"Why?"
It was a raw whisper, one he barely heard above the rushing and sighing of the sea. Glassy wavelets lapped at his ankles, pulled at the filmy edges of her gown, twinkling, wherever they touched, with the same eerie green light that glowed at the crest of each breaker. Geraint watched it, mesmerized, and Angharad repeated the question.
"Why would you do this?"
She was shivering, and he was disturbed by how little heat was penetrating through her soaked garments. She had made no move away from the waterline, had spoken no word to dry either of them. He tightened his arms around her. "Because I am needed."
"When I said I needed you," she answered, in a voice as colorless as water, "this is not what I meant."
It was impossible to explain the overwhelming burden of responsibility he felt. "I know," he murmured, and pressed his lips to the crown of her head until liquid salt seeped into his mouth. Never drink seawater, boy. Memory swam into his mind: an old adage cracked from the craggy lips of a toothless old sailor he'd met in his youth. No matter how thirsty ye'are. It'll kill ye in the end. He shook it off, and chafed her cold shoulder cupped in his hand. "You're getting chilled. Come, we should get up and dry off."
She didn't move. "You promised," she said, "to stay until I told you to leave."
"And I will hold to that promise," he assured her, after a pause. "I have no illusions of my own importance, save to you. I do not know that I was brought here to serve in the rescue of this island. If you cannot let me go, I will stay with you until it crumbles under our feet."
A tremor passed through her, and a sound like a laugh seized and shaken inside-out into a groan. "So. My choice is to lose you now, or lose everything later. That is no choice."
"There are a fair few people who might feel differently about that," Geraint said, thinking of the faces he loved at Abernant. "You were willing enough to break the law for their sake, as your duty, to throw yourself on the mercy of the gwyllion and hope for the mere chance that you would survive it. Can you spare none of that hope for me?"
Angharad pushed at him and sat up, damp strands of her hair clinging to him like seaweed, but she did not look at him. "I could have borne whatever they did to me," she answered thickly. "I cannot bear the thought of what they might do to you."
The other women, after calming the tumult Angharad had wrought — a sight he had been too distracted to truly absorb, though a few vivid images had etched themselves into his mind — had maintained a small, respectful distance, standing in the shallows, watching in concern. Now Arianrhod stepped forward, with an air of gentle resolution. She knelt in the sand at Angharad's other side and curled her hand around her niece's head, cradling it against her shoulder. Over its top, her clear eyes caught Geraint's in a gaze mingled of fierce approval and aching sadness. "Angharad," she breathed, low and crooning, "Angharad, think, love. We would never send anyone, least of all him, if it were so hopeless. Of what use would that be?"
"They would have slain your father," Angharad answered dully. Her shoulders were limp; she looked listless and distant, and made no answering gesture when Geraint squeezed her hand comfortingly.
"But they did not," Arianrhod said, "because he bore the queen's protection, and they honored it. It was not enough to save him from the law, but it was enough to save his life. How much more, he, who will have broken no law - by their own word, by their own agreement?" She looked at Geraint again, and his scalp prickled as she addressed him. "You may not know that you were brought here for this purpose. But I know it, as I know the shape of all that is sacred, as much as it can be known. Your fate is linked to ours, now — you, who are not of Llyr, and yet one of us, born not of our blood but of an even stronger bond."
"Yet not one that will ever be recognized," Geraint muttered. He could not wholly banish the resentment beneath the words, and for a moment he flinched at his own boldness. But though a spark of anger flared, for a heartbeat, within those clear eyes, he did not sense that it was directed at him.
"There are many grave injustices in the world," the High Priestess admitted, without releasing him from her gaze, "and I would I could extend you any hope that this one could be rectified. Alas, I cannot. But it does not change the truth: you are woven and forged and shaped together with one another. Rhiannon has blessed this, and it is her will and her way we seek now, whatever our laws acknowledge."
He blinked, embarrassed at the burning behind his eyes, and turned his attention back to Angharad, who was staring, expressionless, into nothing.
Eilwen moved toward them and crouched before her. For once, no smirk played at her mouth or danced in her eyes, and she spared Geraint not a glance as she took her sister by the shoulders and forced her to look in her in the face. "Come, Angharad," she said, unwontedly serious, "anyone would think you weren't an enchantress at all. Are we powerless, or have you forgotten? Won't he have every protection we can place on him, every step of the journey as even as we can make it? He hasn't trekked across all Prydain — which is no stroll through a daisy field, I hear — and survived being wrecked in a storm just to stagger into a fairy mound like an unwary fool. Chances are he'll be back within a week, and then you'll still have to decide what to do with him." At this, Angharad stirred, seeming to hear her at last, and Eilwen leaned back a little, with a twinkle of her familiar demeanor. "Not the worst trouble to have, I grant you. Now." She raised her open hand between them. The pendant glinted upon her palm; the silver chain, dangling from its edge, glittered like bedewed spider silk. The glare Angharad cast upon the jewel said she did not know whether she loved or hated it, and she made no move to take it.
Eilwen looked at Arianrhod somberly. "Is it safe, do you think, to send it with him? Suppose the gwyllion take it back."
Arianrhod shook her head. "We must send it with him, for we dare not bring it back to the castle while Achren is there, nor can we leave it here, unguarded. The Fair Folk take their gifts as seriously as they do everything else; I do not think they will claim it." But she looked uneasy. "Even if they did, it would likely be safer in their hands than anywhere else. Their alliances with us may be...complicated, but they are no friends to Arawn. I am more concerned with what to tell Regat. But in any case, on such a mission, he must bear it. It will mark him as our emissary."
Silence fell, as they all stared at the gem. Angharad seemed carved from stone, and Geraint was unnerved, watching her, but Arianrhod and Eilwen made no indication of impatience. It did not escape his notice that the women spoke of him as though he were not in their very midst, but he felt no resentment, only an odd sense of inevitability. It was as though they all waited for something, a turning of tide so natural and expected that it was pointless to spend undue energy either dreading it or hoping for it.
Finally, Angharad turned her pale face toward him and stared at him in silence for long moments, a silence that set him quailing at its emptiness. "I will not leave," he repeated, low and hoarse, "until you order me to go."
A spark of life flared in her eyes, or perhaps it was that unearthly green glitter in the water, reflecting in them; a feverish flush darkened her cheeks and she sat up straight, breathing as though in exertion, and turned her attention to the pendant, still held up before her like an offering.
Gathering it up with shaking hands, she turned back to him and reached around his head, fastening the chain behind his neck. "You..." she began, and choked on the word; she shut her eyes and leaned forward until her brow rested against his, took a breath, and spoke in a tremulous, ragged whisper. "You wear my emblem, Geraint of Gellau, and are under my protection. Whoever aids you shall receive favor, whoever harms you shall receive justice, and any wrongs perpetrated against you will be avenged."
Her voice broke again, and his heart wrung itself; his hand cupped her cheek and cradled the back of her head, mingling the tears on her face with the water still clinging to her hair, and he remembered the legend of the death of King Llyr, the weeping of Rhiannon filling the sea. Perhaps it wasfilled with the goddess' tears, a whole ocean of them born of heartbreak and separation, and what made this one so special, out of untold legions?
"I charge you with this task," Angharad continued heavily, her hand resting on his chest, covering the jewel dangling there, "to bear my emblem to Pentre Gwyllion, and learn of the creatures who guard that place, if you can, why this thing of power was given us, to what end, what its powers are, and how we may protect it. Learn whether there is aught that can be done to save our people and our land from him who seeks it. I charge you to return to me, bearing whatever knowledge you have gained, and share it, whether good or ill. I charge you, above all else..." she repeated, quavering, taking his face in her hands, "to return to me."
He covered her cold hands with his own. "I swear it," he whispered, "all of it; if it is in my power it will be done, and nothing but death will keep me from you."
A sob burst from her like a flood from a dam; her arms went around him and she buried her face in his neck. He crushed her to his chest, tried to memorize the weight and shape of her in his arms, and wondered how, not two months ago, he had never known it and yet thought his life complete. All his wanderings suddenly seemed aimless, even shiftless, a selfish indulgence of his own meandering curiosities and pleasures; he had lived only for himself, and now...
White-lipped, he clutched at the tangled mass of her salted hair, and struggled internally, trying to ignore a rising tide of self-accusations, a crippling sense of his own inadequacy. He had volunteered for this. He was suited for it. There was no one else. And though he would do it for her, it struck him, somehow: the will to do something needful, impactful, serving not only her but those faces in the village, and countless others like them spread over the face of this island. The fate of an entire island...
He shivered and shut his eyes, and bent his head until his lips touched Angharad's shoulder, and drove away all other thoughts except the solid reality of her, seared upon all his senses.
The other two women, communicating with nothing more than sympathetic glances at one another, sat back on their heels, silently giving them breathing room. Geraint heard Arianrhod mutter a charm and was not surprised to find both Angharad and himself suddenly dry - a welcome relief, though she still shivered. "I will not pretend this task is without peril, Geraint of Gellau," Arianrhod said quietly, "only that it is not without hope. But it is urgent, and you should go as soon as possible." She glanced up the cove, toward his hut. "Have you any provision for travel?"
"Some," he answered, thinking. "How long is the journey?"
"On foot," said Eilwen, "two days overland. Loaning you a horse would cut it down, though."
"He doesn't need one," Angharad mumbled into his shoulder. She raised her head and sat up. "His boat is rebuilt. He showed it to me, days ago." Staring down at their clasped, white-knuckled hands, her face was drawn and pale, set in lines of numb resignation. "It's less than a day to sail so far if conditions are good."
"As they will be," Arianrhod said, with a nod of approval, "for we will ensure it. That makes things all the easier." She motioned out toward the water. "From this cove, you must sail east, and simply follow the land as it turns. Stray not too close to the coastline, for the southeastern shores are the areas most affected by the slides and quakes. A stone archway marks the boundary of the northeastern quarter. Once you are beyond it you must find a place to land and make your way to the highlands. There are no roads or paths in that forbidden place, but Pentre Gwyllion stands atop the highest point, and cannot be missed."
"And..." Geraint faltered, stumbling over his first impulse to say if, "...when I return? How shall I bring word of what I have found? Should I, after all, come to Caer Colur?" Something in him found it appealing: the prospect of having a legitimate reason to enter that fortress, her domain; to claim a right to be there, all caution and secrecy be damned at last. But Angharad was shaking her head.
"No," she gasped. "You must not. I will come here every day. Or one of us will. Every day, to see whether you have returned." He opened his mouth to argue the point, but she gripped his hands like iron, suddenly intense and commanding, her eyes flaming dangerously. "No. You must not come to the castle."
So spake the goddess. Geraint sighed in frustration, and she softened again. "It isn't just Mother," she whispered, "it's Achren."
He squeezed her hand, a quick gesture of understanding, but it rankled - not that he had any desire to be in Achren's vicinity, but was she really more dangerous than the gwyllion? Perhaps best not to push fortune too far.
Arianrhod rose gracefully, and turned to face the sea, the wind from off the water tossing the dark strands of hair that had escaped her thick braids. She seemed to pull herself inward, as though listening intently to something beyond his range of hearing, and what she heard pleased her. "It is perfect," she declared. "A strong southern current and wind, with nothing on the horizon...not until the evening, at least. Once around the southern horn you will barely need your oars but for steering. Nothing shall hinder you if you leave quickly."
"Not before daylight," Angharad gasped, but Arianrhod quelled her with a gentle motion of her slender hands.
"Of course not. But dawn is not far off. We will help him make ready." She stepped away, moving toward the hut, and Eilwen, after a significant glance at both of them, stood and followed.
Geraint, feeling vaguely as though the entire night were a dream from which he might awaken in equal parts relief and disappointment, gathered his feet beneath him and rose, pulling Angharad up. She leaned against him heavily, head cradled against his shoulder. "I never thought," she whispered, "that this day would end this way."
For a moment he felt puzzled, and then realized she had not slept at all, and this day was still, to her, the one that had begun with her dream, with the treaty, with her coming to the cove, and singing to him, and all else that they had said and shared. It seemed a lifetime ago — despite the wondrous vividness of certain moments. A painful, hot ache filled his throat. "Nor I," he muttered, kissing her temple, and wrapping his arms around her with fierce protectiveness. "We have always known, I think, that I would have to go. But..."
"Not like this." Her voice wavered. "Not to them. I should be going, not you."
"No," he whispered, "no. Listen to me, Angharad..." He took her face in his hands and made her look at him; that face, luminous as moonlight, eyes whose liquid gleam mirrored that great water that had birthed her ancestors, as full of their tears as her own; caught in the heartbreak of that face he cast about desperately for words worthy of it.
"Once..." he stammered, "...once...an ordinary man loved a Daughter of Llyr." The tears spilled from her eyes like cut crystal and he caught them with his thumbs, swept them to the sides. "Loved her as he had never loved another, as he had never known he could...a tenderness, an affection, a passion that seemed greater and wider and deeper than the sea itself...so perhaps such a love could only be inspired by one of the people the sea, a force so uncontainable, so untamable by any man."
Another sob escaped her lips and he stopped until she regained control, bending his head until his brow rested upon hers again; her eyes closed and she listened, tense and trembling.
"Such was not surprising," he continued fervently, "for no man with the privilege of looking upon her face could have helped being stricken with devotion. But to his astonishment..." he kissed her hairline, her forehead, the bridge of her nose..."She returned his love, unreservedly, against all law and propriety and reason, though he had nothing, though he was nothing, and could never repay her kindnesses, or be worthy of her love, or be what she or her people needed."
He felt her take a quick breath, and laid a finger over her lips to halt her protest. "Until one day, unexpectedly, miraculously, he found that he could be. And though the mere chance of his help was small recompense for all that she had done, had given him, it was all he had, and he must take it. He must, or count himself no man at all, ever after."
Her hand rested upon the pendant at his breastbone again, palm flat and pressing in; the cold metal grew warm and then hot, unnaturally hot. It burned like fire and ice against his skin; he clenched his teeth, and wondered if it were actually scarring him, and found that he hoped it would.
"I cannot tell you the rest of this story," he gasped, over the pain, "for I do not know it. I know only that it is not ended." He kissed her trembling lips, salt and sweet, and spoke the promise again upon her breath. "I swear to you it is not ended."
Angharad returned his kiss as though by drinking enough of him in she could keep him there, and released him only when the furtive, quick breaths they managed to snatch at intervals were no longer sufficient. Her fingers trailed across his chest and he could not help a low hiss of discomfort; she lifted her hand in concern. "What is it?...oh!" For the silver crescent had shifted as he moved, and sure enough, beneath it the skin was branded, glowing the livid white and inflamed red of burned flesh. "Gods," she gasped, horrified. "Oh, Geraint. I didn't mean to..."
"Shhh." He grasped her wrist, pulling it away from the wound. "I am glad of it. Now I shall carry you with me always, and all who see it will know—,"
"That I am dangerous," she interrupted bitterly, clenching her hand into a fist.
"That I am yours," he answered, with a gentle shake of his head. "Didn't I tell you the day we met? Many are the stories of Llyr and its rulers. Beauty..." He pressed his mouth against her knuckles until they loosened. "...And peril..." He kissed her palm. "...I have seen both, and I love both, and would not have one without the other."
Her hand curled around his jaw possessively and her eyes changed, becoming thoughtful, then hard. "If they harm you," she whispered, and he shivered at the undercurrent in her voice, "I will unearth the Tylwyth Teg realm from here to its farthest reaches, and rain fire and flood upon them until my last breath."
From somewhere behind him, a throat cleared, and they turned to see Arianrhod standing a few feet away, looking a little alarmed. "Let us not borrow that kind of trouble," she said firmly. "We are already at war with one formidable enemy. Come, Geraint. The hour grows near."
Back at the hut, the other women had unearthed whatever of his provisions were suited for traveling, and packed them in a portable bundle, along with a spare cloak and other useful paraphernalia. He stammered out thanks, but Arianrhod waved him off with an indulgent, careworn smile. "I thought it better to leave the two of you in peace. Eilwen is attending to your boat."
Geraint looked sideways at Angharad. "Attending?"
A wan version of her wry smile crossed her face. "It is one of our specialties, you know."
Mystified, he pulled on his jacket and boots and shouldered the pack as they left the hut. Pulling the door shut, he looked at it wistfully, at the neat thatch and his brick oven and the repaired places in the walls, and wondered if he would see it again.
Further down the beach his boat still lay bottom-up, the last coat of pitch having dried a few days before. Eilwen stood on its other side; her hands drifted over it and her mouth moved in silent words, and a strange tingling air current made the hair on his arms raise. The smell of burning sweet-grass hung over all, rich and cloying. The girl looked up as they approached, wearing her accustomed grin. "Fully charmed," she announced "It's a good repair job you did. But I made improvements." She winked at him. "May your prow part the yielding waves like...an oiled seal," she finished, catching Angharad's dangerous glare, and cocking an amused eyebrow upwards at his obvious confusion. "Haven't you ever told him how we came to rule all these ports? What do you two find to talk about?"
"Far more interesting things than speed and agility charms on ships," Angharad assured her dryly, "however luridly fascinating you make them sound." She turned toward him, but her eyes wandered to the eastern sky, where a pale streak had appeared above the clifftops. Her face fell, and he heard her breath quicken anxiously. "Llyr," she whispered. "I can't do this, I —,"
Geraint took both her hands and she was silent, head bowed, eyes closed, her face twitching. They all waited, in the breathless stillness of dawn, the rumbling of the surf the only sound, as the sky lightened moment by moment. He could not remember ever dreading the sunrise before.
In the growing light the women's luminance seemed to dim, become less ethereal; they looked pale and tired. Arianrhod moved to Angharad's side and touched her shoulder gently. "When you are ready, love."
Angharad swallowed. Her eyes were red-rimmed from weeping, the lids swollen, heavy with exhaustion. She stared at the upended boat with a blank, lost expression, the numbness of a grief that cannot yet believe in cold reality. Her mouth opened once...twice...upon silence; the third time, the words crept out, shivering and lifeless as wraiths from the grave. "Launch it."
Flipped upright, the boat tipped to the side, its rounded bowl cumbersome in the sand, and Geraint wondered for a moment whether they would have the strength to help him carry it to the water. But Arianrhod flung her arm out toward the sea and then inland like the head of a war band calling a charge, and he leapt back in astonishment as an incoming wave hit the slope of the sand and then kept coming; the water rushed forward past the tideline and flooded the space around them, ankle-deep, knee-deep, thigh-deep.The boat rose and floated, and the women looked at him expectantly. He shook off his amazement, and tossed his pack inside, next to the waiting oars.
Angharad stood beside him, and he thought, suddenly, that they were not far from the place she had first met him in the water — always in the water; so of course, of course he would say farewell to her in the same place, because that was how good stories always worked; you came back to your beginning and completed the circle. No. No, not completed, not yet. He took her in his arms one last time. "It is not ended," he repeated — as much to himself as to her.
She kissed him fiercely. "Then come back to me," she ordered, "and tell me how it ends."
The boat rocked wildly as he scrambled in but stabilized quickly - too quickly, too easily; he sat and reached for the oars and the women stepped back, Arianrhod raising her arms. "You go with our blessing, Geraint of Gellau, and our gratitude. May Llyr protect you, and grant you good journey." She called out in a strange tongue; her hands swept gracefully in the air and suddenly the boat seemed to gather itself up; with no help from him. The rogue wave they had called in and held now retreated, swept him back, back past the breakers and into the swells with his prow toward the open sea, caught in an invisible current.
Geraint yelped in surprise, the momentum nearly toppling him from his seat; he gripped the sides and watched helplessly as he was carried away from the shallows and the three pale figures that stood there. He saw Angharad stumble forward and the other two catch her by the arms and hold her, but he was already too far to hear anything they spoke, and in another moment he would be unable to make out her face.
The rising sun crested the clifftops and shafted its light into the cove, illuminating the three. Angharad's bright hair flared in it like the star on a beacon. He watched it blaze, smaller and smaller, until it was swallowed up in haze, until the cove and the cliffs and the sand melded together into one dark mass, and the island stretched to either side before him, waiting.
He touched the crescent moon lying cold and smooth at his chest, and took up his oars.