by Annie Bellet
The twins retreated into the trees and Emyr stripped off his clothing. He folded each piece carefully and laid them on his boots. Shivering despite the lingering warmth of the day, he sank down beside his brother and slipped an arm over the hound’s shoulders. Idrys licked his cheek, his tail thumping the packed earth.
“Tell them both, Idrys. Mother and father. We owe them the truth,” Emyr said as the sun dropped out of sight.
Again the strange shifting feeling, a pain that was both inside and out at once. The terrible stretching and the sudden sense of otherness as the change completed itself with the final dying of the day.
Idrys dressed quickly and walked back out to the edge of the wood.
“Tis only fair, I suppose, that you’d leave me the task of telling them,” he muttered. “This whole mess is my fault, after all.”
Emyr butted his sharp head into Idrys’s hipbone hard enough to stagger his twin.
“Ow. Leave off, you.” The gesture jolted Idrys out of his deepening self-loathing. A tiny smile shifted across his lips only to fade into a grim and determined line.
Together they set out for the holding, hugging the line of the trees as they made for Clun Cadair and a very strange homecoming.
Six
The shout went up through the holding as the slender form of a son long lost appeared like an apparition at the opening of the low palisade that defined the border of the llys.
“Be you spirits, come to torment us?” asked Gethin, the aging head of Chief Brychan’s flocks. He eyed the tall black hound and the filthy, gaunt youth he barely recognized as one of the twins who’d so merrily set out hunting nearly two months before.
“I’m not a spirit, Gethin. A spirit wouldn’t be half so dirty or tired, I’d hope.” Idrys halted at the sight of the men gathering with spears.
It might have been funny if he weren’t so weary. Here they’d wished for nothing but home these many days and now home was proving hard to enter. Truthfully, he’d given precious little thought to what his reception might be, instead focusing on how he’d explain his terrible folly to what he imagined would be angry, worried parents.
“Emyr?” Gethin motioned the two young men behind him back toward the cluster of dwellings. “Gods boy! What’s happened to you? Where’s your brother? What’s with that great black beast?” He stepped forward, peering into the youth’s face in the light of the standing torches that marked the entry to the holding.
Idrys didn’t bother to correct his mistake and instead answered, “I’ll tell my tale to mother and father first, if that’s all right. It’s long, I’m afraid.” Tears threatened to spill as a lump rose from his heart to his throat. Gethin clapped the boy on the shoulder and escorted him to the main hall without further questions.
Emyr pressed close to his brother’s side. The myriad of human and animal smells and sounds overwhelmed him again. Sheep, horse, fresh-cut rushes, cooking meat, and wood smoke, the smells of home. The llys would be near empty this time of year for the summer grazing of the flocks and the tending of the harvest fields and fishing in the seasonal villages near the sea.
The outer cluster of wood and stone houses were mostly boarded up. They both were grateful for this small mercy. It meant less people to stare and shrink away as they passed.
A slim figure broke away from the light doorway of the great hall. Her skirts flying around her, Hafwyn ran to her children and threw her arms around Idrys. He clung to her tightly, the tears that had been gathering for the last few hours welling over with a strangled cry. She smelled of lanolin, wood smoke, and fresh pears. She smelled like his mother, tall and strong, solid and real.
Emyr pressed his narrow head into her skirts as he too drowned in her familiar scent and warmth. Their mother pulled back suddenly and stared down at the large black hound. He looked up at her with desperate eyes, willing her to know him, somehow, through special motherly magic or intuition.
Hafwyn tentatively reached out her hand and stroked the silken head of the hound. She looked then at her son and saw the same sad desperation mirrored in the brown eyes of both boy and dog. She knew then, though her practical mind forced away the thoughts of the impossible.
“My son has returned,” she said, her voice loud and clear though full of un-invoked emotion. She put her arm around her son’s slim shoulders and led him inside. Brychan stood, a rough, hirsute hulk of a man, in the doorway to the hall but moved aside as his wife and child entered with the unnaturally sized black hound. His blue eyes searched Idrys’s own dark ones for a long moment.
Once inside the light of the long and thankfully empty room, he reached for his son. Idrys went to him and fell into his thick arms with another grieving cry. He tucked his head against the bristling beard. His father was stiff, caught between relief and anger and wondering, but he embraced his son for a moment before pushing back the red-eyed lad.
“Where is your brother, Emyr?” Brychan asked, making the same mistake the others had.
Idrys realized his hair lay unbound against his shoulders. He’d always worn his own hair braided, a habit ingrained to help everyone tell him apart from his brother. He shook his head slowly.
“It’s not a tale I can tell here.” He glanced behind to where the courtyard outside was slowly filling with the permanent folk of the holding.
“Food, and a bath. Then we’ll hear the story,” Hafwyn said firmly, putting a hand on her husband’s arm.
She ordered Melita, her maid and companion, to help her fill the copper tub before the hearth in the twins’ old room. Brychan, after a look from his beautiful wife, fetched a bowl of thick stew from the hearth and sat quietly with his son as the boy ate.
Idrys looked down at Emyr, who waited patiently beside him at the headmost table. When he’d half-finished his food, Idrys took the bowl and set it onto the bench beside him for his twin. Neither had eaten in at least two days, though it felt far longer. The warm stew soured in his stomach as he faced his father.
Brychan had more grey in his hair than Idrys remembered. “I’m sorry father,” he began.
Whatever Brychan might have said in reply was forestalled by Hafwyn’s return. She beckoned him away from the table toward the private rooms built into the back of the hall.
It was strange to return to his room. A fire burned in the hearth and the large copper tub steamed on the stone floor in front of it. The bed was made, a state it rarely found itself in when the twins had slept here. Idrys shivered. Two months gone, it feels like yesterday and like years all at once.
Melita and Hafwyn both left the youth and the hound alone to bathe. A small pot of soap lay next to a soft cloth and a change of clothing on the hearth. Idrys stripped with a sigh and sank down into the bath. He had to tuck his knees up to his chin to fit, but it was heavenly just to relax into the hot water.
He took up the pot and scraped up a bit of the soft, crumbling soap. It smelled of roses, his mother’s favorite scent. Idrys scrubbed himself, finally dunking his hair into the now tepid and filthy water. Reluctantly he stood and dried himself with the soft cloth.
“I guess I’d better explain it to them, because things will be strange when you request a bath tomorrow morning after sunrise.” He grinned down at Emyr who had flopped onto the bed as soon as they were alone. His mirth lasted only a moment as there came a soft knock on the door.
“One moment,” he called. He wrung the excess water from his curling hair and pulled on the clean tunic and trousers.
Going to the door, he opened it. Hafwyn stood with bowls of the thick stew in each hand, Brychan looming behind her. Both parents carried a mixed expression of worry and curiosity, though the chief’s was tinged with anger as well.
The twins sat on the bed, Emyr sitting up so he could eat from the bowl that Idrys tucked between his long forelegs. Idrys also ate, thinking that if he were chewing, he’d have excuse not to speak. The stew didn’t last. Exhaustion pulled at his limbs and he sighed. It was best to get it over with.
“I don’t know where to begin,” he said, hating the way his voice broke and wavered. He was so tired and this tale was too great a burden to bear alone.
Emyr leaned against Idrys’s side and tucked his narrow head under his brother’s arm. The soft heat of the hound lent Idrys strength. I’m not alone. I have to speak for us both now. Well, at least ‘til morning.
“Start at the beginning,” Hafwyn said and her gentle tone combined with the understanding and sympathetic gaze of his twin broke the dam of words inside.
The story poured from him then, though he fumbled with some of the parts in Seren’s house. He could see from the slight flush in his mother’s cheeks and the knowing cast of his father’s look that their imaginations filled in the more seductive details that he left unspoken. Neither of his parents spoke nor broke the spell his tale wove in the little room. He related the details of their daring and doomed escape and the mad flight through the wood for home. Finally, Idrys reached the end, speaking of the horrible curse and subsequent transformation.
So loyal, each to the other. As you’ve shared your lives, so shall you split the burden of your fate.
He stopped then, Emyr beside him sitting up on his haunches now, head raised as each watched their parents.
Hafwyn nodded. She’d half-suspected something of the sort the moment the tall black hound at stared up at her with her son’s own eyes. She opened her mouth to speak words of comfort to her children but her husband went rigid beside her and cut off what she might have said.
“Idrys.” His face had turned red as he absorbed the tale. “This is your fault, boy.” He rose to his feet with an angry gesture, thick hands balled into fists. “If you hadn’t led your brother on that mad chase, none of this would have befallen you. Why don’t you ever listen? Look what you’ve done to your brother!” His voice boomed in the tiny space, his blue eyes bright and hard as stones.
“I know, father,” Idrys said softly before his mother could chide her husband. He bowed his dark head and gripped a handful of Emyr’s silky coat. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to make it right.”
He looked up then, toward his mother. Emyr had promised that telling the truth would help. Hafwyn was clever, she always thought of something.
Hafwyn recognized the look of a child expecting his strong parents to fix the world and sorrow welled from deep within that they would learn the truth in such a terrible fashion. She spread her hands, finding her body too heavy with emotion to stand. Helpless, she shook her head, hating to see his gaze fall as tears replaced the faint glow of hope in his red-rimmed eyes.
“You are dead to me, Idrys,” Brychan said as he too sat back down on the narrow bench beside his wife.
“Brychan! You cannot say such, even in anger.” Hafwyn grabbed her husband’s arm.
“I can.” He looked at her with grief-hollowed eyes.
He’d thought both sons dead these last two months. Oh, he’d held hope dear but with each searching party that came back without trace or news; his hope had faded further into despair. He felt every ache in his bones.
“I can,” he repeated, “I will. We can’t tell others this story; it’ll bring suspicion on my sons, on my heirs. What man wants to be ruled by one who is cursed?”
Hafwyn sighed. She could see the practical merit in his words even if she did not agree with the anger that drove the hurt deeper into Idrys’s heart.
“All right.” She smiled at Idrys and Emyr, her gaze moving between the two. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll tell part of the truth.” She took a deep breath.
“Idrys, you were killed in a rock slide while hunting. Emyr was knocked to the ground and taken in by a kindly hermit. There are rumored to be such wise men of the wood about, after all. He gifted you the hound and helped you remember who you were. That’s where you’ve been these months.” Her agile mind formed the story even as her heart sank at the thought of spending the rest of her days pretending her son was dead and gone. ‘Tis better than having him actually dead and gone, you twit, she told herself.
Idrys struggled to grasp the plan in his despair. He was dead, then. He laughed mirthless and sudden.
“Well, Emyr, I guess I’ll have to learn to run slower, eh?” He tried to smile at his brother as he refused to meet his parents’ gaze.
Emyr yipped and butted his head into his twin’s side. He did not care for the plan and his father’s anger had torn a larger wound in his already aching heart. Perhaps Idrys had been reckless, but wasn’t he, Emyr, as much to blame? After all, he’d followed his brother willingly enough. But what was there for it? He looked to his mother and nodded his narrow head in exaggerated fashion to make sure she understood.
The twins collapsed into exhausted slumber on their bed as the fire died in the hearth. The tale was slowly told in the hall to the curious folk by Hafwyn. Her husband had stormed to their bedroom and slammed the oaken door behind him without facing the people.
In the morning, Brychan, Chief of the Cantref of Llynwg emerged early. His hair had turned overnight to pure white.
Seven
Áine skipped down the rocky shore with her basket clutched tightly in one small hand. It was a blustery autumn day and the sky couldn’t make up its mind about whether to cloud over and rain. Clouds moved slowly overhead, reflected in the choppy waves. It was low tide and kelp decorated the shore in long brown ribbons.
Áine slowed as her first burst of energy faded and she began to look for the slick green seaweed that was her mission for the afternoon. The child, though only eleven, took her duties as the wisewoman Tesn’s helper very seriously.
A piteous cry sounding over the rhythmic lull of the waves caught her attention. Áine raised her head and searched the shore with her large green eyes. There, down the beach near a cluster of boulders, she thought she saw movement.
She glanced behind at the small fishing village where Tesn and she were staying until one of the village wives had given birth. The little sod huts tucked into the scrub high above the tide line were too far away for her to yell and the men were long gone from the shore with their round boats. She shrugged slender shoulders and walked fearlessly toward the strange sound.
It was a grey seal. It lay on the rocks and barked in warning at her as she approached. She stayed very still and observed the situation from a safe distance. Tesn always told her to collect what you know before you act. She took a deep breath and heard the pitiful cry again. It was not coming from the seal but from something nearby.
“I greet you, seal,” the red-headed child said solemnly.
She circled the creature who watched her quietly with large liquid eyes. She finally spied the cries origin. A seal pup, no more than a few days old, was caught between two large stones. Áine decided he must have slid down between them when his mother left him to hunt.
Áine set down her basket on a rock and moved slowly toward the seal and her pup. She kept her eyes averted and her body facing slightly sideways.
“Sah, sah, mother seal,” she said softly over and over. The mother backed away, offering no further aggression to the strangely fearless and unthreatening child.
Áine knelt in the silty muck beside the stones without a thought for her rough-spun dress. Pushing up a sleeve already now too short with her last spurt of growth, she reached between the stones to try to grasp the pup. He squealed as her hand came near, but though she pushed her arm in to the shoulder, she could not quite reach deep enough to get a grip on the slippery seal. Her fingertips brushed his thick fur but could go no further.
“Silly pup.” She shook her head at him in a crude imitation of Tesn’s gently chiding manner. “Found yourself a perfect little cave, haven’t you?”
She pulled at the stone nearest herself, since it was flatter and thinner than the boulder behind it that it rested upon. It barely shifted.
Áine rolled back her other sleeve and dug into the rocky muck around the seal pup’s trap. It seemed for every stone she removed to a pile bes
ide her, she found two more. Her hole began to fill with water.
She rose and glanced at the sea behind her, feeling guilty that she’d broken Tesn’s rule about never turning her back to the waves.
The tide was coming in. It had crept up the shore while she dug and was nearly to the waiting seal mother. Áine considered running for help, but if the tide reached the seal before she could, she wasn’t certain he’d be able to swim out the narrow opening before he drowned.
She stood and gripped the stone with both hands. Setting her weight against it, Áine pulled and pulled until her fingers were numb and scraped from the rough, cold stone. It was no use. She could not shift the rock, for much of it was buried far below the surface of the beach.
Áine did not like to give up easily. She continued to strain and pull. Her tears bleared her vision as the tide rose to lick her bare heels. A few dripped from her chin and bounced from the stone to sink into the water, turning to perfect shining pearls as they touched the rock. Áine was too focused on the seal and her effort to notice, much less heed Tesn’s warning about not letting her remarkable tears hit the earth.
Strong, pale hands reached over her and gripped the rock. Áine jerked her head up in surprise. Bending over her stood a woman with dark brown hair and smiling liquid brown eyes. Her skin was as white as Áine’s own and she was fully naked.
She spoke to the child in a language Áine’d never heard, the syllables sibilant and lilting. Her meaning seemed clear enough, however.
Together the woman and child pulled on the stone. The woman’s arms rippled with muscle beneath a sleek layer of fat and grudgingly the stone moved away from its resting place under the assault of their strong persistence. The opening grew and though the water flowed now around the rescuers’ ankles, soon enough the seal pup was free.
He swam in the shallow water to his mother. Reunited, the pair rode the waves out to deeper water and disappeared.
