by Myers, Karen
George recognized what the acknowledgment of imminent death could do to clarify the mind and felt a moment’s pity for him. Did Senua offer him comfort, he wondered.
He looked hard at his father, searching for something to salvage, to give him a way back to a continued existence. He found in himself the memories of his father’s early married life, when he was just a boy. His father had ruthlessly steered him away from his curiosity about him, but he’d never been cruel. He’d spent hours with him in the woods, showing him the ways of the animals. He didn’t have to do that, he must have been guided by affection. He remembered his mother’s easy laugh, her fond gaze directed at her husband.
The final betrayal was unforgivable. Almost. But he hadn’t begun like that, when he married and started his unexpected family.
The image of his protective oak tree came to him, the shelter he offered to his family, to whatever needed it. Could he shelter his own powerful, untrustworthy father? Was it safe to even try?
His father was no man, he remembered suddenly, not the way he seemed to be. I shouldn’t judge him as a man, he thought. “Show me your true form,” George said.
CHAPTER 31
Corniad held George’s eyes at the request, and then slowly pulled off his human clothing, the boots and jeans, the wet shirt—all of it. George was used to the fae indifference in matters of nudity, but as his father dropped each garment, he seemed to become ever more feral until, freed of the encumbrance of his clothing, he transformed into a large red deer and raised his head high, majestic and proud, a stag before these hounds, bayed and awaiting his death with dignity.
The broken tines were still prominent, as if they would never heal, never be replaced by new antlers in velvet. He is not a man, George reminded himself. This is what he is. And I looked like that, myself, when I escaped from Gwythyr and Creiddylad in Gaul with Rhian. For three days I traveled in this form—I’ll never forget it. And that’s my father in me.
He has learned to be a man, he thought, learned to pass. He is indeed guilty, but not entirely, as a man might be. It was never malicious, just survival. We all want to survive. As a red deer, there was no morality to judge. Can he be saved, as a man?
George looked back at Angharad, standing on the veranda. She nodded slightly, a vote for mercy. But will Corniad threaten their daughter someday, or any others of his children to come? It’s wrong to use expediency as a criterion, he thought, but isn’t that the same recklessness they always lecture me about, daring the first blow against me before defending, before striking back? What if it’s my daughter next time who takes the first blow?
I can’t kill him out of hand, he decided. He should have a chance to find a way to survive that doesn’t threaten anyone else.
That’s my decision, he told Cernunnos privately. He felt the beast-master’s hesitation. You should abide by my judgment, too, George insisted, or what does it mean for you to set me as judge? If I can forgive him, you can, too.
He felt the reluctant agreement with relief.
George told the great red deer standing motionless before him, “You do not die today, father.”
Cernunnos emerged as the horned man and stood on a level with the stag, eye to eye, his perfect rack facing Corniad’s damaged one. “Fear me no longer,” his deep voice intoned. “Your line is done.”
He released the form and spoke privately to George. An interesting choice, huntsman.
George retorted silently, you’ll have to look for someone else to pursue for Nos Galan Gaeaf.
He could sense the tartness in Cernunnos’s reply. There is no shortage of injustice in this world.
George smiled. I’ve missed you, he thought, unembarrassed to be so direct, and he believed he felt a sort of gratified acknowledgment from the god.
One thing, he thought to him, what about this breeding business? My children?
Cernunnos’s reply resonated within. They will have choices.
George wasn’t sure he could believe that, but he let it be. One last matter for this bargain, he thought. There will be no rut for me or mine, great lord, never. He let the declaration stand firm in his mind.
He felt assent as the god drifted into silence.
Corniad looked at George when he pronounced judgment, and then at the assumed face of Cernunnos who echoed the forgiveness. The words didn’t penetrate for a moment. They would deny him the death he was prepared for? But why? There would be no bringing back the dead he had already killed.
His son’s growth to manhood had not caused his own death, as his own maturity had brought his father’s end upon him. He’d been wrong to fear it. He wasn’t sure he could trust Cernunnos, but for the first time he let himself wonder, could I have let Léonie live, and her child, too? What was the name his son had given him, Gilbert? Gilbert Traherne, and George. I have a living son grown, and I will live to see his children. But they will never let me, he realized, soberly. Too dangerous.
What will they do with me?
He transformed back to a man and dressed, silently. A tap on his knee reminded him of Senua, and he turned his face away from the cat and the people. The cat stretched halfway up his leg, and he dropped a hand down absently to scratch its head. He wondered for a moment if the goddess liked her ears scratched, too.
The rock-wight spoke from the garden exit that she blocked. “I can take him with me somewhere, if you wish. He can do my kind no harm.”
So, they would decide his fate, now. A life bound, no doubt. And with reason, he admitted.
The lutin spoke up again, the one who had told his son not to kill him. He didn’t understand why not, but he listened to him now.
“I know just the thing for him,” the lutin said. “My uncle, Luhedoc, in Edgewood… He needs help, with the horses he’s raising. A nice quiet life, like the one this fellow’s had in the human world.”
George nodded, “Until he’s ready for more. I like it, Benitoe.”
The lutin looked up at Corniad and addressed him directly. “You should meet my uncle. You have a lot in common.”
Corniad roused himself to reply. “I’ll go with you, if that’s your wish.”
He raised his eyes to George and spread his hands. “I don’t know what else to do.”
Gwyn ap Nudd looked dubious at the prospect, but Corniad was surprised to hear his scholar on the porch intervene.
“I’ll ask Eluned to monitor the situation. She can help ensure that no harm comes to anyone there.”
Ah, he thought, one of her colleagues. Well, and why not—they have cause. A quiet life with horses might be a good way to start again, if they were truly minded to let him try.
The cat under his hand purred. So it meets with your approval, does it, my lady, he thought. Let it be so, then. He dropped his eyes again, in this gathering.
Gwyn said, “So it shall be done. Ceridwen and Benitoe will escort you to Edgewood as soon as may be arranged.”
George spoke to the lutin, “Benitoe, why don’t you show my father the hounds while Ceridwen makes arrangements? He might like that.”
Corniad raised his head and looked at his son. He didn’t expect kindness and couldn’t find any words to say, but his son just nodded as if he understood his silence. The rock-wight moved aside, and Corniad turned and followed the lutin out of the garden.
And just like that, he was back, and his family was alive. George squelched over to the veranda and sat down on the topmost step. His clothes and hair were mostly dry, but not entirely, and he glanced up at the sky wondering when that rain would reach them over the Blue Ridge.
He stretched a hand back to Angharad and she grasped it firmly from her chair.
“What did he do?” she asked.
“Just now, you mean? Before he came?”
She nodded.
“Tried to kill me. Tried pretty hard. He blasted me with the beast-sense, and we were both in trouble.”
“You and Cernunnos?” Ceridwen asked.
“Yeah.” He paused f
or thought, now that the crisis was past. “If he’d taken a knife to me while I was down, that would have ended it.”
Angharad gripped his hand, hard. “You were gone. I could feel it.”
“But your arrow was there with me…” George said, puzzled. “I followed it out.”
“I felt you come back,” she said, faintly.
I don’t understand, he thought, and then he did and his skin chilled. She thought I’d died. He shied away from the notion. It’s not true—it can’t be.
And then he remembered that outer darkness, when he’d stopped his panicked flight a couple of ranks from the edge, coming to a standstill in one of those odd-shaped cells. That was death, he thought. Just there, almost within my grasp.
He stood up and drew Angharad out of her chair and enfolded her, heedless of his damp clothes. “I’m so sorry to scare you, love, and to bring that monster down upon you. When I think about what might have happened…” He shuddered as he held her.
Angharad slipped out of his grasp after a few moments, her composure regained.
“Maelgwn did a fine job of protecting me,” she said, and pulled the boy into their circle. George held him by both shoulders and thanked him solemnly.
Gwyn had taken advantage of this family reunion to confer with Ceridwen on the porch, and out of the back door of the huntsman’s house came Idris and Bedo, and Alun with them. George could see the shadow of others inside the house. The dogs rushed out, frantic, and danced around them.
“I think you can dismiss the guards, Idris,” Gwyn said. “We’ll send him off to Edgewood and watch him closely.”
“That creature is still a threat, my lord,” Idris protested.
“I’ll not deny it,” Gwyn said, looking over at George sternly, “but there are greater powers ensuring peace for now.”
It was clear to George from the tone of his voice that this forbearance was temporary. He was himself too conflicted about his judgment to defend it. Let Luhedoc see if his father could be tamed, and then perhaps they could all be reconciled, he thought.
Angharad looked past him at Ceridwen. “How is it you arrived in such a timely fashion, you and Gwyn?”
“That was your quick-witted apprentice here,” Ceridwen replied, nodding at Bedo.
Bedo reddened. “I was moving the last items in before the rain when I heard Imp yowling and glanced out the window.”
He paused, then spit it out. “I believed the cat. I ran for help.”
George laughed, and Angharad joined in. George walked over, still chuckling, and took his hand. “You have my deepest thanks.”
Bedo looked down, embarrassed, and would have pulled his hand away, but George held it until Bedo was forced to look him in the face and accept his sincerity.
Alun stood and gazed out over the garden, at the damaged flowers trampled by the confrontation and Mag’s haste to reach the exit and prevent Corniad’s escape, and he sighed.
George told him, “It’s little enough destruction, compared to what might have been. Maybe those rosebushes I sent will come in handy.”
His eye fell on Mag at the far side of the garden, where she seemed to be in deep conference with the cat. Must be talking to Senua, he thought. The cat turned its head and trotted deliberately over to the most recent rosebush, the white one Mag had delivered just a little while ago. Imp raised up and rubbed his cheek against the blossoms, and looked back at George pointedly, as if telling him something.
George froze. It was you, wasn’t it, he thought to Senua, projecting to her with his beast-sense. You who gave us the rose that sheltered us in our need. The one that kept us from death, whose giant petals guided us back to our center, our core. You saved us, great lady, and I’m grateful for my life.
He bowed to the young black cat, indifferent to the stares of the others on the porch, and Cernunnos echoed his own response—thank you, my lady.
The cat dropped back down on all fours and returned to Seething Magma, with an indefinable air of satisfaction in his step.
Now what, George thought, and then it struck him. “Ack! I’ve abandoned everything in the human world,” he told Angharad. “I’ve got to go back and get our luggage, return the rental car… I better do it now and get it over with.”
“Will it take long?” Angharad asked.
“Well, if I get the keys from my father…” He stopped. Such a mundane thing, but it would have to be done. He must have them, they weren’t in the car.
“I’ll be gone a while,” he told her. “It takes hours to drive back to where I rented it, and then I have to get to the Korrigan’s Way at Woodward…”
He shook his head as he sputtered to a stop. “No, I don’t.” He grinned. “Mag can make me a way right to Mifflinburg, and I can drive through it. I’ll be back in no time.”
Mag, he called to her as he walked back down the steps and out into the garden. I need to borrow you for a little while to clean up our traces in the human world.
The rock-wight flowed back to her customary anchor point. *Glad to help. Shall I take us back to the inn?*
“Wait a minute,” he called to her, as he trotted past her to the garden exit. “I’ve got to go get the keys.”
CHAPTER 32
“What do you think, uncle?” Benitoe said, as he finished painting the black outlining on the left front wheel spokes.
All the spokes were lathe-turned and painted yellow, green, and red, radiating out from a black hub. Black outlined the borders between the colors along the spoke as well.
Benitoe laid the bowl of paint on the ground with its brush and stood back for a wider view of the caravan while Luhedoc fussed with the fit of the black harnesses.
“Contain yourself, nephew, until I get this right,” Luhedoc muttered, not looking up from his work.
Benitoe suppressed a smile. They were working in a clearing outside the stableyard of the horse farm that Luhedoc had claimed from abandonment on the edge of the district they called Karnag. Most of their near neighbors seemed to have found an excuse to take a stroll from their workshops closer to the center of the little village to loiter along the road and lean on the nearest fence. One of Luhedoc’s grooms held the horses at the head, and the other peeked out from the stable whenever he could.
Benitoe surveyed the caravan. Not half bad, he thought. From the front with its high seat, and the mounting steps leading up to it, to the rear with its horizontally divided door and suspended step, the vehicle was a colorful work of art. The high straight wooden sides leaned out to a roof as round as a barrel. There were two windows along each of the sides, almost like the windows of a little cottage, and a door in front as well. The round roof jutted out on each end to form a sort of porch.
He’d sat down with George and Luhedoc and looked at the different types of gypsy caravans from George’s world. Then, together, they drew a version that would suit the lutins. At George’s recommendation, they kept the basic design big enough for larger folk, too, but that just gave them all that much more room for storage.
On a raised platform along each side of the front wall was a sleeping platform, and an extension could be pulled out from underneath to fill the gap between them, when access to the front door and the driver’s seat wasn’t needed at night. An inner doorway provided privacy for parents traveling with children.
The middle portion was a tiny parlor, with built-in bench seats, cupboards above and below, and rugs softening the floor. The benches converted to children’s or guest bunks. The back end had a bare wood floor to make cleaning easier for muddy feet. A tidy little traveling stove had been fitted in amongst the cupboards, partly for heat, and partly for simple cooking in bad weather, when campfires weren’t available. That stove was korrigan work, like the leaf springs and other metal parts, and neatly done, Benitoe thought.
There hadn’t been much time, just about three weeks to create a specimen of what Benitoe was planning to recommend. He’d wanted to draw something for the Kuzul to consider, but George had
convinced him otherwise.
“Build one,” he’d said. “It’ll be worth a thousand drawings. Make the Kuzul see the fun and excitement in it, the appeal of a group of them traveling from town to town, tricked out in different colors.”
George was funding it, so Benitoe had let himself be persuaded. The craftsmen in Karnag had been excited by the commission and, while the deadline had kept the decorative carving to a minimum, the tongue and groove construction of the straight sides and floor and the setting of the rounded roof had gone quickly, and the cabinetmakers had met the challenge of fitting the interior in time.
The wheels had been built by the wheelwright in Greenhollow, the only way they could get such specialty work done so rapidly, and they’d carted the two large and two smaller wheels up through the ways, but all the rest had been made on the spot in Karnag or somewhere else in Edgewood, and proud they all were of it.
George had helped identify parts that could be postponed until after the Kuzul meeting, like the portable steps that fit down from the front between the wagon shafts for when the horses were unhitched, or shutters for the windows.
They’d debated one-horse and two-horse designs, and settled on two-horse as more prudent. They kept the weight as light as they could, but two horses gave them some options in case they sold or lost a horse while on a journey.
Now they were out of time. Late this afternoon they would make the presentation to the Kuzul. The external painting was done, and Benitoe thought it dazzling. Angharad had recommended that they take advantage of the lutin fondness for red clothing, and the wagon used red everywhere for decorative touches on top of the green and yellow primary colors. Maëlys had told him of her clan’s fondness for those colors, and Benitoe had made of this a subtle tribute in her honor.
Luhedoc had left most of the wagon work to Benitoe’s overall command and concentrated on the horses. George had bought them a pair of harness-broke Vanners in the showy black and white piebald that had so caught Benitoe’s eye. He’d had them delivered to Bellemore two weeks ago, and then brought them through the Guests’ Way where he picked up Luhedoc. The two of them ponied them up from there to the Archer’s Way at Daear Llosg. They’d told almost no one of their plans, so few people had been around to see them, but that had been enough to spread the rumors far and wide.