A Heart in Sun and Shadow (Cymru That Was Book 1)

by Annie Bellet

  “Do you, do you mind?” Áine asked. Her heartbeat sped up.

  “Mind? Goodness, no. You’re a wisewoman, Áine. And my son a man well grown. Both of you are free by age and custom to find joy where you will.”

  Áine’s smile split her face, though a strange shadow of thought lived still in her green eyes. “Thank you, Hafwyn.” She rose and left the hall again.

  Hafwyn watched her go and guessed at the girl’s thoughts. Áine was clever and used to unorthodox thinking, plus she’d had more experience with the world’s mysteries through her own work as a wisewoman.

  If they don’t tell her, she’s of a mind to sort it out on her own, I think. The woman shook her head with a smile.

  Áine left the hall and pulled her cloak tight against the sunny chill of the afternoon. She spied Urien and Llew chopping wood by the smoke house and made her way toward them. Garlands hung over every door and casement now, lending green and red cheer to the grey and white of the landscape.

  “Llew, Urien.” Áine nodded at them as she framed her thoughts. She was unsure she understood her own suspicions but decided to follow her healer’s instincts and go where the mounting evidence led her.

  “You’ve been friends with Emyr for long time, no?” she asked.

  Llew straightened and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “Aye, since we were children.”

  “Were you around when, well, when he lost his twin?” She stepped in closer and lowered her voice.

  Llew and Urien exchanged a glance. They’d wondered when she might ask questions since it seemed she was growing close to their chief and friend.

  Urien answered her. “Aye. Bad business, that. He’s never been the same since.”

  It was the simple truth. The Emyr who had left had been a happy and kind youth with none of his brother’s brooding or impulsive tendencies. He’d returned hollow with grief and the healing of time had only damped the pain, not banished it. He was prone these days to all sorts of odd or rash actions, like riding out hunting at night or passionately arguing a decision he’d made himself earlier in the day.

  “He changed? How?”

  Llew explained some of it and added, “Grief and that nasty bump his head took, most likely. There weren’t ever two men closer than Idrys and Emyr in heart.”

  “Bump on the head?” Áine recalled Hafwyn’s tale and wondered that she’d failed to mention her son being injured before.

  “In the slide that killed his brother,” Urien said. “He forgot himself for near two months before he recovered and came home. Lucky a kindly hermit found him and healed him up.”

  Pieces of the puzzle settled into place in Áine’s mind. She stared at the inner pattern and found it made a sort of impossible sense. Her dream of the two black hounds returned to her mind again and she fit that in as well and wondered at it.

  “You could always ask Emyr yourself, if you’d like,” Llew said after she remained silent for too long. “Sometimes a man will tell a woman he cares for things that he wouldn’t speak to another man.”

  She gave herself a small shake and winked at him. “So if I’d like your secrets I should pry at Caron, eh?”

  “Oh, aye. That little lady has skinned me cleaner of secrets than bones picked over by wolves.” He chuckled good-naturedly.

  Áine grinned and thanked them both. She turned and saw Emyr walking into the hall with his hound on his heels. It was very nearly sunset. She needed only one more piece to confirm her thoughts and, if she were correct, she’d have to wait until dark. She shook her head at her impossible thoughts, but now that it was all coming together she couldn’t find another shape that fit so well.

  * * *

  “You slept with her? And didn’t think to mention it?”

  Time was shorter than Emyr would have liked since his day had been filled with the usual tasks surrounding a feast day and the winter tax collections. He sank down to the bed and pulled his stockings off. “Though I suppose expecting you to make up your mind about anything without some rash act associated would be expecting the sky to turn green, wouldn’t it?” He shook his head.

  Idrys stood on the sheepskin rug and hung his head. He knew he should have mentioned it, but Emyr had covered well enough.

  The tingling in his blood rose to fever pitch and Emyr knew there were only moments left. He thought belatedly of the pearl tear and realized it would have to wait until morning.

  Idrys had just pulled his tunic over his head when the soft knock came at the door. He picked up his belt and glanced at his brother.

  “Come in?” he called.

  Áine entered, closing the door behind her.

  Idrys’s heart sped up and he smiled. He’d never dreamed that anything would ease the relentless pain of guilt and loss he carried with him always, but today he felt differently. He felt as though some part of him that had been out of place for years had finally settled back down where it belonged and taken with it the sharpest edge of his troubles.

  She moved toward him, a white-and-red vision with a strange smile on her face. “How are your ribs?” she asked.

  “Didn’t you ask me this earlier?” he said, raising a raven’s-wing brow at her.

  “I’m a healer, we worry.” She shrugged lightly and stepped in close to him. Her hands came up and wound around his neck. He sighed with pleasure and bent to kiss her.

  Áine let her mind sink into his body as she’d done earlier that day. This time she felt the throbbing bruises on his ribs, though none were broken and it only hurt when he forgot and breathed too deeply.

  She pulled slightly away from him with a gasp and her smile fled. In its place there was only an intent searching knowledge in her leaf-and-sunlight eyes.

  “Idrys?” she said softly, making his name both a plea and statement in one.

  A painful shuddering ran through him and he gripped her close with a small strangled cry, burying his head in her sweetly scented red hair. She knew then her suspicions for truth, though she did not understand the full story as yet. She was in love not with a man with strange and shifting moods, but with two men, one dark and brooding and tormented with unspoken guilt, the other sad and kind and full of compassion for his twin’s pained spirit.

  Áine turned her head and looked at Emyr who stood staring up at her with all too human eyes. She wondered that she’d not noted how the hound’s eyes matched his master’s so well before.

  “Emyr,” she said to the hound and he nodded his head in an incongruous gesture. “Sit,” she said to them both. “Tell me the story, please?”

  Idrys sat with her on the bed and told her the events of those horrible days in fits and starts, glancing often at his silent twin. His telling was slightly different than Emyr might have spoken had he a human tongue, for Idrys’s guilt weighed heavily on the words, but the basic story remained unchanged.

  To Emyr’s surprise, his brother shared with Áine what he’d withheld from their parents and spoke of his shame and desire for Seren. At the end of the tale, he stopped abruptly and looked at her with hollow and dark eyes.

  Áine slipped her hands over his. “Idrys, I do not think your mother or your brother blame you. You were both so young. Seren manipulated you, played on your passions and inexperience.”

  “What is done cannot be undone,” he said as he dropped his gaze to their joined hands.

  “I’ll have you both, if,” Áine paused and took a deep, steadying breath, “if you’ll both have me?”

  Emyr rose from his place and pressed his head into her thigh as Idrys threw back his head and laughed.

  “Are you crazy, woman?” He shook his head at her mildly annoyed look, remembering his own standoffish and moody actions. “Áine, Áine, it was not for lack of love that I’ve resisted you but fear of inviting further pain. I’m sorry for it. Emyr is right, I think, perhaps it is time to let go the past at least a little. Though,” he added more solemnly, “I’ve small practice at it and can’t promise it’ll go with ease.”

&nb
sp; Áine smiled at him and her own heart pricked with a shadow of grief. “We’ve all had loss, Idrys.”

  She wished Tesn could have met these strange young men. It would be just the sort of mysterious story her mother would love. Áine knew she’d have to tell them of her own obscure origins and the selkie eventually. She realized that Emyr had never asked her about the tear and wondered if he’d even mentioned it to his twin. She guessed somehow he hadn’t.

  There was time and time for that later, however. She responded to Idrys’s heated looked with her own passion and crawled into his embrace.

  Emyr sighed very heavily and gave a small whine. Idrys looked up from the bed and grinned. “Dawn will come soon enough. Do you want me to let you into the hall?”

  Emyr shook his narrow head and flopped down with another sigh onto the carpet. He’d lived enough moments vicariously through his twin that he was willing to survive a few more if it meant a preview of Áine’s lovely form.

  “I don’t mind if you stay,” Áine said, “though while I might love the man, I think I’d rather not have the hound in my bed.” She looked at him with worried eyes, not wishing to offend.

  Emyr looked at her and nodded again. He understood completely though his exile stung as a painful reminder of his cast-off humanity. He lay on the rug and found himself looking forward to the dawn for the first time in many years.

  Though many glances were cast at the closed door, no one disturbed the chief. Hafwyn made sure of that, murmuring excuses and smiling every time she looked toward her sons’ quarters. When Caron politely asked if Emyr might wish for supper, Hafwyn made the younger woman blush by mentioning that there were many kinds of hunger.

  And many kinds of healing, she reminded herself with another small smile.

  * * *

  Áine fell asleep with her head pillowed on Idrys’s warm broad shoulder and found herself caught in a strange dream.

  She stood in a familiar clearing with the two black hounds on one side and the twins standing on the other. Idrys and Emyr stared only at each other and did not seem to hear her calling their names. She found she could not move.

  Before her a tall white stone loomed and out from behind it emerged a woman. Her body was draped with white cloth but her face was bare and her features shifted between the selkie’s broad face and Tesn’s wrinkled smile.

  “Mother?” Áine said softly, paralyzed with grief and confusion.

  “Do you love them, daughter?” Tesn/selkie asked.

  Áine felt the weight of the question and paused, knowing somehow that there was more than just a dream in this. She looked at the twins who stared through her, unseeing and lost. Her heart ached with the desire to soothe that despairing look forever from their handsome faces.

  “Yes,” Áine said, “though I know I cannot stay.”

  “You can free them, Áine, free them and perhaps then stay. What man could refuse to wed a woman who’d saved him?” Tesn/selkie said. “But you must come to the Ilswyn before the end of the longest night. And you must not speak of where or why you go to anyone.”

  “What? Why not? And where is this Ilswyn?” Áine asked. She looked again at the twins before returning the implacable gaze of the shifting dream woman.

  “Because it is thus done with magic, my heart. You must go now. Follow the owl, she’ll show you to the gate.”

  The dream began to unravel and Áine could feel Idrys’s breathing warmth beside her in the bed.

  “Wait!” she cried but the dream dissolved leaving only the faint memory of Tesn whispering I love you as Áine awoke in the cold dark room.

  Idrys slept on beside her and did little more than shift as she rose and dressed quickly. She wondered at her own mind being made up so quickly, but she’d failed to heed a dream such as that before when it had warned her of the flood and she’d no wish to ignore such a gift again. If she were wrong she’d lose only a little time and get some exercise.

  Emyr raised his narrow head and looked at her with eyes that reflected the dying firelight in their curious depths.

  “Shh, love,” she said to him, “I’ll return. Tell Idrys. I promise I’ll return, just wait for me if you can.” She bent and kissed his bony head, breathing deep of his soft scent.

  She eased open the door and walked into the hall. It took only a few moments to pull on her boots and cloak.

  Áine slipped out of Clun Cadair in the light of false dawn. She looked up and saw the dark form of a bird circling to the north and east. She set her shoulders and though she took many a backward glance at the sleeping village that had become home these past few months, she put her feet on the path her heart bid her and moved off into the snowy morning.

  Part Two

  Sixteen

  Áine swung her arms to warm her numbed hands as the sun climbed sluggishly into a sky pockmarked by clouds. Looking back she could no longer see the settlement and in front of her the wall of the forest loomed. The strange urgency and certainty she’d felt upon waking from the vivid dream faded away with daylight and left her chilled and wondering what she’d been thinking.

  Her stomach reminded her she’d not eaten the night before and she cursed her stupidity in not even grabbing a few provisions or so much as a belt pouch on her way out. She shook her head and pulled the hood of her cloak tighter. She’d get to the trees and then turn back if an obvious path or sign had not presented itself. This was madness anyway.

  You can free them.

  It echoed through her mind and she sighed as she set one numb foot in front of the other in the crackling and frosted grass.

  The trees, which had seemed so close before, grew very slowly larger until at last, as the sun played hide-and-seek among the clouds, Áine reached the straggling edge of the wood. It was not the unbroken and imposing wall it had seemed from afar.

  The woods provided a little relief from the insidious icy wind that had crept beneath her dress and up her sleeves all morning. She walked inside the edge and looked around, waiting for inspiration to strike her.

  The trees were all nearly bare, standing dark against the sky. A few little birds with black-capped heads flitted among the branches. The forest floor was dark with leaf mold and a few of the shadowed branches retained a light decoration of dry snow.

  Áine stood inside the trees until her feet hurt with cold and her limbs started to stiffen with the lack of activity. She snorted finally, laughing at herself. She’d half-expected some sort of magical path to open in front of her.

  “Áine, you’re an idiot,” she said aloud. On the up side of things, she’d have a nice long walk to decide on a believable reason for wandering off in winter by herself with only the clothes on her back. She turned and started to walk out of the trees toward home as she shook off her disappointment.

  It was only a dream.

  The soft rush of wings stopped her. She looked up and saw a large white owl with scarlet eyes land on a branch just above her head. A mixture of excitement and confusion swept through her. The owl barely rested once she saw it before lifting off again and winging through the dark branches. Áine turned and went after it.

  I’m too cold to be dreaming still, she thought and a pang of guilt went through her. She’d almost turned back, nearly given up. She vowed to herself no matter what happened next, she’d not turn back so easily again.

  You can free them.

  The promise led her on. The owl stayed ahead, just in sight. Áine broke into an easy run, the pace helping to warm her body as she clutched her skirts and cloak tightly to herself. Deeper into the forest she went, following her pale guide. Low branches threatened to catch her hair and her arms and face were scratched by brush and brambles. Áine kept up her pace, pushing aside these small annoyances.

  She recalled the other part of what her dream mother had told her. She must reach the Ilswyn before the end of the longest night. She had no idea how far there was yet to go and her uncertainty helped lend energy to her pace.

  Darkness forc
ed her to a walk. The owl hopped from branch to branch above her as she, frustrated, picked her way through the wood. Her guide’s feathers shone with iridescent light, allowing Áine to keep an eye on the owl while also navigating the wood. She’d become nearly immune to the cold, the chill so deep in her bones that she only noticed it when she rubbed her hands together or slapped her thighs to bring the blood into them again.

  Soon, exhausted and freezing, Áine stumbled more than walked, her eyes fixed on the owl. Hunger and thirst rode her but she gripped in her mind the promise her dream had given her.

  She would not give in so easily again, not this soon. She had only to recall the pain and guilt in Idrys’s eyes as he’d told her their story, to remember how many nights he’d pulled away from his loved ones or drank himself to sleep. She recalled Emyr’s deep sorrow for a twin he could not touch nor speak with, his pain at his inability to ease the suffering of another anymore than he could ease his own.

  Áine remembered and pushed herself onward.

  She nearly ran into the standing stones. The owl came to rest on one of the large white stones that loomed out of the deep of night just ahead of her. Áine stopped abruptly and leaned into a stone. She closed her eyes for a moment. These had to be a sign, a marker of some sort. She opened her eyes, sniffing the air. Wood smoke and ripe apples.

  The owl hopped down from the stone and transformed in midair. A slender and beautiful young woman stood before Áine. She was white of hair and complexion with violet eyes and wore a simple yellow gown sewn about with little green leaves.

  “Áine, I greet you. I am Blodeuedd.” The woman smiled.