She knows the instant he enters among the first oaks and alders, apprehending his aura before she sees him. She stands in a glade by a beech tree, as she did the first time, a hand laid on it for sustenance, sap-strength. She is afraid. But not only that.
He appears at the edge of the glade and stops. Her hair goes to silver. Purest hue, essence of what she is, what they all are: silver around them in the first mound, gleaming. Now lost, undersea. They sing to greet the white moon when it rises.
Only the blue one tonight, hidden from where they stand within the wood. She knows exactly where it is, however. They always know where both moons are. The blue is different, more… inward; hues one does not always share with others. Just as she has not shared her coming east, this journey. She took a soul for the queen at the beginning of summer, will not suffer for this following. Or not at the hands of the Ride. There are others in the wood, though, nearby and south. To be feared.
She sees him step forward, approaching over grass, amid trees. A dark wood, far from home (for both of them). There is a spruaugh somewhere about, which had angered and surprised her, for she dislikes them all, their green hovering. She'd shown her hair violet to him earlier, and seethed, and he'd retreated, chattering, agitated. She scans with the eye of her mind, doesn't find his aura now. Didn't think he would be anywhere near after seeing her.
She makes herself let go of the tree. Takes a step forward. He is near enough to touch, to be touched. Her hair is shining. She is all the light in this glade, the trees in summer leaf occluding stars and moon, shielding the two of them. A shelter, between worlds, though there are dangers all around. She remembers touching his face on the slope above the farm and the blood-soaked yard, as he knelt before her.
The memory changes the colour of her hair again. It is not only fear she feels. He does not kneel this time. No iron about him. He has left it behind, coming to her, knowing.
They are silent, leaves and branches a canopy above, the grass of the glade shimmering. A breeze, slight sound, it dies away.
He says, "I saw you, twice, coming here. Was I meant to?"
She can feel herself tremble. Wonders if he sees it. They are speaking to each other. It is not to happen. It is a crossing-over, a transgressing. She doesn't entirely understand his words. Meant to? Mortals: the world they live within, time different for them. The speed of their dying.
She says, "You can see me. Since the pool." Isn't sure if that is what he meant. They are speaking, and alone here. She reaches a hand backwards, after all, touches the tree again.
"I should hate you," he says. Said that, also, the other time.
She answers, as before, "I don't know what that means. Hate."
A word they use… fire in how they live. A flame and then gone. That fire a reason she has always been drawn. But unseen, until now.
He closes his eyes. "Why are you here?"
"I followed you." She lets go of the tree.
He looks at her again. "I know. I know that. Why?"
They think in this way. It has to do with time. One thing, then another thing from it, and then a next. The way the world takes shape for them. She has a thought.
Alun felt as if his mouth were dry as earth. Her voice, a handful of words, made him despair again of the idea of making music, of ever hearing anything to match. There was a woodland scent to her, night flowers, and the light—changing, always—about her, in her hair, the only illumination here, where they were. She was shining for him in a forest, and he knew all the tales. Mortals entangled and ensnared within the half-world who never made their way back or were found all changed when they did, companions and lovers dead, or aged, bent into hoops.
Dai was with the faerie queen, walking upon water amid music, coupling in the forested night. Dai was dead, his soul stolen away.
"Why are you here?" he managed.
"I followed you."
Not his answer. He looked at her. "I know. I know that. Why?" She said, "Because you put away… your iron when you came up the slope to me? Before?"
A question in it. She was asking him if this was good enough, as an answer. She spoke Cyngael in the old fashion, the way his grandfather had talked. It frightened him to think how old she might be. He didn't want to think of that, or ask. How long did faeries live? He felt light-headed. It was difficult to breathe. He said, a little desperately, "Will you do me harm?"
Her laughter then, first time, rippling. "What harm could I do?"
She lifted her arms, as if to show him how delicate she was, slender, her fingers very long. He could not have named the colour of the tunic she wore, could see the pale, sleek curve of her below it. She extended a hand towards him. He closed his eyes just before she touched his face with her fingers for the second time.
He was lost, knew he was, whatever the tales might say in warning. He had been lost when he left the chapel to come out from behind mortal walls and enter this wood where men did not go.
He took her fingers in his hand, and brought them to his mouth and kissed them, then turned her palm to his lips. Felt her trembling, as leaves did in wind. Heard her say, — very faintly, music, "Will you do me harm?"
Alun opened his eyes. She was a silver shining in the wood, beyond imagining. He saw the trees around them and the summer grass.
"Not for all the light in all the worlds," he said, and took her in his arms.
+
There was very little light in the great hall now: amber pools spilling from the two fires, or where a cluster of men continued to throw dice at one end of the room, and another pair of lamps at the head table where two men remained awake and talking and a third listened quietly, A fourth figure slept there, snoring softly, his head on the board among the last uncleared platters.
Aeldred of the Anglcyn looked at the sleeping cleric from Ferrieres and then turned the other way, smiling a little.
"We have exhausted him," he said.
The cleric on his other side set down his cup. "It is late."
"Is it? Sometimes sleep feels wrong. A surrendering of opportunity." The king sipped his own wine. "He quoted Cingalus at you. You were very kind, then."
"No need to embarrass him."
Aeldred snorted. "While he was citing you to yourself?" Ceinion of Llywerth shrugged. "I was flattered."
"He didn't know you wrote it. He was patronizing you." "That wouldn't have mattered if he'd been right in what he argued."
A small sound at that, from the third man. Both turned to him, both smiling.
"Not weary of us yet, my heart?" Aeldred asked.
His younger son shook his head. "Weary, but not of this." Gareth cleared his throat. "Father's right. He… didn't even have the quotation properly."
"True enough, my lord prince." Ceinion was still smiling, still cradling his wine. "I'm honoured that you knew it. He was doing it from memory, in fairness."
"But he turned the meaning. He argued against you with your own thought turned backwards. You wrote the Patriarch that there was no error in images unless they were made to be worshipped, and he—"
"He cited me as saying images would be worshipped." "So he was wrong."
"I suppose, if you agree with what I wrote." Ceinion's expression was wry. "It could have been worse. He might have cited me as saying clerics should live chaste and unmarried."
The king laughed aloud. Young Gareth's brow remained furrowed. "Why didn't he know it was you who wrote it?"