Hannah, you shouldn't read this either. Though I doubt you'll listen to me.
The other Hannah wrote:My time in the Horned God’s Kingdom is somewhat hard to explain. First there are a few things you need to know about the place.
Most important, in the physical world time is what keeps events from running into each other. In the Kingdom, time is far more mutable. Time takes the form of places, for example, Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter were places, not seasons. Time also takes the form of people. Cernunnos, the Horned God, has many aspects, each corresponding to a different season. Some of these aspects are so radically different from each other that when they meet they do battle with one another, each taking turns vanquishing and being vanquished, dying and being reborn, gaining strength and declining. So Cernunnos is both the Holly King and the Oak King. As such he is the personification of the Winter and the Summer, among other things.
So with that in mind, everything exists in the Horned God’s Kingdom simultaneously. Past, present and future. This also means that mutually exclusive possibilities can also co-exist.
So what organizes this Kingdom? Well nothing actually. However, thought and willpower can exercise a degree of control over all this chaos. This is important to understanding what happened to me.
Now the other major point to talk about is the inhabitants of this Kingdom. As all possibilities can exist at the same time, these beings are immortal as long as they stay within the Kingdom. However, if they go to the material Kingdom they begin to age (though usually at a retarded rate) and can eventually die or can even be killed.
This brings up a key element of their behaviour, their fascination with us. To them, we are insects. Our lifespan is so short that we are insignificant. Yet despite this short time we are all capable of great wonders. Even more, because we live for such a short time and our gone we are driven to leave our marks on history in a way that they aren’t. In this they envious, for our short, intense lives are so much meaningful than theirs.
Now, let me explain the effects of the invasion on the Kingdom. The invaders, with their black blades, disrupted this pattern. Any who fell before them were gone from the Kingdom, as if they never existed. For the first time, these immortals faced true, permanent death in their own Kingdom.
I suppose one can imagine the sudden sense of urgency that the Horned God and his kin developed in the wake of the invasion.
So, this is where I came in. Many of Cernunos’ aspects had perished fighting off the invaders. He needed more. Apparently, my father had cut some sort of deal with one of Cernunnos’ aspects when he was younger. This resulted in his children (i.e. me) having a small fraction of that aspect’s power within us. Cernnunos wanted to reconnect with that power and recreate that aspect through me.
Of course, him being an ancient fertility god and me being a young girl, I’m sure you can guess what his plan was to make this come about.
Our wedding occurred in the great hall of the last great castle that had not fallen to the invaders. All the people of the Kingdom were gathered to celebrate. Well, except one. Cernunnos’ queen looked decidedly unhappy to be sharing the king, but that apparently was resigned to the idea.
Despite my confusion, I found the event joyous. Everything was intoxicating, the music, the dancing, and the food . . . my skin still tingles when I remember the fine fabric of my dress caressing me.
That was about it for happy moments, for next came the consummation of the marriage. There were to be no showers of golden light, Cernunnos, the Great Horned God, lived up to every meaning of his name. He was the stag and the ram, the goat and the bull. He unleashed his primal lust and claimed my body as a residence for his seed. Time and time again he claimed me. There was no romance or tenderness. There was no care or concern. Compliance, while encouraged, was not required. He was a God and I was to be his.
You see, Cernunnos had made a miscalculation. I was too young, and didn’t understand what was going on. My body and my mind were not ready to accept what happened next. As many times as he raped me, he could still not impregnate me.
This was because I still thought of myself as a child, not a woman. Deprived of all connection to linear time, my body shaped itself to fit my own self-concept. That self-concept was too young to bear children.
How long this continued, it was impossible to say, but Cernnunos voyaged forth every day to battle the invaders. Every night he returned to my chamber in an attempt to create his new warrior prince.
During the days, I explored my new home. Not that I could call it home. Sure most of the inhabitants were nice to me, I was one of Cernunnos’ brides after all, but nobody really took any time to talk to me, to explain what was going on or even to show me around.
So it was quite a while before I found the library.
I won’t go into details about what I found there, mostly because I hate seeing Matt cry when he reads about it. Needless to say it was a lot of books, most of them written thousands of years ago, or thousands of years from now.
After I found the library the first time, I returned to it often. So often, I think it was possible that I read every book in there. Books of poetry, books of science, books of philosophy, and books of magic . . . I read all I could find.
I learned so much. Most of all, I learned how to control the fraction of Cernunnos’ power within me.
However, the more I learned, the more I grew.
As I grew, so did something inside of me. . .
My pregnancy was a double blessing as far as I was concerned. First, growing up where I did, I was a firm believer that bearing children was a woman’s sacred duty. Second, and more immediate, with my pregnancy in hand, Cernunnos’ attentions ceased.
However I was still confined to the castle, but that was mostly for safety. The invaders roamed the Kingdom essentially at will. So far, only the thick walls of the fortress had successfully kept them at bay.
Still, the library gave me plenty of distractions from my situation. I often read the books there aloud so that my developing child could learn with me.
I also gained a companion. A doting herdswoman was appointed to serve as my midwife. She had gone mad after the invader had slaughtered her beloved cows. She prattled on constantly about the pampered bovines and about young girls she had known.
At first I questioned why a woman more familiar with birthing calves than babies was charged with supervising the birth of a prince, but despite her obvious madness she had a way about her that reassured me that all would be fine.
When the big day came, I found an added benefit to my unusual companion. My child had several features in common with his father, most notably a set of hooves and a rack of antlers. Fortunately my attendant was able to conduct the birth so as to minimize the effects of such sharp objects on the more delicate parts of my anatomy.
Despite what would have been irregularities in a human baby, my son, named Fanus by his father, was one of the most beautiful children I have ever seen. Perhaps I am just being a typical mother, but there was radiance about him that I have never seen before or since.
So despite the circumstances, I was truly happy. My son, my books, even my attendant all contributed to a small piece of heaven in that dark, troubled place.
Of course, it was not to be.
