Sea Among Stars by Cheyenne van Langevelde

Author:Cheyenne van Langevelde
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cheyenne V van Langevelde

The morning dawned cool and bright, the first fingers of light brushing away the night.

Oisín readied his horse in silence, most of the fae still sleeping. The sun had not yet risen, but he and Niamh were already awake, she with cloaked donned for the journey.

“There, she should bear you safely enough.” He patted the mare’s neck and turned to his wife. “Promise me you will return.”

Worry was not something Niamh was accustomed to, not anymore, and especially from her beloved husband. “Why would I not return? ’Tis only the sea I miss. Everything else is here.”

“I only do not wish for anything to happen to you.” He kissed her forehead gently. “That is all.”

“’Tis only Éire, mo grá,” she murmured, throwing her arms around him in farewell. “There is no reason anything would happen. Nothing happens there. I will come back, I promise.” She kissed him and then mounted the horse.

“Slán go fóill!” Oisín called out as she rode out of the village and the land of Tír na nÓg.

The doorway opened from meadow to sea, from sun to storm, from Tír na nÓg to Éire, from eternity into time.

The horse stepped through and the coming wave hid the portal from view. Niamh inhaled sharply the gust of salty breeze and tears sprang to her eyes. How she had missed it!

She spurred the horse onward and away from the strong tide of the waves. The sea roared in greeting and thunder echoed its welcoming cry. The trees sang out in the breeze and the surf sprayed across her face.

The mare neighed as her hooves touched the dry sand of the high beach and no longer struggled against the undertow. Niamh looked out across the horizon, no less familiar from being so long away.

Lightning flashed in the distance, white against the darkness of storm clouds. Thunder rumbled in reply and the sea rushed anon upon the beach, frothy waves rising on the shell-laced sand.

Niamh resisted the sudden urge to dismount and touch the sand with her feet, to feel the ground where she had walked and wept before. But she had promised Oisín she would not do so. All the same, she longed to.

She glanced behind her as the rising wind caught at her hair, shrieking its way into the wood behind her. It was denser and darker than she remembered, the ground thick with underbrush that she had no memory of existing before. She wondered whether the croft still stood, whether Cillian and Brochan and Donal and Séan still lived in that place, or whether they had removed inland to the towns she had never seen.

She dug her heels into the mare’s flanks, trying to spur her into the woods, but the mare neighed fiercely, nostrils flaring as she tossed her mane in defiance.

Niamh bit her lip. Not like they would have cared anyway. Curiosity helped no one.

She was about to return to the waves and the coming storm when a shout echoed through the woods. Unfamiliar voices called out in reply, their language strange and foreign to her ears.

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