The Realm of the Sun

The Nightmare

               The eve of the day Eirainna had planned to depart forever from Tara, she sat at her windowsill in her nightgown hugging her knees. The seductive whisper of the late autumn breeze pulled her even closer to the window. Traces of chimney smoke from that cottage in the woods reached her now and made her eyes close in awe, but when she opened them, she remembered it was only her dying hearth.

She contradicted herself endlessly trying to find the answer—any answer. It hadn't even been a question that she would run away with Connor before, but she was no longer deciding just for herself. Before, she didn't care if they had to starve as long as they could be together. No consequence was too harsh and no end too cruel. Though her thoughts could barely stretch that far ahead, she had—up until now—been unwavering in her decision nonetheless.

Now she was forced to review every latent consequence again, considering each one for three people. To travel so far alone and by horse in her condition presented its own perils. What if she fainted again and never made it to the forest? Or what if the journey proved too arduous and she lost her unborn child? She would likely not recover from such a trauma out in the wilderness away from midwives and help. The alternative was to stay alone forever in her tower at Tara, always regretting what could have been from her window. Time was no longer a luxury for them, and she had to decide quickly. It disturbed her so—the weight of knowing her decision would be one moment's conclusion and yet its consequence, endless. Eirainna tried her best to quiet her mind and arrive at some sort of resolution. She could risk the journey and all of its costs for the chance to be happy with Connor and their child forever. Tears pooled in her tired eyes as she imagined her child running through open, verdant fields somewhere far from the war...

As the hours passed and the night grew blacker, her eyelids finally began to grow heavy. Her consciousness drifted in her lucid state, and her visions began to transform and grow more elusive, and then all at once so profoundly vivid. Eirainna dreamed that she stood in an open field somewhere she did not recognize. All that she knew for sure was that she was by some coast, for she could hear the lapping of the waves on the rocky shore. Her child ran into her loving arms and they spun around and around in the incandescent light. It wasn't long before Connor emerged from beyond the hill to embrace them both. The dream was so real she could taste the salty air and feel the wind rushing through her hair. As Connor took her by the hand, her own responded to the strength of his grip. The blue spheres of his eyes held her captive for a moment. They seemed to ask her a question that she knew she kept the answer to, but for some reason her lips could not part to speak it. Something pulled her attention away from the fact that she was mute. A weight was released from her other side.

When she glanced back down at her other hand, she found it empty. The young, fair-haired child whom she looked away from for a single, brief moment had vanished into thin air. In a panic, she looked all around her, wondering where the child could have gone. Suddenly, there was a piercing cry, not from far away, but not very close either. The child's voice was muffled as though distant, but shrill enough to wrench every fiber of her being as it called out for her. She turned around again only to find that Connor too had disappeared from her weak and shriveling fingers. Eirainna's heart instantly writhed in her breast at the dreadful sound of her child in agony, but she was standing in the vast field alone now, with no map to guide her and no way to make the relentless noise stop.

A fierce knock on the door awoke her abruptly, her eyes bursting open. She sighed, briefly relieved that she had dreamt it, but she became startled again when she realized she could still hear the crying. Lifting her candle and wrinkling her brow still in a dazed state, she hastily opened her door. Standing there in her bonnet and nightgown, Una looked up at her. Her weary, distressed face lit by the frantic flame that floated on her candle.