Chapter 60: Herrwn’s Dream

The weather improved rapidly in the days and weeks that followed Caelym’s departure, something Herrwn took as confirmation of his belief that the Goddess was “watching over Her own.” Olyrrwd was, if anything, more sanguine than Herrwn, although he was inclined to give himself credit for seeing their disciple was fully prepared for his adventure—as he cheerfully repeated, “Come rain or come shine.”

With the warmth of an early spring melting the last of the ice on the lake, bringing buds out on the trees and calling new shoots up from garden beds, there was a renewed sense of industry throughout the shrine. Priestesses were hard at work pruning and planting. Olyrrwd set Moelwyn to scrubbing out empty cauldrons in the healing chamber, and Herrwn began the opening epic of the nine great sagas, an interconnected series of stories that spanned five generations of semi-divine heroes battling against demons, ogres, and one-eyed giants.

Having already finished recounting the birth and childhood adventures of Elderond, the hero destined to be the first of the Goddess’s mortal lovers, on the night of the full moon following the spring equinox, Herrwn gave a rendition of Dwrrwort’s Deception, a story in which Elderond was lured into an ambush set for him by his nemesis, the ogre king Dwrrwort.

The performance went well, and the part in which the Great Goddess’s divine granddaughter, Ethelwen, saves the gravely wounded hero with a magic spell that brings him back from the very brink of death earned a loud burst of applause.

As he fell asleep that night, Herrwn drifted into a dream in which he was lying on his back in a pool of blood. Before he could feel dread or pain, he heard an ethereal chanting, and the blood began to swirl around him and then flowed backward into his wounds, which closed and healed as he looked down at them. Looking up, he saw a shimmering figure he somehow knew to be Ethelwen standing over him, beckoning him to get up and come with her. The path she took led through the woods to the meadow where he’d once seen Annwr dancing with the shrine’s little priestesses.

Annwr wasn’t there, but the girls were. They were older now and dressed in the long gowns he’d seen them wearing the week before when he’d passed them at their lessons in the shrine’s garden, but they were singing the same songs and were dancing just as gaily around the glade as they had that day all those years ago.

Gwenydd led the line, twirling gracefully, her long, dark hair blowing in the breeze. The twins, their hair plaited in braids, bounded along after her like a pair of leaping hares. Arianna and Cyri followed behind the twins—Arianna swirling and swaying with the sensuousness she’d inherited from her mother, while Cyri skipped along with the wholehearted enthusiasm of a child riding a hobbyhorse.

As he watched from the edge of the meadow, Herrwn realized there was a sixth little girl dancing among the rest—a dainty elfin child so pale she seemed almost transparent.

It was his daughter.

Lillywen had not aged since her death. She was still wearing the soft silk gown she’d been buried in, but despite her waiflike appearance, she leaped and frolicked as joyfully as the others—her light blond hair shining in the sun and her dark brown eyes alight with merriment. As the other girls danced past Herrwn, Lillywen stopped and looked up at him, drawing in her lower lip the way she had when something worried her. Then, seeming to realize the others were leaving her behind, she turned on her toes and darted after them just as the forest and the meadow were fading and changing back into his sleeping chamber.

Herrwn woke up gratified that Lillywen had visited his dream yet puzzled about what message she was trying to convey. The question weighed on his mind throughout the morning, and he was still pondering it while sitting at the high table at the start of the midday meal when Olyrrwd elbowed him in the ribs, muttering, “Spoon first, think later.”

In keeping with the tradition that the chief priest ladled out the first bowl of soup, which a servant would then carry to the chief priestess, the silver tureen was placed directly in front of him. Herrwn picked up the ornately inscribed serving spoon and would have done as his cousin prompted, but, as he looked into the bowl, he realized something in the soup was looking at him. He blinked and the two bulbous eyes protruding above the chowder blinked back.

“Allow me.” Impatient, Olyrrwd took the spoon from Herrwn’s hand, plunged it into the tureen, brought it up—and muttered a word not normally spoken at the high table at the sight of the large frog who sat, equally startled, in the cup of the ladle. The frog recovered first, leaping back into the soup in a splash as gasps and exclamations (though none so vehement as Olyrrwd’s) arose on all sides.

Herrwn sighed and raised a hand, signaling for Ceirog, the kitchen servant who was laying out platters of bread at the far end of the table.

Ceirog rushed up, stammering his apologies and insisting that he’d put the soup out on the table himself and there had been no frog in it then.

Olyrrwd, recovered from his initial surprise, chortled and said, “Perhaps you might take it back and either cook it better or turn it loose”—words that set off a ripple of laughter up and down the table.

Herrwn sighed again. It was bad enough to have a meddlesome sprite wreaking havoc in their shrine, without encouraging it.