A Heart in Sun and Shadow (Cymru That Was Book 1) (29 page)

“Forgive me,” she whispered, “I must follow my heart.”

She drew the knife across the child’s throat.

Blood bloomed around the blade in a scarlet flood. The dying sprite made no sound, just opened its silvery eyes and watched her with an ancient sadness at odds with its youthful appearance. Áine stared down at it in horror and then twisted away, stabbing the second child through the neck and then the third, her eyes pressed shut, her lips bleeding as she bit them. Blood soaked her skirt, climbing up the bodice of her dress and turning the sky-blue linen dark crimson.

With a cry she rose, flinging the knife far from herself. The dead children’s heads dropped from her skirt and they lay in a strange parody of their own sleeping forms; bodies curled and eyes half-shut.

She stumbled away from them to the stream and fell into it, dry heaving. Her stomach, empty for lack of food the day before, had little to bring up but acidic bile. She scrubbed at her bloody hands and then her skirt. The blood washed from her hands, but the scrubbing only seemed to spread it on her dress.

Behind her, the willow began to shake and scream.

Áine looked back and saw the tree sweeping its arms through the air as it cried out in pain, the sound like the smashing of a thousand harps, the wail of a thousand suffering throats. She crawled from the stream to where she’d left the horn bowl and snatched it up.

Rising, she walked back across the water to the tree. Its leaves were hard and sharp and cut into her body as she pushed through its raging branches. Her dress was cut to rags and her flesh marked with hundreds of shallow wounds. Áine blinked through the blood that seeped into her eyes and pressed the horn bowl into the Yfwr’s bark.

Thick, glistening tears flowed from deep cracks in the skin of the tree and ran down, caught in Áine’s bowl. She stood there, sick with grief and guilt, barely feeling the leaves that lashed her skin, the cuts on her face, back, and arms. When the bowl brimmed with the sap-like tears, Áine turned and walked toward the lake.

At the shore she paused and looked back. The tree still thrashed and wailed, and the rising sun shone down on the crumpled bodies of the children. Stuck upright into the earth beside one of the standing stones, the Trahaearn’s knife sparkled in the light and Áine recalled her promise to return it to him.

She moved toward it and another spear of nausea and horror stabbed through her. She set down the bowl of tears carefully on one of the standing stones and walked to the bodies of the children. Bending, she laid the children out straight and closed their filmy, staring eyes.

Her hands were slick with her own blood, but she managed to unknot her belt. The red leather slipped off her hips and fell into the grass beside their bodies, a crimson gash on the stained ground.

Áine left the knife where it lay and picked up her bowl of tears. She walked to the lake and stepped into the water. Her foot did not sink; instead it rested on the surface, the lake giving like soft moss under her weight. She hesitated and then stepped forward. Her heart was a stone in her chest, her mouth a determined line. Áine stared straight ahead, placing one leaden foot after the other.

Empty and aching with grief, she walked out over the lake, away from one heart and toward another. Far above her drifted the shadow of a raven.

The trees pulled back their branches, the ferns curled away from her ragged skirt. The forest itself recoiled from Áine, laying a clear path to where Seren waited. The grieving woman hardly noticed. Her green eyes were hot and damp with tears but focused as though seeing something always just ahead. She held the horn bowl steady in both hands in front of her body as one might carry an offering or a shield.

The sun slid over the sky and sank again. Áine did not waver in her step but called on the glowing fairy light. It ringed her, casting terrible shadows in the trees. The myriad tiny cuts on her arms, back, legs, and face ceased to sting and the blood covering her body dried, making her dress stiff and coarse against her raw skin.

She reached the drychpwll and Seren’s cottage in the middle of the night. The cottage window was dark and no light shone from beneath the heavy door. Áine kicked the door hard with one foot, holding the horn bowl high above her head to keep it steady.

“Seren! I have completed your tasks here,” she yelled in the still clearing. “Arise, Lady, and finish this that I might go complete the final task and free them.”

Soft white light bathed the clearing suddenly, limning the branches of the trees and reflecting off the pond. Áine blinked and Seren appeared. The Lady’s hair hung loose down her back and she wore only a thin undergown of the lightest green. No rings or combs adorned her this night, but the eerie light shifted her features as far from human as Áine had ever seen.

Her silvered eyes glinted and her skin glowed as though it had taken the moon into itself. Her hair was a ruby cascade over her shoulders and when she smiled there was something predatory and sharp hiding within.

“You look like quite the Bean Sidhe,” Seren said. “Shall I finish this?”

She waved a slender hand in the air. The two crystalline stones, the strands of hair from March Cann, and the clasps Trahaearn had forged for Áine all manifested in the air, floating as if they balanced upon some invisible surface. “You have the tears?”

When Áine blinked at her and held out the bowl with a snarl, Seren took a half-step back. She shook her head, sending her hair rippling, and glared at the bloody woman. Áine didn’t care and glared back. She was exhausted, too tired for Seren’s games.

“Take it,” she said. “Give me what I need to break the curse. I just wish to go home.”

Seren took the bowl from her, avoiding touching her hands as she did so. Into the gleaming liquid went the stones, the clasps, and the fairy steed’s hairs. The contents of the bowl seemed to boil over as thick gold foam poured over the sides. As the foaming slowed and finally stopped, Seren reached within and drew forth two necklaces, each as alike as the other. The tail hairs of the March Cann had turned into a delicate cord of deepest purple; the two gems shone white and faceted; the claps closed each off with their delicate filigreed closures.

“This is your final task. You must place these over the heads of the twins, one for each. This must be done at sunset when they change.” She held them out.

Áine took the necklaces and nodded, then paused. “Any sunset?” she asked, having learnt to be suspicious and not so tired as to have forgotten that lesson easily.

“Sunset on the longest day, at midsummer.” Seren’s mouth tightened and then relaxed into a smile. “One more thing, Áine.”

Seren reached out and touched Áine’s shoulder. Áine had just long enough to wonder if this were the first time Seren had touched her or used her given name before she felt a strange tingle in her spine and then sharp pain.

She jerked away, clutching the necklaces. Her body twisted and bent and her clothing changed, becoming heavy and dull, like a beggars robe and rags.

“What have you done to me?” Áine cried out, or would have. Nary a sound came from her lips.

She touched her throat and then felt inside her mouth. She had nary a tooth and at her neck she felt the thin skin and thick wattles of an old woman. She hobbled to the pool, staring down into the calm waters.

A wrinkled old face peered back at her, distorted by the water but clear enough that her own familiar features had been wiped away. She turned back to Seren, aged eyes hurling accusation and hatred.

“Ah, halfling. You’ll not stay this way forever, well, not if your princes love you as you seem convinced. If they recognize you before you break the curse, your own body will be returned. A simple enough task for true love, is it not?” Seren laughed. “Come now, you’d not deny me all my sport.”

Áine slipped the necklaces over her head and advanced on Seren, her wrinkled, bony hands extended and violence in her mind. With another laugh, Seren disappeared but her words rang out across the clearing.

“Sunset, Áine. You’d best go; the journey will be longer on those legs.”

Silently screaming in rage and despair, Áine turned and hobbled from the clearing, Seren’s cold laughter echoing behind her.

She stumbled in the dark, her memory guiding her back toward the Ilswyn and Blodeuedd. Her newly old body wouldn’t hold her up anymore, exhausted as she’d already been, and finally Áine collapsed onto the ground and slept where she was.

Dawn’s light woke her, but no birds sang. It was as though Cymru-that-could-be held its collective breath. The eerie silence suited Áine’s black mood. She found a fallen branch that would serve as a walking stick and pressed onward. Her stomach complained about the lack of nourishment but Áine shoved the feelings aside. She didn’t want to think, to feel. She fixed the image of Idrys and Emyr’s faces in her mind and stumbled ahead, one foot after another.

As she walked she tried to look at the better side of the situation. She had the means to free her lovers now. It had been midwinter when she’d left, so that would leave at least a season between her return and midsummer. She’d found a way to free them, traveled to this strange land and done all that Seren had asked; she could find the means to make the twins recognize her. It was just another task, she told herself.

One more task
.

You can free them
.

You can have a home.

She entertained herself through the day by trying to guess their reactions and imagining their warm embrace. Idrys would lift her up and call out to the sky in his joy. It was his face she held the most dear in her heart, the guilt that lined his features, that unspoken burden of his secrets. It was Idrys she would confide the truth in, the terrible deed and choice she’d made. It was Idrys who would understand and take her in his arms and whisper his forgiveness. It was Idrys who, she was convinced, would have done the same and worse to set his brother free.

Emyr would smile; kiss her face, her lips. His joy would be contained, reserved. He would think of a good tale to tell about his brother’s miraculous return. And Áine would never tell him the truth of what she’d done. Not the whole of it. Emyr would be the one to look upon her with clear and loving eyes, no shadows or secrets clouding their love. After all this, she and Idrys would need his sweetness, his steadying presence.

I need each of them, each for his own ways and own gifts. I’ve missed them both so very much. They will know me. They must know me
.

The trees gave way to meadow and Áine found it easier going. No swallows danced around her, and she saw no insects resting in the bent grasses. The sun was pleasantly warm on her back and with the use of her makeshift cane, she trudged over the silent wold.

It seemed a lifetime ago that she’d searched for the Ilswyn and emerged into Cymru-that-could-be. She recalled the pure white marble, the strange mists, and that Blodeuedd had told her the Ilswyn was only open when the veils between worlds grew thin. Áine hoped that only applied to passage from the world that is to the world that could be.

Despair rode her heart like a threatening storm cloud, hovering on her worst thoughts. What if the gate weren’t open until midsummer? How many months would she have to wait? How would she find the gate at all? Seren had said the curse must be broken on the longest day. Which longest day? The next? She’d certainly implied as much. Áine ran a dry tongue over her soft, bare gums and shuddered.

A soundless cry of relief broke from Áine’s lips as an opaque doorway appeared just in front of her as she crested a hill. Her heart beat painfully strong and forced her to stop and catch her breath, one hand pressed against her breastbone. She felt the hard stones of the cursebreaking pendants.

Grinding the end of her cane into the thick grass, Áine strode forward through the gate, leaving Cymru-that-could-be far behind.

* * *

This time things in the mists bumped against her and she heard voices crying out in a language she could almost understand. At one point, she nearly fell, stumbling over something in her path.

For a moment the terrifying visage of a dead child leered up at her, its neck a gaping wound from which colorless blood poured like a fountain. Áine recoiled and it was gone in the blink of an eye and she was alone again with the swirling mists.

A bright line pierced the gloom in front of her and Áine pushed her aching body toward it. The line thickened and formed into a doorway. Áine stepped through and fell to her creaking knees in relief. The valley of the Ilswyn spread out before her, the trees in their strange state of fruit and flower all at once. What had been strange before was comforting now and Áine choked down a sob.

“Áine, Áine, what has been done to you?” Blodeuedd’s voice sounded from beside her.

Áine turned her head and saw the fairy woman standing beside the huge marble slab where the gate had been. Her blue-violet eyes were dark with pity and pain. Áine raised one hand to her mouth and shook her head.

“You cannot speak? Did you find what you sought?”

Áine nodded and pulled the pendants from underneath her ragged robe.

Blodeuedd smiled, some of the worry leaving her features. “Good. We must get you to the village. I fear that things are not as you left them.”

Áine raised her eyebrows and tried to communicate her need for information. She pointed to the sun, which rode low in the eastern sky and then pointed to the west and down.

Blodeuedd pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “Do you mean you need to be there by sunset? Or do you wish to know the time that has passed? It’s been a few years in Cymru-that-is, Áine.”

A few years
? Áine jerked back and carefully rose to her feet, leaning hard on her makeshift cane. She pointed at the trees and willed her question be understood.

Blodeuedd read the question clearly enough. “It’s summer here, not just in the Ilswyn. Tonight is midsummer’s eve.”