Work Text:
i.
Sparrow knows she is not in Albion as soon as her sand-encrusted eyes blink open.
Automatically she flicks a hand to the side, smoothing it over the blanket -- but no. It is not a blanket, it is a pile of furs, and Garth is not nestled beneath them.
She lies still and lets the scattered fragments of her consciousness recollect.
A shiver, a shudder, and a feeling of listing sideways but not sideways, a feeling of drifting in a direction that should not exist in a world where things make sense.
A blackness so cold her bones thought they'd shattered and her brain thought it'd frozen, a blackness so bleak and so absolute that tears sprung and froze on her eyelashes and she tries to pass out or die so nothing so painfully empty could possibly be felt anymore, and then she is through.
Sparrow sucks in crisp morning air and pushes herself upright, and the fur falls away to reveal tanned and uncovered flesh.
I am naked as the day I was born in an unfamiliar pallet on an unfamiliar floor, I remember a dream of falling sideways-but-not-sideways, and Garth isn't here.
There is only one explanation.
Magic.
ii.
"Hey," he calls softly from behind her as she is bundling one of the musky furs about herself.
Garth is clad in dun and brown, a dusky red kerchief knotted around his neck and the snow-white of his hair dulled by sand and dirt.
He looks a part of the unfamiliar landscape, as at-home as a cactus in a blistering desert. Sparrow doesn't know him at first, and she thinks that is the most accurate feeling she's had since waking.
"Where is this?" she asks, queerly calm.
He answers by pointing to the faintly glowing sigul on her chest, peeking out from under the makeshift fur cloak.
Her hand goes to it automatically, and its pulse seems stronger, sharper, more vivid.
"The land of Eld. The land that was, and is, and will always be."
"The Heartlands, the Mid-Lands, and the End-of-All-Things-Lands," she clarifies without meaning to, her voice alien even to herself.
His knowing smile is as unsettling as it is achingly familiar.
iii.
"What are we doing here?"
"We belong here."
"But what about Albion?"
"We have finished our work."
"...Albion will always need us."
"When the King returns, so shall we."
"Will we?"
"Not as we are now. But we will return. When we must."
"Where do we go now?"
"We seek the red-rose garden, for he waits."
"Who does?"
"He who forged our path."
"White Father."
"You say true, Shoshanna. You say true."
iv.
She learns his name is still Garth, even here, but also Can-Calah, and conversely, Chary-Ka. he is creation and destruction, the good and the ugly, Second Son of the White Father and the Red King both. Better than he who came before, but worse than whomever would follow him after his life-cycle has been completed.
She learns her name is still Sparrow, in her heart, but it is also Shoshanna, the Third of Her Name, Dan-Tete and mother of the Heartlands-That-Were. She will bear bitter fruit and good fruit both, for one cannot do its Great Work without the other, and one must come first for the other to follow.
She learns that the Heartlands are dying, that the Midlands are suffering, and that The-End-of-All-Things-Lands are seeing the dawn of their sickly, poison sun.
She learns that all that happens here happens in the Albion she loves, and though her heart pangs with fear, the Oracle of the Rainbow, Kas-ka Gan, will continue to whisper in the ears of those whose Great Work is nigh, and
v.
"cam-a-cammal, pria toi, gan delah," garth whispers against her ear
just as
sleep descends
over
gilead and
its mother superior
vi.
Sparrow sobs once, just once, as she clings to Garth's shoulders and rides him with a bittersweet and drugging slowness.
She can feel the life quickening in her even as he digs his fingers into her hips and shudders, even as he cradles her in his arms so gently and presses his cheek against her wildly fluttering heart until it calms, even as they drift into slumber with their limbs still tangled.
Life in her means death for her.
vii.
"But you'll survive. I'll die, but you'll... still be here."
"I'm not happy about it either."
"You said we were going to find him. We, Garth."
"We will."
"How? Look at me! I can feel him kicking, he's ready!"
"Have confidence, my One."
viii.
When she opens the book, just before Roland of Gilead's long shadow falls over their campfire, just before the contractions start, she doesn't see the same familiar sentence she's been seeing since she was a child huddled next to Rose's sleeping body under the shadow of Castle Fairfax.
"The gunslinger fled across the desert, and the man in black followed."