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[pwyll_twiceborn]

"It's my turn now," Paul had said.

And so now he stands, alone, knocking on the door of the apartment that Kim Ford shares with Jennifer Lowell. The apartment which Jennifer has not, to his knowledge, left in seven months.

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[inthetapestry]

At the sound of the knock, she goes to the peephole that she'd had placed there after their return, to see who it is. There are often people at the door, more than she would have expected-- deliverymen, postmen, sometimes others.

At first there had been flowers. She had thought Kevin would have been smarter than that. She'd argued with Kim about it, when the other girl had come home to find roses in the trash and their perfume hanging over the room like a choking cloud. Jennifer had been unmoved.

How could she care, anymore? How could she feel something as simple and human as caring, now? She moves through the days as if in some dark dream, seeing the world in the filthy green shade of Starkadh. The stench of the black swan Avaia surrounds her still, clinging to everything. It would have been easier if she had gone mad, but she knows that she is yet sane, although she does not know how or why.

It will not matter in the end, anyway. Two months more, only that, and then Jennifer Lowell intends to die-- in a hospital bed, giving birth to the child of her rape, the son of Rakoth Maugrim.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

It's cold on the porch.

Paul doesn't feel it; the heavy coat on his shoulders, put on by habit and from a desire not to raise eyebrows, is more a nuisance than anything else.

He knocks again, patiently.

Eventually, she'll let him in.

[inthetapestry]

She hasn't seen him since a day in July when he and Kevin and Dave had come to argue with her about her decision to go through with the pregnancy. She had left the room, then.

She looks through the peephole at him for several seconds, and almost turns away... but he is alone, and that in itself is enough of a surprise to send a thin thread of curiosity running through her.

Slowly, Jennifer opens the door.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul meets her eyes.

"I have a story to tell," he says. "Will you listen?"

[inthetapestry]

She looks at him in silence for a moment, weighing him, and then steps aside.

As he enters, she shuts the door and walks away, into the living room.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

He hangs up his coat in the closet and follows her, sitting down on the couch as she takes the rocking chair.

It's a mother's seat, he notes, although there is nothing of a mother's softness to her set face and uncompromising eyes.

[inthetapestry]

Her head is held high, and despite her seven months' pregnancy she is still graceful and fair -- if not precisely golden, now. Not as she had been, once.

"I walked away from you before, Paul. I will again, if necessary. I will not be moved on this."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul regards her.

If his heart aches for her, inside, it doesn't show; not yet.


Expressionless: "I said, a story."

[inthetapestry]

Evenly, without hesitation:

"Then tell it."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul takes a breath.

He has told this to others; to Kevin, at least, in full.

But Jen has not heard - according to Kim, has refused to hear anything that might bear on the subject of Fionavar.

She's going to hear now.

But he begins at the beginning.

"When we were at Paras Derval," he says, slowly, "there was a dog.

"I saw it from the balcony, that first night - I called Kevin to look, but by the time he came over, there was nothing to see.

"That dog had eyes sadder than anything I've ever seen, and they were calling me. I was certain of that, and I was terrified. And bear in mind, I wanted to lose myself, then - I was ready to die." This said without particular emphasis. "I had given myself up. But the sorrow in the eyes of that dog was beyond anything I knew, or was prepared for.

"I saw the dog again the second night I was on the Summer Tree, there as the willing sacrifice."

[inthetapestry]

She remembers Paras Derval, remembers crowds and light and the bright court, as well as those she had met there-- but it all seems distant now, dim and removed.

But she listens.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"When I was there," Paul goes on, his voice measured, "I was visited by Galadan, the wolflord of the andain.

"You know him, I think.

"He was there to ensure that I never reached the third night on the tree - that the sacrifice failed, and the rains did not come. He was there to kill me a day earlier than I had planned to die.

"There was nothing I could do. I was going to die with the weight of Rachel on my shoulders, and the rain, and there was nothing I could do. It was almost a relief."

His eyes hold hers, still and intent, but they're lost in memory.

"And then the dog came.

"The dog came, and fought with the wolf for my life. There was no way he could have won, no way in hell - a brave dog, he was, the noblest there has ever been, but just a dog, still, against a wolf. Against the lord of the andain.

"But when the moon rose, it was Galadan that fled, and the dog who stayed, and I was alive still."

[inthetapestry]

You know him, I think.

Galadan. The Wolflord, coal-black and silver-gray with a cold and merciless will that had seen her taken and bound to Avaia's foulness and sent north into hell beyond her imagining, once.

Once.

It should infuriate her that Paul could say such a thing so casually, even in the midst of his own story as he is, she knows, and at one time it might have-- almost certainly would have. It doesn't now, though, even as a part of her absently wonders if Paul might not have hoped for just that. It doesn't, though, not in the cold dim green-tainted and tinted place that she now looks out from.

And yet, despite it all, one thing in his tale catches her attention. She finds herself wondering about the dog, and something which might almost be curiosity shows in her expression.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

It is impossible to tell if Paul notices the change, as of yet.

"I thought it was the end more than once during the next day; there was very great pain, and I was not lucid."

His voice is almost clinical, now. Kim speaking of one of her patients would have been warmer.

"And then it was dark, and then it was the part that I thought I couldn't face. It wasn't as simple as surviving to die, you see. I had to be given stripped - naked, or it would be exactly the same as if the wolf had taken me. The last test."

This has not been told to anyone. Not even to Kevin, who has heard all the rest.

But Paul's voice is clear.

"It was Rachel, of course; it could hardly have been anything else.


"I would have turned back then. But if I did that, it would make it all for nothing; the dog bleeding in the grove, all that n courage for nothing at all, and so I went on. Lived it through again."



He stops for a moment, here; he is clear now, it is not as it was, but all the same he cannot not stop.

Oh, lady.


So cold, he had been. And so cold he is, and controlled, still, and it is this that allows him to go on with a steady voice.

"That was the last of it. I was nothing, then. A sacrifice - a shell. Rain-to-be.

"Then there was the moon. Dana's moon, the war-moon. A sign of defiance, sent up against Starkad. And then there was Dana herself, and Mornir, and they each gave me a gift. Mornir's was life, but Dana's - Dana's was greater than that.

His voice is deeper than before, and there are echoes in it.

"And there was rain. The long spell was broken by the tree, and by the gods; but most of all, I think, by a grey dog, and there was rain."

He lets the compassion into his gaze, now, that he has been holding in check.

"We are not alone," he says. "He may break us into fragments in the end, but he will not be unresisted, and whatever you may have seen or endured in that place you must understand that he cannot shape the pattern exactly to his desire. Or else you would not be here."

[inthetapestry]

She does not want to hear this, she realizes. She does not want to remember, and Paul's words are bringing things back to her that are painful to recall.

She had risen from the floor of that far-off fortress, there in the depths of foul Starkadh, even after he had peeled her thoughts open like so much fruit, and spit bright golden defiance at the Unraveller himself. You will have nothing of me that you do not take, she had said, and she had meant it-- for once she had been loved and whole, with pride and strength.

But I will take everything, Maugrim had promised, and had come so near to doing exactly that, before Kim had somehow pulled her out.

She lifts her head a little as she listens, in unconscious mimicry of once-bright defiance -- and it is almost painful to see.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Painful, yes - but all the same, it is there, and "Yes," Paul says, and his eyes never leave her face.

"Do you understand? He is stronger than any of us, stronger even than the God who sent me back. He is stronger than you, Jennifer; it is not worth saying except for this: he cannot take away what you are."

[inthetapestry]

"I know this," Jennifer tells him flatly, without looking away.

"It is why I will bear his child."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul sits back.

"Then you become his servant."

[inthetapestry]

"No. You listen to me now, Paul, because you don't know everything either."

She sits straight and tall in the rocking chair, still looking unwaveringly at him.

"When he left -- after -- he gave me as a reward to a Dwarf. Blod. He gave me as a toy, but he said something important: he said that I was to be killed, and that there was a reason."

Her voice is clear and cold and filled with resolution, now, and both hands are resting lightly on the curve of her belly as she speaks.

"I will bear this child because I am alive when he wished me dead. The child is real, and random, and outside his purposes."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul is silent a long time.

He is walking a tightrope, here; only it is Jennifer, not he, who will fall if he makes a misstep.

"But," he says, finally, "so are you. In and of yourself."

[inthetapestry]

She laughs, high and cold, and the sound of it is very like a blow.

"And who am I, in and of myself, to answer him? I am going to have a son, Paul, and he will be my answer."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul shakes his head.

"There is too much evil in this," he says, his voice quiet, "and only to prove a point already proven."

[inthetapestry]

"Nonetheless," says Jennifer, unyielding.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Another silent moment - long, but perhaps shorter than might be expected.

Finally, Paul's mouth crooks sideways; concession, already signalled before he speaks.

"I won't press you on it, then. I came for you, not him.

"Kim's already dreamt his name, anyhow."

An afterthought, it seems.

[inthetapestry]

At this, sudden bright anger floods through her. Eyes flashing, she snaps,

"Paul, understand me, I would do this whatever Kim said. Whatever she may or may not have dreamt. And I will name my son as I choose!"

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Improbably, Paul is now smiling.


"Stick around and do that, then.

"Stay with us, Jen. We need you back."

[inthetapestry]

Only now, as he speaks, does she realize what she has said.

It's a trick, she decides-- a deliberate goad to get her to do something she'd not intended to do.

And yet, she can't find it in herself to be angry with him.

Had this first tenuous spar been a little less fragile, she might even have smiled.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul stands up.


"There's an exhibition of Japanese prints at the art gallery," he says.

"Would you like to see it with me?"

He stands there and waits; and there is no trick in this.

[inthetapestry]

The chair creaks softly as she rocks back and forth, looking up at him in silence.

He's still dark-haired and slender, almost frail, though not as much as he had been last spring. And, of course, that's not the least of the changes, for any of them.

"What was the dog's name?" she asks, finally.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"I don't know," Paul answers.

"I wish I did."

[inthetapestry]

She nods, then looks down, thinking.

After another moment she rises and moves past him. Jennifer puts on her coat as Paul joins her, then opens the front door and takes the first careful step beyond, back into the world.