Geraint sat back on his heels in the dirt, squinted at the blue-and-white marbled sky, and frowned to himself. He was beginning to wonder exactly what he was doing here.
Planting vegetables, at the moment, but that wasn't the point...though it was rather part of the question. He contemplated his small plot of green leaves. Among Angharad's gifted provisions there had been a bag of turnips and onions, and he, loathe to waste anything, had dutifully saved the leafy tops of his produce, and settled them in a square of earth he had marked off behind the hut, near the stream, where he might easily divert the water to irrigate them. They had looked so well there that he had decided to add more, and had traded and performed for various seedlings in the village, so that now, respectable rows of transplanted greenery stood proudly in the earth, marking it as his.
Turnips and onions planted this late would only produce edible greens, of course, not full roots. But a garden was a garden, and a garden indicated a certain amount of...permanence. A permanence that, for the first time in years, he actually desired...and, ironically, could not have. Not really.
He sighed. It wasn't practical at all; no matter how many improvements he made to the hut or grounds, he could not reasonably expect to overwinter here - at least, not without relying even more on the charity of the villagers, which he did not wish to do, or of Angharad herself, whose endless generosity was beginning to frustrate him over his inability to return it with much of anything better than a few driftwood piles and stories. She had visited nearly every other day for almost two weeks, always bringing some gift, and had never suggested that he owed her in kind - indeed, had denied it vehemently, more than once. He dared to hope that she might, perhaps, take less pleasure in showing him kindness if he were anyone else - but this was daring much, and either way, it chafed him as somehow backwards to the natural order of things. She would, no doubt, scoff at this - but then it must seem natural, to someone in her position, to provide for a subject with no thought of return.
Of course, he wasn't her subject.
He wasn't sure precisely what he was.
Geraint rose from his knees with a grunt, brushed the soil from his hands, and propped his makeshift hoe against the hut wall, next to a frame where two salted rabbit skins were drying in the sun. He paused, staring at them, raw memory pushing fresh into his mind.
"Poor things," she says, squinting at the creatures dangling from his snares.
"If you want to eat," he remarks, with a shrug, pulling out his knife, "you've got to be more practical than sentimental."
She sighs, "I know," and sits, with her back to a boulder, to watch while he guts one. He watches her from the corner of his eye while he slices the skin and pulls it back; to his surprise, she betrays no horror or disgust. "It peels right off," she exclaims, with some fascination.
He laughs. "It's not as easy as it looks. Want to try?"
It was meant in jest, but she holds her hands out for the other coney; he hands it to her, then the knife, with raised eyebrows. She pokes at the soft underbelly. "Where do I start?"
"Just there, under the ribs. Not too deep or you'll puncture the gut and make a mess. If you do it right, all the inner bits will come out at once, more or less." He watches, a little astonished, while she follows his instructions without hesitation, slicing through tissue and scraping out innards with all the studiousness of a druid examining entrails.
"Now trim the skin off at the head and feet, and cut up the middle, over the breast. Then you can start pulling it back from the neck." She is quick and efficient with the knife; he waits to see her reaction to the difficulty, the surprisingly strong resistance, of skin separating from muscle. Her bloodied hands are slippery, struggling; he sees her jaw clench and face flush; her knuckles stand out like tiny white hills.
"Belin," she blurts out suddenly, with a gasping chuckle. "Did I say it peels right off? No wonder we give the butcher this job."
He crouches on his heels before her and grabs the other end of the hare, holds it steady for resistance. "Here, this might help."
She grins and pushes a stray lock of hair from her face with the back of her wrist, leaving a streak of blood at her temple. Gripping the skin again, she yanks backwards with unexpected strength. The slippery carcass flies from his clutches and he almost topples over, landing one precarious hand against the boulder at her back just in time to stop himself from tumbling into her.
A jumble of sensation: her eyes, wide and shocked, inches away, her sudden sharp inhale close to his face, the warmth of her shoulder that grazes his wrist...too much, it almost does him in, but for the fact that she clutches a pungent half-skinned rabbit between them, under his chin. He pushes away hastily, clumsy in his efforts not to touch her, even accidentally, and sprawls backwards onto the ground, gasping out, "I'm sorry. I wasn't...quite..."
But she erupts into giggles, then peals of laughter, she is rosy-faced and dancing-eyed, and further words are swallowed up in his own answering laugh of relief, of shared acknowledgement of the absurdity of it all.
What was he doing?
"There's..." he motions toward his own eye, while they crouch near the stream, washing their hands. "There's blood on your face."
"Oh!" She touches her left cheekbone, rubs at it with her sleeve. "Well, we can't have that. Imagine the questions at home. There, did I get it?"
"No, it's..." he makes a frustrated movement as she prods at her own forehead and temple. "It's just there, by your eyebrow. That's it. But it's dried, not coming off."
"Needs water," she says, and he tears a bit from the hem of his shirt, soaks it, wrings it and holds it out to her. She gestures toward her face, and inclines toward him. "Would you mind? I can't see."
It should be a simple thing. A quick swipe of cloth upon skin; nothing. Her eyes close as he reaches up, chestnut lashes dark against her pale skin. Golden freckles scatter across her cheeks like powdered spices on cream. His hand shakes until he is sure she must feel it, even through the cloth, but she makes no indication, unless perhaps that subtle parting of her lips speaks of breath that comes a little less readily than it did a moment ago, if it's anything like his own...
What were they doing?
Geraint strode to the front of the hut, restless. I'm teaching her things, he thought, firmly, at himself, because she asks. She commanded, rather, with that careless imperiousness, tempered now by amusement when she spoke to him, as though it were a game she was playing. A dangerous game, perhaps, for him to join in, but it was the only way he could think of to repay her, by satisfying her endless curiosity and determination. If it also fed his pride to see her admiration of his skills, well, then...at least he had the sense to see it, to remember that it was illusory: this pretense that he could be her superior in any way, teach her anything she really needed to know.
And he was glad of the opportunity, truth be told. Angharad looked increasingly weary and worried when she arrived at the cove. She collected the wood he had gathered and various herbs and implements she needed quickly so that she might steal an hour or two, she said, to enjoy her time away from the castle. She answered his concerned questions with vagaries and then veered off, deflecting him by exclaiming over each new fruit of his labor, demanding to be shown how he had accomplished this or that. Her enthusiasm over his work, her stubborn desire to master the same skills, were so almost-childlike in their intensity that he could not help indulging them, and when he finally saw the anxiety fade from her eyes, the smile spread like sunlight across her face, all his efforts were worth the trouble.
Her inconsistencies were baffling. She had cheerfully slid a knife through a pale fish belly, cleaned it and cooked it over his fire with the same intense fascination she had displayed over the rabbits, yet when he had shown her how to pluck down from a wild grouse she had balked. The skin, she said, looked horrible - all pimply and pale - and she would not touch it.
She had woven reeds together for a basket with meditative patience, but when he tried to show her how to start a fire with only flint and tinder she had lost her temper within minutes, throwing down the stones and giving the kindling one hot glare that immolated it in an instant, shriveling the skin on the spitted fowl above it to a blackened crisp.
She knew how to embroider and how to sew a seam, but not how to construct a garment, and watched him piece together a new shirt from the linen scraps she brought him with a great deal of interest. He had traded labor for leather from the tanner in Abernant and made himself a new pair of shoes; she was so impressed with these that she insisted on making a pair of her own, which took her the better part of two visits - but then refused to take them back to Caer Colur, where they would be noticed by the servants as out-of-place.
"Don't you have any place to hide your secrets?" he had asked her, half-teasing.
"Not at home," she had answered, with unexpected seriousness, "just here." And then looked quickly away from him, flustered, as though she had said something more significant than she meant, and changed the subject.
He tried not to think too hard about such moments, to read too much into them, to allow himself to believe she could regard him with anything approaching what he felt for her. He could not even hope that she did. What could it bring her but pain? He was, at least, free to love her from a distance, without guilt or expectation. She had, he suspected, no such freedom.
Perhaps he should just leave, before things got any more...more...whatever they were.
But he could not bear to think of leaving. Not yet.
The cove felt empty now, too quiet when she wasn't there, and he roamed further and further from his hut on days he did not expect her. He knew, by now, what lay within an hour's walk in every direction except the one from which Angharad came; she had been very clear that he should not go near Caer Colur if he did not want to be brought in and questioned, which she was anxious to avoid. He ought to gather the remaining supplies for his boat repairs; the boat would be a more efficient way of traveling further while still being able to return within a day.
Mind made up, he shouldered his sack - self-made from bits of an old canvas sail he'd found discarded near the village docks - and filled it with several items he knew would have value in Abernant, including the rabbit skins; he'd drop them off with the tanner.
His homemade bow hung over the door of the hut; he took it and a few arrows, in case he should startle up any small game on the way, which was how he'd bagged the grouse on his last trip. It was a rough weapon, made from a sapling cut from a tiny grove in a hollow a few miles north of the cove, strung with twine salvaged from the rubbish heaps in Abernant. He and his friends had made many such as a child; they were common playthings for boys but a large one could be just as deadly, teamed with good sturdy arrows, as the hand-carved, elegant weapons of any royal bowyer.
Angharad had exclaimed over it, when he'd shown it to her, with a rather hesitant enthusiasm that told him she was humoring him a little. She examined it curiously, said it was very clever, tested the string, asked where he'd learned to fletch ... then stood up and, with breathtaking form, shot twice, one arrow after another, without time for him to blink in between, into an irregular lump of turf a hundred yards away. Even at that distance he could tell they both struck within an inch of each other, and gaped at her as she looked at the bow with obvious newfound respect.
"This is very good," she said, handing it back to him. Geraint had felt just a little indignant.
"Did you think it wouldn't work?"
She had bitten her lip sheepishly. "I wasn't quite sure. I've never seen one so...erm...primitive."
He laughed in spite of himself. "Bowmaking has been around a long time, and was not always the high craft it is now. What do you think our ancestors did?"
Her expression had changed, irresistibly, into a slow, expectant, silky smile that melted away his indignation like wax in a flame. "I don't know," she purred, "what did they do?"
Shots fired. Willingly surrendered, he had composed a story for her on the spot.
He found his mind unusually, spectacularly productive. Angharad's audience stoked his imagination, bringing characters and events and legends to life until he felt as though he was not their creator but merely the channel through which they spoke. Even his oldest stories, those he had discarded for being stale and dull, were resurrected for her, altered and embellished until they seemed breathlessly new, or perhaps it was simply her animated response that made them so. He could not look directly at her while he performed; her expressions and reactions made him quite forget what he was saying, but even in his side vision she glowed and trembled and flashed like light on water, buoying his confidence, bringing out something that seemed almost like...magic. Sometimes he half-wondered if it wasn't real magic...this energy that possessed him, that flowed so effortlessly while she was watching.
The path to Abernant meandered among the sea cliffs, giving his mind time and space to do the same, his long strides providing a counterpoint to his tangled, swift thoughts. The thunder of the surf was a steady, endless thrum in his ears, a presence so constant he had ceased to notice it, but he still caught his breath every time he came to a point where the cliffs parted to reveal a dark expanse of blue water, shimmering in the sun, compelling, beckoning.
When he reached the little cluster of cottages that made up the village he found them unusually quiet. He was a local fixture now, accustomed to being cheerfully hailed from open doorways and gardens and mobbed by enthusiastic children, but today doors were shut, and greetings from the adults he saw out working, while not unfriendly, were low and short.
Geraint made his way to the tannery, located at the northernmost point on the outskirts of the village, downwind of the sea breezes...for good reason, he thought, coughing, as the odor of the place assaulted his nose. Its master, seeing him approach, waved him toward the cottage, set well away from the pits and vats that held the foul-smelling ingredients of the trade.
Mawrth Tanner was middle-aged and hale, a straightforward man of few words with a reputation for scrupulous honesty. Geraint enjoyed his company and that of his wife, a witty, sharp woman who said all the things her quiet husband did not. Their home was one of his havens when he went to the village, as it was one of the few in which he did not have to spend half his time fending off young ladies. To be sure, Nia never missed an opportunity to remind him that he was shirking his responsibilities as an unmarried man, but her motivations were, at least, untainted by any thought of capturing him for a daughter. The Tanners had only sons.
He knocked at the cottage door and in a moment it was opened by a small, stocky, dark-headed boy, who fell upon him instantly.
"Geraint!" The child threw his arms around Geraint's waist, beaming, and grabbed his arm, pulled him inside the house. "Mam! The storyteller's here!"
"So I see." Nia looked in from the back door, reeking of beef tallow, a sharp knife clutched in her sturdy brown hand. She waved it at Geraint with a grin. "Come in and sit down, lad. Mawrth'll be here in a moment; I've got to finish this scraping job." She frowned at the boy still clinging to him. "Marlen! Go and get to grinding that bark with your brother, or it's your hide we'll be tanning next. Three times your Tad has told you this morning."
Marlen groaned. "But Mam, what if I miss a story?"
Geraint laughed, and extricated his arm from the child's clutches. "You've got to earn a story with your chores. Help Madox, and when you're done I'll have one ready for the both of you."
The boy whooped, and flew from the front door as Mawrth entered from the back, pecking his wife on the cheek as he passed her. He clasped Geraint by the hand in welcome and bade him sit, taking the rabbit skins he offered and looking them over. "Pretty pelts," Mawrth remarked. "Good for a winter cap. Quick work, rabbits, ready in a fortnight."
Geraint hesitated. He had thought to trade the pelts, but it now struck him that he'd rather like to keep them, if only for sentiment. He wondered what the plain-spoken man before him would say if he told him who was responsible for the removal of one of those skins he held. Keenly attuned to the threads of legend, Geraint had quickly picked up on the universal suspicion that the Daughters of Llyr, though many generations removed from the Sea King, were still not altogether quite mortal beings. The image of their fiery-headed princess, of whom the people spoke in reverent tones, sitting cross-legged on the muddy ground and yanking bare-handed at a bloody rabbit skin with grimy smudges on her face would be incomprehensible. He almost laughed, imagining their shock, and forgetting, for a moment, that he would have thought the same a scant few weeks ago.
"What can I give you for the job?" he asked.
The tanner grunted, waving a brown-stained hand. "Nought. You've already done the hard bit, and they're just bits of things. I'll set the boys on them for the rest, good practice."
"I'll give them a specially good tale then," Geraint promised, "if you're sure there's nothing I can help with." It struck him that the man looked a bit haggard, the blue eyes in the sun-browned face less keen than usual. "You look weary. Are all well here?"
Mawrth shrugged. "Aye. But..." He hesitated. "There's been some trouble in the village, and a few of us have had late nights, sitting up watching."
A cold prickle tugged at Geraint's scalp. He thought of Angharad's warning. If you see or hear anything, you must tell me. "Watching for what? What sort of trouble?"
"Och," Mawrth said hastily, "naught to worry a guest with."
Nia strode in at that moment, drying her hands on a rough towel. "It'll worry him enough if he tries to go through the commons today," she declared. "Trouble wags tongues and fear makes monsters out of men, as they say. You'll stay to sup with us, lad?"
"I shouldn't wish to intrude."
"Oh, rubbish. It'll get those everlasting boys out of my hair at least; they've not been allowed to roam far these three days and I'm about to pickle them both." She bustled to the hearth and stoked the embers beneath the kettle. "How are you faring out there, alone in that cove of yours?"
"I'm all—," he began, but she went on decidedly.
"It's unnatural, a young man by himself. I keep telling you." Handing around tankards, she poured ale for them all and set the jug on the table, winking at Geraint over its top as she sat down. "Whenever you'd like company over there, I hear you'd have your pick of the village."
"Have you seen anything odd around at the cove?" Mawrth interrupted, to Geraint's relief, while Nia took a breath. "Losing any land to the sea? Queer noises at night?"
The questions were disturbingly familiar. "No," Geraint answered. "Nothing. Is that what's happening?"
"Those are the rumors, and more," Nia said. "Mind you, nothing's happened here. But there were traders come from the east side, three days ago, full of stories that would straighten your hair. Of creatures in the night stealing children from cradles, and folks dropping like flies from plague inland, fires erupting in the middle of fields and burning everything to cinders, flocks torn apart by giant wolves, and tremors making the cliffs collapse; whole villages falling into the sea and getting swallowed by dirty great serpents in the water."
"We like your stories better," Mawrth muttered into his tankard.
Geraint frowned. "So do I. Where are all these things happening?"
"Nowhere, most likely," Nia scoffed. "A lot of bloody nonsense. Those east coast traders love a sensation." But she said it a little too forcefully, and he saw her glance toward the back door, where noise of her boys' chatter drifted in. She lowered her voice."They say there's been message after message to the queen, but nobody can see much of anything being done about it. Just relocating those who've lost homes to the slides. There was some grumbling." She shook her head, troubled. "Never heard any of that before. Anyway, it's got everyone pulled tight as bowstrings, scared to go out after dark, and children not allowed to stray far from their homes. The men have been taking it in turns to keep watch at night - though nobody seems to quite know what they're watching for. And now of course folks are seeing things that an't there and stirring it all up further."
"It'll die down in a few days, no doubt," said Mawrth. "But Nia's right. If you go to the common now, don't expect the usual welcome."
"I noticed it was quiet in the village," Geraint said. "Perhaps I'll wait another day or two. I need a few things, but not urgently."
"Stay with us, then," Nia urged. "The boys have asked after you so often I was tempted to send them over to drag you here. We could all use something to cheer us."
So he stayed, into the evening, and the cottage was as full of warmth and light as he was with bread and stew and baked apples, and he and Mawrth sang rollicking sea chanties while they washed up, and the boys danced and beat each other for drums while Nia sat in a corner stitching a pair of leather cuffs and laughed until she cried. And the shadows fell away from the faces of his hosts as they watched the children sit spellbound and shining-eyed at his feet while he performed, and then they all begged for more, just one more story before he left...
Nia piled two more loaves into his arms at the door. "It's a crying shame," she informed him sternly, "for you to be going back alone to that forsaken place, when you ought to be doing this every blessed night, with a lady and little ones of your own. You mind that, you wandering rascal, and think about doing your duty for a change."
"Oh, leave him be, Nia." Mawrth's voice drifted from within, amused. "He's not even of Llyr; why should he settle here? You're only convincing him that a woman will nag him to death."
She cackled, turned Geraint around by the shoulders and pushed him out, into the golden light of sunset. "There! Go and enjoy your solitude until you're good and tired of it, boy."
Madox and Marlen waved to him from the loft window until he was out of sight, and Geraint turned his face back toward the cove, lighthearted...a joy that quickly changed to sobriety as he made his way back through the cluster of cottages on the cove side of Abernant, encountered again the strange silence and reserved, tense manner of the inhabitants. He was relieved when he reached the lonely cliff path again, but it was a hollow kind of relief, a sense of choosing only the lesser of two wrongs. The journey felt longer on the way back, the shadows darker, as though they might be full of lurking things just beyond sight. Creatures in the night, stealing children from cradles...he shuddered, grimacing; such horror stories were, of course, well-known to him; lurking in the shadows of every tribe and family to be released like creeping things on dark nights around fires, born of some strange human need for the icy thrill of fear that made home and hearth all the more comfortable. But that such tales were being reported as realities...
By the time he reached the cove, stars were glimmering overhead; the sea was a black, moaning nothingness, filling the darkness to the south, and his tiny hut seemed colder and emptier than it ever had before.