Jennifer Lowell

As the evening wears on, Jen takes a moment to wander outside.

She never came here much, not as much as Paul and Kim, and she's not sure she'll be coming back much, either.

It's pleasant out here, in the fading light, and she's smiling. That happens so much more, now.

"Someone has come," Flidais says, sudden and grim in the stillness of the Anor, "and Galadan is on his way to this place even now."

Jennifer feels herself go pale. Galadan -- and someone else, whose arrival has Brendel and Flidais both tense, who can only be there because of her. And so she insists on coming down with them. If it's a friend, all to the good; if not, as she tells Brendel, then the Anor is no safer than the beach.

But the boy standing there as she leaves the tower cannot be called friend or enemy. And that, of course, was the idea.

Her Wild Hunt. Her random chance. Her son, standing pale and small and offering her a dagger.

"Will you . . . will you take a gift?"

She looks at him, and draws on her memories of Guinevere, proud and commanding and as hard as necessary, queen and abbess, over and over.

"Is it yours to give?" And, though he stumbles back from her tone, and sounds small and frail and young when he protests, she continues, "What are you doing here?"

"I -- she told me. The one with white hair." Kim, of course. "She said you were . . ."

And Guinevere pushes him away, as he calls her mother, as he throws his father's name at her, as he rails at her; because the choice must be his. It must be. For a moment, it seems that he will see that, accept that.

"Finn told me . . . before . . ." he says, "that my mother loved me and made me special."

And oh, it nearly all shatters and collapses then, and she can't stop her own whisper of "Acushla machree" -- my heart's dear one. But she controls it, fiercely. To falter now would destroy it all.

"He was wrong . . . about making you special," she says. "You know that now. Your power comes from Rakoth when your eyes go red. What you have of me is only freedom and the right to choose, to make your own choice between Light and Dark. Nothing more than that."

She hears Kim scream -- she hadn't known she was there -- but the wind is louder, and Darien's bitter cries are loudest of all in her ears.

Then he turns and runs, straight into Pendaran Wood, and the storm breaks over them.

Night turns to morning in Fionavar, and finds Jen still awake, seated by the window in her rooms in the Temple and watching the sun rise on a midsummer spring. Everything is vibrant, bright, bursting with life.

And the grey cloud around Jen is shredding away in the breeze and the colors.

A knock comes on the door, and she rises to open it, scrubbing at her eyes. Matt Sören stands there, a walking stick in one hand, flowers in the other.

"It is spring," he says, "and these are the first flowers. Loren is meeting in the palace with a great many people. I thought you might come with me to Aideen's grave."

---

Four hundred years ago, Aideen was source to Nilsom, the First Mage of the High King -- as Matt is Loren's, now -- source of all the power he needed for his magecraft. When the King went mad, Nilsom and Aideen stood by him and helped him in all his dark deeds, and eventually Brennin fell into civil war. On the day of the final battle, though, Aideen went to Nilsom and told him she would no longer be drained for this cause -- would no longer give him the power he needed to make victory possible.

And she drew a knife and killed herself, leaving Nilsom and the King powerless and easy to defeat. She was buried with honor. Yet the Mages Council curses her memory every year at midwinter, for she betrayed her mage, and they hold no crime so deep as that.

Jennifer remembers Matt telling her this months ago, before she was kidnapped and broken, when she was still Jennifer Lowell and not Guinevere, too. And every year, he had added, when the snows melt in the spring, we lay the first of the wildflowers on her grave.

Matt leads her in silence to the edge Mörnirwood. The grave is almost invisible -- only a mound of earth, with no stone to mark it. Matt kneels and lays his flowers there, and Jennifer sees that he's weeping.

And it all comes loose, finally, finally, by Aideen's grave.

(In a life shaped of careful decisions, the only impulsive act of significance had been the beginning of her relationship with Kevin Laine one night two years ago. So many nights she'd lain awake, looking at the simplified beauty of his face as he slept.)

(Jennifer wept, in love and in sorrow for all the worlds, all the battlegrounds, for he was beautiful. Then, once only, and formally: "His name is Darien. He has been named by his mother.")

(Jennifer saw Drance fall at last, a wolf dying beneath him, another rising wet-mouthed from his corpse to leap past her to where Laesha stood.)

("Oh, Guinevere. Oh, my very dear.")

Eventually -- a long time later -- it stops, and Matt looks up at her, and tells her softly, "There is heart's ease in this place."

And though she laughs, she knows it to be true.

They talk, for a little, of Arthur, and the Tapestry, and grief, before finally turning and walking slowly back to Paras Derval.

As they walk, Jennifer's mind turns back to another morning, in another spring, when cherry trees blossomed as she stood by Arthur, and watched Lancelot ride into Camelot.

A few minutes later, he leads them into the room where Aileron and Gorlaes are consulting with Kim. Brendel turns to Jen and her companions as they enter and says, "We have been granted aid beyond measure."

Jennifer Lowell is one of the five students from our world drawn to Fionavar, the first of all worlds. There, because she was so bright and shining, the lios alfar befriended her. And because she was so bright and shining, Rakoth Maugrim, the Unraveller, decided to make her a toy, to celebrate his new freedom. So she was kidnapped, tied to the back of Avaia, the black swan, and taken north to Starkadh, where Rakoth raped and tortured her, and intended to have her killed.

Kim, Jennifer's best friend, found her in time, and took her and the others back to Toronto. Pregnant with Rakoth's child, Jennifer decided to have the baby, against the advice of her four friends. It was an act of defiance against Rakoth -- he wanted her dead, and she lived, and she was going to have his child so that there might be a random player in the war of the Light against the Dark.

She had the baby prematurely, when Paul Schafer managed to take her and himself to Fionavar to escape a servant of the Dark. The boy she named Darien, and left him with a mother she knew would give him love. Then, detached and numbed, she returned to Toronto with Paul, and rejoined her friends at last.

( Spoilers )