Angharad was waiting at the cove when Geraint returned from his morning trek to check his snares and fishing lines. His heart rose at sight of her; then he paused, slightly perplexed. Instead of greeting him in her customary way - or ways, rather, for she had turned out to be creative and thorough in her demonstrations - she only glanced up at him with an inscrutable half-smile, waved, and remained where she was, sitting cross-legged and barefoot on the blanket she had spread upon the green grass near the garden. She turned her attention immediately back upon the object in her lap, and he hurried about setting his snared game in the weir he had built in the brook, there to stay cold until he could attend to it later.
When he drew near he saw that she had a length of parchment spread across her knees, her head bent over it studiously. He crouched beside her, slid an arm around her shoulders. "I'm sorry I wasn't here."
"It's all right." She looked up, kissed him in swift, distracted welcome, and added, with a certain note of amusement, "I've just been keeping a promise. Meditating on this." She indicated the document in her lap.
"What is it?" He glanced over the parchment, scrawled thick with lines of ink.
"At the moment," she sighed, "a source of frustration. It's the treaty that was made ages ago with the Fair Folk, and then recorded in writing after my grandfather's banishment. I've been looking it over all morning, trying to decide if it says what I think it says. I'm not sure I trust it."
"What's not to trust?"
Angharad made a vague, impatient gesture into the air. "For ages it's been our understanding that the entire northeastern quarter of the island was forbidden to human habitation, set aside for the Folk. But I can't find it anywhere in here, and now I'm wondering why it was ever tacked on in legend. According to this, it's only the stone ring itself that we're barred from." She pushed the parchment toward him abruptly. "Here, you look. Tell me what I'm missing. I've looked at it so long I feel as though I'm going blind."
Geraint took it and scanned the lines; tightly-spaced script like many-legged insects crawling across the page, the work of a meticulous and, he decided, rather uptight individual. The event may have been a traumatic one, but the scribe who had recorded this treaty had betrayed no emotion in any stroke or dash of his—or her, he amended, remembering where he was—work. There could be no doubt of its thoroughness or accuracy.
"No," he said, "you're right. It's only Pentre Gwyllion mentioned here. What're the Dagrau Rhiannon?"
"Another frustration," she grunted. "'Tears of Rhiannon', in translation. Something the gwyllion helped protect, apparently, but I've never heard of them. Or it. A treasure of some kind, I suppose. It seems to have been the cause of this whole thing, and now we're still held to the terms even though it's lost or forgotten, for all I know. A nice bit of irony, that."
Geraint sucked his teeth, contemplating. It was a nice bit of irony, instinct told him; there was a story in it, somewhere, and it plucked at his mind with delicate fingers, a puzzle to piece together. "Didn't your grandfather travel there to find a source of power?"
"He did," she conceded. "It has occurred to me that this—whatever it is—is what he sought. And if it is, I wish I knew where he'd heard of it. There's nothing of the name in any legends that I know."
Curiosity flickered within him, a quickening, like the rustle in a clump of grass that draws the hunter's eye. He read over the lines again, sinking into them, their mystery a twinkling path that pulled at him seductively. "Did you notice this? The wording specifies that the ring is forbidden to the people of Llyr. It says nothing about anyone else."
Angharad blinked, looking rather owlish in her surprise, and took the parchment back from him. "How did I not...." She read silently for a moment, and he tried not to be distracted by how charming she was, winding a long red-gold strand of hair around her finger, one puzzled dimple creasing the corner of her mouth. "How odd. Not that it makes a difference, really; if we don't have a reason to go I'd hardly think anyone else would either. But I suppose if it's taken literally..."
"The Folk take everything literally," Geraint remarked. "It's one of their most charming and irritating qualities."
"And you know this from experience?" Angharad returned, raising an eyebrow.
Geraint grinned. "Stories, my love, always stories. You could fill volumes with tales of the Folk, and their pattern is as clear as these lines." He tapped the parchment. "They will exploit every unspoken condition, dodge the spirit of an agreement while fulfilling it to the letter, and turn any arrangement to their advantage with indisputable logic. It's why it's so perilous to deal with them, if you do it with any thought of deceit. If these are the terms they agreed to, they will abide by them, but it doesn't make them less dangerous." He studied her face, a trace of anxiety pulling at him. "What are you thinking of doing?"
Angharad hesitated. "I don't know, exactly. But somehow, I've got to communicate with them. Something to do with this." She gestured to the pendant dangling below her throat. "My jewel has been behaving strangely, and this morning it was in my dream."
"A new one?"
"Mmm." She related it to him, in vivid detail, and he stared at the parchment to hide his alarm at the calamity it seemed to foreshadow. "So you see," she concluded, "this gem is certainly magic, but it's never been active before, and that it should become so now, with everything else that's happening...perhaps it's coincidence, or perhaps not. But the Folk might be able to tell us, as they gave it to Mother, and Pentre Gwyllion is the only way of contacting them that we know. Actually..." She reached behind her neck to fumble with her silver chain, and to his surprise, removed it. "Speaking of this. I want you to keep it here, safe, for me."
The silver crescent dangled in the air from the chain, the gem throwing slivered fragments of rainbow light upon the blanket. Geraint looked at it with some disquiet. "Keep it? Why? Don't you always wear it - as a symbol of your identity?"
"Yes," Angharad said soberly, "but I have another. This one was given me at my ascendance ceremony, but before that I had a plain one with no gem. I shall go back to wearing it for a time." She looked troubled. "Achren will be here any day, and it seems prudent to keep it hidden from her, as far away as we can - at least until we know something of its nature, and whether she could even use it. Eilwen and Arianrhod are in agreement and...well, I thought of you."
He took it gingerly. The metal was still warm from her skin. "I can hide it somewhere. What should I do if it...um...behaves strangely?"
She bit her lip. "I hope it won't, for you. I've worn it so long I suspect it's connected to me, and should stay quiet when separated. But keep your eye on it, and let me know if anything strange happens."
"It ought to be protected somehow," he pointed out, and she rummaged in the nearby saddlebag and produced a scrap of linen. Geraint wrapped the pendant in it, strode to his hut, and after a moment's thought, tucked the small parcel over the lintel of the door. Hidden by the shadows between stones, it was quite invisible from any vantage point. He stared at the space, turning things over; the puzzle still nudged him, prickling at the corners of his mind.
Angharad was pulling foodstuffs out of her saddlebags when he returned; bread and cheese and a flagon of wine, setting them aside. She nodded approval over his stated hiding place; he stared, entranced, at the expanse of pale skin left strangely bare without the silver moon that had always winked there every moment since he had first seen her; its absence struck him with an odd sense of intimacy, somehow more vulnerable than the numerous times he had witnessed her wearing it and nothing else. He felt that she had removed a piece of herself, but he swallowed his unease, and said nothing of it. "Won't your mother notice it's missing?"
"No doubt she will. I shall tell her the truth - as much of it as she needs to know," she declared, and began to roll the parchment back up.
The sound of it took him instantly back; strange how he could be transported so suddenly and completely away from his current surroundings. The sea, the sunlight, and the blanket spread upon emerald turf melted away for that instant; instead he saw a worn wooden table beneath the slanting beam of light from a window, heard a pen scratching staccato rhythms into the stillness. It was a fleeting thing, all the more intense for its brevity; it faded at once back into memory, leaving him with a tingling bittersweetness at his core.
Angharad seemed mildly surprised when he took the scroll from her again, and chuckled to see him bring it near his face and sniff appreciatively. "Smells like my childhood," he explained, with a grin. "The hours I spent by my father's side, learning to write."
She looked wistful, uncertain. "Do you miss him?"
"Always," Geraint sighed. He leaned back on the blanket, settling his head comfortably in her lap. "He did not have the strength to join me in play, like some of the other fathers I knew. His illness kept him from it, and I often resented it. But now, when I think of those hours sitting with him, learning my letters while he read aloud from whatever he was working on...or told stories, and sang the old songs of Gellau...I wish I had stayed longer. Listened better."
"He sang?" A small, curious smile crooked her mouth.
"We all did, the whole family. I told you my mother was fond of claiming descent from Menwy."
She laughed softly, fingers combing through the curls at his temple. "Why don't you, now? I should think it would be a lucrative addition to your performances."
"How do you know I don't?" he teased, squinting up at the sunlight haloing her head. "You've only seen me perform for an audience of one. And you've only ever asked for stories, not songs." He shut his eyes and continued quietly. "After Mother died, and then Gwynedd a few years later, Father hadn't the heart for it any more."
Her hand stilled in his hair. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have baited you over it."
"It's all right," he said, thoughtfully. "It's only that...singing brings them all back, for that moment, so I tend to do it only when I'm alone. Because sometimes it's too much." He opened one eye again to look at her ruefully. "One doesn't want to break out weeping in the middle of a performance, you know. It's embarrassing."
She bent over until her tumbled hair curtained his face in red-gold light, and he inhaled the scent of it like a drug. "I should like to hear some of those songs some time," she murmured, tracing his jawline with one fingertip, "and I won't laugh if you cry."
He snatched at her hand and pressed the fingertips to his lips. "I'll trade you, then, song for song. I've learnt tunes from every cantrev in Prydain, but nothing from Llyr. Surely you have your own."
"We do." Angharad straightened up, wearing her wry expression, stained by a faint flush of self-consciousness. "But I am not accustomed to singing for an audience."
Geraint tugged at a lock of her hair playfully. "Fair's fair."
"Hmph," she said, but without any real annoyance. That small smile was back, settling so alluringly in the corners of her lips that he had to force himself to stay still, and not pull her down and interrupt whatever else was about to break out of them. For she had taken a breath, and he held his own, as she began to sing.
She sang of small ships, resting at harbor, away from their untold adventures upon the rolling waves. He recognized the metaphor before the first verse was done: the ships were children, the song clearly a lullaby, full of gentle references to sleep, serenity, peace, and home. Her voice was clear, low, sweet and steady in pitch, and he closed his eyes, blissful, and tried to imagine her as a child...a goldenfire-headed child, being rocked and sung to sleep by...whom? Nothing she had told him of the queen lent itself to the scene forming in his mind. He realized, with an aching jolt, that Angharad was not the little girl in his mental image but the mother, bent singing over a brightly-curled head against her breast.
He pushed the vision away hurriedly, and tried to empty his mind of all but the sound of the song. But the siren sweetness of it was heartrending enough on its own, and by the time she had repeated the last slow lines he realized that if he opened his eyes the prickling ache behind them would almost certainly betray him. So he kept them shut, and measured his breaths slow, and wished both that she had never sung it and that she would sing it again, that she would never stop singing to him.
The song ended, and she was silent for some time, as though she knew he had no words and did not wish to make him search for them. He listened to her silence, backed by the quiet rush of the breakers on the beach, the rustle of the grasses in the ever-moving air, and wondered what she was thinking, and what she would say if he told her of the picture in his mind.
Finally he deemed it safe to speak, at least, pushing past the tightness in his throat. "Beautiful. I suppose that is sung over every Llyrian child in the cradle."
Angharad stirred, the curling ends of her hair gliding like silk across his face and shoulders. "Yes. As I shall sing it over my own soon."
His eyes flew open at this, despite his pride, to find her gazing at him steadily, her expression a mixture of burning intensity and desperate longing that quickened his pulse in an instant. No need to wonder; her thoughts could not be more plainly written if she had scrawled them on the parchment he had set down next to them. Gods! How had he not thought of this? It was madness — dangerous, beautiful madness, and could not be. But perhaps it was, already. It occurred to him that they had been extravagantly careless; he stared at her, and could say nothing.
She waited until his silence spoke for him, and straightened up, turning her eyes away toward the water. "Your turn. Song for song. That was the bargain."
The hurt note in her voice dug at him like claws. Geraint reached up to brush his hand against her cheek, and spoke shakily. "Give me time to think."
"Don't think too long," she said - light words, with steel threaded through them. "We don't have much time for it."
"Angharad." His voice still shook. "Do you tell me that you are—,"
"No," she interrupted. "I would not have risked it without your agreement." She glanced back at him, flushed and hesitant. "I only thought of it this morning, because...my own signs and cycles are no mystery to me. If the very possibility is unthinkable to you, then it would be best if I do not come at all for the next week. Not until the moon wanes once more."
"A full week?" Geraint repeated, then felt foolish — like a petulant child deprived of some privilege. "I...is there no way to prevent..."
"None that are certain," she said flatly.
"What about your duties?" he queried. It was one thing to defer passion; but not to see her at all was a terrible thought. "After all, you came often for a month before the storm, and we managed to stay chaste. I daresay I can control myself for a week."
She barked a short laugh, dry and crisp. "At full moon? Perhaps you could, but I could not, nor would I desire to. Not anymore. I dare not trust myself within sight of you. No," she went on, "I shall have to leave the driftwood to the acolytes for a bit, and stay at home, with only the thought of you to sustain me." Bitterness twisted her mouth into a dark, sardonic mockery of her wry smile.
After a painful pause he sat up, twisting around to face her. She did not meet his eyes. "It isn't that the idea is unthinkable to me," he confessed hoarsely. "The very thought...I cannot..." he choked on the words; a new vision invaded his mind: a small mirror of Angharad, a child, proud, magnificent, crowned with her mother's red-gold hair. His own blood, a princess of Llyr. Would there be anything of him in her - in her smile, her laugh, her eyes? He caught at his breath. "I would I could give you everything you want."
The smooth lines of her throat jerked as Angharad swallowed. "No one can do that," she said bitterly, "because you are everything I want, and I would you were mine, for all to know, without reservation or secrecy or deception. And it is the one thing I cannot have." Her gaze turned to him again, jewel-sharp and aching and devastating. "But I could have something of you, to keep; one that would be ours alone, untouchable, no matter what may come after."
"And leave me with what?" he asked, forcing his voice to remain steady. "Only to watch from a distance as she grew up in a world I have no part in, never to know or be known?" Angharad winced. He saw it, but went on, angry at himself, at the life denied them. "It is difficult enough now, with only you to yearn for, and no one yet come between us. Would you ask this much more of me?"
She stared at him as if shocked that he could be so obtuse. "I would. Because the alternative is that you will watch me bear another man's child, and have nothing of me at all but whatever attention I can spare you once I am married." Her voice broke and she turned away from him, curling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. "And even should I bring you into my own house, under pretense that will be perfectly obvious to everyone, that is no life for any man. You will grow to resent it, and me, and you will leave, sooner or later, and our time here will be no more than memory."
Like all their choices, it was unbearable; Geraint pulled her into his arms and held her, in mute solidarity with the pain that shook her. "You see," she whispered dully, "there is no happy ending for us. There are only endings...one with and one without the one thing that could last out of all this."
That vision of her bent over a fiery-haired child pushed itself into his mind's eye again, and his will began to crumble. "But would a child of ours be accepted in your house? I thought your law states that—,"
"No one would know," she said tremulously. "I will be wed in little over a month, if Mother's plans stand. Even if it happened now, it would be too soon for anyone to suspect the father was anyone but my husband. Healthy babes born a few weeks before their time are nothing new."
Geraint grit his teeth at the words my husband. "Are you certain you could maintain such a secret? Your mother knows you come here often. If it were discovered before your wedding it could go very badly for me. And I find it hard to believe that the women who could sniff out my...erhm...involvement in your life, would not also sense something so pertinent to their expertise."
Angharad stiffened a little and he loosed his arms; she sat up, looking at him with rather rueful respect. "I didn't think of that." Her brow furrowed. "I would never put you willingly in danger."
He was surprised to find himself filled with a heavy sense of regret, a mourning for the dream-child in his vision. "I don't...I don't say this could never be," he said carefully, "or that I do not desire it, even. Only that...we must be careful."
"Careful," she repeated slowly, picking up the scrolled parchment and returning it to the saddlebag. "All my life I have been careful. Dutiful and responsible and sensible. And discontented. Until you came." She dropped the bag as though it were terribly heavy, clenched her fists, and turned back to him suddenly, with the flushed cheeks and blazing eyes that he had come to recognize as the harbingers of storm, that brought his own pulse to a pounding rhythm, his breath to an audible rush. She tackled him like a breaker, with a strength that still somehow surprised him, tumbling them both down onto the blanket beneath the open sky and pulling him into the warm circle of her arms. Her hands twisted into his shirt linen, slid beneath it; her breath was hot on his face. "I don't want to be careful anymore."
Too preoccupied for speech for some time, he finally came up for air, and sighed plaintively against her lips, contemplating the near future. "A whole week?"
Angharad chuckled. "If you insist. But today is ours."
"And what are my orders, milady?" He had a few suggestions, of course, to which she responded with interest.
"How intriguing," she murmured presently, "but you do still owe me a song."
Geraint laughed. "And how am I to accomplish that, in this state?"
Turquoise eyes flashed with a sudden feral light. Abruptly she pushed him away and in one fluid motion rose to her feet, pulling him up with her; she turned, gripping his wrist, and he ran after her toward the beach, in bewildered anticipation.
When they reached the water's edge she plowed straight into the surf, so fast that before he knew it she had led him waist-deep; once again the swells parted around them both in a seemingly-effortless flow, and he paused to watch the phenomenon with his former sense of disbelief. Angharad, drawn up short by his halt, whirled around to face him, and her radiance made him forget the water's unnatural movement, forget everything but the sight of her. Did she really glow, or was it the sunlight, tossed from the fractured surface of the water to dance across her skin? —golden against the sky, ivory against the sea. He shivered, not from cold, and wondered if it mattered if the moon glowed of her own accord, or whether, as some of the druids debated, she merely threw back the light of her brother the sun. One dared not ask such questions of the gods. His mind swam, every sense overwhelmed, his pulse roaring in synchrony with the thunder of the surf.
Droplets shimmered up her arms like crystals as she reached for him, pulled him toward her, the water rose to his chest and shoulders until his feet left the sand and he gasped in sudden panic, clutching at her because there was nothing else. She held him, he realized, by more than her arms, though he had no words to describe the sensation of this fluid power around him; the sea itself buoyed him up, weightless. Angharad laughed at his surprise, and he stared at her in helpless wonder. Here, in her element, she was inferno and tempest, regal and wild and barely human; he thought vaguely that he might not survive whatever she had in mind, but if a man could choose the manner of his death, it would be as glorious an end as any the bards might dream of.
"Will you drown me?" he asked, only half in jest, as she wrapped him into her embrace. Her hair drifted around him, dark in the water, clinging like silken bonds.
"No," she whispered, around the white crescent of her smile. "I'll make you sing."
Author Note: The embedded video is a cover of the song that inspired this chapter, Away from the Roll of the Sea, written by Canadian Allistair McGillivray. In this video, the song was adapted and performed by Wattpad author CelticWarriorQueen17, an extraordinarily talented young woman whose book you should all go buy. :)