“Yes, but they knew we were somewhere close,” said Susan. “Why didn’t they try this island?”
“Ah, but they did not know: they have never seen us. All they have seen are tracks that end in water. For the mara that is no puzzle; their minds look no further than their eyes, and I think that to their eyes this island is hidden.”
“Is it now?” said Gowther heavily. “You dunner surprise me in the least! Happen you con also tell us how we come to be here without wetting our feet, and how we’re going to get back to land again!”
“I do not doubt that we shall walk from here at sunrise,” said Fenodyree, “and, meanwhile, sleep safely and well.
“This is the Isle of Angharad Goldenhand, the Lady of the Lake, and it is one of the Two Floating Islands of Logris. It was lodged against the shore when Angharad guided our feet hither. Here no evil will threaten us. For one night we may lie at peace, and the Lady will watch over us.”
“Very comforting!” said Gowther. Melting snow was sliding down the inside of his collar, and he was tired. “But wheer is this ‘lady’ of thine? I conner see owt but snow and trees, and I doubt they wunner make a warm bed!”
“She is there, though we do not see her, and we are under her protection. Now we must eat a little, and sleep.”
A hunk of dry bread, and a mouthful of cheese, washed down with snow, made their supper. Hungry, damp, cold, and thirsty beyond measure, Susan curled up between the roots of a tree. Her ground-sheet was more of an affliction than a comfort. A long night of misery stretched ahead: sleep would never come. But come it did, and surprisingly quickly. A warm languor crept through her limbs: her brain told her to resist, but she could not. “This is how you freeze to death.” “Well, there’s nothing to be done about it now. And it’s the … first … time I’ve been … warm … for years … years …” The snow against her cheek was a pillow of swan’s-down. The scufflings of Gowther and Colin in their exhaustion and discomfort were carried far away beyond her reach. Susan slept.
It was a curious dream. Much of it seemed to be no more than a mixture of all her waking thoughts and wishes, timeless, disjointed, as difficult to hold as an image in rippling water. And then, for long periods, the people, and voices, and episodes of her dancing brain would fall into place, and become so vivid, so concrete, that there was nothing of dreaming about them. But always, after a while, the pattern would break. It was a painting in which the brush strokes became detached from the canvas, and drifted away as isolated scraps of colour, only to regroup themselves to show the scene advanced a little in time. But this was the main thread of Susan’s dream.
She was sitting cross-legged with Colin, Gowther, and the dwarfs under the trees of the island. Before them were golden dishes piled high with meats, and spices, fruits, and cool, green cresses. Redesmere flashed blue in the light of high summer. Stromkarls were laughing and playing in the water, others listened to the music of the voice of Angharad Goldenhand. She sat between the children, dressed in a robe of white linen. She was tall, and slender, and fair; her long, plaited hair like red gold; and on her brow a band of gold.
It seemed that nothing of their adventures were unknown to her, and she had much to tell. The lios-alfar of the west, said Angharad, grew fewer every year. Only beyond Minith Bannawg did they hold court in great numbers; and when they had heard rumour of the capture of Firefrost by Grimnir and the Morrigan, the elf-lord Atlendor son of Naf had come south to find what truth there was in the tale. He was ill of the smoke sickness when he reached the island, and Angharad nursed him to health. Then, when the stromkarl came from Goldenstone the previous evening, Atlendor decided to go back to his people, since news of Firefrost was good and there was need of him in Prydein. He had set out that morning, in haste to be clear of the sullied air, and he dared not stay for words when he put an end to the spies in Radnor Wood.
The dream ran on in a world of sunlit laugher, and stromkarls brought Fenodyree and the children cloaks of red muspel hair, woven from the beards of giants, and lined with white satyrs’ wool; and there were four cloaks sewn together to cover Gowther’s broad shoulders.
“And for you,” said Angharad Goldenhand, “for whom the danger is most real, take this bracelet of mine. It will guard you on your journey, and when the other is with Cadellin Silverbrow, think of this as fair exchange: it has many virtues.”
She took from her arm a band of white metal, and fastened it about Susan’s left wrist.
“May the Sleepers lie safe in Fundindelve.”
“Thank … thank you.”
Susan was overwhelmed a little by such generosity; normally it would have embarrassed her, but she could not be embarrassed in the warmth of Angharad’s smile.
The picture dissolved once more, but those golden eyes, full of sunlight, remained steadfast through the wheeling colours of her dream.
“Thank you,” said Susan.
The golden eyes faded.
“Thank you. Thank you!”
Her voice sounded loudly in her head; the kaleidoscope receded into a blank screen of consciousness, against which her words fell with a peculiar lack of resonance. Susan knew she was almost awake: awake to a world of snow, and hunger, and weariness, and great peril. Desperately she tried to force her way back into sleep, to make that reality, but the wall was too strong. One by one her senses returned. She felt air cutting into her lungs like blades of ice, and when a drifting snowflake landed gently on her cheek she groaned, and thrust her head into the crook of her elbow. Instantly Susan forced her eyes open, and strained to bring them into focus; but the remains of sleep were heavy upon her, and it was a full quarter of a minute before she knew beyond doubt that her cheek had not lied.
Susan was wrapped in a cloak of bronze-red hair, lined with a fleece of curls.
There was something enclosing her wrist, something that had not been there earlier. She worked her arm free of the cloak to see what it was. A silver bracelet.
The others were awake now. Colin and Gowther fingered their cloaks as though in a stupor. A waning moon shone in a clear sky of frost.
“But it was a dream …!!”
“… and the stromkarls …”
“It conner have happened …”
“Did you see …?”
“So did I!”
“It was summer, too!”
“… and all that food.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No!”
“Theer’s only our footprints in the snow, and all.”
“But these cloaks …”
“And what about this?” said Susan.
“Ay, that is a precious gift,” said Durathror.
They had forgotten the dwarfs, in their astonishment.
“Oh, hallo!” said Gowther. “I’m glad as somebody here knows what they’re about! Witches, boggarts, and green freetings I’ve had to take in one day, and after that I conner feel inclined to argue with owt you say, but now that we’re getting to the stage wheer I dunner know whether I’m sleeping or waking, I begin to wonder if I’m dreaming the whole lot!”
“Dreams, glamour, they are not easy to tell apart,” said Fenodyree, “and men have ever thought dreams are not reality. The Lady of the Lake is a skilled weaver of enchantment. She knew that without help we could not have survived the night. Now, with muspel cloaks upon our backs, we need not fear the cold of fimbulwinter, even though the ice-giants themselves came south. And that gift may be more than all.”