He took me to a pool, hidden amongst a crowd of willow, hazel and elder trees. The water stood deep and dark, its brown colour somehow veiled and unreflecting. The light of the sun did not penetrate the dense trees.
‘Kneel,’ the man ordered, and lowered me onto a mound of damp dead leaves, beside a fallen tree patched with moss. The pool was a foot’s length in front of me, and I leaned over it, eager for what it could show me. The tips of my hair dragged in the water, but barely disturbed the surface. I could not see my own image, which alarmed me. The pool took on a secret character, its depths concealing more than I wished to know.
‘Is she there?’ I asked the hermit. ‘How do I find her?’
‘Ask,’ he grunted at me. Then he turned to leave, and I felt fear flush through me. The water might contain a monster or demons, which would reach out and take me if I was left alone. But I clamped my lips together and said nothing. I wished beyond anything to see my Wynn again, after what seemed like a terrible long time without thinking of her. If the pool could help, then I must have courage.
When the man had gone, I grasped my hair in both hands and pulled it back, out of the way. My knees were cold and stiff on the winter leaves, and as I leaned again over the water, I imagined how it might be if I lost my balance and pitched head first into the magic pool. So I wound my hair into a knot and held it with one hand, resting the other on the mossy log beside me. The sideways tilt caused a pang in my back, which took a moment to pass. As I fidgeted and fussed, there was a growing sense of waiting; a stillness in the air. I could not avoid it for much longer, and with a deep breath I settled myself for what was to come.
‘Holy pool, show me my girl,’ I whispered.
Nothing stirred, but I thought I could see something beneath the surface of the brown murk. Strands of waving hair, and a mouth trying to speak. I recalled the story of Geat’s betrothed, and her abduction by the water god. But that had been a river and the water had been crystal clear.
‘Show me, I beg you,’ I said, a little louder. ‘Let me see that she be safe.’
I bent my face closer, until I was a hand’s breadth from the pool’s surface, peering into the depths, struggling to find a picture there. Nothing. In the trees above my head two crows were flapping and one gave a sharp squawk which seemed to split the air. Distracted, I thought of the bird in my dream, and the spring coming and the eggs which Cuthman could gather for our sustenance as we travelled. Would we still be walking the roads when Easter arrived? Would we honour the Lenten fast this year? Pilgrimages ought not to take place in Lent, it seemed to me. It was a time for quiet preparation and purifying.
But Imbolc broke the winter’s back and thrust the attention forward to the year ahead, demanding that we work the ground for sowing, and bring the sheep close to home for the lambing. Confused, I tried to channel my thoughts onto Wynn. Wynn, Wynn, I muttered to myself. Where are you now, my sweet girl?
The crow called again, closer than before. A scrap of dead twig fell down from the tangle of waterside trees, a little distance from me, and splashed into the pool. It bobbed a little and then floated towards me.
Everyone knows that a crow means death. The twig was dead. The water lay before me, flat and secretive, telling me nothing. All at once I understood. My firstborn child was lost to me. Lost to the living world. I would never see her again. I shuddered and pulled away from the hateful pond, letting my hair fall around my face again. Inside me was a great hollow, an empty space where my daughter had been. No tears came. I had not truly expected to meet Wynn again, now that my son had transported me so far from home. If she had died, I hoped there had been no pain. I hoped she was happy with Jesus in heaven. She deserved a special place for her patience and goodness. But I felt nothing. No sorrow or self-reproach. Scrappy images flitted through my mind - the serious little face framed by dark curls, knees scratched and scabby, her skill with clay and wool, the day we celebrated her womanhood. A brief life, lived without any undue notice or passion. I reached out and took the twig from the pool. My poor sight required that I hold it close to my face before I could properly distinguish its shape. It had two short branches protruding from it, close to the top, at a downward-pointing angle. With a stab of surprise I recognised the rune that Wynn had chosen for herself on that afternoon. Os: the rune that indicated ‘Messages’. Gripping it tight, I stared up at the treetops. The message was received, and understood. Wynn, my child, was dead. Although, I recalled with a pang, Os denoted messages of hope, not despair, gladness, not misery.
Something rustled behind me, and I turned slowly, careful of my back. Cuthman stood there, several paces away. A shaft of sunlight seemed to have come with him, lighting him from behind and hiding his features from me. He was so like an angel that I cried out.
‘Ma?’ he questioned. ‘Are you ill?’
‘Wynn is dead,’ I said, flat and weary.
‘No. She is not,’ he countered, equally flat, but certain too. ‘Where did that idea grow from?’
‘From the crow. The rune-twig. The horrible brown pond which could show me nothing.’
‘Show me the rune,’ he said, stepping forward and holding out his hand. I reached the twig up to him, hope and foolishness beginning to seep together into my emptiness.
‘This is Os the rune for glad tidings,’ he said. His surprise pleased me. I knew something before he did, for once.
‘I know it is,’ I said. ‘She drew that rune at her menses rite. You might not remember.’
‘The crow means solitude, not death,’ he told me, twirling the little stick between his fingers.
‘Yet death is a solitary state,’ I said, simply to be clever. Already I felt I had been stupid to think Wynn had died. Was I misreading all that the hermit and his secret world had been trying to tell me?
‘She is not dead,’ Cuthman said again.
‘Then maybe you can see her in the pool, where I failed?’ I suggested, hoping perhaps that it would remain just as blank for him as it had for me.
He looked at the water with a kind of longing, as if tempted by something wonderful and wicked, and shook his head. ‘Tis a heathen thing,’ he said. ‘I must place my trust in the good Lord, and have faith that my sister lives happily, as she deserves.’
A poof of disappointment and scorn escaped me. ‘Faith?’ I questioned. ‘Is your certainty based on no more than that? Show me, son, so that I too might be sure that she lives.’
Cuthman shook his head, angry and confused. It surprised me to see how shaky his faith could be, at the least challenge from me. What kind of holy man was he, at heart? Someone who had a knack of magic, who had once encountered an angel and conceived a plan which had in truth been based on necessity as much as inspiration. There was beneath me a great void of futility and fear. The world was full of struggle and conflict, pagan against Christian, Celt against Saxon, with no certainties of what lay ahead. Never in my life had I encountered a person with a vision of how it could be on this earth, for living people. Only a rose-tinted dream of a realm in the clouds, where God and Jesus and the angels played sweet music and soothed away all pains.
‘Show me!’ I demanded again. ‘Just see if you can.’
He moved quickly then, as if keen to get it all over and done with. ‘Here then,’ he snapped, and I saw that he was shaking. He knelt close to the edge of the water, the ground crumbling a little with his weight, small clods of earth slipping into the pool. He swept his left arm over the water, skimming the surface, as if peeling away a curtain to reveal what might lie beneath.
Ignoring my stiff body, forgetting any fear of falling into the pond, I leaned forward further than before. Already a picture was forming, where Cuthman’s arm had passed. Two faces looked back at me, smaller than life-size, but quite clear. I had not seen anything so clearly since I was a child.
One of the faces was Wynn. Her hair was shining and clean, her skin smooth and healthy. She smiled out at me, so warm and friendly that I felt bathed in love and wellbeing. As I watched her, she somehow shrank back, so that I could see her whole body. Turning sideways, she showed me a belly swollen with a growing child. She held the palms of her hands together, in a gesture of reassurance and farewell.
‘There!’ said Cuthman. ‘I told you.’
‘Wait,’ I said, afraid that he would somehow close the water again. The other figure was taking Wynn’s place, and I wanted to see who it was. I had expected Spenna, but now I realised it was a strange woman, someone I had never seen before. She was old and lined, her skin almost black in the dark water. Wisps of grey hair fell across her face and she smiled to show a mouth of strong but stained teeth. Her nose was crowned by a great wen, almost as big as the top joint of a finger. The kind of face which frightens children and suggests some special power. ‘A witch!’ I breathed. ‘Who is she?’
Cuthman made no reply. I watched the woman, as she went on smiling, looking into my eyes. I wanted her to speak to me, but no words came. Instead, a succession of clear sentiments moved across her face. First amusement and friendliness. An open look of welcome and generosity despite her ugly features. Then a more guarded expression, a little frown of displeasure, which deepened until the face was deformed and ravaged by a great rage. Fear sliced into my former sense of loving confidence. Something had gone terribly wrong, and it seemed that I might be responsible. The hag was clearly enraged with me, and me alone. At last she faded, not gently bidding farewell as Wynn had done, but turning over and over as if blown by a great whirlwind, shaking her fists as she disappeared from my sight.
‘Tis someone we shall meet one day,’ said Cuthman. He was trying to keep his voice light and careless, but some darker feeling choked him. I sank back on my heels, exhausted.
The sun was high overhead, veiled by a thin covering of white cloud, throwing no shadows, and shedding no warmth on us. My knees ached with the damp, and I found I was shivering, as we dragged back to the hermit’s hovel. We were late in getting started on that day’s trek, each of us shaken by the morning’s events. Cuthman brought me bread and meat that the hermit had left on his table. The man himself was nowhere to be seen, which I did not find surprising. I ate quickly, and then allowed my son to settle me into the cart with a new layer of dried bracken beneath me. Slowly he fastened the straps around his shoulders, and grasped the handles. I had not seen him so low in enthusiasm since we left the moors, and it seemed to me that he was losing sight of his reason for the journey, with no known destination and little to assure him that he did the right thing.
‘Yet Wynn is alive,’ I said, after a long silence. That knowledge cheered me, like a warm coal on a sharp frosty night. ‘And she is to bear a child.’
‘Thank the Lord, she is alive – and married,’ he replied. He sounded breathless and I realised we had been moving up a long gradual slope for some time. The dense trees were far behind us and we were into more open land. On our right hand side, we could glimpse the edges of cliffs and hear the call of seabirds. The sharp sea air came to us across the bare scrubland.
‘Married,’ I repeated, the idea entirely new to me. It was the natural conclusion to make, and yet I wondered. Had my earlier sense of ill tidings sprung from the echoes of some sinfulness committed by my daughter? Had some evil man forced himself on her and left her with his brat? She had smiled in the pool-vision, and seemed serenely content. I sighed at the new questions and the knowledge that I might never have the answers.
Miles or leagues meant little to me, as we journeyed on. We had been away from home for less than a week, and already I had lost count of the days and distance. My idea of the size of our homeland was hazy, but I had heard enough of missionaries walking the length and breadth of it, preaching and converting, to understand that it was small enough to traverse with some ease. The runes contained much about sea and ships and great travellings, and I knew Rome to be a long distance away to the south, across the sea. I had seen the moorland change to rolling hills, glimpsed a distant sparkling that must be the ocean at the edge of our homeland, passed through forests, all in such a short space of time. When we set out, I had no vision of our arriving at a final destination. It had seemed to me that we would walk for months, taking our luck and blessings where we could, and enduring ill fortune as we must. Now, on this short grey afternoon, the idea came to me that we might reach the eastern shores of our island within another fortnight or so.
Cuthman said nothing as we crawled up the long hill. His feet were dragging now and then on the stony road, and twice he steered the cart into a rut and forced me to hang onto the sides tightly as we bumped out of it again. I feared for the wheel, and the joints connecting it to my vehicle. He was tired and I felt worried for him. He was too young for this task. I had always been a useless mother to him, now I was worse than useless: a burden he might ruin himself in carrying.
As twilight fell, we seemed to draw away from the sea coast again, and another forest loomed before us. My son’s weariness forced us to settle early for the night, in a sheltered hollow between some stately beech trees. It was a soothing place and I laid myself down willingly enough. We had food and water, the night was dry though chill, and it seemed to me that I had been given more than I deserved in the glimpse I had had of my daughter. The swollen belly containing my grandchild gave me a warm feeling, despite an anxiety about Wynn’s health during the birth and her security once the child was born. Did she have a man to take care of her? Cuthman had said she was isolated, solitary. I hoped this did not mean that she was unhappy or afraid. I clung to the impression I’d derived from the vision that she was in no state of danger or unhappiness, but somehow contented with her life.
Despite the darkness, the day was not quite done. If we slept so early, we would waken in darkness and have to await the dawn in cold and hunger. Although Cuthman was aching from pushing the cart, and his hands were raw and painful, when he lay down he could only toss and sigh, unable to get to sleep. It was even worse for me. The lack of physical exertion meant that I had little need for long nights of sleep. After a while, I spoke.
‘Tis early for sleep.’
He sighed. ‘I need something to settle myself. My head’s full of pictures and thinking.’
‘We’ve seen a lot over the days,’ I agreed. ‘I never believed it would be such a time for seeing and hearing.’
‘Nay. Mam. Could you tell me a story? Just a quick one. I have come to love a story.’
I was startled. Like any mother, I had woven old tales about lost children and fairy folk to my youngsters, to soothe them to sleep, but a story was a different thing. It needed a crowd of listeners and a familiar ring to it. But as I began to think about it, a strange excitement gripped me. I remembered the half-finished story from the night before. Perhaps it was this which made Cuthman so restless. Perhaps I could complete it myself, and lay it and my son to rest together.
‘Shall I try to finish the one about Deirdre?’ I asked him.
He thought for a moment. ‘If you begin again. I forget how it went at the start.’
I found that I too had forgotten the detail. A girl, hidden away, and a king’s huntsman. A nurse and a secret home beneath a hillock. The elements were there, but the connecting thread seemed dull and lifeless. It seemed to me that I must make a new story, all of my own, if there was indeed such a thing as a new story.
‘Then I will try to remake it, just for you,’ I told him. He snuggled against me, then, like a little child and I remembered how I had loved him in easier times, though only for short moments, the discomfort between us always there. A flood rose up inside me, surging into my throat, and tears burst forth, like a sudden rainstorm. But I made no sound, and the lad never knew of my emotion. He waited patiently until I began, almost before I knew what I would say.
‘Once upon a time, there was a king, who was out on a tour of his lands, all alone. He came to a green mound, in a forest, and sat down to eat a piece of meat he had with him. It was a large piece, with a bone in the middle, and when he had finished, he threw the bone away carelessly, and stood up to leave.
‘Before he could walk back to his horse, he heard a tiny voice, down beside his feet. Looking carefully, he saw a small woman, about the height of his riding boot, shaking her fist at him and shouting as loud as she could. In great surprise, the king knelt down and asked her what the matter might be. She shouted to him that his bone had fallen onto her children, where they were playing outside her house. He had given them all serious bruises and they were frightened and crying.
‘ “This is my house!” she screamed at him. “You have been sitting on my roof, and broken it. You will suffer for this.” And she cursed him, saying his daughter would be stolen away from him, and he would only see her again on her wedding day. The girl would grow up as a shepherd’s daughter, far away from the city.
‘The king smiled a little, even though he was sorry for what he had done. He had no daughter, so was not afraid of the curse. His wife, the Queen, had remained at home, while he made a great tour of his kingdom, lasting many months. They were determined that their first child, when it finally came, would be a son, not a daughter.
‘But when the king eventually arrived back at the Palace, several of his servants came riding out to meet him. They had extraordinary news for him, and it took many minutes before he could understand what had happened. At last it was clear, and he was greatly astonished to learn that the Queen had given birth to a daughter, that very day. But there was no cause for rejoicing. The nurse had laid the baby in the royal crib, lined with satin and best lambswool coverlets, embroidered with butterflies and flowers, and turned away for a moment. When she next looked, the crib was empty, and only the gently flapping curtains at the open window showed that someone had stolen the new Princess right away.
‘The king rushed to his beloved wife, and together they wept bitterly for the loss of their child. The king recounted his meeting with the little woman, and tried to console his Queen that at least their daughter was alive and would grow up healthy. Furthermore, they would see her again on the day she married.’
‘Mam,’ Cuthman interrupted me, accusingly. ‘This be nothing like the story of Deirdre. ‘Tis more like our Wynn, seems to me.’
‘Maybe it is,’ I agreed, trying to hold the thread in my mind, and to follow the story wherever it might lead me. ‘I don’t know where it comes from.’
‘Go on, then,’ he murmured, shifting himself slightly.
‘Well, the piskies took the baby princess, and whisked her away by magic. In a far away cottage, sat a shepherd’s wife, shelling her peas over a large bowl. The woman was dreaming to herself, and besides that, she was shortsighted...’
‘Like you, Mam,’ chuckled Cuthman.
‘Yes, like me. Now hush... So when a real live baby dropped from nowhere into the bowl of peas, the woman believed that it had come from one of the peapods. Holding the child carefully aloft, she was pleased to have such a lovely little girl for her own, and named her “Sweetpea.”
‘She was the only child of the shepherd and his wife, and they loved her very much. She worked with the sheep, feeding the lambs and spinning the fleece, from her youngest years. They lived on the moors, and she often took her turn to watch over the sheep as they grazed.
‘Meanwhile, the king and queen were busy with foreign visitors, and small troubles, and the king was very much away from the palace. The queen grew old before her time, with bad temper and worry and disappointment never far away. She had a cousin, the Countess of Cornwall, who lived by a lake called Dozemary Pool.
‘One day the Countess was knitting, in a small boat on the lake, and from a sudden curiosity, she reached down into the water with one of her knitting needles, thinking to discover how deep the pool might be. She probed four times, in different places. The needle touched something, but she did not think it was the bottom of the lake.
‘A moment later, a very strange figure bobbed up beside the boat and looked furiously at her. He was half man and half fish, with fins for arms and fishy lips. When he saw the Countess and her knitting, he began to scream. “You have blinded my eldest son,” he raged. “Both his eyes have been put out by your needle. And both my other two sons have each lost an eye. My wife is distraught. You must pay for this.”
‘The man began a curse, which the frightened Countess did not at first understand. Her baby son, just born, would be condemned to forever go against his own wishes, said the merman. This made no sense at first, but he continued with a long stream of furious words, and she began to see what would happen. Whatever the young boy wanted, his own actions would ensure that he got the opposite. If he wished to be kind, he would be cruel. If he wished to give, he would in reality take. Nobody would like or comprehend him. It was a bitter curse indeed, and the Countess pleaded in vain for mercy from the man of the lake.
‘The boy was named William, and he was a sweet baby. But he did not grow up sweet at all. He was sour and rude to everyone. He slapped his nurse and pinched the house slaves and stole the toys from the other children. Nobody wanted anything to do with him, and even his mother, who knew the reason for his unpleasantness, wished him far from her.
‘Finally, when William was sixteen, his parents sent him to the royal palace to try to change his manners for the better. Perhaps, thought the Countess to herself, he will be different away from home. She had never told anybody about the curse, because she felt so guilty about it.
‘After three months at court, everyone agreed that although William was very handsome, and graceful in all his movements, and clever at games, he was not an asset to the household because of his perversity and rudeness. The queen sent a message to her cousin, saying he would have to be sent home again, and it was hard to see how he would ever make a successful way in the world, if he could not mend his manners.
‘In desperation, the Countess went back to Dozemary, and knelt at the lake’s edge to pray for help. She prayed all night and until sunset next day. At last, a figure stood before her, and she recognised the great Morgan, sorceress and patron of all Cornish women. Gather fernseed, and scatter it on the lake she whispered, and vanished again.
‘Eagerly the Countess ran about, gathering the tiny spores from the underside of ferns, until she had a good handful. Then she rowed out onto the lake, and strewed the seeds on the surface. Then she waited, almost falling asleep over the oars.
‘A splash startled her, and she roused to see the merman beside the boat. He smiled a little, and said, “My children have regained their sight, for which I thank ‘ee. Go home. The curse on your William has been lifted.”
‘So she rowed back and galloped home as fast as she could. But William was not there, so she went to bed, exhausted but well pleased.
‘But in the days before the Countess found forgiveness from the merman, William, in despair at his lack of friends and his contrary nature, had gone riding on the moors in the heart of Dumnonia, with his fierce black dog, Leo, alongside. Leo and William made a fine pair, each with bitter ways. As they crossed the high moors, Leo began to chase sheep, and killed a number of them. William was angry, but all he could do was call, “Good dog. That’s a fine boy,” and more and more sheep lay dead and bleeding on the heather.
‘So Sweetpea, the shepherd girl, who had been born to be a princess, ran up to William, and screamed her anger and pain at him.
‘ “Sir, these sheep are all we have. My parents will starve without them. Will you pay me for what your dog has done? It is the least you can do, after such wanton destruction.” And she wept to see her precious charges so completely destroyed.
‘But William could not force himself to be kind and generous to her, as he wished to be. He took his purse out of his pocket, but instead of paying her with the silver it contained, he slapped it across her face. Then he turned his horse and called his dog, and began to gallop away.
‘But Sweetpea was a strong and determined girl. She would not let him escape his obligations, and so she ran after him. Her piskie guardian who had stolen her from her crib, lent wings to her heels, and as William crossed the moors, heading eastwards, up and down hills, across rivers, through great forests, she followed him, although her feet were bleeding and she was growing terribly tired. As they went she kept calling to him, “Sir, you must pay me what you owe. I will have the silver from you for my sheep.” The dog turned to snarl at her, but he did not dare attack her, and she took no notice of him.
‘And so they ran one hundred miles, until William reached the royal palace where his mother’s cousin was queen, and where everyone had become wearied of his nasty manners and bitter character. He jumped off his horse, leaving a groom to tend it, and disappeared into one of the far rooms, feeling sick about what he had done.
‘The girl followed closely, but did not see where he went. Instead she collapsed onto the flight of steps up to the palace gate, and lay there too tired to move. Some time later, the king himself found her, and asked her what was wrong. She told him the story of the rude young man and his killer dog, and how she had followed him so far. Her feet were swollen and bleeding, and she could not walk another step.
‘The king was a kind man, and he lifted her in his arms and took her into the palace, where he bathed her feet himself. He questioned her further, until he had the whole story of what had happened. Then he became very angry and resolved to find out which of the young men of his court had done such a wicked thing. He said he would hand him over to her, when he was discovered, so she might do whatever she wished with him.
‘ “You could marry him, if you chose,” he said.
‘ “Nay,” she spat. “Who would want such a beast for a husband?”
‘The king ordered the shepherd girl to be put to bed, and cared for until she healed, and then she would be asked to identify the villain. Nobody was permitted to leave the court during that time.
‘But on the day after Sweetpea arrived, the merman who had cursed William lifted the spell, so he no longer went against his own wishes, but was able to follow his heart, which was still good and kind. So on that same day, he went to the king, and confessed what had happened. He said he had fifty pieces of silver for the shepherd girl and her family, enough to pay for a big new flock of sheep, and a better home to live in as well.
‘When she heard this, Sweetpea began to think again about taking William as a husband. The king assured her that his promise was serious, and she could have William to do with as she wished. “I will take him home with me,” she said, “and he can live with us and work for my father as shepherd boy.” And she laughed to think of the young nobleman being so humbled.
‘William was so surprised he could not speak when the king called him into his royal chamber and handed him to the girl. “But - I cannot marry such as her,” he protested. “I am of royal blood, and she is a mere shepherd girl.”
‘ “Yet she wishes you to marry her, and I order you to do so,” said the king, although his mind was uneasy. William had changed so much that the king began to suspect that sorcery was at work, and perhaps the boy was being wrongly used.
‘But Sweetpea was insistent, and the couple left for her moorland home, to give her worried parents the news. They had found their sheep all dead and their daughter missing, and believed that some great wolf or other creature must have snatched her, after it killed the sheep.
‘The marriage took place, even though William was unhappy at what had happened to him. He liked Sweetpea very much, and they found much to talk about, laughing together and working cheerfully out on the moors, but still he felt ashamed that his wife was a shepherd girl.
‘After a year, the king and queen passed by, on another tour of their kingdom. They saw William and Sweetpea on the road, and stopped to talk to them. Nobody noticed the tiny piskie woman, standing beside a furze bush, but her magic was at work. Of a sudden, the king and queen together recognised Sweetpea as their own child. “Why, my dear, that girl has exactly your eyes,” the king said to the queen.
‘ “And your very same chin,” the queen replied.
‘ “And the hair grows from a point on her brow, just the way yours does,” he added.
‘ “Remember what the piskie told you?” said the queen. “You would see your child again when she was married. I believe this must be she.”
‘ “Girl!” called the queen. “Can you tell us who you are?”
“She is yours,” came two voices together. One was that of the old shepherd’s wife, bent now and almost blind. The other was the tiny shrill voice of the piskie.
And so all became clear. Sweetpea and William inherited the kingdom in their turn, but they never forgot the poor old shepherd and his wife, and made sure to give them a happy and comfortable old age. They loved each other long and well, and ruled the kingdom wisely...’
Long before I finished, I knew that Cuthman had fallen asleep. The moon rode high and bright stars thronged the sky. I was not particularly pleased with my performance as a storyteller. I had been in too much hurry to reach the ending, and had been lazy in thinking of what the people would say to each other, and how they might look. It made me remember my life on the moors, and poor Edd, burdened by my helplessness. As I lay down and tried to wrap myself comfortably in my shawl, I anticipated the dreams to come. Surely I would be returned to my home, where I could walk tall and far, and my little children, more numerous than two, would frolic round me.
I should have known that dreams are not for our anticipating.