Relics, Wrecks and Ruins

by Aiki Flinthart

  “Come on.” Clera pulled away sharply, moving forward, and Nona followed with Ruli at her side.

  “Music?” Ruli cocked her head.

  There did seem to be a faint music in the air, though produced by no instrument that Nona had ever heard. If Nona had been asked to predict what music might play amid the mist-haunted ruins of the Missing, she might have guessed at some kind of ethereal plainsong that the nuns’ chants in Sweet Mercy Convent were merely imperfect echoes of. This was not that. “It sounds rather…”

  “Jaunty,” Clera said.

  “I think it’s magic.” Nona turned back towards Ara, still standing where she’d left her, a shadow in the mist. “A kind of magic.” She didn’t feel any sense of danger. There was something here, ancient and strange, preserved against all probability, maintained over centuries by the dedication of the Missing’s metal servants. She took a few paces towards Ara and held a hand out, wanting to share this moment of mystery and wonder. “Come on.”

  Ara’s tight mask twitched and for a second Nona thought it would crack and return the old Ara to her. Instead, Ara turned her eyes towards Clera’s retreating back and her gaze hardened. She swept past Nona without a word, and the mounting, unexplained sense of joy ran from Nona like blood from a wound.

  Nona followed the other three. The lights ahead were moving, flying through the air, and the alien tune jangled through the mist. Slowly the structure took shape below the shifting illumination. An island of light amid the fog.

  “It’s a…” Nona joined the others.

  “Thing,” Clera said.

  The lights were set across a peaked circular roof that revolved on a central column. Beneath it, a circular platform just inches above the ground and yards below the roof also revolved around the center. And studding the platform were a dozen or more bizarre, brightly colored animals, no two the same, each sporting a saddle and moving sedately up and down on the silver pole that supported it.

  As the four explorers approached, open mouthed, caution abandoned, the whole structure slowed and halted, the animals all coming to rest at the bottom of their poles.

  “That’s a rabbit.” Ruli pointed to the nearest one. “A giant rabbit.”

  “With a saddle,” Clera added. “They’ve all got saddles.”

  The music had slowed with the platform, and grown more quiet.

  “That one’s a snail.” Ara frowned as if furiously searching for meaning.

  “A horse…with a horn.” Ruli pointed to another. “And a…thing…with two saddles.” This latter one looked a bit like a horse with two humps on its back, each sporting a saddle.

  “A…dragon?” Nona fixed on a scarlet beast and tried to match it to a dim memory of a picture Jula once showed her.

  “Keep back!” Ara drew her sword fast enough to make the air hiss, levelling it at the dragon. “I don’t trust it.”

  Nona kept her sword in its scabbard. The dragon was no larger than a small mule and somehow, like the music, it had a jaunty air. Its large yellow eye seemed to regard her as if it knew a joke that she did not.

  “They’ve all got saddles,” Clera repeated herself, stepping past Ara. “It’s for riding.”

  Ara kept her sword pointed at the dragon’s heart. “I don’t trus—"

  Clera spun on a heel and penetrated Ara’s non-existent defense to plant a kiss square on her lips. Nona gaped. A moment later Clera was on her backside, shoved violently away by Ara.

  Ara wiped at her mouth. “What in the hells—?”

  “There! That’s how long it took. And how it happened.” Clera, still on the ground, cut across Ara. “You don’t trust. That’s what you said. You don’t trust.” She was angry now, passion shaking her words. “And you should trust. I kissed Nona and she pushed me away. Not quite as hard, admittedly.” She got to her feet, rubbing her shoulder, the anger leaving her as quickly as it had flared. “You didn’t stop me either. And she told you. She didn’t have to, but she did. That’s trust right there. She trusted you to trust her. So, take that stick out of your backside and make up with her before your fear of losing her really does make you lose her. Because I’d take her away in a heartbeat if she’d let me.”

  Clera turned and pointed to the platform. “The Ancestor has kept this for us. For a thousand years maybe. Trapped beneath the ice. Ice that only melted because of what Nona did. Who she is. Trust her.” She singled out one of the beasts impaled on its silver pole. “Get on this…giant frog…and ride like a woman!”

  Following her own advice, Clera sprung forwards, leaping into the dragon’s saddle. Ruli, infected by the same madness, chose the horse with the horn.

  The music seemed to pause along with Nona’s breath. She prayed that here, where the ice of millennia had thawed, the hurt that had frozen what was most precious to her would also melt. For a long, painful moment Ara stood, trapped by forces that Nona didn’t fully understand. Then, with a noise that was almost a gasp, she turned to Nona, eyes bright, and reached out her hand. “Ride with me?”

  “Always.”

  They chose the not-horse with two humps and seated themselves either side of the pole. The music swelled and, somehow knowing that it had as many riders as it would get, the platform stole into motion, each animal beginning to rise and fall as the whole structure rotated.

  And all around them, in the glowing mist, the patient servants of the Missing worked at their tireless rebuilding, secure in the knowledge that what brings joy is always worth mending.

  Morgan of the Fay

  By Kate Forsyth

  There are those who believe that we of the fay are immortal.

  They are wrong. We are born, we grow, we die, just like any other living creature. It is true that time moves to a different rhythm in the realm of Annwn but that does not mean we do not know death, as the bards have sung so falsely for so long.

  For only those that know they will die can be wise. I have been called many things but of them all, Morgan the Wise is, I hope, the truest.

  I was fifteen when I first understood death and fifteen when I first lay with a man, clenching the seeds of his loving deep within me so that another child could sprout into life. Like the two gatehouses of a bridge spanning a turbulent river, the end of one life and the beginning of another mark my passage from child to woman, from sure innocence to uncertain knowledge. And so it is the story of my fifteenth summer that you must know, if you are to understand how I came to be who I am.

  I was born Margante, eldest granddaughter of Afallach, lord of Annwn, called by some the Fortunate Isle, for its richness and beauty; by others the Isle of Apples, for its fruit-laden orchards; and yet again, Caer Siddi or the Fairy Fortress, by those who have cause to fear the fay.

  Like my home, my name changes according to the namer. Those who love me most call me Morgan, a nickname given me by my youngest sister Thitis when first she began to babble.

  There were nine of us, a blessed number to those of our kind. When I was fifteen, Thitis was little more than two years old and the joy of my heart. I do not know if I loved her more at play, squealing with joy, or at night, when I carried her to bed, her downy head nestled against my shoulder. For my mother had died in the bearing of her, and so I was the only mother Thitis ever knew.

  You may wonder why it was not my mother’s death that first brought me face to face with mortality. You must realize my mother had borne nine daughters in thirteen years. She was worn and tired, and short of temper. She had believed the tales the bards sang, of the Fortunate Isle where death and sickness were unknown, where crops grew without cultivation, and the Tylwyth Teg danced the nights away. She was human, poor thing, seduced from her own people when only a girl herself. My father, Owain, rode up out of the water, smiling, holding down his hand to her. She took it, laughing as he drew her up before him and galloped back into the misty waters of the lake. Of course, she regretted it afterwards but it was too late then. We of the Tylwyth Teg do not let go easily.

  So, al
though I was sorry when my mother died, my grief was not very deep nor lasting, and certainly did not make me understand the fragility of my own life. I was healthy and strong, and busy with my own concerns. For, despite what the bards sing, the gardens and orchards of Annwn do need care. Not as much as the fields of humans, of course. We of the fay do not mind dandelions and clover mingling with our corn and beans, and dislike seeing things laid out in rows and squares, as you humans labor so hard to achieve. We let the wind and the birds and the bees help us in our labor, and sing as we wander amidst the flowers and the trees, and so you think what is done with love and merriment cannot be true work. But all of us have our work to do, even a princess with the blood of gods and goddesses running in her veins.

  Always, too, there were my lessons. I was of the Tylwyth Teg and magic was bred in my bones. I was hungry for such knowledge and so at the age of twelve, not long before my mother died, I was given into the care of the druids, to learn what I could.

  It was at the druids’ school that I first met Anna, daughter of Uther Pendragon, who had been sent to the Isle of Apples to learn the seven arts. We were distant cousins of sorts, for Anna could trace her lineage back to Llyr of the Sea through her mother Igraine, and Llyr had been married to my grandfather’s sister Penarddun.

  It may seem strange to you that eleven generations had lived and died between Penarddun and Anna, and only one between my grandfather and me, but that is the nature of time in Annwn.

  Anna was a tall, fair girl, the tallest and fairest I had ever seen. Beside her I was little and dark, which at first made me hate her. No one could hate Anna for long, though. She was like a soft white cat with round blue eyes and a satisfied purr. It did not take her long to win me over completely. She admired my gray eyes and nicknamed me Argante, and I called her Ermine for her thick pelt of pale hair.

  We were as close as any sisters those three years we studied together. I must admit my lessons suffered, for we were always laughing and whispering together at the edge of the grove instead of listening to our teachers. Anna and I told each other everything in those first ardent years of our friendship and so, you see, it was my fault that her brother came raiding upon our shores.

  They say I hate Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, and indeed I have reason to. Yet did I not give him Caledfwlch, forged here upon our shores and imbued with the powers of Annwn? And when the magic of the sword was not, in the end, enough to save him, did he not know to call for me and did I not go? Would I have done so if I hated him as I should?

  The stories they tell of Arthur, which you listen to with such eagerness, they are like an apple which has been baked with honey and studded with cloves and hung from a silk ribbon. It no longer looks like an apple or smells like an apple, but cut it open and inside you will find pips. Plant these seeds and an apple tree will grow.

  So here is the truth of it, the apple beneath the spices and honey. I hate Arthur for his murdering and plundering, and for the blood he spilled that day, and yet it was because of that blood that I first felt sorrow and terror and joy too, in the flame that can leap between man and woman, and in the painful tenderness that comes with the bringing forth of new life. With this knowledge, I learned to see beyond the flimsy membrane that separates life and death. If it was not for Arthur I may never have become, in the end, Morgan the Wise.

  It was a bright autumn day when Arthur’s ship Prydwen sailed through the mists towards our shores. Belle Garde shone upon its hill like a blue flame, its many-faceted towers glittering where the sun struck. I was playing in the garden with the youngest of my sisters, Vevan and Thitis, while Anna reclined on the grass, being far too lazy to want to toss a ball around.

  Suddenly she lifted herself up, pointing. “Look, a ship!”

  We all stood staring at the boat with its high sternpost and large steering oars, its great square sail painted with some device in red. We were rather surprised, though it was not unknown for strangers to find their way through the haze of mirage that conceals our realm. In those days, the doors between the worlds stood ajar and there was much traffic between those of human blood and those of the fay. The doors are all locked now, of course, and only those that have the key may open them. We of the Tylwyth Teg are not so trusting as we once were.

  As I stood gazing at the ship, I felt an odd frisson down the back of my neck, as if someone had crept up behind me and blown on my skin. I shuddered and rubbed my arms, although I was not cold.

  “Let’s go down to the dock and see who it is,” Vevan cried. “We aren’t expecting visitors, are we, Morgan?”

  I shook my head. “Not that I know of. Surely Taidi would’ve let me know if he was expecting anybody?” I dusted leaves and grass from my skirt and held down my hand to Anna. “Coming?”

  “Of course,” she answered. “Miss the one exciting thing to happen here since I got back? Let’s hope it’s a boatload of handsome young warriors who have lost their way. Maybe we can entice them to stay awhile?”

  I smiled, though I still felt that puzzling tightening of my nerves. I was not concerned by the impact of unexpected guests on our larder, for we always had the cauldron of plenty to tide us over any need for food, nor was I worried about where to house the travelers, for my grandfather’s castle was vast. I felt no fear, for what could one small ship do against the warriors of the Tylwyth Teg? It was a chill akin to fear that troubled me, however, and being still a child myself, I shrugged it away and went running down through the garden as eagerly as the others.

  We were not the only ones to make our way towards the jetty, for we of the fay are always curious and eager for any diversion. Children came running and shouting down the road, men laid down their harps or set aside their tools, and women came wandering out of the forests, many of them with flowers entwined in their hair and their mouths stained red with berries. By the time the ship was dropping her sails and sliding in beside the jetty, there was a jostling crowd waiting for her, all talking and laughing.

  “Look at the red dragon on her sail,” Anna cried excitedly. “That is Arthur’s device! What can he be doing here?” The animation in her face faded, and she frowned. “It is only a month or so since I saw him. I hope nothing is wrong…”

  Then she began to wave and call, for a tall, young warrior was leaning over the bulwark. He leapt down and embraced Anna affectionately. I looked him over curiously, for I had heard a great deal about the young king. He was as big and handsome as Anna had said, his hair and beard near as fair as hers and his eyes as blue. He was not yet twenty, but he was battle-hardened and battle-scarred. He had seen heavy fighting since he won the throne, I had heard, and certainly the guilelessness of his youth had been worn away, I could see that at once.

  He met my gaze with his own, bold and raking. “So this is your beloved Argante. She is almost as beautiful as you describe, Anna, at least for a fairy. I wonder if she is as clever?”

  I felt anger roaring in my ears. I cast him one disdainful glance and said, very distinctly, “It would not be difficult to be more clever than a bone-headed warrior whose ears are still ringing from the last battle he fought.”

  King Arthur laughed. He cast me a look of admiration. If I had not sensed the mockery behind it, I might have half swooned from the warmth of it but I drew myself away, feeling again a shudder of dread. It may merely have been fear at the power such a man might have over me. I do not think so now, however. I am old enough now to recognize the chill breath of foreboding.

  A small band of men alighted from the ship, among them a beautiful, slightly built man that I recognized. This was the bard Taliesen, who had once been a peasant boy in the employ of the great seer Ceridwen. One day, while she stirred her cauldron, three drops of a magical potion spat out and burned his hand. Sucking the burn, he had tasted the elixir of knowledge meant for her son and at once knew all the secrets of the universe.

  Knowing Ceridwen would never forgive him, he fled. He turned into a hare; she turned into a hound. He turned
into a fish; she became an otter. When he grew wings and took to the sky, she transformed into a hawk. At last, in desperation, he hid himself in the shape of a grain of wheat. Ceridwen changed into a hen and ate him.

  That should have been the end of him but once Ceridwen resumed her usual shape, she found she was pregnant. In time she bore a baby boy who was so beautiful she could not bear to kill him. She trussed him up in a leather bag and threw him into the sea. Two days later he was rescued by a prince who raised the boy as his own, calling him Taliesin, which means “Shining Brow”. He grew to be a great bard and seer, though one with little love for the fay.

  At the sight of Taliesen, I fell behind, troubled and unsure. All seemed well. King Arthur and his men were looking about them with pleasure. My indolent Anna was the most animated I had ever seen. Everyone was smiling and laughing. Everyone that is, except Taliesen the bard, and I.

  The doors of the castle stood open, welcoming light spilling out into the gloaming. My grandfather sat in his throne at the head of the great hall, his nine white hounds lying at his feet. They raised their heads and snarled as King Arthur came in. I was glad to see how the king’s step faltered, though it was only for a moment. He ignored the growling dogs, with their ears and eyes as red as blood, and bowed low over my grandfather’s hand.

  I left the men to their polite fencing, and withdrew to my rooms to change for what promised to be a long and tedious night, listening to Anna’s brother boast of his doings and watching her hang on his arm and believe every word.

  When I came down, the great hall was set up with tables and trestles, the minstrels were playing, and King Arthur sat on my grandfather’s left hand, my father Owain on his right. On a side table sat the cauldron of plenty, its golden sides gleaming in the candlelight. It was one of the treasures of Annwn, made by Bran the Blessed himself. With pearls all round its rim, it could only be kindled by the breath of nine maidens. It would produce the most delicious food until all that sat at the table were replete, filled with new strength and vigor.