She leaned over the edge, peering into the darkness. She saw a bare glint far below, but no rope nor bucket. No dipper with which to reach toward the water that glimmered and beckoned.
The darkness reached up toward her, and Elia felt herself falling forward. She slipped slowly down and down the stone channel toward the heart of Innis Lear. Roots caressed her as she fell, and a soft bed of moss finally caught her, damp and soaking, gloriously bright green and smelling like springtime. Lights winked all around, waves lapping against a far shore, crystals in the black cavern, sparkling and laughing like stars but made of stone. Elia opened her mouth, and the moss lifted her up, giving her into the embrace of roots that tugged and rolled her through the island’s bedrock, through the fertile mud fields and beneath stretching moorland. Trees whispered hello, worms caught at her hair, and the tickling legs of root insects kissed her in passing. She laughed, though earth pressed against every part of her, even her lips and tongue and eyes.
And then the wind came, and she flew up again, her blood soaring through her veins, her heartbeat a dance, a song, and Elia was not alone. She spun upright with a group of silver spirits, weaving through the flashing shadows of the White Forest. Where their toes tapped, mushrooms and wildflowers grew, and in their wake floated perfect heart-shaped moon moths, lighting a path.
A crown was gently placed on her head, woven of tiny white flowers, and Elia sat down on a throne of ancient blue-gray granite, worn smooth from a hundred queens and kings.
The crown fell apart, then, and petals tumbled down her hair and cheeks, landing in her palms and on her tongue. Elia swallowed, and a sharpness slithered down her throat, slowing her heart, turning her flesh to stone and her bones to water, until she sank into the granite seat, part of the world.
She sighed, and the island’s wind sighed, too; she laughed, and the island laughed. When rain dripped onto the roots and leaves and peaks of the mountain, she wept.
Elia came back to herself slowly. Curled on the ruined floor of the star cathedral, pressed to the well, her arms pillowing her head. Sitting, she blinked: light in the sky told her it was morning, though whether a morning immediately following her midnight sojourn, or a morning a hundred years later, Elia could not immediately say.
She thought of dancing with the earth saints in her dream. A flash of white, a flit of bright shadow high above, startled her, and she looked up toward the spires.
It was no saint, but an old ghost owl; it drifted silently down toward her in a graceful arc. Elia got to her knees, watching with her breath held, in case by exhaling she might scatter the spell.
The fierce owl was beautiful, creamy and white with a pattern of speckles down its wings and a heart-shaped face, with solid black eyes calm on her own.
Held in its small, sharp beak was a crushed wreath of hemlock. Like the one her father had worn when he died, like the one that had disintegrated in Elia’s dream.
The owl landed on the stone floor with a click of talons and dropped the crown at her knee.
She shivered, and listened to the island.
Eat of the flower, and drink of the roots, said the White Forest around her, and the wind blew the message against the four cathedral spires.
Eat of the flower, and drink of the roots.
Elia understood.
A bargain between herself and the island. This would make her the true queen of Innis Lear.
She carefully picked up the crown. Thank you, she said to the owl, bowing her head. It shrugged its folded wings.
And so Elia Lear knelt, as dawn rose over the star cathedral, across from the watchful owl, with a hemlock crown in her lap. Listening, and thinking. And wanting.
She did not wish to be the queen.
The sun rose, warming the sky to a pale blue. Wind growled and whined overhead, still longing for order, still sad over the lost king. The trees hissed and whispered, though not to Elia any longer. Everything waited. They would have her choose.
If she did this, she was the queen of Innis Lear.
Not her sisters, who would hate her and fight her forever.
If she did this, Elia could never again dream of only stars, or only a small taste of magic. She would be the warp and weft of the island’s life, between the harsh land and the people.
Am I the only possibility? she asked, desperately. Surely there could be someone else, another who could take up this burden, someone to delight in the joys and the power. Regan would speak with the trees, accept this love, and Gaela was strong, ready for hardship. But would either woman listen to the heart of the island?
Elia, whispered the trees.
She did not want to make this choice.
Brona Hartfare had kept the rootwaters alive for twelve years. She deserved this honor, the allegiance of Innis Lear. And Kayo could be an excellent king by her side, raised as he had been to leadership, to mediation and economy. The island loved the witch. Loved both of them. Elia should bring the hemlock crown to Brona, and tell her the secret to getting rootwater running in her veins, to have the island see her and support her reign. Then Elia could leave, could be what she’d always wanted: a priest, a witch. Or even a wife—she could find Ban, save him, take him from his hatred and anger: choose him, choose a life of magic together, simple and belonging and easy.
Was that the way to save everyone, to be everything and fail at nothing? To give up this power and responsibility?
Or was that only what she thought she wanted, because she was afraid?
Elia, whispered the trees.
The witch is calling your name.
Your girl is calling your name.
We are calling your name.
Elia stood and held the hemlock carefully in her hands.
Sisters,
Our father is dead.
I send this letter in four copies, to find you either at Dondubhan, the Summer Seat, Astora, or Connley Castle, hoping to reach you in one of the corners of Innis Lear.
He died with me, suddenly, underneath a starry sky. I suspect you would prefer it had been painful, but he was at peace.
The island is not.
It longs for a king, and we must choose now amongst ourselves. We must be enough together to meet the island’s needs. Come to me at Errigal Keep, and we will decide there, where the iron sleeps.
Regan, the trees told me of your loss—I am so very sorry that your husband, too, has died. I know you loved him. I am learning something of love lately, and I hope you are finding strength in Gaela as always, and in the presence of Ban Errigal, and in knowing Connley’s bones will always be part of the stones and roots of Innis Lear, which were so loved by you both.
Your sister, Elia
AEFA
IT BOTHERED AEFA greatly that her lady still carried her crushed, dangerous flower crown.
Obviously it was hemlock, and the king had died wearing hemlock, and Aefa did not think anything symbolic or sentimental was worth the risk of Elia getting the poison on her fingers or accidentally swallowing some. Or worse just having it close to hand, and then deciding in one sad moment to die.
“I’m not suicidal,” Elia promised softly when Aefa tried (for the seventh or eighth time) to coax the crown from around the princess’s arm where she wore it hooked around her elbow like a large and deadly bracelet.
The reassurance was good, until Elia added, “Though I cannot promise to never eat it.”
Aefa’s huge eyes must have said plenty, because Elia hugged her and kissed her cheek and swore not to die by her own hand.