“Tell me,” she said.
“Keruhn’s purpose,” Tiberan started. He closed his mouth, paused, and then started again. “The magic that locked away Artalon required more than the four Living Seals,” he whispered. “Keruhn made me the Stag Throne, and the key to touching all life on Ahmbren was through the act of life itself.”
Keira’s blood ran cold.
“It could have been any of the three,” he said. “When I submitted, I didn’t know who would pass the gods’ trials and join me in the throne room.”
Keira turned away and closed her eyes. Her fists clenched, and her fingers dug into her palms within the warm fur-lined sleeves of her coat.
“The Great Rite,” she finally managed to say. The oldest and deepest mystery, tied to the very essence of life, and hearth. Keruhn’s greatest rite: male and female, conjoined as one in truth, lighting the warmth of the hearth fire to create kith and kin, family and tribe. And Tiberan became his champion.
Keira clenched her teeth. A warring of emotions rushed through her. Aradma. Always Aradma! They are bound together; I cannot have him without her. If I cannot accept her connection to him, I must let him go.
“I know you’re angry at me,” he began. “I’m—”
“Shut up,” she snapped. “You don’t understand. I don’t understand. I’m angry. Yes. Furious. But not at you. Not at her. Not at…” She didn’t know. All she felt was rage, even as she understood. It didn’t matter. The understanding and the anger slicked together like oil shaken in a water bottle, each unable to dissolve into the other. I’m angry at myself. Why can I not move beyond this? “She’s pregnant,” she muttered. She knew Glavlunder religion too well, Keruhn’s nature too well, to believe otherwise. “Isn’t she?”
Tiberan nodded.
A cold came over her, and her rage stilled for a moment. She looked away from him. She couldn’t meet his eyes, nor bear the site of those stag antlers.
“Tiberan,” she whispered, “I need to go away. I will return, but I need time to think and digest this.”
“I understand,” he said.
“Watch over our sons,” she told him. “I need a month alone.”
She didn’t look at him to see if he nodded or not, but shifted into her wolven form. She left him there on the overlook, slowly at first, and then running faster as her wolf spirit flowed unhindered through her limbs. She dropped down onto all fours, racing down the slopes and into the woods, allowing the wolven creature to race free and her humanity to go silent in her mind.
The weeks stretched to months, and Keira hunted for many moon cycles. She ran with a pack of wolves, taking down caribou and feasting on their meat with the lords of the mountain wilds. With tooth and claw she reveled in the hunt, and in the kill. For a time, she forgot who she was, allowing both her rational mind and wounded feelings to dissolve into the bliss of the beast.
The pack made its home a secluded pond amid a circle of rocks in the mountain valleys. They roamed each month, but their hunting cycle brought them back to the circle every full moon. The wolves would howl, and the beast that had been Keira joined them.
In the third month, her wolven mind awakened further, and she saw their shared dreams carried on the mournful, howling tattoo. The image of the their lord, the Horned Hunter, rode across the sky, swirling in and out of form in the twilight aurora.
For the first time since she had left, human words formed in her thoughts.
Keruhn. They mourn for him. Horned Hunter of the Night.
And old hymn arose in her mind.
Great god Keruhn, return to earth again
Come at my call, and show thyself to men
Shepherd of wolves, upon the wild hills way
Lead thy pack from darkness, unto day.
Forgotten are the ways of sleep and of night,
We seek those, whose eyes have lost the light,
Open the door, the door that hath no key,
The door of sleep, by which we come to thee,
Shepherd of wolves, answer unto me…
She blinked. A great brown bear wandered into the midst of the pack. The other wolves nodded at him, but otherwise paid him no heed.
Keira growled, hair rising on her neck. She tensed defensively, but the bear made no aggressive signs. He stopped in front of her, eyes glittering in sadness, and then sniffed, pushing his nose towards her.
She relaxed and tentatively stretched her nose forward, touching his. The bear licked her snout, and she felt the urge to wag her tail. Instead, she rose to stand on two legs for the first time in months.
The bear stepped back, and then shifted. She stared into the thoughtful eyes of Odoune.
She whimpered.
“Keira,” Odoune said in his soft, soothing voice. “You have forgotten yourself here. Is this who you wish to become?”
She gazed at him mournfully. Memories surfaced, and she felt the churning of emotion beneath the surface.
“Are you so far lost to the pack that you can no longer speak?”
She furrowed her brow. “No,” she managed, pushing the word through her lips. “I… I don’t know how to come home.”
“I can help,” Odoune said. “I helped someone else once who, like you, had forgotten who she was.”
“I know who I am,” Keira said. The memories started coming back. And the anger. And the sorrow. And love.
“Do you?” Odoune asked. “I’ve been sent to help you. If you wish, I can help you find your way back. If not, I will leave you here to lose yourself in the hunt.”
“Who sent you?” Keira growled suspiciously. “Was it her?”
Odoune shook his head. “Your husband,” he answered. “Your family wants you home. Your sons miss you. Your hearth yearns for your warmth.”
My pups. My children.
She shook her head once, and then everything came back. She found her center and shifted back into her human form, thick fur resolving to the winter coat.
“I don’t know how to come back,” she said. “I’m so angry, and not even at anyone. I want to be free to love again. I understand what happened, but… I feel like I’m the one intruding on them, and that infuriates me.”
“Do you doubt Tiberan’s love for you?”
Keira thought about it for a moment. “No,” she finally said. “But I’m not calm enough to accept it.”
“I can help you find your center,” Odoune said.
“How?”
He looked around for a moment. The wolves had stopped their howling, and were listening to him intently. He opened his palms to the sky and gestured all around him. “This is not the jungles of Vemnai, but there is life here. There is a forest, and creatures of the mountains. I can show you how to connect to nature, to find the truth of your being. Your own purpose. As long as you center yourself around Tiberan, you will never have him in your life. Only through knowing yourself will you be able to accept him, as he is, within your purpose.”
Keira took a deep breath. “I can’t do what you’re asking me to do. I’m no druid.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “You could be,” he said. “I can show you the way to serenity.”
Keira surrendered. “If you can show me how to release my anger, I will try.”
There amid the wolf pack, Odoune initiated Keira into the druidic mysteries. He closed his eyes, took her hands, and conferred a link to Life into the center of her being.
Over the next months, she still ran with the pack, side by side with him. She learned to link with the forest and the life in the mountains. Instead of running on all fours in wolven form, she shifted completely into a wolf and learned to connect freely with both the pack and the woods through which the pack ran.
She spent hours meditating in sunlight and moonlight. Odoune guided her, and she felt the forest’s stability. She thought of her husband and the physical mark of Keruhn left behind.
My hearth, she realized. He carries the hearthfire for my return. He does love me.
It wasn’t Aradma she hated or feared. It was losing Tiberan, and he had chosen her over Aradma. He and her sons would be together… but even beyond that: My purpose is my hearth and my people. With or without Tiberan. If he chooses to be a part of my purpose, I welcome him. But without him, my purpose doesn’t change. I will endure. I am who I am.
“Aradma will have a child,” she said out loud, breaking her reverie.
Odoune gazed at her thoughtfully. “She will,” he conceded. “Soon.”
“Tiberan’s child,” Keira said. The thought felt bittersweet. Sitting there connected to the forest, the rage receded, blunted by the wonder of new life.
“A daughter,” Odoune said. Then: “You love Tiberan.”
“I do.”
“And his children are part of him.”
She considered this. Then repeated thoughtfully: “She’s having his daughter.” Her eyes opened wide, and she exclaimed this as if it were the first time she were truly considering it. “She is a mother!”
She thought of her own sons and how intense the love she felt for them was. I love them so much it hurts.
Aradma’s child. Tiberan’s child.
Keira stood suddenly. “I cannot keep him away from his daughter! I love him too much for that.”
Odoune stood and took her hands. “Reach out to the forest. Deepen your connection with it.”
Keira did so.
“Can you stand for her to be a part of his life?”
She closed her eyes and breathed. She dug deep into the truth of her being and allowed Life to connect her to the truth of things. Here, in this perspective, she had a glimmer of what Aradma could see. It was the barest of understandings, but she began to see.
“I don’t hate Aradma,” she said. “I accept that though they are connected, Tiberan has chosen to share in my own life, my own purpose.” She remembered something her mother told her once, long ago when she was young. Love is an act of will. “He has made it his purpose too. The tribe. His sons. Our hearthfire. But he should know his daughter. I couldn’t keep him from her. How could I do that to him? How could I do that to her? And my sons… are they not to know their sister?”
Odoune nodded. “You are starting to see.”
“But not yet,” she said. “I am still uncertain. The fear returns. The anger returns.”
“Then we will meditate more,” he said. “We will hunt with the pack, and run through the woods, and you will come to understand the river of Life.”
She nodded. “And when the anger is gone, I will go home.”
Nine months after going into the mountain wilds, she stood on a mountain top beneath the full moon’s light. White snow and rock lifted the moonlight into a silvery blue hue that suffused the air in dreamlike splendor. Little puffs of frosty breath escaped from her and Odoune’s exhalations.
“It is time. Tiberan’s daughter will soon be born,” she told him. “If I don’t go to him soon, he will miss her birth.”
“Are you ready to go home then?” Odoune asked.
“I am.”
Keira reached out to the forest. Other than the wolf form, the forest had not granted her more animal shapes to wear. She had not yet learned to heal, nor could she summon plant life. All her focus had been on finding her center and overcoming her fears.
But today, the final threads of fear dissolved. Life would continue. I am who I am. Limitations melted away under the warmth of forgiveness.
She grinned. “We are all coparticipants in life.”
Odoune returned her smile. “So I’ve heard.”
She stretched her arms out and then shifted into a wren. Instinctively, her wings caught the air, and she flapped them swiftly, finding she could catch the air and ride it into the sky.
Odoune followed as the owl, and the two of them raced back towards Faerieholm.
* * *
Nine months after the Turning, Aradma’s third daughter was born. Her skin was sky blue with lavender hues, and her hair captured the pale breath of a strawberry’s heart. Suleima and Oriand helped Aradma deliver the child in the upper apartments of God Spire.
They handed the child to her mother, and she held her in her arms. Aradma started. The baby’s right eye focused on Aradma, intensely emerald and alert. Her left eye listed lazily, dull and lifeless.
“Something’s wrong,” Aradma said. Suleima sat beside her and looked. “Her eye. Her left eye…”
Suleima frowned. Oriand appeared thoughtful.
Aradma delicately reached out with her senses and felt the child’s life force. She didn’t want to flood her with Life for fear of overwhelming her. She could not feel anything out of balance or out of place.
Her heart beat in fear, but then… One eye. Conceived in Artalon at the moment of the Turning. I wonder… did you make good your escape after all? Was this the real reason you needed a surrogate to become the Stag Throne?
She released her trepidation and allowed joy over this precious life to fill her as the child nursed.
“What do you name her?” Suleima asked.
“Meara,” Aradma murmured softly. “Meara.” Joyful.
Afterwards, Aradma and her daughter slept. When Aradma awoke, Fernwalker sat by her side. Naiadne stood behind her, staring dully at them. Naiadne still had not spoken since the Turning, and it would be some time yet before her mind healed. But Fernwalker never left the girl’s side, and both Arda and Anuit spent time with her as well, reaching out to her through the Light and Dark.
Naiadne saw Meara in Aradma’s arms. The girl’s expression softened for the briefest of moments into a smile that didn’t touch her lips, and then her stare lost its focus once more and returned to gazing into space.
Meara nursed, and Aradma felt drowsiness overcome her. Oriand and Suleima sat beside her, and she felt simple peace. She fell asleep.
When she awoke, Meara rested in the cradle beside the bed. The others had left, and she lay alone.
A shadow passed over the chamber’s portal just as her eyes were closing, and she opened them in surprise when she realized she’d seen the shape of stag antlers on a bearded seelie’s head.
Tiberan stood in the doorway, and, of all things, Odoune sat perched as the owl on one of his antlers. The other antler… was it a wren? Aradma focused on her. No. Another druid. She felt the wolf undertones of the wren’s soul. Oh, Keira!
The owl spread his wings and departed, leaving Tiberan and the wren.
Aradma smiled and cried. “Tiberan,” she said, “she’s so beautiful.”
The horned man entered the room, ducking through the doorway. He knelt by her bed and looked into the cradle. An expression of wonder overcame his face.
“What is her name?” he asked.
“Meara,” Aradma answered. She looked at the wren. “It’s okay, Keira. You can show yourself.”
The wren paused for a moment and then hopped off, shifting into Keira’s human form.
“I didn’t want to intrude,” she said.
“And I wanted her to come with me,” Tiberan added.
Aradma nodded. “You’ve a right to be a part of this,” Aradma said. “I didn’t want it to be this way.”
Keira shook her head and smiled. “Life is never a mistake,” she said. “Odoune has taught me that much at least.”
“Odoune is wise,” Tiberan commented.
“The best of all of us,” Aradma agreed. “Do you want to hold her?”
Tiberan grinned eagerly. He reached in and took the sleeping baby and held her against his chest. “Meara,” he whispered. He kissed the crown of her head, and then offered her to Keira.
Keira took Meara in her arms, awkwardly glancing at Aradma first.
* * *
Aradma nodded, and Keira took the seelie child in her arms. She looked down into her softly sleeping face. Meara suddenly opened her eyes and stared up at the wolven woman. Keira sucked in a breath as she noticed the left eye. It seemed… dead, somehow.
Meara’s right ey
e, however, focused intensely. She cooed and then smiled.
My god… The child seemed to stare right through her. Keira’s heart jumped, and for a moment she felt the palpable sensation of the warmest moments of Highwinter, huddled as a family around a glowing hearthfire and eating slow-cooked meat dripping in grease, sheltered from the outside passing of the coldest heart of winter.
A wave of awe and reverence washed over her. Great god Keruhn, returned to earth again… She handed the child back to Aradma, murmuring “My sons’ sister…”
Then, in the secret silence of her heart, she offered a prayer of thanks. I understand.
Tiberan smiled at her. He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close, kissing the top of her head.
Keira felt… happy.
* * *
It was a year to the day after the fall of the Kairantheum, the first year of the Fourth Age by human reckoning and the Tenth Aeon by dragon reckoning. Aradma welcomed all people who wanted to build a free life for themselves, and those who chose to make Artalon their home had started cleaning the city from the effects of the war. Oriand continued to live in her old office in Aradma’s Legacy. The troll woman felt strange calling it that anymore, since Aradma wasn’t dead or missing.
The former Matriarch spent most of her time now reading books… some even just for fun. There were no quests to solve, no enemies to oppose. There was just them, people, figuring it out as they went, with thoughtful consideration, respect for their own selves and honorable in their dealings with each other.
There would be future challenges and future threats. Oriand understood enough about mortal nature to not think they would be free of strife forever. But for now, she enjoyed the peace. She was forty-four years old, ready to turn forty-five soon. And she was happy. She had lived to see more than the line of her former Matriarchs had ever dreamed possible, and she had learned to understand true freedom.
She invited her friends over for dinner. Attaris had started to teach her how to cook. It was different from reading, but she derived a pleasure from preparing food and seeing her friends’ joy when they ate. And Attaris always brought his latest brew.
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