Mari laughed. “Oh, I am going to miss you two so much!”
Nan scooped up Aneirin and stood up, going over to hug her friend and handing Mari the boy with the same motion. Mari sat down and cuddled him. “Oh, you won’t miss us that much. You’ll have Rhodri here. Pish-tush, probably before too long, you’ll have far too many Selch here for comfort. Just because Gethin barred Idwal from going to the clan, he’s not going to be able to bar the clan from coming to Idwal.”
“That’s true,” Mari replied, looking up from her baby. “But they won’t be you.”
“Well then,” Sarah told her, with a smile. “We’ll just have to keep coming back to visit.”
Mari heaved a great sigh of relief. “I was afraid we were too backward for you,” she confessed. “After all, we don’t have all the things there are in London.”
“Oh, like air you can’t breathe?” asked Sarah. “We’ll just have to make sure the Old Lion thinks it’s important enough for us to come see how you are doing now and again.”
“Well, he should, for all he’s a heathen English lord,” said Daffyd, kneeing the door open so he could bring in the things he had traded for in Clogwyn. “After all, there’s two Water Masters here. And from the look of it—look at that little lad a-gurgling at the sprite there!—there’s like to be four before very long.”
Mari glanced down at the baby she held, who was, indeed cooing and gurgling at the kindly water-sprite, who was playing in the kitchen barrel and making fountains for him. “Oh—” she gasped. “He’s never done that before!”
“That’ll be important enough!” Nan said with a huge grin. “Problem sorted!”
“All right, my loves, time to go to Criccieth for the train. Rhodri’s got the ketch unloaded so there’s room for you and the birdies.” Daffyd hugged Nan and Sarah as if they were his own daughters. “Off you go, and come you back as soon as you can.”
The girls picked up the carriers, and the birds jumped onto their shoulders. Everyone agreed it was safer for the birds out of the carriers than in, at least while they were on the water. There were hugs and kisses all around, and a little basket of laver-bread pressed on them for the journey “for you won’t get it anywhere but here!” and then they were gone, and Idwal and Mari were alone in the cottage except for the babies, watching the ketch sail down toward Criccieth from the doorstep.
“How long do you think they’ll keep coming to visit?” Mari asked, missing them already.
Idwal put his arm around her. “As long as we are here,” he said, sounding quite certain of it.
“And how long will we be here?” she asked—something she had not dared to ask until this moment, even though the question had been eating at her ever since Gethin had asked her what she would do if the world she knew became too painful for Idwal to bear.
“Well now… as long as your da is alive, for I’ll not leave him alone, and he won’t take to the sea,” Idwal said easily, which made some of the knot of fear in her chest loosen. “And as long as Gethin bars us, which will be seven years at least.”
“But—” she ventured.
“But—” he stayed her words with a kiss. “We are not barred from other clans. And Gethin can rage all he wants, the Selch are not one body; so should need drive, we can find shelter with other Selch or even Selkie.”
A little more of the fear ebbed.
“But I’d rather not.” He held her close. “True it is that the power is thick and pure on the other side of the barrier. But there are other things in the world than power, or why do you think the little ones like yon sprite stay? Perhaps one day, it will be too hard to live in this world, and on that day you and I and all our family will come away. Or perhaps not.” He shrugged, and she felt the last of her fear melting with his love. “But until then, dear love, and dearest friend, you can truly say that we are in our proper place, doing our proper work; guarding the world, doing what needs doing, home from the sea.”
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Home From the Sea: An Elemental Masters Novel Page 34