Sunrise
K. L. Van der Veer
Daoine Sidhe • Editor's Glade
Volume XXII, No. i – Spring 2008
A version of this short was written for my final issue as editor of Ðaoine Sidhe.
I borrowed heavily from popular legend that speaks directly to the heart of the quest.
We are the magic. We are the light. And we must be the change we wish to
see in the world. Each of us has felt the sun and carries the spirit of the fae,
and each of us has something to offer in times of grey twilight.
A chill wind swept down the rocky crags in the grey twilight and howled along the base of the cliff. Nineve tugged her hood forward and pulled her cloak tighter about her shoulders. It had been grey twilight for… for too long. She was sick of it. Sick of the dark. Sick of the cold. Sick of shame. Sick of hiding. Sick of…
A tug on her cloak brought her out of her downward spiral.
“Momma?”
Nineve looked down into green eyes that peered up from beside her waist, then swept her cloak out and around her daughter. She couldn’t lose heart. Not now. “Yes, Gwyn?”
“Are we really going to see the sun?”
“Yes, dear.” Gwyn had never seen the sun. Nineve had told her stories, of course, but how can one relate the pure joy of the light, the warmth, the singing of the soul that comes from standing in a green, flowered meadow beneath a summer sun? Gwyn had listened just the same, staring into her eyes in rapt wonder. What she saw, Nineve could only guess at. The pain of lost splendor, perhaps, or maybe the faintest glimmer of hope for a return to grace.
“Will you tell me about it again?”
A wolf howled in the distance and was answered by a horn.
“Not right now, dear one. We have to hurry. You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”
Nineve took Gwyn’s hand and trotted along under the glowering cliff face. After a short distance, the sheer wall of stone gave way to a gentler slope where a rocky trail led upwards through a scattering of boulders and scrub pine. Soon, even the trees vanished, giving up their fight to survive in the black, stony earth. When the trail vanished altogether, Nineve just headed up. Behind them, wolves howled, closer this time, and a deep, gutteral voice called out something incomprehensible.
“Hurry, Gwyn,” Nineve coaxed, “we have to run.” She tightened her grip on her daughter’s hand and lengthened her stride. Gwyn ran to keep up.
The air grew cooler as they climbed, and a dense fog closed around them, hampering their sight and making every step sound like a hammer on the stones. Nineve didn’t slow—the dogs wouldn’t. Their only hope lay in finding the last sidhe. “Please,” she breathed, half to herself. “Be here.”
Finally, the slope flattened out, and a low hill loomed out of the mist. It didn’t look like a sidhe. Sidhes had green crowns rising over a ring wall of stacked white stone several times the height of a man. There was no such order about this hill. It was a dead, grey mound. Only the white stones scattered all around its base offered any clue that it had once been a font of life and magic. Hopefully, just enough of the magic would be left… in both it and her.
A low whuffing and growling off to their right brought Nineve back to the immediate moment, and she guided Gwyn to the left and around the ruined sidhe to the east side. Or what should have been the east side, but there was no entrance, not even a lintel stone marking where it should be. Maybe she had misjudged their position.
She was about to continue on when a dark shape slunk through the mist directly ahead. Nineve froze, holding Gwyn tight against her legs. The wolf shadow stopped. In the thick greyness, she couldn’t tell if it saw them. Then it raised its head and howled.
Nineve scooped Gwyn up and ran for the slope of the mound, just a few yards away. The wolves would not set foot upon the sidhe. The Others… she wasn’t sure.
Barely two steps up the mound, a hand grabbed Nineve’s shoulder. She dropped Gwen onto the slope even as she was spun around. A hulking man in filthy, leather armour towered over her. Long, greasy hair and a tangled beard obscured all but his eyes, which seemed to burn as bright pinpoints of malevolence in the dark shadows of his face. With his free hand, he reached up and yanked Nineve’s hood back. His eyes widened briefly in surprise, and he almost let go of her.
“Bitch is a bloody demon!” the Other roared, his fetid breath nearly making her gag.
Nineve whipped a long knife from beneath her cloak, and white light poured from the blade. She slashed it across the Other’s stinking, bearded face. He leapt back screaming, smoke rising from his charred flesh. Free of his grasp, Nineve dashed forward, caught Gwyn up in one arm, and dashed up the sidhe.
At the top she circled the crest, looking for the entrance. There was no entrance crescent, no lintel, no trough to indicate a collapse. Damn them! They sealed it when they left. There was nowhere else to go. Wolves and men, animals both, ringed the base of the sidhe. The wolves did not approach closer than the scattered white stones. Several of the Others, however, were already picking their way up the slope.
“Give me strength,” Nineve whispered and pulled Gwyn close against her. She drew the glimmering blade across her own palm. A thin line of red welled up. She closed her eyes and turned her palm down, letting a trickle of blood fall on the earth. The ground beneath their feet shuddered once and fell away, and they tumbled into darkness.
~ • ~
Nineve opened her eyes, she was laying on the ground and the sun shone warm on her face. Her hand hurt. The sun! She sat up. She was on a low mound that rose from a grassy heath. Gwyn lay next to her in the grass, sleeping quietly. A thunder of hooves brought Nineve around into a crouch, hand reaching out, feeling for the magic of the blade that lay somewhere in the grass.
A warband, armoured in green leather and plates of bronze and riding white horses, galloped over a gentle rise. They spread out, fifty strong, and surrounded her, spears held at the ready but pointing up at the brilliant blue sky. Nineve stood, elation warring with anger. She recognized nearly all of them. Not a one had changed in the many years.
“How can this be?” one of the riders said, his voice light and brisk. “You should not be awake.”
Nineve pushed back her long hair, revealing gracefully tapered ears.
“You are fae!” the rider breathed. He looked closer. “Good gods! Nineve! How can… We thought none were left… But the young one. She sleeps still?”
Nineve greeted him with a slight nod. “Fin. She is only half.”
“Half?”
“Half. Those of us who were left behind… who could not get through… When the Others caught us…” Nineve felt the heat rise in her face and paused, taking several slow breaths. “You closed the gates! Why did you close the gates?”
A woman slid from her horse and landed lightly next to Nineve. “It was time to move on, Nineve. There was nothing left but evil and—”
“She is not nothing, Modrun!” Nineve jabbed a finger at Gwyn, who moaned softly and began to sit up. “Look at her! Look at my daughter! She is not evil! Whatever was done to us, whatever she came from, she is good and innocent and of the light. You didn’t just leave… you took the magic with you and left the world to wither in cold and darkness. The only way we could survive was to become as they are.”
“By Lugh, there are more?” Fin asked.
Nineve nodded. “Though they are not as you once knew them.”
“What would you have us do?” Modrun asked. “We left because we couldn’t defeat the Others.”
“No,” Nineve agreed, “Summer cannot defeat Winter, but it holds its own and does not flee, never to return. There will be Others wherever we go. Don’t you understand? We are the light. The Others are us when we abandon it. Our time did not pass. Our time is now, when darkness must be lifted.”
The riders sat in silence.
Gwyn stood up at last and gazed about her in wonder.
Nineve knelt in the grass and picked up her blade. It was now a longsword, the fullness of its magic returned. Thin ribbons of her blood still darkened the blade. She turned it point down over the crest of the hill, gripped the hilt with both hands, and drove the blade into the earth. A low rumble, as of thunder, rolled across the heath and a thin crack appeared in the air beside her. “The magic belongs to everyone. Will no one come with me?”
For a terrifying moment no one moved, then a small group of riders eased their mounts away from the rest.
“Gwalhavad, Talyessin, Myrddin, Enit, Isebale, Igrayn, Peredur…” Nineve spoke each of their names as they rode forward, twelve in all. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“The girl…” Modrun began.
“My daughter,” Nineve corrected. “Gwyn.”
“Do as you must, but at least leave her here with us, where she’ll be safe.”
“No!” Gwyn ran forward and grabbed Nineve’s hand.
“Nowhere there is life is safe,” Nineve said, “and I’ll not leave her with the dead.”
The crack in the air widened, and grey twilight bled through the breech. The twelve riders lowered their lances and charged into the darkness, horses and riders emitting a shining light as they entered the shadowy portal.
Nineve stepped toward the gate, but a gentle tug on her hand stopped her.
Gwyn turned her face up toward the warm sun one last time and smiled. “It’s just like in your eyes, Momma. It’s just like in your eyes.”
Home | Writing | Our Time is Now
Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sunrise out of me.
~Whitman
