The Mythic Dream

by Dominik Parisien

“I cannot be killed day or night, inside or outside, on horseback or on foot. I cannot be killed clothed or naked, nor by any weapon honorably made.”

  Blodeuwedd’s chin trembled before her mouth made a smile of it.

  “Then my husband is immortal, and shall never be parted from me.”

  “Just so, my lady.” He laughed, bright as his name. “Unless the Almighty sees fit to dress me in netting and have me straddle a goat’s back and a bathtub’s edge by the side of a river at dusk, with a thickly thatched curve of roof above the tub, while a man stabs at me with a spear made of a year of Sundays. But if I were meant to die, would Fate have made my killing so difficult to arrange? Rejoice, then, Blodeuwedd, for you’ll never be rid of me.”

  * * *

  In the weeks that follow, Blodeuwedd and Adain are inseparable: reading in the library, walking along the grounds, sharing meals, sharing beds. Blodeuwedd cannot get enough of her, seeks always to be touching her, murmurs questions over their clasped hands and into the warmth of her neck.

  “What does this mean,” she asks, leading Adain’s fingers to every ache in her body. Under her touch a deep red rose buds from her wrist, a bluebell from her breastbone, a heap of lilacs from her ankles, a crush of sweetpeas from her nape. Adain opens her mouth in answer against each bloom, until Blodeuwedd’s cheeks flush from the heat of her breath, the tip of her tongue tracking light along the petals. Blodeuwedd feels every part of her clamoring to be read.

  Adain reads her—but tells her, too, of what’s outside her body, of all the plants and animals beyond the walls. Blodeuwedd listens keenly to her stories of the silent flight of owls, the cleverness of crows; the healing to be found in yarrow and willow bark, the soothing properties of raspberry leaf and mint. Blodeuwedd listens, but most thirstily for lessons on foxglove and mistletoe, hemlock and yew.

  “These are plants that kill,” Blodeuwedd says, astonished. “Plants that hide weapons inside them.”

  “In a sense. Though many poisons can heal if properly diluted and applied,” says Adain. “A needle can stab and it can stitch; the same property can harm or heal. It is all a matter of context, of degree. Some poisons even heal each other’s effects! Belladonna is dangerous, but it’s also an antidote to wolfsbane.” She smiles, just a little wan. “And anything is poison if you have too much of it.”

  The silence that follows her words has a shadow beneath its skin. Blodeuwedd sees it, reaches for it, gently.

  “Is this too much, Adain? Am I poisoning you?”

  “No,” she says, swiftly, “no. Only I know this cannot last beyond your lord’s return.”

  Blodeuwedd stills—then shrugs. “He is more often away than he is here. I am told he is at war, and while he will never die, he may yet be months, perhaps even a year away.”

  “But while he is here—”

  “I will be bored, and hungry, and in pain, as I was before. But I will know you are here, and that will be—something. Better, if not enough.”

  Adain looks as if she would say something else—but Blodeuwedd’s face is smooth, pleasant, any pain folded away behind it like a crocus in rain. But when Adain rests a hand on Blodeuwedd’s shoulder, a whole hood of aconite stretches into her palm like a cat.

  * * *

  Blodeuwedd took to playing a pillow game with Lleu: she would hold a knife to his neck or stomach, spit her hatred of him, and cut into him while he moaned. The cuts never went deeper than paper, no matter where she dragged the blade. Sometimes they played with rope, sometimes with fire; each time, Lleu trembled and cried out, lay spent and panting and infuriatingly alive.

  He loved the games, though, and how she never played the same way twice.

  * * *

  “Shall I tell you,” says Adain one day, as they walk together in the orchard, hand in hand, “about the flowers of which you were made?”

  Blodeuwedd shrugs. “Those I know—meadowsweet for scent, broom for tidiness, oak for hospitality.”

  Adain shakes her head. “Those are only parts—”

  “They only used parts. The blossoms, they said. There is nothing in me of root, thorn, branch—nothing that digs, cuts, climbs.”

  Adain looks at her sidelong, then back ahead, frowning.

  “That may be, my lady,” she says finally. “But blossoms carry seeds, and in that contain the whole of the plant. So I shall tell you all the same.”

  She stops walking, and Blodeuwedd stops with her; Adain crouches down, indicating Blodeuwedd’s feet and legs.

  “Meadowsweet is always underfoot, but the more it’s bruised, the more scent it gives off; there is defiance in that, I think, like a song that won’t be stopped up.”

  Adain touches Blodeuwedd’s legs through the fine cloth that covers them, standing slowly, working her way up. Blodeuwedd closes her eyes, feeling something like a breeze rustling the leaves and stems inside her.

  “Broom,” Adain continues, gesturing to Blodeuwedd’s middle. “You know about the thorns, and it has a sweet smell too, but it’s most notable for thriving in poor soil. It survives where little else could.”

  She places a palm over Blodeuwedd’s heart. “And oak—”

  “Is more likely,” Blodeuwedd whispers, opening her eyes and covering Adain’s hand with hers, “to be struck by lightning than any other tree of the same height.”

  “Full marks,” says Adain, and stands on her toes to kiss her. “You were made of flowers, my love, but those are only pieces of you, the seeds from which you grew. You—you cannot be pressed into a book. You are so much more than the work of wizards.”

  Blodeuwedd is quiet for a space. Then she asks, “Are you a wizard, Adain?”

  Adain blinks, then laughs. “Not at all! Why do you ask?”

  “You . . . changed me, as they did. They saw plants, and made a woman—soft, sweet, biddable. You see the same plants, and make a different woman—hard, sharp, strong. How?”

  “I like to think I see you as you are,” she says, “and they see what they want to see. What flatters their vanity.”

  “Or am I the one thing when they look at me, the other when you do?” She chews her lip.

  “Which do you want to be, my lady?”

  “I want,” she says, her voice a husk. “I want to eat. I want to change others. I want no one to tell me who or what I am, what I can or cannot be. I want”—she draws closer to Adain, wraps her arms around her, snakes her fingers into Adain’s hair and tugs until she gasps—“to take what I please when I’m hungry, to ask no leave. I want a wife, and a weapon.”

  She releases Adain’s hair, steps back. She looks at the ground.

  “I want to be a wizard, though I hate them as I have never hated anything else.”

  “Is it a wizard you want to be,” says Adain, looking up at her, “or a wizard’s power you want to have?”

  She chuckles. “Can I have the one without the other?”

  “Certainly. Wizards—their power lies in naming. They shape reality because they tell a good story. Tell a different one—one of your choosing, one of your desire—and teach it to the world until it learns your truth and makes room for it.”

  Blodeuwedd raises an eyebrow. “That sounds like a pretty story itself.”

  “You were flowers, and they made you a woman,” says Adain firmly. She hesitates for a moment, like an autumn leaf in a stiff wind before resolving to fall. “I too was once other than I am. I had a different name; I threw a mighty spear; I was lord of Penllyn, and did not want to be. And I gave them up—my name, my weapons, my lands—to be a woman among books, a woman among women. To be the blossom on the gorse instead of the thorn.”

  Blodeuwedd listens, and there is wonder in it, that Adain could ever have been other than she is; that Blodeuwedd, for all her failed hours in the orchard mud, could yet be something else—could be what she desired, instead of what she was before choice was taken from her.

  “Teach me,” she says at last. “Teach me how.”

  * * *

&
nbsp; When Lleu returns from his business abroad, Blodeuwedd receives him as she never has before: there is a spark in her eyes she knows will thrill him, and her smile bares more teeth than she usually shows. She sees him surprised, and pleased.

  “My lady,” he says, “I’ve missed you,” and leans forward to kiss her on both cheeks.

  As he does, she whispers, “I’ve thought of a new game to play.”

  His eyes widen, and he grins, and sheds his armor as swiftly as is seemly, then follows where she leads.

  “Not to the bedchamber,” she says, coy. “I’ve thought of something much better.”

  She leads him out past the inner walls, and the outer; assures him there isn’t far to go, until they arrive at the river.

  There is a cauldron there, half covered with a thatched roof; next to it is a placid goat, an old fishing net.

  “Blodeuwedd,” he whispers, “what’s this?”

  “I want it to feel more real,” she says smoothly. “The possibility of your death. Take off your clothes, husband.”

  He does as she says, tensing with desire and fear. She drapes the fishing net over him.

  “Now,” she says, “onto the goat.”

  “You don’t have a spear,” he observes.

  She smiles. “I don’t need one.” She dips a tin cup into the cauldron, offers it to him. “Drink, my husband. We have thirsty work ahead.”

  Lleu does as he’s told, keeping his balance on goat and tub the while.

  As he drinks, she says, “Do you know what today is, husband?”

  He hesitates, wiping his mouth. “Sunday, my lady.”

  “So it is. I’ve had much more than a year of them, you know, in your house—biting my tongue, speaking in flowers neither of us could read. I could have made you a whole other wife,” she chuckles, “from the foxgloves I pulled from my fingers, the aconite I brushed from my hair. But I have learned something of my roots, while you were away.”

  Lleu frowns—coughs. He shakes his head, makes as if to step down.

  “Stay,” she says, “exactly where you are.”

  “Blodeuwedd—”

  “Have you ever heard me speak so many words to you?” she wonders. “Have you ever thought to ask what I thought, what I wanted, what I needed, when you took me from my home and planted me in yours?”

  “You are my wife,” he gasps, and stumbles. The goat bleats in sudden panic as he loses his footing, falls backward, half into the river. Blodeuwedd watches him like an owl, but does not move. Lleu opens his mouth to speak further, but his tongue is swollen. His brow is fevered and wet. Blodeuwedd can hear his heart beating in furious rhythms.

  “Adain!” she calls. “Adain, come out!”

  Adain emerges from the trees, carrying another cup; she hurries to Lleu’s side.

  “Not yet,” says Blodeuwedd, sharp as needles. “Lleu Llaw Gyffes, I am not your wife. Swear it now, and Adain will give you an antidote.”

  Lleu shakes his head, coughs blood—for a moment. Then he looks at Adain, and looks at Blodeuwedd, and nods. “I swear it,” he spits through swollen lips.

  “Swear,” says Blodeuwedd, “that you will never take another wife, never make your manhood from another’s pain.”

  Lleu stares for a long moment.

  “Swear!” hisses Adain.

  “I—swear—”

  “Swear,” says Blodeuwedd, “that you will never raise arms against me or mine, nor let your uncles seek to harm us in any way.”

  “I swear,” he says in a voice of milkweed floss, more breath than words, and there is a sorrow in his eyes that makes her almost hate him less.

  She nods, and Adain tips the antidote into the red of his mouth.

  Blodeuwedd steps forward, squats down next to him as he pants. She dips her sleeve in the river, uses it to wipe the sweat from his brow.

  “You gathered flowers and read woman. You read woman and gleaned docile, pretty, fragrant, weak. But you misread me, Lleu. I have in me the hearts of great ships, the bones of cathedrals. I have in me the sharpness of claws. And you, Lleu, what do you have? You cling like ivy. You smother like mistletoe. But what are you, besides wizard’s work?”

  She stands again, looks down at him.

  “I will never again be what I was before you. But I will be more. And you—you will be a rogue, a rascal. You will be anything but a man.”

  Lleu cries out, pours his pain onto the air as Blodeuwedd never could. As she and Adain watch, Lleu’s shape shrinks, shifts, blurs at the edges, as the magic called man leaves him, as he fights to hold on to it. A light flares from him, then dims. All that’s left tangled in the net is a hawk, sour of body, sound of wing; no sooner do they lift the net’s coils than the bird springs into the air, crying.

  Blodeuwedd watches him go, speechless. She stares at Adain.

  “I—did not know that would happen,” she says. “Are all men hawks, without wives?”

  “There was magic in his making, and magic in his unmaking,” says Adain, looking up at the sky. “His uncles will know soon enough what happened, but his vows will bind them no matter his shape.”

  Then Adain draws her close, kisses her.

  “You did it,” she says. “You’re free.”

  Blodeuwedd nods, silent, gazing into the darkness after Lleu’s wings.

  “Free,” Adain insists, “from everything—from retaliation, from his uncles. You could rule his house if you wanted; you could come back with me to the abbey—we could keep studying together, make a life.” Adain takes her hand. “You have everything you wanted—a name, a weapon—”

  “Adain.” Blodeuwedd kisses her. “I think we can do better than that.”

  The moon rises fat and bright over the river; Blodeuwedd looks long at its reflection on the water rippling the coin of it into white and silver lines.

  “I want to meet Arianrhod,” she says at last. “My former mother-in-law. I want to know what she’s like. Will you come with me? Before you answer,” she says, cutting off the passion in Adain’s eyes, “I cannot say whether I will stay as I am, now that you’ve taught me to read between my lineaments. I may hunger again. I may change.”

  “I wouldn’t have you otherwise,” says Adain firmly. “And so long as you’ll have me, I will stay with you to the earth’s end.”

  Adain kisses her hand, then turns from the water, and begins calling gently for the goat.

  Blodeuwedd takes her time before following; she stretches her hand out in the moonlight, turns her wrist to the sky. She feels no blooming pressure there, or anywhere. Nothing hurts.

  For the first time, the blue branches of her veins look like roots.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  * * *

  I first read the Mabinogion as a young teenager, and loved Blodeuwedd’s story for its strangeness as much as I hated it for its unfairness. When you read a lot of folklore and fairy tales, you get used to a certain amount of sameness as types repeat and accrete, but Blodeuwedd was unlike anything else I’d encountered. I was always fiercely of her party, and tended to forget her surrounding details. What was her lover’s name? Her husband’s? His uncles’? I could never keep those jerks in my head, because this fierce husband-murdering flower-owl-woman was so powerfully provocative. If ever a story wanted subverting, this one did.

  This isn’t the first time I engage with the myth—I wrote a poem about Blodeuwedd in 2005, a short story (“The Truth About Owls”) nine years after that, and still don’t feel done exploring the story’s tensions or arguing with other people’s interpretations. (This story was definitely partly written out of irritation with Alan Garner’s The Owl Service.) There are so many flowers, and so many birds, and so many women in the world, and they all deserve to be more than set dressing in men’s stories.

  * * *

  AMAL EL-MOHTAR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to everyone at Saga Press and Gallery Books who had a hand in making The Mythic Dream: Michael McCartney and Erika Genova, who
made our book look beautiful; Caroline Pallota, Kaitlyn Snowden, Stephen Breslin, and Allison Green, who kept things on track and made sure the book came together; Serena Malyon, whose gorgeous art is on the cover; LJ Jackson, publicity and marketing manager extraordinaire; Erin Larson, Allison Light, and Samantha Desz, who made it sound so good; and our publishing team, Jen Bergstrom, Jen Long, Justin Chanda, Joe Monti, and Madison Penico. We feel remarkably lucky to have gotten to make this book with the best people in publishing.

  And the biggest thank-you to the writers whose stories make up this anthology: we quite literally could not have done it without you. We are so grateful that you loved mythic stories this passionately, and reinvented them so powerfully.

  Dominik would like to thank André and Ginette Parisien, as well as Sophie, Luigi, Théa, and Livie Zaccardo for their unparalleled support. Thanks to Ann VanderMeer for her guidance over all these years. Thanks to Nicole Joanisse and Joanne Larocque, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Mike Allen, Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, Kit, John, and Andrew F. Sullivan, and Amy Jones. A heartfelt thanks to Navah for this last editorial venture—what an incredible journey we’ve had, truly one of mythic proportions in my eyes. I will be forever grateful for all we’ve done together, and for your friendship. Finally, thank you, of course, to Kelsi Morris, who continues to believe in and supports all of my wild projects—it means so very much to me.

  Navah would like to thank her parents, Debbie and Judah Rosensweig, who always believed she’d make books one day; her siblings (and siblings-in-law), Talya and Yechiel, Hillela and Noah, Chayim and Shayna, Moshe, and Elisha; and her extremely excellent tiny nieces and nephews, Maya Ellie, Miriam, and Rafael. Thanks for friendship and moral support go to the Second Saturday game folks, the 9pm Heavy Hitting boxing crew, the BAMS family, the Murder Friends, and especially Maruja Ivri (even though it’s not Galentine’s Day). Thank you to Dominik, for being the best co-editor and friend a person could wish for. Thank you thank you to Naftali Wolfe, for all the things, always. And finally, thank you to Eliora and Ronen, story readers, adventure-havers, myth-believers. Of all the stories I know, you two are the best.