Awaken (8 page)

Chapter Eight

Winter howled into the village like a ravenous wolf, sending stinging ice-clad snow fleeing before a vicious wind. Everyone huddled inside, going out only to tend the animals or complete necessary chores. Myrina at last accepted Goodwife Harbottle’s invitation and, closing up her parents’ house, moved her mother to the Harbottle farm.

The goodwife was one of her mother’s oldest friends and immediately took over the ailing woman’s care. That was for the best, Myrina realised, for although she tried to act as normal, numbness surrounded her like an impenetrable globe, disconnecting her from everything and everyone. Not even the knowledge her mother was slipping away seemed able to penetrate fully into her heart. It simply added further distance between her and the rest of the world.

There were decisions she needed to make regarding her future, but the strength of mind necessary to consider them eluded her. The farmer who leased her father’s fields was pressing to buy them, demanding a decision before the following spring. In the past she recalled having strong views on keeping the land, but couldn’t remember why it had seemed so important.

In truth, Myrina acknowledged, nothing mattered anymore. When she ate, it was because the food lay before her—if she drank it was by rote, her body taking what it needed to survive without asking leave of her mind. There was nothing she wanted or craved—nothing that could move her to more than the slightest smile, the merest frown. After sitting by her sleeping mother’s side for hours on end, she would rise and not be able to recall even one passing thought while she was there.

The one thing she could not think on at all was the glade and what lay there. On occasion something would bring it to mind—the scent of wild sage clinging to Farmer Harbottle’s coat, a glimpse of the moon, full and glowing, outside the window. At those times Myrina became aware of pain lurking just beyond consciousness, waiting to burst free and devour her. Even as it made her gasp, her mind shied desperately away, hiding once more in the clouds fogging her head.

She had no memory of her dreams, and for that she was grateful. Some mornings her pillow was wet from a storm of tears passing in the night. At other times she drifted up from sleep with a hollow, tender ache deep inside, as though in the unremembered reaches of the night something precious lay within her grasp, which the rising sun caused to melt away.

“I wish she would cry, Mam, or get angry.” Elawen’s voice, filled with annoyance, one day drifted to where Myrina stood outside the kitchen. “Anything would be better than seeing her drift about like a ghost.”

Not waiting to hear the goodwife’s reply, Myrina continued on her way to her mother’s bedside. Indeed she felt as insubstantial as a spirit—or a vessel spun from crystal threads, awaiting the blow that would cause it to shatter.

Her mother was awake, awareness gleaming in pain-filled eyes, and Myrina forced her lips into the shadow of a smile, knowing it was not what it should be, unable to do any better.

“Can I get you anything, Mama?”

“Do you have my ring, darling?” Her mother’s voice was thin, an audible representation of her hold on life. “I miss it.”

Slipping the simple golden band from her own finger, Myrina placed it back on her mother’s, where it belonged. The skeletal hand closed tight to keep it in place, and a smile of contentment brightened her mother’s face. Placing her other hand protectively over the ring, she closed her eyes once more and slept.

The trembling began at Myrina’s toes, rising to turn her legs to jelly, her stomach to a writhing mass of pain. When she reached out to grasp the nearby chair, it was with a hand as palsied as that of a woman twice, thrice her age.

Agony clasped her in unrelenting arms, stopping her breathing. Nausea churned, threatening to bear her down to her knees.

All her life she had seen the love between her parents—never overt or demonstrative, but subtle—in the sharing of a glance, a passing touch, a small thoughtful gesture. The simple motion of her mother’s hand, guarding the symbol of their life together, revealed the essential, eternal connection between them—something her daughter craved beyond all desire and would now never know.

Lowering her body to sit, Myrina finally faced the extent of her loss, and it was all she could do not to wail, to howl like a dying beast. When her father died, taking with him the security and safety of her world, she had been too busy to mourn. Perhaps in time she would have done so, but then her mother became ill and it was all she could do to cope, hold their lives together as best she could. There had been no one to share her pain, no time to truly feel the sorrow growing stronger and stronger each day.

In Ryllio she had sought and found solace, understanding, belonging. That fleeting taste of love had lifted her beyond the present pain, giving a teasing foretaste of what could be. To have known him—his passion and tenderness—to have been accepted, desired, needed, just as she was, and then to feel him fade once more to stone was more than she could stand.

Covering her eyes with shaking hands, tears seeping out between her fingers, she rocked back and forth against the onslaught of anguish. All the losses in her life were too much to bear—the torment tearing at her heart would surely lead to madness or death.

“Come with me, little one.” Myrina only dimly heard the goodwife’s soft voice in her ear, hardly felt the gentle hands urging her to rise. “Come away where you can cry in peace.”

And wrapped in the goodwife’s tender care, Myrina cried and cried until she felt there were no more tears left in the world.

“I was wondering when this would happen,” the older woman murmured, stroking Myrina’s hair. “Even the strongest of us must give in to the tears sometime, and you have more reason than most to cry.”

“I want to die too.” She hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but the words burst from her throat, bringing a fresh paroxysm of weeping.

“I know,” Goodwife Harbottle soothed. “Everyone feels that way when they see everything they hold dear falling apart before their eyes. But you have the strength to go on, Myrina. Life is a hard road, no doubt about it. Each time we think it has smoothed out for a pace, another mountain rises ahead. ’Tis just the way of the world, sweetling. All we can do is struggle on, do our best, and hope ’tis enough.”

Exhausted, Myrina made no effort to protest when the goodwife tucked her into bed, although it was the middle of the day, and she drifted to sleep in moments…

…and found herself in the glade, wind-whipped snow thrashing her face and arms with an icy sting, biting and stabbing at her exposed skin.

“Ryllio,” she shouted, trying to see him, go to him, but the swirling flakes created a veil of whiteness, and the buffeting wind held her in place.

“Why do you call to him, Myrina Traihune?” A mocking voice came to her and, turning her head, squinting against the flying crystals, she saw a golden-haired man standing in distant sunlight. “You never truly cared for him. If you had, he would be free.”

“What do you mean?” she cried, fear clawing at her heart, more chilling than the winter’s cold. “Was there some way I could have freed him, something I didn’t do that I should? Tell me, please, and it shall be done.”

The golden-haired faery shrugged, his lips tilted in a mocking smile. “I have no spell to rule the dictates of a human heart, the conscience of a human soul. It is too late, anyway, for the prince is almost completely stone now, by his own doing. Once there was a chance for him, but now he will never again awake.”

“No!” Myrina struggled again the icy bonds restricting her movement, the torturous agony of his words. “That cannot be true. He but sleeps awhile, as Mab dictates, and will awaken once more at her whim.”

With a sardonic lift of his brows, the faery replied, “The spark of life that once beat within the stone is all but gone. So it is when a man loses all he holds dear—especially hope.”

“No! Ryllio,” she cried again, “Ryllio, please, don’t go. Help him.” She turned once more to the faery, holding out her hands in appeal. “Help him, please.”

“There is nothing more I can do, Myrina Traihune.” He began to fade from sight, taking the sparkle of sunlight with him, leaving her in an icy grey miasma. “Except to wish you peace.”

She awoke, sitting up, arms still outstretched, heart pounding in fear and sorrow. Around her, the farmhouse slumbered. Outside the wind moaned and sighed in perfect harmony with her soul.

It was just a dream—vivid, realistic and terrifying—she told herself, even as she was swinging her feet over the edge of the bed. She had not been visited by Kestor, the golden faery Ryllio spoke of, but had simply created him and his words from her own imagination. Yet, driven by a compulsion too strong to resist, she pulled on her stockings and tied them in place and dressed in a warm wool petticoat and overdress.

There was no room for thought, only action, although everything around her seemed suddenly bright and sharp despite the darkness. Instinct guided her to her mother’s bedside, where she placed a kiss on the paper-dry cheek before quietly going downstairs. Farmer Harbottle’s hound lifted its head as she passed through the kitchen, tail thumping on the wooden floor as it watched her lace her boots. Swinging her cloak over her shoulders, she bade the hound stay as she opened the door and slipped out into the night.

Cold connected with her face like a slap, stealing her breath. The snow lay in huge drifted heaps against the building, having blown off the clean-swept fields. For a moment she faltered, wondering if it were even possible to find her way to Ryllio without his call, but determination pushed the thought aside, and she began to trudge as fast as she could toward the trees.

Time lost all meaning as she fought her way through the forest, slipping and falling in the snow, coming back upon her own footprints and striking off in another direction. The cold was intense, made bearable only by the fire of her resolve. On and on she went, until the sky above her began to lighten with the dawn and, shivering, she began to despair.

“Please,” she whispered to the wind. “Please, help me find him.”

A golden glow lit the trees ahead of her, and Myrina stumbled toward it, but then came abruptly to a halt, a cry of distress breaking from her lips.

The glade was filled with snow, the thicket covered with mounds of white. Only by the thorny branches of bracken protruding from the drift could she tell where it was. Forging her way to it threatened to sap the last of her strength but, once there, she found the wherewithal to shake the snow from the brush.

“Oh, Ryllio.” Tears prickled behind her eyes as she looked at the statue. There was no sign of life, any spark or sensation to indicate his presence, and Myrina knew she was too late.

But although her mind said so, her heart would not be deterred. Without thought she pushed through the underbrush, hardly feeling the thorns tearing at her clothing and skin, until she stood before the statue and could touch it. With gentle care she brushed away the snow clinging to his hair and face and shoulders, traced the handsome lines of cheek and brow, nose and mouth. The tears she could no longer contain slid down her cheeks at the feel of the cold marble.

“Ryllio,” she whispered, “I would do anything to help you be free. Don’t give up, please. Give me more time.”

There was no response except from the wind, sobbing and sighing through the trees. Stepping nearer yet, Myrina straddled his snow-covered legs, opened her cloak and bent to envelop Ryllio in the sodden wool. The need to be close to him, even though nothing but frigid stone awaited her, was too strong to resist. Arms around his shoulders for balance, she lowered herself to his lap, ignoring the shivers racing through her blood as she came in full contact with his icy form.

Pressing her cheek to his, hands compulsively exploring his back, his nape, she fit her lips to the hollow beneath his ear and began to speak.

“Don’t leave me, Ryllio, for I will never give up trying to set you free. If I have to find a portal into the world of the Fey, seek out Mab herself and beg for your release, I will do it.”

Still all she heard was the evil wind shaking and creaking in the old forest—all she felt was the numbing cold surrounding her—but she would not be deterred, would not cease until she knew he listened.

“Kestor wished me peace in my dream tonight, but I will not know true peace or even seek it until the spell binding you here is broken. Hold on to that hope, my darling, until I come back to you again.”

She was shivering, almost turning to stone with him. Soon she would have to leave, find shelter and warmth, or forfeit to death her quest to find the key to unlock his prison. There was one more thing she had to tell him before the unrelenting cold forced her back to the village. Settling even closer, she cradled his cheeks in her hands and looked into his unseeing eyes.

“When you told me not to come back, when you sent me away, I should never have listened. Come back to me, Ryllio, as I have come back to you. I love you too much to let you go now, or ever.”

Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to his in one final, desperate gesture.

Pulling away, she gave him a last lingering look, committing every plane and curve of his face to memory before placing her hands on his shoulders and trying to rise.

And found she could not move.

Chapter Nine

A rush of warm, herb-scented air gusted through the hollow as dawn burst upon them, gilding Ryllio’s face with a golden, ruddy glow. Captivated by the suddenly life-like look of his skin, Myrina stilled, lifting one hand to touch her fingers to his cheek. When he blinked and Myrina found herself looking into the beautiful green eyes of her dreams, a little scream of mingled fear and happiness burst from her throat.

It was his arms wrapped tight around her, she now realised, stemming her ability to rise. And as she felt the supple heat of his skin beneath her hand, the shift of hard muscles under her legs, the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, tears overcame her to flow freely down her cheeks.

There was no need for words. Ryllio lowered his head just as she raised her mouth to his and, as their lips touched, clung, parted, only to come together again, Myrina thought her heart would explode with joy.