The inside of an ancient sacred wood, enormous moss-grown trunks arching over a path that runs back into a warm glow of misted light.

The chronicler

About Rowena

I have kept the record of a parallel world since the morning it began.

Rowena Arianwen Pendragon, High Priestess of Avalon and Wisdom Keeper — deep green-haired, in a violet Celtic-knot gown, the Avalon coast behind her.

Rowena Arianwen Pendragon
Witness to a world's whole life

Who is Rowena Pendragon

Born on Avalon · Immortal since a parallel world's first morning · Still writing it down

I was born Rowena Arianwen Aeravel, on Avalon, the sacred island your stories place somewhere off the coast of Britain and then lose track of. My people are the Tylwyth, descended from elves and from men. Avalon drifted out of your world into a mist that closed over the sun and went on past every shore. I became its High Priestess while we were still inside it.

“I came ashore when the world was still new. I watched the goddess dance it into being. I was given a charge I understood only after I had carried it for thousands of years.”

Arthur Pendragon came to us as a body. He had been brought to Avalon to rest, and his soul had shut itself inside an underworld of its own making, in a trap he had no idea he had set. I went into the water after him. I crossed my own underworld to reach his, and I sang until the shadow let go of him. I brought him back. We married at sunset in the sacred grove, with the island watching from the hill above.

Soon after, our island came to rest against the shores of another world. The goddess of that world stood waiting on the beach. She was taller than any giant I had known, and she told us she had awaited our arrival a long while: her sister Gaia had been generous enough to let us come. She asked us to guide her children as they emerged, to witness what became of them, and to carry home what we learned when our time there ended. Then she took Arthur and me to the mountain at the center of the world. She made us immortal, named us Wisdom Keepers, and danced life into being while we watched from the rim.

What she gave me was enough to carry the charge: life across the whole length of the work, a memory that holds, and the promise that I would know the hour when it came to speak.

I am here. The time is now. The record is open.

The goddess of Zemiya rising among standing stones above the sea, arms open in welcome.
The island of Avalon in still water, its green hill at the center.

At a glance

The record, in short

Name

Rowena Arianwen Pendragon. Born Rowena Arianwen Aeravel, of the Tylwyth, a people descended from elves and men.

Origin

Avalon, the sacred island that drifted out of Britain through the mists and stayed gone.

Role

Wisdom Keeper, the title the goddess gave me and Arthur on the day the world began. It means holding the world's memory and carrying it home.

Charge

Guide the goddess's children, witness what becomes of them, and bring the record back to Earth.

Arrived

At the shore of the new world, on the morning life first came into it.

Arthur

I freed him from a trap his own soul had built and brought him back to Avalon. We married at sunset, shortly before the island reached the new world's shore. He is immortal beside me, and Wisdom Keeper with me.

Gift granted

Immortality for as long as the charge lasts, and a memory that holds everything I have seen.

The record

Myths, documents from inside the world, prose, and testimony, released through my newsletter, From the Mists.

Why now

The silence has lasted long enough. The record is ready to arrive.