"Beyond" by Destiny Amber Dane

The meadow seemed to stretch on forever. Gwen sent Celina ahead to scout, and she hadn’t come back yet. Then everything seemed to get extremely quiet and the group stopped abruptly. Then the meadow and Gwen’s pets disappeared, and Gwen was in a whole different world.  

      Compared to the perpetual sunlight of Gwen’s meadow, this new world was strangely dim. Dry, yellow grass grew in sparse clumps in gray dust, occasionally punctuated by a leafless, black tree. Gray clouds obscured the sun, which seemed to glow with a dull, sickly yellow light. Dirty, forlorn people dressed in drab dirt and sweat-encrusted tunics walked around, hacking the dry ground with hoes, unsuccessfully trying to till a plot of land to grow food in.

It was a few moments later that Gwen noticed the animals standing beside her. There was a mud-brown horse, a grayish brown hound, a tortoiseshell cat, and a gray and brown bird. It took her a minute to realize that they were her life-long companions, returned to what must have been their original forms.

What had happened? She thought, wondering where her meadow was. Curious, she walked back in the direction she had come, but her surroundings stayed the same. Was my meadow even real? She contemplated, returning to the side of her animals. Or was it just an illusion? If it was, who put it there and why was I in it? Who am I, really? Am I really Gwen?

Her head spinning, she decided to ask one of the residents of this barren land. Cautiously, she went up to a woman that looked slightly less despondent than the rest and touched her shoulder. She jumped, then stared at Gwen with startlingly intelligent black eyes. “Who are you?” she hissed in a low, raspy voice. The woman’s eyes scanned Gwen’s clean, bright dress, red hair, clear, healthy complexion, and bright green eyes suspiciously. “Gwen-I think. I lived in a beautiful meadow where the sun always shined, and I had everything I could ever want. I wanted to see what was beyond my meadow, and it all disappeared, and I found myself here. Now I’m not sure about anything-not even me!” she blurted out. The sharp black eyes of the woman softened a bit, but did not lose their guarded look.  “In Áit Dearmad, things like this happen often. Usually the person would be put aside for a good reason. Though you do not look dangerous, neither do we, at first sight. But you would not like to cross us in a fight, mark my words.” Gwen frowned. Somehow she knew that Áit Dearmad meant “Forgotten Place.”

“But where,” she asked, “was I?”

“Aisling, The Place of Dreams. An illusion, in short, an image based on what you think of as perfect. It takes away your memories and stores them away, and memories of Aisling replace it. One cannot meet another human in the dream world- only animals that look, to you, like whatever kind you fancy.”

I’ve been in a dream for eleven years? Was I in this world, or another, before I came to Aisling? If so, how old am I really? Her life, so clear and simple before, suddenly was becoming complicated and uncertain.

The woman must have seen the confusion in her eyes, for she held out a pale, dirty, but strong hand and said with a close-to-kind smile, “Come to my house for the night. I am Celeste. You are tired and confused, and probably hungry. Come, girl.” Gwen smiled gratefully and followed Celeste down a rocky path to a mud-and-thatch cottage.

Inside were Celeste’s family, a middle-aged son and a man with a graying beard. They introduced themselves as Hart and Barden, and then all four sat down for a meager dinner of stew and water, which they devoured ravenously. Celeste gave Gwen a pelt of Surgha fur to lie in, and pointed her to an empty corner to spend the night. In a few moments, she was fast asleep.