Bound into the Blood

by Myers, Karen

  She sighed. It had made sense to join her new husband at the huntsman’s house in the winter when the snow was heavy and movement was difficult, and now her pregnancy provided its own travel difficulties. She rested her hand on the swell beneath her breasts and smiled. It was worth it, every minute. She could always paint later, but children were so few for the fae.

  She paused in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder. “Shall we go home?” she asked Imp.

  The half-grown tomcat rose from the top of the boxes piled up under the window where he could get the most warmth and stretched, first his rump in the air, and then his shoulders. He hopped down and joined her at the door.

  “Why are you here with us, Senua?” Angharad murmured as she looked down at him. Unlike a normal cat, inclined to twine about her ankles and make her cautious of her balance, Imp paced alongside her and didn’t get in her way. He glanced up now, as she spoke, but Angharad expected no reply.

  She walked across the lane and up the steps to her own door, and the two of them entered the quiet house. Her terriers danced out into the hall to greet her.

  “I’m in here,” George called from the study, having heard the door open. Angharad found him in his favorite armchair with side chairs drawn up all around him to serve as tables. He’d left himself an aisle for getting through, but it seemed as if the entire contents of the six boxes were stretched out within arm’s reach. Not quite true, she corrected herself, as she peered past him and saw the piles on the library floor.

  “You’ve been busy,” she said. His dogs thumped the ground with their tails when they heard her voice.

  He looked up from the document in his hand. “I’ve only just started reading,” he said. “It’s fascinating. She seems to have kept everything.”

  “Tell me,” she said. She found an unoccupied chair beyond his reach, and made herself comfortable. Imp jumped up and claimed her lap and she stroked him casually. His purrs vibrated through her clothing.

  “Well, I grabbed all the correspondence,” he waved his hand around at the chairs, “and started to sort it chronologically. I won’t bother you with the earliest stuff for now, the start of her trip and her time in Ireland, except for one item. She mentioned casually to her mom that it was too bad she never met her grandfather.” He raised his eyes to Angharad. “Gwyn, that would be.”

  She smiled at the thought of the dignified Gwyn’s sojourn of twenty years in the human world.

  “She was wrong, you know,” he said. “Gwyn told me he met her several times when she was a child, out on her pony at Bellemore. To her, he was just some stranger.” He shook his head, smiling.

  “But you’ll find the Welsh material interesting,” he continued.

  “Hmm?” she said, encouragingly, her hand busy rubbing Imp’s neck.

  “You can imagine, she didn’t tell her parents everything, or her friends. So I’ve had to read between the lines.”

  He straightened up in his chair. “But then I realized something. You know, she was trying to become a writer.”

  She nodded.

  “Most of what’s in there,” he pointed his chin at the piles in the library, “That’s what she was working on. There are short stories, a novel, bits that look like the start of other books. What you might expect.” He glanced at her to make sure she was following him. “I haven’t read those yet.”

  “But there was also something else, not letters, not books.” He pointed at the very small pile on the chair closest to him, just a few pages. “These are notes, maybe for a work or works in progress. But you know what I think? I think it’s personal. I think it was a way of recording her own experiences in a form she could use later for her writing. Not a diary, exactly, but sort of the shadow of one, transmuted.”

  He cleared his throat. “I have to keep reminding myself that maybe none of this happened, that maybe she was fictionalizing it for other use, or making it up altogether.” He paused, and Angharad heard the change in his voice. “But maybe it’s true.”

  “What sort of things does she describe?” she asked.

  “Well, there are some initial notes about a man in the woods, appearing to her like Pan.” He looked up. “That’s like saying some sort of ‘wood-sprite.’ Pan has horns, too, little goat ones. She goes on about the fascination of his eyes, the silence of his movements. All typical romance stuff—that’s a type of book,” he told Angharad, “a tale of love and adventure.” He pursed his lips. “But, you know, I’ll bet that’s a reference to my father.”

  “What else does she say?” Angharad prompted. He’s right, she thought, that’s a sketch of a real thing. That rings true.

  “There’s one sequence, it’s very disturbing. I want you to read it.”

  He frowned as he handed her a page, and wouldn’t look her in the eye.

  She took the sheet from him and began to read.

  A fun evening and too much to drink. Green-flavored, like May wine, and heady. Dark in the room. Tall, so tall. His head strange and my head spinning. Scrapes on the ceiling. A fur coverlet on the bed? Checked the ceiling in the morning and found marks.

  Like that other time, years ago.

  “What do you think…” she started, and George shushed her.

  “Don’t talk about it out loud.” He winced.

  Cernunnos, she thought. He doesn’t like this. That’s why George wanted me to read it myself. What does this fragment mean? Corniad, not in human form?

  She raised her hand to her mouth and looked at her husband. She feared to ask him, with Cernunnos listening. Our private family joke about fawns, she thought—maybe that’s not so funny after all. She read it a second time and gave him an uneasy glance, and his eyes widened as he realized what she must be thinking

  “I would never…” he protested, and winced again.

  She sat in silence for a moment, considering.

  “Twice, she says, in this.” She lifted the page.

  “And it’s dated a few months before she died. Then there’s this.” He gave her one more sheet to read.

  Already used “George.” Ought to be his parents’ turn next. Why won’t he tell me their names? What happened to him that he won’t discuss his childhood?

  “Pregnant? She was pregnant? What happened to the child? Was she pregnant when she died?”

  As she spoke, George raised the palms of his hands to his forehead and bent over, with a gasp.

  She stood up, dumping Imp, and knelt beside his chair. “Stop it, Lord Cernunnos. Don’t bully him like this.”

  George grimaced in pain, but snaked one arm around her in reassurance, and straightened up again, determined to continue.

  “One more thing,” he said. “I found this in the last box.”

  George steeled himself for what was sure to follow and handed Angharad the old newspaper clipping. It was an account from the local paper in Wales.

  He’d already read it, though it had taken three attempts to get through it as Cernunnos blazed at him in fury for his disobedience.

  He didn’t care. He’d almost had a brother—that’s what mattered to him. A boy, the article said. If his mother never got her husband to divulge his parents’ names, then she might have named him for her own father, Gilbert. He decided that would be his name, when he thought of him. Gil. Gil the Ghost. And if Cernunnos doesn’t let up, maybe I’ll be joining him, he reflected ruefully through the throbbing of the room around him in time to the pounding in his head.

  He glanced over at Angharad, kneeling next to him, and tightened the grip of his arm around her. He knew what she was reading, but he tried not to think about it to get some release from Cernunnos. That was a losing battle—all the fragments of information he’d gotten when he’d stolen a look at the policeman’s notes as a child were now made real and vivid, impossible to suppress.

  The article reported a car accident, not far from his childhood home. He’d always heard they’d been out for a walk. The vehicle had plunged into the river. His mother, str
apped to the passenger seat, had died in shallow water, not by drowning but from head injuries, and there were traces of blood on the driver’s side, too. But the details… boar tracks all over the scene, the driver’s door open, seatbelt not used. Most of all, his mother pregnant and his father—missing, body not found.

  Cernunnos’s strong displeasure tore at him, and George huddled in his imaginary mental shelter, wishing for stronger walls. The god could kill him, he was very well aware of it, and their brief working history together would probably not deter him. Cernunnos allowed him the illusion of privacy, most of the time, and tolerated some disagreement, but this was more than a warning. He’d seen this anger before, but never directed at him. He knew he was defenseless if Cernunnos decided to take direct action.

  The message was clear—Cernunnos was insistent that he stop. I can’t, he called out to the thunderstorm raging around his fragile defense, hoping for understanding. I’m sorry, but this is my father. I have to find out, you know I do. Why are you so furious about it?

  A veil was drawn over the storm and it was swallowed up as if it had never been. He probed, hesitantly. Lord Cernunnos? Silence. As if he were gone.

  CHAPTER 5

  Angharad felt the sudden release of tension in George’s body and raised an eyebrow at him.

  “He’s gone,” he told her, uneasiness obvious in his voice.

  She rose heavily to her feet again, and he stood up with her and gave her his arm in support.

  “Come with me,” she said. “You’ve been cooped up in here with this far too long.”

  She dropped the papers onto the chair they came from and led the way out the back door onto the wide veranda where they could sit and admire the garden in the fading light. Imp padded at her side and she let him out too, but the other animals remained in the cool interior of the house.

  She took one of the large wooden armchairs and George followed her lead, sitting next to her and watching her to see what she intended. He had one leg up and crossed over the knee at the ankle, and the loose foot jittered nervously.

  Imp bounded down the broad steps out into the garden, and she smiled faintly, wondering what he was trying to hunt. She reached out a hand to her husband over the little table that stood between their chairs and took his hand when he offered it in response.

  “Is Cernunnos truly gone?” she said. “I think he’s not used to not getting his way and he’s just sulking.”

  George turned his head to watch Imp, then lifted it in the direction of the kennels, not visible through the high solid wall dividing his garden from the lane. His eyes glazed slightly in the manner she’d come to associate with his beast-sense, and she heard the excited noise of the hounds in response.

  “Ives won’t thank me for that,” he said, pointing his chin at the clamor. “But I can still talk to the hounds and hear them.”

  He paused for a moment. “And the ways… I can feel them all, like normal.” His mouth quirked. “Nothing normal about it, is there? Still, nothing’s changed.”

  “And those are gifts from Cernunnos, aren’t they?” she asked, knowing the answer.

  “I’ve always assumed so.”

  “What about the forms?”

  He started. “After what you just read about my father?”

  “If it’s true,” she said, placidly. “And you’re not your father, are you?” That helped, she could see. He was spooked by an assumed guilt that didn’t belong to him. Now he began to calm down, and his foot stopped jiggling.

  He released her hand and rose from his chair, glancing up to check the height of the porch roof over their heads. He invoked the deer-headed man and looked at her with his altered senses.

  She heard her own intake of breath and wondered what he could smell. It must be a very different world to inhabit. The deer-head dipped and he pulled up the horned-man, and the broad alien face with its antlers looked as it always did. He dropped the form and remained standing, pursing his lips and putting his thoughts together.

  “Empty forms,” he said to her.

  “But that’s not unusual, is it?”

  “No, it’s not. He only inhabits them when he has some need. Or sometimes, upon request.” He stared out into the garden for a moment with an unreadable expression, then turned and smiled at her, and sat down again.

  “You’re right, I get it. Not really gone, then,” he said. “It was just so abrupt, as if I’d never see him again.”

  Imp’s explorations had been brought to a halt by the scolding of a red squirrel The sudden explosion of fury attracted her attention and drew a chuckle from George. “He’s swearing at Imp, in ‘squirrel.’ I can hear the intent.” He tapped his forehead.

  “I was thinking about roses this morning,” he commented. “Is it true you don’t see them at court, that Gwyn doesn’t like them, because of his father?”

  Angharad nodded. “I miss them,” she said. “I painted them so often as Lludd’s court artist. In bud or overblown, all the colors… Such a luscious flower. And such a lovely scent, spicy or sweet, depending on the variety.”

  She looked over at George. “It’s too bad about Gwyn and roses. No one wants to offend him. It’s not that he would say anything, I think, it’s just that people know…”

  “He’s king now, and separated from his father,” George said firmly. “He should let it go.”

  That was unexpected, she thought. I suppose he’s right. We do have a habit of deference in the court, don’t we.

  Imp returned and hopped into George’s thigh for an ear rub, then walked across the little table to Angharad and took his customary place in her lap. “No more room here soon,” she warned him.

  They sat in companionable silence for a few moments.

  “My father is family,” George said, quietly. “No less than our daughter coming. There must have been a time when he looked at my mother this way, before I was born.”

  He rubbed his face. “How can I not look into this? My mother’s pregnancy, the death… What actually happened?”

  He paused, as if waiting for Cernunnos to react. “Cernunnos has all the power he needs to stop me, I know that. But, damn it, I thought we were getting along better, after Gaul.”

  He looked down at the floor. “I suppose I like him, after a fashion. We’re very different, but we were developing a reasonable partnership…”

  “He’s become family to you, too, hasn’t he?” Angharad suggested.

  He glanced sideways at her. “Yes, I guess so.”

  He leaned back. “But Conrad, or Corniad, or whatever it really is, and Léonie—they’re my blood, my parents. If there’s any possibility my father is out there, I can’t ignore it.”

  Angharad remembered her own children, turned against her by Lludd, King of Britain. She thought of the treachery of Gwyn’s sister Creiddylad. “Don’t be so trusting,” she told her husband. “Family doesn’t always deserve your affection or your loyalty. You can’t make them something they are not.”

  He looked at her sympathetically and she knew he was thinking of her children.

  “Yes, it’s true,” he said. “But I have so little family. I can’t just throw them away unexamined.”

  He leaned forward briskly and clenched his hands. “I’m going to make a list of exactly what I need to find out,” he told her. “And when I’m ready, I’m going to go to Mariah Catlett’s house and do some research. The deaths took place in the human world—there must be more trace of them there.”

  “And Cernunnos?” she said. The god’s behavior worried her.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes, well, if he doesn’t kill me first just for looking,” he answered ruefully.

  “What do you think of this division?”

  Gwyn ap Nudd, King of Annwn, sat back in his chair and let George examine the map of his territories, expanded to the coastline in the far south, where Florida would be in the human world. George looked across the table in the council room at Ceridwen, Gwyn’s scholar and healer,
the woman he thought of as the court wizard. Her ageless face was unreadable, as usual.

  “Your work?” he asked her. She nodded.

  “This is the territory that Gwyn is thinking of ceding to Llefelys,” she said.

  Gwyn’s uncle, the king of Gaul, had helped him break away from his father Lludd and establish himself as an independent king in the new world. The cost to Gwyn was territory and the services of the rock-wights to create a travel way from Gaul across the ocean.

  On the map, the southern line wavered along from the coast near where Charleston would be and extended west along the bottom of the Appalachians.

  “So, you’re giving him the southern coast. How far west?”

  “Our own domain is not bounded on the west,” Gwyn said. “You know that Madog’s old territory is our first crossing of the Blue Ridge mountains.”

  “But it will be bounded eventually, by the ocean if nothing else. I recommend that you set a western boundary for Llefelys.”

  At his gesture, Ceridwen passed him a blank page and her steel-point pen and inkwell. George sketched out a very rough map of the continent, and talked as he drew.

  “I’m assuming none of this is significantly different between the human world and here.” He lay his hand on the narrow sliver of eastern coast and piedmont. “You currently occupy about, oh, a seventh of the width of the continent. And not very much, north to south. North of, say, here,” he drew an imaginary line across, north of the Great Lakes, “the winters are harder and at some point crops become impossible.”

  “And, of course, south of here,” he continued, pointing at the isthmus of Panama, “there’s a whole ’nother continent, also very large.”

  He leaned back and looked at Gwyn. “All of your father’s kingdom would be roughly the same size as the territory you currently claim for Annwn. It’s a tiny fraction of the entire continent. Same for Gaul. So, are you going to claim it all and figure out how to settle and govern it later, or are you going to let others have a piece? And how big a piece, for your first territorial ally, Llefelys? What about relations with his successor? What about your own heirs?”