by Annie Bellet
Seren. Though she’d cursed them out of pique at being unable to separate the two, she’d still managed to come between them. It was a wound that Emyr longed to heal but could see no clear path.
Time, his mother counseled. Time, indeed. Seven years of slow healing ripped open by one blood-haired woman. He gave a very un-doglike sigh and sank down into the rushes at his brother’s feet.
* * *
Áine dreamed of waves and small white birds and she wasn’t sure at first where she was when she awoke. Her leg hurt and the bed she lay in smelled strange. She wondered if they’d reached Clun Cadair and turned over to feel for Tesn’s warmth.
The events of the day flooded into her memory with a sharp, cold pain. She curled into a ball and felt the tears threaten to rise. She took several careful breaths and sat up slowly.
Her crudely shorn hair hung at odd lengths around her face, reminding her of her inadequate gestures the night before. She was wearing only a light linen shift and recalled Melita and Hafwyn helping her undress the night before.
Grimly, she took stock of her body. Her leg throbbed, though perhaps a little less than the day previous. Her head felt sore, but better for the comfortable, warm rest she’d gotten. Her shoulders ached and the biggest scrape on her hip had scabbed and pulled tight so that it protested with a sharp pain as she moved and stretched. She was alive and going to mend, it seemed.
And what good is that? I’ve got nothing. No Tesn to guide me, no healing kit, no pack, no clothes of my own, nothing. She shivered.
She had her skills still, if grief didn’t dull her intellect. And worse come to worse, she could always cry somewhere in private and trade the pearls for goods. Áine smiled ruefully at that thought. It was something Tesn had told her once, counseling her ward that if desperate times struck, she should be not faint to use whatever means she could to continue her service to the people of Cymru.
All right, you silly nit. You can lie here feeling sorry for yourself or you can try to be useful. Tesn would have your ear off if she saw you laying about when there might be work.
Áine shifted and painfully pulled her legs over the side of the bed. The dress she’d borrowed the day before lay folded on a bench near the casement. She limped over to the bench and struggled into the gown. She tidied the bed as best she could and then hobbled to the door.
Leaning heavily against it she steeled herself to face the people she could now hear moving about in the hall. She ran one hand through her mangled locks and shrugging, pulled the door open.
Emyr, Llew, and Urien had ridden out at first light to finish their circuit of the wintering crofts and to check on the progress of those who would be returning to their homes this week with goods for taxes and trade. Emyr had glanced at Áine’s door but decided she’d like as not stay in today anyway, what with her grief weighing so hard on her slender shoulders.
Caron was in the hall with Melita and Hafwyn. They were boiling down a vat of berries for preserves over the cooking hearth while Melita pounded out the week’s bread. Hafwyn sat calmly on a bench against the wall with her spinning in hand. She was smiling as Áine emerged but quickly turned her head to nod to her guest.
“Sleep well, did you?” Hafwyn asked.
The other two women stared silently at the pale young woman. Áine’s hair hung in uneven lengths around her face which was still red-eyed and pinched with sorrow. She filled out Caron’s borrowed gown nicely, but her shoulders were hunched and her gait halting as she limped to the table and sat with a heavy sigh.
“Aye, thank you.” Áine gave a wan smile to Caron who quickly left off stirring the berries to fetch the plate of bread and cheese and pears she’d laid by at Hafwyn’s bidding for their guest.
“My son is riding out toward the river today to check on the crofts. He’s going to keep an eye out for your pack. Meanwhile, I’ve got a lovely bolt of thick bleached linen, which I hope will suit you for a dress?” Hafwyn smiled warmly at the girl. She understood the pain of grief and felt a depth of compassion and good will toward the young wisewoman that surprised her.
Áine picked at a chunk of bread and nodded, flushing. “Please, put me to work. I need something to do or else…” She trailed off and stared into her plate.
Caron and Melita looked at each other and then at Hafwyn. Her gentle dark eyes lowered in her own remembered pain for a moment. She knew the refuge in being busy that hard work could provide.
“Can you use a drop spindle? I’ve also got a goodly amount of herbs to categorize and preserve from the holding’s gardens, though I think you’re best kept off your feet until that leg can heal.” Hafwyn smiled, banishing her own sad thoughts.
“Aye to the first and I’d be happy to share all I know about the creation of potions, tinctures, and salves. I’ve lost all my own, but I’ve been well trained, I assure you, for all my youthful years.” Áine looked up at her, grateful.
* * *
The rest of the crofts survived the storm unscathed; not even one sheep was lost in the wind and rain. Idrys flushed a healthy buck from a little patch of scrub brush and the men found themselves in a merry chase across the moor. Llew’s arrow brought the deer down and the men were in fine spirits as they returned to the holding with fresh meat to share.
“Urien, mind ducking in to Moel and his son’s? I’m sure they’d like to share in the meat tonight in the hall.” Emyr curried down his chestnut mare as the men finished putting up the horses.
Urien nodded and left Llew and Emyr to finish butchering the deer in the courtyard. Emyr skinned it carefully with expert skill while Llew carved up a green branch for a spit.
They both carefully stood in a way that shielded their gazes from the dark burnt smear on the hard-packed earth where the pyre had been the night before. Though much of the charcoal and ash had been carried to the cairn in the trees just beyond the holding’s berm, the stain remained and would until the winter rains washed it clean.
“I wonder how Áine is today,” Llew said after a moment. Caron, his wife, had come out to give him a kiss in greeting and then dashed off to fetch herbs to rub the meat with and roots to bake in the fire beside it. To one side of the hall was a small covered structure with a slate roof and a deep fire pit dug into the earth and lined with large, flat stones. Beyond lay the smokehouse.
“How do you think she is?” Emyr shrugged.
“I think that often women don’t mind a little comfort in their sorrow,” Llew said with a bright grin.
Emyr resisted throwing a piece of offal at him and instead tossed it to the three waiting hounds that sat patiently at the edge of the yard.
Idrys sat near the hall, keeping his distance from the other dogs. He didn’t care for raw meat, hound form or no.
“She’s just lost her mother, you lecherous oaf.” Emyr glared at Llew.
“True. But she’s a Wise One, you know. They’re supposed to be free to wander and love as they would. And no man should deny to them anything, or so my mother always taught me.” He shrugged. “Besides, it might do you both some good to put a few smiles back on your face. Little enough does these days.”
Emyr froze for a moment and then relaxed as he realized that the “both” in Llew’s statement referred to him and Áine, not himself and his brother. It hurt his heart to lie to his closest friends, but he feared the hurt that might come if they knew he and Idrys were cursed. Better to not test a friendship so, in his mind.
And if the likes of old Moel was suspicious of Áine’s origins because of something so small as blood-red hair and pale skin, how much more would he be if he knew the truth of his chief? Emyr remembered then the pearl and wondered if there would ever be a good time to bring that up. Probably not today nor for another handful of days. Best let the woman grieve before he tormented her with questions.
“Emyr?” Llew watched a curious series of emotions cross his friend’s tanned, handsome face.
“Sorry, Llew. I was thinking.”
“Don’t hurt
yourself,” Llew muttered as he turned away to prepare the fire pit.
Emyr smiled as he heard Idrys snort behind him.
* * *
“Nay, Urien. She’s got the look of a fey witch and I’ve no mind to sup with her like. They beguile you, the fairies, and trick from you what you hold most dear.” Madoc Moel shook his smooth bald head at the stocky tanner.
“Father,” Adaf said in a resigned tone, “I’m sure Hafwyn and Emyr would hardly have extended their hospitality if she were truly so. Besides, the grief I saw last night looked human enough.”
“Oh, that’s a trick, you can be sure. Red and white, red and white, don’t we all know the stories?” The old man folded his arms. “She was even wearing red and white when they brought her in.”
“She was wearing mostly mud. What red there was would be her own blood and her wisewoman’s belt.” Urien rolled his eyes to the gods. He knew that when Moel took something into his thick, shining head it was like a hound and a bone.
“More tricks,” Moel said.
“Fine, father. We’ll go and bring you back a plate, if Emyr’s generosity extends to those who refuse it so soundly.” Adaf threw up his hands. He wasn’t going to pass up fresh meat and Caron’s fine cooking because of his stubborn father.
“I’ll not go, neither.” Maderun said softly from the hearth. “And neither will our girls. She’s fey touched, that woman. Not good to have around children.”
“You as well, wife?” Adaf shook his head. “I fear my house has gone a bit touched themselves, Urien.” His two daughters looked up from where they were sorting apples into crates of bruised and clean, their round and cheerful faces fascinated at the fighting among their elders. “Urien, my wife and I will be there tonight with our children. Tell Emyr.”
Urien wisely took his dismissal and left the house to the sound of Adaf bickering with his normally silent wife. Urien himself was a very practical sort. He gave little credence to stories, though they could fill a long cold night.
He’d seen Áine’s pain and it was as real as the horror and loss they’d all felt when Emyr returned those years ago without his twin and a winter later when Brychan suddenly died. A broken heart, they’d said, but Urien thought it was small wonder the man’s heart had given out when he’d scarce touched food or wandered far from his bed that last season.
He guessed that Emyr blamed himself for it all. His friend would on occasion confess as much when the three were deep in their cups on a late night. Though determinedly cheerful and kind during the day, Emyr changed a bit at night. Urien figured in the dark there were fewer distractions to keep the demons of his memory and grief at bay. He was used to his moody friend and lord.
Urien shook his head again as he made his way between the mostly empty homes to the courtyard. Áine was no fairy lady. If the stories were true the Fair Folk were supposed to be passing fair indeed. The anguish-wracked guest was odd looking, perhaps striking at best. Oh, her body was nice enough, though perhaps a little too muscled and thin from all the walking a wisewoman did, but she was hardly the definition of unearthly loveliness.
“Emyr!” Urien called as he emerged from between the stone houses. “Adaf will be joining us with his wife and daughters.”
“And not Moel?” Emyr’s dark eyes narrowed. “Because of our guest?”
Urien sighed. “Aye. He thinks she’s a fey touched witch out to trick us all.”
“Áine?” Emyr said. His incredulous look faded as he remembered the pearl. “Well, she’s strange indeed. But wisewomen always have mysteries to them, do they not?”
Urien shrugged and moved away to help Llew with readying the pit.
Emyr finished his butchering and folded the skin for Urien who would scrape and tan it for them. He rinsed his hands at the well and went inside the hall, Idrys following at his heels.
Áine sat at the large table near the hearth, sorting small bundles of dried herbs and talking in a hushed tone with his mother. He was surprised, a little, to see her up and working. She’d been so distraught the night before, he figured she would have wanted to lie in bed and rest with her sorrow. Like your father? Great good it did him. Emyr shoved aside the sudden bitter thought.
Idrys walked over the hearth and flopped down beside his mother. Melita sat further down the table, a rough dress shaped out before her in a bolt of thickly woven white linen.
“Emyr.” Hafwyn looked up and smiled. She bent as well and greeted her other son with a quick scratch of his bony head. “Caron says you’ve caught us a deer.”
“Well, to be fair, Cy flushed it and Llew’s arrow took it down. I just rode along and broke an arrow in support.” He grinned.
“Cy?” Áine raised her head from her task. “You call your hound hound?”
I call him brother. “Aye. It suits him well enough.”
A tiny smile played at her drawn mouth. “Do you call your horse march?”
“Nah, I call her Cloud.” He sat down on the long bench across from the women.
“Is she a grey mare then?” Áine raised an eyebrow as his quick smile and light banter momentarily banished her pain.
“Brown as a nut, I’m afraid.” Emyr’s grin lit his handsome face.
“Emyr, quit teasing our guest.” Hafwyn’s admonishment carried no sting. It was good to see her son smile and to see the young woman’s response.
“Teasing her? You’re the one who put her to work,” Emyr replied.
“I asked, actually.” Áine’s smile slipped away. “It helps, a little. To be busy, I mean.”
“Good,” Emyr said, sad to see her smile go. His mother, or perhaps Melita, had evened up Áine’s shorn hair and it hung now around her chin, partially obscuring her sorrow-lined face. “Well, I’d better change and go take care of the hounds.” He excused himself.
Idrys stayed, feeling the tingle of coming night simmering in his blood. He had an hour yet before it was time. He studied Áine with dark and human eyes.
She returned to talking with his mother about this herb or that, naming them and explaining the uses and properties of each. Her voice caught on occasion, especially when she would bring up her mother’s name. Her deep love and devotion to the dead wisewoman was carved plain and strong in every word, every sorrowful gesture and choking stutter.
Idrys grudgingly admired how she’d take a deep breath whenever the hollow look threatened to overtake her features and return to her chosen task with careful-minded stubbornness. She’s not a soft nor cowardly woman, that.
He knew only too well that inactivity could allow sorrow to fester and grow. Better to move, to act, to do. If you figure out how to outrun grief, healer, tell me. Idrys let his head fall to the rushes with a sigh.
* * *
The meat was sliced crackling off the bones and the little group of permanent residents sat inside the hall and ate. Adaf had turned up with his silent wife and two daughters in tow, making apologies for his father who, he said, wished to stay in and have a quiet night. Though Maderun shot Áine a cautious and considering look or two, she held her peace, sitting herself and her daughters at the opposite end of the long table.
Áine barely noticed the tensions. She had only picked at her breakfast and refused a midday meal. The spiced venison smelled good and she tried for courtesy’s sake to eat some. She cut it into small pieces with her knife and managed to swallow a little fresh bread as well. She’d never been one to drink much mead or spirits and even in her grief she refused it when offered in favor of fresh water from the well.
For a while no one spoke much, mostly eating. Llew told the story of the hunt, such as it was and everyone chuckled at his overdramatizing the bold sacrifice of Emyr’s arrow and the graceful competence of his faithful hound.
Idrys watched, bitterly amused. There was an odd dissonance that he’d grown used to over the years in these sorts of exploits. One or the other of the twins would be praised or teased for something their day or night counterpart had done. Then each would have
to gauge his response to fit well with their own differing personalities.
Ducking his head, Idrys let his dark curls cover his lack of a blush. After all, he hadn’t missed the shot so wide and hunted himself up a mighty stone, as Llew put it. He’d flushed the deer in the first place.
Emyr pressed a cold nose to his twin’s elbow and looked up at him with mournful eyes. Glad that dogs can’t blush, aren’t you? Idrys smiled down at his twin and put another piece of meat down onto the wooden platter on the floor for him.
“Cy seems to like cooked food,” Áine said. She was seated to the right of Idrys, in the place of honor across from Hafwyn.
“Aye. Can you blame him? Caron’s cooking is delicious.” He smiled easily though a shadow flitted through his brown eyes.
Adaf and his little family left with Gethin at the close of the meal, each praising the stewed pears and honey Caron had thought to make as a finish to the impromptu feast. Llew and Caron excused themselves as well shortly after, leaving Urien and Idrys to help with the washing up.
Áine tried to hobble out with dishes but was quelled with a look from Hafwyn. She sighed. She wasn’t used to being lame, and while she’d never wondered at the respect Tesn always garnered, Áine felt unworthy and useless.
Áine sat with Hafwyn and helped her wind the thread she’d spun onto skeins. She was tired, true, but she wanted to be bone-tired before she faced her room alone carrying her grief. The food which had tasted somewhat good to her was now a hard lump in her belly. She pushed aside the black tide of sorrow again and again, willing herself to stay calm and hollow.
Idrys joined them, pouring himself a cup of mead and propping his boots on the hearth. His black hound flopped into his normal place before the fire, half under the chief’s legs.
“What do Adaf and his family do?” Áine asked to make conversation. The girls had been young and full of giggles all through dinner. Áine liked children well enough, though she’d not got on well with them as a youngster. Children could be cruel to those who seemed different from themselves.