Iylaine goes out before dawn

Iylaine had been lying for hours, she thought, in a sort of agony. Surely she was ill unto death. She did not hurt, exactly, but she was so miserable she thought she would cry out if it continued. She would cry out, or she would die.

The first day’s ride had been amusing enough, and they had spent the night in the manor of a lord whom the King was gradually befriending, as he could any man, given enough time. Thus this second night was their first night out-​​of-​​doors.

They had headed straight for the coast and would follow it around, for the weather had suddenly become sweltering, and the heavy rains of the spring had given rise to a Biblical plague of mosquitoes, green flies, and midges. Though it would make their journey somewhat longer, at the coast the air would be cooler, and there would be fewer insects.

They had arrived at the top of a cliff overlooking the sea in time for a late supper with the sound of the waves in their ears. And Malcolm had been so delighted to take her to the cliff’s edge and show it to her! She had not had the heart to tell him she thought it dreadful.

The sky had been red and hot and heavy, and it had seemed to rest directly on their heads, for she was without her familiar hills to hold it up at a comfortable distance. Here the horizon was a flat line and lower than their feet. The horizon was nothing but sea, and the sun had been dipping directly into the water, as she had never seen suns do. She almost feared that it would sizzle and go out for good and all when it sank.

The few, unhappy clouds had been black and ugly, and the restless water likewise, except that the water wore a sheen of red reflecting the sky. Worst of all, the sun had laid a bloody stripe down the center of it that seemed to reach as far as the base of the cliffs directly below them, where the waves were churning their bloody foam upon the shore.

Malcolm, of course, had found it beautiful beyond words. He would! Boys did like bloody things. But Iylaine could not understand how men could risk their lives on such a dread expanse of restless water. There was nothing to love in the sea, and the sea had no love for anything within it or upon it: this she knew.

And yet now…

She had been lying awake for hours, she thought, and she was beginning to feel as if the sea were the only thing that could soothe her. She was hot! That was it… she was sweltering. Her mouth was hot and dry, and her skin was hot and wet, and her hair clung to her face, and her shift clung to her body.

And yet Synne could lie beside her in the tent, with her blanket over her, sleeping peacefully!

She was so hot… perhaps she had a fever. She had never had a fever before as the other children did, only a few strange illnesses that had come upon her so long ago that she could not remember how a fever felt. Oh, she was dying! She was so hot! She was certain that if she dipped herself into the sea, she would sizzle like a flaming sun. But it would be cool, cool…

Last night she had thought the ceaseless crashing of the waves below was the most mournful sound she had ever heard, but now it was as soothing as whispered words of love. Oh! if only she could let the waves crash over her! She would sink down, down, to where the sun rested during the night, deep at the bottom of the sea. She would sink to a place so deep that there would be no waves, deeper than the light ever reached. There the water would be still and dark forever. The water would surround her and enter into her. And it would be so cool…

She sat up and felt around for her dress. She would go tell her father that she was ill, and she would see what he could do. She could see that it was not yet dawn, but the sky was lightening behind her head, and she could lie still no longer.

She dressed as well as she could in the dark and in the tent, and then she stepped out.

There were only the stars overhead – the familiar, bright stars she knew! Now the sky lay over her like a damp cloth. The breeze that came up from the sea was wet and salty, and it blew across her body and teased her with hints of what it was to be a fish. The sea was so close!

There were six tents arrayed in a ring around the girls’, and she could not remember now which was her father’s, so ill and so distracted had she been the evening before. All she knew was that he was sleeping with Aengus.

She crept around the circle with an elfin silence, looking at the sleeping heads in the dim light of approaching dawn. Why did he not snore, now, when she could have recognized him by it? After all those nights of keeping her awake?

But then she found his tent after all: there were the two dark heads, and more importantly the silhouettes of two unmistakable noses. She dropped to her knees beside their heads and whispered, “Da!”