Dream of Me/Believe in Me

sticks his head out of his lodge to check. Everyone knows this. The Dragon is no fool, far from it.”
    “He would not have to know Sven said it, only that it
was
said. You know how tales spread.”
    “I know you have become a worrier where you were never one before.” Raven peered at her closely. “What accounts for that?”
    “I know not what I have become or why,” Krysta murmured. “I only know I am not myself any longer. Something is happening to me. I would stop it if I could but I seem to have no power over it.”
    Raven clucked in distress but sought to reassure. “How not yourself? You are the same person you were when you left Vestfold, the same you have always been.”
    “No, I am not. I feel a stranger in my own skin. I scarcely recognize myself.” Outside, beyond the window, tiny wavelets lapped against the beach. The air was still and heavy with hardly a breath of wind. Like the stillness within her … the waiting.
    “You are in a strange place,” Raven said. “Of course you feel different.”
    Krysta hesitated. “It's not the place. Whatever I'm doing, waking up, eating, listening to Edvard, whatever, Hawk is always in my mind.”
    “He is?” Raven looked surprised. “Why?”
    “He is to be my husband, surely that is reason enough to think of him?”
    “I suppose so, but how much is there to think about? After all, he is only a man.”
    “Only?” Krysta laughed faintly. “I wish I could see him that way.”
    Raven clucked and busied herself smoothing her gown. Finally, she said, “I should have been prepared for this. It was so with your mother.”
    “It was?” Krysta was surprised. Her mother was spoken of so rarely that she had little sense of her. “I know she wanted Father to love her and he could not. …”
    “He was a good man but his heart was given to duty. There was no room left for love.”
    “Yet she loved him.”
    “She could not help herself. I don't pretend to understand it. Some say love is a weakness, some call it a fever in the blood. Don't ask me, I have no experience with it. But I do know your mother had great strength, as do you, yet she could not resist love when it came to her.”
    “But I am not in love,” Krysta protested. “I scarcely know the man.”
    Yet even as she spoke she remembered the kiss they had shared in the stable and her instant, irresistible sense that she recognized him in some way she could not understand. Perhaps knowing did not take so very long, not really. Perhaps it happened in the spirit and the heart while the mind remained all unawares.
    “I am not in love.” It was a wishful claim, nothing more.
    “Did you not expect this?” Raven countered. “Did you think to make him love you without loving him in turn?”
    “I thought he would love me
first
, then would I be safe to love him.”
    “There is no safety in love. You want to be safe? Go find a cave and hide in it. But to live, truly live, you must not conceal yourself. Every flight—whether of wing or of heart—is risk.”
    “Risk that killed my mother.”
    Raven stiffened. “Never say that! Never have I said she died.”
    “She walked into the sea.” The words nearly choked her yet Krysta was compelled to say them for they were as stones that had weighed her down far too long.
    “She
was called
into the sea,” Raven protested. “That is entirely different.”
    “So you have always said. What am I to believe then? That she became a creature such as Dragon spoke of or Sven thought to prattle about? Or that she was a woman as I am a woman, and that life became more than she could bear? So much so that not even her own child's arms could hold her?”
    “She loved you! And wanted to stay with you.”
    “Then
why
didn't she? How could she leave me?” A glistening drop appeared on Krysta's hand. Another followed. She stared, surprised, until she felt the dampness of her cheeks and knew she was crying. Never had she spoken of such things, rarely had she ever even allowed herself to think about them. But they were out now, raw and ugly, beyond recall.
    Her chest hurt yet she forced herself to speak. “I'm sorry, you did not deserve this. I know you have always done your best for me, you and Thorgold both.”
    “We did as your mother wished, as she would have done had she been able to remain with you.” Gently, Raven touched Krysta's cheek, catching the tears. “You share your mother's gift, to call those of us from the other world into this one. But