The Moonshawl: A Wraeththu Mythos Novel (42 page)

‘It’s not that...’ I paused.
‘There are things...’ I sighed. ‘Oh, maybe maybe. Peredur says there’s a
missing piece, but there are secrets also. One thing in particular he doesn’t
want others to know.’

‘
You
can know but not
me?’ Nytethorne asked darkly.

I held his gaze. ‘Peredur is
your relative. You know him better than I do. If you think, truly, he wouldn’t
mind you coming over, then come.’

‘If
you
truly don’t want
me there, I won’t.’

I sighed. ‘Let’s not play games,
Nytethorne. I have what you might call a rag-tag team to deal with this
situation. To be honest, personal feelings aside, I’d welcome your...
immovability.
’

He laughed. ‘My what?’

‘Oh, never mind. Just come. But
expect surprises.’

This was a har who’d willingly
let himself by pierced by arrows for a Cuttingtide rite, as part of the complex
web of rituals that Peredur believed kept the
ysbryd drwg
at bay. 
Nytethorne wasn’t a coward. I didn’t believe he’d crumple or run. We might need
that strength. Perhaps, even, the distraction of him was part of it all.

On the ride over, I explained
about Arianne, not sure how Nytethorne would take this information. I expected
him to believe we were deluding ourselves about her, that she must be some
maddened human who’d somehow survived unseen, from a family who’d survived
unseen, even though that theory was even more unlikely than what I thought to
be the truth.

Nytethorne listened to me
without commenting. At the end of my story, all he said was: ‘Clocks, you say?’

‘Yes. I think that’s what helped
her... come through... the fact I put all the clocks in the room.’

He nodded. ‘She know she’s here
for only one reason?’

I stared at him for some
moments. ‘If you mean to help us now, yes, she does. We’ve all faced the
possibility she won’t remain with us.’

‘
Certainty
,’ Nytethorne
said. ‘She’s just part of what haunts.’

I hadn’t considered that aspect
exactly, but I suppose it made sense.

Walking into Dŵr Alarch with Nytethorne wasn’t
one of the most comfortable things I’d ever had to do. As usual, my four
companions were sitting around the kitchen table. Peredur stood up when we
entered the room. ‘That’s a very big amethyst,’ he said, in a frosty tone.

‘My choice, Peri,’ Nytethorne
said. ‘Told him you’d not mind.’

Peredur shook his head, sighed,
and sat down. ‘I suppose not. Where are my amethysts?’

I gave them to him, and he
spilled them from their pouch onto the table, causing Myv to exclaim and want
to touch them. Rinawne fixed me with a stare that I met only briefly. There was
an element of ‘How could you?’
in it, but I had no intention of doing
anything Rinawne might find unsettling. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d
got to his feet and stormed out, but I could tell he was trying hard not to
react in that way.

As the afternoon progressed, and
we – or mainly Peredur and Myv – explained to Nytethorne what we hoped to
achieve, I felt Rinawne settle down. There was no frisson between Nytethorne
and I to upset him, only a polite distance between us. Before Nytethorne left
the tower some hours later, he said to me at the kitchen door, ‘I’ll take care.
No Wyvachi will see me come here. Don’t fret about that.’

‘I wasn’t going to.’

He smiled uncertainly, nodded,
closed the door behind him.

The following day, when Myv
arrived at the tower, he had something he wanted to show us. Rinawne wasn’t
with him, and Nytethorne hadn’t come over, so it was just the four of us. Myv
had a satchel, from which he removed a wrapped object. Reverently, he revealed
this to us: a swathe of iridescent cloth. ‘This is the moonshawl,’ he said
softly, ‘siôl lleuad that has protected my family for many years.’

This was far from the old rag
Rinawne had implied it was.

‘It gives off a powerful light,’
Peredur said, reaching out to touch it, ‘like starlight, somewhat cold, but
pure.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ Arianne said.
‘You can see it’s very old, and yet still so strong.’

The shawl was delicate, finer
than I’d imagined. White as the moon, tender as moonbeams. Somehar had once
taken great care to weave this. When Myv spread it out over the table, I could
see the shape of owls within its lacy pattern. Its fringes were long, like
hair. I asked Myv if he knew who’d made it. He shook his head. ‘No... some har
in Gwyllion. I don’t think he’s around anymore.’

I didn’t think he was either. I
did wonder then exactly who had made this magical shawl.

‘I’ll take this with me at
Reaptide,’ Myv said, stroking the fabric. ‘It feels right to do so.’

‘Yes,’ Peredur agreed, running his
hands beside Myv’s. Occasionally, their fingers interlaced. ‘This old shawl is
as much a part of our task as you or I.’

Later that day, I asked Arianne
if I might speak with her privately. She behaved as if she was simply a part of
Myv’s family, who’d always been with us and always would be. I was mindful of
what both Peredur and Nytethorne had said about this, and knew Arianne must think
the same. I suspected she and Peredur had discussed it. With the rest of us, she
simply kept her fears hidden. Perhaps also she harboured the hope her kin were
wrong and she’d walk from our task tonight free to remain among us. I knew in
my heart that hope was futile, and if she held on to it, this was a weakness
within our circle. She had to face reality, such as it was. I had to be sure
about her.

I took her up to my nayati,
where we generally held our meditations. She sat on the rug in front of me and
said, ‘What is it you want to say, Ysobi?’ There was a challenge in her voice.

I reached out and took her
hands, stroked the backs of them with my thumbs. ‘Ari, you are a gift to us,
and I believe you were sent to help right the wrongs of the past, but you being
here, arriving the way you did... I think that is merely part of the
strangeness we’re living through now. I don’t believe this will extend beyond
Reaptide.’

She looked down at the carpet,
nodded. ‘I know that. I give thanks for every second I spend with my family.’
She looked up at me. ‘If I am a gift to you, then knowing that Peri lives, and
is loved, that Medoc lives on and thrives, and that I’ve been allowed to meet
Kinnard’s grandson, are far greater gifts to me. If I am the sacrifice, then
I’m prepared. I’ve been given this astounding second human life, however brief,
and am willing to pay for it.’

I leaned forward to embrace her.
She shuddered a little, but there were no tears. She pulled back from me,
dry-eyed, although she kept hold of my hands. ‘Thank you, Ysobi, for what you
did, giving me this chance to see the future of my family. Wherever I go next,
I’ll move forward knowing they will carry on.’ She drew in a breath. ‘My task
is to reach Vivi and convince her of this, too.’

I grimaced. ‘I’ve met her – what
remains of her. You’ll have your work cut out. But yes, I think that is your
task.’

She squeezed my fingers. ‘We
face a time of endings and beginnings, and this must include yours as well.’

I raised my eyebrows at her.

‘Oh, come now, don’t give me
that look. I see the walls in you, with bricks of grief and cement of sorrow.
You think you’re tough, and you are, but perhaps it’s time for you to start
knocking down those walls.’

I laughed uncertainly. ‘The
walls are there for a reason, Ari. I’ve made many mistakes in my life. As Vivi
has had to be contained, so certain parts of me must be contained too.’

Arianne put her head to one
side, smiled quizzically. ‘Yet here we are, attempting to free her. Doesn’t
that say something to you?’

I shrugged.

‘Just don’t miss the
opportunities when they come,’ Arianne said. ‘Promise me that.’

‘OK.’

‘And
mean
it.’ She rolled
her eyes. ‘Oh well, I’ve said what I wanted to say.’ She shook my hands a
little. ‘You will always be my beautiful friend, Ysobi, the woman I never had
close to me in the past. I always wanted a friend like you, and to enjoy such a
friendship, freely, experiencing all the good little things of life, but circumstances
took that from us. I never knew a world free from turmoil and terror. You have
that now. Please take all its bounties, if only for me.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

‘You better!’ She let go of me
and stood up. ‘I feel like making a cake, a very big one.’

She left the room ahead of me. I
sat there for some minutes, thinking of nothing.

The day before Reaptide eve, I decided to give Wyva
a last chance and went to visit him. We had plans to finalise for the Wyvachi
festival, which really I couldn’t concentrate upon. I was relieved I’d written
it so swiftly after Cuttingtide, because my priorities were far from cheerful
communal events at that time. Myv and Rinawne would not visit Dŵr Alarch
again before tomorrow.

I found Wyva out in the
stableyard – his favourite horse had gone lame inexplicably. At once, I offered
my help and went into the relative cool of the stable to give the animal some
healing. Wyva stood at my shoulder as I crouched with my hands on the horse’s
leg. I could feel he was tense, like a strand of wire pulled thin. ‘Any more
incidents?’ I asked him

‘No... not really. The weather
will break after Reaptide, and so will this strange... atmosphere in the land.’
He laughed unconvincingly. ‘It’s traditional in this place.’

I glanced over my shoulder at
him. ‘Is it?’

‘When the weather’s so hot and
close, animals and crops get sick. Verdiferel plays his tricks.’

As if to punctuate this
observation, several slates fell from the stable roof into the yard, where they
smashed loudly. Wyva sighed. ‘The heat,’ he said.

A thin scream came from the
kitchens.

‘Wyva...’ I wanted to tell him
then, all that I knew, all that we must do, but he must’ve sensed this because
he said, ‘I’d better see what that was,’ and hurried away. I smoothed the
horse’s leg, rested my forehead briefly against it. Tonight was the last night.
Tomorrow at midnight, we would symbolically take up arms, such as we had. The
Wyvachi festival seemed like a harling’s dream. How could it be possible?

I didn’t bother to stay and talk with Wyva further,
because I knew it was pointless. To keep my mind from the challenge ahead, I
rode into Gwyllion, visited The Boar
for lunch, wondering if it was the
last time I’d do so. After this, I rode round the sites that were now familiar
to me, that I loved. I drank from the Pwll Siôl Lleuad. I sat by the riverside
and dangled my feet in the cool water, then lay back on the grass. I felt
melancholy, tired, fired up, hopeful...

Arianne had cooked us dinner
again; she adored cooking. I was surprised and pleased to discover that she and
Peredur had spent the afternoon in the forest around the foot of Dŵr
Alarch. Peredur had been right. In his company, his mother could leave the
tower.

‘I saw a little of the land,’
Arianne said to me. ‘If anything, it’s more beautiful than I remember but of
course it’s a new land really.’

‘How did it happen... Peri
taking you outside?’ I wondered whether there had been any difficulty.

‘He simply held out his hand to
me and said “Come on, it’s time”, and the next thing I knew I was downstairs
and the door was open and...’ She clutched herself for a moment. ‘The sky was
white, the light like a trumpet. And the smells... Overwhelming. I can only say
it was like stepping out of a spaceship onto a planet that wasn’t Earth, but
was very like it. A planet more intense to the senses.’ She shrugged. ‘More
than that. Can’t explain.’

‘Were you afraid?’ I asked
gently, my own skin shivering at the image she’d conjured.

‘Yes, because if I couldn’t take
that step over the threshold, what would we do? But there was Peri before me,
my beautiful son, holding on to my hand, so I stepped into this new world, and
I could walk in it.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘Perhaps that is what death will be
like.’

I hugged her then, unable to
speak. I thought of the terrible love between her and Peredur, the sky of
sadness. And yet in this strange dream of summer heat and madness, they could
meet and hold one another, if only for a short time.

Nytethorne showed up as we’d finished eating; this
was not planned.  He seemed odd, as if slightly drunk, being somewhat more
demonstrative than I’d seen him before. He hugged Peredur, then Arianne, then
stood behind me to run his hands swiftly through my hair. I felt distinctly
uncomfortable. Why had he come here?

Peredur and Arianne retired
early, before midnight. I sat with Nytethorne in the kitchen. ‘So here we are,
Ysobi,’ he said, into the silence our companions had left.

‘For the time being, yes.’ I
didn’t want to talk about our task anymore, because we’d said everything. I
wanted to be alone to prepare myself for tomorrow. There was nothing beyond
that.

‘So tonight I’ll be staying
here.’

I had been staring at my laced
hands. My head jerked up. ‘What?’

‘You heard. Don’t need to say
why.’

‘You do! Why? The boundaries are
clear between us. The beds are all taken. Go home and sleep well so you’re
properly rested for...’

‘I meant in your bed.’

My surprise was genuine.
Nytethorne had said no to me in creative ways; he’d meant it. We’d said no to
each other. ‘This is an immense change of mind. Do I get a say in it?’ Even as
I spoke I was wondering whether in fact he meant simply he would sleep beside
me for the night.

He smiled. ‘No, you’re limp as a
cut reed. You need it.’

‘But...’

‘Don’t know the outcome for
tomorrow, do we? Ancient concept. Don’t die with regrets for things undone.’