by T.A. Barron
“What does Dagda look like? In the stories, I mean.”
Branwen took the last of the paste from the bowl. “Ah, that’s a good question. A very good question. For some reason known only to him, Dagda’s true face is never seen. He assumes various forms at various times.”
“Like what?”
“Once, in a famous battle with his supreme enemy, an evil spirit named Rhita Gawr, both of them took the forms of powerful beasts. Rhita Gawr became a huge boar, with terrible tusks and eyes the color of blood.” She paused, trying to remember. “Oh, yes. And a scar that ran all the way down one of its forelegs.”
I stiffened. The scar under my eye, where the boar’s tusk had ripped me five years ago, started to sting. On many a dark night since that day, the same boar had appeared again, and attacked again, in my dreams.
“And in that battle, Dagda became—”
“A great stag,” I completed. “Bronze in color, except for the white boots. Seven points on each side of its rack. And eyes as deep as the spaces between the stars.”
Surprised, she nodded. “So you have heard the story?”
“No,” I confessed.
“Then how could you know?”
I exhaled long and slow. “I have seen those eyes.”
She froze. “You have?”
“I have seen the stag. And the boar as well.”
“When?”
“On the day we washed ashore.”
She studied me closely. “Did they fight?”
“Yes! The boar wanted to kill us. Especially you, I would guess, if it really was some kind of evil spirit.”
“Whatever makes you say that?”
“Well, because you were . . . you! And I was just a scrawny little boy then.” I cast an eye over myself and grinned. “As opposed to the scrawny big boy I am now. Anyway, that boar would surely have killed us. But then the stag appeared and drove it off.” I touched the spot under my eye. “That’s how I got this.”
“You never told me.”
I glanced at her sharply. “There is much you have never told me.”
“You’re right,” she said ruefully. “We may have shared a few stories about others, but very few about ourselves. It’s my fault, really.”
I said nothing.
“But I will share this much with you now. If that boar—Rhita Gawr—could have killed just one of us, it would not have been me. It would have been you.”
“What? That’s absurd! It’s you who has such knowledge, such powers to heal.”
“And you have powers more vast by far!” Her gaze locked into mine. “Have you begun to feel them yet? Your grandfather told me once that his came in his twelfth year.” She caught her breath. “I did not mean to mention him.”
“But you did! Now can you tell me more?”
Grimly, she shook her head. “Let’s not talk about it.”
“Please, oh please! Tell me something, at least. What was he like?”
“I can’t.”
My cheeks grew hot. “You must! Why did you mention him at all unless there was something about him I should know?”
She ran a hand through her yellow locks. “He was a wizard, a formidable one. But I will tell you only what he said about you. Before you were born. He told me that powers such as he possessed often skipped a generation. And that I would have a son who . . .”
“Who what?”
“Who would have powers even greater than his own. Whose magic would spring from the very deepest sources. So deep that, if you learned to master them, you could change the course of the world forever.”
My jaw fell open. “That’s not true. And you know it. Just look at me!”
“I am,” she said quietly. “And while you are not now what your grandfather described, perhaps you will be someday.”
“No,” I protested. “I don’t want that. I only want my memory back! I want to know who I really am.”
“What if who you are involves such powers?”
“How could it?” I scoffed. “I’m no wizard.”
She cocked her head. “One day you might be surprised.”
Suddenly I remembered what had happened to Lud’s stick. “Well . . . I was surprised. Out there, before you came. Something strange happened. I’m not even sure I did it. But I’m not sure I didn’t, either.”
Without saying a word, she retrieved a torn piece of cloth and started wrapping it around my ribs. She seemed to be observing me with new respect, perhaps even a touch of fear. Her hands moved more gingerly, as if I were almost too hot to touch. Whatever she was feeling, whatever I was sensing, it made me very uncomfortable. In the same moment that I had started to feel closer to her, it made her seem more distant than ever.
At length, she spoke. “Whatever you did, you did from your powers. They are yours to use, a gift from above. From the greatest of the gods, the one I pray to more than any other, the one who gave each of us whatever gifts we have. I have no idea what your powers might be, my son. I only know that God didn’t give them to you without expecting you to use them. All God asks is that you use them well. But first you must, as your grandfather put it, come to master them. And that means learning how to use them with wisdom and love.”
“But I didn’t ask for powers!”
“Nor did I. Just as I did not ask to be called a sorceress. But with every gift comes the risk that others may not understand it.”
“Aren’t you afraid, though? Last year in Lien they burned someone they said was a sorceress.”
She raised her eyes to the shafts of light coming through the holes above our heads. “Almighty God knows I am no sorceress. I only try to use whatever gifts I may have as best I can.”
“You try to blend the old wisdom with the new. And that frightens people.”
Her sapphire eyes softened. “You see more than I realize. Yes, it frightens people. So does almost everything these days.”
She gently tied off the bandage. “The whole world is changing, Emrys. I have never known a time like this, even in . . . the other place. Invasions from across the sea. Mercenaries whose loyalties shift overnight. Christians at war with the old beliefs. Old beliefs at war with the Christians. People are afraid. Deathly afraid. Anything unknown becomes the work of demons.”
Stiffly, I sat up. “Don’t you sometimes wish . . .” My voice disappeared, and I swallowed. “That you didn’t have your gifts? That you weren’t so different? That nobody thought you were a demon?”
“Of course.” She bit her lip thoughtfully. “But that’s where my faith comes in. You see, the new wisdom is powerful. Very powerful. Just see what it did for Saint Brigid and Saint Colombe! Yet I know enough about the old wisdom to know it has great power, too. Is it too much to hope that they can live together, old and new? That they can strengthen each other? For even as the words of Jesus touch my soul, I cannot forget the words of others. The Jews. The Greeks. The Druids. The others, even older.”
I watched her somberly. “You know so much. Not like me.”
“There you are wrong. I know so little. So very little.” A sudden look of pain crossed her face. “Like . . . why you never call me Mother.”
An arrow jabbed my heart. “That is because . . .”
“Yes?”
“Because I really don’t believe you are.”
She sucked in her breath. “And do you believe that your true name is Emrys?”
“No.”
“Or that my true name is Branwen?”
“No.”
She tilted her head upward. For a long moment, she stared into the thatch over our heads, blackened with the soot of countless cooking fires. At length, she looked at me again.
“About my own name, you are right. After we landed here, I took it from an old legend.”
“The one you told me? About Branwen, daughter of Llyr?”
She nodded. “You remember it? Then you remember how Branwen came from another land to marry someone in Ireland. Her life began with boundless hope and
beauty.”
“And ended,” I continued, “with so much tragedy. Her last words were, Alas that I was ever born.”
She took my hand in her own. “But that is about my name, not yours. My life, not yours. Please believe what I am telling you! Emrys is your name. And I am your mother.”
A sob rose inside my throat. “If you are really my mother, can’t you tell me where my home is? My true home, the place I really belong?”
“No, I can’t! Those memories are too painful for me. And too dangerous for you.”
“Then how do you expect me to believe you?”
“Hear me, please. I don’t tell you only because I care for you! You lost your memory for a reason. It is a blessing.”
I scowled. “It is a curse!”
She watched me, her eyes grown misty. It seemed to me that she was about to speak, to tell me at last what I most wanted to know. Then her hand squeezed mine—not in sympathy, but in fright.
6: FLAMES
A shape filled the doorway, blocking the light.
I jumped up from the pallet, knocking over Branwen’s wooden bowl. “Dinatius!”
A hefty arm pointed at us. “Come out, both of you.”
“We will not.” Branwen rose to her feet and stood beside me.
Dinatius’ gray eyes flashed angrily. He shouted over his shoulder, “Take her first.”
He entered the hut, followed by two of the boys from the village square. Lud was not with them.
I grabbed Dinatius by the arm. He shook me off as if I were a fly, throwing me backward into the table bearing Branwen’s utensils and ingredients. Spoons, knives, strainers, and bowls sprayed across the dirt floor of the hut as the table collapsed under my weight. Liquids and pastes splattered the clay walls, while seeds and leaves flew into the air.
Seeing him wrestling with Branwen, I sprung to my feet and leaped at him. He wheeled around and smacked me with such force that I flew backward into the wall. I lay there, momentarily dazed.
When my head cleared, I realized that I was alone in the hut. At first, I wasn’t certain what had happened. Then, hearing shouts outside, I stumbled over to the doorway.
Branwen lay twenty or thirty paces away, in the middle of the path. Her hands and legs were bound with a length of spliced rope. A wad of cloth, torn from her dress, had been stuffed into her mouth so she could not cry out. Apparently the merchants and villagers in the square, busy with their work, had not yet noticed her—or not wanted to intervene.
“Look at her,” laughed a slim, grimy-faced boy, pointing at the crumpled figure on the path. “She’s not so scary now.”
His companion, still holding some rope, joined the laughter. “Serves the she-demon right!”
I started to run to her aid. Suddenly I caught sight of Dinatius, bending over a pile of loose brush that had been stacked under the wide boughs of the oak. As he slid a shovel full of flaming coals from the smith’s shop under the brush, fear sliced through me. A fire. He’s starting a fire.
Flames began crackling in the brush. A column of smoke swiftly lifted into the branches of the tree. At this point Dinatius stood upright, hands on his hips, surveying his work. Silhouetted before the fire, he looked to me like a demon himself.
“She says she is not afraid of fire!” declared Dinatius, to the nods of the other boys. “She says she cannot be burned!”
“Let’s find out,” called the boy with the rope.
“Fire!” shouted one of the merchants, suddenly aware of the flames.
“Put it out!” cried a woman emerging from her hut.
But before anyone could move, the two boys had already grabbed Branwen by the legs. They began dragging her toward the blazing tree, where Dinatius stood waiting.
I ran out of the hut, my eyes fixed on Dinatius. Rage swelled within me, such rage as I had never known before. Uncontrollable and unstoppable, it coursed through my body like an enormous wave, knocking aside every other sense and feeling.
Seeing my approach, Dinatius grinned. “Just in time, whelp. We’ll cook you both together.”
A single wish overwhelmed me: He should bum. Burn in Hell.
At that instant, the tree shuddered and cracked, as if it had been ripped by a bolt of lightning. Dinatius whirled around just as one of the biggest branches, perhaps weakened by his fire, broke loose. Before he could escape, the branch fell directly on top of him, pinning his chest and crushing his arms. Like the breath of a dozen dragons, the blaze leaped higher. Villagers and merchants scattered. Branches exploded into flames, the sound of their snapping and splitting nearly drowning out the cries of the trapped boy.
I rushed to Branwen. She had been dropped only a few paces from the burning tree. Fire was licking at the edges of her robe. Quickly I pulled her away from the searing flames and untied her bonds. She pulled the wad from her mouth, staring at me with both gratitude and fear.
“Did you do that?”
“I—I think so. Some kind of magic.”
Her sapphire eyes fixed on me. “Your magic. Your power.”
Before I could reply, a spine-shivering scream erupted from inside the inferno. It went on and on, a cry of absolute agony. Hearing that voice—that helpless, human voice—my blood froze within my veins. I knew at once what I had done. I also knew what I must do.
“No!” protested Branwen, clutching at my tunic.
But it was too late. I had already plunged into the roaring flames.
7: HIDDEN
Voices. Angelic voices.
I sat bolt upright. Could they really be angels? Was I really dead? Darkness surrounded me. Blacker than any night I had ever known.
Then: the pain. The pain on my face and my right hand told me I must indeed be alive. It was searing pain. Clawing pain. As if my very skin were being ripped away.
Beneath the pain, I grew aware of a strange weight on my brow. Cautiously, I reached my hands to my face. The fingers of my right hand, I realized, were bandaged. So were my brow, my cheeks, my eyes—swathed in cold, wet clothes that smelled of pungent herbs. Even the barest touch cut me with daggers of pain.
A heavy door creaked open. Across an expanse of stone floor, footsteps approached, echoing from a high ceiling above my head. Footsteps whose cadence I thought I recognized.
“Branwen?”
“Yes, my son,” answered the voice in the darkness. “You have awakened. I am glad.” Yet she sounded more dismal than glad, I thought, as she lightly caressed the back of my neck. “I must change your bandages. I am afraid it will hurt.”
“No. Don’t touch me.”
“But I must, if you are to heal.”
“No.”
“Emrys, I must.”
“All right, but be careful! It hurts so much already.”
“I know, I know.”
I tried my best to remain still as she carefully unwrapped the bandages, touching me as delicately as a butterfly. While she worked, she dripped something over my face which smelled as fresh as the forest after a rain and seemed to numb the pain a little. Feeling somewhat better, I spouted questions like a fountain. “How long have I slept? Where is this place? Who are those voices?”
“You and I—forgive me if this stings—are at the Church of Saint Peter. We are the guests of the nuns who live here. It is they you hear singing.”
“Saint Peter! That’s in Caer Myrddin.”
“So it is.”
Feeling a cold draft from a window or door somewhere, I drew my rough wool blanket about my shoulders. “But that is several days’ travel, even with a horse.”
“So it is.”
“But—”
“Be still, Emrys, while I untie this.”
“But—”
“Still, now . . . that’s right. Just a moment. Ah, there.”
As the bandage fell away, so did my questions about how we had come to be here. A new question crowded out all the rest. For although my eyes were no longer covered, I still could not see.
“Why is it
so dark?”
Branwen did not answer.
“Didn’t you bring a candle?”
Again she did not answer.
“Is it nighttime?”
Still she did not answer. Yet she did not need to, for the answer came from a cuckoo, alive with song, somewhere nearby.
The fingers of my unbandaged hand quivered as I touched the tender area around my eyes. I winced, feeling the blotches
of scabs, the still-burning skin underneath. No hair on my eyebrows. No eyelashes, either. Blinking back the pain, I traced the edges of my eyelids, crusted and scarred.
I knew my eyes were wide open. I knew I could see nothing. And, with a shiver, I knew one thing more.
I was blind.
In anguish, I bellowed. Suddenly, hearing again the sound of the cuckoo, I flung off my blanket. Despite the weakness of my legs, I forced myself to rise from the pallet, pushing away Branwen’s hand as she tried to stop me. I staggered across the stones, following the sound.
I tripped on something and crashed to the floor, landing on my shoulder. Stretching out my arms, I could feel nothing but the surface of the stones beneath me. They felt hard and cold, like a tomb.
My head spun. I could feel Branwen helping me to my feet, even as I could hear her muffled sobs. Again I pushed her away. Staggering forward, my hands hit a wall of solid rock. The sound of the cuckoo drew me to the left. The groping fingers of my unbandaged hand caught the edge of a window.
Grasping the sill, I pulled myself closer. Cool air stung my face, The cuckoo sang, so close to me that I might have reached out and touched its wing. For the first time, it seemed, in weeks, I felt the splash of sunshine on my face. Yet as hard as I tried to find the sun, I could not see it.
Hidden. The whole world is hidden.
My legs buckled beneath me. I fell to the floor, my head upon the stones. And I wept.
8: THE GIFT
During the weeks stretching into months that followed, my torment filled the halls of the Church of Saint Peter. The nuns residing there, moved both by the strength of Branwen’s piety and the severity of my burns, had opened the gates of their sanctuary. They must have found it difficult to feel anything but sympathy for this woman who did little else but pray all day and tend to her wounded boy. As to the boy himself, they mostly avoided me, which suited me just fine.
