Sunrise

Chapter Thirty-One: Awakening

A loud "hwoinch!" woke her up. Eilonwy raised her head, rubbed her eyes. The light from the window had the bright stark quality of high noon, confirmed by the hollow ache in her stomach. Several hours must have gone by. Hen Wen had risen and was staring at the door, from which, in a moment, a soft knocking sounded.

It turned out to be a servant with her dinner, which she took back to the stool. Hen Wen sat at her feet and gazed upward with longing so she dropped several morsels to the floor, and the pig nuzzled among the rushes for them, snorting contentedly. Eilonwy ate, and looked at Taran. He still slept, and did not seem to have moved, but his eyes had lost their sunken quality, and his breathing was deep and even.

She left her tray on the floor for Hen Wen to clean, and got up and crossed to the window. Outside there was a grassy expanse like a glade, at the far edge of which alders began to cluster around a low stone building, elegant and beautiful in design. Cultivated rose hedges wound around the alder trees and climbed over the walls and archways in sprays and fountains of pink and yellow and red. Their perfume wafted even as far as her window – at least, she assumed that was the source of the loveliness in the air. She'd never smelled roses before; only read of them.

There were people here and there, strolling under the trees and through the roses, singly or in groups of two or three. They were dressed simply in robes of light, airy colors. A few had books or scrolls in their hands. One was sitting beneath a tree with a harp, though if he was playing, she could not hear it from here. The scene was so peaceful and lovely she stared a long time, wishing she might step through the window and go explore it. But suppose Taran woke up while she was gone?

She turned and looked at him again. His couch was right beside her, the pillow at her right hand, and from this vantage point and angle his face was rounded, nose snubbed, eyelashes a dark tangled fringe over cheeks golden-freckled and sunburnt. How had she never noticed how long his eyelashes were? She had an odd fancy that this must be how he looked when he was very young, and wished, even more oddly, that his mother could have seen him.

A sense of common loss filled her with sadness. Mine never saw me either. But...whence came the images, then? Those flashes of slim white hands and fiery hair, that voice that sang of Llyr's white horses and wind upon the water?

She began humming to herself, that tune that she'd always known and couldn't remember learning, the one Achren had always scowled at and told her to be silent. She wished she knew all the words instead of just a few snatches of phrase; it had the frame of a lullaby, but there was a love story in it somewhere, too, with sea and sadness all mixed in, like colors in a dye pot, swirling together. Humming, gazing inward, she was unaware that she had reached out to the boy on the couch, did not know that her hand was stroking the hair back from his temple, would not have known it was what her mother had done for her while she sang the same tune.

There was a break in the rhythm of Taran's breath; he stirred, and his movement brought her to herself. Eilonwy gasped, jerked her hand away as though she'd touched a serpent, and scuttled across the room, plunking herself onto the stool so hard she winced. She curled her legs up and hugged her knees to her chest, hiding most of her flaming face behind them, peering over at him as his limbs twitched. His eyes fluttered open once, twice...the third time they stayed open.

Hen Wen made a sound halfway between a grunt and a squeal. She got to her feet with what, in anything less bulky than a pig, would have been a joyful bound, waddled to the couch, and pushed her cold, bristly snout into the space between the boy's ear and bare neck. He made a wordless sound of surprise and discomfort, his mouth open in confusion, eyes bewildered and round; and Eilonwy forgot her embarrassment in a flood of amusement and relief. She laughed aloud. "You should see your expression. You look like a fish that's climbed into a bird's nest by mistake."