by Annie Bellet
Emyr pulled Idrys off the bed and they lay on the floor, struggling to breathe.
It was too hard to see, though the fire looked to be burning fiercely enough despite the dwindling air supply. The boys closed their eyes. Breathing was getting harder and harder. Idrys gripped his brother’s arm tightly with one hand, the other resting on the wet, stinking skins.
There was a rush of flame suddenly and the smoke abated. The sound was much like the sound of the owl’s wings and it roused the twins from their dazed and labored state.
Idrys raised his head and forced his stinging eyes open. The fire burned brighter than before, the flames eating hungrily at the door. And beyond it was daylight. The fire had eaten through the thick old oak.
Unable to form words from his dry throat, Idrys tugged at his brother’s hand and pulled on the leather. Emyr squeezed back and leaned over to grab a wet hide.
They struggled to their knees, crawling toward the oppressive heat, each holding a damp skin out like a shield. The power of the fire’s blaze was such that they had to avert their faces. They tossed the thick, soaked leather onto the flames, which damped the fire’s fervor but did not quite quench it.
It was enough.
They’d left the brazier near the door. Ignoring the heat, they lifted the shining bronze and heaved it into the leather, flame, and charred wood.
It crashed through, leaving an opening in its wake large enough for a man to dive through.
“Go, you first,” Idrys said.
“You, what if she returns? You run faster.” Emyr shook his head. His voice sounded graveled and strained despite the sudden gasp of fresh air to breathe.
“I’ll not leave you, nor you I, so what does it matter?” Idrys glared, his throat raw and painful as well.
Emyr, scared and full of adrenaline, shook off the desire to argue further and rose. He dove through the opening head first, coming to his feet in a neat roll on the grass outside. He turned and moved to the side as his brother quickly followed him.
Their tunics were smoke-stained and their hair around their faces singed. Above the strips of colored cloth, now blackened with soot and smoke, their eyes were red-rimmed but clear and bright with hope.
“Run,” Idrys said, taking his brother’s hand as he tore away the strips of cloth from his face.
They ran. It was mid morning judging by the sunlight that filtered down through the forest. They set their path to the south and west, toward home and all things known and normal. Fleeing the Lady and their own confused desires, they plunged through the wood in a strange parody of the mad hunt that had brought them to her doorway.
Fatigue, hot and persistent in their muscles, forced them to slow eventually. The sun had risen past the midpoint and begun its long descent toward the night.
The twins slowed to a fast walk, picking a more careful path through the wood. About them they began to notice changes they’d been oblivious to before in that first mad rush of freedom.
The leaves had started to change. The green of high summer was fading and the wood was now tinged with gold and brown. Not fully, for it was not yet fall, but still, the beginnings of the shift in seasons was evident around them.
“It’s been three days. But how long out here?” Emyr lifted a golden leaf, fresh fallen, from the ground as they walked.
“I’d say late summer, perhaps,” Idrys said.
“Good we left when we did, then.”
“Aye. Though the time passing will lend truth to our story.”
“They probably think us dead.” Emyr shivered.
“Don’t think it, brother. They’ll still be hoping, searching. Our parents won’t give up easily without answers.” Idrys clapped Emyr on the shoulder and then took up his brother’s hand again. Their fingers entwined, each clinging to that familiar comfort.
It was late afternoon before they heard the pursuit. The forest grew mysteriously quiet around them. Then, just as they noticed this unnatural stillness, the far-off cry of hounds sounded through the wood.
Emyr looked at his brother. “Father’s hounds?” he said hopefully, though they were at least a day’s hard travel from home.
“I think not,” Idrys said, pausing to listen.
“I think we’d better run again,” Emyr said with a shudder.
The twins kept their grip on each other’s hands and ran at a more sustainable though no less urgent pace. The woods here were open under the thick, old canopy, with only small patches of fern and hazel blocking their path.
The sun was dropping and gloom rising when the hounds got close enough to sight. The chilling baying struck renewed energy into the exhausted twins and they pushed their already burning legs to further speed.
Idrys wasn’t sure he could have outpaced his brother at this point even if he was considered the quicker of the two. His lungs labored and his throat was choked with thick phlegm. His lip throbbed where he’d bitten it, though now it seemed such a small ache compared to the rest. He glanced behind and wished he hadn’t.
A score of hounds flowed perhaps fifty meters behind the twins like a wave breaking over the landscape. Their bodies were tall and lean in the way of hunting hounds, but their fur was bright and shining with the white of the moon and the red of fresh-spilt blood.
“Find a tree,” Idrys cried. “We’ve got only moments.”
“Gwydyon’s balls.” Emyr looked behind as well and pressed his speed further.
Ahead of them a spreading oak loomed out of the descending darkness. Its branches started just above their heads and reached out to create a clearing of sorts. The brothers veered and made it to the tree with the hounds so close they could hear the dogs breathing as they ran.
Idrys jumped, catching the lowest branch with sore hands. He hauled himself up and swung a leg over. Emyr jumped as well, his hands catching the limb. Idrys wrapped a leg tightly around the branch and grabbed his brother’s tunic with both hands and hauled him up.
A hound, the first to reach them, leapt as Emyr heaved upward. The jaws of the creature caught his trouser leg, ripping free as its teeth found no purchase on the thick spun cloth.
The twins climbed to a deep crook in the tree where they were well above the snapping jaws and frustrated cries of the fairy hounds. They rested there, breathing hard as they clung to each other.
“You think she’ll come and call them off?” Emyr gasped finally as the painful ache in his chest eased a little with each breath.
Idrys thought of Seren’s face when they coupled the eve before. She’d had a look of detachment, yes, but also one of desire, the kind of possessive passion he usually acquainted with owning a particularly fine horse or a rare gem.
“She’ll come,” he said.
“Promise me, whatever she says, whatever she does, you’ll stay with me. Don’t let me go, Idrys.” Emyr shook, his voice trembling.
Idrys wrapped his arms tighter around his brother’s shoulders. He felt as scared as Emyr sounded but steeled himself against his own tremors.
“I so swear, Emyr,” he whispered into his brother’s dark hair, breathing in the familiar scent of his twin beneath the lingering smell of smoke.
“I so swear, Idrys,” Emyr echoed, feeling at once both too old and too young.
The twins sat in the tree, each with their head on the other’s shoulder, waiting as the red-and-white sea of crimson-eyed hounds circled and sang beneath them.
Five
The last shaded rays of sunlight lingered on as the twins clung to their perch in the spreading oak. One moment the air was filled with the baying of the excited hounds, the next all was still as though the entire world had taken a deep deep breath and now held it.
Out of this immense calm, Seren appeared. Her hounds sat still as stone carvings, lazily arrayed at the base of the tree. The Fair One walked out of the growing gloom wearing a simple white dress with a small wreath of blue summer flowers circling her loose, rippling scarlet locks.
“Come down from there,�
� she commanded. Her voice was clear and cold as a winter night, her face impassive giving no hint as to her mood or will.
The twins shook their heads, each keeping a tight grip on the shoulder of the other.
Emyr spoke, “Lady, we greet you. We have enjoyed your hospitality, but we must return home.”
“Decided that, then, have you?” She laughed and there was a cruel, mocking note in the clear tone that they’d never marked before.
“Aye,” Idrys and Emyr answered as one.
“Since you are so set on this, I’ll make you a bargain.” She smiled, the mocking expression fading in the light of her iridescent beauty. “One of you may go; the other will stay with me and be my love.”
Her words sounded at once warm and reasonable. A bargain indeed. Emyr and Idrys looked at each other and their promise in the frantic moments before her arrival echoed in the eyes of each.
“And if we refuse this bargain?” Idrys asked. He’d grown wary in a way he’d never have been only days before.
Seren shrugged. “Mayhap I’ll see if my hounds care for further sport then. You gave them a merry chase, and I doubt you’ll make a home of that lovely tree.”
She tried to look disinterested. These young mortals clearly did not know that in truth once they’d refused her she’d lost her power over them. She chose to let them think she could take them against their will, so long as she didn’t have to voice the lie. Centuries of practice let her comfortably couch all statements in the realm of the possible instead of the actual, allowing her to avoid having to tell the truth entire.
The Fair Folk could not lie, but they’d talk circles to avoid the truth.
“No matter what,” Emyr whispered to his brother and Idrys nodded.
“I quite like this tree. Such lovely leaves this time of year,” Idrys called down to the waiting Lady.
“Idrys,” Seren guessed, for she could not tell the one from the other, filthy as each was with soot and ash. “I will make you a prince in truth, my love. I can teach you things no mortal has ever known.”
She walked to the base of the tree and leaned a slender hand upon the bark. Her inner light grew then until it spilled cool and clinging over the lowest branches of the oak.
Desire, hot and unbidden, rose in Idrys. His blood sang with remembered passion, her words arousing sensations along his skin as he lost himself in the memory of the most tender caress he’d ever known.
Emyr’s arms closed more tightly around his brother as he saw the anger fade to rapture in the gleam of the Lady’s power. The air around him was too heavy to breathe and he struggled to draw it into his lungs. Idrys. You promised. Don’t leave me brother. Not like this.
Idrys started to pull away.
Emyr managed a strangled cry and, clinging to his brother, threw them both from the tree.
They hit the ground hard, Idrys slightly under his twin. It worked. The look faded from Idrys’s eyes and he groaned and blinked as though waking from a deep sleep.
“No,” he croaked, eyes on his brother who still held his shoulders.
At the word there was a sound like a harp string snapping, a clear and broken note. The light winked out leaving only Seren standing there in her cold beauty. The hounds were gone, slipping back somewhere into the oncoming night.
“Very well,” she said. All kindness was gone from her features. “So loyal, each to the other. Much like a dog. In fact, I think you shall live as dogs, since you have broken my hospitality like wild curs.”
Idrys and Emyr, their hands still clasped, fingers intertwined, rose slowly to their knees before her. The power of speech had fled them both in the face of cold terror and their iron resolve.
Seren smiled and the twins shivered. “Yes, quite fitting.” She looked to the sky. “By night, you Emyr, shall serve your brother, his faithful mutt. And you, Idrys, I think by day it shall be your fate. As you’ve shared your lives, so shall you split the burden of your fate.” Again the mocking laugh, quick and soft in the gloom.
Emyr doubled over, pain stretching along all his limbs. Horrible screams burst from his lips as his body twisted. Idrys held on, finding his own voice as he screamed as well in horror, screaming for her to stop, to take him, to leave his brother alone.
It was over in the space of a breath, between one scream and another.
There, standing in a puddle of tunic and trouser, Emyr was no longer a man. Instead he bore the form of a tall hunting hound, his coat sleek and black. But his eyes, staring in shock up at his twin, they were Emyr’s eyes still, clear and brown as polished wood in firelight.
Emyr the hound threw back his head and howled. Idrys leapt to his feet and sprang at the Lady with an unintelligible curse. The hound followed on his heels, teeth bared. Rational thought fled in the face of terrified anger.
Seren disappeared. It looked as though she only took one backward step but somehow the oncoming night swallowed her whole, leaving only whispering leaves and an empty wood behind.
Idrys stumbled about, thrashing through the woods, yelling for her to come back and undo her curse. He collapsed, exhausted, his throat closing off with choking anguish.
Emyr crept up along side his brother and licked his face, laying a large paw on his brother’s thigh. Idrys grabbed onto his twin, pulling the hound half into his lap as he let himself sob into the warm, silky fur.
“I’m sorry, Em. Gods I’m sorry. I’ll make it right. This is all my fault. Emyr. All my fault.” They lay curled together on the forest floor until the pervading fatigue of grief claimed them both.
* * *
A strange tingling woke them both. False dawn lent the surrounding trees a grey corona against the pale sky above. Emyr lifted his narrow head and tasted the damp air with fresh senses. He’d hardly noticed the night before the panoply of scents and sensory input that assailed his new form.
He shook himself and wagged his tail at his brother as Idrys sat up. They were both stiff from sleeping on the ground and cold from the dew that now clung to their bodies and dampened their hair.
The tingling grew as Idrys scrubbed at his eyes with dirty hands. The fear and anguish of the day before combined with the intense physical exhaustion and left him empty. He shoved down the irrational and entirely childish hope that somehow this was all still a strange dream and that his true waking would come.
“Emyr. What do we do? Go back? Find her hut? Maybe she’ll change her mind.” Idrys looked at his brother but found no human expression to read on the narrow face that returned his gaze. Emyr yipped and turned his head to the east.
The first rays of sunlight slipped into the sky and with it came a strange pain riding the wave of tingling sensation in the limbs of each twin.
The change that hit them felt less violent than it had looked the night before, and far quicker.
Emyr knelt on the ground, human and naked in the morning light. Idrys stood entangled in his own pool of clothing, looking around with a very human, surprised expression on his narrow hound’s face. It almost made Emyr laugh. Almost.
“Idrys, it’s all right. Give it a moment. Your senses will be overwhelming for a moment if you’re feeling like I did.”
Emyr took a deep breath and tried to offer what comfort he could to his brother. Ever practical, and rather chilled, he gently pushed his brother out of the way and began to pull on his twin’s discarded clothing.
He stood and took in the forest. They were a long day’s travel from home, if his bearings were correct. Knowing by his own experience that his brother would retain his human mind while confined to the hound form, Emyr turned and spoke.
“We can’t go back to her. The gods only knows what else she might think to do. We have to go home. They’ll be worried sick. Mother must know, at the least. She’s clever, she’ll think of somewhat.” Emyr tugged on his boots, pulling the soft leather over his sore heels.
Idrys tucked his tail into his body without thinking and whined high in his throat. He walked forward and licked h
is brother’s outstretched hand. He knew Emyr was likely right, and the folly of not listening to Emyr lay fresh and painful in Idrys’s mind.
The brothers walked side by side toward the moors and the sea as the forest woke up around them and the sun rose to cast green and gold shadows among the turning leaves.
They reached the edge of the wood as the sun sank low. The weather held despite heavy clouds that blew in from the sea toward the distant taller hills of Eifon that rose like shadows against the mercurial sky to the north and east.
Emyr got their bearings again as the wood faded into the low heath and brushy grass of the moors that spilled from the tall old forests down to the rocky shore of the western sea. Near the edge of the forest stood a tall standing stone, called a carreg, bone white with its northern face thick with moss. It was a well-known landmark to the twins; the shepherds called it the talking stone, though the tales about how it came to be varied with the telling.
“There, Idrys.” Emyr pointed to the white carreg. “Though I think we should wait here for a while yet.”
The tingling had started again in his body strongly enough that he was able to differentiate it from the burning of his muscles. Night was coming and with it he’d change. They were only perhaps an hour out from Clun Cadair, but it was too close to dark to be sure they’d make it before the curse took its terrible effect once more.
Idrys stood alert next to his brother. His black form came to Emyr’s waist and a light wind lifted the dark fur from his long back. Swallows dipped and circled in the meadow ahead as the sun dropped down over their home.
He too felt the singing in his blood and tensing of his muscles as the light faded. He raised his eyes to his brother and nodded his narrow head in a very human gesture, trying to signal he understood. It was too frustrating, this inability to communicate. He was accustomed to the easy if sometimes argumentative banter that Emyr and he had always shared. Its loss stabbed keenly as despair threatened to fill the hollow of his heart.
