The light grew brighter and brighter. The mist began to burn away. The tall, frowning cliffs that surrounded the fjord began to show wet but clearly seen through the blowing vapor. Then the dragon lowered his head and butted me lightly in the chest. He
likes samphire
, I thought. He
doesn’t care for fish. He would not want to eat
me. So I placed my hand on his forehead just at the frill. I touched it, and the world vanished around me, and I spoke to the dragon.
Did I say the sea here was gray, green, and black? No, I was wrong. Yes, those colors were there, but also many others: red, sometimes like blood, sometimes like the fine enamel work of a polished gem or the red, yellows and oranges that dance and dazzle in a fire’s ever changing hues. Then there is green, the clouded emerald, bearing secrets, light and fair as masses of drifting sea grass on the water, or clear, shading away into blue where the sea meets shore. But blue, blue, what do we know of blue?
The pure arch of summer sky over the ocean or the blues as light is lost, first transparent, then translucent, finally shading into shadow as the surrounding beasts reach the deeps.
I was wrong. Sometimes he did eat fish, and he and his companions, speaking in song, pursued them through the vast canyons and drowned mountains beneath the sea.
Oh, the dragon song of love and battle, hunger and grief, loss, desire, and the blazing instant of fulfillment echoed in this everlasting symphony that no human mind has ever comprehended. No human ear has ever heard. They all sing, you know—the porpoise, the whale, even the shrimp click to call for love.
These and many more things he told me in the eternal, unspeaking instant when our minds were joined. Then he pulled away—not I—and turned, swam through the receding fog back into this kingdom, the open ocean. I sat on the shingle, weeping without knowing why.
When I was thirteen, cymry’s answer changed.
It had been a hard winter. A hard year, now that I think about it. We had a long, dry spring, unusual in this part of the world, and then just as the crops were well stunted by the drought, it rained buckets, drowning them. Making a living from the soil can be hell. How those in Roman territory made it, I cannot think. Maeniel said they often didn’t, selling their children into slavery, starving, and finally having to flee their homes to escape the tax collectors. They were simply overburdened by the cost of legions and a government that did less and less every year, since it was controlled by the large landowners, who paid no taxes at all and cared nothing for farmers who had small freeholds.
He and Dugald argued constantly about this. Maeniel said that the road to Rome was the road to ruin, and Dugald said that they were the culmination of thousands of years of civilization, beginning in the east and spreading westward, carried by Kyra’s folk who built the great chamber tombs in Gaul Armorica and Ireland. When I and Kyra complained and Mother covered her ears with her paws and Black Leg whined and stalked out of the house, they both turned on me and the rest, lecturing me about how I must learn about politics because one day I would be queen.
I said, “Ha! What would I rule over here in this quiet corner of the world?” Besides, I liked things just fine as they were. Dugald would hush me and say wait. Things were more peaceful now to the south. The trade ships were sailing—one had made port close by—and the crews brought news to us when anything made a loud noise in the world. All the talk was about the Pendragon’s son being reared by Merlin. He would, they said, become high king, and even the Saxons supported him.
I went down to the harbor near the headland where the battle had been fought, and we climbed aboard the ship to see the jewelry and spices laid out on the deck for sale. Sometimes there were books, paper, and writing materials. When Dugald found these things, he bought them. I never asked after the jewelry or even the weapons.
Gray made me a sax, the single edged blade the Frisians carry. It was about ten inches long, forged all of a piece, tang and blade together. The hilt was wrapped first with wire and then leather. I’d had my own spear since I was ten. The Gray Watcher had lately given me a beautiful compound bow that, as he said, was similar to the ones carried by Roman cavalry men. So I felt no need for any other weapons.
On this ship I saw no books. There were many people aboard. Issa was nagging her father and Bain for another necklace, this one gold. Gray was present, haggling with the captain over some scrap iron in a sack. Things were getting pretty bloody, because Gray was determined he was not going to pay the man’s price and the captain was determined he was.
A young man, one of the crew, spoke to me. “Not interested in any of the jewelry?” he asked with seeming casualness.
I laughed. “I can’t afford it,” I told him. “I have no money. I’m just here with Kyra.” She was also haggling with a withered looking merchant, who had a dark gray beard and was becoming very dramatic.
“The woman with one eye?”
“Yes.”
“She your mother?”
“No. My mother is long dead.”
“I didn’t think so. She is so dark, and you are very, very fair. So blond is your hair, it is almost white. I haven’t seen someone so blond since I left my country. Most of the people here are dark, and if they aren’t dark, they’re red. But you, you’re beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
He took my hand, drawing me away from the crowd around the goods set out for sale on the ship’s deck. “Would you care to walk with me up into the rocks?”
He gestured at the headland against which the shallow draft ship was moored. The ground was very broken there, flat clearings, then giant boulders. In a few steps you would be hidden from the folk on the ship, wandering in a maze with small clearings ablaze with green grass and wildflowers and barren spots covered with sun warmed stone. He was still holding my hand. I looked into his eyes. They were gray blue and his hair was a dark honey blond.
But I wondered what the reason was for his strange scrutiny and why he would want me to go off alone with him. Uneasy, I tried to pull my hand from his. He wouldn’t let go.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think I want to—”
“Why not? Am I ugly?”
“No.” I was conscious that he still had my hand. “You are quite pleasant to look upon.”
“Then see.” He pointed to a necklace of garnet and amber. “If you walk out with me, I’ll give you that. It will look beautiful on someone with your coloring, so blond and fair skinned. I’ll get it now and we can take it along with us. Let me show you how the red stones and butter amber will glow against that milky skin of yours. Come with me.”
He was still holding my hand and made as if to put his other arm around my waist. I snatched my hand away and backed up. “Why would you want me to go with you and offer me presents?”
“Yes! Why indeed?”
The voice was the Gray Watcher’s, and he was standing behind the young man, looking down at me over his head. The young man turned and found himself looking at the Gray Watcher’s chest. In all the years I had lived with Dugald and the Gray Watcher, I had never seen him really angry. Not even during the battle with the pirates. But I sensed that he was angry now. The fair boy was one inch from dead. That was just his distance from Maeniel.
“He did no harm,” I said.
“Not for want of trying,” Maeniel said. “She is virgin and still a child. Now get out of my sight before I snap your neck like a rabbit’s.”
The boy left, easing away with remarkable quickness.
“What did he do?” I asked, wide eyed at Maeniel’s fury.
“You really don’t understand, do you?”
“Oh,” I gasped. And then, of course, I did. First I blushed and then I began to laugh.
The tension went out of Maeniel’s body. He wound up buying me the garnet and amber necklace. I didn’t know he had such a thing as money, but he did.
Later we stopped at the chief’s hall. He wasn’t there, but Issa greeted us respectfully. She was now head of the household, being married to Bain, her mother having died in the last year. Her father seemed to have aged greatly. She was her father’s only surviving child, which explained Bain’s deep interest in her when she was only a young girl.
She offered us wine and mead, but as was proper on a casual visit, we took only beer. Others were in the hall. The Romans say we have no seats but sit on the floor, but this isn’t true. We have benches and low tables arranged around the fire pit, and since wood carving has become a high art among us, these are often very beautiful, cherished heirlooms. So they were in Dunnel’s hall, fragrant cedar and the stone hard pine that grows in the mountains battered by wind from the sea. These were twined with sea life. Seal, whale, porpoise, dulse, samphire, sloke, and sea spinach mingled with the beasts and long necked dragons; eels, mackerel, and hake were braided together with the knots of eternal renewal.
The hall was a beautiful place with the fire blazing brightly on the central hearth. Its glow was thrown back by the jewel like colors of the many wall hangings tracing the ancestral accomplishments of both town and family, flaming in the deep polish of the old oiled wood of its furniture. I sat where a proper girl should sit, among her male kin. Quite a few people were here visiting, to take advantage of the trade ship’s stop. But we were all surprised when the young man who had propositioned me on the ship appeared before us.
“My name is Farry,” he said, “and I am the son of the captain, Cuan. The request I made of the young lady here was an honorable one. The jewels were valuable and a seafaring man is not in a position to marry.”
Maeniel’s face didn’t change. “Then it should have been made in Kyra’s presence,” he said.
“Yes,” Farry said, “but I was in a hurry and I was afraid some other might snare her. And I didn’t know she was a noble. She dresses so… so… plainly. The jewels were mine to dispose of and I would have made good the gift. But that’s not why I come here today.”
“What is it then that you want?” the Gray Watcher asked. “She is not for you, however much you offer. She is too young as yet, and most noble.”
“I know. I know,” Farry said. “Her line has numbered many kings and queens, and that is why she is in danger. Lord Merlin still hunts her, and there is a price on her head. I was told this by one of my crew, who said I should try to snare her and carry her off to Cornwall, where she would command a huge sum from the chief druid and other British princes. She is a great prize, and I can see why. That was the reason I took her hand and behaved foolishly, but I am here to say I had no bad intent.”
Maeniel was about to answer, but I placed my hand on his and spoke to Farry. “I thank you for the compliment of your esteem and admiration, and I value your friendship. I thank you for your warning. I had not thought the memories of my mother’s influence still lingered and had believed myself all but forgotten.” Then I rose and took his hand.
He looked at me for a long time, as though sealing me in his mind that he might remember my face. “I wish,” he said, then gave a little laugh. “I don’t know what I wish. That you were less or I were more, perhaps. Yes, just possibly that’s it. The jewels do look beautiful on you. I wish I had had the pleasure of making a gift of them to you. Goodbye.”
Then he turned and walked away, and I gazed after him in sorrow.
“Don’t look so, girl. He’s the first to fall at your feet; he will not be the last. A more disturbing thing is what he had to say,” the Gray Watcher said.
“Yes,” Dugald said. “I had hoped the hue and cry had been forgotten or Merlin believed she was lost or had died in my care.”
“No,” the Gray Watcher said. “His kind don’t forget things. Not things of her sort. And, make no mistake, when the ship makes its way back to the kingdoms below the Roman wall, someone—this Farry even or his father or his shipmates—will bring word to the British druid that this child has grown into a woman and that she is dangerously beautiful and intelligent.”
“What should we do?”
“I cannot think any here would betray us,” I said.
“No?” Dugald answered. “Then you have a better opinion of most people than I have.”
Mother and Black Leg were at my side. I could see they and Maeniel and Kyra agreed with Dugald.
“Then what should I do?” I asked.
“You? You do nothing,” Maeniel said. “It is what we will all do. We are a family. I swore I would never let myself be drawn into the human struggle again, but here I am.”
“I think we should go home by another than our usual route. Some of the rest of the ship’s crew may be harboring foolish ideas about earning a pile of gold from this Merlin,” Kyra said. “When the ship is gone, nothing will happen for a time. Soon it will be autumn and we must question Cymry.”
We took Kyra’s advice, and the Gray Watcher turned wolf and led us by a route only he knew back to our steading.
The ship brought illness with it. We didn’t know it at the time, but not long after they left, sickness spread through the village. As usual it took the oldest and youngest first. Dugald came down with it and was affected badly, as was Issa’s first child, who died. I had only a mild case, since 1 was usually healthy; and, of course, the Gray Watcher and his son Black Leg never got any illness. But Mother fell ill then, not with whatever afflicted the humans, but with a congestion of the lungs. The Gray Watcher and Black Leg left to hunt, since the crops were poor this year. Not only our house but also the rest of the village was in need of meat.
Kyra, who is never sick either, remained home with me to care for Dugald and Mother.
I made a bed of soft grass for Mother near the fire and slept beside her with my arms around her. Kyra made medicine. She would not tell Dugald what was in it, and he swore at her when she tried to pour it down his throat.
“Woman, I will send you boils and the flux if you don’t leave me alone!” he yelled as he lay shivering in his blankets.
“Be quiet, you old fool, and drink this. It will break your fever.”
“Fever. Fever. I have no fever!” Dugald yelled. “You left the door open. I’m just cold.”
“A plague on you for a two legged jackass,” Kyra screamed. “If I ever saw a case of the ague, it’s the one you have now. Shut up and drink before I hold your nose and pour it down your throat.”
“She will, too,” I said from my place beside Mother near the fire. “And I’ll help her. You know her remedies always make you better.”
“If I heave till my toenails come up, it will be all you women’s fault!” he screamed.
“You won’t. Now, dammit, drink,” she told him.
He did, swallowing the contents of the bowl in one draught. Then Kyra wrapped him in woolens. He began to perspire, and in no little time his fever was broken. Then she came over to check Mother.
“How is she?” Kyra asked.
“Not good,” I said. “I can hear her breathe.” And I could. The empty and fill of her lungs made a gurgling, rasping sound.
Kyra knelt down and put her ear against Mother’s ribs. “I cannot think what else to do,” she told me. “I dosed her with the same drugs I did Dugald, but her tribe doesn’t perspire the way humans do, and her nose is dry and hot. Besides,” Kyra said and made the sign of the cross, “I think she is much sicker than Dugald.”
Mother opened her eyes and looked at me. “I am old,” she said. “Old for one of my kind. You have been a good daughter to me. She has been a good friend. Tell her to go to sleep. Her potion took away the pain in my chest. In the morning, I will be better.”
I told Kyra what Mother said. She nodded, then dipped a small bowl of stew from a pot on the hearth and gave it to me with some bread. The oatcake that is cooked on a griddle or flat stone near an open fire is hard but softens when it is dipped in broth. She got some for herself and offered Mother some, but Mother refused it and placed her head on my lap and slept.
Dugald snored on his bed against the wall.
I didn’t realize I was weeping until I tasted the tears on the bread. Kyra brushed the tears from my cheeks.