The Lady at the River's Edge

31 - The Nightborn Dance

Words come to her, distorted, as if she is submerged in water. The voice is well-known to her, but she can't recall his face or name. "For love, you must go," he says. "For love, I cannot follow."

There are images too, in oil-slick shimmer, soft at the edges, shifting as a dream: a fox makes play of a sleeping hound, who upon waking gives chase. The fox darts into a hen-house, for he knows the rooster is away, and there disappears. The hound, finding his tormenter vanished, turns his anger upon the hen.

Like smoke the image shifts and dances. The colors bleed together into swirling chaos. Amidst the muddle patterns appear, roses of red and white, budding, blooming, and never fading. Thereatop a new voice rings, high and sweet, unknown to her. "From love I birth the saint, and for love I grant her the name of the martyr."

She is dancing, this she knows. Where does she dance? Why can she not see? There is a drum which is a horse, and on that mount she rides the sky. This too she knows: the world is but an image, shining on the surface of a still lake; it is flat, and its face does not resemble its depths.

The colors coalesce, a new dream made vivid to her eyes: a stag looms over a doe and her fawn. His antlers now shine gold with the holy light of the sun. The doe is afraid, and thus so is her child. A twitch from the stag, and they dart into the woods–but oh how long those antlers reach!

His duty done, the stag lays down, and now he is a wolf of plain gray. His leg is caught, tied fast in a snare, and for all his snarls and snaps he cannot free himself from the rope. But then: a dove of purest white flutters down, as if born from a wisp of cloud, alighting on the captured beast. With her nimble beak, she pecks the knot undone, and lo the wolf is free! He gives a bark of thanks, only to trot off back to his den, where his mate is waiting.

"For love you came," says the wolf, another voice she does not know, this one deep and proud. "For love, I must depart."

From whence the wolf disappeared now comes a lion, with fur of gold and mane of red, striding sure. But hark! A rumbling chorus of growls–the lion's pride snarls at his back. Teeth bared, claws unsheathed, they crowd behind him. Does he cower? Does he bow and beg? No–he takes in his paw a leafy bough, and marches through their midst untouched, his gold shining all the brighter.

Once more the colors fade. Her body is a distant thing, tied to her soul only by memory. She is above it, well above; the very arch of the sky lies beneath her. Across the dark cavernous void of heaven she hears an echo; the first voice comes again, the only voice she knows.

"For love, you must go. For love, I cannot follow."

She wants to answer, but she has no mouth, no lips or tongue, no breath. She cannot cry out, cannot reach to where he speaks from. She is for now but a lonely vessel, a chalice made to hold all the pains of the world. Where went her steed? Why can she not yet descend?

The colors swirl, rippling backwards from where the daylight now shines, across the world from where she drifts. She smells a dozen mornings, a hundred, and longs for the warmth of the sun.

There is light, not the gold of the dawn but the white of the night's full moon. The moon is a rabbit hunted, chased across the sky. A hound snaps at her tail as she darts across the rolling meadows, but with a sudden sharp turn, she confounds her pursuer, and he falls still, ceasing in his chase. The hunt began at the dawn of time, and will last until the earth turns to ash.

By the light of the moon, she sees now a falcon soaring across the sky, and in each deadly talon a mouse is clasped–but they are held safe, not speared through. With sharp eyes he scans the valley below–and dives! Has he glimpsed his prey? Or perhaps a burrow, for the mice to find sanctuary?