Floating.

Floating, and dreaming.

It was odd to recognize that I was having a dream at all. Usually I didn't know I was dreaming until I'd already woken up. But the sensation of warmth and love radiated around me. Was it because I had fallen asleep surrounded by my triquetram, or was it because I was now in the hands of the Mother?

I was high in the sky, stars sparkling around me in the dark sky. The dark velvet around me lit up as I fell gently down, and instead of staring above into the sea of stars I twisted my body to look below.

Trees as far as the eyes could see were below. Familiar trees. Autumn trees.

And a distance away, a blazing fire was the sole event to be seen. My heart tightened. What did that mean?

I floated down and towards the flames. As I was brought closer to it, I could see the familiar shape of Thanantholl. The high cliffs that protected it were crumbling. The waters that streamed through the cracks of the city were filled with the dead as the trees and buildings of the city crumbled.

"No." My protest was barely a breath as a tear slipped down my cheek, dripping off my chin to land in the flames far below. I reached out, trying desperately to pull myself forward in the emptiness I floated in, but nothing worked.

"Where are they?" I was screaming now. "Where is the resistance? Where are the Autumn warriors?"

The fire below flashed brightly, blinding me as I threw my hands before my eyes. When it faded, I was yanked down closer to the city. In a giant rush, the fire fizzled down to nothing but ashes in the empty husk of Thanantholl.

I was allowed on my feet, dropping gently until my boots hit the cobbled stones of Pearl Street. I spun around, looking for life.

The shop where I bought my tea from the mute dryad was nothing but a pile of ash with the twisted metal remains of the steel tables and chairs. Schula's favorite tailoring shop fared better, but the bodies of the mistress and her assistant lay in the street. The fountain near the middle where I walked with my friends and ate lunch and watched the passers bye, it was empty and cracked, never to bubble to life again.

I balled my fists at my side, glaring up at the silent starry sky.

"Where are they?" I screamed again. Was this truly the Mother's vision for me? Or was it a crueler trick?

Marching. Stomping. Beating of feet in unison.

I turned again and I was no longer on Pearl Street, but instead I was at the front gates. The Winter army marched. Their risen dead and the living soldiers marched shoulder to shoulder, looking straight ahead with empty eyes. Ice crept under their feet as they came in, ushering in a fog of cold winter chill.

I reached out to stop them, push my fire against the front of the marching line, but nothing came out. I tried pulling from myself, pulling from around me as the witches do, but nothing came.

When my flames failed, I ran forward and pushed at the marching Winter force. The fae in the front, a broad male with blue skin and a sword, still stared lifelessly as he marched through the gate. I pushed at him, throwing my whole body at him, but he moved forward unaffected. 

I fell into the street, brushed aside as the army marched into Thanantholl. I couldn't do anything to him. To any of them. I may as well have been an ant pushing a tree for all the good it did.

I stood and ran forward. I met the front of the line again, looking to where they were going. Straight to the grotto, to the palace.

"No... Mother!" I screamed, reaching up to the sky. "Tell me that Thanantholl doesn't fall! It can't! I... we fought so hard for it!"

I fell to my knees, tears welling in my eyes. "We fought so hard for it..."

Another flash, and I was no longer near the gates. I stood before the palace. The doors were shut and a barricade had been hastily constructed. My heart tightened with hope, and I spun around to  see where the Winter army was marching from.

They were here, coming into sight. Marching into the grotto, covering everything in ice and fog and despair.

A thud behind me had me looking at the doors again, only this time they were being opened. A bright light emerged from the doors, and suddenly they were pushed wide open in a burst of light and wind. 

Blinded, I covered my face with my forearm, and looked out to the Winter army. They were being pushed back!

I tried to look into the palace doors again, but no matter what I tried I couldn't see in. But it didn't matter! The Mother was showing me a vision where the Autumn fae were fighting back!

They did it.

They did it, and I wasn't there.

They didn't need me to be here to grasp whatever fate Thanantholl was destined for, and the thought was sobering. Was that the Mother's message? I was not needed in Thanantholl, but somewhere else?

The wind wrapped around me and I was flung into the air. Thanantholl disappeared below me, and so did the autumn trees. No more fire. No more wind or ice or fog.

Below me was nothing again, until the dark woods of the unclaimed Wyldes appeared.

I fell fast, landing in a strange clearing with a rocky ground. The moonlight filtering through the terribly tall trees above. The light scattered in blue patches across the ground, and while I could tell I was in the unclaimed Wyldes, it was... peaceful. There was no foreboding feeling here of danger. This place was safe, calm. And somehow, familiar.

I walked, looking around for what the Mother wanted me to see from here. There were no living things, no hostile creatures, no friendly faces. Just a calm patch of trees and a rocky ground.

"My daughter," Kalor's voice sounded from behind me.

I turned to face my father, his warm smile and open arms just begging to be embraced.

"Father!" I called, running to him. I wrapped my arms around his neck, knowing he was only a vision but appreciating it all the same. I closed my eyes, hugging him tight. He even smelled just as I remembered, and his hands were dotted with ink splatters from his work.

But this was not my father, this was a vision from the Mother.

I pulled back from the hug, waiting to see what this was supposed to tell me. But Kalor just looked out over my shoulder into the clearing. I turned to look where his eyes were drifting, but then he tapped me on my shoulder. Something was familiar about it, something important.

"Daughter," he said softly. "I did not get the time with you that I wanted, but I am so glad to know you. I know you have found a new home, and it's not with me. But I wanted to give you this."

My eyes widened. This was the exact conversation we had the day I left Eidelhein. I looked closer at him, realizing he was even wearing the same clothes and his hair in the same fashion. Was this to be a memory then?

He placed a small, rough sphere in my palm and I looked down to see a chestnut.

"It's from her tree. Plant it when your home is safe, and let her watch over us both." Kalor took my fingers and curled them over my palm, enclosing the seed in my hand.

I closed my eyes slowly. This moment had churned my stomach over many sleepless nights. Was it the right thing to leave him? But I had things to do here. I just wanted to see him again, spend an afternoon talking about his favorite books and my favorite teas and hearing stories of Lark.

"You could come with me, you know." I spoke the same words I said to him before, but Kalor just shook his head with a gentle smile.

And faded away.

I was left in the cold clearing, a chestnut in my hand and the moonlight filtering down on the rocky ground. The rocky ground that began to change.

A rumble under my feet alarmed me at first, and when I stumbled and fell to a knee, I could see the white rock poking out of the earth as though it was... growing.

And grow it did, because the rock gained height and substance. The texture was now that of carved stone, and the places where it protruded from the ground were now walls. The walls became windows, and doorways. Gardens sprouted, rooftops were shingled, until a whole village had sprouted up in the clearing.

Not even a village, really. It was bigger than that. A whole city, and I stood at its center.

I looked around in amazement, brushing the dirt from my knee as I stood. This wasn't just an empty clearing in the unclaimed Wyldes, this was a village in a style that reminded me vividly of one place in this world I had been.

Eidelhein.

The elven architecture was even more prominent here. Where Eidelhein was made of the elves and humans together, this place was clearly once an elven kingdom.

The earth shook again, and I fell. The buildings crumbled, or maybe rather they sank. Down, down, down into the ground just as they had started, fading away into an empty clearing again. But not quite how it had been before. Instead, the outlines of the buildings remained. A lone wall, a crumbling well, an overgrown garden. There were now ruins where the city had just stood.

The shaking knocked me over again, but this time I dropped the chestnut in my hand. It bounced in an eerie way that chestnuts do not bounce, and it landed a distance away to where the largest keep of the city had stood.

Right in the middle of the path to the old keep was a circular garden, and the chestnut bounced until it came to rest right there in the middle of it all. Then, it sprouted. Sudden and swift, it became a sapling, then a young tree, then it grew and grew until it was as tall as any other monstrous tree in the unclaimed Wyldes.

The shaking stopped, and I stood up. For a long moment, I stared at that tree. I was supposed to plant it where I found a home, so did this mean I was supposed to be with the elves after all? But then, why was this place in the Wyldes at all?

Wind lifted me again, but more gently this time. Up, up, up I was carried until the clearing with the ruins was no more than pebbles that could fit in the palm of my hands. I could see much of this part of the Wyldes now above the trees. Looking around, my view was expanded, and I could see the Winter's Teeth in the distance and the rest of the Winter lands below them. I could see an edge of brilliant oranges and reds in a different direction, surely the mark of the Autumn forest. The bright greens and vines of the Spring court were another way, and the shining hilltop city of Dwellonmar could be seen, even from here.

I turned. Behind me were the Summer lands, and I could see just where I was in the midst of it all. A large swath of unclaimed Wyldes lay below me, marred by age and war. A place that even the courts had not taken back from the dark side of the Wyldes. A place...

"A place... between... the courts," I murmured.

'Very good,' a woman's voice rang in my head. A cry and a whisper at the same time.

Rushing wind took me again. I was tossed upward, but a heartbeat later I changed directions and I couldn't tell which way that might have been. Darkness passed around me, then the sparkling stars above.

Another rush of darkness and wind, then it all went black.

~

I gasped, sitting upright. The Mother's dream no longer held me, but I was very disoriented from the experience.

"Wren!" Schula shook my arm. "Wren, it's okay."

'What did you see, little witch?' Spaulder asked.

'One... two... three...' Schula added the pattern of breathing for meditation. I closed my eyes, and breathed with her.

Once I had calmed down, I opened my eyes to Spaulder and Schula's cautious expressions.

I sighed, remembering just where in the Wyldes the Mother had shown me a glimmer of hope. A place where none of the courts held power, and yet the elves were able to live there in peace. A place between the courts, yet still of the Wyldes.

My gray eyes met theirs in turn, and I smiled.

'We are not needed in Thanantholl,' I told them. 'But I think I know where I'm meant to make our last stand.'