it from this one here," and hearing an anguished cry, I knew that he had somehow caused some hurt to Tara, and then all became suddenly clear in my mind and I knew who he truly was. Still, I did not understand how this being could be alive, for Ellen and Tara had, as they both thought, killed it in the place where we had held our council. This must be, I now knew, the serpent who had kept Tara imprisoned even as he was imprisoned in his own spell, and whose slaying had been Ellen's second test after coming to this world.
"But how?" I could not believe that even now, the rational part of my mind was asserting itself, but I just had to understand how this could have happened.
"It was quite a coup, was it not? Imagine me being led triumphantly and as a friend into that damned place where I lay imprisoned for so long! Still, none of you knew me! None of you realized that I, the silly Philosopher King, was truly what I in fact am: the Bringer of Night!"
"Oh God," I said. "Oh no! It's true! I know him now! He was the one--the one who met me on the path of the convent that night! How can I know him now and have not known him before?"
"The same way all of you were fooled," he said. "The same way I feigned my destruction and then rose up in another guise to test the young and untried Fisher of Shadows. She thought she had caught me, but I slipped away as cunning as an eel!"
"But you did truly remember yourself," said Cerridwen. "You did sing in sympathy with us at the council!"
"So I did, and it was against my will that I did it. Still, I knew that it would be a good chance to infiltrate your ranks and to come to this secret island."
"Yes," said Cerridwen, "and here you shall stay! I cannot permit you to leave."
"Ah, but your changing pool has done wonders for my vitality, good lady! I have no need of a ship full of shining sailors to take me back across that wide ocean. All I need," he said, his voice growing even more vast and terrible, "is a pair of wings," and before I knew what was happening, a pair of huge and scaly claws had snatched me from the midst of my companions, and the Bringer of Night, in the form of what I took to be a huge dragon, was bearing me away from the sacred clearing, away from the blessed island, away over the storm-tossed sea on wings which beat the air like thunder. The last thing I heard as I felt my mind being overwhelmed with his dark presence was the voice of Cerridwen deep within my mind.
"Remember," she said, "that my protection remains upon you! Sometimes the long way around is the right path to take! Have courage, little one!" Then there was only silence, speed and a sense of almost palpable despair.
It is strange to recall that time now as I sit here in my cell and type these words into my laptop's memory, for as I thought then, I was being carried to my death. I tried to pray and to confess my sins to God as my captor soared higher and higher, beating his ponderous wings above me as he flew, but all prayers and supplications for aid fell dead in my mind and did not spring forth from my lips, because I feared at every moment that the dark one, still in his dragon's form, would drop me from this unimaginable height and that I would be dashed to pieces on some cruel pinnacle of rock or be drowned in the midst of the billowing sea. Of course, I had no idea where I was being taken or even whether we still flew above the sea or had come to land, or whether we were in fact in one of those strange voids which were the chasms that sometimes had to be crossed to reach different parts of this strange world. Of course, even though there was silence around me, I did not feel that sensation of being suffocated by the silence which I had noticed when traveling with Evangeline from Uncle Wart's cottage to the shore of what I had come to call Tara's lake. But what did he mean to do with me? Ellen had said that I had been marked in some way, that the dark ones intended to destroy me, but if the Bringer of Night really wanted to do that, he could surely do it as casually as I might swat at a persistent fly. So where was he taking me and why was I not now being completely crushed under the weight of his dominating will? The only answer to this question must lie, I thought, in the protection which Cerridwen had conferred upon me during our conference in the grove. However, for all the clarity of mind which it seemed to afford me, I was unable to think of any way to escape my current predicament or to rejoin my companions.
On and on we went, the dragon's talons clutching me as though I were a mouse being carried by an owl, and then all at once, he shifted his form, or rather became formless as Tara had done when carrying me from the place of the council, and now I was enveloped in his chill and clinging presence. It was as though some vast and titanic spider had gathered me into its unimaginably huge web, and now at last, I felt the darkness beginning to break down the barriers of protection which Cerridwen had placed upon me. I began to fade in and out of consciousness as I was borne along, but even that does not begin to describe things correctly. I think it was more as though I was fading in and out of existence. At one moment, I knew myself to be Sister Katherine, Kate Matthews, even the Minstrel of Twilight, and at another, I was nothing. I felt nothing. I thought nothing. I remembered nothing of my past, dreamed nothing of my future. I was simply gone, simply cast loose upon the desolate shores of oblivion, without even the sound of the sea or memory to console me.
It was during one of these non-periods, I suppose, that we must have ended our journey, for I have no memory of arriving anywhere. However, when I came to myself again, I felt softness all around me and had a sense of awaking in complete comfort. Indeed, as I began to move, I realized that I was in a large and opulent bed, and I could hear morning birds caroling outside of an open window.
"What? Where am I?" I had expected to find myself in some dank dungeon or other, so when I found myself in a high-ceilinged and spacious apartment and lying in a bed worthy of the most gently-born princess, I wondered greatly.
"You awake then, deary?" The voice was cheerful enough, but it creaked with age and fatigue. "Like some tea, would you?"
"I'm--uh--" I began, "I'm not exactly sure." I knew that I must be among the dark ones, and as I lay in this comfortable bed and pondered my situation, I felt instinctively that all this was a sham, an artifice for my benefit, perhaps to win me by other means than simple domination of the will.
"As you please, lass," said the woman, and then I heard something in her voice that I thought I knew, something in her cadence that was as familiar to me as my own mother's voice. I could not be certain if I was correct, but I had to find out for sure.
"Are you a servant here?" I asked. "Where is this place?"
"You are in the hall of the Philosopher King, of course," she said, "and yes, I've been given the task of being your guide while you are here. Call me Dashwood, if you must call me anything. Now, what about that tea?"
"Dashwood," I said, flashing immediately back to the St. Sophia days and the Jane Austen society of which Ellen and I had been the principal members, "I would love some."
"Good," the cracked voice said, and into my mind came Ellen's own voice. "It's all I can do for you here, give you tea and food and such. I'm sorry you ended up here, Kate, but I see you have been given some protection!"
"He isn't the Philosopher King, you know," I said. "He's--he's--"
"Hush now," said the strange and aged voice. "You'll tell me later, alright? I'll bring you your tea."
As my strangely-disguised friend left the room, I wondered how she had come here. I had pictured her suffering unimaginable torments, but now, it seemed as though she had infiltrated this place even as the Philosopher King had infiltrated the council which Cerridwen had summoned. What was her game? What was she trying to do? Did she know that the Philosopher King had been changed and strengthened on the blessed island, and what would she think when she learned that I had had a hand in his transformation? He had sworn revenge upon her and upon all connected with her, and if she did not yet know that he was the dark one whom she thought she had defeated when he was in his serpent's form on her first journey to this world, was all her sneaking and spying simply leading her into a trap? If it was, I knew that I had absolutely no chance of getting her out of it, but she had said that I could talk to her later, so perhaps she would engineer a further opportunity for covert conversation. Meanwhile, when in Rome, I supposed I ought to do as the Romans did and to see what I could learn about this place while I had at least some semblance of liberty.
Ellen soon came back with the tea and as I sipped it, I knew that it was more than what it seemed, for my spirit seemed to be freed from the last shreds of the forgetfulness into which I had been cast during my journey hither. I was glad to have her with me and to know that, at least to all appearances, she had not suffered greatly since her arrival here.
"Dashwood," I said, being careful to use this code-name, "do they know you're here?"
"Of course they do," she said in her assumed crone's accents, "but they do not know who I am and that is how it must remain for now."
"Do you know what I'm doing here then?"
"Your host brought you here not long ago," she said, "and all he said to us minions was that you were to be treated with all reverence and honour. That, as I learned the last time I was here, does not bode well for you."
"If he hurts you, Kate," said Ellen's true voice in my mind, "be sure that I will do anything I can to help you. You and I will meet soon again, and I will be able to appear to you properly. In the meantime, be circumspect and wary, greet all offers of hospitality with suspicion, and be careful if you are given an audience with your host."
"I will," I said inwardly, "but I have to tell you something about him!"
"I will come for you soon enough," her mind told me. "Be ready!" And with that, taking my empty cup, she quit the room as silently as she had entered it.
Getting out of the vast bed, I began to explore. Soon, I found the clothes in which I had been dressed by Evangeline--how long ago? I could not recall just now. It seemed like years had passed since that morning in Uncle Wart's cottage. Now, I found that I was clad in a night-gown of some rich material, and seeing that this would not do if I were summoned to some public ceremony, I dawned the bard's robes again and suddenly found that I missed the harp. It had been left in the care of some of Cerridwen's people back on the island, so I knew it was likely in safe hands, but I longed for its honest weight at my back and its living vibrations as I touched it. Cerridwen had said that the long way around was sometimes nonetheless the correct path to take, but how was I supposed to accomplish anything in this place? Was I a prisoner? Was I being recruited by my host for some nefarious purpose, and perhaps most importantly, how could I aid my friend in whatever her plan turned out to be?
The room was spacious, as I have said, and I had been provided with every comfort. Hot water stood ready for washing and the breeze blowing through the open window felt like a breath of heaven. Even the scent on it was the same as that I had smelled before in this world. I do not know what I had expected, but its sweet pungency was a balm to me as I took it in. The floor was thickly carpeted and all the furnishings were in heavy woods, and when I got to the door, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it stood wide open. So, I was evidently not meant to be imprisoned amid this luxury, but of course, I should have guessed this before. Dashwood had said that she would be my guide while I was here. I wondered how she had managed that little feat of maneuvering with my host. She must have seen the change in him when he had returned. If she had, I reflected, then she must be brave indeed to continue this charade with him surrounded by his new power. That thought made me think of her in her current form, and I slowly began to realize something. No light came from her and no resonance rang in her voice. She had so far avoided touching me, but if she did, I believed that I would find her hand to be very cold. I would find all this out when she chose to take me to her secret place to talk properly, but until then, I supposed that all I could do was wait and be still, as Evangeline had told Ellen herself to do when they had first met in dreams three years before.
"You!" said an imperious male voice at the door. "You're wanted! Come with me!" And before I could protest, I was borne roughly away.
The passages down which this new being carried me seemed to twist endlessly back upon themselves in such a way as to render my usually rather good sense of direction completely useless. Besides, all the sounds I heard echoed strangely off of the walls and the ceilings, so I soon had no sense of the spaces through which I was moving.
"You know," I said, "I am able to walk."
"Not quickly enough, pathetic mortal," he replied gruffly. "Besides, do you think that the master would make it that easy for you to come to him? You're even more foolish than you seem if you think that!"
Tiring of this witty and sparkling conversation, I decided to keep silent for the rest of the journey. Evidently, this angered my bearer even more, as though my silence was a kind of rebellion that he did not respect from a mortal such as myself. In fact, I could tell that he was attempting to cause me pain by the use of his will, but as on the journey here, it was as though his assaults were being repelled by some barrier, so that only the knowledge of what he was trying to do could reach me. I blessed Cerridwen inwardly for this and hoped desperately that she and my other companions were alright. How could I let them know I was safe? Was I in fact safe? Perhaps I had been given my luxurious bed-chamber only to make the agonies of death seem even more stark when they came. Still, if this were the case, then my host did not know me very well, for I had long ago given up such notions as a grand lifestyle. I had been born into a life of privilege, after all, and something had made me eschew it in favour of the relatively austere life of the convent. If he had wanted to give me some peace, only to take it away again in the end, he should have placed me in a small chapel and had me listen to the most beautifully-sung Compline service I could ever have dreamed of, while all the time pulling out my fingernails one by one with rusty tweezers. As it was, I relished the thought of his being unpleasantly surprised by the singular lack of effectiveness that his henchman was demonstrating in his efforts to soften me up.
Through more passages, across roofless courts, up stairs and down into meandering ways which I thought must lie beneath the castle proper I was taken, and in what seemed an impossibly vast and vaulted subterranean chamber or hall, I was suddenly set upright on my feet, and just as suddenly, I found myself alone. What was I to do now? I could sense no wall near at hand, and no breeze gave me an impression of where the door to this place might be. I did hear the presence of pillars as I stamped my feet, but I feared to simply walk forward, lest I might fall into a pit or begin walking in useless circles. I was sure that this was what my captor meant me to do, and as I stood alone in the echoing cavern, I felt silly for my earlier arrogance in the presence of his assistant. After all, it was none of my doing that his attempt to cause me pain had not succeeded. That was all due to Cerridwen's good offices, of course, and now that I stood utterly alone, I knew that apart from that protection, I had no defense against such a being as he had now become. It was at this point in my thinking that I realized how cold this space was, and just as I realized that and took in what it might mean, my captor's vast and terrible voice rang out all around me.
"Well," he said, honeying his roar with false tenderness. "I am glad to see you here, Minstrel of Twilight. Now, we can begin to talk together."
"I have nothing to say to you," I yelled, my own voice sounding tiny in that vast place. "If your aim is to kill me, then I suggest you do it and get it over with." Make no mistake, gentle reader. I did not feel as brave as I hoped my words sounded, but I thought it best to try and make the best of the situation and show no fear.
"Fine words," he said, "but you forget one thing, mortal! I know you, or I will know you in time, once I break through the shield that my enemies gave you. I intend to know you, dear Katherine, in the Biblical sense, to coign a phrase."
"What could you know of the Bible?" I found myself rejoining.
"I know more of it than you think, little human! Do you not know that I am all around you now? You have no way of hurting me in this form, and all the pretty songs you might sing would die on your lips if I exerted even a tiny bit of my power. In this place, I am all there is, and you shall soon come to know this as an indisputable certainty. However, before then, you and I will talk."
"Alright," I said, using all my effort to form the words, "then why haven't you killed me?"
"Because you have a gift, and I want you to use that gift in my service."
"Are you joking?" Many times at the convent, Mother Clotilde had admonished me for my sarcastic tongue and quick temper, and I heard her reproaches pounding in my brain even as I said this.
"Not in the least," he boomed, "for I believe that you have a gift that no other human has ever had. Others have been able to use the true language. Did your friends not tell you that? How very discourteous of them! Well, nonetheless, there have been others, but none of them could twist it. For most humans, our people's voice is something they can parrot, but as for truly using it, truly directing it as they would, this is beyond the typical mortal mind. It was clear to me at the council that you were leading the song, Katherine of the mortal lands. You were leading it and no one else. This told me that you would be a great ally if I could get you to see things my way."
"And what way is that?" Where were these words coming from? How was I able to stand in this being's presence and not simply faint dead away? All my limbs had begun to tremble, my mind was growing ever more confused with the dancing echoes in this chamber, and yet here I was speaking words of challenge as though I were Job questioning the Almighty.
"Your race has become weak," he said. "It has lost its way and even its will to the mere pursuit of pleasure. Your music could give it new purpose, could help your people break free of their silly and pathetic lives and become something more than the sum of their parts. With you to inspire them and the true language upon your lips, why even the smallest child would sit in state as a king! Listen, and I will tell you what it will be like!"
Then, the fullness of his considerable voice firmly under his control, he began to chant in the ancient language. As I listened to the lofty syllables pouring through the air around me, I recalled what Evangeline had said in our first true lesson. She had said that those of the dark way had lost what she called her people's voice, by which she had meant the very language that the Bringer of Night was now chanting. So how was it that he was now able to access that set of sympathetic harmonies with all created life? How could he, a creature of the dark path, now wield the power which had, so far as I knew, been the only advantage of which those of the light could boast? I could see now that he was an entirely new creation of sorts, an undying one with a dark will who had, because of his brief return to the light and his emersion in the changing pool, gained the ability once again to use that primal and lovely language for his own unlovely ends, and what was worse, as he continued to chant, I began to see what he wanted me to see. Even though a part of my mind knew the vision to be false, I began to understand how he would make humanity into true rulers of our world. The only hitch was that whenever an undying one of the light spoke that language, I felt a deep sense of peace suffusing my being, whereas when I heard it now, all I could feel was that creeping chill, and I realized too late that here, at last, was a way for my captor to break through the defenses set round me by the only unfallen member of his race. Cerridwen could never have stood against the very language of the stars, the very voice of creation itself, and so, as I continued to listen spell-bound to the beautiful words, my mind, my heart and even my spirit began to sink under their shining weight. I was drowning in beauty, but it was, for all that, a fatal beauty which had no power to comfort. Just as I was about to sink beneath his will forever, I was recalled by the call of another voice sounding every bit as vast as his own and filled with true authority.
"Stop!" was all this voice said, "and in that one ringing word, I knew who it must be. Ellen herself had come, now no longer disguised, and I was no longer alone.
"So!" said the Bringer of Night softly. "I wondered when I might be seeing you! How does your wound, Fisher of Shadows? Does it still pain you perchance?"
"Never mind that," she said. "At least my suspicions have proven true! I have had a long while to think about that wound I was given by the serpent, and I wondered why none of those of the light could heal it. It only stood to reason that the answer lay in the fact that my wounder had not actually been destroyed. So where had he gone? Then I recalled my last sojourn in your castle. I had thought that the coming of the dark ones as I completed the quest of the bell had been a mere coincidence. I had actually wished for your safety, for even though you had played me false, I was convinced that this was only the nature of the test. How naive I was! I know that I cannot destroy you, changed as you are, but I can take my friend out of here, for here is a thing which I do not think you intended when you wounded me. You and I are now bound by an unbreakable bond. I know you, Bringer of Night, and I now bind you from using our people's voice!"
"You cannot do that!" he cried, but even as he attempted to use their language to exert his power, the words faltered into silence and he began to shrink and to resume the form he had taken at the council. Meanwhile, as his influence diminished, that of the Fisher of Shadows grew, and before long, I was borne aloft with her being surrounding me and soon, we were out of the castle and flying away on the wings of a rapidly rising wind.
"Ellen," I said after a while, "why did you do that?"
"It was all I could do," she said. "Whatever plans I had for spying out his movements were forgotten when I knew that he was hurting you."
"But how did you bind him from using your language?"
"I--I just did it, I guess," she said, and there was something in her tone which told me that she was not telling me all that she might say.
"Ellen," I said, suddenly alarmed, "are you quite yourself? I mean, where are we going?"
"I don't exactly know how to answer either of those questions," she said, "but we have to find somewhere safe for us both to rest."
"But what is this wind?" As she bore me along in her wake, I could feel the wind freshening to an icy blast. This was the first hint of winter I had felt since leaving behind the snow-laden trees of Benet's Wood, and even the fact that I could feel it while being surrounded by my friend's formless presence was strange in itself.
"They're following us," she said. "That's all I can tell. The binding I placed on that dark one won't last long, unfortunately. What happened to him? How did he become so strong?"
"I'll tell you everything when we get wherever we're going," I said, "and that had better be soon, because I don't think you're able to keep them from me for much longer."
"That's true," she said sadly, "but at least you have been given protection. I seem to have botched things horribly yet again."
I could feel her despair as she continued to carry me along. Her presence was not dark by any means, but neither was it as Tara's had been. She seemed frantic and half mad with fear, and though I had always trusted her as I would have trusted my own right hand, I now perceived that I must be on my guard while I was with her and while we were beyond the aid of Cerridwen and the others. How would we ever find them again? The wind seemed to blow from all quarters at once, and try as she would, Ellen was having a hard time keeping a straight course. What was more, I had the distinct impression that she could not see where she was going, by which I mean that she could not seem to master whatever tides of time and space the undying ones traveled upon. There was never a sense that we traveled through any silent void as there had been when I had journeyed with Evangeline, with Tara, and even with the Bringer of Night. Instead of being a falcon soaring upon the winds and using her power to direct her course, she seemed to be a leaf being driven before them, and I, as her mortal companion, could do nothing to help her.
"We'll escape somehow," she said. "We have to!"
Suddenly, and to my dismay, the wind began to draw together, to shape itself into some definite form, and though it never slackened its assaults upon us, I knew it at last for no mere wind, but for a group of the dark ones who now faced Ellen. Around us there was nothing: no sound of rustling branch, no singing of bird, nothing that my mortal senses could recognize. All there was, in the end, was the swirling wind and the feeling of deep menace that stood arrayed against us. I say 'stood,' but with nothing whatever to stand on, I suppose that this is a poor choice of words. However, let it pass, if you would.
"Ellen," I said. "Speak to them! Do something! They're not like him. They can't use the voice of your people! They hate it! Speak to them!"
"Do you think she can, little mortal?" The voice was soft, sibilant and slow. In fact, it sounded so much like the wind which moved around me, that at first I was not altogether certain of its being a voice at all.
"Of course she can!" I said, but still nothing came from Ellen, neither flash of living fire nor music of flowing utterance.
"Kate," she said, suddenly sounding completely human to my ears, "I'm--I'm sorry! I got you into this and now I can't get you out again!"
"No!" I shouted. "No! This is not how it's going to end!" Indeed, I had no plan whatever as I said these words, and again the chill of the dark ones was creeping into me, but Cerridwen's protection was still keeping it at bay, and I was suddenly very angry.
"This is the Fisher of Shadows," I said, "and I--" Here I gulped. "I am the Minstrel of Twilight! I have been to the blessed island and stood where no mortal has ever stood before! I challenge you myself!"
"It's no use, Kate," said Ellen softly. "They're too strong!"
"It seems your Fisher of Shadows has been caught in her own net," said that hissing voice again, and suddenly, I felt myself torn from Ellen's presence and tossed over and over in a headlong and endless fall. I knew what had happened. They had left me to the mercy of this world itself, knowing that, unveiled to my senses, it would be a mass of confusion to me.
"Ellen!" I managed to call out. "Remember who you are! You are the daughter of Evangeline herself! You have to speak to them! Ellen! Please!"
As I continued to tumble over and over, I thought I could hear her trying to say something to me, but the words were lost in the chaos of sound and sensation that I was experiencing. I knew that I had not long before my mind would be shivered to pieces like a boat being driven onto rocks in a bad storm, but just as I despaired of ever finding a way out of this, I began to hear a soft singing all around me. It was the Gaelic song which I had sung for Evangeline back at the 'Palace of Art,' and as I listened to the voice, I knew it for that of the Lady of the Sunset. This gave me some hope at least, and I tried to still my mind and to let my lips speak the language I had only begun to learn, but while I did find some clarity, my tongue was still mute.
"Come, Katherine!" said Evangeline's voice in the roiling darkness. "You must speak! Only f you speak will we be able to reach you! Hurry, or it will be too late for both you and my daughter! Help will come if you call for it!"
With that, and while I continued to twist and to plunge in this formless void, I found myself recalling the playing of the fountain in that land where I had first sat with Evangeline, that land of mists and flowing streams, and as though the fountain itself was pouring words into me, I suddenly began to speak, almost against my own will. As soon as the words came flowing from my tongue, I found that the horrible spinning and dipping began to lessen, and before long, a familiar presence was all about me and had joined with me in speaking. Soon, my senses began to resume their wonted ways, and I knew that I lay enfolded in Tara's strong presence.
"You're safe now," she said into my mind as the words of her language fled away from me and I fell silent. "We will go to a good place where both you and Ellen can replenish your strength."
"She's in trouble, Tara," I said aloud. "She can't speak!"
"That shall be attended to. For now, it is enough that Gwydion and I have found you both. Rest now, and I will take you to Evangeline!"
As I felt the warmth of her being flowing into me, it was only now that I realized how chilled I had been ever since the Bringer of Night had captured me. Even my flight with Ellen had not been like this. She had not been able to lend me any of her strength. It was even as she had said; she was unable to help me or to stand against the dark ones' assaults. What had happened to her? How had she come to this impasse? Surely such a little time among the dark ones could not have worked this change in her. Something deeper was going on with my friend. Of this I was certain, but what could it be? Would anyone, even Cerridwen, be able to help her? And what of the grand plans which had been made at the council? We had gained and lost one ally already. Were we to lose another one in Ellen? I thought and thought about this, but as with everything in this world of great terror and even greater beauty, it defied logic and reason. I knew that I would not be able to solve these riddles on my own, but I also knew that Ellen was incorrect about one thing. She had said that she had gotten me into this. If that was so, then it had happened on the first day we had met at school. Somehow, I knew now beyond any doubt that she and I had always been meant to stand together in this great battle which seemed to be coming. Evangeline had greeted me in the wood on that far off Midsummer's Eve as though she had already known me, and I thought now as I rested within Tara's comforting being, about that night. As I recalled the verse she had given me to say to Uncle Wart when I told him of the meeting, I understood at last that even then, she had spoken in her own language, but my mind had translated it and made it into a simple poem. What she had shown me, I now realized, was the very path that Ellen would later tread when she came to her time of testing. My mind, however, had not been able to bear the weight of these images, and so I had translated them into words which both I and Uncle Wart would at least in some measure be able to understand. Even then, I now knew, she had been preparing me, but for what? She had told me that I would take the place that she would have held if she had not turned away from Cerridwen and followed her own path. However, now that she was back with Cerridwen again, what was to stop her from resuming her duties? After all, she and I had been instructed to go among the folk of the Twilight so that we might attempt to rouse them and to enlist their aid against the dark ones. However, I thought, now that she had been changed, had she perhaps come to some new knowledge which she had not known before? Would she still be the Evangeline that I had come to know, and yes, even to love? Tara, I knew, was still her essential self, but there was a new splendour about her which was pure joy to behold. I supposed, at last, that all I could do was wait, and as I came to this conclusion, I realized how unbelievably tired I was, and lying suspended in radiant warmth, I soon fell deeply asleep.
When I woke, I found myself once more in a bed, and for a moment, I feared that all the adventures of escaping the castle and losing Ellen and being found by Tara had been a mere dream. However, as I opened my eyes and sat up, I could smell the unmistakable odour of Evangeline's oatmeal as it simmered over a crackling fire, and when I put my feet on the floor, I felt the firmness of wooden planks beneath them and smiled.
"Is this the fabled cabin?" I asked of no one in particular.
"Indeed it is," said Evangeline herself, coming to me and taking my hand for a moment. "How do you, Katherine? You seem to have come through alright, but there is something troubling you, I think. You stirred in your sleep and spoke strange words."
"I don't know," I said. "I'm frightened for Ellen. I feel--I feel that even before she came here this time, something was amiss with her. Did you not see it?" I hoped I did not sound reproachful to my kind and benevolent healer, but I could not believe that such a change as Ellen had evidently undergone could not have been noticed by her own mother and passed without comment.
"Alas," she said as she dished out the oatmeal and handed a fragrant and steaming bowl of it to me, "I was prevented from seeing it until it was too late. It takes a fully awakened mind to pierce all of the deceits of the dark ones, and as you have seen, even that may not always be enough. Now that I am whole again, now that I have come into my true destiny at last, I see how things have gone and how I myself have had a part in the ruin which has almost come upon my own daughter."
"Ruin? Surely she can be helped!"
"She can be, and she will be, but it is not my voice nor my hand which will call her back from the abyss. The light within her is dying, Katherine, and there is only one voice that can rekindle it."
"Then let me go to her now!" I exclaimed fiercely. "I can't just sit here eating breakfast when my friend is ill!"
"You can and you will, child," said Evangeline somewhat sternly. "The food I give you is not only for your body. It will renew your spirit, which I think has taken quite a beating just lately."
"Very well," I said, "but where is she now?"
"In a place of safety," said Evangeline, "and you will come to her soon."
"Why could I not have been brought to where she is?"
"Because you did not need what she could be given there. I myself will bring you to her in a short while. Do not fear! The flame will burn a little while longer, now that its candle is sheltered from the wind."
"Ellen did something," I said after a while, "back at the castle. Do you know about that?"
"Once you were taken and until you escaped," she said, "your movements were dark to me. A shadow surrounded both you and Ellen that my mind could not penetrate."
"Even now? Even after--"
"Even after that, yes," she said, a deep sorrow ringing hollowly in her musical voice. "However, tell me about it, if you would."
"Well," I began, "the dark one, the Bringer of night I mean, has the ability to use your speech for his own purposes."
"We feared this possibility," said my benefactress. "And?"
"He tried to get me to be his minstrel, his summoner I suppose. He tried to use the language to get around the protection that Cerridwen had placed upon me."
"That is the answer, then," she said.
"The answer?"
"To the strange change I see in you. You have been considerably weakened, and I did not understand how until now. But do not worry. You will be set to rights again."
"Alright," I said uncertainly. "Well, Ellen came in then. She had been disguised as an old servant in the castle, or that's how she came to me when I first got there, but when she knew this thing was happening, she came to where we were and she--she bound him from speaking. She did not speak herself, you understand, but she bound him from speaking your language, at least for a time. How was she able to do that?"
"She should not have been able to do it, Katherine," said Evangeline. "This is a grievous thing you tell me! We are forbidden from binding another of our race to silence. That is an ancient curse which the dark ones managed to weave long ago. It cannot work forever, as you say, but it does severely weaken anyone at whom it is aimed for a little time."
"So how did she learn it?"
"That is something we shall have to find out," she said. "Have you finished?" I had, and once I had washed and drunk a glass of pure water, I was once again borne aloft.
"You seem to bear this mode of travel well," said Evangeline's voice from all around me as we went. "I was unsure whether you would, so I did not use it when last we journeyed together."
"Tara seemed to have no qualms about it," I said.
"No indeed," said Evangeline with a laugh that thrilled through my entire being. "She came to know you quickly."
"Is she with Ellen now?"
"Yes she is, and so is young Gwydion. It seems that our place of retreat is not to be the hall of the Philosopher King, but it will still afford us a safe place to be."
"And what of Cerridwen?"
"She has pledged to come if she is needed, but for now she waits until we call for her."
"Should she not be at this place of retreat of yours? I thought her plan had originally been to go with the Philosopher King to his castle."
"Do you never tire of asking questions, Katherine? Ah, but of course I know the answer already. Asking questions is your way of making sense of madness. Very well then, I will try to satisfy your curiosity. The place of retreat to which we are going already has some strong protection upon it. She would have gone with the Philosopher King to see that his castle was rid once and for all of any dark influence which might have come their during his sojourn there as one of the folk of the Twilight. She could have reclaimed it if he really had been simply one of the folk of the twilight. As things turned out, however, she finally knew him for one of the dark ones, and so there was nothing which her presence could redeem at that time."
"Do you know the truth about Ellen's old wound?"
"I know it now as your mind speaks it to me," she said, "and I feared something of this kind. Ellen must come to fight with this dark one in some final battle, and she must either destroy him and finally be healed, or be destroyed herself. This is a hard destiny, Katherine. Is it not?"
"It is indeed," I said, "but if I can help her, I will do so."
"You will be able to help her," said Evangeline, and suddenly she had resumed her more-or-less human form and we stood together yet once more upon the shores of the autumnal lake.
"Is the boat here?"
"You will need no boat," said a voice like the voice of a large water-fall. "I myself will carry you to your destination," and in a moment, I was stroking the mane and touching the smooth and spiraling horn of a unicorn, as he bent down to let me examine it.
"Good, Gwydion," said Evangeline. "Thank you for coming! Katherine, you must go with our good friend here. I shall return anon, but for now, I must report all this to Cerridwen."
"But Ellen!" I protested. "Aren't you going to help her?"
"That is not my task," said Evangeline, and was gone with not even a rustle of skirts to betray her going.
"You know," I said, when Gwydion and I were left alone, "you didn't have to come to me as a unicorn."
"No," he said, "but how else should I present myself to a maiden such as yourself? Come now and mount, and I will bear you to Ellen's side."
Finding a convenient stump nearby, I managed to climb up without too much difficulty, and before long, he had unfolded his great wings and had bounded into the air. I fervently wished I could see as we soared high over the lake, but all I could do was listen to the wind rushing past my ears and the cries of water-fowl as they glided to and froe about their business. Now that I knew where we were going, I longed desperately for a good cup of Uncle Wart's tea. Evangeline had said that her food was revivifying to the spirit, but just now, my spirit wanted nothing more than the strong taste of that sacred leaf in my mouth to prove that I was still myself, still Katherine of the mortal lands, for despite loving many things about this realm, I knew beyond a doubt that it would never truly be mine as it was Ellen's. Still, even she had chosen to stay in my world, and I wondered even more now whether that had been a wise decision. Her wound must have continued to bleed away that mysterious essence which all undying ones had as the source of their vitality, and yet she stayed on, never seeking solace with her mother's people. This puzzled me a great deal, and I hoped that I could finally get some truth out of her when next we met. Then, a sudden dive and circle from Gwydion recalled me to the present, and I decided to put all dark and vexing thoughts from my mind and simply to try to enjoy the fact that I was riding on the back of what was, for me at this moment, an actual winged unicorn. Many times I had dreamed of this in childhood, and just as many times, I had awakened saddened by some unnameable sorrow when the dreams had ended. Now, here I was, a grown woman, and my dream was actually coming true. My heart lifted with every lift of the great wings, and by the time he had deposited me at Uncle Wart's doorstep, all care and grief seemed to be wiped clean away by the joy of that wonderful flight.
"Well," said Tara's voice as she came to greet us. "I see you've been showing off again, young sir!"
"I only wanted to give the Minstrel of Twilight some happiness," he said, as I slid off his back and into her waiting arms.
"I suppose you can be forgiven then," she said, and taking me by the hand, led me into the little cottage.
As we entered, I heard a familiar clicking of doggy toe-nails on the wooden floor, and in a second, Ruby herself was jumping up on me and trying as hard as she could to cover my face with kisses, so excited was she to see me.
"Hello!" I said. "And how have you been, girl?"
"She's been safe here," said Uncle Wart, coming down the hall from the guest-room to meet me.
"You ought to sleep, sir," said Tara tenderly.
"I'm sure that's so, my friend," he said, "but so long as Ellen is ill, I can't leave her side."
"Her salvation," said Tara, squeezing my hand where she still held it, "perhaps, has come."
"I hope it has," he said. "I hope you can do something, Sister Katherine! She seems both feverish and cold at once, and while sometimes she is lucid, at other times she raves and screams as though she is being pursued by unseen enemies."
"The truth of the matter," Tara said, allowing me to enter the sitting-room and to take my accustomed seat, "is that her wound became infected a long time ago, and we did not know it. As a result, the infection has spread and has been aided by the dark ones. They would like nothing better than for her to either be destroyed or to become one of the folk of the twilight, those who neither remember their connection to our race nor care that they have lost it. They continue to speak our language, it is true, but only in part, only brokenly, and in doing this, they cause unintended mischief."
"Well," I said, "I'll do what I can, but without the harp--"
"Did you think we would have left that behind?" Tara laughed and placed it lovingly at my side as she spoke. "Come now. Play something while our friend gets you a cup of tea."
I did so, and I found myself singing the Gaelic dream-song again. Tara seemed to like this very much, and began to tell me stories of her time in Ireland. She had lived there through many ages, apparently, but had remained mostly unknown to the land's inhabitants. Still, she had loved the land for its green valleys and heather-covered hills, and it still stood tall in her memory as a place of truest beauty amid a world of chaos. Evangeline's plight had called her forth from her peaceful life, of course, and during her time of service to her friend, she had been changed into the serpent and imprisoned by him who was now called the Bringer of Night. Now, at long last, the changing pool had taken away the last vestiges of that imprisonment, and she had become what she had never thought to be: one of Cerridwen's people. Indeed, as I sat in her presence, I knew this to be true, for though I had only had short moments with her since her change, now I could tell that she was overshadowed by a power even greater than that which she had shown to Ellen before in her garden. The power which Ellen had helped her to regain was now as nothing to that which she now wielded, yet she still wore the form of a lithe and sprightly woman as we talked, and this apparent contradiction of vast simplicity made me marvel greatly.
"What is it you smile at?" she asked as I put down the harp and received the cup of tea from Uncle Wart.
"Oh," I said musingly as I sipped, "just this place. This land. It's full of contradictions. I mean, here you are, sitting in this small cottage in the form of a simple woman, when all the while you could, if you wanted, splinter it to pieces with the flick of your finger."
"I might say the same about you," she said with a laugh. "Here you are, a mortal woman whose life could be blown out in a mere moment, able to sit in my presence and not be broken to pieces by it. Even without Cerridwen's protection on you, you have been able to do this. It is no small feat, Katherine of the mortal lands."
"You said before, Tara," I replied slowly, "that you and I are bound up together in the pattern of things. What did you mean by that?"
"That I am destined to be with you as we complete the journey on which we all are embarked," she said. "As Ellen aided me to regain my power, so I must aid you to find your own. Evangeline is your teacher, but I am to be your protector and your friend."
"But what about Ellen? Once she's--she's well again," I faltered, "couldn't she do that for me?"
"How would it have been if Arthur had needed to protect Merlin at every turn? Do you think that Merlin could have given him truly wise council? Remember that you are to become Ellen's counsellor, Katherine. You and she will each bear a part in what is to come, and since you are mortal, you need a guide and a guardian here. As Ellen once had Gwydion, so now you have me. Do you not feel the bond growing between us?"
"I'm not sure," I said truthfully.
"You do, though," she said, "or how could you have called to me in the darkness?"
"Uh," I said, "I didn't exactly know that I was calling for you."
"And yet you did. You called for me by calling to my nature."
"But it was unconscious, I protested. "I had no way of knowing what I was doing."
"There is such a thing," she said, moving the harp to the side and sitting down at my feet, "as trusting too much in what your mind knows. Intuition is not a failing, you know. You would do well to remember that while you are here."
"But Ellen has lived her life guided almost solely by intuitions," I said, "and look where she has ended up!" As I said this, Tara stood up again and then began to fill the room with her immensity.
"Be careful, Katherine," she said as she towered higher and higher, "that you do not let pride be your undoing. Be not complacent overmuch, for you never know when the wind may change." Then, all at once, she had resumed her usual size and form, and I was left speechless for a time.
"That," said Uncle Wart, "is a handy ability, dear lady! I wish I could have done that in the presence of my students!"
"Well," I finally said, when Tara had resumed her seat on the floor in front of me, "she's right though. I do sometimes think myself better than Ellen. It's silly and I have to try to overcome it."
"Saying a thing and doing it are two very different matters," said Tara softly, "but if I can, I will help you in this as well."
"Thank you," I said, putting down my empty cup, "and now, I suppose we had better get down to business."
"She is in the room where you slept when you were here, Katherine," said Uncle Wart. "I believe I will leave her in your own and this good lady's capable hands. I do feel the need of sleep after all."
"I'm glad," I said, and embracing him quickly, I listened to his tread as he went down another hall to his own room.
In the silence which followed, I carefully picked up the harp but nearly dropped it again when I heard a prolonged and agonized scream from the direction of the guest room.
"Oh God!" I shouted. "Oh Ellen!"
"Come," said Tara, going ahead of me. "Whatever we may meet in there should not be met by you unaided," and without another word, she preceded me down the hall at a very swift pace.
What we did meet when we entered the room was nothing I would have expected. Ellen lay in the bed, writhing under some unimaginable agony, and when I went to her and touched her hand, I was struck by a strange sensation. A rhythmic movement seemed to be just discernable under the skin which was bathed in sweat, and as I pondered what this could be for a moment, in a flash it came to me. Ellen now had a pulse again. Blood seemed to be moving within her. In short, she seemed to have become as mortal as I was.
"Tara," I asked. "what does this mean? Why does she have a pulse?"
"I am not certain, Katherine," said my companion, drawing a chair close to the bed for me to sit down upon.
"Oh, but I am," said Ellen in a crazed voice. "I'm certain! Everything's been undone! All my testing, all my torments, everything! It's all been for nothing, and now you have Kate and will play with her too as the whim takes you, eh? Well, do what you want. You'll not take me in again!"
"Ellen!" I was shocked by the bitterness of her words and the waves of hate which seemed to pour from her.
"What?" she asked through teeth clenched in pain. "Have you come to entertain your sick friend? Well, do your best then. Even my own mother hasn't been here, you know! And you, Tara! I don't know why you persist in coming to me. I've told you how I feel about you! It was helping you that led to my wound! Look," and then a movement of the bed-clothes was heard followed by a sharp gasp from the woman at my side.
"But how?"
"How does it bleed real blood?" Ellen asked in tones of deepest mockery. "Well, I suppose that's a question for the ages, now isn't it? All I know is that I'm tired of all this, tired of everything! It's all been lies and I won't hear any more of them."
"You will hear this," I said, suddenly angered by the change in her, "or the true Ellen will hear it anyway," and putting the harp to my shoulder, I began to let my fingers caress it as they had when first I held it.
Soon, they began to play of their own accord, and the harp's notes rang out joyously and clearly after Ellen's harsh words. Then, before I knew what was happening, that living and lilting music had formed itself into words which came pouring from me like rain upon parched earth. Indeed, I thought as my lips moved to this world's rhythms, I felt as though I must bring the grail to the wounded Fisher King.
"Drink!" my mind shouted as I sang. "Drink, Ellen, and be well! Discard this heavy and mortal flesh and become what you were born to be! Come back to us, please!"
Before long, Tara too was singing, and our voices blending closely with the notes of the harp, the song took on a life of its own as it had done at the council. As it continued, I waited to hear whether Ellen's voice would join us, but though I never heard her singing, I did hear her sobbing, and she was doing this as though her very heart would break. On and on went the music, and on and on went her sobs, until at last, a light began to dawn in the room, and the presence which I had come to know as Ellen Mitchell began to assert itself as it had not done since my first evening at the 'Palace of Art.' Suddenly, my head began to reel with the beauty of the song, and I would have dropped the harp had not Tara caught it deftly and rested it from my trembling grasp before it fell.
"Well done!" she said to me softly, taking my hand for a moment and lending me some of her power.
"Oh God, Kate!" Ellen's voice had assumed much of its former resonance, but I could tell that the wound still lay unhealed within her. "I never knew you could sing like that! I never really knew it until now!"
"Are you alright again?" I asked, reaching out for her hand again.
"I think I will be," she said, taking my offered hand in hers, "but I think it's you who needs the help now! Kate! Your hand is so cold!"
"Really? I hadn't noticed."
"He did this to you," she said. "I know it, and I didn't help matters by running away with you like that into the teeth of his fellows! I'm sorry, Kate! I really am!"
"Ellen," I said, trying to sound calm and to cover my alarm at whatever she had perceived in me, "you did brilliantly! You were weak and confused, and now I know that you were really ill, but you saved me from him twice!"
"But I couldn't save you from the others. I couldn't even speak!"
"Can you do so now?" Tara asked in her serene yet ringing voice. "Can you call for Evangeline?"
"I--I don't know," she said, "but I'll try," and soon, into the silence came the beautiful voice of my friend speaking syllables of that mysterious tongue, and on their wings I was borne back to the incident at the arch, when she had saved me from the influence of the dark ones at Evangeline's prompting. As she spoke, she got out of the bed and stood in the middle of the room, gathering power to herself as one might gather the folds of a trailing blanket around one for warmth, so that by the time she had finished speaking, she was more herself than I had yet seen her, though still with that hint of darkness where the wound still troubled her.
"My daughter!" said Evangeline's voice. "I come!" and at those words, she did come, standing in the doorway of the room as though she were a living ray of sunlight.
"Katherine," she said to me later, after Ellen had come and embraced her with joyous cries, "now it is time for your healing."
"But I feel fine," I said. "Shouldn't we get on with speaking to those of the twilight? What if the assault comes more quickly now?"
"The assault," said Evangeline, "will come, but it will not be begun by our enemies. We are in the process of formulating a plan to surprise the Bringer of Night in his own domain. We have discovered that many of his supporters are in fact not wholly dark, but are truly folk of the twilight. If we can penetrate his defenses and rouse them, that will be enough to severely diminish his forces so that we can at least begin the work of vanquishing them entirely.
"So we need a Trojan horse, I suppose," I said.
"Something like that, yes," she agreed, "but first, Katherine, you must be whole and strong for the task, so Tara and I will be taking you to Cerridwen's island. Only she has a chance of undoing the harm which the dark one did to you back in his castle."
"But really," I said indignantly, "I feel fine!"
"Do you?" Evangeline's voice rang like the tolling of a great bell when she said this, and all at once, I did not feel the least bit fine. My head felt feverish, my limbs trembled and my mind began to slide away into some dark and cold place from which I knew there would be no return.
"There," she said after a while, tenderly taking my hand until I felt better again. "I was authorized to lift the protection which Cerridwen had placed upon you for a little. As you can now understand, I hope, your healing must come swiftly, or when you leave our world, you will surely die."
"But couldn't I take her to where Cerridwen is?" Ellen clearly wanted to be of service to me after all her harsh words.
"No," said Evangeline. "Your meeting with her will come, daughter, but not yet a while. Your task is to travel with Gwydion and to summon all our allies to meet us at the place of council, Tara's island."
"But can we get there without the boat?"
"The way is not barred to you anymore, Ellen," said Tara, "and Gwydion knows the way even if you do not. We will join you there when Katherine has been made well, and then we will discuss our plans."
"Alright," said Ellen, "but I'm not going without seeing Uncle Wart!"
"He sat by your side ever since you came here," I said. "He'll be glad to see you more like yourself again."
"Indeed he will," said the man himself, who had evidently decided against sleeping after all and had now joined us.
"You should have seen her, Evangeline!" he exclaimed.
"I did, Arthur," Ellen's mother said sadly. "I both saw and felt what she was going through. Does not every mother do so?"
"Perhaps not quite in the way you mean it, beloved," he said, "but yes, I suppose they do, and so, I might add, do adopted uncles. Nell, I was very worried about you!"
"I was too," she said, "or a part of me was. A part of me knew that everything I said and felt was wrong, but most of me was just so tired of it all!"
"It's been difficult for you," he said, "but I'm sure it'll all be put to rights soon enough."
"Perhaps it will," said Evangeline, "but I am afraid that now, I must deprive you of your company, save of course for the lovely Ruby."
"I'll be glad to have you go if it means that the dark ones will soon be defeated."
"We'll try our best," said Ellen, "but I have the feeling that this is only the first battle of many."
"Now you begin to see the pattern aright," said Tara. "Your connection to us is coming back!"
"It is indeed, Tara," she said, "and I now understand that I have been away too long. Thanks for everything, Uncle Wart!"
"Goodbye then, little Nell," he said, and I thought I caught the merest ghost of a sob in his jovial voice.
"Come then, Katherine," said Tara, "and I shall bear you across the sea."
"And Evangeline? You're coming too?"
"I am indeed, Katherine, for I have some business on that island myself. I was only allowed to depart in response to my daughter's call."
"Well, Kate," said Ellen, taking my hand in hers, "I suppose we'll see each other soon."
"I suppose we will," I said. "Keep up your courage, alright?"
"And you," she said, "keep up your strength. I've never realized how much I've depended on it over the years until now."
"Ah shucks, ma'am," I said in my best southern drawl, "'Twern't Nothin'," and with that, I was once more borne immediately away, enclosed again in Tara's bright essence.
I can recall very little of that journey now, so tired was I that I slept for most of the way. However, when I woke again, I felt refreshed and ready for whatever awaited me on that beautiful and holy island. What I do recall was that I wandered in a dream of flowing waters and of Cerridwen's soft voice, and as the dream faded, I knew that it had been Cerridwen herself who had been calling me. Tara too seemed to be filled with a kind of silent ecstasy as she bore me nearer and nearer to the island, for though she said no word either aloud or into my mind, I sensed an odd quickening in her presence, a clarifying and sharpening of her nature which bespoke the same feeling as I now enjoyed. It reminded me of the feeling I had experienced when I had first been given and allowed to where the full nun's habit. Suddenly, I had known what it was to be what I had always wanted to be. Indeed, it had surprised me very much, this welling joy in my heart, as my pragmatic mind had insisted until then that the moment of my full profession as a nun could never be as wonderful as my fancy made it. However, as soon as I had been robed, I had felt my heart begin to beat fast and when I was presented to the congregation in this time-honoured uniform, I had actually found myself weeping with the joy of a long-cherished dream now realized. So it was with Tara, I understood. For her, the island of Cerridwen was the one place she most wanted to be, so that with every journey thither, she felt again the keen and heart-piercing joy of achieving her deepest desire. I myself had no such august feeling as that, but I knew that at Cerridwen's call, I would dare to do anything she asked or follow her wherever she led, even were it into the very mouth of hell itself.
As we came at last to the shining shores, I thrilled again to the sound of soft bells ringing, and as I was about to ask Tara where we were to go and whether she knew the way, Cerridwen herself was with us and taking me by the hand. I did not know whether Evangeline had come with us as she had said that she would, but as though I had already asked this question, Cerridwen answered me in her measured and clear tones.
"You and Tara are to come with me," she said. "Evangeline awaits us."
"But I thought she had some other business to attend to," I said, almost forgetting to whom I was speaking as I did so.
"She has, it is true, but she also must bear a part in your healing. Now, keep a firm hold of my hand, Katherine, for if you do not, the ways of this island will hurt you in your weakened state."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You will see," she said, and taking my hand in her soft yet firm grasp, she led me deep into her woodland halls, Tara gliding as silently as a ghost beside us.
Once more, as on my last visit to this place, it seemed to be the hour of sunset. Birds betook themselves to their roosting, singing their vesperal lays as they went, and all about me was the softness and sweetness of a summer's evening. Indeed, as we made our way through the woods, I found myself thinking once again of that night in Benet's Wood when Evangeline and I had first become acquainted. I suppose that this was because these woods seemed to breathe forth the very essence of summer from every bough and bush, and again, as I walked beside the trees, it was as though they whispered their natures to me in the rustling of their leaves. Again I felt dwarfed by the immense vitality of this place, and yet, as I walked slowly, hand in hand with Cerridwen, her presence seemed to invite me to partake of it as I could and to draw strength from it as a thirsty traveler might draw water from a clear and cooling well. I was puzzled by her admonishment to keep hold of her hand, however, for on my last visit here, I had been encouraged to stray as I would over the island without regard to my mortal senses, for they would not, I had been assured, be harmed here. Of course, as I recalled the pain and confusion I had felt when Evangeline had lifted the protection I was under for a time back in Uncle Wart's Cottage, I understood that I had been fundamentally weakened by my struggle with the Bringer of Night, but surely that was of no consequence in this blessed place. Surely I could not but be strengthened by its shady nooks and lofty arboreal cathedrals. However, deeming it wiser to leave this hypothesis untested for a time, I continued to allow my guide to lead me onward, thinking I knew what would be our destination.
As we moved on deeper and deeper into the woods, I felt certain that I was being led toward the grove where I had spoken with Cerridwen, but as she stopped and we came out from the shelter of the trees, the fragrance of the myrrh-moss all about me and the gentle sound of lapping water told me where we must now be. We had come, I now knew, to the changing pool.
"Is this," I began carefully, "to be the place of my healing?"
"It is," said Cerridwen, "and here I must now leave you, but be not afraid, for you shall have good help!"
"Did you perhaps think that I would not be with you to see you healed?" Evangeline's encouraging voice went to my heart like the sweetest of music, and as she came toward me, I felt as though I might cry, so bright and powerful did she seem.
"You are in very capable hands," said Cerridwen. "I shall await you all when your business here is done," and with that word, her presence faded from my senses as though she had never been there.
"The changing pool is before you, Katherine," said Evangeline, "and it is within its depths that you must find your healing."
"But how can I go in there? Surely this is not a place meant for mortals!"
"No indeed," said Tara, "but you have received a special dispensation, I think you would call it, for I have been allowed to carry you through the pool and to see you safely returned to its shores."
"It is even as Tara has told you," said Evangeline, "and I am to prepare you for your journey."
"Prepare me?"
"Indeed yes," said Evangeline. "Even as I dressed you once in those robes, now it is my task to undress you."
"But surely I can undress myself, can't I?"
"You could," said Evangeline, "but you will see why I have been enlisted to help you in a moment. First, you must remove your shoes and stockings."
"I can't wait!" I said, longing for the feeling of the myrrh-moss beneath my feet, and hastily undid the buckles and straps and soon stood unshod, but for all its fragrance, the carpet I stood on did not feel now like the lovely and balm-exuding moss I had been expecting. Now, it was as though I was standing barefoot on hot nails or on thousands of prickly thorns.
"Oh Evangeline!" I screamed.
"I know, Katherine," she said, putting her arms about me and helping me disrobe. "I know it must hurt you terribly. You are experiencing the moss as a true mortal, for your undying essence has been drowned for a time in darkness. Never fear though, for we shall soon have unearthed it again."
"But I was able to speak before," I said, pain now searing me where Evangeline held me, "and your touch did not hurt me as it does now."
"That is true," she said, "but you cannot have Cerridwen's protection upon you while you enter the changing pool. You must be completely naked, with only Tara as your guide. Even without Cerridwen's protection and in your right state, my touch could not hurt you. We know each other too well for that, dear one, but now that you have been weakened and her protection has been removed, it pains me greatly to know that I myself am causing you pain. Once you descend into the pool, however, the pain will end, for it provides its own kind of protection."
"Very well," I said now as I stood naked between the living flames that were Evangeline and Tara. "But how am I to walk to the pool?"
"You will not have to walk," said Tara. "I am to carry you, and while I know it will be painful, the pain will last a shorter time than it would if we asked you to walk alone over the moss. Now, Mistress, is she prepared?"
"She is," said Evangeline, and I found myself wishing that I felt as prepared as she said I was. "Carry her in!"
This time, Tara did not envelop me with her presence, and I silently blessed her for it, for even though she took me up in her arms and I felt the pain of her embrace, it was a thousand times better than being tossed into the centre of a living furnace. As it was, I felt as though the woman who was carrying me was made of raw electrical current, so that even her tender caresses set all my nerves jangling and my teeth on edge.
"Only a little farther," she kept saying. "Only a little farther, Katherine," and then all at once, with a great splash, she tossed me into what I took to be the centre of the pool. At first, the water too was painful, but as Evangeline had predicted, the pain soon wore off and I found that Tara was now swimming beside me.
"There is a current here," she said. "Can you feel it?" I could. Indeed, it was as though we were in the heart of some monstrous maelstrom, for if I once stopped treading water, I found myself beginning to spin in the eddies which seemed to cross and recross each other as they flowed.
"How are we to fight against it?"
"Fighting against it will avail you nothing," she said. "The changing pool will have you whether you fight or whether you surrender. You must not fear the whirlpool, however, for you will not drown. Take my hand! I do not think it will hurt you now, and let the current take you where it will. Remember that this is a sacred pool. It knows its own business very well."
"But," I said, recalling a conversation I had had with Evangeline back in the 'Palace of Art,' "that doesn't necessarily mean that it is not dangerous, does it?"
"I did not say that it was not dangerous," said Tara. "I said that you should not fear it. Now, take my hand!" As she said this, I could feel my limbs weakening, so with a grateful squeeze, I took the slight but firm hand she held out to me and, ceasing to kick my feet, allowed the current to begin spinning me, drawing me inexorably and relentlessly downward as it did.
Strange for me to write, and likely even stranger for you to read, as I went under the water, I never felt the least bit as though I were drowning. I felt a mad rush downward and a sense of incessant whirling as the current caught me, but even though I could feel the water in my eyes and in my nose, and even in my mouth, I had no sense that it was taking away my life. I continued to breathe normally even as I sank deeper, and though the water as it closed over me was extremely cold, it did not feel as though that cold would cause my heart to stop or otherwise do me any injury. However far down we went, Tara's hand still remained firmly clutched in mine, though of course neither of us spoke. Things were happening too fast for me to get a word in edgewise, and as for Tara, I felt sure that she had simply taken the wiser course and had kept her mouth shut out of respect for the situation. I was glad to have her near me, however, for as the downward plunge seemed endless, she was the one anchor, the one safe thing that I had to hold on to. I knew that if I came through this ordeal alive, she and I would be bound by a bond that even I could not fail to be aware of.
At last, as we continued spinning and falling, I began to notice that the water seemed no longer cold or even wet. Instead, there was simply space around us, though it still continued to hold us in an intangible current. Where was this leading? When would it end? Just as I thought all these questions would drive me mad, the descent slowed and the spinning ceased, and as things resolved themselves around me, I suddenly found that I stood on a thick carpet in a high-ceilinged room. From somewhere adjoining, I could hear the sounds of China dishes being removed from a cabinet, and as I put out a probing hand, I felt what could only be the ornately carved back of one of my parents' dining-room chairs. I found myself dressed appropriately as I stood there, for there were good shoes on my feet and I was wearing my graduation dress. Suddenly, I knew that this was not a real situation as such, but rather the reenactment of a memory. I was about to relive the celebration of my graduation from university, which had taken the form, as had every important occasion in my parents' lives, of a tedious and prolonged dinner party. Tara seemed not to be around, but if I stilled my mind just a little, I could notice her presence faint and far off, seeming to look on with mild concern. How I knew that last bit about the concern is hard to explain. I just knew it.
"Well, Miss Matthews," said one of my father's associates, already slightly drunk from his before-dinner scotch. "So you're graduating at last, are you?"
"So it would seem, Mr. Penny," I said, barely able to hide my contempt for such a banal question.
"And what will you be doing with yourself? Is there some dashing young professor waiting to sweep you into his intellectual embrace?"
"God, Sam! Really!" My father could always be counted upon to come to my rescue, and at this admonishment, Sam's interest in me seemed to melt away and he returned once more to his dinner, chewing noisily into my ear as he ait.
"But really, Kate," said Joan Carter, one of my mother's oldest college friends. "What are your plans? No one here seems to know!"
"That," my mother said icily, "is because she has not seen fit to grace us with the information. It seems that whatever her plans are, their exact nature is classified."
"My plans," I said, a fork full of food half-way to my mouth, "are nothing very special. I'll tell everyone what they are when the time is right."
"It's enough that you sold your gold flute," pursued my mother, "without telling us. What on earth did you need the money for?"
"I didn't need the money, mother," I said, suddenly every inch the twenty-two-year-old girl I had been on that evening with all that girl's insecurities and angst well and truly intact. Why had the pool brought me here? What was it trying to show me? I knew there must be a reason, but it was all I could do to try and rise above all the petty absurdities that had been the hallmarks of this night for me ever since its actual occurrence.
"Maybe she's going to join some hippie commune out in California," put in the drunken Sam, sounding every bit like the man in The Graduate who kept insisting that Dustan Hoffman's character should get into the plastics business.
"There are no hippie communes anymore," said Joan matter-of-factly. "They're now called planned collectives or something. All the community you want, I think, but with not so much of the illegal or hallucinatory fun."
"Joan," my mother said, turning her venom upon her friend for want of a better target, "please don't encourage our daughter! Ever since she went to that benighted boarding school and met that Mitchell girl and her uncle, she's become more and more secretive with us." This in fact was not in the least true, but my mother was the type to see conspiracies and bad influences wherever she looked.
"Now Karen," my father began, trying to keep the piece as usual. "You know that isn't true! Ellen Mitchell is a perfectly sensible girl. She's going on to do her Masters, isn't that right, Kate?"
"Yes," I said. "Ellen's a born teacher I think, and a born scholar into the bargain!"
"And what does her uncle think about that?"
"Oh," I said. "Uncle W--I mean, Mr. Collins thinks she's doing the right thing. He's very happy for her. In fact, the two of them are having dinner together just as we are now." Oh, how I wished to be in the 'Palace of Art' at that moment or else at whatever restaurant they had chosen for their little celebration of Ellen's success. I had always felt more at home with them than I had here, and even in reenactment, tonight was no exception. Besides, Ellen already knew of my plans, so if I were there, I would not be undergoing this maternal scrutiny now.
"Mother," I suddenly said, replaying events as they had happened before, "do you really want to know why I sold my flute?" The big deal about selling this flute was that it was a gold flute and it was worth a lot of money and had therefore cost my parents a lot of money when they had purchased it for me. Of course, what my mother had failed to understand was that I had never wanted a gold flute. I had always preferred the tones of well-made silver ones, but in her zeal to brand me as a daughter of privilege, she had opted for the flashier choice despite my protestations. Ellen had always thought I loved it, so carefully did I guard it while at St. Sophia's. The truth was that it had become a sort of millstone around my neck, a symbol of all that I had begun to find irksome about my parents and their ways, and when the time had come to part with it, I had done so with a cheerful heart.
"Yes, Katherine," she said. "Please let me know!"
"Alright," I said, and just as I was preparing to blast the party with the shocking revelation that I had decided, after graduation, to go to a convent and become a postulant, I suddenly found myself feeling sympathy for my mother and the words I would have said failed me. Listening to the tinkle of wine glasses and the scrape of forks on good Spode, I found myself suddenly understanding my mother's point of view and her subsequent actions and harsh words in a way I had not been able to appreciate them before. Here was a woman who had been born with no silver spoon in her mouth but who had been married to one of the richest businessmen in the area, and then, after many tries without success, had born a daughter who had turned out to be blind. All she had ever done for me was try to remove from me the sense of inadequacy which she had always felt as my father's unstatused and unmonied wife. The only trouble about this course of action was that I had never been made to feel inadequate or inferior to anyone. Instead, my father had encouraged me and had supported me, even as my mother had tried her best to shield me from what she considered to be a cruel and uncaring world. Knowing all this then, how would I be able to simply say what I had said in such an abrupt way? I tried to take a lesson from the undying ones, and before I continued to speak, I stilled my mind and waited. Then, when I felt Tara's presence sure and strong beside me, I began again.
"Alright," I said. "I suppose that this is as good a time as any to say what I have to say. I know that this will come as a shock to you, mother, but I think I'm right in believing that father will not find it such a surprise at least."
"We await your pronouncement with bated breath," my father said, and I knew this for a new piece of conversation that I did not remember. So, taking this for a good sign, I cleared my throat and spoke.
"I know that the last thing you want to see me as is a burden on society," I said. "I myself would rather not be that if I can at all help it. However, I believe that there are other ways to get along in the world than by riding on the riches of those who have gone before."
"Is that meant to be an insult?" Sam Penny had come from old money, and I now understood that he also felt a sense of inadequacy when sitting next to a self-made man like my father.
"Not at all," I said, trying to remain calm. "I just believe that allowing my father to legacy me into yet another degree or even into a job would be more than I could bear." No one said anything in response to this, so I went on.
"After graduation tomorrow, I will be making preparations to travel to the convent where I have done my Lenten retreats for the past few years, and where I have lately been given permission to become a postulant. I intend, if I am deemed right for it, to become a teaching nun in the order of St. Agnes."
The room was absolutely still. No glass clinked and no food was being dished out by the servants. Indeed, it was time for them to pour the coffee, but everyone seemed to have been struck stone-still by my words.
"What did you say?" my mother finally asked. "A nun? Really?"
"I intend also to teach," I said composedly, all the while remembering how it had been on the actual night, "if they'll have me of course."
"But you could become a world-renowned musician!" she said, her voice sounding hurt. "What on earth has made you decide this?"
"Nothing on earth," I said, marveling at the boldness of my replies. On the actual night I had announced this, it had come out of anger and had not resulted in anything good. Now, I at least hoped that my new course would be a little more sympathetic to my parents and less concerned with my own perceived right to be heard and to be understood by them.
"I feel called to this life," I continued, "and I promise that as a nun, I will do my best to be the kind of daughter that you raised me to be."
"Well," said my mother quietly and through clenched teeth, "we will have to talk about this further, I suppose, but for now, let's enjoy the rest of the dinner, shall we?" And with that, the servants suddenly resumed their carefully-orchestrated movements, the coffee was soon poured out, and conversation resumed its accustomed flow as desserts were handed round. In this new flow of conversation, I suddenly heard the words and voices blurring and melting together, and as they faded from my hearing and Tara's presence assumed more and more solidity at my side, I knew that whatever this test had been, it was now completed.
"Is that it, do you think?" I asked.
"Here," she said softly, "I am not your guide. Only you will know when the pool has released you."
"Well," I said, now feeling the spinning and plunging space around me again, "I suppose it hasn't done so yet."
Then suddenly, the space began to shape itself around me, and I found myself sitting on a log in a forest. Other girls were not far off but they were laughing at me and calling me names.
"Try and find your way out of here if you can, know-it-all," they said. "We're sick of you answering all the questions in class! So we're going to leave you here overnight! See how you like it!"
The leader of the group was Emelia Evanston, a girl who seemed to take delight in teasing anyone she considered a fair target, and I knew by her voice that I was now back in Benet's Wood, though at the time, I had no idea that that was what it was called. This was my first week of school, and I had been either ignored or teased mercilessly for all of that week by the students. However, the teachers had all fascinated me, for they were all very intelligent and very dedicated to the subjects they taught, and for me, that was enough to make them into idols and role-models. I longed desperately to be taken seriously in those days, and I thought, apparently mistakenly, that everyone would respect me if I showed off the breadth of knowledge which I had gained during my time with my tutor. Well, here at last was my payment for that mistake. The girls had led me out here on some pretense of an evening outdoor study session, only to spin me around several times, leave me sitting on a log, and taking my white cane from me, run screaming and laughing off in all directions. I knew, as I sat there, that this was just another reenactment, but it was a memory that I had tried hard to avoid since it had happened, and so the fact that the pool had shown it to me came as quite a shock. Without wishing to do so, I began to sob as I had done on that evening, and even though a part of my mind knew that Tara was still with me, most of me had been caught by the spell of the memory and held there like a dear hypnotized by a set of headlights.
"God help me!" I prayed, and then I began to say the Hail Mary a few times and that seemed to calm me down. Then, with my adult mind, I realized something odd. Thinking back over this event, I found that I had no clear memory of returning to my room, but when I found myself there later that night, I thought that I must have just fallen asleep and been found by someone out walking or by one of the groundskeepers perhaps. I knew I had maintained sense enough not to move from the log so long as I had no cane, so then how had I found my way back to the school dormitory? Well, I thought as I sat still and let myself fall back into the memory, perhaps I'll remember what happened now if I let it play out.
The chanting of the girls moved farther and farther away on all sides, and soon, I could not hear them anymore. All around me the crickets were singing, and the first hint of fallen leaf-smell hung drily in the air. Reaching into my pocket, I took out my rosary and began to pray it in earnest. It was about the time when I would do that particular devotion anyway, so I thought that I might as well keep myself occupied if I really did have to stay out here all night. As I continued to pray, (it was the joyful mysteries to which I was attending tonight,) I thought I heard a voice speak my name. However, knowing that I had often heard these phantom voices before as I was just dropping asleep or just coming awake, I shook myself for fear of dozing and continued with another decade. Then, as I reached the next Glory Be, the voice came again, this time more distinctly.
"Katherine," it said, and opening my eyes which I had closed in prayer, I suddenly beheld a light near me, and it was from this light that the voice seemed to be speaking. Of course, the adult part of my mind knew what this light portended, but as my child's eyes beheld it, I felt certain that it must be an angel coming to save me.
"Can you hear me, Katherine?" The voice was that of Evangeline, as my adult mind perceived, but I recalled now the extreme sense of wonder that I had had on first hearing it.
"I can," I said, "and I see you too."
"That is well," she said, "for I haven't much time. I see that you are lost. Would you like me to show you the way out of the woods?"
"I would like that very much," I said, "but who are you, please, ma'am?"
"That you shall know hereafter. For now, just think of me as a friend. Will you trust me, child?"
"I will," I said. "I will trust you," and feeling a strange sort of intangible touch on my arm, (I can put it no plainer than that, I'm afraid,) I stood up and was led by my bright companion through the woods and up to the very doors of the dormitory.
"You will not remember this encounter," she said to me now, "until you are ready. However, it will stand you in good stead for future meetings, for a part of you will know me and will understand that I am a friend."
"Thank you, miss," I said uncertainly. "Thank you very much!"
"Come again to Benet's Wood of your own accord," she said, "and if you spend the night, perhaps we shall meet again."
"I will," I said, "perhaps when I'm older."
"Goodbye then, little Katherine! Be of good courage, for you will soon have a friend!" With that, the light faded from around me, and opening the door, I went softly in and managed to find my room. My cane was lying on my bed, and someone was waiting up for me.
"Kate?" It was Ellen, of course, but my child's mind did not as yet know her name.
"Who is it?" I asked.
"I'm Ellen Mitchell," she said. "I'm the headmaster's niece. I saw you heading out with those girls, and then I saw them come back without you and carrying your cane, so I took it from them and I was just about to go out and look for you when I heard you come in.
"How did you find your way back, anyway? I sure couldn t have done it."
"A woman found me, I think," I said, and then all at once, I felt very tired, and even as I sat down on the edge of my bed to take off my shoes, the bed faded from beneath me and I was again in the formless space with Tara.
"Well," she said. "That was a strange memory to be sure!"
"I wonder what will happen now?" I asked. However, I did not have to wonder for very long, for suddenly, the space around me began to feel distinctly wet, but it did not, thank the blessed Lord, feel cold anymore. Instead, it felt deliciously warm and inviting, and as I began to spin counter-clockwise, I also began to ascend through the water, Tara still keeping a firm hold of my hand as we went. Besides the lovely warmth of the pool, I also noticed that this spinning was slower and more leisurely than the journey down had been, so that when my head at last broke the surface, I felt perfectly calm and refreshed.
"Come now," said Tara, "and I will take you to the steps. Evangeline is waiting to meet you!"
With infinite tenderness, she put her arm around my waist and upheld me as we moved through the water, and before long, my feet found the steps at the edge of the pool and I began to ascend. They felt as smooth as glass but were somehow not slippery or treacherous, and with Tara at my side, I felt very safe indeed. However, as my feet touched the mossy shore and even though it did not burn me as it had done before, I suddenly felt great trepidation about once more coming into Evangeline's presence. At first, I was not sure of the source of this emotion, for as I say, I was very calm and refreshed otherwise, but as I stood for a second at the edge of the pool, I began to understand what was wrong. Tara still stood beside me in her wonted woman's form, but suddenly, and with a keenness I had never known before, I could sense the truth of her more fully than I ever had. Oh, it was still veiled from me for the benefit of my human senses, but it was there nonetheless, and it was very overpowering. I could feel a new connection between us, and this was confirmed when next she spoke.
"You know more now, Katherine, but you must not be weighed down by the knowledge. If you have begun to know me a little, so much more must you begin to know Evangeline. Your road lies with her now, whereas mine lies with her daughter, but as ever, I will come if you call for me. You must go to her of your own accord and on your own. You know she is not far away, and you know that she means you no harm. it is time to cast aside fear and to do what you have come here to do."
"Thank you, Tara," I said, tears coming into my eyes. "I hope we may meet again!"
"Be assured that we will," she said, clasping my hand one last time, and suddenly, she was not there.
Now, I addressed myself to the journey across the myrrh-moss to where Evangeline waited. I could sense her presence and see the light which had been her calling-card on both that long-ago midsummer's night and that other evening when she had led me out of Benet's Wood and which I had not remembered until the pool had shown it to me. I knew that she was still herself, still the trusted being who had guided me to Ellen and had evidently aided us to become friends, but there was something underhanded in it all as well, I thought, and I was not certain whether I could keep that thought hidden from her if I once more stood within the sound of her voice or the touch of her hand. yet, Tara was correct. There was a reason for everything that was happening here, and it was finally time for me to truly learn it. So, after pausing a while to listen to the stillness of the evening around me, a stillness in which I fancied that the very stars silently sang overhead, I stepped onward, my feet sending up glorious clouds of fragrance where they bruised the soft green upon which they walked.
"Well," said Evangeline as I approached, "do we understand each other then, Sister Katherine?" And there was such a depth of love and tenderness in her tone that I found myself crying with joy and running the rest of the way to her.
"I--I think we do," I said. "You--you meant Ellen and I to find each other! You saved me that night in the woods with those--those girls!"
"I saw a bright jewel being covered with mud," she said, as she began to dress me once again. "I sought only to prevent its being destroyed."
"You saw more than that, I think," I said.
"Yes?" She sounded genuinely surprised at this repost and interested in what I would say next.
"Yes," I continued. "You saw the pattern of things and you saw that Ellen and I might be of use to each other and thereby of help to the whole pattern of events which are being played out now. You knew that through that trick the girls played on me I would meet Ellen, and you knew that through Ellen, I would begin to know Uncle Wart, and well, you yourself by leading me out of Benet's Wood that night led me even to this very moment."
"And if that is the truth," she said, putting some final touches to the arrangement of my bardic robes, "what does it mean to you?"
"At first," I said, feeling her gaze upon me, "I found it a little sneaky, a little underhanded, but now, well, you see more than I do of this pattern, so how can I judge?"
"but what if I were to say to you that it was you who found me when I was lost, you who gave me an anchor in your world once more? For you see, Katherine, that is how I see the matter. After I was pulled from Arthur's side, I was in a void between worlds, a place which was not a place. I cannot describe it so you can understand, and if I were to share an image of it with you, I believe it would drive you insane. At any rate, I was able to briefly appear in your world to save my daughter from the fire which took the lives of her adoptive parents, but after that, my vitality was truly spent. All my will was going into keeping myself at the ramparts, at the border between the worlds so that the dark ones could not cause any more mischief to Ellen, when suddenly, I heard a young girl crying and I saw her sitting in Benet's Wood, lost and alone.
"For me to have heard you meant that you were somehow able to penetrate the barriers if your mortal senses and to reach out to me, though I am sure it was an unconscious action on your part. As it was, I could not bring all of myself into your world at that time, but I tried to show you that I was there and to speak to you, and when you heard me and saw me, I knew that you were using other senses which in most humans are either sleeping or almost completely absent. From then on, Katherine, it was you who were my anchor, my north star. Ellen was my reason for fighting. Arthur was my beloved to whom I could not come, but you, Katherine, just by being who you were, kept me sane, kept me sure of where I was and who I was. I can never repay you for that. It was you, in a sense, who brought me close to my mother and helped me to complete the journey homeward to her and to my true self once again."
I did not know what to say in response to this, but I found that I did not need to say anything. Instead, Evangeline gathered me to her in a warm and deep embrace, and by that action, I knew that no words of mine would be adequate or necessary.
"Now," she said, holding me at arm's length for a moment, "we must go to meet Cerridwen in her grove."
"But what of Ellen? Tara said that she was going to join her."
"That is true," said Evangeline as we began to walk through the woods again. "Ellen needs a war-leader, but do not worry. Tara is still your protector. Even if things have gone awry, she will still fight for you if fighting is needed. However, she must be Ellen's mentor as I will be yours."
We walked in silence now, and yet we did not cease communing, for as we moved beneath the trees and as I listened to the night sounds about me, I also heard or felt or intuited a continual song which Evangeline seemed to be singing within herself, and as I perceived this, I knew that a part of me was spontaneously responding to it, though in a broken and faltering way. As the inward singing went on, I came to know more and more of her life, more and more of the years she spent as a mortal and the deep love she bore for Ellen and for my own dear Uncle Wart; and, to my surprise and delight, I found that she loved me as well, so that by the time we reached the wall of soft radiance which marked the boundary of Cerridwen's grove, tears were once again filling my eyes.
"You are not my daughter," she said aloud as we paused for a moment, "but I think of you as a daughter and a sister of the heart, Katherine."
"I always thought," I said, tears making it difficult for me to speak, "that you just needed me, that I was convenient to your plans. Don't get me wrong, I would have been happy to simply be needed, but well, this is better."
"Indeed it is," said Evangeline, "and together, we stepped through the radiance and stood before Cerridwen.
To say that we stood before Cerridwen is to put what happened next into a truly mortal frame of reference. Actually, as we entered the grove, it was as though Cerridwen was all around us, as though she herself was the grove, in a manner of speaking. No stately woman's shape was before us now, I somehow knew, and though my own body never lost its cohesion, I knew that she was seeing the truth of me just as I was experiencing the truth of her. Evangeline's human shape also fell from her as she entered, so that now I stood, or seemed to stand, in the midst of living light which was not blinding and vital fire which did not consume me. Indeed, as I think back on that experience now, I come to realize that I was not standing, as such, on anything at all. No ground was beneath me, and yet I did not fall. I was being upheld by the life of these two beings, and we were communing together in yet more of that silent singing. I had stepped into a ceremony of parting, I felt, and though no words were spoken, the sense of it came to me in words later. Here is what it was like.
"Welcome," Cerridwen said without saying as we entered and were caught up into her true mode of existence. "Welcome to both of you! No veils can exist between us, for you have been given the protection of the changing pool and you are changed."
"Yet," said Evangeline in that same silent way, "the little one here is not like us. She is still Katherine of the mortal lands."
"That is true," came Cerridwen's answer, "but here, for an instant, she will know as much of what it is to be one of us as she can know it."
"It is a wondrous thing," I said, "to stand where there is no ground and to know that we are a part of something so vast and intricate as what I begin to glimpse now." For I had begun to glimpse in my mind or heart a tiny fragment of what Tara and the others had called the pattern of things, the great and interconnected truth of the cosmos, and instead of finding overwhelming confusion there, I found clarity.
"Only those who are changed can come to where we are now," said Cerridwen, "and here, only truth will do."
"You say well, my mother," said Evangeline. "Katherine and I have seen the truth of each other at last, and she, I think, has seen the truth of herself. have you not?"
"it is true," I said. "I was shown the need for compassion and I was shown my own lack of it. I see now that even the Bringer of Night must be viewed with compassion."
"This is more true than you know, dear one," said Cerridwen sadly. "For he has taken holy things and used them wrongly, and now they will eat him. His own new strength will consume him, little by little. I do not think that his redemption lies with us. Yet, we must hope for it, however and if ever it may come."
"And we must work for it," said Evangeline, "you and I, Katherine. We must journey into the heart of his realm together."
"But how can that be accomplished? Surely he would know you, Lady of the Sunset," I said.
"and so he would," said Cerridwen, "but not if she is a part of you."
"A part of me?"
"Yes," said Evangeline. "You shall bear me as your yourself have been borne. I will be within you but will not possess you. I will be with you, but I will be unseen."
"You are still untried, Katherine of the mortal lands," said Cerridwen, "and we know that there is great power within you, but that power must be directed rightly, and though you will learn how to do this in time, you have not the skill for it as yet. Indeed, this journey with my daughter will, I think, teach you all that you need to know."
"But I'm mortal! I'm human! Surely a presence such as yours would crush me, body and soul!
Ah, said Cerridwen, but you have forgotten the changing pool. We had never thought to see you set foot in that pool, Katherine, but since you have, it has given you much strength that you did not possess before. Do you recall the last time you sat with me here? For you, it was a grove. For you, I was a woman. Now, though you are mortal and bear your own shape, we, at last, can appear to you as we truly are, and even though your senses cannot entirely grasp what that is, your heart and your spirit can hear us when we speak with you and you can communicate with us in the same fashion.
I have guided you before, Katherine, said Evangeline softly. I ask only to be allowed to guide you again, for within the halls of the Bringer of Night are things more treacherous than your former schoolmates, and his ways are more tortuous than the ways of Benet s Wood.
But how will this happen? It frightens me! Into my mind had come all the old stories about demonic possession that I had ever heard, and absurdly, I found myself wondering what Mother Clotilde would think about this offer of true communion.
the idea frightens you, little one, said Evangeline, but do you fear me? Will you not trust me? I tell you that you will not cease to be yourself when I am with you.
Has this ever been done before? I asked, wishing to avoid these questions for the present.
No, said Cerridwen. It is a wholly new thing that we are going to do, but we have seen it in the pattern of things. We know that it can be achieved and that it must be. Greater things will come of it than the doings we now have on hand.
Then come, I said, and I remember holding my arms out to either side of me as though I were being crucified. I felt that this was the most open position I could be in for whatever would come next, but Evangeline forestalled me. Again, she was in her woman s shape.
You are not a sacrificial lamb, Katherine, she said. You are my sister and my daughter of the heart. All you need do is embrace me, and I and Cerridwen will do the rest.
Very well, I said, and knowing that I embraced a living flame, I came and placed my arms about her neck and she gathered me to her bosom.
Now, said Cerridwen, still singing in the silence of her people s voice, No boundaries exist between you. You are two minds connected in the great dance. You are no longer mortal and immortal, no longer human and undying one, no longer Evangeline and Katherine. You are one being, but your minds are separate. You are each other s strength and each other s weakness. You will merge your bodies and you will unite your souls, but neither will dominate the other. Neither will serve the other. You will simply exist within each other and you will each guide and be guided, as is meet.
So be it, both I and Evangeline responded, and then there was a strange melting and blurring of consciousnesses. The singing never stopped, but it seemed to come into even more sympathy with itself, as though two crystal glasses were slowly being adjusted with different amounts of water until a perfect harmonic vibration was achieved. However, instead of shattering as the glasses might have done, we found ourselves to truly be a part of one another, though it was my body which bore the outward shape of what we had become.
There will be times, said Cerridwen aloud, now standing before us as a woman again, the grove having become a grove again for my benefit, when you, Katherine, will have to relinquish your control to Evangeline. Do you understand?
Yes, I said, and knew it to be my own voice and will that uttered the word.
And you, my daughter, continued the lady, will you take that control if she gives it to you?
I will, mother, my mouth said, but this time, I knew it was Evangeline who spoke while I merely listened, but I will not cloud her senses or dominate her will.
Good, she said, then I myself will bear you to the halls of the Bringer of Night.
Must it be you? I asked, for I had felt a tremor of fear from Evangeline at these words of her mother.
I see that you and my daughter are truly connected, said Cerridwen. Do not fear for me. The fact is that I have a part in this adventure as well and I must fulfil it.
Very well, I said, but I knew beyond a doubt that Evangeline was dismayed by this turn of events.
first, however, we must attend the council, said Cerridwen. We must show the others what we have done here. Your harp has already been taken to Tara s island, and you will need it to fulfil your task.
Alright, I said, and felt an inward vibration of assent from Evangeline s consciousness as well, and before long, we were enfolded in Cerridwen s presence and borne far away.
Unlike the last journey I had taken to Tara's Island, I was not assailed by emptiness this time. The void did not press upon me as it had done during my first journey with Evangeline, but, I soon discovered, this was not only due to being enclosed by the venerable being who was now my guide and my bearer. By degrees, as the journey progressed, I came to realize that what seemed void to my mortal senses was, for a being such as Evangeline, rich with vista and filled with vitality. It was true that I could not experience this realm as she herself did, but having her consciousness tethered to my own caused my own consciousness to open out and to perceive the very edges of her reality on its own terms. Consequently, while on other journeys had simply luxuriated, on this one, I remained alert and intense, straining my mind to perceive what came to be only as faint and far-off music might come across a field on the breeze blowing from a quiet country church on a summer's day. Yet, if ever I felt myself falling into that reality, Evangeline would gently touch my mind with her own to draw me back and would admonish me silently to be careful.
This time, we did not land on the shore of the lake but on the island itself, Cerridwen needing no aid to cross. For, it must be remembered, this lake was not a mere body of water. To the undying ones, I now perceived even more clearly, it was a crossing of some great immensity of what I might call time and space. It had once been a prison for that being who was now known as the Bringer of Night, and even though it now as not a prison, it was kept carefully hidden as a secret place of council and of comfort. Indeed, as I set my feet upon the island, I knew that it had now been transfigured even more and had, in fact, become an extension of Cerridwen's own place.
"did you do this?" I asked that being as she resumed her woman's shape beside me.
"did I do what, little one?"
"The island," I said. "It's like your island."
"And how could it be otherwise?" She laughed as she said this, "For Tara herself has been changed. All creation is changed when a changed one dwells in it." I thought there was some significance in this statement that was meant for me.
"Come now," said Cerridwen. "We must ascend the hill. I think Evangeline's presence within you will keep you right," and with that final word, she went before me and I began to climb, this time with no hand in mine.
Of course, to say that I was alone would not be correct either. Instead, as I went, I found that I knew instinctively where to set each step. Evangeline was guiding me as surely as if she had been walking beside me, though it was not as though she was merely giving me directions. It was as though she was lending me some of her sense of this place to augment my own senses, as though I had gained a kind of inward knowing of my surroundings that I thought only possible in my dreams. For it is true that when I dream, it is as though my surroundings are like a familiar story which I have learned by heart. I am still blind in those dreams, but I seem to have another way of perceiving my surroundings which I do not possess in my waking state. This is what it was like as Evangeline guided me up the hill of Tara's island. it was as though every step of the way proclaimed itself in my mind like a well-loved song or a familiar piece of poetry. I knew that hill almost as I knew myself, and though I went in silence, I did not walk slowly or haltingly. I was soon running with no fear of falling and no stumbling in my steps, for the hill was a part of my being as I ran. Indeed, as I gained the summit, I had a sudden thought that the hill itself had been carrying me along with it, and as I thought this, I felt a pulse of approval from Evangeline as though she would say:
"Well done, Katherine. You begin to understand."
to the gate I now came which again melted into mist and admitted me, and here I was, every sense awakened by Evangeline's presence as a part of me, in the midst of friends and companions. Ellen was there, and as Evangeline perceived her, I felt a lovely quickening of joy and gratitude which welled from her as a true and living fountain. Moreover, I felt that Ellen perceived this too and responded in kind, and this, I now realized, was how they greeted each other. Then, as though from a long way away, I heard Ellen's voice speaking my name.
"Kate! Are you alright? like that?"
"It's--it's different, Ellen," I said, "but it's also glorious!"
"You're different," she said, coming and taking my hand. "I'm glad you're better and that I--I didn't cause any lasting harm."
"Is it really as we see it, Mistress?" Gwydion's deep and golden voice asked. "Are you and the mortal one together?"
"We are indeed, my young friend," said Evangeline as I stilled my mind to let her speak through me. "It is as it must be for the time being, but you needed not to ask me this. Surely your own knowing will tell you."
"I ask your pardon," he said. "I just could not trust my own knowing."
"Let all put doubt aside!" said Cerridwen now. "This union has been made within the pattern of things and for the mortal one's protection. She must go into the very mouth of night, and who of us would have her face that darkness alone?"
"This is a glorious thing to behold! Now we can really begin doing things," said Tara, a sudden crystalizing of her presence as though she had dawned some invisible armour and had drawn an intangible sword now coming to my senses.
"Indeed we can," said Cerridwen. "Katherine and my daughter will journey to the dwelling of the Bringer of Night where she will declare herself in league with him. Evangeline will be able to fool him so that he does not see Katherine's changed presence. Then, in the guise of being his servant, Katherine will go among his people and will attempt to awaken as many as will hear her song. They will hate his halls once they are awoken and will wish to flee them. We must be there to set them free."
"You say 'we,' Lady," said Ellen. "Must you be there as well?"
"It is imperative that I am," said Cerridwen. "You will know why when all is over. It is in the pattern of things. That is all that I will say for now. have you found everyone we need?"
"We have," said Ellen, "and they will meet you at the appointed place, but there are not very many of them."
"many of them would not heed the summons," said Gwydion.
"Not to worry," said Cerridwen. "They will come when they hear the rumour of battle. When their brothers and sisters of the twilight are free and when they know by whom they were freed, they will rally to the call at last. This is the beginning of a great wheel of events, my children, and we must set it turning even if we may fear its motion."
"Ancient things will be made new," I found myself saying, "and new things will come to trouble the ancient wilderness."
"It is even as Katherine says," said Tara, "for I have seen it."
"But Kate," said Ellen suddenly. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"I have a debt to pay, Ellen," I said, "and a destiny to fulfil," said Evangeline with my lips as I again stilled my mind, "which cannot be denied, even as you yourself have, my daughter."
"Fisher of Shadows," said Cerridwen to Ellen sternly, "do you not trust that we would have asked her consent?"
"I am sorry, Lady," said Ellen, clearly overwhelmed by the venerable one's presence. "I did not mean to doubt you."
"There is still a need for you to come to your healing," said Cerridwen gently. "I believe that the events we set in motion will bring you to it at last, but not before great trials befall you, dear one."
"Then," she said in typical Ellen fashion, "let's get it over with." I couldn't help laughing at that but I was hushed to silence by a touch of Evangeline's presence upon my mind.
"she is still very vulnerable, Katherine," she said into my mind, "and this is the sign of it. Only when she is fully healed of her wound will she be truly whole."
"I'm sorry," I responded inwardly. "It was just that she sounded so much like my friend approaching some difficult task with her usual grim determination."
"It is that grimness which could be her undoing," said Evangeline in thought to me. "Do not forget this, for you will need to know it in the time ahead."
"Kate?" Ellen was evidently concerned by my silence.
"I'm alright, Ellen," I said and took her hand again by way of reassurance. "It seems that this time it is my turn to be tested. I hope I will not fail the trust you all have placed in me."
"If the trust really were placed in you, little one," said Cerridwen, "then perhaps you might be justified in your fear, but do not fear, for another's hand is guiding us all in this. None of us are alone, and none of us, if we put ourselves into that other's guiding hand, will go wrong. Now, shall we drink the cup of parting?"
With that, Tara brought a meal of which we all partook and a large chalice of clear water from her fountain. as we ate the fruits of her orchard in silence, she solemnly brought the chalice to each of us in turn and we drank, pledging ourselves to this great doing and to one another in fellowship. Evangeline and I did this simultaneously, and I felt, in some indefinable way, that the water refreshed her spirit as well as mine as it passed my lips. This ceremony done, Gwydion handed the harp to me with hands that would have burned me if not for Evangeline's strengthening presence, and Cerridwen, after blessing everyone assembled there, again enfolded my body into herself and bore its two in habitants to our place of testing.
This place was as unlike Tara's island as anything could be. WE found ourselves in a dense and ancient-seeming forest at night. It seemed as though a storm was brewing, for a strong wind blew through the bare boughs above us so that they sounded like rattling bones and chattering teeth. Even the trunks of the trees creaked as they rubbed against one another, and instead of the sweet scents of a forest in spring, the damp and sour odours of rot and decay were all about me. Clammy vapours seemed to festoon the trees and to settle on my head and hands as we moved.
"this is a terrible place," I said in silence. "No wonder Cerridwen did not stay here long."
"I am glad that you will never know just how terrible a place it truly is," said Evangeline into my mind. "However, we have not far to go. The servants of our enemy will meet us before long and will bring us--you, I should say--to the castle. You will always know I am with you, but they must not recognize me. It is also crucial that he not recognize the fact that you have been changed, so I will do my best to conceal it from him."
"I suppose like knows like," I said.
"That is so, yes, and even though his changing was not done properly, he was still changed by the pool, so he would see the marks of it in your being if I did not hide them from him."
I pondered this as she guided my feet along the barely-discernible path. I did not feel very different since the adventure of the changing pool, and as I felt the cold vapours brush against my skin and come stealing little by little into my entire being, I remembered the malice of the being to whose whims I was going to at least pretend to submit myself. I recalled his voice as it crushed me with the weight of the will which drove it, and as I did this, I realized that even though I may have been changed in some way by the pool, I was not strong enough in myself to withstand him if he once found out that I was working against him.
"You are frightened," Evangeline's essence sang into my mind without words. "It will not be easy, I fear, but it will be worth even our lives to accomplish our goal." Believe it or not, I was comforted by this, and we continued our journey in both outward and inward silence.
I stilled my mind as much as I could with a repeated prayer, and I found that when I did this, the connection between us became more apparent. I could feel the chill as something living against which she was fighting, and all at once, I realized that what I felt as cold vapour was for her a kind of poisonous energy, for lack of a better description. Yet, I knew that no one was consciously directing it at her. No one knew she was here. It was simply the effect on this realm that was caused by several darkened undying ones dwelling in it. Then, I thought of what Cerridwen had said about Tara's island having been changed by her own changing, and I knew that this one who called himself the Bringer of Night had indeed brought night to his domain, even as Tara had brought light to her own, for this was the power of the changing pool. It was sacred, yes, but also dangerous, and for one who would usurp its power it held even more danger. He must have known this, and yet he had held to his course. He must have known that it might lead to his destruction. The very touch of Cerridwen's island must have burned him, darkened as he already was when he first set foot upon it, and yet he had walked over stinging turf and searing moss to reach his goal. This strength of will I would have to find a way to guard against when I again stood in his presence. However, I reflected, I was not alone. Evangeline was with me, and if she could not match wills with him, then there was no one, whether human or undying, who could. I knew now what I had to do. I had to anchor her in time and space as we drifted amid this world that was poison to her, while in return, I knew that she would give me the strength to face whatever I would have to face in the halls of the Bringer of Night.
My thoughts were broken by a sudden condensing of the chill which bled through my body and into Evangeline's consciousness into a definite presence ahead of me. I stopped walking and again stilled my mind with prayer. Evangeline cast a warm shield of protection around my mind which enabled me to think clearly. this was not like that night on the path when the dark presence had surprised me. Now, I was ready and I was not alone.
"You have returned," said the dark one. "My lord will be pleased."
"I was taken by the Fisher of Shadows," I found myself saying almost without thinking.
"That one will pay for what she did to my lord," said the dark one, and then his presence came around me and coalesced into a silent whirlwind whose force I had no power to resist, and soon, my senses reeling, I was enveloped in a cloud of malice so strong that it was all that both I and my guide could do to avoid completely surrendering to it. AS it was, I eventually lost consciousness, but this time, instead of falling into blackness, I found myself in the green place where Evangeline had given me my first lessons in her language.
"Are we really here?" I asked her, for she sat beside me as before.
"This is a safe place for both of us to dwell for a time," she said sadly, "but we cannot stay here for long. You would describe this as a dream. For me, it is a memory. Soon enough, we will have to return to where your body is, but we can always come back here when your body lies asleep or unconscious."
"I begin to think that having a body is a hindrance here rather than a help."
"Many of our people, whether they be of the dark or of the light or of the twilight, think this, Katherine," she said solemnly, "but we will prove them wrong. Your sense of survival will help us a great deal where we are going."
"I wish we didn't have to leave here," I said, already feeling my conscious mind tugging at me to rejoin it in whatever dark place it lay foundering.
"I know, but we will anchor each other as best as we can. Now, are you ready?"
Some part of me must have assented, for no sooner had she asked the question than I found myself once more in my body and lying on what felt like a cold and unyielding surface. The space around me was vast, and I thought that I must be in that great hall which had been the site of my last encounter with the one whom I had come to see. My head was throbbing and my ears seemed filled with the sound of the ocean at first, though on further consideration, I realized that it was the pounding of my own blood in my veins that I was hearing.
"I see you are awake," said my captor from the space around me. He seemed unable or unwilling to take a more solid form. Indeed, as I felt myself growing attuned to his presence, I realized that though he seemed strong to me, to Evangeline, he was clearly weakened by the journey we had taken. I could sense her wanting to reach out to him, but she refrained from doing this lest she should betray her presence too soon.
"He is in much pain, Katherine. They all are, especially since our enemy was changed," she said in thought to me.
"I'm sure he is," I said, the chill of this place still crushing my mind in its giant's grip. "Does he know it, I wonder?"
"that is the question. We will only know when you begin to sing, I think."
"Right now," I thought with all my might, "I couldn't sing even if I wanted to."
"You will, however. You will," said a voice into my mind which was not that of my companion, and for a moment I thought we were finished right then. But a reassuring pulse from Evangeline's consciousness told me otherwise.
"I am in the presence of the master of this hall?" I asked, trying to find some dignity in my undignified position.
"You are indeed, my young friend," he said, and his voice was suddenly exceedingly warm and charming. "You ought not to be lying here, however. I'm afraid that my servant was a little overzealous in his attentions toward you. If you will come with me, I will lead you to a place befitting your new role here. I assume that you are here to take me up on my offer?"
"I am," I said. "I realize that you are the stronger leader and that you will be able to teach me things that the others are too timid either to teach or to do themselves." I hated every word I was speaking, but I knew that I had to seem credible, so with all my strength, I tried to calm my emotions and to make both him and myself believe what I was saying. This, of course, was dangerous work, but with Evangeline's reassuring presence to strengthen me, I was able to remain aloof to the hold he was trying to gain over me.
"I'm here," I said, "because I wish to be. You have no need to dominate me the way you do the others."
"So I see," he said. He had assumed a human shape for my benefit, and now, as he took my hand to lead me through the vast hall, I realized that I had gained his respect, and perhaps, his admiration as well.
"Be careful, Katherine," Evangeline admonished me from her place in my mind. "He is not to be trusted, nor is his good regard to be depended upon. Still, you have made a good beginning," and here, I felt the slightest touch of her consciousness upon my own, ringing with warm approbation.
"We will feast soon," said my new master, "and you will play for us. I want to see what you can do."
"But you saw it at the council," I said. "You know what I am capable of."
"Oh, I know what you can do when you are confined to the language that those of the light have taught you how to parrot back," he said, disdain pulsing from him like icy fire, "but I am going to teach you how to do what your fisher of Shadows can do. I am going to teach you how to twist it to your own ends."
"To your own ends, you mean," I said with a laugh, and indeed, that laugh was one of the hardest things for me to achieve in such a place as this. The walls seemed to drip with malice and pain, and while I knew that Evangeline and I were still able to hold our own for the present, I knew that we could not last here for long.
"I hope that you are here, dearest Katherine, because you share my view of things."
"I would not have come if I did not," I said, and we walked on in silence for a time.
By this time, we had exited the vast and pillared hall and had begun to climb several flights of stairs. I was taken at last into a small but well-appointed chamber whose rounded shape told me that it was in one of the towers of the castle, and left to my own devices at last, I could do nothing more than lie down on the bed I had found and fall gratefully into sleep.
"do you remember," said Evangeline as we sat again in the green land of my dreams, "when I first began introducing you to our language?"
"I do, yes," I said.
"Well, he will begin to give you another kind of lesson, and you will need to be prepared for it. You see, his use of the language will seem very much like what you already know, but you will find that it does not make a whole, a complete pattern, either of sound or of image."
"Then how will we be able to use it to awaken anyone?"
"Our job is to make it seem as though you are singing as he would have you sing, but in among his fragments of image and intent we must weave the words of truth. Make no mistake, Katherine! This can't be hidden for long. We will be discovered eventually. It can only be hoped that enough of his people will have come over to our side before that happens."
"I wish we could know how the others are doing."
"They await their moment to enter this realm," said Evangeline, and when they do, then the battle will truly be joined. Now, however, it is time for you to return to your conscious mind again. Your lessons will begin very soon now."
Again, with no actual word of assent spoken by me, I once more found myself inhabiting my own body again, Evangeline floating beside me as my outward senses slowly reestablished themselves and assumed dominance over my inner mind. I felt better than I had when I had first come here, though I could not say that I felt exactly like myself. For one thing, though I was wide awake, there was no sun coming through the high and mullioned window over the bed. All I could hear was the sound of wind blowing through the many chinks in the stone walls of this tower and the cawing of some strange kind of nocturnal carrion bird out in the darkness.
"this really is a horrid place," I said to myself as I rose, "but at least I don't have to rely on sight to get around."
"You truly are uniquely suited to this place," said the master of the house, coming in noiselessly.
"What," I said. "No servants today?"
"You are not here to be waited upon," he said, "but to learn what I would teach you. Now, come with me," and with that, he took my hand and led me quickly down stairs and across courts to a high and broad chamber where stood the harp which Evangeline had given me.
"It will do this harp good to be freed from the service to which it has been put for lo these many years," he said.
"I suppose it will," I said, sitting down on a low bench and taking the dear instrument from its cloth coverings.
'Now," he said, "as you know, this language we speak among us is as much about intent and image as it is about meaning and sound. The mistake which you have made was to let the language drive you rather than using your own mind to shape it." And then, without any warning, I found the lessons beginning.
Unlike with Evangeline, I felt no sense of peace as he made me repeat words and songs which he had clearly created himself. It was all I could do to keep my mind leaping along with his as it jumped from image to image, building castles in the air and them tearing then down with a thought. This, in the end, was what he was teaching me to do: to weave beautiful cloaks in which to hide poisonous daggers, and though I never wholly entered into what he was teaching me, I could not help but be affected by it. and as the lessons lengthened interminably, I could tell that all this misuse of her people's voice was affecting Evangeline as well. She tried to shield it from me, but I knew that she was in great pain of a kind which I could never fully understand. Finally, however, my new teacher seemed satisfied with my progress, and leaving me alone in what I now knew must be his feasting-hall until the revelers should come in, he went silently from the room in pursuit of some other unknown purpose.
"Are you alright," I asked my companion in thought as I rested the harp in front of me and leaned heavily upon it.
"I can bear it," was all her answer. "You have done well, it would seem."
"I suppose I have," I said. "Maybe I've done too well. In a strange way, I found this process easier than the one you showed me."
"It is more akin to your own people's way of seeing things. Is it not?"
"I suppose it is," I said, "though I'd never seen it so clearly until now. How can you want to help us?" I found myself asking suddenly. "I mean, how can you and Cerridwen and the others care about us so much?"
"We are your near kindred, little one," she said. "We should never have been estranged. In the end, of course, you will surpass us in wisdom and strength, but we should be allies for you and not enemies."
"and what about this feast? Will the food be bad for me to eat?"
"I should think not. He knows that you are mortal and he needs you alive. Still, I would be moderate if I were you."
"I will certainly try," I said, but just then, the smell of freshly-roasted meat came to my nostrils with such intensity that I almost forgot my true purpose for a moment.
"Now, he will ask you to sing," she said, "but you and I must sing together. The song he has taught you must mask and yet not conceal the true song of our people. Do you understand?"
"I do," I said, though in truth a part of me simply wanted to relax amid the convivial splendours of what seemed to be a very lifelike medieval feasting-hall. I remembered what Ellen had told me about her own first adventure in the hall of him who had been known then as the Philosopher King. Apart from all the trials she had undergone, she had found the food and drink very good indeed, and I was certain that this being, even in his new guise, would not skimp on my account.
After a while, the guests and friends of the Bringer of Night began to file in, and as I sat in what seemed to be my appointed seat as bard of the feast, I found myself gaining one of those glimpses of what Evangeline was perceiving about this place. For her, though it wore the outward appearance of a feasting-hall, it seemed truly to be an environment filled with the dark presence of its creator, and as the guests came in, I noticed that they were not truly of it in the way that my captor had seemed. These people were different. Though they were not of the dark, neither were they of the light. For though I heard them talking and laughing in great merriment, I could tell that Evangeline perceived them as wandering in a dream which dulled their native senses until they were all-but non-existent, thus making them the easiest of prey for our all-too-congenial host.
"Is this what Ellen could come to because of her wound?" I asked Evangeline without a word.
"It is indeed. Do you see now how dangerous it is?"
"If you spoke to them," I said, "they wouldn't hear you, would they?"
"They would not, no, but they will hear you. Your voice will be new to them."
"I hope so," I said, and then the feast commenced in earnest and I turned my mind to focus on the conversations around me.
What mainly became clear to be between bites and sips of lovely food and excellent wine was that the people in the hall did not know that our host had indeed been changed. They saw him only as their fellow being, a being of the twilight like themselves who wanted only to provide a diversion for them from whatever their usual activities were. he was not holding them captive, at least as far as they knew, and neither had he ever done it before. I suddenly knew beyond a doubt that tonight was supposed to be the night when that all changed, and I was supposed to be the one who helped him change it. These unwitting pons in his game were going to be made slaves of his will if he had his way. However, if I had mine, they were going to be awoken from their deep dream and were going to see him for who he was, even if it meant my death. But then there was Evangeline to consider. She was going to have to help me do what we meant to do, but if I succumbed, I would likely take her with me. So, even though I felt recklessly confident that our plan would work, I tried to temper this with my usual unassailable logic. However, even though I ate and drank moderately as Evangeline had suggested, I found this increasingly difficult to do. I feared some treachery at first, but I realized that in the same way that the water of Tara's fountain had refreshed both myself and Evangeline when my body had drunk it, so the wine was beginning to dull both my mortal and her immortal senses.
"I'm sorry," I said in thought as I finished only my second glass.
"It will be alright," she said, "but remember. Though you perceive this as mere wine, for the others, it is a narcotic. They are like your--your lotus-eaters." I smiled at this, thinking of Odysseus on the island of these idle and drug-addled people.
"Well then, bright Pallas," I continued in thought, "I'm glad I have your favour to defend me against this place."
"My friends," said the lord of the hall at last, "we have a special treat for you tonight. I have found a bard of surpassing skill to play for us. Please draw near and listen to our friend, Katherine of the Mortal Lands."
"Mortal?" The murmur of suspicion and disbelief went around the room as I wiped my hands and drew the harp toward me.
"Yes," said our host, "mortal. You think them beneath your notice, but as I have told you before, they are more interesting than you give them credit for being. Just listen to her and you'll understand."
A hush fell over the hall as I set the harp to my shoulder and placed my fingers silently on the strings. I knew what I had to do, but for a moment, my mind hung suspended between two poles of power: the still dynamism of Evangeline's voice and the ever-shifting and prismatic refraction which the Bringer of Night had made of that ancient song. I began to play and to sing, my song sounding just as the Bringer of Night had hoped it would, but behind it and in among it ran the golden thread of Evangeline's true language. If we were lucky, the Bringer of Night would not perceive it, but I remembered how it had pulled him in before his changing at the council. If it did so this time, we would be lost in a second.
On and on went the singing, and it soon became clear that our host was realizing that his friends of the twilight were not following it as they should have done. Indeed, with the part of my mind which was seeing things as Evangeline saw them, I could tell that some among the crowd were beginning to perceive her presence and to sing quietly in sympathy with her part of the song. She appeared to be telling them to be careful about how they responded, but they soon began to realize what their host and friend had planned for them, and as the song took on a life of its own, I could no longer control it as I had been doing. Soon, the whole room had erupted into sound and our host knew that he had been betrayed. However, instead of exploding with anger as I had thought he would do, he simply let the song continue until it sank naturally into silence and until all the people with him now stood awakened to both their true natures and his at last.
"Well, Katherine," he said, as they all came around me to defend me from his potential wrath, "I see that you have played the game well. However, I do not think that you could have done it without help. I suspect the hand of the Fisher of Shadows in this! Where is she?"
"You will meet her soon enough," said Evangeline using my voice, "but for now, you will have me to contend with if you seek to harm this woman."
"And The Lady of the Sunset stands not alone," said one of the newly-illumined people of the twilight. "We know what you are now and we will see you either destroyed or redeemed, but we will not leave you as you are without a fight."
Suddenly, my world was undone. The feasting-hall was gone, and in its place was that strange void of nothingness. I realized that I had no power to perceive this place, so, after stilling my mind, I allowed Evangeline to use her senses to augment my own.
"do what you need to do," I told her as I retreated. "I place myself in your hands."
"We are not alone, Katherine," she said as her presence sharpened and grew more distinct within me. "The battle is beginning. Soon, I think you and I will be out of it one way or another, but for now, I will do my best to get us through this darkness and to keep you from being hurt."
Then, while my body was caught up into the dark void and my mind began to float away to some distant quarter, whether of safety or oblivion I did not know, I heard my own voice raised in Evangeline's golden speech as she rallied the newly-awakened people of the twilight to her. Our enemy was still trying to win them back, but it was of no use. They had seen his true nature now and they wanted no part of it. I could hear them singing as Evangeline now sang, and even when she caused my mortal voice to fall silent, the singing went on, and as it did, in that unity of sound there grew up harmonies and counterpoints, and it was only then that I began to realize that those of the twilight had seemed to be devoid of personal distinctness. Only now, as they sang the song which was the source and ground of their true being, did their persons, their distinct selves come ringing through the rippling waves of sound and imagery which now enveloped me. I sank beneath its beauty, my mind and senses suffused in splendours, and there I would have been content to remain, caught in bliss like a fly in amber, but I was suddenly ripped from my prison and borne screaming back into the middle of the battle.
Evangeline was no longer a part of me. I did not notice her going, but when I came to myself again, I felt a deep sense of loss where her calming presence should have been. I called out to her desperately with my whole being, but there was no response. What was more, I found myself again in the presence of the Bringer of Night, and I knew what he wanted to do to me.
"Are you looking for someone, Katherine of the Mortal Lands?" he asked coldly. "I'm sorry she can't be with you now, but you'll be with her soon enough. Since you seem so keen to share your body with your Lady of the Sunset, then perhaps you will also be happy to share her prison!"
"What have you done with her?" I knew that this sounded idiotic, but I could think of nothing else.
"this," he said, and all at once I was hurled far away by the force of his will, and I found myself floating in a void of nothingness. there was no place to set my feet and nothing to hold onto. I could breathe, but only just. The air seemed to be thin and unhealthy in some undefinable way, and all I heard around me was dead silence.
"Oh God," I tried to say, but found my words swallowed again before they could escape. "He's keeping me alive in a place where my body means nothing."
"No," said a voice which seemed to come from all around me. "He wishes you to die. I, however, do not," and there, just beyond my range of perception, I knew that Evangeline waited. I tried to move closer to her, but there was nothing for me to move against. All I could do was exist.
"this is all I can do for you, Katherine," said Evangeline's voice sadly. "He has plunged you into our true mode of existence, at least as he sees it, and all I can do for you now is give you some air that you can breathe."
"Why can't we touch?" I wanted her near me more than anything just then.
"I am too weak to come to you, Katherine, but I will stay with you and sing to you. Cerridwen surely will find us somehow."
"I'm so cold," I said in thought.
"I know," said Evangeline. "This is bitter, but just listen," and she began to sing. This time, it was not a song in her own language, but it was that song in Gaelic, the Dream-song. She sang and sang, filling the nothingness with her powerful voice, and even though I knew that helping me was taxing her, I also knew that it was her weakness which was giving her voice its strength. She was spending herself in her singing, much like the myrrh-moss spent itself by being crushed underfoot and was renewed again by its own inherent sweetness.
"We will not perish here," that song seemed to say to me, and then, though what I knew to be my sense of self was rapidly sinking into nothingness, I found myself joining the song, and as I sang, I felt myself drawn nearer to Evangeline's waning presence.
"Katherine," her voice said into my drowning mind. "How is this happening?"
"What?" I responded wordlessly. "The Lady of the Sunset is perplexed?"
"But why should I be?" She said, and a pulse of sweet joy suffused me at this. "There was a reason you were shown that first night in Benet's Wood during your time in the changing-pool after all! again you call me to yourself. again you anchor me. I begin to revive now, but I cannot be with you as I was before. That was Cerridwen's doing."
"That's alright," I said, taking the hand I now found beside me. "We can touch here it seems."
"It seems we can," she said, a sigh of fatigue vibrating through my entire being, "and that is well. The worst thing the dark ones can inflict upon us is a loss of connection, after all."
"Do you know anything of the battle?" I asked.
"Nothing definite. I only hope the others will know we are imprisoned."
"They do," said a voice I was never so overjoyed to hear in my life till then. "Kate, you're coming with me."
"But Ellen," I said, what about Evangeline?"
"I myself will lead her out," said the deep and golden voice of Gwydion.
"Is the battle over then?" I asked Ellen as we moved hand in hand through the strange void.
"Not yet, and I think we'll need both you and Evangeline before it's finished, but you will hopefully have a chance to rest first."
Before long, Ellen's presence seemed to reestablish the world around me in a more human way. We were again in the forest where Evangeline and I had been left by Cerridwen. All around us we could hear those of the light and those of the dark dueling, and ever and anon, an undying one of the twilight would arrive and would stand bemused, uncertain of what to do. Then, before too long, one or other of the competing songs would capture his or her attention and he or she would take sides.
"Some of them are going to the dark," I said. "I have to help them!"
"Cerridwen says not now, Kate," said Ellen. "She will help you first."
Soon, I found myself in what I took to be a glade. There seemed to be a fire burning and Evangeline sat tending it. As I came near to her, I noticed something, some change in her that I could not account for. She seemed restored to herself again, but some fundamental brightness seemed to have forsaken her for the moment.
"You must see Cerridwen, Katherine," she said to me in the tenderest of tones. "Ellen, your place is in the battle."
"I'm going," said the Fisher of Shadows, "but what--"
"Hush, daughter," said Evangeline. "Go and do your duty. You will know all soon enough."
I stood silently and spread my hands toward the blaze as Ellen left, and then Evangeline guided me to the door of a tent.
"She is in here. You must go in alone. I will be here when you come out again."
"Alright," I said, "but can I do anything for you first?"
"No," she said. "hurry now. there is not much time, as you would say."
Opening the flap of the tent, I stepped inside. The air was sweet with the scents of Cerridwen's island.
"Katherine," said Cerridwen's voice as I entered, and again it was as though it was coming from all around me. 'I am afraid that I cannot take physical form now. However, I can undo for you what our enemy has done."
"But I don't feel ill or anything," I said.
"and yet you are ill. If this wound of the spirit is left uncured it will fester and darken you. Stand still."
As I stood in the middle of the tent, I felt her presence drawing close to me. it was only then that I perceived how weak she was.
"Wait," I said. "You can't do this, not for me!" Whether it was because Evangeline had shared my body or because the changing-pool had given me some insight into these beings and their mode of existence I did not know, but as she began ministering to me, I knew that she was somehow dying.
"No one else can do this for you, Katherine," she sang into my mind. "Do not be frightened. All this is in the pattern of things. Besides, what you think of as dying is not what happens with us. All of us must come to this change in the end. IN fact, I have chosen this time and this place, but I will not leave yet. Still, once I help you, you will no longer be able to perceive me as you do now."
"Your daughter seems not so hopeful as you," I said.
"She has never seen this occur before. She does not know what it is to be an unfallen undying one at this time. She has seen some of her companions cease to be, and to her it has been a bitter severance which left a wound. It will not be so now, but she does not know this yet. I will linger here until the battle is lost or won."
"But how were you so weakened?"
"You will know in time. I had hoped to stay and to be the one to heal Ellen fully of her wound when it was right to do so, but alas, this is not to be."
"Thank you for--for everything," I said.
"Be strong, Minstrel of Twilight," she said. "many will need your strength before the end. Now go. I can do no more for you." Even as I heard or felt these words, I knew she had spoken truly, for her presence began to fade from my senses, and only the merest hint of her island's sweet fragrance in the air told me that she was still there.
Turning slowly and opening the flap again, I stepped out of the tent and went to where Evangeline still sat feeding the fire.
"I see she has told you," my companion said aloud as I sat beside her and took her offered hand.
"She didn't have to tell me," I said, "but yes, she did explain something of what will happen to her."
"it is as I feared. I would it were not so."
"How has it come to this?" I felt tears of anger burning my eyes. How could such a venerable being like Cerridwen be brought so low? it did not seem just in the least.
"I was almost consumed when Gwydion brought me to her. She had already done much in the battle to strengthen the fighters and it seems that our enemy had managed to wound her somehow, though I cannot imagine how that was accomplished. Well, she restored me. She has that power within her. Yet, because of the wound she had received, she suddenly became weak. She cannot now be helped by any of us."
"But couldn't you all get together and help her? That song of yours is powerful!"
"it is, yes," said Evangeline, "but if this is indeed in the pattern, then I dare not raise my hand or my voice against it. We must simply let be what will be."
"Then I'll sing," I said.
"You will sing," said Evangeline. "You will sing with me as we sing her to her journey's end, or perhaps for her it will be a beginning; I do not know. For now though, silence is best, little one. The battle cannot last much longer now, lost or won. Take strength from the fire before us and let us simply rest a while."
"But why must we be out here while she is in there?"
"She is only parted from you as we sit here, Katherine. To me, she is nearer than my own self. She will call the others in time, and they will come and she will bid us farewell. Till then, wait. Be still." Those words struck me deeply, for they were the words she had spoken to Ellen when she could only communicate with her through her dreams. That she was saying them to me now meant that she had no other help to give, no other way to tell me what she might tell me if I were truly one of her own. Despite the connection that had grown up between us, despite my singing of that endless song which she had taught me, I felt keenly my mortality and thus my separation from her and all her race. yet as we sat in silence, her hand still rested in mine and I could hear in my mind a hymn of love and longing flowing from her in great waves of unenviable grief. Hers was a heart as deep as truth and her love was a thing of adamantine strength as well as being tender beyond telling. And so, as the fire crackled and as she fed it with sticks and kept it glowing, I waited and was still for whatever would happen next.
Then, as the stillness of that place took hold of me and as the fire continued to burn, as I held Evangeline's hand and knew that she mourned her mother's loss already, there suddenly came ringing out of the night a cry of anguish.
"Ellen!" I was on my feet in a moment, but hesitated when I realized that my companion still sat feeding the fire, seemingly unperturbed by what we had both just heard.
"Yes, Katherine," she said now. "You must go to her. Something is terribly wrong. However, I cannot accompany you, for I must tend this fire while it still burns. it was Cerridwen's duty to do, but now that she cannot, it is up to me."
"So then," I said slowly, "this is not just a fire for my benefit?"
"No. it is the place where our people get their strength. it is symbolically a fire so that you can understand it, but if I falter now, all could be lost. if you go to the edge of this glade, you will be met by a friend. More than this I cannot see. Go well, my friend!"
"And you," I said and turned my steps into the cold and unforgiving night outside the circle of the fire.
Evangeline's prediction came true as I walked out of the clearing and into the thick of the forest. I saw a light before me and felt a strong hand slipped into mine, and soon, Tara herself was beside me as she had been during the adventure of the changing-pool.
"You heard the cry then," she said. "Come. You are the only one who can help her now."
Again I was folded into her presence and borne through that chill place, and not even Tara's own keen life-force could keep the darkness from invading me. However, she was able to shield me from the worst of it, and by the time she set me on my feet again and stood in human shape beside me once more, I felt more-or-less ready to do whatever I would have to in order to save my friend from her torments.
"She is in the great hall," said Tara now.
"I thought it was--well--gone," I said, but then I remembered that it was not the hall which had vanished around me but rather my way of perceiving it had been altered. Now, my senses had reestablished themselves and all the filters between that world and my mortal body were back in place.
"Come now," was all Tara's answer, and she led me through the remains of broken gates and battered outer walls and into the heart of the castle which still stood strong and undamaged.
"The fight does not go well I see," I said.
"There was little hope that it would," said Tara, "but if we do not hurry, then all hope will be lost."
Again the cry came, and I knew it for Ellen's voice as I had done before. However, something was not right. What I had taken for torment or anguish now sounded like savage anger. She sounded wild and insane, uncaring and beyond reason.
"She will destroy him if we let her," said Tara, "and now is not the time for it."
"What? Do you mean the Bringer of Night? Surely any time is a good time to destroy him," I said.
"You forget the pattern, Katherine of the Mortal Lands," she said. "Now is not the time. If he is destroyed now, then she will destroy herself and we will all go with her. You shall understand very soon now I think."
Indeed, Ellen's cries were coming closer as she said this, and in a moment, we stood again in the great feasting-hall. Ellen was there, I knew, but she was not in physical form. Neither, so far as I could judge, was the Bringer of Night, but his presence was just as palpable as that of my friend. They opposed each other, but where Ellen's warm light should have been there was something else, something I had felt before in this place. She was no longer connected to her kindred by any anchor. She was wild, rogue, unpredictable. I was frightened both of her and for her. What could I do in this situation?
Then I heard Ellen begin to chant. her words were in the language of the undying ones, but they did not bind me as Evangeline's had done. They did not fill me with ecstasy, but rather they seemed to rape my very soul with their malicious intensity. Here was an undying one who knew how to speak with wholeness. Her progression from sound to sound and image to image was flawless and without joint or break. However, the flow of her words was wrong. Where the Bringer of Night spoke falsely in order to entrap, she spoke truly in order to destroy.
"If she had been changed," Tara whispered, "she would not have been able to do this. The pattern would be too much with her."
"I know," I said, knowing that Ellen's chanting was hurting her as it was hurting our enemy. "this is what her time among my people has taught her, Tara."
"However it may be," she said, "your voice is the only one which might reach her now. He is stopped by her for the moment, but if she continues, he will be destroyed and she will destroy herself. She's doing this because she saw you and Evangeline cast into prison but she does not believe that you have been freed."
"But I'm right here. Can't she tell I'm here?"
"She knows nothing but her own voice now, Katherine. I will be with you as long as I can, but I may have to leave you. She is, perhaps unknowingly, undoing the very fabric of our nature. it is very difficult to bear."
"I wish I could help you," I said.
"You will," she said. "come."
She took me to where I had sat during the feast. To my surprise, the harp of the Minstrel of Twilight still stood where I had left it. It had not been hurt in the battle. I took it up and placed my fingers on the strings. Nothing else would do for it than a flawless repetition of the words which Evangeline had taught me. Yet, I found it difficult to still my mind while Ellen's rhythmic chanting went on. However, feeling a touch of Tara's presence on that part of my mind which was able to access the language of the undying ones, I suddenly began to play and to sing. Tara too sang, though only softly. I could tell that her remaining with me was taxing in the extreme. I was about to tell her to go when I felt her suddenly vanish as though her presence had been a candle snuffed out by a cold draft.
Now, I was alone, but at the same time, I knew I was not alone, for the singing had taken me. I was singing with the voice of the undying ones. I was naming things truly, and, I suddenly realized that all my naming amounted to one name, one call. I was calling for the Fisher of Shadows to awaken. I was calling my friend back from the brink of total and irredeemable madness. I saw her struggling feebly at the bottom of a long well of darkness. She stood there, herself fallen under the weight of her own words, but as I called to her, she seemed to hear and to respond slowly and with great difficulty. Even our enemy seemed to respond to me. His was a response of loathing and fear, for now he knew that I had been changed and he did not understand this. What was more, he knew that my voice was not only mine but that of Cerridwen herself. Whether she had given me her strength back in the tent or whether she was somehow with me now I did not know, but I knew that what I was singing could only be coming from her unfallen nature.
"Katherine," he seemed to say as I sang and played. "How could your animal feet have descended into that pool? How could you be given gifts only meant for my people? And how can you speak with--with that voice?"
"And who are your people?" The voice startled me into silence. "Who are your people, I ask again?" And now I heard Ellen's true and honest voice, the voice I had always known. "It was you who should never have come to the pool," she continued.
"Well," he said. "Why do you not destroy me for it?"
"I wished to," she said, "but it is not mine to accomplish at this time. For better or worse, you have been hallowed somehow by that pool whose waters I have never seen. If I destroyed you now, I myself would be consumed. You are, I think, weakened considerably, however, and I will find you once again, of that you may be certain."
"Not if I find you first," he said. "You can't stay in the mortal world forever, and once you're here, I'll find you as I found you before. Your wound betrays you, Fisher of Shadows. That wound was given by me and I can smell it wherever you go."
"It may betray me to you," she said softly, "but it also betrays you to me. Did you never consider that? I spent three earthly years denying that connection. I now see that I must embrace it."
"Ellen, no!" I was shocked by this and began to sob in dismay. Had all our plans failed utterly? Could Ellen not be reclaimed?
"It's alright, Kate," she said. "I'm not surrendering to him. Indeed, he couldn't make me surrender now even if he wanted to. It is just that this wound of mine is not as much of a weakness as some have made it out to be. I will never be free of it while he lives, but neither will he ever be free of me. He knows this now, I think. Now, it's time for you and I to leave this place."
"Go then," he said. "You may have woken the people of the twilight, but I still have others who are on my side," and with that, his presence was suddenly gone from the room and I was left alone with the still physically intangible presence of the Fisher of Shadows.
"I'm weak, Kate," she said from all around me. "I was a fool."
"Better you know it now than later," said Tara as she came and stood beside me.
"I hurt you," Ellen said sadly.
"You did," said Tara, "but you hurt yourself even more. Come. Perhaps you may be healed a little," and rapping the harp and lifting it to her own shoulder, she took my hand in hers. Ellen came with us, and between one breath and the next, we had removed ourselves from the hall and were in the glade with the fire.
"Well, daughter," Evangeline said to Ellen who now stood beside me, human shape resumed. "You have succumbed to anger and to malice. You have taken vengeance upon yourself."
"She was stopped, however, just in time," said a vast voice which seemed to come from the very stars. I knew that Cerridwen had spoken though I could not sense her.
"Mother," Evangeline began but then stopped, for something was happening. some vast and awesome transformation was beginning, and though it was beyond my senses to catch, I knew that it was happening because my every nerve tingled with a quickening thrill for which I had no name.
"Hush now, daughter," said Cerridwen's voice, now ringing through all time and space as it seemed to me. "You are saddened that I must leave you, but you do not know what my parting from you will mean. this change was always meant to come to me. I will come to you if I am needed, but you, my daughter, must be as I was. You must bring both your daughter and the mortal one to their respective destinies. After all, have you not been with them from the beginning? You are the Lady of the Sunset now, daughter. Your time will be the sunset of our race, but it will be a glorious one. Now, come to me."
Suddenly, Evangeline's presence was as a blazing fire as it had been in Cerridwen's grove before we were joined. The scents of Cerridwen's island now came strongly into the glade, and as they swirled and mingled, I suddenly knew that several bright presences had joined us there to pay homage to their guide and queen as she began her journey.
"Katherine," Tara said. "Sit and take the harp. You will know what to sing and how to play." I did as she asked and soon, my voice was lost in the chorus of harmonies and counterpoints I had heard only a fraction of in the hall of the Bringer of Night. Everyone was singing. Everyone was naming her whom Ellen had called Cerridwen. They called her Queen of Light and Lantern in Darkness. They called her North Star and Guide of Travelers. They called her Mother of All and Star of Morning. Then, at last, in a final chord of surpassing sweetness, they named her with her own true name, a name that I know but that is untranslatable, and then she was gone from among us and only Evangeline stood there, revealed at last in undiminished glory.
"She is gone," said the Lady of the Sunset as she again took physical form, "but she will not be forgotten. Our minstrel of Twilight has seen fit to chronicle her in a song which will resound throughout our memory."
"But you did that," I said. "surely I had nothing to do with it."
"Till now, Katherine of the Mortal Lands," said Evangeline, kneeling before me and taking both my hands as she had done back in the palace of art, "none of us knew her true name. Even her own daughter had never truly known it, but you brought it to us. You gave us a new purpose, for in knowing her true name, we know our own true being. No longer can we be estranged from your world. No longer can we wait in aloof detachment. The wheel turns and we must turn with it, and there is one more task for you to do before you return to your mortal life, at least for a time."
"But surely she's finished, Lady," said Ellen. "Surely she can rest now!"
"No," I said, for I knew what Evangeline had meant. "The dreamer of Dawn. He must be awakened."
"It is as you say," said Evangeline. "Come. We will all go to the island and Katherine will wake the sleeper as she has done here. Will you come with me once again, little one?"
"I will do so with a glad heart," I said, tears coming into my eyes as I felt her presence, now enriched as Cerridwen's had been, taking me into itself.
"I too have been weak," she said into my mind as we went. "I knew not of the glory of my mother's changing. She has now fulfilled her destiny with that change. She is not gone from us though she cannot be with us. We are only undying ones in name. she is truly immortal."
"But you will come to that immortality as well I think," I responded.
"Perhaps," she said. "We know now that this is our path. She gave us that knowledge through your song."
"Will Ellen be alright?"
"We shall know soon. For now, you must leave her aside and focus on your task."
"I'll try," was all I could think to say, and before I was fully aware, I stood on the island which would now be the dwelling of Evangeline.
"Go where you will for a time, Katherine," that lady said to me. "I will summon you when it is time to do your office."
"Come," said Ellen, materializing beside me. "Tara has offered to show me this place. I've never come here before."
"I suppose not," I said, and taking both their hands, I walked with them through the wall of light and into the woods which I knew that Cerridwen had somehow built with the sound of her own voice.
"So," said Ellen. "What is this task you have to do? Who is the Dreamer of Dawn?"
"Can you not guess?" Tara asked. "You are both his follower and his forerunner."
"Had you traveled by ship as we did the first time I came here," I said, "you might guess who we mean."
"Recall for what cause your mother and I were exiled and imprisoned," said Tara. "Remember what law we were said to have transgressed."
"You mean King Arthur? He sleeps here truly?"
"He does," said Tara. "Cerridwen herself cast him into an immortal sleep, and now that she is gone, he must be awakened."
"But Evangeline is her successor," said Ellen. "I can see that she's undergone some change already, and now that Cerridwen has left us, something more was passed to her. I felt that happen."
"You will see the whole truth of it soon. She has gone to be in seclusion for a while."
"Can we stop a while?" said Ellen. "My wound seems to hurt more here."
"it would overtake you here if I were not with you," said Tara, "but yes, we can rest here."
We were in a small clearing. The evening was sweet about us. The island sang its vesperal chants in birdsong and breathed out its incense in a profusion of flowers which seemed never to close themselves in sleep. I both loved and hated the joy I was feeling, because it seemed wrong to feel it when Cerridwen, its source and fountainhead, had been taken from us.
"Do you think her truly gone?" Tara asked, divining my thoughts. "You shall see that she is not when you meet again with Evangeline."
"Still," said Ellen, "I know what Kate means. She came to me at my darkest hour but I never really got to know her."
"She wanted dearly to meet you here," said Tara, "but now other hands will do the work she left undone in you when the time is right."
"I see that," said Ellen. "I understand that my wound is the only bond I have with the Bringer of Night. Still, how am I supposed to defeat him?"
"All this will be known when the wheel comes round to it," said Tara.
"But you see it now. I know."
"I see something of it, yes. It is mine to see as it is Evangeline's to say, as it is yours, Katherine, to interpret."
"Yes," I said. "I know this much, Ellen. The sword you carry will be his one day as it was before, and it will be you who will give it to him."
"I could give it to him as soon as he wishes it," she said. "Let's wake him up and get this over with."
"He will be brought to awareness by Katherine's song," said Tara, "but not to full awareness. He must be taught and trained anew for this new way of fighting. She must teach him our voice and you must teach him our will and our way of fighting. And also he must know of his mortal nature again. he must learn how his world has moved on since he was carried here. This will proceed as it must. He must first spend time on the borders of this realm for a long while as he sees it. Now, we are summoned." And as she said this, I heard a long and lilting melody come ringing across the island. It pulled me to my feet almost without my will and we three set off toward its source in silence, bound in the spell of the song of summoning which Evangeline had woven for us.
As we approached the wall of radiance which surrounded what had been Cerridwen's grove, Ellen suddenly gave a cry of pain.
"I can't go in there," she said. "Something is wrong."
"You shall go in," said Tara. "the pain will lessen as you step through the boundary."
"Come," said Evangeline's voice. "Tarry not. There is much to discuss here in this place of truth." Then I felt Ellen's hand slip from mine as she was drawn through the luminous veil and into the grove. Tara and I, hand in hand, walked through it of our own accord.
"Welcome to all of you," said Evangeline's voice, now grown even sweeter so that my heart trembled within me to hear it. "It gladdens my heart to see you all here. First, my daughter, who has come to a new awareness of her destiny even as she was almost lost to it and to us."
"I'm sorry," said Ellen. "I wish, well, I'm sorry for what I tried to do."
"Do you acknowledge the danger this wound poses to you?"
"I do," she said. "I know now that I cannot stay in the mortal world so long as I bear it."
"No," I found myself saying, "but I can. I can be the listening post."
"You shall be my hand in your world, Katherine of the Mortal Lands," said Evangeline, "if it please you to do so. You have come a long way and have learned much, but during the time of waiting which will follow the waking of the Dreamer of Dawn, you must learn even more and not be idle. You must gather those about you who will believe your story and who will stand with you in your world when the battle comes, for it will be fought in both worlds, and though it is not the final battle when the pattern of things will finally be known to all, it will be a decisive one and the fate of many will stand or fall by its outcome."
"I'll do what I can," I said, "if you'll help me."
"You and I will never be truly parted, Katherine," said Evangeline. "Cerridwen meant for that joining to occur so that we could remain joined in heart and in mind. I will see you in your dreams most often I think."
"But I think, Kate, that I should keep out of your life for a while," said Ellen.
"What? No," I said, tears coming to my eyes.
"Her council is wise," said Evangeline, taking my hand and drawing me to her. "You have been made strong by coming here. She has come to know her own weakness and instability."
"We'll see each other again, Kate," said Ellen. "Of that you may be sure, but I must go to Tara's island for a time I think and learn what I should have learned from her a long time ago. I could not have been taken so easily had I stayed with my people longer than I did the last time. It was fear which drove me back to our world as much as it might have been courage or arrogance in my new-found nature."
"I will take her with me when this meeting is done," said Tara, "as my mistress so wills of course."
"I will it, my Sword of Truth, for it pains Ellen to be here. Know that it once pained me, daughter, for I too fled my appointed path."
"and now you've come home," I said. "It's like Cerridwen said to me. Sometimes the long way around is best."
"She had great wisdom," said Evangeline sadly. "May I be guided by it in the days ahead."
"But surely she is there with you," said Ellen. "I can sense her or a part of her in you."
"She has indeed given me something of herself," said Evangeline. "It is glorious and joyous to contemplate and it will take me some time to fully come to terms with it. All I do know now is that this grove is my place of strength. It is the place from which I can see the turning of the wheel most clearly. It will not be my part to go to war again, I do not think, but to tend the fire of our people and to feed it with what comes to me from the truest truth." Then her voice took on the ring which I had heard in my own voice during times of prophetic song when she said:
"And Tara will harvest here while Ellen will be her handmaid. Katherine will call her own kind and all shall answer who are of the truth, and we shall all meet again when we must for the muster of mortals and undying ones which will be led by the Dreamer of Dawn and his dragon banner."
"And what of the cross and the virgin?" I found myself asking without thinking.
"Yours to carry," said Evangeline, "as a warrior of Christ. In any battle such as this, He must be represented. now, I believe it is time for Ellen and Tara to depart."
"I'll miss you," I said as Ellen came and embraced me. "I'll keep the 'palace of art' standing somehow."
"Oh, I think it'll stand just fine. Someone will come to haunt its halls again I dare say, but yes. I'll miss you too, Miss Moreland. For the love of all things lemon-scented, don't forget your Miss Dashwood."
"Never, Ellen," I said. "Never in a million years!"
"I think my mother has been a truer friend to you than I have been," she said, "but I'll do better. I promise I will."
"go on," I said. "Learn from Tara as I've learned from your mother. I promise you that it will not be boring." The tears were falling freely as I said these last words but no one forbade me from weeping.
"She will be well-looked after, Katherine," said Tara, taking my hand in farewell.
"Of that I have no doubt, my friend," I said. "You guided me when I needed guiding. I know you'll do the same for her."
"We only part to meet again," said Evangeline, and with that, she and I were left alone.
I suddenly found myself standing before a fire of sweet-scented wood. I did not know whether I was still in the grove, but I knew beyond all doubt that I was still on the sacred island.
"Is this the fire you spoke of, Lady?" I found that to call my companion by the name that Uncle Wart had used was now impossible. I knew too much of her for it to mean anything anymore.
"It is, my girl. I am its keeper now, and yet, I am not alone. She whom some called Cerridwen is still a part of me, and she is teaching me even now as we speak. If you could see what this fire truly is, you yourself would wish only to tend it, to guard it and to ward it against all who might seek to extinguish it."
"I wish I could see it," I said, surprised at my own words, for I was never one to pine for what I had no way of understanding. Now, however, I knew that even if my physical eyes were to see it as my skin could now feel its warmth, I would still be blind to its true nature.
"You and I must now begin to awaken the Dreamer of Dawn, my girl," said Evangeline.
"Where is he? Must we go to him?"
"No, child, for we will need the fire to aid us. And when your task is done, you will be returned to your own place, and I will see you safely home to your sisters. Nothing in your world can hinder me any longer."
"But if you leave this island, won't it be hard for you?"
"Do you not yet understand, little one?" Her laugh rang true and strong amidst the crackling of the flames. "I have been made whole, and when one is made whole, one carries that wholeness wherever one is. This is true of those humans who have been healed as well. They need no sacred places, strictly speaking, for they themselves are living temples."
"I hope that I may be one someday," I said. "Your feet are already on the path," said Evangeline, "but take care that you grow not too sure of your own steps, for it is another's hand that must guide you."
"You truly understand then? Cerridwen seemed to, but I wasn't sure if she had the right of it."
"If she had not the right of it when you first conversed with her, she has it now, and she is telling me of it. Have you not guessed what this fire is?"
"Is it a kind of connection?"
"It is the only true connection that can exist. It is love which must be kept fed by sacrifice, the sacrifice of solitary self to the pattern. But you know this already, child, or you would never have joined your sisters."
"No," I said, "I suppose not."
"Come then," she said, taking me to a seat and placing the harp before me. Then, I heard her taking up another harp, and I knew it to be the one from Uncle Wart's house back in the mortal world. Harps have voices like anything else, and when she struck this one's strings, I recognized its call.
"Now," she said, "follow where I lead," and with that, we began to play and to sing. I knew that I was singing to an old and wounded man who lay upon a bed of stone in some dark yet sacred place, and as I sang, I knew that he grew younger. Then, at the climax of the song, I felt him rise up from his hard couch and stand, tall and yet not fully grown, and begin to walk forward. I thought he was drawing near to where I sat, still playing and singing for all I was worth, but just then, I found myself sitting silently, my fingers still caressing the harp before me, and the only sound was the ticking of Uncle Wart's grandfather clock.
"We have returned to your world, Katherine of the mortal Lands," said Evangeline's voice, filling the room and yet sounding like that of a mortal woman at the same time. "You will return here again when it is time, but for now, you must resume your life at the convent."
"I don't see how I can, Mother," I said. I had meant to use the word "Lady" again, but she did not forestall me.
"I am, in a sense, a mother to you now," she said. "At least, Mother is one of my names now, so it is well that you should call me so. You will do well there, and it is there where you will begin to gather the humans that will help us when we resume our battle against the Bringer of Night. Your Ellen isolated herself and was almost lost because of it. You must do the opposite. Some may perceive the change you have undergone, but to most people you will be as you are. You, furthermore, will know those who will be your allies, for their souls will chime with yours as do the strings of a harp."
"How will I get there?"
"I will once more send you to sleep, and when you awaken, you will be in your accustomed bed."
"I suppose I can say that I came in late if anyone asks."
"You can, but no one will ask."
"What do you mean?"
"You will see," she said, and taking the harp--now I had the one she had been playing while we were at the fire rather than that other, almost-living instrument--she led me along the familiar hallway to my bed.
It was indeed as she said. She played the dream-song and I slept, and when next I woke, I was in my cell at the convent. Ruby was with me, and it was two days before Christmas Eve. I remember wondering if Mother Clotilde would ask me about the phone-call of the night before, but as I began the usual round of daily activities, it became quite clear to me that there had been no phone-call, no urgent summons. The glad days were before us, and I was free to spend them where I belonged, with my sisters.
Even so, I hasten to add that if that other world calls me again, I will obey, and if I can find people whose souls chime to mine, as Evangeline said, I will do my best to awaken them to the truth of our situation. For the dark ones are never far away, and they seek at all costs to put out that fire which Evangeline now guards. However, it is up to all of us to help her to tend it, for it is the fire of love, which burns away all doubt and fear and leaves only truth in its wake. And what is that truth? It is nothing more nor less than communion and wholeness with the whole of existence and its truest source. It was not built by us, for we forsook it long ago, but we can feed and tend it, for it has the ability to reside in every human heart. May it one day blaze forth when the twilight at last gives way to a new and brighter morning!
THE END