A Heart in Sun and Shadow (Cymru That Was Book 1) (7 page)

Hafwyn recognized the look of a child expecting his strong parents to fix the world and sorrow welled from deep within that they would learn the truth in such a terrible fashion. She spread her hands, finding her body too heavy with emotion to stand. Helpless, she shook her head, hating to see his gaze fall as tears replaced the faint glow of hope in his red-rimmed eyes.

“You are dead to me, Idrys,” Brychan said as he too sat back down on the narrow bench beside his wife.

“Brychan! You cannot say such, even in anger.” Hafwyn grabbed her husband’s arm.

“I can.” He looked at her with grief-hollowed eyes.

He’d thought both sons dead these last two months. Oh, he’d held hope dear but with each searching party that came back without trace or news; his hope had faded further into despair. He felt every ache in his bones.

“I can,” he repeated, “I will. We can’t tell others this story; it’ll bring suspicion on my sons, on my heirs. What man wants to be ruled by one who is cursed?”

Hafwyn sighed. She could see the practical merit in his words even if she did not agree with the anger that drove the hurt deeper into Idrys’s heart.

“All right.” She smiled at Idrys and Emyr, her gaze moving between the two. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll tell part of the truth.” She took a deep breath.

“Idrys, you were killed in a rock slide while hunting. Emyr was knocked to the ground and taken in by a kindly hermit. There are rumored to be such wise men of the wood about, after all. He gifted you the hound and helped you remember who you were. That’s where you’ve been these months.” Her agile mind formed the story even as her heart sank at the thought of spending the rest of her days pretending her son was dead and gone. ‘
Tis better than having him actually dead and gone, you twit,
she told herself.

Idrys struggled to grasp the plan in his despair. He was dead, then. He laughed mirthless and sudden.

“Well, Emyr, I guess I’ll have to learn to run slower, eh?” He tried to smile at his brother as he refused to meet his parents’ gaze.

Emyr yipped and butted his head into his twin’s side. He did not care for the plan and his father’s anger had torn a larger wound in his already aching heart. Perhaps Idrys had been reckless, but wasn’t he, Emyr, as much to blame? After all, he’d followed his brother willingly enough. But what was there for it? He looked to his mother and nodded his narrow head in exaggerated fashion to make sure she understood.

The twins collapsed into exhausted slumber on their bed as the fire died in the hearth. The tale was slowly told in the hall to the curious folk by Hafwyn. Her husband had stormed to their bedroom and slammed the oaken door behind him without facing the people.

In the morning, Brychan, Chief of the Cantref of Llynwg emerged early. His hair had turned overnight to pure white.

Áine skipped down the rocky shore with her basket clutched tightly in one small hand. It was a blustery autumn day and the sky couldn’t make up its mind about whether to cloud over and rain. Clouds moved slowly overhead, reflected in the choppy waves. It was low tide and kelp decorated the shore in long brown ribbons.

Áine slowed as her first burst of energy faded and she began to look for the slick green seaweed that was her mission for the afternoon. The child, though only eleven, took her duties as the wisewoman Tesn’s helper very seriously.

A piteous cry sounding over the rhythmic lull of the waves caught her attention. Áine raised her head and searched the shore with her large green eyes. There, down the beach near a cluster of boulders, she thought she saw movement.

She glanced behind at the small fishing village where Tesn and she were staying until one of the village wives had given birth. The little sod huts tucked into the scrub high above the tide line were too far away for her to yell and the men were long gone from the shore with their round boats. She shrugged slender shoulders and walked fearlessly toward the strange sound.

It was a grey seal. It lay on the rocks and barked in warning at her as she approached. She stayed very still and observed the situation from a safe distance. Tesn always told her to collect what you know before you act. She took a deep breath and heard the pitiful cry again. It was not coming from the seal but from something nearby.

“I greet you, seal,” the red-headed child said solemnly.

She circled the creature who watched her quietly with large liquid eyes. She finally spied the cries origin. A seal pup, no more than a few days old, was caught between two large stones. Áine decided he must have slid down between them when his mother left him to hunt.

Áine set down her basket on a rock and moved slowly toward the seal and her pup. She kept her eyes averted and her body facing slightly sideways.

“Sah, sah, mother seal,” she said softly over and over. The mother backed away, offering no further aggression to the strangely fearless and unthreatening child.

Áine knelt in the silty muck beside the stones without a thought for her rough-spun dress. Pushing up a sleeve already now too short with her last spurt of growth, she reached between the stones to try to grasp the pup. He squealed as her hand came near, but though she pushed her arm in to the shoulder, she could not quite reach deep enough to get a grip on the slippery seal. Her fingertips brushed his thick fur but could go no further.

“Silly pup.” She shook her head at him in a crude imitation of Tesn’s gently chiding manner. “Found yourself a perfect little cave, haven’t you?”

She pulled at the stone nearest herself, since it was flatter and thinner than the boulder behind it that it rested upon. It barely shifted.

Áine rolled back her other sleeve and dug into the rocky muck around the seal pup’s trap. It seemed for every stone she removed to a pile beside her, she found two more. Her hole began to fill with water.

She rose and glanced at the sea behind her, feeling guilty that she’d broken Tesn’s rule about never turning her back to the waves.

The tide was coming in. It had crept up the shore while she dug and was nearly to the waiting seal mother. Áine considered running for help, but if the tide reached the seal before she could, she wasn’t certain he’d be able to swim out the narrow opening before he drowned.

She stood and gripped the stone with both hands. Setting her weight against it, Áine pulled and pulled until her fingers were numb and scraped from the rough, cold stone. It was no use. She could not shift the rock, for much of it was buried far below the surface of the beach.

Áine did not like to give up easily. She continued to strain and pull. Her tears bleared her vision as the tide rose to lick her bare heels. A few dripped from her chin and bounced from the stone to sink into the water, turning to perfect shining pearls as they touched the rock. Áine was too focused on the seal and her effort to notice, much less heed Tesn’s warning about not letting her remarkable tears hit the earth.

Strong, pale hands reached over her and gripped the rock. Áine jerked her head up in surprise. Bending over her stood a woman with dark brown hair and smiling liquid brown eyes. Her skin was as white as Áine’s own and she was fully naked.

She spoke to the child in a language Áine’d never heard, the syllables sibilant and lilting. Her meaning seemed clear enough, however.

Together the woman and child pulled on the stone. The woman’s arms rippled with muscle beneath a sleek layer of fat and grudgingly the stone moved away from its resting place under the assault of their strong persistence. The opening grew and though the water flowed now around the rescuers’ ankles, soon enough the seal pup was free.

He swam in the shallow water to his mother. Reunited, the pair rode the waves out to deeper water and disappeared.

Áine stepped from the circle of the woman’s arms and walked up the beach to get out of the water. She retrieved her basket and turned back to the woman.

“I greet you,” she said politely, remembering her manners belatedly in the excitement. “I thank you for your help.”

The dark haired woman laughed then, at least, Áine thought it was a laugh, for she threw back her head and barked not unlike a seal, though singularly human mirth threaded through the sound and her face as well. She walked out of the water toward the girl.

Áine held still; she did not think the woman meant her harm for all she acted strangely. Áine wondered how she could be out on the shore in the wind without a stitch of clothing on her body. She didn’t even have cold bumps on her skin. Áine was shivering and had cold bumps all along her legs from her soaked and muddy skirt. She pulled down her sleeves and wiped her skinned and dirty hands self-consciously on her dress.

The woman touched Áine’s blood-red hair, coming loose now from its braids, with one long-fingered and big-boned hand. She smiled and Áine noticed with a start that the woman had small sharp teeth behind her bloodless lips. The child reached up with a curious hand and touched the woman’s face. Her skin was warm and very soft. Her eyes were round, large and dark with strange pupils.
Like a seal
, Áine thought, dropping her hand.

The woman spoke again in her strange but beautiful tongue. Áine shook her head looking up at her in confusion. Then the mysterious woman bent as she tipped Áine’s chin up. She kissed the child full on the lips, her mouth cool. The woman stood back up and turned away.

Áine licked her lower lip, tasting where the stranger had kissed her. She tasted of salt, as though she’d licked a stone that had soaked in the sea or perhaps swallowed a tear.

She watched silently as the woman turned and walked back into the sea. Her dark head disappeared beneath the waves with barely a ripple. Áine, her seaweed-collecting mission long forgotten, took off down the beach toward the village to tell Tesn what she’d just witnessed.

She glanced back at the ocean before she turned up the path to the huts. Out in the white and green waves, swimming through a rare shaft of sunlight, watched a seal with its dark head round and glistening above the water. Áine waved and then ran up the path.

“Tesn!” She stopped as she crossed the threshold of the low main lodge and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dim interior.

Tesn sat by the hearth where her old bones could stay warm away from the autumn damp and chill. She smiled as she took in the muddy and frantic appearance of her adopted daughter.

“I’m here, Áine.”

Áine nodded politely to the three women who sat in a semicircle just inside the open door, using the light of the afternoon to mend nets by. She walked past them and sat on the rushes at Tesn’s feet, folding her cold feet underneath herself. She glanced at the circle of women and leaned in to whisper to her mother. She told her in hushed tones of her encounter on the beach.

“Was she a selkie, Tesn?” Áine said the word with reverence.

She knew the story of how she’d come to the wisewoman. Tesn had told her as soon as Áine was old enough to form sentences of how a selkie had carried Áine across the sea and given her as a special gift to the healing woman to raise as a daughter and apprentice. Áine had many years ago ceased to tell the tale to anyone else, for the children made fun of her and the adults regarded her with either condescending indulgence or keen suspicion.

“She likely was, my dearest heart.” Tesn smiled at the girl, her dark eyes kind in her wrinkled face. “We’ll talk about it more tonight. You should go and change your dress. If you ask sweetly, I think Dydgi means to do wash this afternoon and she might help you.”

Áine nodded and stood. She went to the low cot she shared with Tesn and pulled her leather pack out from under the bed. Her second dress was better mended than the one she wore, though no less plain.

She went outside and walked the short distance to the freshwater stream. She hissed at the cold water but dutifully scrubbed her feet. She pulled off her soiled dress and rinsed the mud from her legs and arms as well. For good measure she splashed her face, recalling the touch of the selkie. She wondered if it were the same one who had carried her across the sea and nursed her on the shore.

Shivering, Áine pulled on her second dress as she fought to recall any of the selkie’s words. Perhaps Tesn would know the language if Áine could remember something about how it had sounded.

The girl tucked her dirty dress under her arm and tugged free the leather ties on her braids. She ran her fingers through her long red hair and pulled it back into a single braid as she walked.

Áine returned to the lodge and found the women circled around the very pregnant Wladus who lay on a makeshift padding of deerskin before the warmth of the hearth.

“Her water’s broken,” Tesn told Áine as the girl walked to her side. “What should be done now?”

Áine knit her brows as she concentrated. “If her contractions are weak, we should make a tea of raspberry leaf. For pain we can give a tea of chamomile and water elder. Liniment of lavender and chamomile should be rubbed on the belly and lower back to help ease tension and make pushing easier.” She looked up at Tesn and relaxed a little as the old woman smiled.

“Very good, love. Fetch my things. We’ve a while yet ‘til the babe starts to come, but we should be ready.”

The men returned and the rain followed on their heels falling in large cold sheets that swept across the sea and up the beach toward the mainland. They repaired to a hut to wait out the birth, leaving the lodge to the women who held quiet vigil within.

Áine nodded off, curled on the cot before the fire. She woke to Tesn’s gentle touch.

“It’s time.” Tesn turned back to the women.

Wladus crouched now over the clean rushes. Blood dripped from between her legs. Áine knew this was normal enough, for it was not the first birth she’d assisted. She hovered near Tesn as the wisewoman intoned gentle prayers and rubbed sweet-smelling oil into the stretched skin of the pregnant woman’s belly.

The night deepened and still the baby did not come. The woman’s pains intensified until she could hold herself up no longer and lay back instead with a pad of soft leather clenched between her teeth. Tesn felt her belly and then eased her fingers into the birth passage to feel for the baby. She could just touch the crown of its head. The child was the right way round yet still not passing as it should have. She sat back on her heels to think.