Page 39 of Beyond the Faerie Gate

Rhoswyn

“Rhoswyn?”

I really don’t want to wake up. I don’t think I’ve ever been so warm and comfortable in my life.

“My daughter, wake.” There’s laughter in her command this time, but the steel in her tone convinces me to do as she says. I blink open my eyes, only to be swamped by darkness.

Where am I?

Why can’t I see anything?

“You died, dear one.” It’s the same voice as before, only sadder this time.

I flinch back, but I’m not sure if I actually move anywhere. I can’t feel my body at all. All I can feel is… weightlessness.

“No… No, that can’t be right.” I’d know if I died, right?

“I am sorry, but it’s true.”

I’m about to deny it a second time, when an image fills the darkness. A girl with pale hair falling from a dark horse and getting caught in the chest by an enormous crossbow bolt. It’s a terrifying, ugly scene, and I wish I could close my eyes to block it out.

I can’t.

Fortunately, the blackness swallows up the vision after a long moment.

“So I’m dead?”

“You are in between. Your essence has returned to Faerie, to me.”

“And that makes you…”

Danu. Their Goddess.

“I have many names. You alone may claim to know me as Mother and address me as such, if you wish.”

She says it casually, but there’s an undertone of withheld emotion there which makes her seem vulnerable.

Is this real? Am I truly having such a candid conversation with a deity?

“Speak your mind,” Danu prompts. “I won’t take offence. I love the way all of my creations think. Absolutely fascinating.”

“I’d like that,” I whisper, biting my lip. “I didn’t… I’ve got to admit, I doubted you were real, even with the whole ‘feeling the connection’ that Maeve made me do.”

Her chuckle is like sunshine in the darkness. The sound is too pure for the black. “I know. I regret you were brought up away from me, but otherwise you would’ve been stolen from my temples and caged beneath the earth on a forgotten shore.”

Well, when she puts it like that… “So you agreed with my… with my other mother’s decision?”

That sounds weird. If I count Diana, the Goddess, and my human mother, then I have three mothers.

“Yes. I suggested it—though it was perhaps the hardest decision Diana and I ever had to make.” She pauses. “Our time together comes to an end, my daughter. So I must ask you for your choice.”

“My choice?”

“Will you return to the land of the living? Or will you travel to the shores of the Otherworld and rest?”

The Otherworld sounds nice. Peaceful.

And it’s not like I’m doing such a great job of being the queen that the fae need.

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