 
The Silvered Mare

Jon Jacks

Other New Adult and Children's books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl – Love Poison No. 13

Whatever happened to Cinderella's Slipper? – AmeriChristmas – The Vitch's Kat in Hollywoodland

Blood of Angels, Wings of Men – Patchwork Quest – The World Turns on A Card – Palace of Lace

The Wailing Ships – The 13th Month

Text copyright© 2018 Jon Jacks

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Thank you for your support.

# Chapter 1

Today, the mare was dark, brooding.

Over the next few hours, tens of thousands would die here; men, women, children.

Hidden amongst the shadows of the woodland, it watched with growing dismay the drawing together of the two armies.

One highly organised, heavily armoured and ingeniously armed, yet knowing such advantages hadn't saved other armies that had been sent to quell the rebellion.

The other far larger, confident of another victory, just as they had conquered and laid to waste the great cities the empire had imposed upon their land, their peoples.

Their queen was preparing to release the hare, who would let them know whom the Fates favoured.

But today, the mare knew, the hare would lie.

*

Would he die today?

Probably.

Hadn't every legion sent out against this queen and her army failed to stay her rebellion?

And today, the odds were once again on her side, her army far outnumbering theirs.

For them, it would be a defensive battle; the queen's army must be allowed to fall upon the swords of the massed infantry.

He and the rest of the mounted soldiers must stay towards the rear, no matter how eagerly they wished to revenge the previous day's slaughter, when their fortified cavalry barracks had been attacked and captured. They would only be forced into an early action, it seemed, in the unlikely event that the warrior queen's massed chariots could somehow navigate the hills and marshes protecting the infantry's flanks.

As for later in the day, that would depend on how well the infantry fared: if they prevailed, then the cavalry could take part in the wiping up operations immediately afterwards; if they fell, then the cavalry would either fall with them or be forced to ignominiously flee the field.

May the Goddess Epoena keep a watch over them; or, if he fell, at least safely guide him to the other side.

Even as he called upon the goddess for her protection, he saw her riding before him, naked and mounted upon a gleaming white mare. He almost gasped in surprise that he had been granted this view of her, both elated and yet terrified; was it a sign that she would be later welcoming him into her own world?

If so, then he would he be accompanied by the friends gathered around him? For he could tell by their reactions – their own barely withheld astonished gasps, the sidelong glances as, like him, they sought reassurance that they weren't imagining this glorious sight – that they had all seen her too.

The goddess rode calmly before them, proud rather than ashamed of her nakedness. The horse beneath her shimmered, rippled like foam on rolling waves; then like those waves, it began to fluidly dissolve and disperse, until all that was left of it were bare outlines, much like the glistening sheen of a dark horse caught in the light of the moon.

Then this vanished too, along with the girl.

She left only a whisper on the lazily flowing breeze.

' _Return my land to me_.'

*

# Chapter 2

Alanua's head throbbed wickedly as, at last, she woke up.

It was still dark. She shivered; she was _so_ cold!

No – it wasn't _still_ dark. It was _growing_ darker.

And she wasn't at home in her bed of straw. She was lying out amongst the sleeping men, women and children of the queen's army.

A few of those around her shifted painfully in their sleep, groaning, even wailing piteously in agony.

As Alanua sat up, her forehead sharply ached. She instinctively brought a hand up to where it hurt most, frowning in surprising as her fingers felt something hard, caked and flaking there.

When she brought her hand back down, she saw that the flakes sticking to her fingers were of darkest crimson; of what could possibly be blood.

Close about her, the bodies were still, quiet. She reached out for one of them, shocked by its unnatural lack of any kind of warmth, any form of flexibility; for it was as hard and immobile as if frozen.

As if the darkness itself were sprouting into life, there was a sudden flurry of shadows, splitting and briefly rising up into the air, dark shapes with feathered edges that cawed furiously as they tussled over glistening scraps.

Carrion; riving at the flesh of those 'sleeping' close by her.

She saw now that the dark mounds of countless bodies stretched out in every direction, a seemingly endless landscape of a disturbed and rolling earth. Yet amongst it all there were odd signs of life; the ragged forms of weeping women searching for those they had lost, the even more ragged creatures silently grunting in joy as they found another jewel or purse the dead would neither have use for nor fight to retain.

The swords, shields and helms that the fallen still wore were naturally ignored by these thieves, for they didn't wish to be mistaken for warriors when the exhausted victors had recovered enough to return to the battlefield and seek out those who still clung to life.

If she had found a helmet that had fitted her, would Alanua now be amongst the dead or those who had fled when it was obvious the battle was lost?

The soldier who had struck her had obviously believed his harsh blow of a hilt to her unprotected head would be enough to kill a young girl.

There was a loud snort of disgust, maybe even dismay.

Seeking out its source, Alanua found herself staring in surprise at a red mare, a blood-red horse walking far more carefully amongst the dead than any of the far more callous humans.

Why was it still here, when it could be off somewhere where it could rest and feed?

There was no saddle on its back, no signs of any remnant of reins or leads. Perhaps it had broken free of one of the many war chariots that, so deadly efficient in every previous battle, had been rendered useless today by a solid wall of shields and flanks protected by hills and an impassable, waterlogged marsh.

Such a strong, well-trained horse would be valuable to anyone who could capture her; yet no one was making any attempt to even draw close, let alone throw a noose about her neck.

It could well be, Alanua reasoned, that once again no one was willing to risk being mistaken for a warrior, or wished to be seen denying the victors their own booty.

There was an undoubted wariness about the robbers, however, each somehow unconsciously shying away whenever the horse nonchalantly drew near.

The dark hide of the mare rippled in what little moonlight there was. It flowed, as if suddenly formed of nothing but reflected shards in a dark pool.

The hide flapped, like black cloth caught in a gust of tussling breezes, becoming flickering flames of darkness.

And, collapsing and folding in upon themselves, they revealed nothing more than a hideous construct of a flowing black sheet, topped with the peculiarly terrifying skull of a horse.

*

# Chapter 3

The darkness still flowed silently about this horrify artifice of a horse. Now, though, it was a mix, a mingling of rippling gown and endlessly rolling storm clouds.

The white skull seemed to gloat over the fallen.

Only moments ago, this repugnant thing had seemed to be a horse. Now it was revealed to be some form of witchly device, a magical guise conjured up so some wizard or witch could move freely amongst the living, and the dead.

As if sensing Alanua's awe and interest – sensing, in other words, something that was not as it should be – the witch turned her way.

The dark holes of the horse's skull seemed to lock on Alanua's eyes, as if peering into them intently, irately.

What was a mere girl doing watching a witch going about her business?

Whoever this witch was, she coolly turned away, the growing darkness of the night yet again swiftly folding in upon itself as witch once more became horse.

With a contemptuous snort, the red mare unhurriedly curled away from Alanua.

Alanua's head throbbed painfully, her vision blurring as her eyes filled with tears.

Had she imagined the whole thing?

How could a woman, even when wearing such a crude disguise, suddenly become a horse?

Because she was a witch, keeping everyone around her spellbound?

But then why should Alanua, a mere girl, be granted a way of seeing beyond such powerful conjuring?

Her head was swimming now with a mingling of pain and poorly defined yet conflicting thoughts. She lowered her head, cupping her brow in her hands in a fruitless effort to ease the relentless aching of her mind.

Across the line of her eyebrows, it throbbed most of all. As if there was a physical rather than just a mental struggling going on there.

She closed her eyes, the agony of the pressure building up there unbearable.

She could feel the furrowing of her brow, the tickle of eyebrow hair against the inner flesh of her fingers,

And suddenly, there was sense of movement in her cupped palms, reminding her of when she had once caught a mouse.

*

Startled, Alanua snapped back her head, staring in fright into her cupped hands.

It wasn't a mouse she held there.

It was creature she could never have imagined could possibly exist.

No bigger than the smallest shrew, it had the head and neck of the most delicately beautiful horse. Yet its body was like that of fish, with a fin on its back. Its lower part coiled towards her, serpent like.

It fluttered in her cupped palms as if somehow magically floating there.

'Alanua,' the creature whispered urgently, 'you must look for the hare; only the hare can save you now!'

*

# Chapter 4

The hare?

The hare that had lied, that had betrayed them?

Alanua had seen for herself how the hare the queen had released before the battle had curled off across the land lying between the opposing forces, its deft moves promising them yet another victory.

How was it possible that the hare could save her?

How was it possible, however, that she held in her hands a creature that wasn't supposed to exist?

A creature that talked to her.

'Who _are_ you?' she asked the apparently weightless creature. ' _What_ are you?'

'Juno,' the creature responded. 'That is both my name, and what I am.'

'Are you a...horse...or a fish? Or a _snake_?'

'We can talk later,' Juno said, 'you _must_ get away from here!'

Abruptly recalling that she was seated amongst the dead of a fierce battle, Alanua nervously glanced everywhere about her.

The thieves searching amongst the corpses for valuables would kill her if they caught her peering intently into her hands, as if she held something especially prized.

She stared once more into her cupped hands.

Her _empty_ cupped hands.

Juno was no longer there; she had vanished.

*

Like the goddess, was Juno just something else that Alanua's dazed and throbbing head had conjured up into existence?

Am I going mad?

Once again, she anxiously looked out across the mounds of bloodied corpses that stretched away from her on every side.

Yes, she should leave here _now_ , or at least as soon as possible.

The victors would recover soon from their exhaustion and begin searching out those of the queen's army who still lived.

How long had she been unconscious?

How long had the Romans had to rest and recover?

Rising to her feet, she took a last, forlorn look over the dark, still shapes of the fallen.

Was Aedan amongst them?

Or had he lived, and fled?

Leaving her amongst the dead.

It had seemed so exciting when they had decided to leave a life of drudgery and farming and join the queen's victorious army.

Should she search for him amongst all these corpses, in the hope that he was only wounded and could be saved?

In the growing darkness, the merging of everything into one murky shade, she caught the glitter of emeralds.

They were eyes.

Eyes observing her closely.

The eyes of a hare.

*

# Chapter 5

If she followed the hare, as the strange little creature had advised her to, Alanua would be abandoning Aedan.

She had followed the queen's army because she had wanted to be with Aedan. He had been deemed old enough to fight; he had been expected to fight.

She, of course, had been told by her mother that she was too young to become a follower. That it was too dangerous, and she would be safer at home.

Then again, it was also her mother who had told her Aedan wasn't good enough for her. So, having secretly disobeyed one of her mother's instructions, she had found it so easy to ignore another of her mother's many commands.

Rebelling against her mother's directions regarding Aedan had simply made their love for each other seem even more joyful, even more precious and worthy of keeping alive.

Whenever they could, they had disappeared into the surrounding woods together, straying as far away from the village as they were able in the time given them.

The way Alanua remembers it, she had missed the coming of the Roman Counsel and his soldiers to the queen's village because she had been down by the river with Aedan.

The Counsel had come to demand that, under Roman law, a queen had no right to rule or hold property. All of her husband's lands now belonged to the emperor now that the king had died.

The queen had refused to comply with such an outrageous demand. And so the Romans had stripped and whipped her, with the Roman soldiers taking out even worse and further outrages against her two daughters – even though the oldest, Voudica, was hardly thirteen.

Alanua only found all this out on her return from the fields with Aedan. By this time, the Roman Counsel and his men had gone, the damage done.

The happiness Alanua felt was wiped out in an instant, as if her time with Aedan had been nothing more than dream, and she had been rudely awoken to a reality horrible beyond imagining.

The queen wanted revenge, and her subjects agreed with her. Aedan swore that the Romans would suffer for this insult against those he loved.

He would rather die, he had proudly, furiously proclaimed, than let the guilty go unpunished. Only in this way could honour be restored, innocence regained.

And now the chances were that he was indeed dead.

Honour had not been redeemed.

The return of innocence had been thwarted.

What role could a hare play in righting so many things that had gone wrong for them?

*

Apart from the odd blink of its staring eyes, the hare was perfectly motionless.

It could have been waiting for her, like a well tamed dog, Alanua realised.

To test her intuition, she cautiously took a step towards the hare, expecting it to take fright at any moment and scamper away.

The hare remained where it was. It blinked, continued to stare at her.

Alanua took another step, then another.

The hare did indeed appear to be waiting for her to draw closer.

She was only a horse-length away when, at last, the hare turned and, taking a few hops, headed in the direction of the nearby, thickly strewn forest.

It was a place Alanua would much rather prefer avoiding, especially now it was drawing all the darker.

The hare, realising she wasn't following, also stopped, glancing over his (her?) shoulder back towards Alanua.

There couldn't be any clearer sign that the hare was expecting Alanua to follow her.

The hare once again patiently and motionlessly waited for Alanua to make her choice.

Alanua chose to follow the hare into the woods.

The hare hopped along in front of her.

*

# Chapter 6

Shouldn't she be heading back home? Alanua asked herself.

And what would be the point of that?

The villagers wouldn't welcome her back.

They knew she had left to join the queen's rebellion. Now that it had failed, it would bring down the wrath of the empire upon poor villages such as theirs.

And if they were found to be harbouring one who had actually fought for the queen, well, what would their punishment be then?

Bedsides, Alanua had to admit, she was no longer sure where her village actually lay in relationship to her present position.

She had simply followed the advance of the queen's army, hardly bothering to notice the land they had been travelling through.

It was possible to navigate using the stars, she knew, but what use was that when you had no idea where you were supposed to be heading?

When you had no idea how to use the stars anyway?

The hare, on the other hand, was a creature whose patterns of movement, whose mating dances (and, if needs be, through close study of their entrails), could be used for divination.

Some even said hares were actually wise women, shape-shifting under the moonlight.

As Juno had informed her, this hare was perhaps her only chance of avoiding capture by the vengeful Romans.

*

Her life depended, it seemed, on the hare who had betrayed them.

But perhaps that was because the queen herself had insulted hares, had perhaps even unwittingly aligned them with the Romans when she had declared that their enemies were nothing but foxes and hares trying to rule over dogs and wolves.

Worse still, perhaps it had been the Goddess of Victory herself, Boudiga, who had at last deserted them.

'I call upon you as woman speaking to woman,' the queen had pleaded before the battle, 'I beg you for victory!'

And yet theirs had only been a dreadful defeat, not victory.

Alanua hardly had to think about where she was going as she followed the hare through the dark wood. The creature appeared to know where the otherwise hidden tracks lay, paths that Alanua would never have been able to find on her own even in daylight.

The woodland lying just ahead of her was now opening up, the trees smaller, the gaps between them greater. For beyond this sparser line of wood the trees came to an end, with only the undergrowth continuing a little further, stretching down towards one of the many roads that now spread out across the land.

The queen's army had used this road as it had advanced towards the legionaries garrisoned in the fortress at Lactodurum; the Milky Way, Alanua had heard the road called.

The hare didn't take to this road, however: rather it darted swiftly across it, vanishing into equally dense woods lining the other side of the road.

Alanua similarly dashed across the road, fearing that she might be spotted if she stayed out in the open for too long.

She slipped into the wood's dark embrace, once again experiencing that unwelcome mix of relief and fear.

This was the domain of the creatures, not of man or woman. Perhaps, too, of evil spirits and manifestations.

And if any man were here with her amongst the woods, he would now undoubtedly be a renegade, like her a survivor of the defeat who would have to find a new way of staying alive; even if that meant robbing or killing anyone foolish enough to cross his path.

*

# Chapter 7

In her imagination, in the darkness, the trees clustering around Alanua took on the forms of men, of vicious animals of the night.

The hare, however, showed no fear. And so although Alanua couldn't fully bury her fears, she continued to follow the creature slowly hopping along in front of her.

She was tired, and wished the hare would pause for at least a moment, giving her time to rest. She considered letting the hare go on ahead a little while she rested, feeling reasonably sure that the hare would wait once it realised she was no longer following.

But what if she were wrong?

What if the hare didn't have any more time to waste waiting for her?

If the hare left her here, she would be lost in the darkness.

Besides, the hare instinctively seemed to understand that Alanua had to get as far away as possible from the battlefield, to ensure she wasn't caught up in any subsequent searching of the area by the victorious Romans. So they had no choice but to pass through these dangerous woodlands even though the darkness was now almost complete.

Her own instinct was to avoid the woods at night, as this made them only more dangerous.

But now she relied on the night to protect her.

Not that it meant she feared it any less.

*

When they at last stepped from the woods into open, rolling farmland, the hare quickened her pace.

Ahead of them, lying in the very direction in which they were heading, Alanua could see the lively flickering of high rising flames, smell the wafting aromas of smoke and roasting meat.

Although it abruptly dawned on her that she was hungry, she held back from licking her lips in anticipation of a delicious meal.

She had been fooled before by that wicked odour.

On their advance through the country, the queen's army had not only defeated every legion sent out to quell the rebellion, but had also taken and laid to waste some of the empire's greatest cities.

And those people caught up in the way of the queen's army had paid dearly for the outage that had been inflicted upon their queen and her daughters.

They had been sacrificed to their goddess, Boudiga.

The meat roasting on those fires was probably human.

*

# Chapter 8

The closer Alanua drew towards the burning building, the worse the chocking effect of the smoke became, despite it being virtually invisible in the darkness.

It was a far larger and more impressive building than Alanua had expected.

She had seen the villas the Romans had built, and had of course been awed by their size, sophistication and beauty.

But this was something even greater and far more imposing.

A fortress.

A fortress with incredibly high walls, as if the darkness had been made solid before her.

A solid darkness that stretched out to either side of her, as if its intention was purely to block any further progress.

She remembered now; as the army had made its way northwards along the road, Aedan had proudly told her that he would be accompanying the bands protecting their flanks, and possibly taking part in an attack on a Roman cavalry barracks lying a little south of Lactodurum.

Yes, it really had all seemed so exciting then, hadn't it?

She had resented being told that she wouldn't be amongst the warriors. Not because she was a woman, of course; the queen and her eldest daughter were leaders of the army, and many women were deemed more than capable of joining in with the fighting.

But it had been agreed by everyone (even Aedan!) that Alanua was too young.

Too small, even, to bear the helmet that might have spared her being knocked unconscious.

The hare had the good sense to skirt around the fort's formidable walls rather than take the more obvious option of entering through gates that invitingly lay open.

In the inconsistent, ever-changing red glow of the flames rising up from inside the fort, the armour of the bodies strewn around the entrance glittered with a bloody red sheen. The corpses of the horses, being naturally darker, could have been small hillocks of freshly tilled earth.

Here the smoke could at last be seen, a twisting, hazy veil enveloping everything.

The hare seemed neither to care nor be bothered by either the mounds of dead or the coiling, choking smoke.

She continued to confidently lead the way, heading now towards the next burning building.

And once again, the stench of burning bodies stretched out across the dark fields towards Alanua.

*

The villa formed three sides of a square surrounding a small courtyard.

Two sides were on fire.

The glow from the flames roaring up into the night transformed the courtyard's central fountain into an elemental mixing of water and fire, or – depending on your preference, or perhaps your state of mind – a spouting of blood rising up from the earth itself.

As Alanua passed by the springing waters, the calm tinkling of its falling into a pool could be heard even amidst the fierce cracks of the raging flames.

Like most villas Alanua had seen, this one had a slope-roofed veranda. Here and there, however, its supporting posts had been transformed into crude crucifixes, the villa's owners firmly bound to them along with any servants who had been foolish enough to remain loyal to their Roman masters.

Just as at the fort, the hare unconcernedly hopped past the dead as if they were nothing but more charred timbers.

Then again, why should the hare care when these corpses were not of her own kind?

Hares had a way of communicating with the dead, Alanua had heard. That's why they burrowed underground, enabling them to carrying messages from the living to those whose abode was now the underworld.

Briefly hopping up onto the veranda, the hare entered a door leading into the wing of the building that wasn't burning. She ducked quickly through a number of hallways and rooms until they entered what could only be a kitchen, with it's a large fire and bricked, oven-like features.

There was no food to be seen anywhere, however.

Meat hooks hanging from the rafters had been stripped of anything that had been suspended there to be smoked by the fire. Earthenware vases of milk or water had either been carelessly toppled or cracked, their precious contents spilling everywhere over the work surfaces and the floor.

A door apparently leading off towards what might have been a storeroom was thrown wide open, the interior empty but for grains of wheat trodden into the floor.

It had been remorselessly stripped of everything useful or edible.

The hare made no effort to approach the storeroom. Rather, she headed for a corner of the kitchen, gracefully hopping towards what could have been the opening to a small oven, if it hadn't been placed so far away from the fire, and so low down.

The hare slipped into the hole, pausing to briefly glance back towards Alanua before it vanished inside.

The hare obviously expected Alanua to follow her.

Getting down on her hands and knees, Alanua scrambled through the hole.

Inside what was a small, low room, there was a thick layering of fresh hay.

Even so, it smelt dreadfully in here; the stench of dogs.

It wasn't a mess, however, but cleaner by far than many of the houses she had seen in the villages they had passed through. These dogs must have had their very own attentive servants tending to them, or at least someone appointed to look after them as part of their duties.

There were also bowls of meat, vegetables, water and ale set out for them to eat.

They lived – or more likely, _had_ lived, Alanua corrected herself – better than most people. This food must have been laid out for them just before the arrival of the queen's warriors who had peeled off from the main army, and had therefore remained untouched, the dogs now probably lying somewhere outside amongst the dead.

Alanua ate and drank hungrily.

She curled up amongst the comforting warmth and softness of the straw.

She _was_ tried.

Couldn't they rest awhile?

She looked pleadingly towards the hare.

'Just for a _few_ moments? Who would find me _here_?'

The hare stared back at her with curiously wide, glistening eyes.

Then she blinked.

Then she lay down, closing her eyes.

*

# Chapter 9

Alanua was awoken by the tickling cold of the hare's nose rubbing urgently against her cheek.

Just as earlier when she had woken up, confused and bleary, on the battlefield, it took her a moment to recall where she was, what she was doing here.

This was made all the harder as so much that had occurred could have been a dream.

This hare.

Juno.

The witch.

She emerged unwillingly from the reassuring comfort of the womb-like kennel, shivering as the cold of the rest of the kitchen hit her.

Oh, how much easier it would have been if the soldier's blow to her head had simply killed her! Then she wouldn't be so unbearably cold, so lonely and fearful, so wretched that she had to steal food put out for the dogs!

On the prompting of the hare, she had gathered together what was left of the food, wrapping it up in the folds of her ragged dress and supporting it there with one arm as she had scrambled back through the opening. She had also pushed before her the largest bowl she could find in the kennel, having filled it with all the water and milk from the other bowls.

Now she quickly looked around the kitchen, seeking out a hessian sack for the food, a stoppered metallic jug to pour the watery milk into.

She had no idea how long it would be before she came across another hoard of food.

*

Out in the courtyard, the fire that had ravaged the villa had at last begun to die down.

The gagging smoke still hung about the courtyard, as did that horrifyingly confusing odour of roasted pork. But now there was hardly more than a gloomy pink glow to light Alanua's way as she made her way past a fountain reflecting nothing but the odd sparkling star. Little moonlight streamed down from a shard almost hidden by clouds and the rising smoke plumes.

The chiming tones of the cascading waters could be heard far more easily now the crackling of the fire had been replaced by the odd snapping of a charcoaled timber.

Alanua would have tripped over the body laid out in the yard if she hadn't noticed just in time the light reflecting back from his eyes like two miniature, silvered moons.

No, not his _eyes_ ; the _coins_ placed over his eyes.

The dues for the Ferryman, who would carry him across the river to the underworld.

The light flooding the courtyard was poor, ill-defining, yet it was obvious that this man wore the dark, simple clothing of her countrymen, as opposed to the light coloured and more finely made garments of the villa's family and servants.

His companions had had to leave him here, doubtlessly when the wailing of the horns of the queen's army had called on them to swiftly regroup in preparation for battle.

She envied him in her way; he at least was free of his worries now. Hers were only just beginning.

Alanua stared apprehensively at the two sharply glittering coins.

They would be useful on her journey.

But they would be _more_ useful on _his_.

She was torn between taking the coins and begging the Goddess for forgiveness, or leaving them knowing she might well end up begging people for alms

She looked towards the patiently waiting hare, as if expecting her to offer advice.

The hare's eyes blinked.

She gave no sign that she wanted to help Alanua make a decision.

The coins sparked and glittered temptingly.

The image stamped upon the coins glistened brightly about its edges.

The coins didn't bear the face of the emperor. They bore instead a few quick, curving strokes, representing what could be the simple outlines of a galloping horse.

They had been carefully placed upon the man's eyes, such that the two horses could have been charging across the dull moon of his face.

This man, then, had not one but two horses to carry him off to the world of the spirits. Alanua was aware that coins had been struck for the queen, though she had never yet seen any.

Gingerly bending closer towards the dead man's face, she cautiously removed one of the coins, taking care not to catch his flesh with her finger tips.

As she stood up straight once again, bringing the coin up closer to her face for a more considered look, she saw that the flowing strokes upon the coin were indeed an artistic, energetic rendering of a horse in full gallop.

Even held up close to her eyes, it wasn't easy for her to clearly make out the coin's design in the dull light. She moved a little close towards where the springing waters reflected and enhanced what little light there was, hoping to see things more easily there.

The spray and the odd, more wayward droplets wetted her fingers, making them increasingly slippery, weakening her grip on the coin as she attempted to twirl it about so she could view its other side.

The coin fell from her fingers, tumbling towards the waiting waters.

Cracckkkk!

Alanua was startled by the abrupt snap of what could have been a lightning strike. It came from behind her, back to where she had just exited the wing of the building containing the stripped kitchen.

She whirled around.

She heard the dull plop of what she assumed must be the coin striking the fountain's waters. But the focus of her interest was on the intensely black shadows of the covered veranda, for they appeared to move sharply, with almost conscious regularity, as if someone was hiding amongst them.

The witch!

Alanua was sure she had briefly glimpsed the witch veiling herself in shadows, the whiter head of the horse skull glaring back at her from the darkness.

She peered fearfully into that darkness, at once wishing to make out once again the figure she had seen, but also dreading that very thing.

There was nothing there.

There was no more movement.

The crack that had so disturbed and unnerved her had, in all probability, been little more than another heavily burnt beam breaking under the strain of holding up a crumbling building. The noise had simply carried through what remained of the structure, exiting the door just as she had a moment earlier.

With a sigh of relief, she turned back to face the hare with a sickly grin, wondering what the complacent creature must make of her stupid fear of the darkness.

But the hare was nowhere to be seen.

It seemed to have abandoned her.

*

# Chapter 10

'Hare...little hare – are you still there?'

Alanua peered out into the darkness, hoping the hare was still nearby, that she had simply hopped off into the thicker parts of the black night.

Of course, there was no answer.

But neither was there any sign of the hare.

Besides her, the man glared up at her with his one, brightly glistening eye.

Was that it?

Was she being punished for helping herself to half of the Ferryman's dues? Even though she hadn't meant to steal it?

Would the hare return if she returned the coin to its rightful place?

She stepped over towards the fountain, ready to climb into its freezing waters if needs be to retrieve the coin.

But what chance of finding it did she have in the darkness?

*

The sparklingly silvered lines of a horse flowed and rippled on the surface of the waters.

Fortunately, this was the edge of the pool, where the waters were hardly disturbed by the cascading waters of the fountain.

Alanua realised it had to be some form of trickery, the way that water magically appeared to bend a stick you plunged half in, half out.

It must be, then, some kind of reflection of the coin lying on the pool's bed, the glistening lines of the horse illuminated by the moon and stars rising up through the waters to the surface.

The horse seemed curiously alive, its legs appearing to move as the waters gently swelled and fell.

Alanua reached out, gently touched it, as if tenderly stroking its back. She delighted in the way her slight disturbance of the waters caused the horse to apparently respond to her touch.

Strangely, as the waters smoothly bobbed, not all of the strokes and glints of light forming the horse flowed exactly the same way, the brighter sparkles separating slightly from the shimmering curves linking them.

She didn't wish to disturb this gleaming image; but she had no choice.

She had to retrieve the coin, for the sake of the poor dead man, who wouldn't want his spirit trapped in this world.

*

As if the darkness itself had heard her self-admonition and whole heartedly agreed with her, an irritated snort erupted from the thickly solidifying gloom lying ahead of her.

'Who's there?' Alanua demanded nervously. 'I meant no harm here...I'm lost, that's all.'

She cursed herself for her foolishness,

Shouldn't she have pretended she had lived here, but had escaped the butchering inflicted upon the villa by the queen's army?

It was too late to correct her stupid admission that she didn't belong here.

Whoever was out there in the darkness was now unhurriedly approaching her, the footfalls growing louder with every step drawing them nearer.

*

# Chapter 11

Alanua gasped.

The horse emblazoned on the coins, flowing in the waters, illuminated in the stars, was now calmly drawing towards her.

It was nothing but the silvered tips of ears, neck, back and tail, along with the curving edges of the foreparts of legs, front and rear.

It gleamed with the lustre of the moon, whose shattered shard had finally broken free of the clustering clouds, and was no longer veiled by smoke now the fire was dying down.

Everything else lying about these shimmering highlights was of the deepest black, the darkness of night.

It drew closer, this wraith of a horse.

This magical horse.

This trickery of the light...

For, it dawned on Alanua, it was merely the sheen of a horse's hide, glistening brightly in the moonlight.

The horse itself was so black it could have been formed of the night; and so it had remained invisible to her until it had stepped into what little glow came from the sickening flames.

Of course, she reasoned, it must have escaped when the cavalry fort had been attacked.

And yet, just like the hare, the horse's eyes captured her own in its intense stare.

It was waiting; waiting for her just as the hare had earlier.

*

# Chapter 12

Alanua had never ridden a horse.

They were far too expensive – to purchase and to care for – for lowly or young people like herself.

Perhaps, as with the hare, she was simply supposed to follow the horse.

But then again, how hard could it be to ride a horse?

Surely, all you had to do was sit astride its back?

And then she would be swiftly carried away form here; far swifter than she could possibly hope to achieve by walking.

First, however, there was the matter of ensuring the dead man was safely carried off on his own journey.

She reached into the cold embrace of the waters, reaching down for the coin lying on the bottom.

Carefully, she placed the retrieved and still wet coin back in the hollowed-out recess of the dead man's eye.

The patiently waiting horse snorted, as if in a mingling of disgust and surprise.

The dead man seemed no happier now that both of his moon-like eyes had been restored to him.

And there was still no sign of Alanua's guiding hare.

Perhaps it wasn't so easy to be forgiven for such a trespass.

*

She stepped a little closer towards the horse, expecting it to turn as she approached, just as the hare had spun around once she had drawn close enough.

The horse, however, bent its forelegs, lowering itself to the ground.

It was easy for Alanua to climb up on its back.

She grabbed its silken mane tightly as the horse once more rose up to its full height.

Now the horse at last turned around; and rode off wildly into the night.

*

# Chapter 13

Alanua could only think of the wind when she tried to imagine what else could move so impossibly swiftly.

How was she to know that no other horse could have caught the one she rode, no matter how hard it tried?

Even the wind, Alanua's nearest comparison to her experience, would have given up the chase.

Despite the way they raced so incredibly smoothly across the fields, Alanua clung ferociously to the horse's dark mane, fearing that at any moment she would be thrown, tumbling painfully to the ground.

How did everyone manage to stay on a horse's back when it could run at such a dangerous speed?

Fortunately, the darkness veiled their true speed from Alanua. Had this been daytime, when the things around would have been more clearly visible, everything would still have been passing by in an indecipherable whirl, but at least it would have granted her some sense of how quickly they were passing through the landscape.

The horse took in its stride hollows, dips, hillocks and even hedgerows or rocky outcrops, leaping over them in one flowingly seamless motion, and so it wasn't until they careered into the dense wickerwork of a forest that Alanua experienced any indication of the rush of their flight.

Here at last, even in what seemed to be an impenetrable darkness, she could make out shapes that were still darker than others, even though they were passed by in an instant. There was also that inescapable sense of something closing in about her, as well as the odd attempt of a slender twig to reach out and scratch at the flesh of her face.

Breaking free of the forest's claustrophobic clutch was like leaping free of dark soil being shovelled into her grave. They came out into a more open landscape once more, the silvery thread of a river reflecting the moon now the only thing separating them from what could have been lush farmland lying on its other banks.

The horse didn't break its pace. It rushed on, crashing through the water, each landing of a hoof throwing up gloriously sparkling fountains of the mercurial water.

Either the river had no real depth, or they had been lucky enough to come out at a ford, Alanua reasoned.

The horse sped on.

*

# Chapter 14

A fountain of fire sprang up from the darkness lying ahead of them.

Was this another building set on fire by the queen's army as it had advanced through the land? Or was it now the turn of the Romans, already bringing their vengeance down on the populace?

In their headlong rush towards the blazing pyre, the rising flames seemed to abruptly soar into the sky, revealing themselves in an instant to be the offspring of a huge bonfire rather than any devastated farm or town. Yet it also dawned on a horrified Alanua that they were charging directly and unavoidable towards it, as if her mount was determined to throw them both into the conflagration, where she at least would be quickly reduced to a charred cinder.

Then, suddenly, without any abrupt jolt – leaving Alanua incapable of saying when it had actually happened – they had slowed to a regular trot, approaching the blaze at an unhurried pace.

Around the fire now the dark shapes milling about it began to take on form, tinged as they were with the blaze's own red glow. Forms that moved, swayed – danced merrily.

It was a demonic scene, with its bloodied and dark cavorting figures excitedly circling this false sun; but Alanua at last sensed no fear, for this was a scene she recognised.

She had witnessed many such celebrations of the festivals of the 'bright fire' of Bealtaine, or the bonefires of the unused remains of slaughtered animals at Samhain; although she had to admit this wasn't the time to be welcoming either of these.

It could be, then, a victory celebration.

A fire of bones of a different kind.

One by one, many of the demons became recognisable to her too, men and women she had seen flocking to the queen's army as it had victoriously made its way past towns and villages. They were drunk, happy, the way Alanua remembered them celebrating other victories against the Roman forces sent against them.

But this time, it made no sense; this time, they had lost.

'Voada! Voada!'

Even against the raucous background of all the laughter and inebriated cheering, the yell was loud and direct enough for Alanua to pick it out from amongst all the other cries.

From out of the dark mass of writhing bodies, a boy was rushing towards her, waving joyously.

'It's me, Voada! Aedan!'

Voada?

Was he drunk?

Of course he was!

Alanua elatedly leapt down from the back of the black mare, darting swiftly, almost clumsily, across the ground in her urgency to greet Aedan.

She had feared he had died, yet here he was; safe, and apparently not even slightly injured.

As they came together, they instinctively threw their arms about each other, sharing a painfully yet gleefully tight embrace.

'Aedan, you're _drunk_!' she admonished him, giddily laughing. 'It's _me_ : _Alanua_!'

'Oh, of course: _Alanua_!' he chuckled as he pulled her tighter to him, as he kissed her again and again. 'I'd forgotten _that_!'

Before Alanua could ask him how he had forgotten her name, he breathlessly stepped back, gripping her hands, whirling her into a happy dance.

'Didn't I say I would wipe out this stain inflicted upon you?' he declared proudly. 'Now we are _free_ , Alanua; free at last of those devilish Romans!'

'Stain? Upon _me_?And how can we be fre...?'

'But how did you get here!' Aedan unconsciously interrupted her in his excitement at seeing Alanua safe once again. 'I thought you were lost: I'd been told you would be amongst us, but I'd searched everywhere and couldn't find you!'

'I came on this horse–'

She turned, expecting the horse to be patiently waiting for her, as it had done earlier.

But the black mare was no longer there; it seemed to have vanished once again into the darkness it had appeared from.

*

# Chapter 15

To be reunited with Aedan, when she had feared that he might be dead, served as further proof to Alanua that their love for each other had been predestined and was therefore unavoidable, inescapable.

Despite her mother's concerns and doubts – despite her mother's many attempts to keep them apart – they had once again been brought together, even when it had briefly seemed that fate had at last turned against them.

Naturally, her mother's qualms and insistence that they no longer see each other had only strengthened their determination to meet up in secret. It gave their liaisons an extra edge of excitement, a sense that their attempts to stay together in spite of all these pressures to separate them could only be a sign that it was a love that was pure and true.

Such a love could only be wonderful and good for the world.

And therefore those wishing to keep them apart must be wicked, maybe even unknowingly evil.

They met out in the woods, far enough away from the village and the workers in the surrounding farmland to avoid being seen together. From here, they would often head towards the wider sections of the river that flowed through the less dense parts of the forest, bathing here, or simply relaxing on its grassy or sandy banks.

Here they would often pick and delicately entwine flowers, setting their interwoven bouquets in the waters in the knowledge that they would flow down towards the village, where those washing or fetching water would marvel at these unnatural creations.

It was their way of taunting her mother, of course. A lesson for her that she cannot pull apart those fated to be together.

On those days when the villagers would be particularly busy fulfilling their appointed tasks, and Alanua and Aedan believed their continued absence would go unnoticed, they would follow the track of the river as it lazily wound its way out of the wood. Now they would use the growing darkness as their cover. Besides, most people would have sought shelter behind the village's crude walls, fearing the wild animals that gradually took over the earth as the sun went down.

With the fading of the sun, the stars came out too, dominating the darkening sky with their sparkling brilliance.

'How can we be in danger when all our ancestors are looking down on us like this?' Aedan wondered aloud as he stared up in awe at the glittering canopy stretching everywhere about them.

Reaching out for his hand, Alanua followed his gaze upwards, staring up into the night along with him.

Directly above her were the stars around which everything revolved; the whole world, the night itself, slowly spinning about that far off point, as anyone who took the time to stare upwards long enough could easily see for themselves.

You could link these stars in your imagination, conjuring up creatures just as surely as you could form horses and swans in the clouds. Even the Romans had brought with them their own tales of heroes who had been made god-like when they had been cast upwards into the night sky, transforming into clusters that ensured their stories would never be forgotten.

Amongst this particular grouping of stars, she had been shown how the Little Bear and the Great Bear were separated by the writhing serpent Draco.

The serpent was easy to visualise; the bears, however, had always struck her as being a fancy of the old women who had told her these tales.

Besides, Alanua's real interest in the stars lay in that milky band that appeared to stretch all the way across the universe. It was the milky stream flowing from the breast of a goddess, some said. Others claimed it was a form of river, separating the world of the living from either the realm of the dead or the mansions of the gods, depending on whichever tale you wished to believe. Then there were those who declared it could only be a bridge, linking those worlds, and thereby making them accessible to anyone brave or foolish enough to attempt such a journey.

Alanua had her own ideas of how this wondrously iridescent cloak of white had come into existence.

It was the Track of the Children.

With a finger that could have been trailing its path across the sky, Alanua brought the coursing of the spumy stream to Aedan's attention.

'Have you heard, Aedan, how it came about to bond two lovers whom others wished to keep apart?'

'I've heard many reasons for its existence,' he admitted, adding with obvious interest, 'But no; I can't recall ever hearing _that_ one.'

'In their case,' she said with a tinge of regret, 'it could so easily have been over for them before it had bloomed into its full glory; because there had been a great battle, a battle to end all battles as the victorious king claimed, for he made sure that every man amongst his enemy was killed.'

'But the boy – the one who is in love with the girl – he must have escaped then?' Aedan interrupted a touch doubtfully, failing to see how this could be a story of love if one of them had already died so early on in the tale.

Alanua shook her head miserably.

'No, he died along with the rest of the men, bravely fighting for his people.'

Aedan hesitantly chuckled.

'Then this has to be the _end_ of your tale? You've _started_ at the end?'

Once again, Alanua sadly shook her head.

'The king had him buried with all the rest of the warriors in a mass grave. But rather than be parted from him, this girl falls into the grave – and is buried there along with him.'

'She's _alive_? She lets herself be buried _alive_?' Aedan interrupted once more, aghast at the thought of someone lying there as soil was piled in upon them.

As it dawned upon Alanua that this was indeed a terrible way to face death, she pondered this for a moment

'I'm not sure,' she said. 'The way I've heard the tale, it's not _really_ spelled out, I suppose.'

'Or maybe you've always preferred to skip over that particular part of the story?' Aedan teased her.

She laughed, realising there was a great deal of truth in this.

'Well, yes,' she admitted. 'I wouldn't like to dwell _too_ long on the idea that she is alive when she falls amongst all these dead warriors!'

'Either way, it seems to me she's going to end up dead,' Aedan pointed out. 'So maybe we could just assume she had been killed by the king's men, along with all the warriors? That's a far _braver_ way to die anyway, isn't it?'

Alanua nodded in agreement, even though she felt this changed the tale far more than she would have liked.

'But anyway,' she continued, 'the victorious king was angry when he found out that the lovers had been buried together; he didn't want them to be enjoined this way, even in death.'

'Why? Why was this so important to him?'

Alanua shrugged; once again, it was a missing component of the story that she had never dwelled upon, considering it a minor detail as far as the moral of the story was concerned.

'I'm not sure,' she confessed. 'The way tales are told, passed on from person to person, some of the reasons lying behind the story are lost. Does it really need to be explained anyway, when it's a tale of love?'

'I suppose not,' Aedan agreed, even though he felt a reason behind the king's actions was important. 'Maybe she was _his_ daughter? Then he wouldn't want her to be lying with someone who was a mortal enemy, would he?'

Yet again, Alanua found herself nodding in agreement with Aedan's quite reasonable observation.

'Yes, yes; I suppose that would make some kind of sense of it all, wouldn't it?'

She thought of the anger aroused in her mother by their own forbidden relationship.

'Maybe,' she added thoughtfully, 'that was the whole cause of the war; maybe the king was furious that _his_ daughter had fallen in love with the son of an _enemy_ king!'

'If so, he must have regretted being against it; he lost his daughter after all.'

'If that was so, he didn't regret his actions enough to stop himself from trying to keep them apart, even now that they were dead. He had their bodies dug up, and reburied in graves on either side of the burial mound.'

'He must have _really_ loathed this boy!' Aedan murmured worriedly, nervously catching Alanua's eye as he said this, wondering if this was how her mother felt about him.

Alanua either missed or ignored Aedan's plea for a refutal that her mother loathed him.

'Soon, a tree spouted from each grave,' she continued with her tale, 'each one growing and rising up so quickly that in no time at all they are reaching out to touch each other, as if the lovers themselves are embracing once more. The king, of course, orders that the trees are cut down, only for other trees to grow in their place. And every time the king orders the felling of the trees, others grow to replace them, reaching out so that their branches entwine.'

'Why doesn't he just accept that he isn't going to beat this?'

Although Alanua felt Aedan was being far too irreverent for her liking, she managed not to show it.

'He wasn't going to be beaten – or at least, so he thought. He had them dug up once again, and this time had them reburied on completely opposite shores of a Great Lake; or, as some say, even the sea itself.'

This time, Aedan merely whistled softly in appreciation of the king's ingenuity; no trees could span such a distance.

'The trees once again reached up from their graves, soaring up and up until even they could reach out no farther with their branches; and so now it was _this_ that emerged from the very tops of the trees, endlessly growing between them–'

Alanua gazed up dreamily as she once again used a pointing finger to trace the path of the milky band arching across the universe.

'It was _this_ – the Track of the Children – that forever enjoined them once more.'

*

# Chapter 16

The darkness had absorbed the horse as completely as if it had never really existed.

No matter how hard she peered into the surrounding night, Alanua couldn't make out even a faint tracing of that glittering sheen that had first alerted her to the horse's presence by the fountain.

Where was that dead man now? she wondered, recalling the moment when she had dropped the coin into the fountain's pool.

Despite her interference in his last repose on earth, had the Ferryman accepted his fee and carried him into the world of the dead?

And what of all those other dead she had seen on the battlefield? Who was there to ensure each of the fallen had the Ferryman's fee in readiness to ensure the safe carriage of their souls into other realms?

Rather, they had been stripped by thieves of whatever useful belongings they'd had on them when they fell; not just coins and jewellery, but good shoes, a warm cloak. Rings had no doubt been taken along with a finger, if needs be.

Yet here was Aedan talking as if such a woeful loss of life could somehow be called a victory?

How ridiculously stupid were these people being, lighting a fire to celebrate a dreadful defeat as if it were some remarkable accomplishment? Worse still, the vengeful Romans would have absolutely no trouble finding them, inflicting yet another defeat upon them before they had time to regroup and refresh their forces.

Slipping her hands out of his, she urgently grabbed Aedan by his arms.

'Aedan! We _must_ douse the fire! The Romans will send their army against us once more!'

Aedan laughed richly, as if relishing the threat proposed by Alanua.

'Good, good!' he pronounced excitedly. 'Another army for us to slaughter; where can the harm be in that? It just makes it easier for us if we don't have to go out searching for them!'

'But how would we defeat them when we've already suffered such a terrible loss against them, Aedan?' Alanua pointed out with growing frustration, confused by his recklessness when a more cautious approach was obviously required.

Aedan regarded her curiously, as if she were the one who was talking nonsense.

'Alanua, how can you possibly talk of loss after such a glorious triumph for the queen's army?'

He turned to face the men, women and children happily dancing about the huge, soaring fire.

'Does this look like a defeated army to you?'

The flames of the great fire now reached up so high into the night sky that they flung clouds of sparks up to even greater heights. Here they sparkled brightly amongst the stars as if newly born, the glow red, yellow, rather than purely white: but their life was only temporary, for they soon dulled and were soaked up by the irresistibly encroaching darkness.

As for the elatedly frolicking people, however: no, they didn't look defeated, Alanua had to admit.

But were they simply fooling themselves, hoping to keep their spirt alive?

Aeden took one of her hands in his.

'Come on,' he said happily, 'We must let your mother know you're all right; if I bring her the good news, then she might even begin to like me at last!'

'My _mother_? She's _here_?'

Mixed in with Alanua's shock at this news was the self-admonition that she had hardly thought of her mother recently. Had her anger at her mother's refusal to accept Aedan spilled over into deliberate attempts to think as little as possible about her, such that she was no longer conscious of it?

'Of course!' Aedan interrupted Alanua's thoughts with a surprised chuckle. 'Where else would she be, Alanua?'

His eyes lit up, a sign that something had just occurred to him.

'Ah, unless, of course, _you_ thought she had been _killed_ in this so called defeat of yours!'

*

# Chapter 17

'Your sister will be glad to see you survived too!'

' _Sister_?'

Alanua was more shocked than ever.

She had a _sister_?

Or, maybe, Aedan was playing some cruel trick; trying to make her look an even greater fool, now that she had already made herself look ridiculous by failing to realise that they had triumphed over the Romans after all.

'You look surprised,' Aedan noted, appearing a touch startled himself by Alanua's obviously unexpected reaction. 'But she's well too, of course!'

Alanua hardly heard him

How could she have forgotten that she had a _sister_?

In fact, she had no memory of a sister _whatsoever_.

How could _that_ be possible?

Just how badly had she been struck on the head by the Roman soldier? Well, he _had_ meant to kill her after all, so he must have hit her as forcefully as he could.

As she didn't wish to appear to Aedan to be any more foolish and confused as she already had, Alanua decided to change the subject, hoping that her memories would gradually return to her as she recovered from the blow.

'Do we know what happened to the queen?' she asked.

'Naturally, she fought as well as anyone,' Aedan proudly replied. 'When news of this new victory reaches the people, even more will gather around her banner!'

'Then she's well? She wasn't wounded, or anything like that?'

'It's as if she's the goddess Boudiga herself, Alanua! Of _course_ she's well! Vodica also escaped any injuries, you'll be glad to hear!'

Alanua wryly noted that Aedan hadn't mentioned the queen's other daughter: did that mean, perhaps, that the youngest _had_ fallen in the battle? She didn't wish to press the point, fearing what the answer would be.

Even in the fluctuating, harshly contrasting light been thrown out by the flickering flames, Aedan couldn't fail to gather from Alanua's pained expression that she was still thoroughly confused.

'Alanua, you _still_ seem puzzled by all this! What is it that's stopping you from accepting that we won?' Aedan couldn't resist bringing Alanua's attention back to the celebrations going on about them. 'You can _see_ for yourself that that's true!'

'I was...knocked out,' Alanua ruefully admitted, regretting her disclosure even as she confessed for she knew this gave Aedan reason to doubt her memories of the battle. 'I came around lying amongst the dead; there were so _many_ dead, Aedan!'

Her hard emphasis on the huge numbers of dead she had seen were a clear sign to Aedan that she refused to believe that such a large loss of life could be hailed as a victory.

'The Romans lost more than we did; their army no longer exists as a force to be reckoned with,' he insisted. 'Yet see how many of us remain to fight!'

Yet again, he waved a hand over towards the uncountable numbers of people drunkenly carousing around the great fire.

There were tens of thousands of people here, Alanua realised, her eyes adapting at last to the darker areas lying farther outside the brighter glow of the fire. In these less illuminated areas, large groups of people were celebrating in their own ways, laughing or talking, dancing, or simply merrily drinking themselves into a stupor.

If so many had survived the battle, it had to be a glorious victory, just as Aedan continued to proclaim.

Even so, she couldn't forget the dreadful sight she had woken up to; fields strewn with piles of bodies that seemed to stretch out in every direction she had looked.

' _How_ did we win?' she asked, desperately seeking reassurance that they hadn't lost after all, even though it still seemed so improbable to her.

'The chariots, as usual, caused panic and confusion amongst the Romans; they can't work out a way of holding back a ferocious charge!'

It was true that, in many previous battles, the charging of heavy horses and chariots containing spear and sword wielding warriors had first broken then scattered what should have been the tightly drawn up ranks of the legions sent out to face them. But yesterday (was it really only yesterday? Or was it, in fact, still _today_?) the Romans seemed to have picked the battlefield wisely, protecting their rear with a dense forest, their flanks with hills and marshes the chariots were too heavy to negotiate.

The hills had worked to the Roman's advantage in other ways too, the charging warriors of the queen's army forced into a narrow front no wider than the tightly packed line of legionaries. Here, then, the numbers directly facing each other had been equalised.

Worse still, the foremost warriors of the queen's army found themselves forced onto the swords of the Roman's shield wall by those behind eagerly pressing forward: they found, too, that they had no room to step back from a sword thrust, no room even to swing their own weapons.

As they had fallen before the wall of shields, the piling up of their own bodies, the spilling of their own slippery blood, had added further difficulties to those continuing the fight.

'I thought the ground was too marshy for our chariots?' Alanua persisted.

Aedan shook his head.

'After the battle, I saw for myself how easily our chariots passed over the marshland. I'd boarded one, as we left the field.'

He came to a sudden halt, pulling back on the arm with which he was holding Alanua's hand and stopping her from progressing any farther.

'I suppose I should introduce you to our new queen!'

' _New_ queen? But I thought you said the queen had survived the battle?'

'Yes, yes; of _course_ she did! But it was only because Telephousa allowed us to cross her marsh that we won! So our queen pledged her allegiance to her!'

'Aedan, why would our queen do that?' Alanua asked doubtfully.

Aedan smiled.

'Because all _these_ lands are hers; I mean, _this_ is the _realm_ of Telephousa!'

*

# Chapter 18

'There's _no_ such queen! I've never heard of _anyone_ by that name!'

How could Aedan – how could their _queen_ – call it their battle a victory if they had simply become subservient to some other ruler?

Worse still, it was a queen Alanua had never heard anyone mention before.

How was it possible that these were _her_ lands?

And what did Aedan mean, anyway, when he claimed she had allowed their chariots to pass safely over her marshes?

A marsh is a marsh: it is either impassable as far as chariots are concerned, or it is dry enough to allow them to operate there.

No one's _permission_ changes the nature of the land!

Unless...

Unless it is not a queen we are talking of, but someone with otherworldly powers.

A _witch_!

The witch, perhaps, whom she had seen walking amongst the dead, disguised as a horse.

*

Aedan made no attempt to respond to Alanua's observation that she knew of no one who had previously heard of this Queen Telephousa.

Rather, he abruptly pulled her behind him, taking up a defiant protective position as an incredibly tall man approached them.

The man was unmistakably heading their way. And he was brandishing a huge sword, with a blade that glittered in the glow from the fire as if it were itself aflame, or at least forged from a blazing gold.

Aedan reached for the hilt of the sword tied at his waist.

'Who are you?' he demanded as the stranger continued to draw closer towards them. 'I don't recognise you – or even your manner of dress!'

The man wasn't wearing the thicker, cruder materials of everyone else around him, but the finer and lighter materials that the Romans tended to garb themselves in. Even so, his dress wasn't noticeably Roman, being of a far simpler quality and style.

'I'm Khrysaorion,' the oncoming man coolly declared. 'And it's not _you_ I want, but _her_ ; she must come with me now, for her own good!'

'I think that's a matter for _her_ to decide, isn't it?' Aedan retorted.

As he spoke, Aedan glanced back over his shoulder at Alanua in the expectation that she would dismiss the man.

To his surprise, she remained silent.

She was, rather, gawping at the oncoming man as if he were some awe-inspiring, god-like figure.

No; it wasn't the _man_ she was staring at but, even more bizarrely, the empty space lying over and beyond his right shoulder.

Naturally, Aedan wasn't capable pf seeing what Alanua saw there.

It was Juno, serenely floating off to one side of the man's head.

*

# Chapter 19

Alanua had begun to tell herself that Juno could only have been an apparition, conjured up after the blow to her head.

Yet here she was once more (not that that meant, of course, that she _wasn't_ a phantom existing only in her imagination).

She was about to speak to the little creature, asking where she had been all this time, but stopped herself short so that it only came out as a surprised gasp.

She didn't want Aedan to know that she was now seeing creatures that had no right to exist.

The stranger, however, had already observed Alanua's interest in the minute seahorse hovering just over his shoulder.

'You can _see_ him?' he asked in surprise, for he obviously believed it should appear to her that there was nothing there but empty space.

'Of courseI see her... _him_. I thought she – _he_ , was a _her_!'

Being entirely incapable of seeing the floating creature, Aedan was bewildered by this turn in the conversation.

'What is it we're talking about?' he asked worriedly, following Alanua's still startled gaze in the hop that he might begin to discern _something_ lying there. 'I can't see _anything_!'

'If you can see him,' the man replied to Alanua with obvious admiration, 'that may begin to explain why you're here and why it might still be possible for you to return!'

'Where have you been, Juno?' she asked the silent creature placidly bobbing in the air.

There was no answer from Juno, even though he blinked at her as if wishing to reply. He remained perfectly mute, the steady, unhurried flowing of his every move equally silent, as if he were submerged in invisible waters.

The man chuckled good naturedly.

'I think you are confused; he is _not_ your Juno!'

'He's not? Then, what is he called?' Alanua said, adding as it occurred to her,'Do we all have them?'

She glanced about her, taking in the other people surrounding her.

There were no other exotically floating creatures to be seen, it seemed to her.

Apart from this Khrysaorion, no one else here had their own equivalent of Juno – not even herself.

'As I'm sure you can see,' the man said, having registered the way Alanua had looked about her and frowned miserably, 'no, not here. They don't belong here, except under the most special circumstances.'

Before Alanua could ask any more questions, the man spoke urgently.

'We _must_ leave _now_!' he insisted almost vehemently. 'You have had your time to say goodbye,' he added, indicating the bemused Aedan with a nod of his head.

'Goodbye?' Aedan snapped irritably. 'We've only just got back together!'

'I won't and cannot take her against her will,' Khrysaorion reassured him, turning to address Alanua once more as he sternly pronounced, 'But if you delay your stay here any longer, it may as well have been my sister who brought you here rather than me: and then only she will be able to help you return.'

' _You_ didn't bring me here,' a bewildered Alanua pointed out, wondering if what was either a lie or a misunderstanding on his part was a sign that she shouldn't trust him, shouldn't leave with him. 'It was a horse; a dark horse.'

'Please; you must come with me _now_!'

He reached out hand as if to take hers in his.

With a sudden side-long strike of an arm, Aedan brutally knocked Khrysaorion's hand aside.

'She's staying with me; we were meant to be together, no matter what!'

'If this is _your_ choice...'

Khrysaorion peered deeply into Alanua's eyes, seeking a response from her.

She nodded, if more doubtfully than she had intended.

With a bow of his head, Khrysaorion turned and strode away, his sword still blazing as if it were a bright torch leading the way through the darkness.

*

As she and Aedan approached a large, fetid pool that lay on the approach to Telephousa's abode, Alanua wondered why she had been so reticent about admitting to seeing the Juno-like creature hovering by Khrysaorion's head.

For no matter how strange the little creature appeared to her, its peculiarity was as nothing compared to the beasts standing on the edges of the water. They generally had the bared legs and torsos of humans, but in some cases even these were animalistic: the chests of bears, lions or large birds, the legs of goats, horses and bulls. The heads were almost invariably bestial, taking in every kind of animal Alanua could think of, including wolves, eagles and even long-necked swans. Arms too varied, being the wings of birds, the hairy arms of the larger apes, the crooked, scaly limbs of dragons.

As she drew nearer to the pool, Alanua was relieved to see that some of these 'beasts' were no more than men or women sporting masks and costumes, but many appeared to be creatures that usually only appeared in the very worst nightmares.

They dunked goblets of gold and silver into the pool's stagnant waters, drinking it as if quenching a terrible thirst, then reeling around as if suddenly completely intoxicated. They played on flutes, stringed instruments and drums, the result a mix of delicious harmonies and a wailing dirge.

They danced, a ritual worthy of the shamans in its wild cavorting, its eerie cries and pained weeping.

Alauna had heard tales claiming that the Romans had brought with them the foulest kinds of creatures; gorgons, harpies, furies.

Perhaps these were those very creatures.

Perhaps this was where they lived; this was _their_ land.

Fortunately, they were all too engrossed in performing their elaborately chaotic rites to notice Alanua and Aedan as they slipped past on a narrow path weaving through an oily marsh.

The minute pools of putrid water dotting the pitch-black earth sparked in the darkness, the reflections of the moon, stars and even the now distant fire glittering like lost souls tracking the lovers' progress.

'What _is_ this place, Aedan?' Alanua worriedly asked Aedan, drawing him closer to her for she feared she might fall off the slender, snaking trail and fall into the surrounding bog.

'It's a land of springs!' Aedean gaily replied, as if he were describing the most wonderful place on earth.

'Was this...was _this_ the marsh our chariots charged across?' Alanua said, fearing his answer.

'Yes; although I'm sure that, during the day, the charioteers found it easier to see their way. Like you, I've only seen it in the dark; but even then, our chariots suffered no problems crossing it!'

'No chariot could cross land like this!' Alanua persisted.

'That's what the Roman's obviously believed, Alanua!' Aedan chuckled. 'It's deceptive; there are broad tracks through here that only Telephousa could reveal to us!'

The darkness lying just ahead of them seemed more complete – more substantial, more _solidified_ – than anywhere else around them. Stranger still, above this solidified darkness, the stars continued to shine, such as if the darkness could have been that of an otherwise invisible cave.

And indeed, the further one peered into this darkness, the purer – the thicker and more impenetrable – it became, as if every shred of darkness had been compelled to forfeit an essential part of its makeup that was now drawn down to this one particular area, as birds make their way home.

Within the very depths of this impossible darkness, something impossibly appeared to move.

The darkness itself rippled. It flowed, as shards of darkness in an oily-black pool tussle amongst each other. The night itself could have been ablaze, its flames blacker than unlit coal.

Collapsing and folding in upon themselves, these sheets of utter darkness seemed to partially pull apart.

And from behind these curtains of deepest shadows, the furiously hollow eyes of a horse's skull hungrily stared out at Alanua.

*

# Chapter 20

The witch!

Who else could it be?

Hadn't Alanua seen her on the battlefield?

Hadn't Aedan said that this was her land, her marshes, over which she seemed to have an unnatural control?

Alanua came to an abrupt halt, pulling back on Aedan's hand to stop him progressing any farther.

'She's a _witch_! I _saw_ her amongst the dead!' she fearfully hissed.

The darkness writhed about the glaringly white skull, such that it could have been a mane of distressed snakes, infuriated by Alanua's refusal to progress any farther.

'Alanua!' Aedan said, as if he were admonishing a foolish child. 'Telephousa has powers beyond our understanding, that's all!'

Alanua couldn't be sure if the dark queen had moved toward them a little, or if the darkness itself had simply receded: but whichever way it was, even more of this hideous Telephousa was revealed to her.

The dark queen's body, as might be expected, was so unexpectedly black it could have been formed of an abrupt nightfall, a sheet of darkness suddenly enveloping everything about it. Worse still, where there might have been legs there was instead the coiling lengths of a great serpent.

'I _can't_ go on,'Alanua admitted, her own legs threatening to collapse beneath her.

'You must!' Aedan insisted, pulling hard on her hand as if preparing to drag her along if she refused. 'She is our new _queen_ , Alanua! We depend on _her_ now for our livelihood! We _must_ show our respect!'

Alanua hung back, resisting Aedan's attempts to take her any closer towards Telephousa.

It was the sheer darkness, as much as the terrifying aspect of Telephousa, that caused Alanua to shy away from stepping any closer. To step within that overarching blackness, it seemed to Alanua, would be to be make a commitment that she would never be able to go back on.

Here, at least, the stars still joyously sparkled about her, their light as nothing compared to the sheer vastness of the empowering darkness, yet somehow reassuring in their constancy.

Even these rancid pools lying everywhere about her glittered with the stars' glorious light, like beacons of hope amongst the darkness.

In many places, this illumination was brighter than others, the reflections being those of tighter clusters of stars.

The heroes and the gods, watching over the earth.

And in the pool closest to Alanua, there was the brightest accumulation of all these clusters, the sparkling stars linked by the shimmering crests of illuminated ripples.

Drawn together like this, they formed the silvery outline of a galloping horse.

*

# Chapter 21

The energetically rendered horse flowed and rippled on the surface of the pool, apparently alive as its legs moved with each gentle swelling of the disturbed waters.

Just as when she had seen this image earlier in the fountain's pool, Alanua reasoned, it could only be formed by some kind of reflection of a coin lying amongst the silt of the pool's bottom.

Yet, surely there couldn't be a coin here, lost amongst the pools; could there?

Despite how unlikely it seemed, there couldn't be any other explanation.

Slipping her hand free of Aedan's hold, Alanua bent down towards the glittering rendering of the horse, wondering if she should attempt to retrieve the lost coin just as she had before.

As Alanua gently reached out towards the pool's oily surface, the horse shivered in response to her touch.

*

Curiously, the image of the silvered horse appeared to Alanua to be swiftly growing larger; as if the coin she believed to be on the bottom of the pool was now rushing up towards the surface.

She pulled her hand back and away from the water's surface, startled all the more now by the way the simple, artistic strokes were taking on more substantiality, rapidly gaining the solidity of a real, white horse.

A white horse with vast, beating wings, propelling it up towards her from the depths of what could only be a near bottomless pool.

Amongst the peacock-feather colours of the oily water, Alanua briefly wondered if this were some other terrifying horse hybrid, for it looked as if it had the head of a girl.

Then she realised; of course, a girl was riding on the horse's back.

But as if it were a further trick caused by the swirling of the waters, the girl had Alanua's face.

*

# Chapter 22

'Alanua! Look out!'

Aedan's warning was almost drowned out by the fluttering of huge wings. The downdraft caused by the beating wings pummelled Alanua's back, whipping up her hair so that it swirled furiously about her.

She whirled around, looking up and away from the pool.

The winged horse was descending rapidly upon them, and Aedan had already drawn his sword as if he were expecting an attack.

Just as Alanua had seen in the pool's reflection, a girl was seated on the back of the flying horse.

A girl who looked so like Alanua, she could have been her twin.

*

Alanua placed a reassuring hand on Aedan's sword arm.

'Wait; let's see what she has to say. I don't think she means us any harm.'

'She?'

Aedan frowned bemusedly.

Couldn't he see the girl? Alanua wondered.

'You've stayed too long; you _must_ come with me _now_!' the girl riding the horse urgently yelled as, with a steadying of its great wings, the horse softly landed on the ground close by them.

'Why? Who _are_ you?' Alanua demanded.

Aedan appeared more baffled than ever, grimacing in incomprehension as Alanua appeared to him to be talking to an obviously silent horse.

'Juno,' the rider confidently replied. 'I'm here to help you once again!'

Alanua scowled doubtfully.

'You don't _look_ like Juno!'

'So suddenly you're the expert on what I look like? I'm the memories of whom you were while you were alive; and I can give you back your life, provided you're not willing to see yourself forgotten just yet!'

Dead?

Alanua was appalled.

How could Juno speak of her as being dead?

Wouldn't _she_ , of all people, know if she was _dead_?

Reaching out, she took and firmly grasped Aedan's hand, seeing the fear and bewilderment on his face.

Wouldn't Aedan know if she was dead?

But...would Aedan know if _he_ was dead?

Hadn't she been trying to tell him all along that they had lost the battle against the Romans? That they had lost tens of thousands of warriors?

And hadn't she seen tens of thousands of warriors celebrating their 'victory' around the great, roaring fire?

Telephousa's realm was the land of the underworld, wasn't it?

She grasped Aedan's hand all the more firmly.

'We must _leave_ here, Aedan: and _now_ , too, before it is too _late_ for us!'

Her request was met by protests from both Aedan and the girl.

' _Leave_? Why should we want to leave here? We have _everything_ , including each other!'

'No! He _cannot_ come, Alanua! It is _already_ too late for him!'

'Then I shall _stay_ ,' Alanua answered back resolutely. 'We cannot be _parted_!'

*

# Chapter 23

Despite its heavy burden, the winged horse effortlessly rose upwards, heading towards what appeared to Alanua to be the sun, rising at last after this overly long night.

Alanua was sitting behind Juno, reassuringly curling her arms about the girl's waist. Similarly Aedan, seated the furthest back, nervously clung on to her.

Alanua could understand Aedan's fear, for even when they were rushing through white plumed clouds that thankfully veiled how high and fast they were flying, she realised that to him she must seem to be holding onto nothing but empty air.

Juno had relented and allowed Aedan to accompany them when it had dawned on her just how adamant Alanua was that she would stay in the underworld if he had to remain there. With a frustrated pouting of the lips, however, the girl had sternly warned them both that they would surely regret it.

Aedan, not wishing to be told what to do by a girl, let alone a girl he couldn't see, had ruefully agreed to mount the horse if this was the only way he and Alanua could be together.

The wind caught up in the horse's vast wingspan powered them forward at an unimaginable rate, sending them tearing through the ever-shifting landscape of unhurriedly rolling clouds. The horse, every bit as white as its radiant surroundings, confidently galloped across these insubstantial, spumy waves as if she herself had taken form from them.

Struck with the blindingly white glow of the sun, the foaming crests shone as if the light came from them, the illumination returned in equal measure. In such an all pervading luminosity it felt as if there was no real movement at all; and yet when Alanua attempted to ask Juno how she had come to rescue them, the words were immediately stripped out and away from her mouth, to be cast back towards the realms of the dead.

It was only when the clouds began to thin a little, changing now into swirling lacy veils, that Alanua sensed they might now be sinking lower. As the veils became wisps, and the three riders dropped free of the shrouding cover, the full horror of their terrifying speed was at last made clear to them, the forests and fields below whirling by in a blur, as though the whole world were spinning in an unconscionable hurry.

It seemed, however, as if they were _falling_ even faster.

For all the lift they appeared to be granting them, the immense wings could have been as useless as crude sails, made of nothing but white sheets and supporting sticks.

As they plummeted, the rapid revolving of the earth slowed, a river sparking in the sun changing from a glittering band of beaten silver to crystal clear waters as it rushed up to meet them.

And then, suddenly, they were safely across the river, and landing softly on its banks.

The only jolt was caused by a hoof striking a rock, knocking it aside and opening up a long forgotten spring.

Even so, Alanua silently shrieked in dismay.

She was holding on to nothing but empty air.

Juno had vanished.

*

# Chapter 24

When Juno had first appeared to her, Alanua had naturally suffered frustration when the quaint little horse-headed creature had almost instantly vanished.

This time, however, Alanua was far more distraught, for she had seen Juno as a girl; a girl she had actually held onto, feeling her warmth beneath her hands.

A girl, too, who had looked _exactly_ like Alanua; who could have been her twin.

A trick, undoubtedly.

But...why would Juno wish to play such an obvious trick upon her?

There were so many questions Alanua would have liked to ask Juno, but now it was too late – unless she showed up once again later on.

Alanua was suddenly aware that Aedan was still tightly clutching her about her waist, holding her in the cold, unbending grip of someone frozen with terror.

'We've landed, Aedan; we're fine now!'

She reached down to gently unclasp his hands; and was shocked by just how incredibly cold his hands were.

They were also thin, bony, hard – and almost impossibly rigid. Yet his clasping hands were so weakly holding on to each other that she quite easily separated them.

'Alanua,' Aedan gasped anxiously, his voice rasping, slow and unsteady. 'Wha...tswr...ongwi...th me?'

Alanua glanced back over her shoulder, catching the rankness of Aedan's breath, shying away from the stench of it.

His flesh was pale, almost blue. Eyes stared bulbously out from deeply, darkly hollowed sockets. The skin was stretched tightly about the mouth, peeling back around sharply revealed teeth.

'Feel so he...avy so weakkkk...'

Alanua had seen men struck like this before, when they had suffered a mortal wound, yet clung on to life, vainly hoping they might recover.

Aedan was dying.

Worse, he looked as if he was _already_ dead.

*

# Chapter 25

Leaping down from the back of the horse, Alanua immediately turned back to make sure the weakened Aedan didn't tumble to the ground along with her.

He was unsteady, but fortunately he hadn't begun to slide off the horse's back.

Even so, Alanua saw that his condition was rapidly deteriorating.

Hadn't Juno warned them that Aedam should stay in Telephousa's realm? It was only there, obviously, that Aedan could continue to lead some form of continued life.

Where _was_ Juno?

_She'd_ know what to do, wouldn't she?

'Aedan, you _have_ to return to Telephousa's world,' Alanua said kindly yet firmly to Aedan, holding his hand for reassurance; a hand that was bonier than just seconds ago, she was sure of it! 'You can't live here; you're going to die if you try and stay!'

There was no answer from Aedan. His eyes appeared blank, uncomprehending. He was slumping forward, growing weaker by the second.

The _horse_!

The horse had brought them _here_ ; now she could take Aedan _back_!

'Take him _back_!' Alanua urgently ordered the horse, stepping back a little and ducking under the expansive wing so she could address the horse to its face, 'Take him back _now_!'

The horse appeared unconcerned. It replied with a dismissive snort.

Ducking under the wing once more, Alanua darted towards the horse's rear, slapping it hard.

' _Go_ , go now! Back, _back_ to where you came from!'

'That's not her task.'

The voice was cool, detached, feminine; Alanua thought at first that it must be the horse who had spoken. As she turned around, however, she saw a woman drawing water from the pool created by the freshly uncovered spring.

The woman reminded Alanua of her queen, albeit this woman was poorly rather than richly dressed, while her manner was demure, almost subservient.

'She grants life; not takes it,' the woman confidently added as she stood up straight, her water pitcher filled to brimming.

'But he's _dying_ ,' Alanua insisted, drawing the woman's attention to Aedan's rapidly worsening condition. 'I'm not asking her to _take_ life; only to take him _back_ : to where he can live again, be _well_ again!'

'Then you need to address her correctly,' the woman calmly responded, adding as she indicated Aedan with a slight nod of her head, 'and he will need to get down off her back.'

Alanua was appalled by this suggestion that Aedan should willingly give up his only chance of being saved.

'But he needs to return to where he _came_ from,' she persisted. 'Please, please; you seem to know so much more than I do about this horse. Can't you tell her to take him back?'

The woman smiled.

'I _am_ trying to help; you _have_ to help him down off her back – and _then_ you can ask her to take him to the other realm.'

Quickly, Alanua began to help Aedan down from the back of the horse. He was far lighter, far more rigid than she had expected him to be. He was also ridiculously weak and uncoordinated in his movements. He clumsily slipped down off the horse's back, almost falling to the earth and dragging Alanua with him.

'Mistress,' the woman said to the horse, her tone pleading and fearful as she continued, 'as you can see, this man belongs in the realms of your mother.'

Stepping back a little, the horse bowed her head. With the raising of her gloriously feathered wings, she caught the light flooding down from the sun, as sails catch wind.

With a turning, a smooth fluctuating, of those great wings, she made the light ripple and flow, whirl and vibrate, the light intensifying so that it was suddenly blinding.

Alanua had to look away; and when she looked back, it was as if the sparkling crests rippling across a sunlit pool's surface was being sucked down into the darker depths of a vicious whirlpool. The spiralling flow of black was winning over the circulating waves of light: and then the light, along with the horse was gone. It was replaced now by what could have been a hovering cloud of darkness, albeit one so dense it could more likely be a tear in the sky, a deep fissure in the world.

The shadows moved, folding in and over one another, as flames cavort and imperceptibly swap positions, as a black sheet taken and played with by the wind flaps in and out, expands and shrinks.

Amongst the closing and the parting, Alanua briefly saw the face of a girl, a girl who could have been wearing the shifting shadows as a dark cloak; and then the face vanished, a sheet of sheer black enveloping her completely.

The darkness whipped, snapped – leapt, shards stretching out towards Aedan.

Then the darkness took hold of Aedan, its grasp as firm and unbreakable as the most ferocious talons.

*

Instinctively, a panicked Alanua vainly attempted to pull Aedan free of the clutches of this aura of sheerest darkness.

Aedan was oblivious to this tug of war going on for his life, his body puppet like in the way it was limp yet also stiff, his mouth hanging open with the slackness of the unknowing.

'You have to let him go...'

The woman was by Alanua's side, a placating hand placed tenderly upon the distraught girl's shoulder.

'That's what you wanted, remember?' the woman gently reminded Alanua.

Wherever the fluctuating darkness came in close to Alanua it abruptly backed off like hissing, angered snakes, yet continually probed, and neared, an ever present threat that it would strike and make its own of anything that hindered it for too long.

Regretfully, Alanua released her grip on Aedan, moving away from him and falling thankfully into the woman's warmly embracing arms.

It was the darkness that embraced Aedan, supporting him in a way that surprised Alanua, for it obviously had a solidity belying its more fluid appearance. It's hold upon him seemed almost caring in the way he suffered no harsh, sudden moves.

Then the darkness snapped, flapped – and rapidly folded in upon itself.

Taking Aedan with it.

*

# Chapter 26

'Where has he gone?' Alanua wept anxiously.

The woman held her tightly, almost motherly.

'You know where he has gone; back to where Telephous rules, where the worst of his experiences have been thankfully expunged – allowing him to continue a life of sorts, even if it is one lived in ignorance.'

'How do _you_ know all this?' Alanua asked suspiciously. 'How do you know of Telephous?'

'Don't we all know of her really, but refuse to recognise her out of fear? In the same way, men have always called her daughter Mistress – or Despoena, to use a far older term, but only meaning the same thing – rather than risk calling her upon themselves by using her real name.'

'Despoena?'Alanua repeated curiously, recognising something familiar in the name. 'Like Epoena, the horse goddess? It was a dark mare that took me to the other realm; was that her?'

The woman shook her head.

'No, no; that's Khrysaorion, her bother, whose powers are weaker then hers. He can only guide you on the briefest of journeys down into the darker earth of his mother, taking his name from her more beneficial aspect of Khrysaoros; or the golden blades of wheat she is also responsible for.'

Recalling her meeting with Khrysaorion, Alanua glanced towards the woman's shoulder, wondering if she too had her own version of Juno calmly hovering there. Of course, there was nothing there.

'Yet I see you didn't _return_ with him; with Khrysaorion, I mean,' the woman continued, stepping back a touch to observe Alanua with an almost reprimanding frown. 'You have obviously confused them with your offerings and requests at the springs; and yet they spared you. Which can only mean someone ensured you regained your life.'

'A girl...there was a girl, who arrived on the flying horse to save me.'

'Did she now?' the woman said, her tone still a touch admonishing. 'Well, then you can be sure you had someone who cared deeply for you, my dear.'

' _Had_ someone?'

'How else could she have been there to help you unless she had journeyed there _with_ the Mistress?' the woman pointed out. 'And the Mistress does not lightly offer her gift of life; usually, _someone_ must make amends. What was her name, the name of this very brave and selfless girl?'

'Juno,' Alanua said miserably as it dawned on her that she would never see the girl again. 'But...I hardly _knew_ her! Why would she do _that_ for _me_? I mean, I'm not even sure...not even sure who she _really_ was.'

Wrapping an arm about Alanua's shoulder, the woman gave her a maternal hug.

'Then don't forget her, or what she has done for you. Keep her memory alive at least; in this way, I think there might be some purpose to all this after all.'

'It would be better if I were dead and she were alive!' Alanua responded bitterly. 'There's no longer any purpose to my life; my love is dead, I have no home to go to, and soon the Romans will be hunting me down. My life wasn't _worth_ saving! What kind of future have I got here? I'd have been better off living in ignorance, as you call it, under Queen Telephous!'

'Have you ever noticed,' the woman said, 'how beautiful parents _seem_ to have beautiful children?'

Alanua pulled away a little from the woman, perplexed and quite irritated by the way she had so curiously changed the subject of their conversation to something so trivial.

'You talk of _beauty_?' she snapped. 'All I can see is _ugliness_ in my life!'

'Ugliness; yes, yes – that's a _very_ good point isn't it?'

Alanua almost grimaced in frustration. Suddenly, the woman was talking as if she were incredibly stupid, when it had seemed only moments ago as if she were the wisest woman Alanua had ever met.

'I mean,' the woman blithely continued, 'if ugly parents only had ugly offspring, and beautiful people _really_ had only beautiful children – well, then by now we would have split into the truly hideous and the angelically glorious, wouldn't we?'

Thinking about this, Alanua had to admit the woman had a point, even if she couldn't see why she thought it was worth discussing.

'You see,' the woman said, 'whether it is beauty or ugliness, or tallness or shortness, then thankfully something more ordinary always reasserts itself.'

Alanua, of course, was still confused.

'So it is with what seems to be all our possible futures, endlessly branching off like some vast, unstoppably growing tree,' the woman explained. 'At some point, they turn back upon themselves; and the future decreed for you will be fulfilled.'

'So are you saying it has been decreed that all I can look forward to is mourning Aedan?'

'Such a fate would be cruel indeed; no one should make light of the Mistress. Besides, it isn't for me to determine your future – all I can say is that there is a purpose to your life, only one you aren't yet aware of. So who are you to fritter it away?'

Shocked by such an insolent accusation, Alanua was about to ask the woman who she thought she was, lecturing her in this way, only to be rudely interrupted by an abrupt, raucous shrilling and the beat of flutes and drums. The boisterous playing came from a procession of gaily dressed people unhurriedly winding their way towards them whom – it seemed to Alanua – had just broken into their tune on sighting of the spring's cascading waters, for many were excitedly pointing it out to those lying farther back along the snaking column.

Alanua's real focus of attention, however, was on the hideous apparition at the head of the procession. For its own head was the horrifyingly gaunt skull of a horse.

It was the witch; only this time curiously wearing a white, rather than a black, sheet.

It was Telephous herself, here no doubt to drag Alanua back to her underworld realm.

*

# Chapter 27

Telephous's blank eyes appeared to Alanua to be implacably fixed upon her.

It was a sense given more force by the fact that the witch, and her column following on behind, were undoubtedly now heading directly towards Alanua, rather than the spring as she had first supposed.

She felt mesmerised by the deeply hollow-eyed glare of the oncoming horror, as a rabbit remains locked in the devouring gaze of a ravenous fox.

As the hideous creature languidly drew closer, Alanua at last managed to briefly tear her eyes away from that strangely penetrating stare, her attention drawn to a fluid movement of bright colour just off to the side of the horse's bared skull.

It was a small creature, a mix of horse and fish, gently bobbing in the air as if floating in unseen waters.

It was a Juno.

*

# Chapter 28

It wasn't _her_ Juno, of course.

But what other name could she use for such a weirdly delicate creature?

Besides, hadn't Juno herself told Alanua that it wasn't _just_ her name, but also what she _was_? (Yes, Khrysaorion had insisted that his had its own name, but surely that didn't stop the little creature from _being_ a Juno?')

Why would Telephous possess a Juno? Everyone else she had come across – bar Khrysaorion – hadn't.

Had the Mistress possessed one? Alanua recalled that she hadn't really had time to see for sure either way, not that she had thought to check.

And what of Telephous herself, when Alanua had come across her in her own domain? Alanua had been so terrified that she hadn't drawn close enough to see for herself whether the underworld queen had possessed one or not.

Perhaps the question she should be asking herself, Alanua realised with a growing sense of dread, wasn't 'Why would _Telephous_ possess a Juno', but 'Why did _she_ possess a Juno?'

And so it was with a mingling of relief and astonishment when Alanua saw that there _were_ other Junos serenely floating amongst the procession. In fact, as far as she could see, _everyone_ there had a small horse-headed sea creature lazily hovering alongside his or her head.

Before she could make any sense of this revelation, it abruptly dawned upon her that Telephous was now only an arm's length away from her; and here Telephouscame to a sudden halt, the long skull of the horse protruding so far forward that its hollowed-out snout was just about touching the top of Alanua's head.

From inside the skull, there came a reverberating, laboured breathing, such that Alanua almost expected the horse's nostrils to be exuding hot, steamy blasts.

'I see you can see things denied others,' the horse-like creature growled.

*

It was a man's voice, not a woman's.

A wizard then, _not_ Telephous, Alanua surmised.

A wizard dressed to replicate some aspect of Telephous, doubtlessly to enable him to conjure up powerful otherworld forces and commit terrible magic.

About her, the pounding drum beat and shrills of the flute had become almost unbearably loud and penetrating. It added to the overall sense of chaos created by the crazed, awkward leaping and spinning of the innumerable people now clustering everywhere around her.

'Yet, I see your guide has vanished,' the wizard shouted over the mind-numbing cacophony.

His head tipped slightly this way then that, like a large beaked bird suspiciously eyeing the approach of a cat.

'Guide?'Alanua repeated curiously.

She couldn't understand who he could mean.

Surely he hadn't seen Despoena leave them?

'The woman,' the man explained, his voice echoing hollowly in the empty skull, granting it an eerie booming quality. 'She was here just a moment ago; where has she gone?'

Alanua swept her head from side to side, seeking out the motherly woman who had spoken to her.

The woman was nowhere to be seen. She had vanished into the crowding revellers, perhaps taken up into a frenzied dance by one of the lustier merrymakers.

'She wasn't my guide,' Alanua admitted to the wizard, realising she nevertheless felt a bizarre sense of loss now that the woman had left her without expressing either a reason or a goodbye.

'Then who was she?' Rather than a rude demand for an answer, the wizard's query seemed to Alanua to be merely humorously chiding in its tone. 'You _see_ these things; _I_ see that. And yet I _don't_ see any guide with you. At least, not if, as you _say_ , this woman was _not_ your guide.'

The emphasis placed on this last sentence caused confusion for Alanua, for it had an obvious hint of doubt about it. It also uncomfortably sounded like an accusation that she might be lying, or at least attempting to hide something from him.

The way the horse skull was slightly angled gave the impression that the wizard might be inquisitively staring at the empty space lying just above Alanua's shoulder.

Was the wizard looking for Juno?

Is that what he meant by 'your guide?'

Seeking reassurance that the wizard was indeed referring to the presence of a Juno – or, in her case, the _lack_ of one – she took in once again the wizard's own Juno; and she was surprised to see that it ducked and weaved excitedly there, its tiny, fragile fins like a bee's wings in their frenziedly rapidly fluttering.

She looked next at the Junos of everyone else about her. These, despite the energetic swooping and rising dance of the humans they had been paired with, appeared listless, maybe even soundly asleep.

And in spite of the many Junos that Alanua could see here, no one else appeared to be aware of their presence, going by their complete lack of interest in the delightful little creatures.

Unless, of course, you excepted the wizard.

He was still curiously peering at the vacant space where Alanua's own Juno should be.

He was still patiently waiting for an answer from her.

Was the wizard, like her, capable of seeing these Junos too?

She decided to take a chance; she wished, after all, to gain a better understanding of the role played by a Juno.

She also dearly wanted a way of finding out what had happened to her own Juno.

'You...you can see _them_ too?' Alanua asked hesitantly.

The wizard nodded, the skull leadenly slow in its movement.

'They are our guides; or perhaps you're more familiar with the other name I've heard them called – hippocampus?'

'Do...do you know much _more_ about them?'

Alanua wasn't sure that she wished to reveal her lack of knowledge, especially as she still had no clear idea who this 'wizard' might be.

But she had no choice.

She _didn't_ know the answers to these questions.

And she _wanted_ to know.

' _Soldiers_!'

' _Legionaries_.'

The warning cry went up from the very edges of the happily gambolling crowd, instantly setting in motion a wave of panic rapidly rippling back towards where Alanua and the wizard stood. Only a moment ago ecstatic in their joy, the dancers were now almost tumbling over one another as they each vied to position themselves the farthest away from the oncoming Romans.

Because of the people frenziedly milling about her, Alanua hadn't yet sighted the approaching soldiers, but she straight away felt more anxious than anyone else there.

Naturally, there might well be no immediate reason why the Romans should suspect that she had been a part of the army; yet being of a different tribe to these people, there were many differences in her way of dress, her mannerisms, that could well attract attention.

Added to this, there was her heavily bruised forehead. And was there still caked blood in her hair? She couldn't recall making any attempt to wash it off.

Anxiously, Alanua instinctively reached up towards her wound, feeling what, yes, felt to her like it could be dried blood. She squirmed worriedly, glancing down at her clothes, fearing that the blood of the dead she had lain amongst had soaked into the material,

Standing so close to her, the wizard couldn't fail to note her rapidly increasing apprehensiveness. There could only be one reason for such fear; for it was obviously the fear of someone realising that the hunters had found their long sought for prey.

'Take this,' the wizard hissed conspiratorially.

As he spoke, his hideous horse head rose higher, tipping forward as if in an exaggerated bow. The white sheet rose up with it, collapsing in upon itself with a clack of veiled wooden framing; then the head of a man with a whirlwind of wiry hair peered up and out of the contraption's rear, an understanding smile upon his face.

Before Alanua herself understood what was happening, the wizard had turned the contraption completely around, and was deftly slipping the bizarre contrivance of sheet and skull over her head.

'Trust me; this is the only way,' the wizard declared reassuringly.

As the sheet enveloped Alanua in its comforting if rank warmth, she instinctively took hold of two of the poles forming its tripod-like framing, lowering it all the more securely into place. She found her head slipping through a hole carved into the base of the skull, her senses instantly overwhelmed as her entire view of the surrounding world was transformed into something disconcertingly different; for it felt, weirdly, as if she had stepped out of her own body and garbed herself in the form of some other creature.

Yes, through the skull's hollow eyes – and even through its nostrils, if she carefully tipped her head in certain ways – she could still make out the chaos engendered by the arrival of the Romans. Yet it was an extremely blinkered, ungainly view, her attention drawn more towards the encasing cavern of curving white walls. Moreover, all outside sounds were muted, the rhythms of her own breathing, even the pulsing of her blood, drowning out all aural knowledge of the outer world.

The scenes playing out before in that other world could have been nothing more than an entertainment put on for her amusement. She was outside of it all, uninvolved in its purposes or direction.

A terrified scream briefly penetrated her new existence; but that was all, and it was gone as abruptly as it had come into being, such that it could be forgotten, deemed unimportant.

She was safe in this fresh new world, wasn't she?

*

# Chapter 29

It was all an illusion, of course; this idea that she was somehow safe, that she had somehow been transported far away from the cruelty of the world.

Yes, naturally, Alanua recognised that.

And yet, even as this dawned upon her, she retained a sense that her experience of another world had been genuine, if only momentarily, and she wished to seek it out once again, make it a more permanent form of existence.

In the play being enacted around her, people were now more regularly falling to the ground, were being trampled upon by those still standing as they fought to retain their balance and remain on their feet. Amongst it all now there was the bright flash of sun-reflecting armour and blades, the Romans brutally going about their business of searching out the warriors who had fled the battlefield, treating everyone they came across as suspicious and worthy of interrogating.

The soldiers pushed, slapped, punched. If anyone drew their particular interest or ire then that person, whether man or woman, would be pulled up close to a snarling, spitting face, then violently shoved back into those crowding behind them once they had received their warning.

Inside her cavernous skull, Alanua's blood pounded as ferociously as any drum, her rapid breathing whistled as forlornly as any flute. She was hot, sweating, and she couldn't wipe her eyes clear of the blurring drops running down of her brow.

Through this increasingly hazy, watery gaze, Alanua almost missed or even misinterpreted the minute and fluidly ever-changing glimpses of glittering rainbow hues.

The legionaries, too, had their Junos, languidly floating alongside their heads.

*

# Chapter 30

Suddenly, a Roman was up close, having stepped into the framing of Alanua's window onto the outside world.

His Juno was plain for her to see now. And entirely unlike the assertively thrusting and jostling legionary, the Juno remained peacefully asleep.

The solider grabbed the wizard by the throat, dragging the smaller, more emaciated man up towards his heatedly scowling face.

The wizard smiled.

By the grinning wizard's head, his Juno ironically flowed excitedly back and forth towards the dozing Juno of the brutal solider, moves that Alanua could only interpret as a fruitless attempt to wake the other.

The soldier's gaze wavered; with a sidelong glance, he curiously took in Alanua in her strange garb.

His interest in the wizard instantly waning, he carelessly shoved the poor man back and away from him.

'What's this?' he guffawed, the words obviously strange to him as the pronunciation was uncertain and odd. 'Some strange thing you've conjured up to scare the crows away?'

Alanua's breathing, along with the furious surging of her blood, quickened and intensified.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all, dressing up in a contraption that ensured she would become the focus of anyone's attention.

'She is our goddess,' the wizard calmly assured the irate soldier.

The legionary smirked in astonishment.

'Goddess?' he laughed. 'She's _hideous_!What sort of goddess is she, if she isn't beautiful?'

The wizard shrugged.

'It's not for us to say what form our goodness should take,' he politely explained.

Ignoring the wizard's attempts to calm him, the soldier abruptly stepped closer towards Alanua, reaching out with a hand to grasp and drag the skull up and away from her head.

The wizard swiftly reached out with his own hand, deftly catching the Roman by his arm and holding him back from completing his action.

The soldier glared in fury at the wizard, obviously surprised by the man's foolishness. He looked to Alanua as if he would strike off the wizard's head for such impertinence as soon as he had gathered his wits about him.

'Please,' the wizard said placatingly, 'would you like _your_ goddess to be treated so disrespectfully?'

The Roman's eyes blazed, his mouth sprang open as if he were about to vent his long-built up wrath on this pathetic little man standing before him; only to immediately back down as a harsh cry rang out in a language Alanua didn't understand.

Another Roman stepped out of the crowd towards the first soldier, his attitude that of a superior in the way he barked out questions, his head swivelling from an unabashed legionary to a nonchalant wizard.

The superior halted in mid flow of his commands as he sighted Alanua.

Casually pushing his way between the two men, he strode towards her, bending a little to peer through the hollowed-out eyes of the skull.

'What _is_ this monstrosity?' he demanded, at last in words Alanua could follow. 'Who's _in_ there?'

Before Alanua could nervously answer, the Roman commander had turned back to angrily holler once more at the unfortunate soldier.

'I said, "What's going on here?" Why are you spending so long with these particular people?'

Alanua was surprised to see that the Roman officer's Juno was mildly awake, if a little dazed, maybe even stupefied.

'He says it's their goddess, sir,' the soldier obediently replied. 'I wasn't sure what to do; what with the revolt and all the trouble we've had recently.'

The officer narrowed his eyes, pondering this, nodding a little as if accepting its wisdom.

'It's like no goddess I know of,' he said, doubt and suspicion returning to his face.

'As you can plainly see, sir,' the wizard said in almost a whisper, apprehensively glancing everywhere about him in such a way that it implied he didn't wish anyone else to hear his confession, 'it is merely a _representation_ of our goddess in one of her many forms; the White Mare.'

The officer observed Alanua once more, but this time as if looking at her afresh.

'Ugly, isn't she, your goddess?' he sneered, adding as he took in the fact that the bottom of the sheet now trailed upon the floor, 'And small; really small.'

As the soldier had previously attempted, he reached out to remove the skull and sheet.

Naturally, the wizard couldn't take the risk of holding back an officer's arm as he had done moments before with the legionary.

'Sir,' the wizard interrupted loudly enough for the Roman to pause, dropping back into his conspiratorial whispers and manner once he had the officer's attention, 'it would break the _illusion_ that she is a goddess...'

He glanced slyly back at his followers, the guarded movement of someone checking that no one had overheard him, the implication being that he was keeping uncomfortable truths from naively child-like worshippers.

Withdrawing his arm, the officer took this in with a sage-like nod of understanding. Nevertheless, he turned to Alanua and once again tried to see who was hidden beneath the skull by intently peering into its dark eyes.

'And what do _you_ have to say about all this, goddess?' he chuckled.

'She _is_ a child, sir!' the wizard whispered. 'I hide it from the others: I tell them the goddess cannot speak on worldly matters as her voice can inflict death on mere mortals.'

The Roman grinned, amused by the trickery of this priest or whatever it was he dared to call himself.

It all served to keep the people in check, this fear engendered by these foolish religions.

Besides, this goddess was quite obviously nothing more than a child, rather than some fierce warrior in hiding.

'You _must_ disperse,' he ordered, his interest in Alanua having come to an end. 'Celebrate your rituals some other time; _now_ is _not_ the time.'

*

Despite the wizard's heartfelt pleas that the crops would fail if the ritual ceremony was delayed, the Romans insisted that the group had to split up immediately and leave the site. No one was allowed to leave in groups larger than three, even though this resulted in brief yet brutally put down protestations that some were being sent far away from their homes.

Only the wizard and 'his' child were allowed to remain by the spring and its surrounding pool. As soon as Alanua thought the legionaries were far enough away to suggest they wouldn't be returning, she turned back to face the wizard.

'Why _were_ you dressed in this strange contraption?'

It wasn't the question she would have most liked to have asked him. She would have preferred to know more about the Juno so excitedly and energetically floating by his shoulder.

Yet how could she trust what he told her when he had just admitted to the Roman officer that he was nothing but a charlatan?

His eyes widened in surprise.

'Because, as I said to the Roman, she is a representation of the goddess.'

'Yet...I saw how you didn't want anyone else to hear your confessions that it was all nothing but a trick to fool them.'

'I was trying to save you,' the wizard pointed out, 'despite putting myself in danger by doing so – because you haven't even told _me_ the truth about _yourself_.'

'I was on the battlefield, I admit,' she said ashamedly, realising that he was right to chide her for her rudeness. 'My name is Alanua. Thank you for helping keep me safe.'

'And I'm Caballine,' he said with a satisfied nod in recognition of her offer of thanks.

Stepping closer towards her, he reached up to grab the horse's skull.

'Here, let me help you out of all this.'

As he pulled at the skull, Alanua pushed upwards on the poles of the frame, such that she quite easily slipped out from beneath the now loosely flapping sheet.

'Most of what I said to the Roman was the truth,' Caballine said, taking the sheet and its supporting framework and carefully putting it aside on the floor. 'Which is why he believed it, I suppose.'

Laid out upon the ground, the skull and its bodiless white sheet could have been a long dead creature, worn back down to its underlying basics by time and weather.

And yet it was this, Alanua realised with shame, that had frightened her when she had first seen it on the battlefield.

'It's lucky for me you were passing by here,' she said, recalling how this crude disguise had probably saved her life.

Taking out some bread, an apple, and a knife from the satchel hanging by his waist, Caballine indicated with a sweep of the blade, a movement of his eyes, that they should sit or lie down upon the grass and he would share out his food.

'Not passing; _heading_ here,' Caballine corrected Alanua, nodding towards the spring with a lowering of his head. 'I'd intended to conduct our ritual around the spring.'

Even as she accepted his offer of a slice of the apple and a chunk of the bread, Alanua frowned as her suspicions regarding Caballine returned.

The spring had come into existence only moments ago, as the horse's hooves had struck the ground.

'But how could you know it was here?' Alanua bluntly demanded.

'Ah, because it is such a _fresh_ spring, you mean?' Caballine replied with a knowing smile, noting the look of surprise on Alanua's face. 'I _sensed_ it had appeared here; I wanted to celebrate the arrival of fresh waters.'

'How can anyone _sense_ the simple dislodging of a stone?' Alanua said, her scepticism far from being fully assuaged.

This time Caballine's smile was closer to being a smirk, a sign perhaps that he was well aware Alanua was still attempting to keep some things from him.

'You ask me this, even though you have seen things that I have sought all my life to see?' he said, a hint of sadness in his voice.

Once again, Alanua was surprised by the level of Caballine's knowledge.

How _could_ he know all this?

Caballine saw that she was still full of doubt.

'Tell me,' he said, drawing her attention back the frame and its sheet lying by her on the ground, 'didn't _you_ sense something _unusual_ when you put on the garb of the goddess?'

A discomfited Alanua shrugged, hoping to hide the embarrassment she felt: was Caballine using clever words and half-truths, as he had with the Roman, to draw her into false sensations and beliefs?

Did he regard her as being another potential fool, someone who could be coerced into blindly following him, just like all the others?

'It's all an illusion; as you yourself said,' she retorted.

'And the creation of these waters;' Caballine confidently replied, 'was _that_ an illusion?'

From the assured tone of his words, his manner, Alanua inferred that he was well aware of how the waters had sprung into life here.

'As soon as they believe it is safe to return,' he continued, 'everyone will make their way back here.'

'Why? _Why_ are these waters so special to you?'

'To _me_?' he chuckled. 'They are special to _everyone_ , don't you think?'

Once again, Alanua picked up the sense that Caballine new full well how the spring had come about. He just wanted, it seemed to her, an admittance from her that she had witnessed its formation.

'This White Mare you speak of,' she began guardedly, seeking to warn him off from assuming its creation and source had been entirely benign, 'has a far, far darker side.'

Caballine nodded, thoughtfully pursing his lips, an acknowledgment perhaps that she was right to issue this warning.

'How can corn grow,' he said quietly, 'unless there is dark soil to nurture it?'

'Why am I only now seeing these things?' she asked, staring curiously at his Juno, wondering once again what had happened to hers. 'Is it the bump to my head: how much of what I'm seeing is just some fantasy of mine?'

'I cannot fully know what you are seeing; we each see things that still remain by different degrees veiled to us,' Caballine confessed. 'This blow to your head; you were probably closer to death than you realised. I've seen blood clots that, depending on which way they went, determined whether a man would live or die; such an experience can open up the most closed of minds.'

'I've seen my Juno as a girl, yet she's vanis–'

Caballine urgently jumped to his feet. Following his anxious gaze, Alanua saw that he had noticed a plume of dust rising up from one of the surrounding fields.

'Your people, returning already?' Alanua asked uncertainly, noticing that he seemed fearful rather than cheered.

Caballine shook his head miserably.

'No, Romans; cavalry this time,' he said. 'It seems that officer wasn't such a fool after all!'

*

# Chapter 31

On sighting the spring and its pool brightly glistening in the sunlight, he spurred his horse into an even faster gallop, urging his men to do so too.

It would all probably be nothing, of course.

But it was essential that every possible sighting was checked and checked again.

He had been told how huge numbers of men had been set to search long and hard amongst the dead of the battlefield; yet there had been no sign of the rebel queen's youngest daughter.

She had to be found, before she became a rallying point for a continuation of the rebellion.

The officer who had earlier come across the shaman and the child he had presumed to be the man's daughter hadn't been aware of this, of course.

But it was worth investigating, this child who had never revealed herself. Who had remained hidden beneath a crude disguise of horse skull and white sheet.

He had no idea what this barbarian princess looked like, of course. Yet her manner of dress – the richness of the materials alone – would surely reveal who she really was.

' _This spring is_ mine _; think_ carefully _of what you do here!_ '

The warning was startling in so many ways; it was quite clearly a woman, a girl, who had spoken to him. And yet the nearest girl to him now could, surely, only be the one by the spring.

Besides, the voice had come from surprisingly close by – so close, that it could have been himself speaking, if only that hadn't seemed crazier still.

Ahead of him, the pool sparkled all the more in its reflections and distortions of the sun's bright rays. The light rippled and flowed, as he had seen so many times when gazing at brightly illuminated waters, the glow taking on an impenetrable solidity despite its ever shimmering fluidity.

It flexed its muscles now, this light given form. It moved swiftly down the hill, given a life independent of the waters of its mother.

It galloped towards him, such that he would have believed he must be going mad, had he not seen from the wide-eyed reactions of his men that they saw her too.

The Goddess Epoena.

Who else could it be?

She rode bare and bare-backed upon her startlingly white mare. She rode her mount faster than any other horse could run. She tore towards them as if she were a rush of the fiercest wind.

He briefly considered reining in, bringing his own charge and that of his men to a halt.

Yet what would be that point of that?

No one can avoid the anger of a goddess.

Besides, what if this were no goddess at all, but a clever illusion conjured up by the shaman?

He would have been made a fool of, and shown to be a coward too.

The white mare shimmered mirage-like, a rippling heat haze of intermingling light and waves. In that misty glow, it began to lose its substantiality, even to partially disintegrate, such that the girl soon appeared to be riding nothing but curving strobes of light.

Mounted upon her wraith of a horse, the naked girl hurtled through them as if she herself also had no real substance. She could have been a rush of light, as beams cascade down from the heavens through gaps in the clouds.

And as if those clouds had abruptly whirled together to close those gaps, the girl and her mare vanished.

Only her voice lingered.

' _Return my land to me_.'

*

# Chapter 32

The small troop of Roman cavalry drew up alongside the spring, throwing up fountains of dirt as the riders slowed their horses from a hurried gallop to an abrupt halt.

'You there,' the soldier in charge shouted out to Caballine, 'we're seeking a girl; and we've been told she might be here with you!'

For a moment, it seemed to the cavalrymen that the man standing in the spring's pooling waters was going to ignore them; for rather than immediately responding, he continued to recite a mumbled prayer requesting a good harvest. He also blithely continued cupping water in his hands and liberally pouring it over the skull of the horse affixed to the slightly billowing sheet.

On seeing the soldiers rushing towards them, Caballine had helped Alanua to quickly slip back beneath the contraption, leading her out into the waters with the promise that this would grant them a little extra time: 'They're going to have to dismount and come into the waters to arrest you.'

Naturally, Alanua couldn't see how this slight delay in her seizure would help them, yet she had complied with his wishes anyway, seeing no alternative.

Just as it seemed to Alanua that the Romans would indeed leap down from their mounts and stride out into the water to apprehend her, Caballine calmly turned towards the irately waiting soldiers as if he had only just become aware of their presence.

'A girl?' he said curiously. 'I can't see how a mere girl would cause such great concern to the legions.'

Although he had intended to remain calm and indifferent in front of the Romans, Caballine struggled to restrain his surprise that the cavalrymen's guides were curiously alive and excited.

He only rarely saw a guide who had been woken, and only then it was still in a daze, a sign that someone was perhaps beginning to understand that there was far more hidden in this world than was revealed.

' _This_ girl is a daughter of the rebel queen!' the officer snapped, making no attempt to hold back the fury in his voice.

'No one I've seen around here struck me as been of royal blood,' Caballine replied truthfully.

The officer had had enough of this man's insolence.

With a wave of a hand, he ordered two of his men to dismount and wade into the water.

'Liar!' he growled. 'I thought I'd give you the opportunity to prove you're not an aider of the rebels, and this is how you reward me!'

Rather than panicking, Caballine nonchalantly poured another cupped handful of water over the skull's long forehead.

'We were told you're hiding a girl under that ridiculous fake horse disguise!' the officer announced triumphantly as his two men reached the middle of the pool and made a grab for the skull and its attached sheet.

The troopers pulled viciously at the horse-like apparatus, lifting its half drenched sheet completely clear of the waters. Thrown up into the air, it briefly appeared to float there, as if caught on the wind, only to plunge back towards the waters under the weight of the skull.

In the middle of the pool, three men stood in the waters up to their knees, two of them completely mystified, the third grinning in amusement at their surprised expressions.

No one had been hiding beneath the sheet.

There was no girl to be found here.

*

# Chapter 33

The sheet was empty, most of it now fanning out in flowing ripples across the shallow pool's surface, the skull resting on the spring's bed.

Urgently waving more of his astonished men forward, ordering them to search the pool without bothering to dismount, the infuriated officer barked out further commands that they should probe with their lances right down to the bottom of the waters.

'It must be deeper than we thought!' he declared confidently. 'She's under the surface, that's all; spear her as you would a fish!'

Surging fountains of water were thrown up everywhere the horses trod, their hurried milling around in the tight confines of the pool chaotic in its urgency. Amongst it all, Caballine casually grinned, as if he were witnessing a ridiculously foolish endeavour.

As it gradually dawned on each man that he was spearing nothing but water, the frenzied search began to calm and slow until they were all forlornly standing silently in a quietened pool.

'There's no girl here, sir,' one of the men eventually admitted.

'No one could hold their breath that long,' another added.

The furious officer directed his frustration at the still smiling Caballine.

'So you were in the water with nothing but some weird skull and sheeting?' he snapped irritably. 'Are you a mad man? Is that it? Are you _mad_?'

As the officer turned his mount around, in preparation to leave, he gave a further order.

'Bring him with us anyway!'

Two of the troopers closest to Caballine reached down from the backs of their horses to grab him by his upper arms.

'I _did_ say, sir, that I'd never seen this girl you're seeking,' Caballine pointed out.

The officer wheeled his mount around to face him.

'Do you know of a white mare that seems to be formed of nothing but ripples of light beams?' he doubtfully asked Caballine.

To the officer's obvious surprise, Caballine not only nodded, but also pointed off towards the south.

'A hard day's ride from here,' Caballine declared assuredly.

The officer frowned, as if wondering if this could possibly be true; then he gave the order to release Caballine.

'Just one more mad man in a country that's full of them!' the officer snarled bitterly as he turned to leave once more, his men obediently falling in behind him.

Caballine patiently waited until every Roman was out of earshot.

'I know, I know,' Caballine said, glancing affectionately at the elatedly fluttering horse-headed creature floating by his head. 'Maybe, just maybe, the blood of this girl is far more important to us than any strain of regality.'

*

# Chapter 34

The waters were dark, violet hued – and impossibly deep.

Alanua knew that she would have to swim down as far as she was able, if she wanted to avoid any search conducted by the Romans.

Not that she thought it would be of any use.

How long would she able to hold her breath?

Not long at all; not long enough, no matter how hard she tried, to remain out of their reach.

Already, her lungs were screaming at her that it was time to return to the surface.

The tightening of her chest was unbearable.

Still, she swam on; for she had seen something ahead of her sparkling as brightly as any stars in the night sky.

It was a series of curving strokes, coming together to form an energetic rendering of a horse in full gallop.

The waters couldn't be anywhere near as deep as she had first supposed.

It was a coin; what else could it be?

*

# Chapter 35

The presence of the coin gave Alanua a goal to aim for; something to keep striving for, something fooling her into believing she would suffer no harm if she continued reaching out for it.

It was a goal that briefly made her forget that her body was close to rebelling against her will and her determination to force herself ever downwards. Her near emptied lungs longed to be filled again, her mouth wanted to throw itself open, to drink in the air the body craved but failed to realise was no longer there to be inhaled.

In the movement of the dark waters, the horse flickered and bucked. It was growing larger with every strong stroke of her arms, with every yard she descended.

The struggles of her body, however, were telling on her at last, such that she could no longer ignore them.

A rush of bubbles escaped from her mouth.

She herself now wanted to breath in, to gulp in air despite knowing it wasn't there.

She came to a halt, a body fighting to stay alive having taken over full control.

Yet she was now too deep, too short of the last remnants of air, to break through the water's surface in time.

Worse still, in her growing weakness, she felt herself succumbing to an even more powerful force.

She was caught up in a crushing of the waters.

The swirling currents of a whirlpool, viciously pummelling every inch of her flesh.

And now those waves had her.

Had her by the legs.

By her arms.

Like murderous water nymphs, dragging her farther and farther down.

*

# Chapter 36

She could now hear the glorious melodies of these seductive sprites.

The harmonies curled about her, vocal chords strummed as expertly and deftly as the strings of a lyre.

They were calming, these voices; her inner turmoil, even her instinct to save herself, felt stilled, reassured.

She let herself go with the flow of the surging waters. Let herself be enveloped by the massed bubbles of air whirling about her, sparkling surprisingly iridescently in the darkness, a lacy veil of light and captured air.

The coin still lay just ahead of her, the only thing that remained perfectly motionless, that acted like an axis for all this relentlessly swirling movement.

The horse was growing ever larger as she now rushed towards it: far, far larger, she began to realise now, than any coin she had ever seen.

The foaming water spumed about her now, a caressing lather hurtling along with her. As the surging waters embraced her, they took her firmly, turned her about, forced her into a protective and therefore comforting foetal position – and then suddenly those same waters were forcing her out, even – it suddenly seemed to Alanua – upwards, out into the cold airiness of space.

Soaring, the milky foam fountained outwards, each bubble separating from all the others, diamond-like in its coruscating glittering, becoming its own glistening point in the darkness lying everywhere about Alanua.

Still, though, the silvered horse lay high above her, the hub about which everything continued to wheel.

It was formed of the stars, she saw now. The clusters of stars in which others only saw bears and serpents.

Draco's head was now the eye and ear tips of the horse. A section of the serpent's coils had become a powerfully curving neck.

The base of the neck curled into the horse's upper body, a line joining up to the Great Bear's rear. An ursine leg formed the flowing tail and a rising hoof.

The horse's own rear legs were drawn mainly from the Great Bear's foreparts, the second hoof taken from the latter's neck. The curling tail of the Little Bear, together with another portion of serpent coil, formed two sprightly kicking equine forelegs.

Yes; this linking of the stars to form a prancing horse was far more obvious than any talk of bears, great or small; for if was conjured up only from the brighter stars of all those whirling above her.

If only she could ride such a horse!

How far could she travel then?

Farther than any man had ever imagined or even dreamed!

*

# Chapter 37

The energetically rendered horse flowed and rippled, shivered even, as if in anticipation that Alanua was about to mount her.

Whenever she had thought she'd seen coins in the waters, it was really this constellation that had been revealed to her, reflected and enjoined by the shimmering crests of illuminated ripples.

Alanua reached out, foolishly believing she only had to grab its gracefully curving neck, and she could ride it forever.

Yet the horse already had its rider.

A woman wearing golden robes.

No; not _wearing_ – she wore nothing, unless you counted a glow that could have been that of the sun as a garment.

And then, abruptly, the golden hued girl had vanished, leaving only a whisper of a voice behind.

' _Return my land to me_.'

*

The silvered mare was suddenly shrinking, dwindling in size as if now rapidly rushing away from Alanua.

More likely, of course, was that she was the one falling away; plummeting back through the sky, back to an earth that must lie far, far below.

Or, maybe, she was rising, ascending once more up through the deep, dark waters of the pool?

Either way, the sparkling specks poured in about her once more, coalescing and thickening far below her into what could have been the milky funnelling of a gigantic lily.

Now another voice was calling to her, more urgently this time.

' _Don't go! Not yet!_ '

It was a male voice; _Aedan's_ voice, she was sure!

'Yes, it's me!' Aedan agreed, even though Alanua couldn't recall speaking. 'Use the bridge!' he urged.

Bridge? What bridge?

' _You're_ the one who told _me_ of the bridge, Voada!'

Voada?

*

# Chapter 38

'The Track of the Children!' Aedan called out to Alanua. 'It _connects_ us; just as in your tale!'

Looking to slow her fall, Alanua reached out with a foot towards the uncountable glittering specks flowing in on every side of her, surprisingly gaining purchase there, stepping into the upward curving flow of the streaming stars.

With another step, and then another, she found herself rising up along the milky river arching through the darkness.

And, rising up from the other end, there was Aedan, his beauty restored, and every bit as unashamedly naked as she was.

'Aedan! How did you get here?' Alanua cried out elatedly, breaking into an excited run towards him; then abruptly slowing as, recalling their previous meeting, she warily added, 'This isn't Telephousa's realm, is it?'

'No, no; of course not!' Aedan reassured her with a thrilled laugh as he continued his own dash towards her. 'It was the life of a mollycoddled child; I realise that now!'

Reaching her at last, he threw his arms about her, drew her to him in a tight embrace. Alanua thankfully wrapped herself about him too, relishing the warmth, the comforting smells, the closeness.

In an instinctively harmonious lowering and raising of their heads, they brought their wetted, opening mouths together, the lips moulding, one to the other; a kiss briefly and wonderfully enjoining their minds, their souls, for they could think of nothing else but this.

As the kiss came to an end, Aedan hugged Alanua all the tighter.

'I _never_ thought I'd see you again, Voada!'

Alanua irritably pushed Aedan away.

'What _is_ this, Aedan? I'm not _Voada_! It's me; _Alanua_!'

Aedan chuckled, but his brow furrowed in bafflement.

'We can drop all this _now_ , can't we, Voada?' he gently chided Alanua. 'Your mother's hardly going to care anymore, is she?'

'Drop _what_?' Alanua asked, her expression even more mystified than Aedan's.

She realised she couldn't recall what her mother looked like.

Even worse, when she tried to remember anything about her, all she could think of was the woman who had met her by the spring.

That blow to the head; what else had it made her forget?

'I don't understand what's going on, Aedan,' she admitted miserably. 'I'm _Alanua_ ; not _Voada_ – Voada is the _queen's_ daughter.'

Glancing worriedly at Alanua's badly bruised forehead, Aedan took her comfortingly in his arms.

'We were only _pretending_ that you were this Alanua, remember?' he said gently. 'It was the only way for us to be together, to follow the army. Your mother – the queen – wouldn't have let you come otherwise; or be with me.'

Alanua pulled away from Aedan.

'But there _must_ be some mistake, Aedan!' she insisted vehemently. 'I am Alanua; I'm _sure_ of it!'

'Maybe you were her for so long, telling everyone we met that that was your name, that you were this Alanua; well, then when you were hit, you just ended up fooling yourself, Voada. Can't you see that?'

No, she couldn't see that, Alanua – or should that be _Voada_? – worriedly realised.

'If I can't even get my own name right, then how can I know who I _really_ am?'

'It will return to you; your memories,' Aedan said hopefully.

'And if it doesn't? Then I'm trapped; neither Alanua, nor Voada! Just lying somewhere lost in between the two! I can never really be sure who I am anymore!'

' _I_ know the Voada _I_ love,' Aedan pointed out.

'But _I_ don't, Aedan; can't _you_ see _that_?'

*

'Does it matter that you still think you're called Alanua?' Aedan asked kindly, noting Alanua's anxiety yet not fully understanding the reasons behind it 'We're _together_ again. We've proved that _nothing_ can keep us apart!'

'But who _am_ I, Aedan?'

'You're you; _Voada_!' he confidently replied, failing to recognise that this only added to her confusion. 'You can stay here with me; it's not like Telephousa's realm, where you're fooled into thinking you're still on earth.'

He had tried to envelop her once again in what he assumed was his reassuring embrace, but she irritably stepped away.

'No, Aedan – I'm _not_ Voada! I'm _me_ ; I'm _Alanua_!'

'Alanua, Voada; it's all the same to me!' Aedan chuckled. 'Just different _names_ , that's all!'

'No, Aedan; it's _more_ than _that_!' Alanua persisted, even though she realised she couldn't quite explain why she should feel this way.

Wasn't Aedan right? Wasn't it just a difference in names, and nothing more?

Wasn't he right, too, that their love had miraculously brought them back together? That even death had been unable to keep them separated?

As if to reinforce and harden her doubts, Aedan drew her attention to the huge flaw in her argument.

'Alanua was just someone we _made_ up, Voada! You _can't_ be someone who never _really_ existed!'

'But...but I _must_ have become her for a _reason_!

'Yes: to _fool_ your mother – _that's_ all!'

Naturally, Alanua could see the sense in this...and yet, and yet...

It was as _Alanua_ that she had become aware of Juno.

It was as _Alanua_ that she had travelled here, visiting realms she would previously never even have _imagined_ existed.

She had become _Alanua_ for a _reason_ : she was sure of that, at least!

But...if that were true; what _was_ the reason?

She could never find out the answer by staying here.

She could only discover why she had become Alanua in the world of the living.

*

# Chapter 39

Alanua's head throbbed as, at last, she woke up.

It was daylight. How long had she been asleep?

She shivered; she was _so_ cold!

Of course she was cold; she was naked. And she wasn't at home in her bed of straw, but lying out in the open, amongst the shorn grass of a gently rolling hillside.

As Alanua sat up, her forehead sharply ached. She instinctively brought a hand up to where it hurt most – then started in shock and fear.

She was looking down upon the neatly regimented lines of massed Roman cavalry.

*

# Chapter 40

Apart from the odd sharp snap of fluttering pennants, the lines of mounted troops gently curling around the base of the hill were mostly silent and motionless.

And then, abruptly, even this sound, even this limited amount of motion, suddenly died and stilled.

'Are you sure of your task?'

The voice was cool, detached, feminine.

Briefly looking out to either side of her, she saw that she was alone on the hill.

It could only be her own doubts admonishing her, Alanua realised.

She also realised that this was no normal hill. Rather, it had curving white lines carved into the turf. From this angle, they made no sense to her, of course, for it wasn't possible for her to see them connected and in their entirety.

As she turned around once more to try and make more sense of them, she saw that an old woman was now seated alongside her on the grassy hillside.

The woman reminded her of someone she had once known, albeit this woman was poorly rather than richly dressed, while her manner was demure, almost subservient.

Yes, now she knew who this old lady was; it was her grandmother, Locrina.

Locrina, she also recalled now, was the queen's mother.

So Aedan had been right: she herself was the queen's daughter, Voada.

Alanua joyfully threw herself into her grandmother's warm embrace.

'Don't be worried by the soldiers,' Locrina warmly assured Alanua, drawing her attention back to the long, curving lines of mounted troops. 'They were given visions of what they so dearly wished to see; signs telling them to come here – to await your coming.'

'My coming?' Alanua repeated incredulously, following her grandmother's gaze out towards the regimented Romans. 'I've been betrayed, you mean? They really _are_ here to arrest me!'

'Not to _arrest_ , I _assure_ you!'

With a brief wave of a hand, Locrina appeared to bring the freeze on time to a halt.

As far as the soldiers were concerned, Alanua had only just woken, had only just sat up.

As one, they rose up off the backs of their mounts, dismounting to the clink of buckles and armour.

Alongside their horses, each solider knelt, and bowed towards Alanua.

And then they froze once more, this time in their deferential poses.

'They come to _worship_ you!' Locrina told Alanua.

'Why _me_? I'm the daughter of the rebel queen...'

'To them, you _appear_ to be an aspect of their goddess Epoena.'

Suddenly, Alanua sensed that she was rising upwards once more, looking back upon herself seated alone upon the hill.

But Aluana wasn't only seated upon a hill.

She was also seated upon a gigantic white horse, carved into the contours of the hill side.

*

# Chapter 41

Even when she found herself back on the hillside, Alanua could easily recall the flowing curves of the horse she had seen rendered amongst the turf.

She had seen it embossed upon the queen's coins.

She had seen it glowing within the waters of the spring.

She had seen it amongst the stars themselves, the pinion upon which the whole universe revolved.

They were only a few quick, curving strokes; and yet they conjured up the power and energy of a magnificent horse in full graceful gallop.

'I'm _not_ their goddess; they will find that out, soon enough!' Alanua pointed out anxiously, fearfully taking in the waiting troops once more.

'No: not as long as they wish to believe that you are her. They need a vision to follow, to give purpose to their lives. And it is only _visions_ of their goddess that they have seen; and your appearance to them _fulfils_ those visions.'

'How do you know all this, Grandma? I'm meeting people all the time who all know so much more than I do? Why, then, should it be me that they wish to follow?'

'But don't we all know of this, and of so many other things too? The problem for most of us is that they are now simply long forgotten memories of our ancestors that we will always carry within us.'

Seeing Locrina so close, talking to her, touching – even holding – her, Alanua had been fooled into forgetting that her grandmother had died a while ago.

'Grandma; are you somehow still alive?' Alanua asked hopefully. 'Like Aedan?'

Locrina quietly yet richly laughed at the need in Alanua's voice.

'I am your _memory_ of me; like all memories, I am as real and alive as you wish them to be.'

'But...I can touch you; feel you!' Alanua protested in disbelief.

'Why, are you saying you don't have memories of holding me?'

Alanua frowned, puzzled.

She glanced towards her grandmother's shoulder; there was no Juno there.

Locrina chuckled once more.

'I know what are looking for my dear; but you won't find her there because, well...' she paused, opened her arms wide, '...here I am!'

'You?' More disbelieving than ever, Alanua pulled back and away a little from Locrina. ' _You're_ Juno?'

'Ah, you didn't recognise me when I appeared to you before either, as your mother, did you?'

'That was _you_? At the spring?'

'Just as the white mare you saw sprang from her mother's blood, so you sprang from yours.'

'Why didn't you say? I thought I had _lost_ you!' '

'You cannot kill a memory, unless you choose to pretend that you have. Now you've found me, you can never lose me; I've always been there, as a part of you. For I'm not just _your_ memories of me, but also my memories of my grandmother, and her memories of hers – stretching as far back as you could possibly wish to recall.'

'How can we have _their_ memories?'

'In the same way we have any memories of course; a remembering of past experiences. Just because we choose to forget them doesn't mean they're not still there, waiting for us to reawaken them.'

Nearby, a horse snorted impatiently, and then another.

A fluttering pennant snapped in the wind.

Alanua looked out towards the awakened soldiers.

'You aren't just _you_ , my dear,' Locrina encouragingly reminded her. 'Just as every star comes together to form the Track of the Children, you too are the gathering of all those who came before you.'

Alanua rose to her feet, conscious of her nakedness, but for some reason feeling neither shame nor any sense of vulnerability.

She began to walk down the hill towards the patiently waiting soldiers.

From their ranks, a number of officers stepped forward and began to approach her, carrying between them robes, armour and a sword.

Alanua felt somehow older, taller now in both her stature and self-belief.

'Don't be scared,' she told herself, 'you are _Voada_ ; and you are of your _mother's_ blood!'

*

# Chapter 42

The armour fitted Alanua far better than she could have hoped for.

She had grown, she realised, as if her journeying had taken far longer than it had first seemed to her.

Not that she saw herself as Alanua anymore, of course.

She was Voada: daughter of the queen.

It was Voada, naturally, whom the people thronged around to see as she and her long column of men passed through the hamlets lying along the road.

She had a regality about her now, having drawn on her patchy memories of how she had once behaved and been treated.

She also rode the horse that she had been presented to her with a skill surprising even herself; as Locrina had urged, she had called on the memories of memories that she was ultimately formed of.

Unfortunately, she had seen no more of Locrina since that day when she had walked down off that hill. Thankfully, however, she still possessed the ability to see the Junos of every person she met, to determine their demeanour even when the little creature appeared at first to be soundly asleep.

Even in this unawakened state, she could detect that they were listless, sad, lacking in hope.

The excitement and joy of the men, women and children rushing out to give her troops food and blankets was only on the surface, she realised sadly.

They feared failure, retribution, death, and the destruction of their painfully tended farms and plots.

Why didn't they realise that her mother's rebellion had failed because the Romans had been better trained than the queen's army?

Why couldn't they see that her own army was as well if not better trained than the infantry who would be sent out to face them?

If only the people could see what she could see; that the Junos of her men were curiously alive and excited. For the soldiers firmly believed that Alauna was an aspect of the Goddess Epoena.

Her men literally worshipped her.

She would lead them to a victory restoring the land to its rightful owner.

'I will regain the land my mother had sought to make hers!' Voada silently vowed.

*

# Chapter 43

Alauna's officers were fully aware, of course, of the tactics the forces ranged against them would employ.

The strategies of the infantry legions would be based around creating a defence limiting the manoeuvrability of their own cavalry battalions. The infantry commanders would therefore attempt to draw the mounted troops into battle on a field carefully chosen for the obstacles it presented to rapid, fluid movement.

'So we cannot let them determine where we meet them,' an officer adamantly declared as the campaign was debated, 'we must be brave enough to withdraw if it is disadvantageous to us.'

The infantry moved slowly, and increasingly wearily, as Alanua's cavalry refused to face them. The far swifter moving riders adopted instead schemes involving sudden, unexpected attacks and rapid withdrawals. As well as regularly attacking the flanks and rear of the marching infantry, the mounted soldiers also charged down upon any foraging parties sent out to find supplies and sources of water. In this way, the riders forced the direction the infantry must take, gradually confining the marching legionaries into an ever narrowing course inevitably leading them into a confrontation across a wide open landscape, one favouring the rapid movement enabled by the horse.

The legion expertly and competently formed up into a series of solid squares and oblongs.

Alauna's cavalry took up a bull's head formation, a solid forehead with flanks curving out into horns that would encircle the enemy.

There would be no hare released today.

Voada knew victory would be hers.

*

From the lines of the legions, a rider bearing the standard of a messenger slowly approached.

The lines of mounted men parted to allow him through to where the officers and their Goddess Epoena waited, already mounted and prepared for battle.

'Many will die today,' the messenger stated blandly, 'yet such bloodshed could be rendered unnecessary if we allowed our goddesses to work out their differences between them.'

'Your _goddess_?' one of Alanua's officers sneered. 'Where _is_ she, _your_ goddess?'

'She will appear; she has promised us that. Unless your own goddess admits she is the weaker goddess by refusing the challenge.'

'I will accept the challenge,' Alanua replied calmly.

She was impressed by this ploy of the legions; whether they had a goddess willing to represent them in single combat or not, if Alanua was seen to refuse the challenge it could weaken her hold over her men.

'There's no need for single combat when force is on our side,' another one of Alanua's officers vehemently spat at the messenger. 'Goddesses are not expected to take on the roles of men!'

Alanua saw no point in wasting time on further words.

With a powerful upward jerk of an arm, she sent her circular shield soaring into the sky, far farther than any man could hope to achieve.

As the shield rose ever higher, Alanua leant over in her saddle, grabbing the lance from a nearby rider. She flung this spear upward, aiming at the whirling, glistening disc: and struck the shield dead centre, the force so powerful and accurate that the weapon's shaft penetrated half way through before coming to a halt.

The legions' messenger was shocked by this display of skill and power.

The mounted officers were no less impressed, but told themselves such abilities were to be expected of a goddess.

The pierced shield tumbled to the earth.

Alanua smiled with satisfaction.

Yes, it was amazing what gifts you could draw upon from deep inside you.

'I have no fear of your goddess,' she confidently proclaimed.

*

# Chapter 44

The messenger returned to his own side, to relay Alanua's acceptance of the challenge.

A little while later, Alanua herself rode out into the empty, silent land lying between the two opposing forces.

She bore a fresh shield, a lance, a sheathed sword. The only noise was that of the snorts of impatient horses, the metallic clink of harnesses and weapons.

Even as Alanua drew close to the centre of the empty land, there was no still sign of movement amidst the squares of the legions.

It had been nothing but a bluff all along, Alanua thought with a twinge of disappointment.

Not that she had ever expected to face a goddess of course. Yet she _had_ hoped there would have been _someone_ to pit her newfound skills against.

About five cart lengths ahead of her, the ground began to swell, the way marsh gas builds beneath a peaty surface before belching free.

In a splattering fountain of dirt, the dark soil did indeed split before her; but now the scene was more akin to the opening of a long forgotten grave, a pure white skull rising up as if sprouting into life.

It was the long, gaunt skull, however, of a horse.

And as the skull rose higher above the ground, it brought with it a white sheet gently flapping in the breeze.

*

# Chapter 45

Far behind her now, Alanua heard her men break out into raucous laughter.

Was _this_ the goddess of the legions?

Some fool emerging from a hole dressed up in a horse's skull and a white sheet, thinking that would terrify them?

Was sort of a joke goddess was this to face Epoena?

Naturally, Alanua herself was not so sure that she was facing some elaborate hoax.

'Caballine; is that you?' she asked unsurely.

There was no reply.

Was it some witch then, as she had first suspected on seeing something similar to his contraption on the battlefield?

Or was it, as Caballine had claimed, as she had witnessed in Telephous's realm, something else entirely...

Drawing closer, she saw a Juno floating above the apparition's shoulder.

It was wildly alive; darting around, rising and falling.

And yet; Alanua couldn't read this Juno's emotional state as easily as she had those of the people she had come across recently.

Where was her own Juno; didn't she need her now more than at any other time in her life?

Why had her Juno deserted her again?

'Who... _are_ you?' Alanua asked warily as she neared the still, silent creature standing before her.

'Some call me Leukippe; the first woman of these lands – _my_ lands.'

'If you see these lands as yours, then why do you face me?' Alanua demanded imperiously. 'Surely you should be helping _me_ wrest them from the Romans?'

'And when you have freed these lands; whom do you intend to restore them to?'

'To my people.'

' _Your_ people?'

'They want to be freed from the rule of the Romans.'

'Is this _really_ what your people want; more war?'

'This is what my mother wanted; and what I have _vowed_ to accomplish in her place.'

'Your mother _failed_ , remember! _That's_ an attribute you shouldn't wish to make _yours_!'

' _I_ won't fail!'

Weary of all this pointless conversation, Alanua suddenly spurred her mount into an abrupt gallop, lowering her lance, flinging her shield before her disc like.

Accurately and powerfully aimed, the shield struck the skull with a force that could have easily cracked it. As it was, it was a strong enough blow to send the skull flying back into the air, taking its attached sheet with it like a fluttering white flame.

There was nobody, nothing, hidden beneath the contraption.

The frame, sheet and skull fell lifelessly to the floor.

*

From the ranks of Alanua's cavalrymen, there was a huge cry of exultation, a triumphant raising of lances, a tremendously loud drumming of shields.

Alanua whirled around on her horse, raising a swiftly unsheathed sword, her lance contemptuously cast aside.

'Attack!' she bellowed, as loud as she was able. 'Attack!'

*

# Chapter 46

The bull's head powered forward.

To spare their horses until the moment they were ready to strike home against the shield wall facing them, they wisely set off at a rapid trot rather than the full on charge they would break into a few yards from the enemy line.

Alanua wasn't prepared to wait for her men to catch up with her.

She felt invincible.

Whirling her mount about once more, she urged her horse into a fierce gallop, heading directly for the centre of the legions' line.

She scornfully rode over the white sheet flapping uselessly on the ground, the hooves of her horse pounding it, rapidly shredding it and sending it fountaining into the air as a snow storm of rags.

She raised her sword, preparing to strike on first hitting the tight wall of closely packed shields, using the force of her charge to break it.

She wouldn't die; she was somehow sure of it.

Caught up, it seemed, in the backdraft of her ferocious charge, the shreds of the white sheet continued to frenziedly whirl about her, sparkling brightly now in the light of the sun, glittering flakes that together formed a milky glow increasingly becoming as opaque as any mist.

No matter; the legions lay ahead of her, as unavoidable as a mountain in a fog.

*

It could indeed have been a low lying mountain that Alanua had come across in the misty glow.

She sensed that the ground she was riding upon was rising up, while the shield wall lay far farther ahead of Alanua than she had presumed.

Her mount was flagging, snorting irately in its weariness.

As the horse's charge unavoidably slowed, the swirling, sparkling shreds of sheeting slowed in their own motion, the milky glow fading, clearing.

The glow briefly shimmered, rippled like foam on rolling waves; then, like waves enmass rushing up a beach, surged forward even as it intensified into a funnel of white sheet, topped by the blank-staring skull of a horse.

*

No longer enveloped by the milky glow, Alanua realised she was on a hillside far away from any shield wall of legionaries.

Lying just beyond the apparition, a huge white horse was carved into the turf.

How had she ended up back here?

Turning in her saddle, she saw that her men had also been left behind on the battlefield.

'Where are my men?' she angrily demanded of the creature as she whirled back on her.

'Dying for you; isn't that what you wanted?' the apparition contemptuously replied.

Slumping a little in her saddle, Alanua sighed forlornly.

' _You_ called on them; you called on them to follow me – isn't this what you wanted?

'No, not this; I don't need war to reclaim my land. I require only _belief_.'

'I need to be with them,' Alanua demanded, sitting up straight once more on her horse.

'They will lose; are you sure you would want to be there when it dawns on them that you're no goddess?'

'If they lose, then yes; it's all the more reason why I should die with them. Even if it's by their own hands – for they trusted me, and I let them down.'

'Ah, just like your mother, you see.'

'Yes, just like my mother,' Alanua proudly replied.

'I didn't mean it as a compliment; I meant that, just like your mother, you lost, Alanua.'

' _Voada_ ; my _real_ name is _Voada_!'

'Yet it wasn't Voada, with her foolish ideas of regality, whom I called upon; it was Alanua!'

'More fool _you_ then!' Taken over by a rapidly growing frustration, Alanua lithely leapt down from her horse, approaching the apparition with an accusatory waving of her arms. 'For there is _no_ such person to _call_ upon!'

'Alanua; it means _nurturer_ , _nomad_.'

'It means _nothing_ ; it was _nothing_ but a _name_ I briefly called _myself_ by.'

'Alanua threw off her privileges of royalty, preferring love; Voada took them back.'

The Juno by the apparition's shoulder appeared far more alive and responsive than the contraption of wood, sheeting and skull.

'You have a Juno too,' Alanua pointed out curiously. 'Why would a _goddess_ need a _Juno_?'

'Even I need the advice of all those who come together to be me.'

Alanua frowned.

'Yet you claim to be the _first_ woman of these lands...' she said suspiciously.

'Until we recognise that we need advice, how can we ever hope to receive and be completed by it?'

'Is that _really_ an answer to my question?' Alanua scoffed doubtfully. 'And what of _my_ Juno; did Voada somehow spurn her too? From what you're saying, I needed her advice more than ever!'

'Voada never recognised Juno as being an essential part of her; Alanua _did_.'

'Alanua, Alanua, Alanua!' she breathed irritably, covering her ears and head with her hands as if the name's repetition had become painful to her. 'Are you going to keep on repeating it until I begin to hate my own name?'

Her eyes, too, instinctively screwed up in agony as they were hit by the blazing glare of sunlight striking the crown of the horse's skull.

In that intensely hot light, the air appeared to ripple like a disturbed pool, the bone actually becoming molten, pouring down a sheet that was itself now liquefying and flowing away.

And like milk, it streamed into curving rivulets, in an instant indelibly merging with the chalk lines of the galloping horse.

*

# Chapter 47

Alanua was alone upon the hill once more.

Unless, of course, you counted her horse.

Alanua sat down miserably upon the back of the chalk horse.

'I don't think it's possible that I could have made a bigger mess of all this,' she confessed despondently to the horse, thinking back to the countless loyal men she had sent needlessly to their deaths.

The horse unhurriedly approached Alanua, sharply bending her long neck to comfort the obviously troubled girl with a warm, nuzzling head.

'I don't _deserve_ consoling; you know that,' Alanua said bitterly, chuckling despite her foul mood as the horse's warm breath tickled her skin.

Feeling another gentle touch upon her ankle, she turned to see what could be by her foot.

She almost leapt up in fright.

A serpent's coils where wound closely about her, almost nest like in their nearness and circling form.

Slowly, she cautiously rose to her feet, not wishing to disturb this creature and, perhaps, causing it to strike.

Looking back, at first she thought, with horror, that the huge serpent had already begun to swallow the poor horse whole.

And then she realised; no, the horse had grown a coiling serpent tail.

*

# Chapter 48

'Juno?'

Alanua fearfully peered back at the anguiform horse.

Certainly, it had all the form of her Juno when she had first appeared to her – but here, if it was Juno, she was so much more frighteningly larger.

The head of the horse rose a little, as if preparing to answer Alanua's question. Instead, the flow of the move sent its flesh into a fluid wrinkling, such that Alanua feared it would all dissolve, leaving the bone bare.

But what had been a horse thankfully quickly became the face, head and body of a young woman, the serpent tail a moment later transforming into her legs; not that she seemed to need them, for she hovered a hand's breadth above the grass.

'I am Locrinus,' the young girl warmly declared.

Alanua recognised the name, if not the look of her great grandmother.

'Ah,' Locrinus said. 'I see you're thinking my great grandmother never looked like this; but indeed I did, when I was barely older than you. Besides, I can choose what I look like; including a horse – or even a hare, if I think that's what will help you most.'

Alanua smiled wryly.

'It's good to have you back, Juno,' she said, only to add with a resigned shrug, 'even if it's now all too late to help me.'

'Too late?' Locrinus repeated doubtfully. 'That depends, surely, upon whichever branch of your life we're discussing?'

'A _dead_ branch, Locrinus: I'm a best-forgotten failure, when I could have helped a goddess restore the land!'

'And how did she appear to you, this goddess?'

Alanua realised that Locrinus must already know the answer to her question. Yet, obviously, it required answering by her to ensure she recognised something important about it.

'In the heavens? As a goddess should be; a golden-hued rider mounted on a silvered mare of stars! Here on earth? In some strange guise that would impress no one! How ridiculous is that, if she wished to be restored to her rightful position?'

'Maybe she had no choice?'

Alanua found this a truly puzzling thing for Locrinus to say. How could a _goddess_ have no choice? Why, even Locrinus had declared that _she_ could choose what she looked like.

'Why not conjure up visions?' Alanua said, answering with another question.

'A vision can only begin the _process_ of acceptance; at some point, she must make an _appearance_ to ensure belief.'

'An appearance that any madman can fake?' Alanua scoffed, although more fondly recalling Caballine's rituals in the pooling waters of the spring than her dismissive tone implied.

Frighteningly, Locrinus began to rapidly age before Alanua, becoming in an instant the old woman she might imagine her great grandmother to actually look like. But even as she had changed into this old woman, Locrinus was already changing again and again, transforming in a blur from woman to woman, even man to man, the innumerable branches that had all come together to be Alanua.

'Do _you_ appear as who you really are?' the countless women demanded of Alanua.

And then, the series of rapid changes appeared at last to come to an end, the woman standing before her being – as Alanua couldn't fail to recognise – the very first woman to have walked upon these shores.

Leukippe: the White Mare.

It had seemed to take an instant, all these revelations, yet Alanua saw that it was now so dark everywhere about her that it could only be midnight.

'Only if you draw on the wisdom of everyone you really are can you finally call yourself complete...'

With a gaze that could have been trailing its path across the sky, the woman brought the coursing of the milky band of stars to Alanua's attention.

'...and ride on the Tail of the White Mare.'

*

This is why she had ended up here, back on the hill.

This is the connection, the bridge, between earth and the heavens.

Everything revolves about this axis.

Everything always leads back here – no matter how many branches our lives take, for we ourselves are the culmination of so many more uncountable branches.

That's why, too, it is so painful to be torn apart from even one of our own, innumerable connections.

'I should _ride_ you again?'

The head of the horse rose a little, as if preparing to answer Alanua's question.

Alunua stepped a little closer towards the horse, expecting it to turn as she approached, just as the hare had spun around once she had drawn close enough.

The horse, however, bent its forelegs, lowering itself to the ground.

It was easy for Alanua to climb up on its back.

She grabbed its silken mane tightly as the horse once more rose up to its full height.

Now the horse at last turned around; and rode off wildly, upwards into the night.

*

# Chapter 49

Aedan was still waiting there, as if Alanua had parted from him only moments ago, only to turn about and approach him once more.

She didn't need to dismount; for wasn't she also Leukippe?

And Aedan: who was Aedan, really?

Here, in the beauty of his nakedness, he was also the sum of so many countless others, transforming before her now as rapidly as Locrinus had revealed her true nature to Alanua.

In those uncountable branches, those entwining offshoots, there were so many connections.

As they held tightly onto each other, Alanua recognised that they were indeed one.

As long as people continued to forget this – that all are parts are a part of the goddess – then how could she ever hope to be once more complete?

'You'll stay, Voada?' Aedan said hopefully. 'You've decided to stay with me?'

Alanua resignedly stepped back from him.

'No, Aedan, no,' she said apologetically, accepting now that her life must continue to be dark and rootless. 'I _am_ Alanua; the _nurturer_ of the seeds of belief.'

She turned around; and rode off, swiftly descending the Tail of the White Mare.

End

A note regarding the White Horse star cluster

At the time of the forming of the White Horse, the central star would have been at the base of the horse's neck. Later, due to precession, it would have been found on the rearmost foreleg, hence the need to create the otherwise odd projection, which is a means of highlighting the star's position.

Note that the foremost hind leg has a phallic extension that cannot be seen on the present hill carving, but earlier portrayals show that this did indeed appear in more original versions. It could, however, also be seen as a stroke forming the lower edge of the horse's body, creating a more solidified form of the horse and one more in line with drawings of animals rendered on cave walls.

In this way of looking at the horse, what has previously been taken to be a raised foreleg is transformed into the lower, defining line of the neck, while the head becomes fully formed by taking a line up from its snout and joining it to the eye and ears.

This still gives us a rendering of a horse that is full of movement and power.

If you enjoyed reading this book, you might also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl – Love Poison No. 13

Whatever happened to Cinderella's Slipper? – AmeriChristmas – The Vitch's Kat in Hollywoodland

Blood of Angels, Wings of Men – Patchwork Quest – The World Turns on A Card – Palace of Lace

The Wailing Ships – The 13th Month

