Angharad of Llyr is heir to a matriarchy: a line of enchantress-queens that has ruled her island for centuries. Her destiny from birth: to rule as sole authority and ensure that her powerful bloodline endures for another generation. Devoted to her p...
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Stories often meddled with time.
A good teller knew when to speed it up: quickening the pace, the blood, the breath of the listeners, drawing their attention always to the next moment before they quite knew what they had just seen and heard, until they blinked and an hour had gone by like a flash. Or slow it down, spinning a moment out long, like a thread from a clump of wool, to play upon the perception of an audience, increase tension, leave space for mystery, for questions, for guesses. Geraint had always had a good instinct for how to manipulate the concept of time.
Yet he could never have predicted that two days could be such an eternity.
He hadn't expected Angharad to return immediately, of course. Nor did he really expect her to come the next day; her visits were never that frequent, though he allowed himself to hope that perhaps, she might dare to increase their occurrence now...
It was not desire that made him frantic, though it was strong; he craved her presence as he might crave food or water or sunlight had he been deprived of them. But desire he could control; he'd buried it long enough, knew how to distract himself from its grip, even now, when it fed off of heady experience rather than vain imaginings. It was not passion but fear that stole his peace, that kept him checking the cliff tops, scanning the path down into the cove every few minutes for any sign of her, praying for the relief of knowing she had not met with some consequence too harsh to consider, or wasn't locked in the castle to prevent any further forbidden liaisons. Fear that perhaps...perhaps that she had come to her senses, once back in her proper place and position, and now regretted her rashness, regretted everything.
He threw himself desperately into whatever work he could find; his garden, gathering her driftwood, the boat — he had promised her; he pulled it further up the beach, out of the reach of the corrosive fingers of the lapping wavelets, and set to work with his bartered tools, trying to keep his will on that which he could affect. In his mind he saw her sitting in its prow, and he told himself stories that all ended with their leaving; in them he bore her away from this island that bound her, breaking all the ties that would not let her be free. In them, she went with him joyfully, and as he worked the salt that stung his eyes might have been sweat, or it might not.
Three times he began to walk in the direction he had watched her disappear with her companions, three times with some vague thought of approaching the castle, but without any idea of how, when he got there, to discover where she was or what she was doing or whether she was all right, and each time he had paced like a wolf in the tall sea-grass and stared at the grey towers in the distance, the fortress that held her, that could not be breached—not by him, anyway. He was powerless; must wait for her. How long must he wait, just to know? There was nothing he could do, and he had always chafed at doing nothing.
He walked to Abernant on the second day, with some thought that if their princess had been caught in a scandal the village would be abuzz with the news. But there was nothing out of the ordinary; the fright over the rumors from the eastern tradesmen was fading, and people greeted him cordially, though the children found him less entertaining than usual. He could not concentrate well enough to tell any new stories.
