Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Fifteen

The dream began as many dreams inside Faerie began for me, on a hill. I knew it wasn't a real hill. It was more the idea of a green gently sloping hill. I was never certain whether the hill had never existed outside of dream and vision, or whether it was the first hill from which all others were copied. The plain that stretched below the hill was green and full of cultivated fields. I'd stood on this hill and watched war come to faerie, and seen the plain dry and dead. Now it was so alive. Its wheat was golden, as if autumn harvest was just about to begin. But there were other fields with vegetables, where the plants were small, just breaking above the surface of the rich earth. The plain, like the hill, represented an ideal. The fact that it was solid underfoot — and I knew that if I walked down I'd be able to touch the plants, rub the grain between my hands, and see the kernels free of the dry husks, all of it real — didn't change the fact that it was both real and not.

There was a tree beside me on top of the hill, a huge spreading oak. Part of the tree had the first green leaves of spring, another had bigger leaves with the tiny green beginnings of acorns, then the leaves of late summer with the acorns green but much larger, then the brilliance of autumn and the brown acorns ready to be picked, all the way to a section that was winter-bare with only a few acorns and a few dried brown leaves clinging to the branches. I stared up at the dark lace of branches and knew they were not dead, but only resting. When I'd first seen the tree it had been dead and lifeless; now it was what it was meant to be.

I touched the bark of the tree, and it had that deep, thrumming energy that old trees have. It was as if if you listened hard enough you could hear it, but not with your ears. You heard it with your hands, or your face where you pressed it against the cool roughness of the bark. You felt the life of the tree beating against your body as you pressed yourself to its hard sides. It was like a slow, deep heartbeat that started as the tree, then you realized that it was the earth itself, as if the planet had a heartbeat of its own.

For a moment I felt the turn of the planet, and held on to the tree as if it were my anchor to so much reality. Then I was back on the hilltop, and I could no longer feel the pulse of the earth. It had been an amazing gift to sense the hum and flow of the planet itself, but I was mortal, and we are not meant to hear planets' heartbeats. We can have glimpses of the divine, but to live with such knowledge every moment takes holy men or mad men, or both.

I smelled roses before I turned to find the cloaked figure of the Goddess. She hid her face from me always, so that I got only glimpses of her hands, or a line of mouth, and every glimpse was different, as if she went back and forth in age, color, everything. She was the Goddess, she was every woman, the ideal of what it is to be female. Looking at that tall cloaked figure, I realized that she was like the heartbeat of the planet. You couldn't see her too clearly, or hold her too starkly in your mind, not without becoming too holy to live, or too mad to function. The touch of Deity is a wondrous thing, but it carries weight.

"If this place had died it would not have been just faerie that died, Meredith." Her voice was like the glimpses of her body, many voices melding into one another so you would never be able to tell what Her voice was, not exactly.

"You mean reality is tied to this place too?" I asked.

"And is this not real?" She asked.

"Yes, it is real, but it is not reality. It is neither faerie nor the mortal world."

She nodded, and I got a glimpse of a smile, as if I'd said something smart. It made me smile to see Her smile. It was as if your mother had smiled at you when you were very small, and you smile back because her smile is everything to you, and all is right with the world when she smiles at you. For me as a child, it had been my father's smile and Gran's.

The sorrow hit me like a blow through my heart. Revenge and the wild hunt had put the grief aside, but it was there, waiting for me. You cannot hide from grief, only postpone when it will find you.

"I cannot stop my people from choosing to do harm."

"You helped me save Doyle and Mistral. Why couldn't we save Gran?"

"That is a child's question, Meredith."

"No, Goddess, it is a human question. Once I wanted to be sidhe more than anything else, but it is my human blood, my brownie blood, that gives me strength."

"Do you believe that I would be able to come to you like this if you were not the daughter of Essus?"

"No, but if I was not also the granddaughter of Hettie, and the great-granddaughter of Donald, then I could not walk through the human hospital to save Doyle. It is not just my sidhe blood that makes me the tool you need."

She stood there, Her hands drawn back into Her cloak, so that all of Her was in shadow. "You are angry with me."

I started to deny it, then realized She was right. "So much death, Goddess, so many plots. Doyle has nearly been killed twice in just a few days. Frost is lost to me. I would protect my people and myself." I touched my stomach, but it was flat, and I did not feel that first swelling of pregnancy. I had a moment of fear.

"No fear, Meredith. You do not see yourself as pregnant yet, so your dream image is how you see yourself."

I tried to quiet the sudden racing of my pulse. "Thank you."

"Yes, there is death and danger, but there are also children. You will know joy."

"I have too many enemies, Mother."

"Your allies grow in number with each magic you perform."

"Are you certain that I will survive to sit the dark throne?"

Her silence was like the wind, howling across the plain. It had an edge of coldness to it that made me shiver in the light of that sun.

"You are not certain."

"I can see many paths, and many choices being made. Some of those choices lead you to the throne. Some do not. Your own heart has debated whether the throne is even what you want."

I remembered moments when I would have traded all of faerie for a lifetime with Doyle and Frost. But that dream was already gone. "If I was willing to leave all of faerie behind and go with Doyle and my men, Cel would hunt me down and slaughter us. I have no choice but to take the throne or die."

She stood with aged hands on a cane now. "I am sorry, Meredith. I thought better of my sidhe. I thought they would rally around you when they saw my grace return. They are more lost than even I could have imagined." Sorrow was thick in Her voice so that it made me want to cry with Her.

She continued. "Perhaps it is time to take my blessings to the humans."

"What do you mean?"

"When you wake, you will all be healed, but there are too many in faerie who would do you and yours harm. Go back to the Western lands, Meredith. Go back to your other people, for you are right, you are not just sidhe. Perhaps if they see that my blessings can pass them by and be given to others, it will make them more careful of them."

"Are you saying you would use me to give magic to mortals?"

"I am saying that if the sidhe turn away from me and mine, then we should see if there are other more grateful hearts and minds."

"The sidhe are magic, Mother; humans are not."

"The very workings of their bodies are magic, Meredith. It is all miracles. Now sleep, and wake rested, and know that I will do what I can for you. I will speak loudly to those who still listen. To those who have shut their hearts and minds to me, I can only put obstacles in their paths." She gestured toward me, and Her hand was young again. "Rest now, and when you wake you will go back to the mortal world."

The vision began to fade, and I was once more aware that I was in bed with my men. My hand no longer ached from the thorns, and I could move it so Sholto and I were free of our hand-binding. The thought was solid enough to wake me, but the blanket of flower petals tucked itself under my chin, like a mother tucking you in when you are very small, and again I had that feeling that nothing could harm me. Mother was there, and all was right with the world. I had a moment to find it strange that this abstract feeling of the Goddess was more comforting than she herself had been on the hillside. I felt the brush of a kiss on my forehead, and heard her voice, Gran's voice. "Sleep, Merry-girl. I will keep watch." And as I had when I was small, I believed, and slept.