Navasheen                                                        August 2008, by 


By Gudrun Sabrina Hirt

Chapter One 

It had been long that magic was hindered and lost in the world.  As children, people had to stop believing in magic and in the possibility of magic . . . and that is how the many kinds of fairies and how the unicorns disappeared.  They were the last of all creatures that were once on the Earth and disappeared through the soft flash of light into the other realm, Navasheen.  In Navasheen, inside the tower between waking and sleeping there was a big book that had been blank, fallen open since the beginning of time.  It was called the Hufa An.  It was never meant to be written in, since it was the unwritten book of all that could be.  But for some years there was an invisible hand writing in it, page by page.  And when the last page would be written, then Navasheen was going to disappear too and all the magical creatures that ever were. 

  Nobody in Navasheen could hold power over that hand writing the book, though the Fairies of Good Waiting had read how it had written in the beginning that there was only one who could stop the book from being written.  And that was the child living on the Earth who would wake up in Navasheen . . .

 

  Whatever the time she was living in, what she was doing in her life, what she had ever believed in or what she was looking for, or how old she was, Una went to sleep and dreamed.  In her dream she kept seeing sea water in sunlight, fading in and out.  She felt lost and in her dream she couldn’t keep consciousness.  When she did lose consciousness and what was like falling asleep a second time, Una was wakened by a bright light coming from the sun.  And there was a young girl with milk-white arms around Una, telling her everything was alright.  Still like in a dream, Una had no form, was not confined in a solid body but yet was embraced and loved like when she was a little girl. 

  “Hush, I’m here now,” the young girl told her.  She was happy as brightest daylight and like the good fairy who rescues all the lost baby animals in the flower fields.  Una knew her as a familiar friend she had known in her earliest childhood but actually had never really met.  It felt like it was her older sister and yet was like a playful child taking her hand to all things of happiest childhood.  Una in fact was already nearly thirty.  Una later learned this was the fairy that had been with her since she was born and later had gone back again through a small bright light to Navasheen.  The fairy was wearing white rags though very clean and they formed a dress.  Una caught glimpses of where they were – they were in the sky above the sea and yet there was nothing frightening.  There were plenty of light baubles all around them – they were the Fairies of Waking and Sea, she later discovered.  It was so beautiful and it felt home was nearby, very near.

  “Yes, you are going inside to your home,” Una heard spoken to her though the air carried the gentle voice away; they were travelling at faster speed . . . or a different kind of air it was becoming around them – then no speed at all, it seemed.  Just as Una noticed it, the fairy smiled and caressed the little girl that was who Una had become again and without a doubt, Una knew she was safe.  Then there was an assuring promise and confidence Una felt from the loving fairy and next just a blissful nothingness in a bright, white space floating at a higher height . . .

  Next Una was shifted through different weights of air – there became stone walls visible to her and the wood frame of a window – then she was inside a room, saw very blurry – just some red and gold of furniture, small winged fluttering things wishing to attend to her in concern and surprise.  Before her was a very large, heavy book on a stand.  A quill of grey feather and marks writing on the book, by itself – and once she had perceived that she was drifted away again.  There was a pull at her breath – she began breathing and was returned to familiar consciousness, a very happy and exciting one though a bit dizzy from the travels. 

  Una opened her eyes – she had eyes to open and close again – and she was her child self, waking up in lucid light of sky through the many leaves of treetops, lush green all around her, the sound of – yes, that was a stream, very close, to her left.  The stream of which the sound she had been wanting to listen to all her life, so she then knew.  She was lying alongside the stream in a forest.  The bountiful ground was such a vivid, rich green, the deepest and vibrant kind of green ever seen and at once she knew it was the most mystical place and refuge from all journeys.

  She closed her eyes again; a bit dizzy from all the travelling of sleep or wherever she had come from. 

  “I think she’s close to awakening,” – there was a girl speaking – and then another, or was it a boy.  “She moved.” 

  “Do you think she’ll want someone to hold her hand? “

  “Shhh, don’t go Bror.  Let her come to us.”

  “She’s going to wonder who we are.  She’ll be frightened.  Elfinnwynne, she’s a child.”

  “Wayyh didn’t tell us – “

  At that time Una sat up.  Bror, the boy, and Elfinnwynne, the girl, were sitting on the mossy ledges of rock to the right side of her.  They had kept a distance.  The two children were both the same age as Una, had been Una’s friends in that strange realm of childhood that had been but hadn’t.  But now this time they were older than Una, so Una saw by their height and lankness.  She looked at her own arms which were shorter in comparison.  And the dress she was wearing, – why, this was the dress her Godmother Aunty Maffy had given her on her sixth birthday, pink and yellow flowers and a white embroidery hem.  She looked back at her friends.  They were just before age eleven, though Una knew them from before as maybe just five or six, same as her.  This time there was a mission.  Una felt this.  Her friends were ready that way, the way they were dressed, the girl in a white dress very much the same as the fairy mother who had carried Una across the sea.  The boy wore clothes from a long ago adventures, woven and patched and frayed from the green to brown, from tawny to purple as plants growing in the shaded forest.  He wore a bow and arrows.  They were in a mystical land, not at home in the house they had grown up in – that house though Una never lived there in that other reality of her life.  As she tried to compare the two, that other reality with her mother and father and their house became more obscure.      

  Life had gone so fast, from where she had lived with her two same-age friends.  It was a strange thing how outside in the reality of chronological life, time and age swept you to different places.  Una suddenly was struck by the thought of how her life had gone on in what was now that faraway realm . . . what is called her “life” – where time and paces had taken her.   She had already grown into a woman, she had.  Woah, that went fast.  Now it felt all grey and just made of humdrum tasks, work, searching, and moving to and fro without really going anywhere, all these people she could not remember just now but had been important.  What had she been doing just at the time before she had woken up here?  What were the present circumstances?  She could not recall, not even the bedroom before she had closed her eyes to sleep.  Where had she been living?

  “It’s good we’re together again,” said Elfinnwynne, the girl.  She was a confident though gently speaking friend. 

  “Nothing’s changed much with us,” said Bror, the boy, good-naturedly.  “We’ve just turned a bit older because you need us this way, to be your guides and protectors.”

  “We’re going on a journey, the three of us . . . there are a few things you will learn of, many creatures and people you will meet.  There are some dangers and a few obstacles and passages . . . “Elfinnwynne nodded her head in defiance though Una saw in her a foreboding seriousness.  The girl’s head shook all the copper-gold curls that hung most around her shoulders.  She stood up from the mossy ledges she had been sitting on.   Una saw the longest curls were swinging behind her ankles.  “We must find our way and meet all those who are a part of saving Navasheen before everybody is lost forever.”  She walked closer to Una in a way to press how serious the circumstance.        “You are the only one who can save the magic.”

  Una did not step back though the importance that was weighted on her was something she was naturally inclined to step back from.  She had the image of herself becoming the pendulum of a great clock and everything was becoming dependent on her . . . to do what?

  “What did you see before you woke up?”

  Una knew for sure how this to answer, though there had been a many things she had seen.  “The  book . . . “  Una could describe nothing in words for the greatness of the book and where it had been – in that high place she had floated to . . . in a dream, wasn’t it?

  “You have been inside the Tower between waking and sleeping,” Elfinnwynne said with a slow nod.  Her eyes deepened to a violet mystery and twinkled softly.  She too knew where Una had been and what she had seen and it was a most important, highest place.  “And there is the book you saw.  It is the book of all things that could ever be.  The Fairy Folk have called it the Hufa An.”

  Una nodded, smiling.  The book was still close at her heart like it had been when she had drifted close to it and it was the most precious of all she had seen and met in that dream . . .

  “Wayyh, who is your Travel Light, let you go to see the Hufa An,” Elfinnwynne’s eyes still twinkled though her face straightened to remind Una of her wondrous friend.   “Without her, you would not have found anything, anywhere, not even us.  Her name is Wayyh and she will be the only help you can rely on in times of trouble when nothing and nobody and even you will fail.  She is of that realm that is not where Bror and I are from, she is not of Navasheen.  She isn’t of the world you come from either . . .”

  Una remembered here, remembered the happiest and peaceful light before which she had met Wayyh, and Wayyh had come out from that light.  It was sunlight, though not the same as sunlight on Earth.  And yes, it had also taken Una places before.  She seemed to have known that from long ago, just as Wayyh had always been there.

  Elfinnwynne then in a bit of haste to teach Una something, added, “Her name sounds much like its meaning.  Waay.”  Elfinnwynne talked much with insight and thought, yet the boy Bror behind her now stifled a chuckle.  With time Una found out more how Elfinnwynne really was just a child after all, though she assumed she knew most everything – which was actually true, she was an unusual child and had been through different worlds.  Yet very often Bror laughed about some slips of her child tongue which were funny in their abruptness.

  Una had to giggle a little too.  It was a relief.  She looked around and everything settled again to her as it had been when she first woke up.  It was a beautiful place, safe, and there were no expectations on her . . . It was true life, the vibrant green – all of the moss over the ground, over the roots of trees, the ferns, grassy bank along the stream; the dappling light and forest shadows, the many sounds of the stream.  Where were they going?

  Elfinnwynne still smiled, having laughed a little at herself as her good company had.  The clean white rags hanging from her arms lengthened as she raised them to summon Una toward the stream.

  “The path is yours, along the stream.  Neither I nor Bror know the way back to the tower – we have never been there ourselves.  The fairies believe that you know the way there, however long it might take.  They are waiting for you there, the Fairies of Good Waiting.  You must find the path yourself – though Navasheen will help you . . . and so will Bror and I.”

  Una ceased to feel the beauty of this mystical land as her breath tightened.  “The tower?  Where the book is?  Yes . . . yes, I know I must go to it.”  Her hand to stomach she breathed more at ease.  “The book, yes, the book.”  As she saw it again in her memory, she felt this was the most exciting thing off all.  “The book.  The book.”

  Elfinnwynne nodded.  “Yes, the book.  Your heart beats for the book.”  She tossed her chin in the direction of the stream.  “You will find out more about it . . . and first, I believe we must walk a little distance so that whatever, whoever can help us find our way to the tower.”  It looked to Una that the tower was just over the mound of moss and tree roots to climb over, maybe a little walk yonder.  Then Elfinnwynne added, “There is no map of Navasheen.  It would be too great to cover in a map on paper.  Besides, there are different dimensions that can’t be marked and located on paper which is only two dimensional.  Also, you can’t find the different places if you don’t find the person or the creature that takes you there.”  Elfinnwynne tapped her elf-pointed toe, listening to the sound of rubbed suede on some rock.

  Bror was walking a little behind, on the other side of Una.  He had been quiet yet listening.

  Una had no shoes, she walked bare feet.  She stepped over the mound, picking foot easily, having all the energy.  When she needed to climb taking big high steps, Elfinnwynne offered a hand though Bror already assisted her arm.

  “This is the most peaceful of forests,” he said to her, smiling warmly to remind Una of their old friendship.  “There isn’t a thing you must be afraid of.  In this forest there is nothing wicked.”  He looked around, a peaceful awe in his smile and the apple-yellow and green of the light in the forest dappling over his face.  “It is here that the unicorns live, and the unicorn children.  Outside of this forest we’ll have a bit to worry about.  But nothing can do us harm here.”    

  Una followed Bror’s line of gaze and discovered a moving fuzzy thing carrying a small stack of leaves on its back – and there was a red lady bird though perhaps the size of a mouse.  It seemed they were just as all little animals are of any forest, going about their day’s leisure and work.   Una became mesmerized in a dreamy way by an indigo haze of flowers that grew along these shady slopes that the children came to.  They were a lot like blue bells.   She looked closer – there were little mice!  A soft, tan kind of grey – four of them – sniffing the flowers.  Una held her breath as she straddled a few steps towards them.  The most adorable little mouse heads turned to her.  And then one looked at Elfinnwynne, another at Bror.

  Bror said aside to Una, “These mice are known to smell flowers of the forest and that is their food, they eat the nectar and nothing else.  But if you watch them, you’ll see how they get drunk on this beautiful smell of the flowers – and fall down.”  Bror chuckled.  He wasn’t joking.  Una noticed one of them was tipping over, although it was sitting on its bottom.  “They roll about and smell some more.  You see, you really can get drunk on flowers!”  Una felt that was how the flowers were like as she knew them.    The mice were not afraid of her as she bent over to look at them.  An unexpected one of the mice just fell over to the side and rolled in a deliriously happy, languid state.  One of the other mice actually picked one of the flowers off the stem with its little hands and held it out for Una.

  Bror was quick to mention to her.  “Just smell it, don’t take it.  That is what the mice intend for you.”

  Una did just that and drank in smell that the little mice got drunk on – it had a very fruit-like sweetness.  Una began to giggle; she asked Bror and Elfinnwynne almost seriously, “Do you think I’m going to become drunk now too and fall over?”

  Her friends laughed a little – though Elfinnwynne’s was just a gentle musical sigh; Bror was just like the average boy.  “Maybe if you do fall over drunk with its smell, that might be the way back to the tower between waking and –“

  “Bror, you’re silly,” Elfinnwynne opposed.  She herself was very much on the move toward the objective of their purpose, and obviously it was a serious matter to her.  She was already ahead on the next moss-covered mound which was higher than the first and had many ferns on either side of the little path.  Elfinnwynne could pass as a white fairy maiden of the woods if Una did not know who she really was and who had before kneeled beside her playing board games.  Elfinnwynne before had been a lot shorter and even had a fringe across her forehead.  She had not such a fine line of chin and not learned yet to be lofty and knowing better than others.

  Bror and Una had to catch up – Una regretting leaving those dear little mice and their blissful sweetness.  There were more of those bells of indigo but no mice – though some butterflies of faintest sunlight.  A squirrel circled round a tree trunk, going up.

  Elfinnwynne said in a low voice as Una stepped beside her, “If you’re quiet enough and Bror too, the unicorns won’t mind us and then they’ll let us see them.”

  Una’s heart sucked in her breath with the greatest thrill so far since she had woken up here.  “Unicorns!”  She had seen once a real unicorn, in a film.  It had been spring and the young green in the woods had been translucent the way it was here in this mystical forest.

  A gentleness came to Elfinnwynne and she slipped her slender arm across Una’s back.  Elfinnwynne’s lovely eyes deepened violet and twinkled and Una became eager to discover the deeper mystical beauty hidden in this forest.  “Yes, the unicorns . . . they are here.  The ones Bror mentioned.  They are here, quite close.  The bells of indigo are a sign.  They are also called the ‘Memories of the Innocents’ by those sunlight fairy butterflies you see.”  She looked with some sadness and a little pain to the bells of indigo.  “Perhaps when we meet the Unicorn Children, you will learn some of those memories.”

  Una’s attention had become as swift as the swift flight of the unicorns that might be behind the young green foliage or between moss-covered tree trunks.  “Unicorns . . .” Una’s breath stung in her chest.  Unicorns were at the heart of this forest . . . if only she could meet their presence, the whitest white.  The unicorn of gentle step and following the deeper hidden paths . . . Preferring to be hidden, only for the pure at heart to see; an aid and humble guide to the most hidden valleys bright with sunshine.  

  Una’s head began to saunter as she remembered how she had in deed been too noisy laughing before.  She had not meant to be boisterous but of course a unicorn was very shy and afraid.  Perhaps it only showed itself to other magical creatures, magical people, and Una was just Una.

  Bror nudged her arm.  “Don’t worry, Pixie.”  Una was glad Bror was there.  And she was called Pixie!  Her mother had called her that before.  “I’ll make you laugh again pretty soon – it’s the best we can do to get away from Elfinnwynne!  The pixies will like you lots when you meet them.  They made faces at Elfinnwynne last time we were in the Unicorn Valley.  Pixies laugh all the time and the unicorns let them ride the wind with them, holding on to strands of their white manes.  Pixies are the ones who plait the manes of unicorns – tiny little plaits – just very few of them in the unicorn’s mane, you usually can’t see.  There aren’t any pixies just here though, not where we are walking.  As it is in the songs, pixies only stay home in the Free Country of the Sun where the unicorns run.  If we follow the Memories of the Innocents, we’re sure to meet the Innocents themselves and they – “

  “Bror, you must always think you know better what’s for a child,” Elfinnwynne crested overtop.

  Una wondered what was wrong.

  “Una must find the way herself, without being told by anyone who she is supposed to meet.  We don’t even know ourselves.  Maybe we won’t go to the Unicorn Valley this time.  Telling her about the Unicorn Valley and the Free Country of the Sun . . . they’re wonderful, but we might not even be going there.”

  Bror looked reprimanded if not also disappointed; hung his head a bit.  The earthen brown tan coming to his face as it had been the time before when he was silent and Elfinnwynne was telling Una important things.  Other times though, whenever Bror seemed to be dreaming in the space of the wonder and peace of the young green forest, his face lit fair again.

  Una did not say anything though she began to trust what Elfinnwynne was saying.  Una was beginning to understand more how Elfinnwynne meant that there were some important ways Una had to be minded as being very special.  Una could see by Elfinnwynne had strong faith in her and also something very great and important, to do with Navasheen and the big book.  Una did not yet know what was going to happen if she did not make it there on time.  At the thought of the book, yearning came back to her . . . the book . . . the Hufa An.  The whole time she felt that it needed her and yet it was on the other side of what could be several dimensions and journeys.  How possibly could Una make it there?  And Wayyh had brought her there.  Una had been there.  But how come she didn’t just bring her there now? 

  The trees over head began to rustle softly.  There had not been a breeze before.  There was something new.  There was a dull foreboding coming to Una of the grey normality of the life outside – as if perhaps she might be waking up from being awake in this beautiful place of Navasheen.  An ache came to the middle of her chest, for she did not want there to be any other reality than the here and now, this tender young green, the translucency of the leaves on the trees, the ferns; the mysterious bells of indigo leading her and her friends to the unicorns  . . .

Chapter Two  

Elfinnwynne and Bror held her hand on both her sides.  Looking up and around, they also did not sense things were quite the same though they were more concerned about Una.

  Then to the left, by the stream which took a jagged left turn away from where the children were heading, there came a faint sound of a voice singing.

  On the right, just near, something white and slender moved –

  “Look!”  Una pointed, but her voice beamed and rang with the thrill of seeing a unicorn and though she saw its two front legs, stepped out from behind a tree and a whisk of its tail of white, there was too much foliage for it not to disappear into again.

  Elfinnwynne and Bror only heard its hooves on the hollow sounding ground.

  Una clasped her hand over her mouth.  She hadn’t kept quiet . . .

  And yet that voice to the left, singing was entrancing.  The children listened to the singing sometimes thinning into the clearness of the stream.  Then rising again – at times very recognizable and becoming an earth warm.  The children listened for this the best.  It was a nice person.

  They walked cautiously though without hesitation about being so easily seen.

   It was a woman washing clothes in the stream, of medieval appearance, peasant-like, wearing browns and wine colours and smiled.  She stopped singing to greet the children.  Una was relieved to find her.  She seemed a kind lady obviously from where there were many people, outside of this forest.  She had pearl-white teeth, a very gentle though notable contrast to her mocha dark skin.  Her hair was coarse and black and in the centre of the many twisted and hanging cloths over her head piece a gold band glinted a bit worn and frayed.

  “You have a beautiful voice,” Una said to the lady.

  The woman nodded graciously, welcoming the children to come close though she was on the other side of the stream.  The stream was deeper on her side, running slow and olive green where the big cloths were being washed.  The children stayed on their side of the stream.

  “So you want to hear many stories,” the woman said to Una.  She smiled also at Elfinnwynne and Bror.  “Those who like my voice are looking for stories and can hear in my voice that I am dreaming of stories.”

  “Yes,” Una agreed.  “Yes, I like stories.”

  “Well, I enjoy singing of stories I can’t even think or know about,” the lady said.  “It’s the heart of the stories that I want.  There isn’t a story I have heard of that is like what I sing about.  It is free.”  She had a story-telling way of speaking, very rounded diction yet with notes into the faraway the same way her voice had disappeared in and out of the sound of the stream.

  “I am passing through this special forest.  It is a short cut that only I know of.  Yonder is the continuation of the road to the Market.  I come here to wash the clothes for the Market.  It is the most peaceful place, and also is a secret.  If you see my gold band that I wear on my head, I am the servant of a noblesse, a lady in waiting.  I’m called Murrjjune.  I work not at a castle like most laundresses.  I travel.  These are my bundles of unwanted old robes and gowns of princes and princesses from far away lands.   I collect these on my journeys.  Some of them also are tapestries, as you can tell.”  She pulled at the beige and patterned heavy cloth for us to see who big it was.  “When my bundle is the most I can carry, I make my way back to the Market in my home town and sell them.”

  A mysterious richness came to her warm enjoying smile.  “It is not gold or coins or silver I sell them for.  These robes and gowns once those of princes and princesses are worth more than coins can pay.  I ask for jewel stones.  But I am looking for the missing Bloodstone my Lady has lost on this most ancient belt she keeps in her boudoirs and she wishes to wear. It is a belt she once found in the temple of a people long lost.  There is a story to this belt she knows about.  It is in a legend about a maiden who once wore it.”  Murrjjune became dark with the legend she knew of.

  Una wanted to know more about it.  She only noticed later that Elfinnwynne rather rolled her eyes whenever the belt was mentioned and turned her face away, opinionated and disdainful of something about it.  

  “Yes, the belt of my Lady Rezakra.”

  It was a name alluring yet of someone that sounded very strong will almost angry – this was how Murrjjune depicted the name.  She still smiled warmly overtop the mysteriousness, just swaying the tapestry she was washing slowly in the green, calm water. 

  Una asked, “What is the legend of the belt?  What is a belt?”

  Murrjjune thought a moment, then in her carefree easiness left the robe heavy in the stream and from out of the high pile of fabrics beside her caught sight of something she pulled out.  This was a grey and changing grey belt of black gems glinting in spray shapes over it – and some amber.  Black hanging laces to tighten.

  “One of these,” Murrjjune said, holding it up with two hands.  “It is worn over a dress.”  She held it up to her own chest and waist and expressed she definitely did not covet someone who could wear it.  “This is for a young maiden.”  She tossed it to the side good naturedly as she saw Elfinnwynne show some lofty disdain.

  The Moorish woman returned to her washing.

  Bror spoke up.  “What is the legend of your Lady’s belt?”

  “I am not that good at telling a tale,” said she.  Una suddenly felt something strange happening in the shade and depth of the water that the tapestry was dragging through and mystery growing powerful.  “But have a look inside the water.  The water will tell you.”  And Murrjjune’s smile became less to trust.

  Elfinnwynne grasped Una’s hand and Bror her shoulder as the water suddenly swirled rapidly and opened as a dark swirling cave from inside it there were horses riding, thundering, and the noise and terror of battle in a dark night without a moon.  It was real and yet just inside that cave which the water kept surging to hold up.  The children shielded themselves with their arms though nothing came out at them, not even the spears that glinted in the firelight as torches burned grass and ground; men were falling off their horses.  The cave formed by the water and the happening battle inside it became as great as a large gate.  And Murrjjune was hidden behind it.  Una did soon catch sight of her hands to the right bottom side of the cave.  The arms reached to the bundle to change the tapestry in the water for a robe, as if nothing was happening.

  The children did not run away, the vision was spellbinding. 

  A young woman appeared, wearing a long crimson gown.  Her hair a black plait down her back and across her waist as she watched the battle though as if also through a vision just like the children were.  She had one of the most beautiful faces Una had seen, and Una noticed strong eyebrows that were determined though later drawn with fear.  Una followed the young woman’s gaze and noticed one of the armour-covered men fighting amidst the collision of horses and swords and shields.  He was at the front and of the battle and stayed on his horse – deft with his sword and his shield.  Then Una could see that the crimson-clad young woman watching was indoors with stone walls in the dark lit with several torches.  She had just risen from a throne.  There was a grief-stricken bearded gentry kneeling on the ground.  “No, surrender not,” the woman said as if in denial of the man’s plea.  “Gojjom will fight to the end.”  She gazed in confidence back to the armed man she had been watching and her hand met her heavy breathing chest where her heart was.  “Eideir is on the front.  He will fight and drive Dinestus's forces far back over the Fallacuse Hills.  Gojjom will triumph and Dinestus will hide his face in shame to ever have believed Gojjom is too weak to defend itself.”

  “No my Queen – “

  “Silence.  Report back to give these orders.  Fight.”  The queen’s face softened, hopeful and confident.   “Follow Sir Eideir who will not withstand defeat.  Eideir the valiant and true to his country . . . the Knight the Queen loves.”

  Una had not seen a girl or woman in love before – in films before, but none so admirable as the beauty of this lady who loved the knight.  Now behind the lady, some white mist appeared and it seemed to be inside the Queen’s mind.  It was the queen and the man who was Eideir; they stepped toward each other.  They both smiled; to Una they were in awe and wishful happiness.  The queen took his hand to her heart and kissed it.

  “My Queen . . . Beyuhhwa.”  The man became serious though obviously fond of her.  “I am not worthy of your love.  You are a queen.  I am a knight.  Of all the kings who have sought your hand . . . and now you take my hand to your heart . . .”

  Eideir stroked the straight black hair from the top of a stubborn forehead.

  The Queen, named Beyuhhwa, looking back at him, returned, “Eideir.  Since you became Knight to Gojjom and its protector, there has been less fear.  You are a greater warrior than any king has ever been.  Gojjom needs you as their king.  Though the scribes will not allow it.  You will sit at my right side and be my king, if to the people of Gojjom you are but their knight.”  Eideir pulled her close to him and searched through her eyes.  Beyuhhwa answered, “There will be nothing that can keep us apart.”

  The Knight’s blue eyes then showed Beyuhhwa had spoken about something that he feared.  He let her go again.

  “Beyuhhwa . . . Dinestus’s army . . . it outnumbers us by a thousand.”  He sighed, showing a distress returned to him that heaved between his shoulders, the maillery reflecting as he breathed.  “I may lose this battle . . . “

  The two of them both came to face and admit their fear and grave foreboding – even Beyuhhwa had been hiding it – most of all, their fear of the loss of each other.

  “You are the Leading Knight in the battle for Gojjom . . . for the life of every peasant, man, woman and child . . . our country will be lost.  And I will be lost and you will be lost . . . I would rather die.”  Resolution returned to Beyuhhwa and the crimson of her tunic came to brighter hue.  Something brighter than usual began to shine in her eyes.  Una blinked.  They were little lights.   It brought the young woman to smile as she was conscious about the lights.   Though there was a battle and possible death and loss, she became carefree and the outline of her face softened as did the smile that quivered at the corners.  Eideir was as surprised and bewildered as Una.

  “Your eyes, love.  They are shining.  How can this be?”

  “Yes, they are the lights of my immortality . . . “Beyuhhwa lowered her eyes.  “I did not think this would ever happen.  They are lights nobody has heard about.  They were caught by those few rare half-fairy folk long ago who stared at the Northern Lights.  My mother was a descendent of them.  She passed the lights on to me before she gave me away to the King and Queen of Gojjom, when I was a baby.  I found this out from my fairy godmother – “

  Eideir shook his head.  “Beyuhhwa.  There are no such things as fairies.  You’ve spoken of them before, and I didn’t really think you truly believed in them.”

  Beyuhhwa’s smile faltered.  Her eyes expressed a bit of hurt, the lights seemed to fade –then they bounced back; a flame of Beyuhhwa’s usual strong spirit returned and its shadow darkened over her eyebrows.  “You will take my immortality now.  If you believe in it or not, it is going to you.”

  The lights beamed into a flash – and Una, Elfinnwynne and Bror gasped because of the sudden brightness and had to cover their faces.  Their eyes later on were still half-blinded a few moments.  Yet it was thrilled them all over, like the thrill of knowing you are alive when you thought you were on the brink of death and life begins anew. 

  “It is real,” the children heard Beyuhhwa’s voice the most gentle they had heard with the sweetness of apples over her breath.

  Everything grew dark suddenly, and Una kept seeing points of lights and the outlines of Beyuhhwa and Eideir with their hands held to each other’s chests.  There was only Beyuhhwa now reminiscing inside the dim castle walls, firelight flickering over the stone.  The battle was still going on. 

 There were two men fighting, and the metal helmet fell off one of them.  The gold-brown locks and the familiar face of Eideir showed him set on the defeating opponent nonetheless.

  His opponent with scary looking armour and a heavier sword with jagged edges also had a voice that frightened Una so she could not look and made her cover her ears.  But she heard nonetheless his words, with her ears covered, “Knight of Gojjom, how is it this privilege has landed me to kill you? – When your Queen protects you with swarms of her under-servants wherever you go!  You are her over-servant she can not spare for all the tears she will shed.  She would rather twenty of her foolish servant-warriors lose their lives only to spare the life of the knight who wears her country’s crown!”

  At the clang of their swords, Sir Eideir replied, his arm strong and without tire, “Very eloquently said, Dinestus, eloquently said.  Yours is the power of the tongue as is the power of the sword.”  Una’s heart jumped suddenly in fear – Eideir was nearly stabbed where his armour had come off at his breathing diaphragm.  He grinned fearlessly.  “There is no bard or learned she looks forward to more kneeling before her by the evening fire with his excellent speeches.  She can use you . . . to flatter her loyal subjects – to enrich and inspire their loyalty –” Now the sinister lord nearly got his death – casually disappointed Eideir nearly whispered in Dinestus’s ear behind under the metal helmet, “their loyalty to the ideal of mercy when you are judged as prisoner of war under the harsh laws of Gojjom.  As an invader.  A murderer of peasants.  A coward who would rather set fire to barns and villages than face Gojjom’s army in agreed time of battle.”

  Now Dinestus’s helmet came off by Eideir’s deft sword.  Dinestus looked very much a human after although Una was surprised at that, him being the horrible.  He was ugly though, small eyes across high cheekbones and a pointy nose. 

  In a moment though Eideir was thrown off his horse and fell to the ground.  Dinestus descended from his own horse and they both fought some more, Eideir made it back on his feet.  Next Eideir struck and blood rushed from Dinestus’s thigh.  Angered, Dinestus gathered all his energies.  A dagger surprised him and at his throat and Dinestus dug and pointed but drew no blood.   It would not pierce or cut; Eideir remained unharmed.

  Dinestus looked horrified with disbelief.

  Eideir smiled after a jesting smug look.  “Queen Beyuhhwa believes in magic.  And in immortality.”

  Dinestus was stepping back, shaking his head.  “A witch,” he cursed.  Yet then there was a rolling of his eyes, mockery.  Una felt a strange pang deep in her stomach that something was wrong.  “A witch.   When there is your first love who is not Beyuhhwa.  She believes you have forgotten her . . . Your fair maiden love in Prayrshire, in your humble village.  A comely maid, though common.  Marian, her name.”

  A great change came to Eideir.  “How did you know?”

  Dinestus tilted his head to the side, and he was becoming scary, to Una. 

  “She never asked you of anything.  Not even for you to stay in Prayrshire.  Entirely the contrary of your queen.  Marian, the shimmer over the sea bay.”

  “How do you know about Marian?”

  “And yet vanity of a queen’s need for a hero and fame and the beauty of a fairytale castle and its feasts made you forget all about the young girl at home who lost her heart over you and waits for your return.   Madness has come over your head.  It is the queen who has thrown a veil over you with her desperate pleas . . . A queen of a little country that knows not how to summon together an army for all its dreamy calls for peace.  And then in your vanity not to break her trust in you, you accept the spell of immortality you sucked in from her eyes.  Were they dazzling, her eyes?  Do you know that those lights can only passed through love?  It’s a shame you cannot make me immortal.  But I have no need of it.  Tonight when I conquer Gojjom it will be my last war I have to fight, for Gojjom will join the Roman Empire . . . with another name of course.”   

  Anger came to Eideir, and he forgot his bewilderment of how Dinestus could know so many things.  The knight raised his sword again with more emotion than before and the two men fought a few clashes but Eideir lost his sword when his bewilderment returned again.

  Demetrius was cold and seeming blank-minded in triumph, pinning Eideir down though Eideir remained unwounded.  “There is a greater magic that is coming over the world.  That is of order, of armies.  Of conquerors and a growing empire stretching across the earth, with the help of those workers of magic you would call the dark side who work for us.  My friend Seer told me everything of relevance about you.  Our magic is perhaps more organized than yours.

  “Beyuhhwa has been under the spell of the old fairy realm, the old that is dying.  And so Gojjom remained self-contained, resistant to change and to unity with what is outside of her little country.  I suppose you can choose to believe in unicorns; in half-fairies being gifted with immortality just from the Northern Lights.  You can believe in them, but they are nearly non-existent by now.  They have no place in our order.  Their magic is helpless.  Even yours now inside those two love-blinded eyes of yours.  Did you not know that your immortality is only inside your two eyes?”

  And Una screamed as Dinestus raised his arm and hid her face behind Elfinnwynne’s shoulder.  She was told later that Eideir’s eyes were dug out and then he was murdered. 

  When Una looked again, the battle scene was dimmed out and Beyuhhwa was no longer visible either.  Then in a moment, it was a grey-dawn and a field after a battle with many slain lying over it.  A red or brown long-caped figure was walking, uneven in steps and balance at times.  A long black plait and the hood fell back: it was Beyuhhwa, weeping and mourning the form of Eideir though with one touch of his face she drew back in dismay as well as when she moved his arm.  Looking out and around her in the mist, she searched in belief of the beyond.  “Eideir . . . where are you?”  Her attention was caught by the red that was on the ground by his head.  It was not blood but red crystals, stones.  Beyuhhwa grasped one in her hand and gave out a wail that jerked a choke in Una’s throat.

  The vision in the water tunnel changed.  Una tried to understand and figure out what was happening, and it was a castle being taken over by force and there was agony in the face of a middle-aged woman who tried to stop soldiers entering a room and failed.

  Another vision and with sound though muffled voices was with a heavy wood trunk moved over the floor.  Beyuhhwa had been sitting at the far end of the room with some ladies in waiting and they stood up alarmed though the trunk was supposed to be obliging. 

  Next, the water-tuned showed her opening the trunk.  She spoke out, “They have given us some our things.  Dinestus should grant my request to have all our things brought to us here.  If we are made prisoner of the castle that was once our home, at least some gratitude can be afforded to us for taking it from us.”  She smiled wryly to the ladies who were enduring the time of distress.

  The next scene was of a mess of garments and robes and sheets across furniture and on the grey-stone floor and Beyuhhwa sewing – it was a red crystal – one of the stones in the shape and colour of a drop of blood stitched across into a garment.  The garment was in deed a belt.  It was just like shadow, trying to see colour in a shadow.  Its laces were suede, tanned and rubbed also to shadow and disappeared throughout.  The room was then dark except for a torch burning along a wall and Beyuhhwa bent over sewing beside it.  The belt had become covered in glinting dark stones in the firelight, Una noticed.  Suddenly there was another hand besides Beyuhhwa’s and it was an early grey dawn sky out the window.

  “I should have the Taylor Craynu’s elves to help me,” came Beyuhhwa’s voice that was clear and pleasant.

  “My Queen, you have worked the whole night through.  Surely you have need of sleep.  Here, give me the needle, I will sew the rest of the stones.”  It was one of the ladies in waiting.  Her blue eyes were kind and there were many winds of flaxen plaits adorning her head.    

  “No.  I shall sew these stones myself.  I can not tell you yet where they came from.  But you might soon, if there is any power inside them.”  Beyuhhwa’s breathing was that of hope and around her eyes was a white radiance and no tiredness.   

  Next, Una saw that Beyuhhwa was wearing it: the belt of shadows without colours and the blood stones sewn in different directions around her waist.

  “My Queen.”  The kind and fair young lady, her head dress white now, stepped up, her eyes timorous this time.  “My Queen, did you hear the knock on the door?”

  Beyuhhwa was struck as well.  Gathering composure, a gloating darkness came over her and glittered with the blood stones.  “Dinestus knocks.  That is beside and entirely outside of his nature.  Yet he knocks.”  Her eye brows raised and then became bold stern lines again.  She strode across the stone floor.  “Come in.”

  It was the dreaded emanating countenance of Dinestus.

  “Good evening, ladies.  Queen Beyuhhwa.”

  “A good evening I may wish you if only I did not loath your deeds and what to you is considered a good evening,” Beyuhhwa hurled as if the words were crunching through silence.  “A good evening to you is slaying and shedding blood and then conquering a castle and a country.  And do not speak my name.  Anyhow there is nothing you can respect that is mine, so what’s the use in saying anything to you.”

  It was drowned and dimmed, the vision in the water tunnel so that Una could not hear what Dinestus said in return.  But she watched him step dangerously near and then suddenly jump back as if he had seen a snake coming from Beyuhhwa’s waist.

  Beyuhhwa’s voice larked over the thick sound of just the tunnel of water rushing.  “You see?  Eideir’s love was true.”  Beyuhhwa’s anger and triumph was nearly frightening.  Smoke was all around her.  Around her waist where the blood stones were it was a thick black smoke though gleams of red flashed through.  “You killed him.  And now his blood can kill you.”  She was walking steadily toward Dinestus.  He ran for the door and Beyuhhwa sprang but could not make it before he slipped behind it.  The door shut and shuddered possibly by the bars pushed by Dinestus and his guards on the other side.  Una only saw Beyuhhwa’s black waves of hair still flaying in the air over a deep fir-green dress with the belt of smoke clearing.

  Una then began to think there was no more to watch inside the tunnel of water that turned as there was nothing to see for a while.  She and Elfinnwynne and Bror exchanged glances.  Where was Murrjjune?  There, behind a tree, the children saw only her arms and a big wet robe she was trying to flap to get drops of water off.

  There was a further shuffling of garments.  The children’s eyes squinted to make out the new vision that came.  It looked the backside of women walking in grey robes – but no it was just the dim light of dawn, through small arches.  It was outside.  There was a hill and a glow of burning ashes at its crescent.  The headdresses were heavy cloths.  Now their faces were in view.  One of them was Beyuhhwa; the others were the same ladies who were with her in the room they were imprisoned in.

  They kept walking, all solemn and none saying a word. 

  There was a guard at the door.  Nobody smiled at each other.  The guard with the grease smeared face let them pass.

  The women walked more, through dark corridors, then a larger space to walk through with high vaulted ceilings and then a great hall. 

  “Vinantyu, search by the throne and the chairs behind.  I will look back in the first corridor by a torch.  Ishcore, look here in the hall – look down every slab from the corner there, left to right toward the throne – I shall help you when I come back.  Sancren.  I pray, let us find torches and yours is the second corridor and small hall where Dinestus destroyed the Moon fountain . . . there is no fountain he can tolerate in our country, he must be afraid of them.”  A tempestuous glare settled as Beyuhhwa nodded directions.  “Let’s start, ladies.  If anyone asks tell them the truth, we are searching for an amethyst pendant Lady Beyuhhwa lost.  It is a very important pendant and when the lady finds it, she will give it to Dinestus as a gift for it gives the power of wisdom.”  There was a strange silence and two of the ladies gave away their fear by the look on their faces.

  Una thought how it was strange for the women to have their heads wrapped in that way, the white head dresses.  And you had to watch closely who was who for they looked all alike; you couldn’t even see their hair.  They had all looked so beautiful before, each one very different with their own colours and hair and ornaments.

  Next the water tunnel showed Beyuhhwa’s face.  Una was unable to tell what she was feeling but it looked drained of the usual essence of her face.  Yet there were the dark eye brows that had still the lines of fierce bravery and the sweet white highness of cheekbones, soft cheeks.  The vision Una watched showed Beyuhhwa then looking down at the shadow and the blood stones between her fingers.  She was not wearing it, the belt in its form of straight enforced sides, laces hanging down.  She carried it, feeling the shape of the stones, gazing out ahead of her.  Her one finger smoothed over a gap and some string hanging out.  A kind of rueful pain greyed her face.  This was the loss of one of the stones.  Una remembered this was what Murrjjune was going to the Market because of.  Her whole trade was to search for that missing stone, of whatever crystal stones were paid to her for the robes she gathered, washed and sold.

  The vision was still with Beyuhhwa, but it was only shadow and the breathing and pacing of someone walking, climbing.  There were voices that echoed, coming from different places, even throughout the forest and not inside the water tunnel.  Una, Elfinnwynne and Bror looked around them, frightened.

  “Where has our lady gone?”

  “She said she is going to the Temple of Ashes.  She was looking down and answered as if I wasn’t there.”

  “If one of the guards sees her, they will capture her and bring her back.  She is not permitted anymore to leave the castle.  The wedding is already the day before tomorrow.  You should have stopped her.  Dinestus will be furious.”

  “Have you seen Beyuhhwa, kind Grachrilde?”

  “I saw her last yesterday, young maiden, I saw her yesterday.  Sorrowful lady . . . it is all lost for her now.  I would go and kill myself lest that dirty swine of a man laid his hands on me.  What of our country . . . all that we lived and stood for, he is robbing and killing all of us in spirit.  Everything is lost.  Oh, Sancren, there is a piece of my heart that shall go to my grave in grief.  And I will it be soon, dear, I will it be soon.”

  Someone was climbing stairs, by the sound of it and the vision of the tunnel became itself of the water that it was made of and stone steps.  There was a fleet of them but they came and went.  Una caught sight of the hem of a long dress with some of the steps, as if the water tunnel was through the view of who ever it was climbing the stairs.  It was a long flight of grey stone stairs.  At the top was a shrine with the tips of flames visible from inside it.  The shrine had no walls but pillars of rock pieces piled at its corners.  Mahogany wood beams supported a flat roof with straw sticking out of it.  The Temple of Ashes.  That had been where the blood-stone belt was found many many years later, by Rezakra.

  That was all that Una saw or heard of the legend that the water tunnel told of.  The water dipped down and joined the stream again.

  Murrjjune’s face did not tell that there had been something happening.  Her heap of the wet and washed laundry was a lot bigger than before and there was only one garment left for washing.

 

Chapter Three

“What is the ending of the legend?”  It was Elfinnwynne asking.   Una herself was in a daze, blinking.  Bror was swallowing hard. 

  Murrjjune looked up at them.  “That is not something the vision could show,” Murrjjune said, as if she had been pondering about.  “Death to most people is a grievous thing and a horror.  Yet Beyuhhwa lives to this day.  Not on the Earth, and not in Navasheen.  I myself have not gone to where she is.  I live forever in Navasheen.  But Una, Una perhaps will meet her one day.  Rezakra herself is one of the only in Navasheen who can pass into time and place wherever she chances.  She never wills where she goes.  Sometimes she is called.  Once, maybe two centuries before you were born, Una, Rezakra went to the earth and came to a forgotten city.  Stone walls without roofs, in a wasteland.  It used to be Gojjom centuries ago which had been teeming with green plants and the forest just outside its walls.  Rezakra climbed the steps to the Temple of Ashes and when she did, something happened which does not occur very often on Earth.  An old magic.  There were old ashes that still remained at the bottom of the shrine, down a well where the fire had been burning incessantly until the death of Beyuhhwa who had thrown herself into it.  The belt with the bloodstones had been burned as well.  Dinestus banned the temple from ever burning its fire again.  When Rezakra went to the temple, the fire burned again, and its flame burst out through the top so Rezakra saw it and fell to the ground in surprise and fear.  Then, by the side of the flames that settled steadily, hardly noticeable at first, there was the belt with the bloodstones glinting their deep red, stitches of thread sewn over them just as they had been the last day Rezakra had worn them.  There one stone missing, with the threads hanging.  That missing stone was the reason Beyuhhwa’s belt no longer could protect her.  And the belt today is with Rezakra and has no powers to protect.”

  Murrjjune stood up.  Her heap of wet garments was complete.  Her hands were tired, she expressed how they were.  Over one of the branches of a young birch was a travel bag.  She slung it over her shoulder.

  “Are you coming with me to the market?”

  The children had still been standing, waiting for Murrjjune to finish telling about Rezakra when she saw the belt with on it Eideir’s blood turned to stones.

  Bror looked around at a thought that came to his common sense.  “Where’s the wagon of the basket for your laundry?”

  Elfinnwynne put in, “Aren’t you going to dry them first?”

  Murrjjune had a darkness coming to her smile again.  Una began to step back without thinking.

  “No laundry can dry in these woods as fast as they would dry at the Market in the open sun.  And it is a warm country we are going to.”

  The children looked at each other, then back at Murrjjune.  “Are we going to the Market?”  Bror said.  “We haven’t exactly thought about it.”

  “We’re still on the other side of the river from you.”

  Murrjjune pointed to a row of stepping stones, just perfect to walk over without difficulty.  “The wee one will step most at ease, not having any shoes.  The soles of the feet are the better grip.”  She smiled again in the way in the beginning when the children first met her.  Funny, it felt a lot of time had passed in that time and with the legend being told from inside the tunnel that rose from the stream.

  When the children had crossed over, Murrjjune asked of the children to help her carry the piles of wet clothes.

  Elfinnwynne was suspicious and her mouth pressed in a scowl.  “How would you have gotten to the Market without us?  Had you not met us here in this forest?  It is the first day you have come across anybody to help you, isn’t that true?  Why must we carry heavy dripping clothes for you?”

  Murrjjune was humbled.  Her ways were like warm spices.  “I won’t need your help at all if you will travel the way that might be unbearable to you children but is the fastest . . . and in fact, the only way to the Market from this forest . . . it is the way I use myself. “

  Bror was perhaps the most interested at this.  Una was bewildered still and quiet.

  “What’s that?  How?”

  Murrjjune sunk to a squat next to the wet pile.  It was not easy for her to tell.  “The pile of clothes take me in and out of the Market.”

  Una was fascinated, seeing the big pile of wet clothes with sparkle and interest.  She smiled in awe.  “May we go through the pile then?” she asked, quicker than Bror or Elfinnwynne who held Una back as she started for the pile.

  Murrjjune smiled a bit ruefully, her head to one side.  “They are all wet now, and this is the part of my existence as laundress I enjoy the very least – well, if it weren’t for the missing blood stone for my lady Rezakra’s belt . . .”

  “Queen Beyuhhwa’s,” corrected Elfinnwynne, to be fair.   “It was hers.”

  With a shrug and a sigh, Murrjjune conceded, “Yes, Rezakra though claims it as hers.  Beyuhhwa is far away and has no need of the belt and Eideir’s drops of blood.  It is Rezakra who has need of protection.  Anyhow, that is Rezakra’s own story.”  The Moorish woman of royal commission questioned the children’s liability.  Then she nodded intuitive approval.  “You might meet her, at the Market, if I call on her.  Maybe today we will find the missing blood stone.  It is for that missing stone I travel far away countries and kingdoms, gathering old and ancient robes and garments and tapestries.  In Navasheen there is a shortage of gold and silver, so people at the market pay with whatever a merchant asks them.  I ask for precious stones, also those of jewels.  Pay with a red stone or a red crystal and it might be all that you need to pay.  I never tell anybody why.  I say my lady in her castle is fondest of red, they are for the great hall which needs all red stones, red crystals over it,” Murrjjune’s coral white teeth showed they knew some tricks.  “There is no servant who is as free as me.  All stones paid to me except for the red ones I keep and pay for whatever I need or please, along my journeys.”    

  Bror thought that was really great.  “I’m glad Rezakra is so generous.”

  Murrjjune flicked her hand.  “Ah, she has so many jewels at home.  But she has never come across the missing blood stone for Beyuhhwa’s belt.”

  Hands on her hips, Murrjjune looked a bit firm at the children as she took a quick survey of how they appeared to her.

  “You children aren’t tired, aren’t hungry, aren’t cold.  It isn’t cold.  You don’t look the sort that will catch cold with a bit of rain on their head or with a bit of wind.  I think you can climb under the pile of these robes that are going to the Market and we will be there before you can begin to complain.”

  The children were taken by surprise.  Una thought it a marvellous idea.  “Wow,” she said just above a whisper – and then waited for Bror and Elfinnwynne’s enthusiasm however it was not there at any level.  “What?” Bror asked.  Elfinnwynne was cross as if someone had teasingly told her to climb under a pile of wet clothes without telling them anything was going to happen.  She and Bror were sceptical and keeping an eye on Murrjjune in case it was some kind of trick – when suddenly, a flying tapestry dashed at them from Una’s side out of nowhere.  Una spotted the head of a laughing boy – a dark skinned boy wearing a little turban – he was flying on the tapestry – and just as Una ducked, covering her head, Elfinnwynne and Bror did the same and were crashed by what felt like a mountain and they saw nothing but darkness underneath it all.  Murrjjune still standing and the boy on his feet laughing, quickly ducked in under the same side of the big wet pile though she made it in with some lifting of the heavy fabric. 

  And next there was a great relief for the children – the weight on top of them was ten times lighter or twenty times lighter.  It had become soft and light cloth and smelled quite nice.  Murrjjune’s laundry had dried in a second!  The surface was quite hard though that they were crouched on, knees and elbows.  Una shifted her forehead to rest on her arm instead of that floor which was wood. 

  “Stay under, children!” ordered Murrjjune just above a hoarse whisper – she was already on the outside. “Don’t let anyone see you!  I haven’t tricked you, you must trust me.  Take a peek outside, we are at the Market!  We are going to my stall, so hold on tight, there are a few bumps and holes on this road!  Open up an air hole here towards my voice?  Can you make it?”

  Una made it.   Her first need for security was for Bror and Elfinnwynne but with one glimpse at where she was, what she saw outside of this heap of garments and cloth, she was aghast and fascinated.  Simply wide-eyed for a long time and kept watching the passing scene – they were all people dressed in ancient attire – crowds, some of them walking together.   Some were coming toward Una, so she thought.  A stout wide man with a brown big beard, wearing a hide coat hanging open and a grey shirt over a belly was not walking past the wagon but suddenly coming toward them.  Yet he did not see her.  Una did not stop him but saw he just stole a sack-coloured robe from the top of the heap. 

  Then Una murmured for Elfinnwynne and Bror.

  “Shhht, I think we’re on a wagon!” Elfinnwynne hissed in return.  “We’re facing the back.  We’ll start soon.  Are you alright Una?  Don’t be afraid!”  Una couldn’t see her.  She was somewhere close in the pile of fabrics on them though.  At least the pile was all dry now, but its weight still was oppressing.

  “Yes, I’m alright!” Una confirmed, glad of Elfinnwynne’s company.  “Bror?”

  “I’m here too!” came Bror’s rough reply.  “I hope the wagon will start soon, don’t you?”  He began to chuckle.  Una was relieved at the humour of the situation that he brought.

  Una was about to pluck up the courage to suggest out loud that one of them creep out and look where Murrjjune was now when there was a jolt and the wagon was on a roll.  They were going backwards, the children, since they were facing the back, peering out from little holes in the heap.  There was much anticipation leaping with each of their heart beats.  Una peered out from under the yellow ochre frock with frayed fringe.  She was curious about the stalls and what might be under those roves – some were dark thatched and beamed, others were of tanned hide, others of canvas, others were colourful and like rugs.

  There was a stall Una stared at though she could see just a few glimpses until a lady with a head piece of two golden bee hives blocked the view; the lady stopped speaking to someone and then Una still stared, waiting to catch the wondrous sight again.  It was of combing hair – but with strange creatures like toy trolls moving in a ritual dance way and watching, inside the stall.  It was a granny and granddad with old red greying beard and long hair, combing two little girls’ hair behind the table of the stall and dust of different colours – sparkles fell from their hair and onto a white cloth that then was tied up in a bundle and stuffed inside a small leather pouch, each.  Strings were pulled to close it tight.

  “A young girl’s dreams, a young girl’s dreams,” there was someone speaking close to the wagon in an eerie way.  “Dreams . . . Comb your hair with the Troll’s Dream Comb and catch the dream dust.  Little girls, only five Blackest Berries to pay.  Dream when the troll’s comb combs out for you.  A young girl’s dreams, a young girl’s dreams!  Will you have some powder to collect to put under your pillow?  Dreams . . .” And the wagon was driving too far to hear more.

  The wagon stopped and a loud call from the front that was unmistakably Murrjjune at the end of the phrase with the trailing high and off of her voice, sifting through faraway hill tops in the North East, then cresting down to a coastline she soared along on the other side of the world in the South West – after passing through the clouds of this Earth.

  “Fendian matches, good lad Bonjo!  Another box of Fendian matches, that’s what I needed!  Well done Bonjo.  All day you meander down the lanes of this felonious Market that robs one of time and of your purse and this day I had in mind to find you but gave up hope.”

  “Pleasing Day, Murrjjune!  There are slaves harvesting wheat and slaves planting rice today, in other worlds.  But in Navasheen there are big white sacks of sugar and white flour stacked in rows in storage.”  Una liked the voice, it was rhythmical and chirpy.  She imagined a well-humoured narrow-framed man with sloping shoulders and a beaked nose and ruddy frizzled should-length hair.  “In other worlds there are school masters looking at children through magnifying glasses to see through their character, yet they do not see.  There are newspapers people read to find the truth about the nation and where to find their bearings on their globe.  Yet in Navasheen, light one Fendian match to see through the truth that you need to see.”  With a whistle, he might have entrusted a knowing wink.  “Uncover if someone is trustworthy or treacherous, eh Murrjjune?”

  “Yes, that will be one box . . . for . . . what have I got?  A chance?”

  The two of them laughed.

  “Ah Murrjjune, Priestess to those living on Neptune . . . I am not there today, and there’s my mongrel slob berry eater waiting behind the stall, and he won’t let me give anyone a chance.  So sorry, no chance . . . It’s two berries he requires for those matches.  It’s a set price, and you won’t find mongrel slob requiring cheaper.”

  “Oh, I hope those berries will keep round inside your pouch – I feed the mongrel slobs I pay to watch them chew the payment I give them, out of my wages I worked for.  There’ll be some other things I’ll have to send Erranush out for me to buy.  Right now have guests waiting for me to be my helpers . . . just today.  I must not let them wonder why I am taking such time and making them wait under cover.”

  Una thought and wondered.  Who were they?  Sounded suspicious.

  “Under cover?”

  “Ye-e-es.  They are under cover of heaviest weight of covers to bear – speaking of substance and weight to imagine . . . and I’m afraid if I don’t get to my stall and attend to them very soon then they might not get any air and burst their heads out of their heap of costume!” 

  Una pressed her lips together.  Murrjjune meant them, Una and her friends hiding under the heavy fabrics.  Yes, Murrjjune was getting worried her friends were so quiet – and it had been a while one of them had last moved.  In fact they themselves were listening intently as she was.

  Soon the wagon was on a roll again. 

   “Blue lamb’s wool, Blue lamb’s wool for your ears!” Una heard.  She did not see who it was.  “Wear these inside your ears and nothing of ill-will anyone can say to you can be heard at all.  But hear everything else crystal clear.  Madam, I can see these are what you’ve been looking for –”

  Then there was, “Brave Maps, Brave Maps!  Buy one and embark on an adventure.  Unscroll a Brave Map, point to you starting point and you will be there.  Jungles, Angalese Mountains to journey through.  Yes, good lad with good hearing and the best courage I’ve seen . . .”

  Una’s attention was lost and she did not hear the rest of the different sellers promoting their wares – had seen the first one.  There was a lady different from the other people – so Una was in awe at how beautiful, maidenly, tall and with long flaxen hair almost, a gentle expression on her fair, like she was musing in her own little space far away from the Market place, on the quest for something.  She came from somewhere delightful, wonderful.  The clouds – that was how she looked like, though the colours of her cloths were not extraordinarily different from anyone else.  Some beige and fur skins.  There was an orange glow of rose that was the skirt showing only from the knee down.  It was like the glow on white clouds at sunset.  There was a delicate gold-white print shining from the fabric.  What she wore on her head were simple embellishments with some very pale gold.  The length of her hair showed some of almost the same pale gold.

  Una did not see her again until later.

  There were blue fairies flying with blue cone-hats and veils and hid the wondrous dreaming lady from view.  “Elfinnwynne,” Una used her voice again though it didn’t come out enough from the air gap.  “Did you see . . .” but Elfinnwynne did not hear.  There was a dip that the wagon fell in on one side and the sound of water – a really big puddle in the bumpy dirt road.  The horse hooves in the front, the creaking wagon, the different voices and goings on amongst the crowd and by the stalls, of course Elfinnwynne must have been engrossed at something to hear a little voice from beneath it all.

  The wagon rattled on quite a distance yet.  In the meantime Una saw a horse that had looked like a white unicorn but wasn’t, it was on a riding horse and walking with a young man in peasant clothing.  There had been three calves that had spotted her.  They could talk.  They tried to venture near her but were afraid.  The language they spoke was not English but Una could not understand it, it wasn’t English.  The calves were at the Market with their mother, who was standing at a stall with a wreath of purple flowers around her neck, standing on four feet.  She was a black cow like her calves.  If Una was making the right inference, the cow was making a purchase at a stall – she was speaking, using her mouth and teeth to talk, the seller at the stall nodding and wrapping the goods in paper, it looked like cheese.  Strangely, at the stall were maybe six women breastfeeding.  Una had not seen so many breastfeeding women at once and certainly did not think it common at a market.  She was going to ask about this when she got the chance to.

  There were none of the animals walking on their hind legs and upright like she had seen in picture books.   There were several walking independently though, most of them noticed the wagon and looked eye to eye with Una.  None of the humans ever did.  She wondered why only the animals saw her.  There was one cat she saw walking on its hind legs and it was wearing red boots! 

  “Look!  Bror!  Elfinnwynne!  Puss in Boots!” 

  Then Una finally felt a nudge, from Elfinnwynne it must be.  There was a nudge again.  The clothes were too thick of a wall but Una worried it probably meant a warning to be quiet.  Una watched and picked up every detail of Puss in Boots – there was a twinkle in the cat’s eye and whit that made him look a character even closer to a human than Una had thought – however he did not notice Una, perhaps he had become too human?

  Inquisitively Una urged to try to identify something more in the crowd.  Around her at the green-tipped wings of one girl about her age with dark hair trimmed below her chin, walking with a basket under arm, looking like any ordinary little girl.  Who could she be?  On her head was a white flower for a hat!  It looked like a real real flower; Una saw how it was translucent and flapped as the girl walked.  Had Una not seen her before?  Una noticed a young man with a red cap and she noticed he was a card!  Not a human!  A card of red hearts from Alice in Wonderland!  Suddenly her mind opened to the idea that in Navasheen there might be fairytale characters . . . she had not noticed any before.  Yet of course Una did not even know a quarter of all the fairytale characters.  Some of them were at the Market, yes, though in Navasheen were many people and animals, creatures whom nobody had written or passed on a story or tale about that had once lived on the Earth.

 

Chapter Four

  Like the kidnapped for ransom, Una was carried inside a bundle of clothes and she kicked and yelled.  Elfinnwynne and Bror were carried the same way until they found themselves in a pile, tapestries and robes lifted off their heads so they could look into the face of a grinning dark skinned boy – the same one who had knocked the children down flying on a carpet, so it looked, and thence they were transported in a second outside of the wonderful forest.  The boy had a rose-beige little turban on top of his head, looking back at her.  A clear crystal – perhaps a diamond, flashed back at her.         

  Elfinnwynne and Bror were angered and threatened to knock the boy down himself.

  “Hey, it was you!  You flung us down!  Who are you!”

  Una was not upset but in wonder.  “Aladdin?” she asked out loud, credulously.

  The boy gave up his defence as Elfinnwynne and Bror dropped their attack.

  “Aladdin?”  The boy turned to look at – wow, a young elephant, a teenager elephant was peering closely into the stall right behind Elfinnwynne and Bror. 

  The children gasped – the elephant had a huge head, but then they saw it was only a young elephant.

  “Benjuro’s heard tales of Aladdin, too,” the boy said.  He nodded outwards toward the elephant.  The elephant flapped its ears and raised his trunk.  The children were so delighted!  They ventured to reach their hands out to the animal.  Elephant skin was strange and bristly.  The boy declared to the children, “’Tis not I who is Aladdin, but a hero.  And he’s grown up.  No one really sees him.  He’s away on adventures, of course.”  The boy had a second look at the three children before him and became more credulous than perhaps Una had been of him at first.  His eyes widened most at Elfinnwynne and his bottom teeth showed as his lower lip pulled out in apprehension.  Finally he snapped his finger, with one hand, waving and a tall broad-leafed plant, dark-green suddenly came out of the movement.  At the bottom Una saw it was planted inside a gold pot.  Then the boy pointed behind Una.  There, behind Una, was Murrjjune, setting up her stall.

  “Today you are her helpers, I have been told,” the boy said with much more confidence than he had before.  Altogether he was very friendly and child-like.  “I am Prince Ramasaga, here at the Market because it’s boring at home.  I live here at the Market now.  I’ll show you everywhere there is.”

  “When there isn’t any work to be done for the day,” Murrjjune put in loudly – quite different she turned out to be from how she had been in the green forest, quite strict.  Una stared, a bit lost.  Murrjjune was quite just like any lady now – in a film or in real life – really busy and no more dreaminess or song from her heart in her voice, mesmerizing in her eyes and face.  There was a little bit of it still there – Una collected it in assurance to herself.  Also, she was reminded in thought that this was the busy Market place they were at now.  No more were they in the light green forest so soft to the mind and spirit and where there had been just the swaying of the fabrics in the water of the stream as the only thing in action.  The Market place was befuddling.  Una was behind the counter – though too short to look out.  She did not mind.  For now she was not curious but frightened of all those people milling about and the shouts and voices.  The boy smiled and laughed – who was in deed Prince Ramasaga, ran and was cuddled by Murrjjune at her side like he was her son = maybe he was her son.  Una felt very relaxed and was smiled at with ease and welcome like she too, and Elfinnwynne and Bror were welcomed as part of the family.  Ramasaga snapped and waved his fingers a few more times, laughing about it, and at the same time the tall plants tall enough to be trees in gold pots appeared, beside and then covering the front of the stall.

  “Nonsense, now Ramasaga, make away with those ones.” 

  Una, Elfinnwynne and Bror laughed even more though it was already funny, for, the plants were blocking the whole front of the stall.  Ramasaga, waved from between a few leaves.

  “You’ll just have to have trees buying from you today!” quipped Bror, thinking of something to say.

  Elfinnwynne remarked, “And the small fairies who can fly in between the leaves!”

She demonstrated with her dainty but expressive shape of hand.

  “Ya!” Una agreed, enthusiastic.  She couldn’t wait to see.  “I saw some before!  They were carrying big long veils for grown-ups, some of them.  They can carry really heavy things!”

  Later while the children were taking over Murrjjune’s task of folding the fabrics neatly while she hung the tapestries on the wall with Bror’s help, Una asked Ramasaga if Murrjjune was his mother and why he didn’t called her that.

  “No no,” Ramasaga said, shaking his head.  “No, my Mama is on the Mountain Pheptune.  She grows orchards of blossoms for fairies from the higher mountain ranges that come and harvest for the snowy winter.  My Papa carves flutes.  He used to come to this Market sometimes but lately he is ill and no medicine helps him.”  The boy was wistful and sad.  “I ran away from home because I don’t like to be home anymore.”

  “But your Papa is ill . . . “

  “Yes . . . he has stopped making flutes.  He sits by the pond all day and does not see me.”

  Una stared.  “That’s terrible!”

  The boy showed a bit of defiance in his face.  “Yes.  And so it is no different to him at all if I am at home or if I am not.”  He couldn’t help hanging his head a little.  Then he perked up again.  “Besides, I am a magician.  Did you know that being a Prince and Princess is really boring?  That’s why my parents ran away to the Mountain Pheptune and lived away from it all.  I live just in a cottage.”

  “A cottage?  So you’re not a prince?”

  “Of course I am.  My parents don’t have a castle.  How can I live in a castle when I was born at home?  My home is much nicer than any castle I’ve seen or heard of.  I’ve heard it’s terribly cold inside all year long.  And terribly boring – unless it’s haunted.”

  Una made a little shriek.

  “Haunted?  Yes, there’s a haunted castle in Navasheen, Dierveik.  It’s the only castle where ghosts have not been freed, or else ghosts will be forever lost in Navasheen and some people will miss them.  Dierveik is a castle surrounded by swamps, in the middle of moors.  That’s where I want to go some day.  It is dangerous to get there – and even more dangerous to go inside it if you have not enough magic powers.  Maybe you want to go too, my magic is getting better – “

  “Not a haunted castle.”

  “It is scary, though with my magic, I want to turn the ghosts all back to being living again so they can be much happier.  They only scare people there because they aren’t very happy.”

  Una thought this made sense.  She had never thought that about ghosts before – exactly.

  “I wish I could live in a castle – for a little while,” she said, dreamily.  “I’d dress like a princess – but even better there’d be a beautiful princess, very tall with long blonde hair and a long dress.  She will sit on her thrown and tell me how I came at the right time and I shall be a princess too and she needs to tell me all about the beginnings of her kingdom – queendom . . .  princessdom.  The stories of stolen treasures, hidden treasures, someone was kidnapped.  And who is the baddie and she’ll describe the wonderful handsome prince who is long awaited for but he is under a spell and can’t wake up and fight.  Then, because we are good friends and I am a special little girl to her, she’ll call for great balls and dancing fairies.  And do and arrange for anything that I like.  And perhaps her old father the king is still there and he’ll show me the library.  And – “

  “I don’t think her father will be alive still if she’s already sitting on the throne.”

  Una flipped her hand.  “That won’t matter.  But then, there will be swans outside the castle, really really white swans, and everything is so beautiful outside it makes you cry . . .”

  Ramasaga did not like the sound of that.  “You girls are always wanting to cry.  And you girls really do cry a lot.  I don’t think you should want to cry at all if there’s nothing that makes you sad.”

  “Oh, but crying is also when you’re very happy.”  Una searched his face, judging if he was the safe kind of person to tell wishful fancies to or not.

  “I think you really will find a castle and a princess and everything like that.”  Una was touched by his sincere assurance.  He did really believe and trust that she would.  Wishful fancies definitely were safe with him.  He was a special chap, different from boys Una could think of at the moment.  They had just wanted to talk about their baseball cards, hockey cards, were impressed by Dick Tracey and she had to share the liking for those for if there was anything girly or pink she was immediately ostracized.  Ramasaga was summoned by Murrjjune to help her with one particular heavy length of tapestry to hang from the ceiling.  She needed some of Ramasaga’s magic.  She was standing on a ladder and there was only one ladder. 

  Una tuned into Elfinnwynne and Bror’s discussion.  They seemed to completely have forgotten about her.  Elfinnwynne was explaining to Bror the history of tapestry on the Earth in France in the 13^th century and said that it had features that medieval England did not have.  This tapestry she and Bror were looking at, depicting a tall lady facing backwards, carrying a vase, was definitely French. 

  Bror continued to think about it, pensive and his face fair as when he was in thinking or dreaming.  His hat showed more of its silvery lilac in the veins of the leaves.  “But what about those red crosses in the corners?  The cross of St. George, medieval England?”

  Elfinnwynne’s defined, pretty chin raised a little.  “Maybe it’s from a country on the borders.  It was weaved in a kingdom that’s both English and French.  Normandy perhaps.”

  “Elfinnwynne, neither of us knows about history.  We never went to school.”

  “Yes, however what about Mr. Craig’s library?”

  “You did a lot of reading in the books of history, of course.  Are you sure in Normandy medieval folk followed the red cross of St. George?”

  Elfinnwynne was becoming relinquished to her own delusion about how well her faculties of the facts in the books were organized and accessible inside her memory.

  “Next adventure we’ll go to a school.”

  Bror shrugged.  “I’m glad we’re in Navasheen.  A Market like this – I think we’ll have a few days to go and discover all the different odd and magical things that go on here.  Let’s hope there’ll be plenty of time once we’ve finished helping Murrjjune.  We’ve never been Market stall sellers before.”

    Una tried not to stare.  She was busy after pulling out clothes and folding them nicely.  Yet she could not stop her astonished curiosity about why Elfinnwynne and Bror had never gone to school.   How beautiful and perfect they were, from magical places and how clever they were and already going to be teenagers, and yet they had never gone to school?  Could they count?  Una dared not ask, but determined to wait for a chance to ask them a simple arithmetic equation.  After all, she herself was six years old yet had already lived thirty years and graduated from university.  Gazing at the tapestry, her mind wondering, she thought about herself some more and tried to remember her degree course.  Did it not have to do with tapestries?  Did she not see them lining walls of castles and . . . and . . . some other places that were not castles – she had been there with a notebook and pencil.  Una could not remember them.  Was it not many of these that she had looked at and viewed in books? – And yes, she remembered rows of vases and ceramics.  Did her years studying not entail looking through books and through pictures much like this picture of the woman with the vase?  Wasn’t it all to do with these kinds of things?  She tried to remember but couldn’t.  Was this because she was dreaming?  Because she was in Navasheen?

  Elfinnwynne sighed.  She began to pout a little.  “I wish I could have gone to school.  But not the school for elfins . . . my mother wanted to put me in one of them but then . . . anyway, just before she did, I discovered the little pool by the spring and began seeing not my own reflection but that another little girl . . . who was Una.  We were the same age then.  And then she began speaking to me but I couldn’t hear her because she was just a reflection.  Then Flora the old Frost on Flower Mother told me we had been separated at birth, that girl I had seen in the reflection.  There was also a boy, our brother.  ‘You are not blood siblings,’ the Frost on Flower Mother said, “but friends of spirit which is another yet closer kinship.  And you are always together though in another realm of mind that none of you know about until you meet each in a dream.’”  Una could sense Elfinnwynne turning to gaze and see if Una was listening.  Una was good at pretending.  Elfinnwynne turned back to Bror and said in a lower though higher, gladsome voice,   “You and I have met in dreams many times for our adventures.  I’m so glad now we have met Una for one!  The only time before was when, in her life on the Earth, she fainted and fell on the floor and hit her head on the side of a bed in the dormitory.  We foresaw that . . . and it was a happy time though short . . . we were together in a little red house as if we had always been together.  She knew us right away and was so glad to be with us.  Maybe one day with her we will enter an adventure where we must find answers in a labyrinth of books going high along walls of great caves.” 

  Una wondered if she herself was going to go on such an adventure or not. 

  Bror suggested, “Perhaps Una’s way to the Tower is through a labyrinth like that?”

  Elfinnwynne replied nothing to this.  Una was not interested at all in libraries if they meant all books of rough paper and all print and no pictures.  She liked children’s books with illustrations though, a lot, and encyclopaedias.

  Una sat down on a brass bound chest.  It was bewildering; she started thinking about herself and how she was here and how come she was not at home in the normal world when she was herself who had aged and progressed.  Living her life according to time.  And she was losing her memory and herself.  Something was happening to her.  She knew she should be an adult – yes, she actually had already grown into an adult with the experience of growing up already mounted and ploughed through.  And yes a child, this was her real, original self, with her hair bright golden brown like it really had been.  She felt the braid down her back . . . and the little curls around her face – this dress she was wearing was her old dress with the pink and yellow flowers.  The little buttons in the shape of flowers.  Her arms were her familiar arms.  Young, with its few moles.  Her hands perfect, without any veins coming out anywhere.  Una had been feeling unlike ever before – had it really been this happy and carefree to be so young?  And it was also this place.  She had this whole time not thought of drink or food, as if it did not exist.  There was nothing she saw in the market.  Just now this came to her realization.  There was no thought to temperature, everything was pleasant.  She had been sweaty and too warm under the pile of fabrics on the wagon but that came with the circumstance, knowing what it was.  Everything was pleasant here.  It really was a dream.  Una had not remembered the book called the Hufa An since light green moss and fern in the forest and the quest not even Elfinnwynne knew the way of.

  Una remembered the book now that she has seen when she had been inside the Tower between waking and sleeping.  She looked back at her friends Elfinnwynne and Bror who were looking at designs of other tapestries.  They must remember! She thought, and she sprang to her feet – perhaps there was no time to lose and there was no pathway here at the market to the tower . . .

  When Una started back without saying anything to Elfinnwynne and Bror.  A very light-haired, very pretty young girl was there - just across from Una as if she had something to say.  Her hands were placed over some of the garments on display that she had moved. 

  “Yes?”  Una suddenly was helpful like a seller at a stall.

  The girl was maybe Elfinnwynne’s age, maybe younger.  She had very winning gracefulness, smiling gently when Una paid her attention and was to Una the princess stepped out of a legend yet undiscovered.  She definitely had a legend, a saga behind her.  Una remembered the maiden she saw before – and thought they must be sisters – or from the same legend?

  “Hello lovely little girl . . . I am here to find a fable told in pictures.  It should be my very own, to look at on the wall in my room.  It shall be a special fable, one I should like to remind myself of every day in the morning.  It shall hang on the wall next to one of my windows – where I eat my breakfast at my small table that is gold and was once made of the gold of the morning sun – by my friend the Sun god.”

  Una enjoyed listening to her voice and the way it sloped up and down as she spoke.  Somehow a picture came to Una of seeing through the clouds the green hills that sparkles with silver.

  Una became enthralled with the sensation of wherever this girl might come from.

  “Are you a princess?” Una asked.  “You live in a castle, don’t you? “

  The girl was about to reply in her frank, graceful way – but then made a furtive glance – Una saw it was at Murrjjune who was busy, still on the ladder and looking a bit impatient at the ceiling of the roof, at the back of the stall.  The girl leaned forward and said to Una, “Why yes, I am a princess, but you may call me just Isilde.  There are quite a few Isildes, and they aren’t necessarily princesses.  I don’t want anyone to know who I am at this market.  Especially not when I want to buy something.  The market sellers will ask me ten times the price if they would know who I am.”  Una saw a twinkle of humour in the princess’s eyes – “Or maybe not even give to me what I want to buy at all because they’d say a princess like me should not be out shopping at all.  I should stay up there in the clouds.  That’s where I live – if anyone would know my real name, they’ll tell me I should fly back up there where I belong and not take away anything from the Market that other people could have who don’t have such lovely things as I already do.  My castle in deed is filled with all the most beautiful fancies and treasures anyone has ever thought of.”  The young girl was very trusting and without any dark cloud of thought, truly just dreamy white clouds like where she came from and was her home.

  Una was delighted with all the most wonderful she had ever heard anyone tell of in her life.  Una had been wanting to meet someone like this even when she had not know it, and Isilde – though not such a princess-like name – was so kind and looking at Una and talking to her which was entirely different from the films Una had watched, animation or real people.  This was a real legendary princess who really lived and was not an actress.  And was so kind and Una’s friend!

  “I would like to go there,” Una said, after a moment of remembering to express eagerness with humble politeness.  “Can I go?”

  Isilde knew only grace and an agile rapport.  “Yes,” she said, trying to see through to Una’s imagination and expectancy and measuring it to how she could make it possible for Una.  Isilde breathed with happy anticipation.  “Will you join me for a visit?”

  “Oh yes! – yes!  With my friends, here, Elfinnwynne and Bror – “Una stepped over to the two of them who had just taken notice of Isilde and stared.  They both had faces fill with the brightness of hopes and dreams.

  Una was gladder even more to share this all with her friends.  “Elfinnwynne, Bror!  We’re going with Isilde to her castle . . . in the clouds!”

  Isilde looked a little alarmed to Murrjjune.  “Not so loud.  You have yet to ask permission from your friend Murrjjune.”  She returned to her amiable, dreamy composure.  “And first I would like to view and find a tapestry that shows a fable in pictures . . . “

  Murrjjune had had her back most of the time facing the children and Ramasaga was somehow gone.

  Bror offered in his way of an intuitive listening woodland dweller, “You may step to the side here and come inside.”  He stretched out his rough boy’s hand to Isilde as he stood by the little brown wood gate on the right side of the stall.

  Isilde at first mistrustful or was it shyness, was not eager to give out her hand.  She surveyed Bror a little but then sighed in release of tension and smiled.  “Why yes, thank you,” she said and gave him her slim pretty hand.  Una did not think Bror knew she was a princess who lived in the clouds.

  Elfinnwynne and Una followed them to the tapestries.  Murrjjune was hammering a few nails on a beam under the roof.

  “Oh dear me, how wonderful,” said Murrjjune, looking down.  “I’m very glad to see a young girl interested in tapestries.  Yes, they are wondrous tapestries, some of them of mysteries long forgotten.”  The melody returned to Murrjjune’s voice.  She sighed as if in relief of herself.  Una wondered if Murrjjune might start singing again.  Perhaps then the mazes and crazes of the market outside of this stall would all become peaceful like a stream moving slow on the deep side.  But then Murrjjune’s attention was grasped once more – Una turned and looked where Murrjjune pointed with a nudge of her mouth.  It was to the line of people, possible customers who were viewing garments on the other side of the counter.

  “Elfinnwynne, will you keep an eye please over there,” Murrjjune said, a bit preoccupied with things in her head. 

  Elfinnwynne, by her own spark of enthusiasm, picked up with presentable steps toward the gathering viewers, already a confident merchant.

  “Elfinnwynne, it’s precious stones they must pay!  You be the judge to how many and what kind of stones someone’s got to offer.”  Murrjjune returned her attention to the tapestries and the young girl gazing keenly at one, then studying another.

  Bror and Una stood by.  Una kept wanting to tell Bror about the castle and that this was a real princess who could take them there . . .

  Murrjjune was catching glimpses of some of the gemstones Isilde was wearing, some of them sewn in the comb in her hair.  Isilde had one plait down her back.  She also wore a necklace of sapphires and diamonds . . . Una was about to speak out bluntly, forgetting how Isilde did not want anyone to know she was a princess – but Murrjjune said something instead.

  “It is in precious stone or crystals I accept payment.”  Murrjjune became less carefree, a little disturbed by the jewels perhaps.  “You, my dear child, can afford to pay several tapestries . . . the red one would pay all.” 

  Una was a bit frightened.  But it was Murrjjune after all, with some of that darkness Una had already seen before.

  Isilde was in pleasant dreams of visions those pictures lapsed her into.  The tapestry she had turned to just now was just what she had been looking for.  It showed rows of different pictures in scenes.  It was very colourful, but to Una did not tell a fable or a story, there was no action in the pictures, and there was too much of vines twining over everything, vines turning in different colours.  Thought there were depictions of fantastic creatures such as a dragon, a Pegasus, a warrior with one eye in the middle of his forehead – so-called Cyclops; it looked a kind of dark knight waving his sword and riding a black dragon with several heads.  There was a maiden in white.  There was the sun with its arms reaching out holding a baby.  There were high stone crags with a castle on top.  There was a prince walking from out of the sun, there hardly being a defining outline between the prince and the sun.  And there were swans flying with girls in white dresses riding over the wings, some by veils from the tips of the swans’ wings.  Then there were reddened golden apples hanging from a tree.

  Isilde had the dreamiest expression on her face Una had ever seen and it awoke an ache in Una’s chest, a longing for that dreamiest of place of greatest other-worldly beauty.  Isilde spoke, barely more than a murmur, “This is it.”  And it meant and contained something greater and with even some painful importance than some fanciful dream and beauty.

  She paid Murrjjune with her necklace which had several diamonds and sapphires on it.

  “Oh no, this is far too much.”  Murrjjune shook her head.  “These are great, heavy jewel stones.  And I would but ask for one single piece if it was red.  Have you nothing red?”

  Isilde’s expression began to change.  As if she was holding something back she did not want to give.

  Just then, Ramasaga returned to the stall.  He was carrying firewood which he dropped as he entered.  It was because of Isilde.  “It’s her!  Princess Isilde!  Murrjjune, you shouldn’t let her have come in here!”

  Murrjjune’s eyes grew wide.  She was alarmed.  It seemed also more for Una.  Una was pulled to her, Murrjjune held Una under an urgent protection.  Una was confused.

  “Leave my stall at once!”  Murrjjune ordered.

  In an instant it was no longer the young girl Isilde but a tall, grown maiden . . . the maiden with the long flaxen hair over furs draped over her shoulders – her face was almost the same face but not such big childlike eyes thought they were innocent and filled with dreamy beauty the same though with growing disappointment, fear and pain.  It was a crown Una now could identify, the pale gold and silver twisting around her fair head.  This was the maiden Una had caught sight of before, the wondrous maiden.  They weren’t sisters or from the same tribe of people . . . this was Isilde, the same person.  But how come Murrjjune and Ramasaga did not trust her?

  “Isilde, it’s you!”  Murrjjune lashed out.  “Isilde of the Clouds in the Sky, you are endangering us all!  You know you are!  I would not have dreamed that on this day you would come in here, and that horror of an evil man sure to find you anytime next and we will all be lost.  Go!  Out of this stall!”

  Isilde fell to her knees at Murrjjune’s feet.  “Please.  I beg of you protection.  Protection from him finding me.  Just these few moments, may I have the tapestry I have bought with more than its value to you – I will take it rolled up under my arm, if you will take it down from where it hangs.  And I will be out . . .”

  “He will know you are in the Market!” Murrjjune did not seem to have a heart.  Una wished she could free herself from her embrace.  Bror was seeing to Una, that she wasn’t frightened.  She was just growing angry.  Isilde was innocent and – moreover, begging protection.  Why was Murrjjune so unkind?  “He is here in the Market looking for you this very moment.  You know that is how fast he can tell once you reach the ground.  I scorn you – Ramasaga, boy, don’t just stand there – do something with your powers to get this woman out of here!”

  Isilde rose to stand again, ready for whatever should come next.  Yet then she nodded for Murrjjune to look down at her foot pointed out from under her pink-dawn skirt.  It was a golden slipper.  And in the centre of it, a red stone.  She exchanged one foot for the other.  There was also a red stone on the slipper on her other foot.

  Murrjjune was breathing steadily.  Una felt how her embrace over her loosened.

  Isilde’s voice was full-bodied, louder, though still of the same character of the younger Isilde Una had met.  “Behold with your very eyes so you may finally see the stones you have been looking for.”  There was a high-held haughtiness there had not been any of as a young girl,   “These are tears and blood Eideir shed by the violence upon him by Dinestus the cruel.  These are a miracle, every stone on Beyuhhwa’s belt.  For though his eyes were no longer with him, Eideir wept.  And these tears, mingled with the blood of his wound, formed into crystals.  And this one stone Beyuhhwa lost, thousands of years ago, the clouds lifted from the ground where it dropped and brought into my sky.  I took it.  And since then it belongs to me.”

  Murrjjune’s chest heaved with growing vehemence.  “You selfish girl!  If the stone had come to you, you could have thrown it back to the clouds to send back down to Beyuhhwa so she might have been spared from her fate!”

  “I did not know.”

  “Of course you didn’t!  How do you find out about things here in Navasheen if it weren’t for your silver bowl that shows you whatever you wish?”

  “Yes, but I did not ask it until it was too late.”  Isilde’s eyes were brimming wet with grief and humiliation.  “Beyuhhwa had thrown herself into the fire at the temple . . . the silver bowl showed me.”

  Una could not see Murrjjune’s face and expression but she could sense Murrjjune soften her judgement on Isilde.

  Nonetheless suddenly she raised her arm, pointing.  “Leave at once, before the wicked man on the many headed dragon find you here with us.”

  Isilde looked faint.  “The fable in pictures . . . this tapestry – “She was about to step up the ladder to get it down.

  “I will have your slippers for it.  With Eideir’s blood stones,” Murrjjune demanded, her voice rounding in dimension with the knowing of her power.

  Isilde would not make her steps up the ladder. 

  Una burst forth with emotion, though only by her instruction.  “Go and take it, Isilde!  Go take the tapestry!”

  Murrjjune turned Una to face her and said nothing, but Una understood right away that Murrjjune was meaning the best and was in great worry.

  There was a sudden noise outside.  They were the cries of people.  There was a great thud everyone felt on the ground, a crashing noise.  The neighing of horses, it was happening only a short distance away.  Una was too short to see anything outside.  Murrjjune plunged her down to the ground.  Murrjjune cried out, her pendants on chains around her neck in the dust of the ground.  “Here he is!  It’s the Unnamed Stalker and his seven headed dragon!  Bror, duck under!  Isilde, there is no fool like you are!” 

  Isilde had climbed up the ladder.  She was unfastening the tapestry from the nails it hung from, folded it in half and held it to her chest, standing on the ladder and not coming down to hide.  She gazed out and the terror inside her grew with each breath as she watched something outside, or rather, was watching for something.  The crowds of the market were in screams and in a bustle to get away. 

  Ramasaga the little magician had vanished from sight.  She spoke out, concerned for him – he should be here – “Murrjjune, where’s Ra –“

  Suddenly there was the fiercest hissing Una had ever heard and she turned to look up –there were two heads on long necks come through the side where Ramasaga had been standing when he came in – the most conniving frightening heads with slithery tongues that came out, with horns and slimy grey and brown scales.  Then there came more, on top of rubbery snake like necks that you could not watch the speed of or where was their outline. 

  The moment Una looked at them, they furled out at her like tentacles of an octopus and she screamed and Una hid her face.  Though the heads were still there and breathed hot on her neck and there was one breathing horrible on a point on her back.  When she looked up, there was a terrifying head that hissed at her with fangs but wouldn’t bite her.  Una screamed and couldn’t stop screaming.  More heads of the same sort of even more terrifying came in, with their hissing of a malice that was too much to bear.  Isilde, Una saw, still on the ladder, thrust the tapestry as a shield from the monster heads that now started attacking her.  Una screamed and screamed, crying out the word help and could do nothing else and when a terrible man appeared, with guile and almost like a spirit but made of a strange substance like rubber, Una hid her face on Murrjjune’s arm bracing her and gave up screaming with deploring outbreak of sobs.

  Then there was a turn around in what was happening.  Una could tell by Murrjjune’s sobs that turned to exclamations of surprise and then laughter.

  “Isilde, fly!”  It was Ramasaga on top of a heap of garments and robes that had fallen on top of the many headed monster dragon and the horrifying man.  Ramasaga turned to Una and Murrjjune and Bror.  “Fly kids, fly like the chicken that finds it has strength in its wings!” he shouted – with a smirk in one corner of his mouth.  He was surprisingly less of such a young child than Una thought he was.  She was astounded, jumped to her feet. 

  Ramasaga weighted the heap of robes one some of the heads that had pulled their way out again.  “Take the tapestries!” Ramasaga yelled, and with a snap of his fingers, the tapestries hanging from the roof tore off and hovered in the air.  Isilde seemed to be the quickest to flight – she got, whereas Bror, Murrjjune and Una had to think first – how were they going to get on a flying carpet?  Knees or hands first or could they just stand?

  “Don’t think about it!  It’ll hold you!”

  Murrjjune was afraid herself – she decided to sit on the tapestry.  She pulled Una onto the same one but the tapestry gave way and they flopped to the floor. 

  “No, it’s one to ride each!  They have a will of their ow – “

  Suddenly the heads had all emerged and the beguiling face of the Unnamed Stalker made Una scream and dash onto one of the tapestries which then flew her out of the stall into the fresh cool air.  She did not even need to hold on anywhere, yet she felt she needed to find a grip.  Looking around her, she saw Bror and Murrjjune were just behind her.  And up ahead, Isilde’s bright flash of hair and the skirt of pink sunset flitted faster than Una could follow in and out through, moving figures of the crowd.  The riding tapestries knew how to hide from view enough, even dipping low to the ground, then appearing again.  Una was not afraid of keeping her eyes open anymore, the carpet never brought her to face any danger of bumping into anything or anyone, and the people and animals in the crowds swept to the side in time as Una cried out, “Watch out!” and couldn’t help laughing in delight.  The ride was sensational.

  Behind her sometimes she heard Elfinnwynne’s “weee’s” and a “Beg your pardon!” and Bror’s laughs.

  Around the corner of some coppices of trees, there was no more crowd and no more stalls and wagons but the carpets flew over the road.  And four or five huts came into view, huddled together, with little gardens and a man with grey bushy beard and smoking a pipe ploughing in one of them.   There was a red watering can.  Isilde was no longer in view, Una waited as the tapestry slowed down.  She, Elfinnwynne and Bror smiled at each other; red in Elfinnwynne’s cheeks.

  There stood the tall fair maiden, between two of the houses, Isilde still on edge for her safety but showing a calm assurance to the children.  She held her tapestry now rolled under her wrist.  The one she had rode on lay still on the ground.  The children approached.

  “We must hide in one of these cottages,” she said.  Isilde stood though without much interested in discerning which cottage, but was asking the children to discern, she gave them her confidence in that. 

  Una looked around, worried.  So the flight wasn’t over? The dreadful many headed dragon was coming with the persecuting, power-demanding man.

  “Where is it safest hide?” Una asked.

  Bror shrugged.  “Well, who living in these cottages would be the kindest and hide us well?”

  They looked around.  The cottages each looked a little bit different.  They all seemed quiet.  It was daytime after all, there was work on the fields, and children played in the woods. 

  “There’s a fire at one of their hearths, here!” Elfinnwynne said.  “See the smoke rising from the chimney?”

  There was from one of the thatched roofs a stone chimney, a little lop-sided, and that was what the faint smell of burning wood was coming from and there was the unmistakable smell of pungency of food cooking.  The small door of the cottage, just in front of where Bror was standing, pushed open.

  Una gasped, but it was a middle-aged woman who posed no unfriendliness but the contrary, opening the door of her cottage.  She was a little plump and jolly of nature, but the worn look over her face gave Una the haunch that though the lady would be kind and welcoming, her thoughts and cares were tied to work and duties. 

  “Hello good lady,” Bror spoke when Isilde looked to him, apprehensive and looking over his shoulder in the direction that the many headed dragon, the Stalker could be appearing in approach.  “Kind lady, would you be so kind to accommodate us – perhaps for a night’s rest, a shelter?” 

  The older woman beckoned with her hand.  Una wondered if she could suppose that she was beckoning fugitives.  Elfinnwynne took a step forward though the rest hesitated.  Isilde showed her comfort and confidence in Elfinnwynne and smiled, no more anxious.  Una got a sense of thrilling pride for Elfinnwynne with her plain blankness of emotion, dressed all in white, composed and looked her usual, composed, standing for the slimness of dedication it takes to live on the plane of the mission.

  The others tracked behind and Elfinnwynne spoke with the woman in the doorway. 

  “Oh yes, you may stay here for as long you like.  I have children of my own a little bit older than you, dear.  I love them dearly.  My husband is out to work.  Yes, there are wandering gypsy children and runaways and even young lawbreakers welcome here in this home.  They have come before, and they escaped whatever they needed to.”  The lady’s keen understanding of why the children had come was something they had not expected.  Una looked to Isilde whose shoulders lessened any tightness from before and it seemed she had known that goodness and rescue was where she and the children were going to sweep to.  She smiled to herself, bright with the calm, ethereal fullness as when she was a young girl – though not quite.  There was a plaintive lack Una discerned, meaning she was missing something or thought there was something she was missing.

  Inside the hut was a mixed smell of leather, of fire and smoke and slept in beds and mustiness and dried plants and flowers and berries hanging from the ceiling.  There were in deed many things hanging from the ceiling – a pair of worn shoes with laces hanging, a toy rifle, even a pair of spectacles.  The children smiled at the greeting of a glowing fire on the hearth.

  “Yes, for you have come to the right place.”  The lady sat down, beckoning for the others to sit.  The children and Isilde sat down on nothing but tree stumps for stools.    “There may be many paths to safety – or there may be only one path.  You children – and dear lovely lady . . . whatever is trying to find you, coming after you, it might find you here . . . but this cottage can find you what you need to escape again.”   The lady picked up a sock and took out the needle and thread out of it and between eyeing where to sew stitches and tied knots she continued speaking and looking and each of her rapt listeners.  “When the time comes, you will know.”

  Bror, Una, and Elfinnwynne looked at each other.  Then Una watched Bror and Elfinnwynne scan the objects hanging from the ceiling with awe – as if there must be magic in the string of onion bulbs and magic in the red baby’s shoe.  But scepticism began sauntering into them both.  There was a spinning wheel with a spool of grey yarn on the spool.  There was a big basket of laundry.  There was a basket of apples – there was a brown spice sprinkled dark grain bake on the table, a jug . . . there was not anything that looked like it could help one escape.   There nothing for a wagon; there was no magical pair of wings.  There was a fishing rod – Una sighted that, and a pail.  But in Navasheen anything could be magical and even not seeming of anything out of the ordinary.  Murrjjune’s travel bundle.  The flying tapestries.  But then, that had been because Ramasaga was a magician and had turned them into magic.  Outside on the way inside, Bror had experimented with the tapestry he had flew on and it did not do anything except just be a floppy tapestry. 

  Una began to excitedly wonder about there being an escape door somewhere?

  Isilde said dreamily, “Good lady, we might wish to sleep here for the night.”  She got up to her feet.  May I prepare a comfortable sleeping cot?  Or I should like to lie down a little while to test and see how this cottage can be lived in – however long it is we might have to stay here. . .” From out of nowhere she puffed out a white linen covered pillow and shook it to puff it out to pleasing fullness.  Una was amazed.  Isilde stepped across to the messy unmade beds on the other side of the room, not minding how the children stared as a cloud appeared – in the middle of the room.  It was a plush fluffy mass, smooth and – in deed, it was one she could sit on!  It was one of those clouds, Una thought in delight.  It was not the cloud that made clouds disappointing when she learned that you could not stand on them – and from inside an airplane she had seen this to be true – the airplane went through the clouds and it was as if they didn’t exist.  But here now, a cloud really existed in form the way it was in films, in animation . . . Una ran to it, without delay when she identified it as so – and dived over it.  It was the loveliest silken softness, puffing all around her.

  Isilde and the children in deed did make the cottage their shelter to rest in for the coming night.  After dusk Mr. Tupner arrived from working in the fields.  With him two children who were almost grown ups, a girl and a boy, who were bare footed their legs covered in mud they washed in a bath.  They had been at school, which in fact had been close to the mashes that day where they were learning from the creatures that lived in the mud and learning how to move at their pace seeing through their eyes and senses.

  It was a wonderful sleep Una sunk into until early morning.  Sleep in Navasheen was different, she thought as she sat up, wondering about it all.  Perhaps it was just the kind of sleep of a very young child, waking up as if you had just fallen asleep, without waking up in the night or remembering any dreams.  And yet Una asked Isilde, “We were with the sun, right close to the sun in the blue sky, weren’t we?”  Looking around her, she was amazed how they could have been there and it was so bright when here in the room it was a usual dim-lit, rather grey and drab inside of a cottage with small windows cut through thick walls.  It was not even a sunny day outside.  Una wondered at herself how she could have posed it as a question to ask Isilde when it had been so bright and such a great colossal infinity – like the throne of the universe at which this cloud be had hovered.  Una slipped onto her feet, the earthen floor cold but becoming warm as she stood in one spot.

  Isilde smiled to show she was listening in her own musing space to what Una had asked.  Yet she had nothing to say in answer to Una’s question, as if it had been an exclamation of marvel that Una had made, not a question.  Isilde glowed with sunlight over her, as if she were facing the sunrise.  None of that pinkish gold was anywhere else in the room, not at all from what Una could see out the window either.  Isilde sat braiding her shining hair, one side of her head which was already coiled in droplets.  She wore a larger headpiece like many of the medieval women in the market and like Murrjjune wore, though still simpler and just one plain sheet of cloth of bluish cloud . . . and she wore a golden crown, tucked between cloth.

  Even stranger – or what perhaps made it less strange – was that Elfinnwynne had that glow over herself too.  She was lying on the cloud on her tummy, facing as Isilde was, hands propped under her chin, noticing Una only a little, absent except in a happy dreaming space.  The fire across the room was just glowing embers in the drabness of the room.  Where were Mr. and Mrs. Tupner?  They weren’t there.  And the older children Lyfyia and Janku had gone already.  Una had awakened to the sound of their voices just outside the window, fading.

  “I should like to go home today,” said Isilde, looking now at Una confidingly.  “We shall have to wait for Fwindhhar.  That is my Pegasus, he takes the shape of a Pegasus sometimes from the most surprising things . . . last time, Fwindhhar flew in at the shape of a child’s kick ball that was thrown in through the stained glass windows of the chapel where a small group of wicked statesmen and council were about to assassinate the poor orphaned children who were heirs to the throne.  Just before one of the children was going to pick up the ball, smiling in glee, the ball turned into the white Pegasus horse who I recognized by his marks as Fwindhhar.  His wings knocked down several of the altar boys in the chapel, I’m afraid – and their candles set fire to the red carpet and curtains.  People attending the service began rushing out.  Two of the secret assassins remained and approached the children with daggers.  Fwindhhar whinnied for the children to climb on his back on time and they lifted into the air and broke through the great arch of stained glass windows.  I remained, knowing Fwindhhar would wait for me outside somewhere.  The men were frightened of me, seeing how I glowed and thought I was an apparition.

  “You see, that is the importance of the slippers that I wear with the blood stone crystals at my toes.” 

  Una had become rapt with wonder visioning the story that had happened with the children rescued by the white Pegasus.  The golden slippers were on the floor with the bloodstones looking ruby this time.  

  “The blood stone points the way for where I must go,” Isilde finished.  Then she added, conscientiously, as Una should know the truth as far as Isilde knew herself.  “Although there is not a reason I know myself.  Usually I go to help children who know not the danger they are in, or youths who are in distress for some unjust punishment of the law upon them.  They will see me as a maid or a young girl.”

  Bror and Elfinnwynne perked up more interest.  A study of discernment was browning over Bror’s face.  “Isilde, were we in danger that we did not know?”

  The sunrise glow and the shine in her kind eyes might have hid any shadow that passed as the fair dreaming maiden spoke something that sent shivers and fear by the shade of darkness in the meaning.  “Yes, did you not know that Murrjjune took you out of the mystical green forest so that you would not come upon the unicorns who would lead you to the unicorn children?”

  Elfinnwynne, Bror and Una all soon came to blurt out “what?” in surprise.  Then the lady who cared and loved yet dreamed afar refrained from answering.  She looked back in her usual way, perhaps from a bit closer than she ever confided – since the young girl she had been when Una had met her – and with empathy she partook in the lifting of the veil of illusion – so that the children would be less confused which side to believe, hers or Murrjjune’s.

  “So this is what has happened . . .” Elfinnwynne was the first to come to speech – though the clear-cut decisiveness of her voice was not all there as it normally was.  

  Bror and Una remained sifting between loyalty to Murrjjune and the remembrance of those times she was uncannily mistrustful.  And yet she had openly scorned Isilde, had she not?  As if Isilde was only a young girl who made grievous, shameful mistakes.

  Elfinnwynne’s eyes narrowed.  “How do you know anything about us and where we were and the unicorns and the unicorn children?” she demanded though with only a sliver of mistrust.

  The fair dreaming maiden mused some thoughts and visions in her mind.  Then replied, “There are the Fairies of Good Waiting who send messengers to tell me what is being writing in the Book of All the Things that Could Be once the course of what is happening to the fate of Navasheen is recorded.  And in alarm and worry the Green Kelpie came flying on its green horse while I was trying to let the blood stones in my golden slippers lead the way from Ganusheer Mountain.   One of the Fairies of Good Waiting had dropped some petals down to his moss green, stony seaside with the news.  The child who has woken up in Navasheen is with her friends but also with Murrjjune who distracted you from the path you were drawn to.  The whole legend and importance of the missing bloodstone for that belt Rezakra the Temptress wants to wear was a complete deviation away from what is awaiting you.

  “Yes, though she may sing the songs of the Far Away Peaks and the Far Away Shores, Murrjjune of the Roots is of the people once from the Earth who only came to Navasheen because of the Magic Market that transcended to Navasheen because of some wizards who brought it there.  Murrjjune is of the Earth, Rezakra is also of the Earth.”

  “The Earth . . . Una’s Earth?” asked Bror, with some banter humour sideways to Una.

  Una smiled and then observed something beautiful rising in Elfinnwynne’s recognition of Isilde.  Elfinnwynne said in a murmuring breath with deep flowing understanding, “You are not of the Earth.  You are . . . of the Cloud and Sky.”

  Isilde nodded, the sunlight glowing on her more golden than pink as it became brighter.  “Yes.  As you are of the tender tip of green in spring, Elfinnwynne.  Bror, you are of the forest ground that one enters, with the forest’s smell of soil, fallen leaves, pine needles and pine cones, smell of bark and moss.

  “Yes, and kind Una, you are of the Earth and not of the Earth at all.  Your home is unknown to me but Waaye might guide you there when it is time.  Home is with whoever loves you since always and who are with you in your true real home.”

  Una remembered Waaye . . . and it felt they were all friends, from that time Una could only remember since she had been dreaming and then woke up in Navasheen with Elfinnwynne and Bror.

  A weakness became evident in Isilde’s face.  She remembered something bleak . . . and the golden sunshine over her weakened and the children felt a dread fall over them.  It was a kind of dread that was something familiar, and they were frightened.  Elfinnwynne looked around at the corners and along the ceiling.  Bror got to his feet, steadily and grabbed a brook stick.  Isilde took Una’s hand. 

  “He’s coming,” she said.  She crossed with Una to the fire hearth, Elfinnwynne and Bror following.  They stood before the burning embers and the ash.  Isilde drew in her trust in that inner calmness and confidence.  The ashes were in flakes, some of them, not burnt as fine.  Isilde was lit in her mind by an idea and her eyes began in search amongst them.  Just then there was the rasp behind and the children screamed as they saw one of the monster heads with its flexible, bending neck was there, through the window!  The worst sight they dreaded was the dark-haired and pale-skinned man with the red bleeding lips, the rubbery floating way his body dashed and moved.  The memory of him was as bad as seeing him . . .

  Isilde made a couple of grasps at some of the flakes of ashes.  The children wondered if this was toward the rescue.  A miniature monster suddenly came out from under the burning embers!  Isilde and the children jumped back.  No, it was a dragon, a young one and it was spitting fire!

  “This dragon!  It’s Fwindhhar!” Isilde gave a gentle lovingness out to it, pained.  “Oh, but it has yet to grow before it can help us!  If only I can find . . .” with her left hand Isilde made one last flitting search of the ashes – and at the same time the door pushed out of its bolts behind them, a mesmerizing white cloth came from that flake of ash Isilde had pinched.  “Quick, let’s get under this cloth!”  The children wanted nothing more, it was a saving light, they knew without question.  And huddled inside it, they could not hear anything that had been of the crash and noise of the monster behind them.  They were zapped out of the inside of the cottage, off its earthen floor.  Their many headed monster and the horrible rubbery pasty, dark-haired phantom were far away and Una began to squeal with glee for the narrow escape.  Bror cheered boy-like.  The cloth widened and lifted to the shape of a tent.  Inside there was the familiar warming golden glow.   The gazed in awe at Isilde and wondered if it was coming from her and at the same time they took it for granted that the sun was shining of gold shining on them from outside.

  They were outside in the sun in deed; there was even the sound of birds in the distance.  Perhaps they were in a field.  Isilde smiling gently at Una, Elfinnwynne and Bror, reached to the side of her to flap back some of their tent and look outside.  In deed, it was a grassy hill they were on, with lower hills in view.  The children and Isilde pushed out from inside the tent and stood up to face some children running down the hill that was the way up from the tent.  There were maybe ten children, dressed in what was to Una old-fashioned clothing like in a picture book.  The girls had their hair unkempt and afloat, soft.  The children were happy and it appeared that these hills were their home and play ground to run and climb.  Ruddy were their cheeks and parts of their faces glowed tawny from the sun.    

  There was a white Pegasus, circling in the blue sky.

  “Fwindhhar!” Una called, arms outstretched.  Her hair had not been made that morning and hung over her arms, brown and gold nearer to her face. 

  Isilde knew that Fwindhhar would be there and smiled, standing and collecting her peace after the scare of the persecution and her frantic search for a way out.

  The happy children who ran down the hill all cried out, “Isilde!  Isilde!”  And some looked up at the sky calling to the Pegasus, “Fwindhhar, she’s here!”

  They all loved her and the Maiden of the Cloud and Sky embraced and returned the caresses of as many as she could.

  “These are the lost Earth Children,” she told Una.  “They are from your world where you come from, and lost their way going home.   You see the bloodstones on my toes?  They guided me to meet them and bring them here to a better home than was on Earth.  They saw me and together we flew to these hills – with the kind help of Fwindhhar of course.”

  Fwindhhar was not a talking Pegasus, though Isilde spoke of him as if he might be ready to say something in return.  Now with his hooves on the ground, his wings gently swayed – they were such plush feathers and whiteness.  His big round eyes were kind and listening.  He was a humble horse in spirit despite the majestic span of his wings and the magic of flight in such great expanse and dimension all around him and under his hooves even though he had landed on the ground.  His hooves were on the ground though his gracefulness was as if he was lifted and not standing.  You could believe the ground was made of cloud.

  Una reached her hand, faintly to touch the whiteness though there came transparent amethyst particles around the tips of her fingers.

  “That is of a Pegasus’s loyalty,” Isilde spoke.  “You need not touch a Pegasus to know that he is there for you.  He is your flying horse to which ever destination.”

  In deed, the amethysts swirling around Una’s fingers were as if they were some the soft fur of an animal somehow, though there was no touch on her skin. 

  “But go on, reach further and see if you can touch him,” Isilde encouraged, as peaceable as she usually spoke, much to Una’s surprise when her fingers met no surface and even her whole hand went through the white horse’s shoulder.  The horse seemed to feel it though and its skin flinched.  Fwindhhar turned his head slightly and Una pulled her arm back to her side and stared, baffled.

  “And since Fwindhhar is here, we must not keep him waiting,” Isilde said as from a distance.  She spoke to the children around her, one hand on a little boy’s shoulder, turned toward her with chestnut colour of hair and chestnut hair cut.  “Isilde must return with him to the sky and through the clouds to my castle.”

  Some of the girls had marigolds behind their ears and marigold necklaces.  They took them off and gave them to Isilde who smiling, laughing, said thank you and gave them to Una and one or two to Elfinnwynne and Bror.  The marigolds were such lovely flowers.  Una and Elfinnwynne joined some of the children setting some marigolds in Isilde’s gold and silver crown.

  Fwindhhar had already been kneeling on the ground for a while.   Una was helped to climb on his back and the Pegasus’s back suddenly was there though earlier her hand had gone through its shoulder.  It was a mystery but Una was beginning to accept there was one surprise after another in Navasheen.

  From the sky as they lifted off, Isilde, Elfinnwynne and Bror all together, the Earth children of the hills waved and cheered, jumping in excitement.  Then Una ducked under a drift of cloud she thought she was going to bump into it.  But it was just as the Pegasus’s shoulder when she had tried to touch it.  And so it was flying through the clouds.  Sometimes there was a clearing and then there was a vast landscape of clouds, looking like mountains, many hills, valleys – and in deed, the further through white dense cloud and then out again – through and then out again – that Fwindhhar rode through, his passengers holding on tight and watching – the better shape the clouds took until they were real trees, pine and leafy, that they were riding over – just all still white and puffy like clouds.  There was even a lake.  And then there was a young deer prancing beside them, graceful though a little impetuous and not as strong and noble as an adult deer – Its neck remained turned toward the passengers, wanting to keep up the speed but then as Fwindhhar slowed down the deer leapt into a thicket and didn’t return.  Isilde and the children looked at each other, smiling.

  There were some rabbits, fluffy and just made of clouds though alive too.  They turned their heads as they hopped their own way.

  Though they were not safe.  Isilde gasped and cried when looking over her shoulder she saw the persecutor had found where she was going.

  “No!” cried Una and gripped on to Fwindhhar’s coarse mane as he leapt forward at a speed of flight.  Elfinnwynne and Bror leaned to her as Fwindhhar’s wings gave them less space as they lifted higher.

  “He’s still at a far distance,” Isilde said, rushing her words.  “You can make it to the gate, Fwindhhar, on time before he can get to us.”

  “Fwindhhar go!” Bror said, boyishly confident and making the most of it being an adventure.  “Go, Fwindhhar!”

  It was a wonderful new world in the sky of clouds that were alive of animals and trees and just the same as a forest on the land on the earth and with the strange sound of tinkling and like the shaking of snowy tree tops and the steps of deer under a cascade of snow crystals.  But now it became a place through which to flee and search a way where the persecutor could not follow.

  Fwindhhar’s glide was too slow – the persecutor caught up and the dragon’s heads were breathing hot air over Una’s neck and she gripped tight with her face over Fwindhhar’s coarse mane.

  “Fwindhhar, you must change!” Isilde cried. 

  There came a change over the way Fwindhhar was flying and the weight and suddenly Una felt her face pressed not over coarse horse mane but over something glitchy and cold!  She looked – and Fwindhhar had turned into another creature, green and of big scales!  His head was that of a dragon’s, with orange and brown.  Una was glad she only saw the back of the gigantic head. 

  And this dragon could fly so much faster!  Una ducked and was rushed through slates of air so it felt and she got no air when the dragon swooshed to the side suddenly.  She dared not look.  The dragon however was gliding along the sides of a mountain.

  And finally it slowed down.  Fwindhhar turned to a Pegasus again and Una looked up.  There was a giant – or he was not such a giant-giant, but quite giant, and a Cyclops, only having one eye, in the middle of his sun-burnt and creased skin.  He held a club in his hands, resting over his hands.

  “The Persecutor can never pass through here,” Isilde said.  “Una, Elfinnwynne, Bror, this is Howen, my friend and protector.”  She smiled.  “Truly he is not only that.  He stands guard at the gate we now pass.”  Though Una could see no gate.  It was just clouds again, no forest or anything in any shape.  Just clouds, as if this was back to the more usual sky Una knew was over the Earth.

  They were greeted by young girls, maybe a little older than Elfinnwynne, all wearing golden bands and white dresses.  They could fly and soar and their movements were always dance-like, lilting, graceful.  They smiled and were the most wonderful company Una had ever met, kinder and warmer than fairies.  They had all long blond hair like Isilde. 

  “These are my younger sisters . . . we are different we are, though alike in many ways.”  Isilde slid off the Pegasus and kissed to greet her sisters.  The children stayed on the Pegasus, good Fwindhhar.  The children rubbed his neck and sides and Isilde’s sisters did too.  One of them spoke to Una.  “Hello, I am glad you have made it here.”

  “My sisters are very many, you will see,” Isilde said.  She smiled with humour in her bright ways.  Her eyes twinkled merrily.  “You might think it is unfair that only I am the only princess here.  That is easy, my father was a king who had a castle built for me.  Their father, Aer, was someone different, one who flew the air and did not care about castles, he was not a king or a prince but perhaps something like a god with different kinds of powers and values than mere kings and queens.  My sisters and I have the same mother, though, she is the daughter of the princess that married the man who was once the Frog Prince, if you’ll remember.” 

  Una was amazed.

  “We did not grow up knowing her, for she lives as a shaft of light, having taken that form, and wishes nothing to do with being human.  Though many daughters come to light and being through her.  Aer does not even know that he has daughters.  They do not even see our mother as a woman, for she is but a shaft of light that is the greatest beauty he can see, joy and also rare.  He looks out for them or at times forgets about them until they shine out falling unexpectedly from here or from there.  Aer flies through the realms of the clouds and sky.”  Isilde mused, smiling.  She took Una’s hand, walking and suddenly there was a remarkable change in where they were..  It was soft real green grass they were stepping on, and there was an open sky and below it blue water.  There were snowdrops growing everywhere along side the greecliff sides.  White geese flew across the lake, there were four of them.  And there were three girls also with long flaxen hair and wearing white who waved from a boat and impetuously called out, “Sildy, you’re home!”

  The sun shone here, just like on earth though with a mellow pin glow like when it is early morning or at sunset.  There was another kind of light though which was not the sun and this was a golden softness engulfing everything like fallen snow though it also shone from within.

  And shining at the far side of the lake, almost where the valley trailed off into more clouds glowing golden and brighter than could be any sunset clouds that Una had ever seen was the castle.  If everything of this land warmed to Una a golden-pink lovingness that brought her own heart to warm and burn, all the more so was the castle.  The castle Una stared and stared in amazement.  It was just like the clouds, with its tallest towers within the clouds and invisible.  And as everything around was real but so much better than anything real, more so was the castle unreal.  It was of glorious other dimensions.  There was another dimension beyond and below and over and to the side and within the three dimensions.  It was not at all a usual building and though it was white and gold and pink and in along some window ledges and trellises the soft sparkling colours of snow in the mellow sunlight, it also turned into space and rooms with chandeliers and more of Isilde’s sisters inside, not noticing anything outside.  There was a throne room of beautiful shining stones covering its walls – shining grey stones that reflected miraculous illumines of the sky at dawn: blue, indigo, gold and amber going into the freeing turquoise in the middle.  And there were Isilde’s sisters dancing across it, light and at ease – it was just for fun.  One of them was doing turns going around the table setting down forks and tea spoons.  Then the castle returned back to as it was on the outside.  This was the only building that magically became transparent and even out of its proper walls and dimensions when it did.  And even when it was back to its façade, the castle began to lift away into vapour, slowly at first, then sucked up as reversed rainfall at first bending upwards and even disappearing, joining the mass of clouds above, though winking through with a smile as still being a castle, brighter in glow and colour at its outlines.

  Una watch in rapture as beauty was engulfing from all directions, beautiful colours and sparks and movement, fountains, surprises, little flying lights and sprays; floating graceful lines and lifts.  They became personified by these living round lights, some of them were blazes; some were pale and faint.  And then the different moving sources from everywhere began to form the castle back, starting at the bottom.  Una giggled with delight to watch some doodling shapes higher above getting the trellises and spirals ready ahead of time since they took plenty of detailed dexterity.  It became night time and all was dark except those lights that were building the castle and the clouds glowing from their brightness and colours above. 

  And then a great magnificent tree of glittering leaves sprayed into being, sputtering apples that looked like gold-streaked apples and when you looked again and higher they were red sparks for cherries.  The tree was of twining grey and gold bark from another dimension which was there in front of the castle itself and though not really there.  The leaves nearly touched Una’s forehead.  The apples dropped into the lake with heavy round plumps – and the cherries fell as sparks of falling fireworks. 

  As Una watched the reflection of the tree glowing amongst the ripples of the water, the tree itself was completely gone but the reflection stayed.  The greyness of dawn began to fade the night away, over the tree and the sky in the lake too.  Una reached for Isilde’s hand.  Together they watched everything glow back to as before.  The castle shone, real walls – though not for long.  They turned into fluffy clouds and then became transparent again.

  There was Fwindhhar flying though transparent, just white thin beautiful lines and his wings spanned nearly from horizon to horizon with glittering stars.