Sunrise

Chapter Fourteen: Reconciled

She must have really slept, eventually. It could not have been more than an hour before she was tearing herself, shaking and sweating, from the talons of a nightmare. Her eyes flew open to cloud-mottled moonlight, wind-tossed upon a velvety black sea of moss and brush, and she sat up, gasping for breath, straining against the strangling fabric of her cloak. The rush of moving air through the treetops roared in her ears like a million bodiless voices; her own whimpering wandered lost and wordless among them. She could remember nothing of the dream save being suspended over darkness, lost within a cavernous empty space with shadowy, writhing walls, and hearing Achren's voice speaking unintelligible words; every nuance and tone pulsed with malice.

It seemed a heart-pounding eternity before another voice intruded, rough and homely but alive and real: Taran's voice, saying her name; his hands on her shoulders, shaking her out of the clinging remnants of the dream.

She stopped struggling and stared at his wide-eyed face, materialized out of the darkness. A surge of relief and exhaustion swept over her; she burst into tears, burying her face in her cloak-swathed arms.

Taran froze for a moment, but presently she was aware of a warm arm about her shoulders and a voice muttering low, soothing words. "There now...it's all right. Just a bad dream. No one's after you. You're with friends and we're safe now. Don't cry...it makes your nose run, remember?"

This made her sob crack like an egg over an unexpected laugh, and she hiccuped and raised her face, scrubbing tears away. She tried to speak, but her voice wavered and slid, stumbling over the unstable terrain of her breath. "I...it was just...I couldn't..."

"Shh," he said again, patting her back. "It's all right. Dreams are dreams. Dallben says sometimes they mean something important, but Coll says it's usually that you shouldn't have eaten beans for dinner."

Another hysterical gasp of laughter; she muffled it in her cloak, and stayed there, sniffling, in case he had any more of those lines. "I've never eaten beans for dinner. But I have nightmares often."

"Well." She felt him shrug. "Small wonder, where you come from. Maybe they'll go away now that you're out of Spiral Castle, once you've been gone long enough to remember that in your sleep. Here," he added, shifting his arm and tugging at her cloak. "You're all tangled up. That'll give anyone nightmares. I wake up at home, sometimes, all twisted up in my blankets, dreaming I'm being swaddled to death by a giant."

"Did you just make that up?" She loosened her arms, allowing him to pull the folds of material free.

Taran shook out the cloak and settled it back around her shoulders. "No, it's true. Once I dreamed I was being chased by morgens through a pond, and couldn't run because, you know, you move so slowly in the water. And when I woke up frightened, and tried to get up, my legs were so tangled in my blanket I fell out of bed."

Eilonwy giggled, tension draining from her shoulders, and gazed out over the meadow. Taran was sitting next to her, an arm still over her shoulders in a way that somehow did not feel awkward or stiff, and she wondered how she could have ever been as angry with him as she'd been just a few hours ago. If only he could always be as agreeable as this.

"Taran," she ventured presently, ending a long silence, "what is Caer Dallben like?"

"It's quiet," he answered, after a thoughtful pause. "Before the last few days, I would have said it was too quiet. But now..." He gestured with his free hand out toward the meadow. "Now I'd like it back. I suppose I thought an adventure would be...I don't know, grander. Not sleeping on sticks and going hungry and being chased through the woods for days. I'd rather have been hoeing the turnips. But I won't tell Coll that, if I ever make it back," he added, and she knew, by the sound of his voice, the rueful grin that accompanied it.