reveal the face behind the veil
Jan. 1st, 2008 04:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseThank you so much to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lazigyrl for my Yuletide story; I thoroughly enjoyed it, and y'all should read it.
I wrote "Of Smoke and Gold and Breathing" forshortcakegreen:
The Dark is Rising, Jane/Will/Bran, PG, 9,438 words.
Of Smoke and Gold and Breathing
It was Jane who answered. “Jane,” he said. Jane Jana Juno Jane, his mind chattered. Jenny Gwen. Names tumbling over each other in the dark. “Jane,” he said again, forcing his mind to clear, “It’s Will Stanton.”
“Will,” she breathed, sounding pleased and surprised. “My goodness, I haven’t heard your voice in an age. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m all right,” Will said, hoping that he’d dredged up enough energy to give credence to his lie. “Jane, I haven’t much time, and I need to speak to Bran. Is he in?”
Jane’s voice crackled back apologetically over the line.” No, Will, I’m sorry. He’s out for the evening. Out for a few days, actually. Up in London with John Rowlands. But how’ve you been? It’s been ever so long since we’ve heard from you.” Her voice had changed, grown huskier and sweeter than he remembered. No longer a little girl’s treble. And there was a Welsh lilt to her phrases now. It was easy for him to forget, sometimes, how long it had been that she’d lived with Bran. Coming on to five years, it must be.
His mind was wandering again; the pain in his shoulder burned like hot coals, and he suddenly felt so tired, so ghastly tired. “Jane,” he said again, in a shameful plea, “I’ve...there was an accident yesterday, and I’m afraid I got a bit banged up.” Dimly he heard her exclaiming, though the words to him seemed passed through water, or through the waver of heat above a flame. “No,” he said slowly. “I’m all right, they’ve patched me up. No, a stab to my shoulder, but it could have been worse. But look, Jane,” he said, trying to regain his foothold, “I can’t…stay here right now. My arm doesn’t work much, and—” he broke off, reluctant to tell her than there was no one in London who would care for him, or notice if he failed to frequent his usual haunts. He’d done too good a job at being unobtrusive and unmemorable. He flushed dully at the realization of what he would look like through her eyes. Or worse, Bran’s.
Bran. “…Bran to you tomorrow,” she was saying. “He can take the rail, it’s not so far. Bit of luck, really, that he and John are up London way.” He tried to interject, but she said gently, “Don’t you worry about it, Will Stanton. I’ve wanted a visit from you for years now—and I know that Bran wants to see you. He misses you something terrible, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” he replied. His words fell to the floor like so much dust, he thought, and he said goodbye to Jane.
*
A rider sheathed in mail bore down on him; Will could not see the man’s device, or tell if he was friend or foe. Foe, most like—all the friends had been dead long before it had come to open war. The head of the knight’s lance pierced his shoulder, and a dark gritty pain followed it down the length of his body. He cried out, gasping, and fell to his knees in the muck. Couldn’t hear, he couldn’t breathe.
He saw Bran charging down on them astride his warhorse, his silver sword striking down into the strange knight’s neck, cutting through him at the joint of his helm where the lifeblood thrummed close to the surface and unprotected. The knight fell silently, and Bran pulled his sword from the body as it plummeted. “Will!” he cried, shock clear in the shrillness of his usual warm tenor. Will looked up at him weakly, considering. He’d not known, then.
Bran’s hands were on him, holding him upright. “Iesu Mawr! Will, stay with me, stay—”
Will screamed as the spear haft shifted, tiny motions at the tip of the rod working down into the point, jarring the wound terribly. Bran broke the haft, leaving the head buried in Will’s tendons and arteries and bones, and he screamed again with the pain of it. Molten iron. “Will, come on, os gweli di'n dda, are you all right?”
Will gasped again, almost limp in Bran’s arms. He could see his own blood dark against the green of Bran’s tunic. “My lord,” he said, struggling to get the words out, “My lord Pendragon, I fear I am sore wounded.”
The loose scrub around them could not conceal the wrath of the battle. Not five feet away, a dead man lay sprawled in the loam. His curling fingers were extended toward them in futile pleading, but there was blood dripping out from the hem of his hauberk, and his eyes were open but unseeing.
Bran shook him gently, and Will could feel great tremors running through the young Prince’s hands. “None of that, now. I am no lord of yours, dewin bach, Old One. My name from your lips is Bran, and no more. You always,” he added, touching Will’s face with a still-gloved hand, “get so formal when you’re anxious.”
Will sagged against him, strength running from his body like the blood from his wound. “Leave me,” he said. “Bran, go, you’re needed. I can’t—you go, Bran, I’ll be all right.”
Bran didn’t interrupt his caress. “The King my Father is dead, Will. The battle is already lost. I cannot save his kingdom, nor keep alive the dream of the Table, you know that. When Arthur falls, Camelot vanishes into legend, and the Dark wins for a time.” Will looked up at him, and the young Pendragon’s pale, pale hair was tousled by his helm, and his eyes were closed, and there were tears glimmering on his cheeks. “My father is dead, Will,” he choked out in a whisper, “but you’re not yet. I can save you, my dewin, my sais bach. You I will keep, against the coming of the dark times.”
“Bran,” Will said, voice low and solemn, “You know that you cannot go back.”
Bran looked up at the field, the shroud of interlaced branches and green shoots allowing him only a partial view of the last pathetic sallies of his father’s knights, and of the slaughter of kerns on all sides of alliance lines. Will thought with some distraction that the Pendragon’s eyes were burning like a meteor come to earth, or like the final bloody moments of a sunset. “Yes,” Bran replied. “Too many factions, now, and not a one that would welcome the continued existence of an heir. I know.” He sighed. “Rest well, my Lord,” he said, glancing skyward. “Hic jacet arturus, rex quondam rexque futurus.”
His silver mail chimed bell-like as Bran lay down in the bracken beside Will’s prone form. “And so the dream is ended,” he murmured. “Tomorrow will be a strange awakening. But I am so tired, Will. Would it—do you think it would be all right, if we just rested here for a moment? I swear, just a breath and then I’ll get you cleaned up, and we can find shelter for the night. But I can’t yet.”
Will nodded, too worn even to speak. He shared Bran’ weariness, and his wound ached dully, like a memory of a great agony long past. Bran’s breath warmed his cheek, and he could smell the other boy’s scent of green things and damp air, and the sandalwood of the case where his tunic had been packed away. When Bran’s arms wrapped around his, he couldn’t refuse their solace, couldn’t pull away enough to chivvy the young King onwards. For a moment he was all human, the Old One submerged beneath the need a young man exhausted and in pain, desperate for Bran’s warm strength.
*
Sunlight streamed down in shafts between the thick leaves, turning the light warmly green all around her. She heard not a sound besides the fall of her palfrey’s feet on the loamy path and the small sounds of the forest, but she had no doubt that they were close. “Bran! Wi-ill! Bran ap Arthur! I know you’re out here, you can’t fool me,” Jane called. “It’s all right, I’m on my own, and I’ve told no one why I came.”
She’d expected it, but she gasped nevertheless when Bran stepped out from behind a tree, his white hair shocking against the deep blue of his raiment in the sunshine. “Jenny,” he said with a smile. “I wondered how long it would take you to find us.”
Catching her breath, she grinned back. “You might have sent me some notice, and then I’d have got here the sooner,” she said. “In all earnest, my lord, I’ve been worried sick. Would it have been the end of you, to have sent me some word or token?”
Bran caught the lead of her horse, and offered her a gentlemanly hand down from her perch. She slid down to the forest floor, not letting go of him. Her fingers were tight around his wrist, clinging fervently to his solid form. He shot her a look, aged and full of cares. “How bad is it, Jenny-wren?” he asked her. “And—what of the dead King’s body?”
“It was recovered from the field of battle,” she told him, “But not by any man of the court. A Lady, they say, came for his corse, and wrapped and anointed it, and bore it down to the deep places of the earth to entomb him. But he will have no monument from any man above-ground. I wasn’t sure,” she added, faltering, “if that was good news. On the one hand, I can’t think of many yet living whose hands I should like to touch him, and in this way none of them can do him violence in his death. And yet, oh Bran, your father’s body, and you unable to walk to the spot of his grave. I’m so, so sorry, for everything.”
Bran bowed his head for a moment, and with his eyes in shadow he looked like a charcoal drawing of a boy, and not one of flesh and blood—all monochromatic light and shadow, with no color to grant him life. She drew her hand away, not daring in that instant to touch him. But then he stood erect, slender and proud, and a light burned in his eyes that gave her comfort. “Come walk with me, Jenny,” he said to her. “I need to return to Will; he was wounded in the battle, and he’s still very weak. And tell me everything, sparing nothing. It’s odd, isn’t it? Here I am, abdicating as completely as ever man did abdicate, hiding out in the woods licking my wounds with my dewin and a runaway girl, and yet I cannot bear to leave my kingdom without hearing the final words of this tale.”
“Not so strange,” she said, taking the palfrey’s reins and falling into step beside him. “But Will? He’s all right?” Bran nodded, though Jane noticed that the thin lines of care about his eyes and mouth did not smooth away. He was worried, she thought. “The factions are near wild with all that’s come to pass,” she reported, “but no one of them has much more power than the next. I can’t think who the next King will be, but he’ll be a harried and uneasy one. Some are mourning Arthur, some cursing him,” she said, and looked out of the corner of her eyes at him to see how he would take it, “but not a soul knows what’s become of you. Most are of the opinion that you were slain in the aftermath of the battle, but a small and vocal group are holding out for the belief that your wizard spirited you away, either to protect you so that you might save Ynys Prydein some day, or to do away with you once and for all and have all your power to himself.”
Bran sniffed. “Will? As if!”
Jane asked with trepidation, “Was he very badly hurt, Bran?”
“I wish that he did have the power to spirit me away, because then he might have the power to heal himself. It could be worse, but there’s no healer here, and he’s been…very tired. This last gasp of our struggle has exhausted him greatly, I think. It’s hard for him, to watch the destruction of everything the Light has worked so hard to build.”
“But surely he’s seen worse before, Bran, living as long as he had.”
Bran looked at her, and his usually kind eyes were hard as flint. “Surely. Why would you think that would make it easier, and not that much harder on him?”
*
He could feel the earth around him. It was not still, nor silent. In each instant a thousand things came to life, and a thousand things died. Small animals and leaf tendrils sought nourishment. Insects emerged from cocoons. Everything that the slanting, filtered light touched was affected by it in some way.
He heard the footfalls with his fingers long before any sound reached his ears—the ground trembled beneath them. He was sure it was the ground trembling, and not his hands, he was sure. He was so tired. But he gathered the last of his strength to press himself back against the trees, to try and hide. He kept his eyes open as best he could, trying to focus them while the forest clearing around him wheeled and spun. When he saw Bran he couldn’t keep erect any long, and crumpled down to the mossy floor. “Bran,” he gasped out. He wasn’t sure why he was speaking. He wasn’t sure why he had been alone.
Bran knelt by his side, pulling him into his arms. He brushed a kiss against Will’s temple, warm and present and real. “Here then, Will bachgen,” he said gently. “I’m back, and here’s Jane come to find us.” For the first time Will noticed that she was there: smiling, her dark blonde hair catching the light coming through the trees. She wore a green gown over a brown smock, tied up for riding and walking through the wood.
“Jane,” he said, and reached out for her.
She sat down in the leaves beside him. “Will, how’re you feeling?”
“I’m all right,” he said, and coughed. “What news at the court?” he wheezed.
Bran raised one hand forbiddingly. “We’ll talk of that later, Will. Everything’s all right, and you’re too worn to deal with issues of policy right now. You know I want you to rest for a bit.” He shifted closer to Will’s form, laying the Old One’s head in his lap. He looked up at Jane, frowning at her, and one of his hands started combing through Will’s dull brown hair. “How’s the wound?” he asked Will.
“You can dress it again later, and have your fill of poking me then,” Will said witheringly. “But Jane, just the one thing: we’ve no reason to fear pursuit?”
“No,” said Jane, and incongruously she giggled. Both boys stared at her. “I have a plan,” she said. “I’ll have to go back, either tonight or tomorrow. Well, I’d have to anyway, to get us provisions and those things that we’d rather not lose. But I’ll have it be known that I saw the two of you on the edge of the field of battle, and that you, Will, held the young Prince captive in your sorcerer’s wiles. You boasted to me that you’d lock the Pendragon in a cave of crystal out of time, and that there you’d keep him until you’d taken all his secrets and powers. You were, of course, only his friend in order to seduce him into your confidence.” She was smiling form ear to ear, and slowly Bran joined in.
“What on earth are you talking about?” Will asked.
“No, I see it,” said Bran. “It’s perfect. Confirm for them all their own silly superstitions, and they’ll never think to look for us again. Jane, you’re brilliant.” Standing, he began to declaim, “Three primary illusions of the Island of Prydein: the illusion of Math son of Mathonwy; and the illusion of Uthyr Pendragon; and the illusion of Jenny-wren my darling and most clever girl.
“Now, Jenny,” he went on, “do you want to make it back tonight? If so, you should go now, otherwise it’ll be to dark.”
She nodded slowly, considering it. “Yes, I think there’s time.” She bent down to touch Will’s cheek, gentle as anything. “Be at peace, Old One,” she said to him. “I’ll be back tomorrow, and you can read to me for a bit if you like. I’ll bring all your books, and anything else?”
“No,” he answered. “Only yourself back safe again, Jane.”
Bran stood, and offered Jane a hand up. She brushed the leaves from her skirt, and reached up to twist her hair back. “Your horse, my lady,” the young Pendragon said. He might have been at a great feast in his hall, so courtly was his manner, but around him were only trees and the small noises of the wood.
“Bran, be safe. Look after Will,” Jane said, and mounted her palfrey. “I’ll be back tomorrow.” She called over her shoulder, “Pob hwyl!” and then was gone in a whirl of brown leaves.
“She’s a rare, girl, that one,” said Bran, and sighed. Turning back to Will, he said seriously, “Now, Will, how is the shoulder really? No need to lie for Jenny’s sake, and I will have the truth.”
“It hurts,” Will admitted, “and everything seems like it’s happening behind a veil. Or under water. But I don’t think it’s worse.”
Rolling up his sleeves, Bran said, “Let me have a look. It’s time to change the bandages, and I want to check it for infection.” Looking down at Will, he added, “This is going to hurt, Old One, but you knew that.” He started gathering wood and kindling for a fire. “We’ll need hot water, and there’s still some cloth left from my haversack to bind you up with.”
“Here,” he said. “You lie down on my cloak, and I’ll get these old bandages off of you.”
It was a long, messy business. Will bit down hard on one of Bran’s leather gloves to keep from screaming as the Pendragon cleaned his wound, but only managed it for a quarter of an hour or so before he fainted from the pain. He slept uneasily all that night, only waking slightly when Bran lay down beside him and covered them both with his camp blanket. The Pendragon smelled like steam and herbs, and Will pressed closer to the human warmth of him.
Will slept like the dead all that night, not stirring until the sun was long up, and Jane came riding back into the clearing. Bran looked up from tending the fire, and Will sat up from his nest of cloaks and blankets as best he could, and Jane beamed at them brighter than the rising sun.
“Well,” she said. “Let us now begin our life as merry woodland outlaws. Wherever do you boys sleep? We’ll have to build a shelter of some sort, and do this properly.”
*
The doorbell rang loud and discordant; Will, who had been dozing in his chair, started up with a muffled yell. He realized, moments after, why he should do his best to avoid such things. He’d jarred the wound. His shoulder throbbed abominably, and pain streaked up behind his eyes. Fighting through the pain, he called, “Come in!”
“Will,” a young tenor voice said, accompanied by the stomping of boots against the threshold, “This is all the hospitality you show to an old friend, one that you have not seen for nearly six years? I did not know the English were so impolite.”
Bran. Still standing in the entryway, waiting. His voice had changed, Will thought, but not as much as it might have. Deeper, but still recognizable. Lilting and musical. One corner of Will’s mouth twitched upwards as he thought, wetter. I bet Welsh babies dribble a lot. His ears were filled with the memory of Bran’s laughter, and he nearly forgot to respond to the adult version of the same that was now standing in his foyer.
He didn’t know what to say to Bran. What on earth was still safe? Something in his chest twisted at the thought of chatting over rugby scores with the Pendragon, and he could ask after nothing else. Oh, how’s your da, Bran? Yeah, that’s right, you’ve no idea that he’s not your father. The two of you have gone back to living a lie.
“Will?” The voice was rougher, darker, and Will struggled to sit up. That was never Bran’s voice. Someone else was with him. “Will bach,” it said, sounding very Welsh, “Are you all right?” Footsteps rounded the corner, and Will found himself looking up into the brown, creased face of John Rowlands.
He stared stupidly at the man for a moment, remembering Jane’s warm voice on the phone: up in London with John Rowlands. Of course. How could he have forgotten that Bran wasn’t traveling alone? “John,” he said aloud. “Yes, I’m sorry, it’s just a bit hard for me to move around. Sorry I didn’t come greet you at the door.” He’d been so focused on…other things, he supposed, that it had slipped his mind that John would be there. Somewhere in the darkness of the chilly apartment, Bran was there. He could almost feel him, like cold needles of rain or light underneath his skin.
John smelled of herbs and lanolin. It was an oddly comforting scent, despite its strength. The shepherd crouched down beside Will’s chair and pushed back the boy’s sweater. “Your shoulder, bachgen, yes?” Will nodded as John got to the bandages. He turned Will’s arm over in his hands, examining the dressing. “What happened to you?” John asked.
Will looked up, and Bran was standing there, leaning against the doorframe. His mind whirled, and his breath came short. It was harder than he’d expected, seeing him now after so long. His memories slipped when confronted with this older version of Bran, like and yet unlike Will’s companion. The two images patterned over each other, Bran doubled against himself, and Will felt giddy with the strangeness of it. The Welsh boy was tall now, taller than Will, his body long and lean and graceful. His hair was brushed down, less spiky that it had been when he was a child, but no dark glasses concealed his golden predator’s eyes. He was the most beautiful, kingly thing that Will had ever seen, slouching arrogantly in his dark sweater against the dirty white wall. “Hallo,” Will said quietly.
The other boy—man now, it would be—inclined his head ever so slightly. “Will Stanton.”
“Come in,” Will said. “Take a seat.” He looked around his tiny apartment, seeing it for the first time as an outsider would: the shabbiness of it all, the scuffs and the stains that he hadn’t managed to get out of the cheap used furniture, the dinginess of the paint on the walls and the threadbare mud-colored carpet. There were books piled on every available surface, and on the floor along the walls, and papers scattered about. But the poverty of the place was worse than the clutter. He blushed; he’d never thought anyone would see his home. Or anyone who would matter. He said, “I’m sorry things aren’t tidier, I’ve been a mess. What had you and John to do in London?” And every word was agony worse than a lance point.
Bran looked at him, piercing through him with those hawkish, merciless eyes. Will looked away, down. It was Bran’s own choice, he told himself. Bran’s choice to give up his high destiny, to forget everything he’d known. He could do nothing to break or damage it in any way, give no hint of anything inappropriate. They had met when they were boys, twice, when he’d been on holiday. Will knew Bran’s girlfriend. There was nothing more between them than that.
John, from the settee next to him, said, “We were up for a harp concert. It does Bran good to hear a real harper, one better than myself.”
“None better,” Bran said instantly. “Finest harper in Wales, you are.”
John smiled slowly. “Aye, well then. That’s as may be. But Will, there is a story here. These bandages are quite new, and yet already there is blood coming through. What’ve you been into, lad?”
Bran shot Will a glance. “Blood? Jane said you were all right.”
He was going to have to tell them something. How would it sound to say that he’d been wounded while fighting in the battle that had killed Bran’s great father? “There was an auto accident,” he heard himself saying. “The man was decent about it. Paid for my hospital and everything.” That was a flat-out lie; he’d paid the hospital bills himself, and they had been more than he could afford on a tutor’s salary. “Bit of metal shrapnel went flying through my shoulder, but it could have been much worse.”
“Well,” John said, “as far as I can tell, it’s bad enough. You must be in a fair bit of pain, Will.”
Will nodded in assent. “Mmm. The medicine they gave me helps a bit, but it makes everything so foggy that I’m not sure it’s better. And I can’t do for myself. Bran, I wouldn’t have asked, if I hadn’t…”
Bran grinned a bit, the corners of his mouth pulling back sharply to reveal his gleaming white teeth. “Aye, I’ll believe that,” he said. “So long it’s been since we’ve heard from you. Really heard, mind, not a card at the holidays.”
“I’m sorry,” Will said. “I’m not very good at remembering, sometimes. I get so caught up in things.”
Bran looked around the dingy little apartment, and at Will’s pain-twisted face where sweat was beginning to bead, and raised one pale, elegant eyebrow. Will closed his eyes, unable to bear the uncomprehending censure that covered Bran’s face. There was nothing he could say or do, anyway.
*
Jane had decided that Will needed a change of scenery. “It’s making him melancholy,” she said to Bran. “He needs to remember to good parts of the world.” And so Bran had carried Will—Will had objected to that last strenuously, but found that he could only walk by himself for moments before being overcome by exhaustion, and so surrendered to his friend’s attentions—up to the spring, where the river that ran down the forest had its beginning. They sat together on the riverbank, looking down at the smooth stones beneath the surface of the glassy, bright water. Jane thought she saw a particularly bright pebble in the current, and climbed down to fish for it. Her feet were bare, and she’d hitched her gown up round her knees to wade in the stream.
“Rivers are a paradox,” Will said. “They are always the same, and yet always different. Not so different from time, I suppose. Panta chorei kai ouden menei: we both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not.”
The water was very green, reflecting the leafy canopy above them. Jane’s blue-grey eyes looked verdant in the afternoon light as she slid down the bank toward them, laughing as she slipped in the mud and loose earth. And Bran’s were nearly brown, nearly human. “Greek?” the Pendragon said, laughing—at Jane, and at Will also, and maybe from just simple happiness. “You’re slipping, Old One. That wasn’t nearly as obscure as your usual utterances.”
Will sat up indignantly. “That was Heraclitus!” he said. “Cicero called him ‘the dark’ because he was so completely incomprehensible! How on earth could I be more obscure than that?”
“Yes, but rivers?” Bran said. “Talk about obvious. Now, if you decided to pontificate about water beetles, that might be more impressive.” The blond boy rolled over onto his stomach along the bank to watch the little water-striders skipping over the eddying currents.
“Here,” Jane said to Will. “Hold still for a minute.” Her slim fingers brushed against the curve of his ear, and he shivered involuntarily. He could smell the freshness of the flower-chain she was in the process of pinning into his hair.
“Posies, Jane?” he said.
“Forget-me-nots.”
Bran sat up again. “Jenny-girl, I’d not say our Will had much trouble with his memory. No flowers for me, then?”
Jane looked over at him. “You’re supposed to be forgotten, Young-King-in-Hiding.”
“Aye, but not to forget myself,” he replied. “Or did you want me to forget myself so you could have my Will all to your own selfish little self? Bring me some flowers, wench, or I’ve a mind to duck you in yond stream.”
“I shan’t,” she retorted. “There are no flowers here for exiled princes. Duck me if you dare.” Her mouth was stained red from the wild berries they’d eaten on the way up to the spring, and her hair was bound back with a green ribbon at her neck. Will watched as Bran pulled her down to him, the Pendragon twining the girl’s hair round his fingers.
“Actually,” Bran said, “I rather fancy a swim. You for it, Jenny-oh?”
She laughed, silvery-warm. “Yes, all right. Though I’ll have you know I’m not half such an abandoned creature when I’m not around you. Will,” she said, turning to him, “you shouldn’t wet the dressing on your wound, but there’s no reason why you can’t cool your legs. Will you come in with us?”
He nodded; Bran had already stripped down to his hose. He helped Jane pull off her dress, leaving her in nothing but her white linen chemise. They dove in together, their bodies describing matching pale arcs against the dark green of the water, and Will stood on the bank with his bare feet against the wet, rounded stones and felt the ripples of their wake brushing against him.
*
When Will woke that evening, it took him a moment to remember all that had passed in the last, oh, the last decade or so. He was in Wales. He’d arrived by train the day before yesterday, with Bran and John Rowlands, and had promptly collapsed in abject exhaustion. Jane had nursed him all the previous day, bringing him soup and tea and hot water bottles and cold compresses, talking quietly about her life with Bran in Clywyd, and all the small news of the village. He must have slept through this day, though—he could see nighttime gathering outside of his window, and the stars beginning to come out. But those things were not what had disoriented him so badly.
Bran was playing the harp, long arpeggios of sound rippling through the air, and for a moment he was a child again, standing on the mountain with his greatest friend, not having to hide or pretend to be other than he was. He rose and dressed still half in the embrace of a dream, and it wasn’t until he opened the door and began his descent down the stair that he remembered all that has transpired, and all that he had lost.
He stood for a moment clutching the banister, letting the loss and the memory and the sound of the harp-strings roll over him like waves, incapable in that instant of resisting the force of the music, and the strength of the emotions it summoned in him. It was dark outside, and in the room below him he could see lamplight glowing. He must’ve slept for hours; it had been late afternoon when he’d lain down.
Jane saw him, and half-stood to come to him, but he held up a hand. “I’m all right,” he said, and Bran broke off sharply.
“Will!” the other boy said. “Are you feeling better?”
Bran sat behind a great concert instrument that towered over his pale head, and his fingers still rested on the strings. He was wearing a smoky blue sweater, in a departure from his usual harsh monochrome, and his eyes looked very gold in the soft, warm light of the evening.
“Yes, thank you,” Will said absently. “You still play?”
In answer, Bran swept back into his music. The melody began simple and sweet, playing along a tonic chord in breathtaking, pure simplicity. And then the bass line took up the canon, twining round the original line. The piece used no easy tensions, no moments of discord tightening the musical line pulling toward resolution. Instead, each moment of song was perfectly in tune, harmonious and gentle, and yet the music in whole still carried momentum and a swelling motion. But then Bran stopped again, and his mouth twisted in frustration.
“Here, Will,” Jane said brightly. “You give it a try.”
Will started, jerked out of the half-dream the music had cast him back into. “What?”
“The third line,” Bran said. “I play for the bass and soprano voices, but some of the richness of the music gets lost that way, you see. I’ve only got half the voices singing, and it’s no good. The harmonies are never quite right, and I can tell that there’s something missing. Like a misplaced thought, it is. Enough to drive a man mad.”
“I try to sing the alto part for him,” Jane said, “but I’ve not enough voice to match with the harp, and I’m afraid I don’t do much good. But you’ve a lovely voice, Will. I remember your singing from when we were small, up in the hill somewhere. It was beautiful, and it echoed back from the other hilltops.”
Will looked at her ruefully. “I was a soprano then, Jane, and my voice broke years ago.”
“Yes,” she said, “but a voice that good would carry over, I’d think. Do you never sing any more, then?”
He smiled at her. “Here,” he said, shifting awkwardly against the pain in his shoulder, levering his body up to standing. “Let me see the music, and I’ll give it a try, if Bran’s willing.” Bran nodded shortly, and waved the sheaf of music at him. Will took it, and sank back into his chair—it bothered him, more than he liked to say, that he was still so weak, that his body tired so easily. But he smiled at them both, at Bran, almost holding his breath with the effort of his semblances. “Shall we?” he said.
And this time Will began the music, singing the tenor line clear and strong as a tolling bell. The song was in Latin, and felt old, but not ancient, to his Old One’s senses. Sicut cervus desiderat, he sang, almost four whole measures before Bran’s harp rang out, and in the space of those measures he felt his voice strengthening, gaining a richness and depth that it had lacked when he was a boy treble. He hadn’t lied to Jane: he did still sing, but it had been years since he’s sung like this.
Now the harp was playing with him, and he and Bran wove the three lines together in a cascading canon, melodies singing one after another into the quiet air. The harp slid down a long descending run, resolving down from a suspended fourth to the comfort of the tonic chord again, and Will became dimly aware of Jane’s soft, breathy voice singing the alto part. Her singing was scarcely audible in the great waves of his and Bran’s melodies, but he could feel the hum of it down his breastbone as he sang, a link in the chain.
Bran’s eyes were closed, and he drove his harp on to the great peak of the music, soaring in a long resonant arc on the high D at its climax, and then it was Will’s turn. He took a breath, and launched upwards into the longing note: anima mea, he sang, ad te Deus, drawn out along a falling line like a great gasping sigh, like the utmost expression of a heart’s desire. And then it was all over, falling down the last remaining tension. The treble voice faded first into a long sostenuto, and Will heard Jane trailing down the last ornamentation of the alto part, and he reached up for his last high, pure note, and they all met at the end in one warm chord that they held perhaps a moment or so longer than was strictly necessary.
“Well,” Bran said at last. “That was a bit better.”
“What do the words mean?” Jane asked him.
“As the hart longs for the running stream,” Will answered without thinking, “so too does my soul long for thee, O God. Psalm 42:1. It’s Latin.”
“It’s lovely,” she said.
Will looked up, looked at Bran for a moment with every guard down, and loved him so hard he could scarcely breathe. “Yes,” he agreed.
Bran met his gaze, and Will felt dizzy, and then Bran looked down and away, pulling his hands back from the harp-strings. “Jane,” Bran said. “Come along up. I’m tired, and we’re to be up early tomorrow morning. I have to take the flock up to the high pasture, and that will mean setting out before dawn.” He stood, stretching his long lean body, and his sweater rode up to reveal an expanse of pale flesh. There was again something arrogant in his motions, and Will wondered miserably just how much Bran knew, and how intentional his actions were.
“I’ll be up in a moment, cariad,” Jane said, vanishing into the kitchen.
“Do you need help, Will?” Bran asked him, laying a hand on the Old One’s back. Will melted into the touch, but said aloud that he would be fine, that he was going to sit up for a minute more before going back to bed. Bran nodded, and climbed the stairs. His footfalls were firm against the wood paneling, sure and quick.
Will sighed as he left the room. In the silence that followed, Will hung his head and nearly wept for what he’d lost, and for what had never been. He didn’t know how to deal with this arrogant man who was not a King, or the cold man who was not his friend. Bran had been proud and prickly as a boy, but that had faded as he’d come into his power and his destiny, and the boy that Will remembered from their last great adventure together had been bright and kind and perceptive, a leader, compassionate, not afraid to show fear or emotion to his wizard-companion. And that boy was gone now, as clearly so as if he’d died.
This, Will reflected. This was why he never came back to Wales.
*
Will could hear the train whistling through Clywyd valley, the long note drifting and echoing through the mountains. He looked out of the window, toward the direction of the sound, and thought of distances and motion. He scarcely noticed it when Bran pushed the door of his room open and came in; his stockinged feet were quiet on the oak floor.
But he felt Bran’s bright, crackling presence at his back, and turned over to look at him.
“How’s the shoulder?” Bran asked.
“It’s mending,” he said. “Itches now more than it hurts.”
“Well…good then.” Bran scuffed his toe against the floor, looking quite a lot like a small boy, and not at all like a strapping young shepherd.
Almost giggling with the strange awkwardness of it all, Will asked, “How’s your da?”
“Oh, he’s well,” Bran said. “He’s retired now, you know. I think he’s very glad I’ve stayed on at the farm. He was worried that I might leave—for a while, John was talking up a music school in London.”
“I can see why. You’re marvelously good.”
Bran smiled. “Well, you’re good enough yourself, choirboy, but I don’t see you going to any music schools.”
“And studying English Literature and early British history is so much more practical?” Will snorted. “I may as well be.”
He looked at Bran consideringly, and fleetingly wondered if the other boy was content. If he wanted to leave, if he would be happier if he’d left years ago. But Bran had already given up everything for the love of Owen Davies—his education didn’t seem like quite so much beside all of his memories, Will supposed.
But Bran stood there looking out the window, and his white face was drawn in long, harsh lines. He looked very stark, standing there in the brightness with his hair uncovered, contrasting wildly with his dark clothes, with the dark glasses that hid his eyes. “Yes, well,” he said shortly. “There’s work that must be done, English. Rhys Evans is expecting me up the mountain at the sheep pen, I’ve got to be off. I shan’t be back before dark tonight.”
Will looked up at him, and smiled fiercely. “I’ll see you then,” he said firmly, insistently. And Bran returned the smile. Will might have said something, might have blurted out…something, but Jane came down the hall with a tray of tea and toast for him, cheery and present, an unavoidable reminder of that which had changed.
Bran dropped a kiss on her cheek as he passed, slipping silently out. Will could hear him descending the stairs, going for his coat.
Jane set down the tea tray with a sigh. She flopped down on the bed next to him, and he rolled over to look at her. “How’re you feeling?” she asked.
“Better,” he said. I…Jane, thank you for all you’ve done. I wouldn’t be nearly so healed if it weren’t for you.”
“Nonsense. Thank you for thinking it, Will, but I’ve done no more than I ought.”
“More than anyone else has,” he muttered.
Jane sat up, and looked at him with a little wrinkle of worry between her brows. Looking back at her, Will marveled at how grown-up she was. She was old enough to think outside of herself, to implicate and to be delicate and to nurture.
“Will,” she said slowly, “I don’t mean to pry, but…are you terribly poor? Bran said your apartment was pretty bad, and if there’s no one who would take care of you but us, who you haven’t seen in so long…”
He smiled at her. He schooled his face into blandness, innocence. “No, I’m fine really. You know me. I’ve always been better with books than with people.”
“Do you know,” Jane said, “you always were different, even then. But I didn’t think that anyone could change him so much.”
Will sat up. There was hurt in her voice, and something with hard edges. “What do you mean, Jane?”
Jane sighed. For a moment, Will could see with terrible clarity how very young she was. “I know my lover, Will,” she said quietly. “And I do love him. But he’s always been an arrogant prick, in his own way. He was teased so badly as a child, and it’s made him rather bitter. I’ve tried, for years now, to break his shell, to show him that he doesn’t need it anymore, but every time I try the walls grow higher. But you,” she said, looking at him. He was grateful for the quilts that hid his face. “Will, you’re here less than a week, and I can see it melting away as if it’s never been there. He’s so happy with you.”
Will offered, “Perhaps it’s because we were friends as boys, and I help him remember simpler times. Childhood friends often have that effect, you know. He loves you very much, Jane, I can tell.”
She smiled at him. “And what of you, Will? Are you happy? Sometimes you look so utterly alone that it near breaks my heart.”
“I have you to love, Jenny, and Bran as well. How could I be unhappy?” But he knew that his answering smile didn’t quite meet his eyes, and hoped she wouldn’t see it.
“You ought to come more often,” she said to him. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of you dating in Oxford?”
Will raised an eyebrow at her. “Jane, have you ever met any academics? No, there’s not.”
Jane looked at him out of the corner of her eye, appraising. He was looking down, twisting a ring around his left index finger, watching the play of light along the band of silver. “I know that you’re in love with Bran,” she said.
Will’s smile died, and he scrambled to deny it. “Jane, what are you—”
She cut him off. “It’s all right,” she said. “The two of you are like…like lightning rods, or stars, or. I don’t know what you’re like, but you’re different from me, both of you. There’s an intensity to the two of you that I sometimes think could burn me alive. Bran can hide it when you’re not here, and I suspect that you do the same, but put you in the same room and it’s all trumpets and glory and thunderbolts.”
“Jane, I hope you’re not saying that you don’t think he loves you, because he does.”
She reached out to caress his face, running her hands through his hair. The hard fragility of her face melted away, released into the morning, out the window. “Oh, Will. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.” She looked up at him, her face shy and blushing and tender, and said to him, “You’re not the only one who knows some Shakespeare.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“Oh no, Will, I’m the one who should be apologizing,” she exclaimed, genuine dismay in her voice. “Here, lie back down. Oh dear, that didn’t go at all how I wanted it to. I’ve been saying things all wrong, Will, and you must forgive me.”
He allowed her to gentle him back down to the pillows, and to fuss over him for a moment. “Jane,” he said, “you’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve every right to resent me. I’ve…behaved badly, Jane, in coming back here.” He looked up at her unguardedly, letting her see the nakedness of his emotion. “I am in love with him,” he confessed. “You know why; he’s easy to love. And I knew I shouldn’t come here, because of it.”
“Will,” she said. Her voice was full of something that sounded almost like love. “I don’t mind. There’s something between the two of you that’s complicated, that crackles like electricity.”
Will laughed bitterly. “Complicated would be the right word,” he said. “He could never…there’s no way, Jane.”
“I know. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I’m not upset about it…oh, but that does sound dreadful, doesn’t it?”
“No.”
“He’s such a strange boy,” she said, picking at the stitching along the border of the quilt. “There’s so much of him that I don’t know, that I’ve never seen. He’s hard to love, sometimes. And you’re just as strange, if not moreso, but there’s nothing easier than loving you.”
Looking over at her, Will said, “You mean that?”
Jane laughed, clear and clean and free from all guilt and anxiety. “I think I fell in love with you during that first holiday in Cornwall,” she said. “Because I had to spend so much time defending you to Simon, you see.”
Will gazed at her in wonder, as she sat there smiling in the sunlight that turned her hair to gold, “As boundless as the sea, indeed,” he said, and her smile grew even brighter.
“I’ve always loved the sea,” she answered, “and the smell of it. So wild and old and full of forgotten things.”
*
Bran’s shoulder jostled against Will’s as they wandered down the narrow forest path. Will’s arm was bound up in Bran’s blue surcoat—there had been a frost the night before, and the cold had ached terribly in his still-healing wound. It had been the first freeze of the year, and while it was still August, the frigid crystals edging the leaves heralded autumn and cold weather.
“This will be a different sort of adventure in midwinter,” Will said wryly, his mouth twisting with anxiety. “Do you think we’ll manage it?”
Bran’s feet were so close to his that their footfalls sounded in unison. Will could feel the heat from the Pendragon’s body, and could see every one of his pale eyelashes outlined against the grey, cloud-covered sky. “We’ll be fine,” Bran said. “We’ll manage. Plenty of peasants get by with less, and we’ve got enough money. We can ride out to the village every now and then, maybe. It’s been months. They’ve likely forgotten all about us, save as a part of songs and stories of the glory days gone by.”
“More fool they, then,” Will said. He gasped a bit as he spoke, out of breath already.
“Are you feeling all right? Not in too much pain? That frost must have been brutal,” Bran said sympathetically. He wrapped a long-fingered hand around Will’s forearm, pulling him to a halt and scrutinizing him piercingly.
“I’m fine,” Will said in exasperation. “I’m not that fragile, you know. Worrywort.”
“Well, I don’t know about you,” Bran retorted, “but I’m hungry. I have some of that hearthbread Jane baked yesterday. Come sit down and have something to eat. You’re pale.” He took off his dark cloak and spread it out on the ground, guiding Will down with a strong, steady hand. “You think far too much,” he said as he did so. “Look at you: not three days on your feet again and you’re calling up council meetings and strategies of war. You do not always need to be the King’s right hand, you know. I will not say that you’re only human, for it isn’t true, but neither are you invulnerable. And for all that, I’m no longer a king.”
Will leaned back against and old oak, resting the aching musculature that arched along his shoulderblades. “It’s funny,” he said in an abstracted tone, his eyes seeing past the reality of the August forest into Time. “You’re the one who’s connected to the tradition of the unhealable wound.”
“Tell me,” Bran said, sitting down beside him and once again wrapping his fingers around Will’s upper arm, soothing the tremors of pain and weariness that ran through him under the skin.
“Through your name,” Will answered. “In the ages to come, scholars will say that King Bran the Blessed, whose name you share, is like the Grail King in the later Arthurian romances. He guards the Holy Grail, and he has a wound that will never heal until the Grail is found by the purest Knight. Bran the Blessed also had such a wound.”
Bran cocked his head to one side like a falcon. “Bendigeidfran, that would be.”
“Yes.”
“I remember a story, from when I was young, that Bendigeidfran had a marvelous cauldron that could return the dead to life. I was always petrified of it.”
“For good reason, I suppose,” Will said. “And that cauldron is not so different from the stories about the Grail. Men have always pursued the great mysteries, and that in itself is a good, but I shouldn’t like to think what would happen if the objects of their quests were ever attained. Better that some things be disbelieved and forgotten.” He felt old, old and sorrowful and weighted down by knowledge and by difference. The stand of elms at the edge of the path had already begun to turn gold, pale and paper-thin.
Bran’s hand slid down Will’s arm to clasp his palm firmly. “And yet here we are,” the young Pendragon said, “and for any who did not know we would seem as legendary as Bran the Blessed. But we are not, though the times for high deeds have perhaps passed beyond us.”
Will looked up at him, puzzling out the odd colorless face. “Does it not bother you?” he asked. “You are the Son of Arthur, born to high deeds. You are, in your own way, no more like an ordinary man than I myself. And yet you have lost all that, and are living in the forest like an outlaw and hiding your great heritage. Can you truly be content with this life, Bran? Can you live like this with only Jane and myself and not go mad with longing for what might have been?”
“You are content with it, wizard boy.” Bran’s face was clear as water and as firm as stone, and his eyes shone very bright. “You hide what you are, pretend to be an ordinary boy, nothing special. Can I do less?”
“But it’s different for you,” Will said softly. “I was made to be this way; you were not.”
“Yes, it is different,” Bran agreed, just as soft. “Because I can still live as a man, and be in the world, and love and toil and all the things that we do as denizens of life. And you cannot, not really, because you will still be alive long after this oak has withered and died, and these saplings have grown mighty and perished in their turn. Do not pity me, Old One.”
Will held their still-clasped hands up to his cheek, pressing a kiss against Bran’s knuckles. He did his best to smile, though Bran’s words had struck through him like an arrow to stand quivering at the heart. “Don’t pity me, then,” he said, doing everything he could to turn his inflection towards sarcastic jest. “Or if you will, pity me because I have to live with such a failure as yourself. Meant to be King, he was,” he went on, addressing the oak, “and now look at him: dirty face and leaves in his hair, and breadcrumbs all down his front. That’s majesty for you!”
Bran only sat up taller, the very image of haughty grandeur. “Eat your bread, lunatic wizard. And leave off, and let me eat mine. If anything is to drive me mad it will be you.”
Will obeyed, biting into the tough brown crust and sinking his teeth into the soft flesh of the loaf beneath. The bread was good, rough and hearty and filling. He thought maybe Jane had added rosemary to her dough, and maybe a pinch of dill. It smelled sweet in his hands as he ate.
The afternoon around them was beginning to get really warm, shaking off the fetters of morning frost and growing heavy and golden with heat. Somewhere to the left down the path a swallow struck up a burbling tune, trilling and piping fluidly up the scale. Will felt soft and warm and a bit sleepy.
Eventually Bran, having eaten his fill, said, “Tell me a song, Will. I’ve heard nothing since we left court, but I know that memory of yours. You’re as good as any bard.”
Will cut his eyes over to look at him, surprised but not unpleasantly so. “I…all right, then.” He felt his spine like an oak rod, straight down from his mind and between his shoulders and pressed against the ground, a lightning-rod of connection. He felt his voice deepen, becoming more resonant, more rhythmic. Bran pressed up against him, shoulder to shoulder, and he could feel the weight of the other man’s head laying against his temple. For him, he drew in a breath and began to chant the old Song of Taliesin, feeling all the while the oak at his back and the dappled sun on his face and the heavy sweetness of Bran’s breath against his neck.
“Of nine-formed faculties, Of the fruit of fruits, Of the fruit of the primordial God, Of primroses and blossoms on the hill, Of the earth, of an earthly course, When I was formed, Of the flower nettles, Of the water of the ninth wave. I was enchanted by Math, Before I became immortal, I was enchanted by Gwydyon The great purifier of the Brithon.”
The music of the words wound up around the tree trunk and dissipated into the blue sky above them. With the small part of his mind that wasn’t taken up with the chant and the song and the power of the ancient words, he remembered that Jane was going to climb up to the spring and do some washing. Maybe they could go meet her there.
lazigyrl for my Yuletide story; I thoroughly enjoyed it, and y'all should read it.I wrote "Of Smoke and Gold and Breathing" for
shortcakegreen: The Dark is Rising, Jane/Will/Bran, PG, 9,438 words.
Of Smoke and Gold and Breathing
It was Jane who answered. “Jane,” he said. Jane Jana Juno Jane, his mind chattered. Jenny Gwen. Names tumbling over each other in the dark. “Jane,” he said again, forcing his mind to clear, “It’s Will Stanton.”
“Will,” she breathed, sounding pleased and surprised. “My goodness, I haven’t heard your voice in an age. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m all right,” Will said, hoping that he’d dredged up enough energy to give credence to his lie. “Jane, I haven’t much time, and I need to speak to Bran. Is he in?”
Jane’s voice crackled back apologetically over the line.” No, Will, I’m sorry. He’s out for the evening. Out for a few days, actually. Up in London with John Rowlands. But how’ve you been? It’s been ever so long since we’ve heard from you.” Her voice had changed, grown huskier and sweeter than he remembered. No longer a little girl’s treble. And there was a Welsh lilt to her phrases now. It was easy for him to forget, sometimes, how long it had been that she’d lived with Bran. Coming on to five years, it must be.
His mind was wandering again; the pain in his shoulder burned like hot coals, and he suddenly felt so tired, so ghastly tired. “Jane,” he said again, in a shameful plea, “I’ve...there was an accident yesterday, and I’m afraid I got a bit banged up.” Dimly he heard her exclaiming, though the words to him seemed passed through water, or through the waver of heat above a flame. “No,” he said slowly. “I’m all right, they’ve patched me up. No, a stab to my shoulder, but it could have been worse. But look, Jane,” he said, trying to regain his foothold, “I can’t…stay here right now. My arm doesn’t work much, and—” he broke off, reluctant to tell her than there was no one in London who would care for him, or notice if he failed to frequent his usual haunts. He’d done too good a job at being unobtrusive and unmemorable. He flushed dully at the realization of what he would look like through her eyes. Or worse, Bran’s.
Bran. “…Bran to you tomorrow,” she was saying. “He can take the rail, it’s not so far. Bit of luck, really, that he and John are up London way.” He tried to interject, but she said gently, “Don’t you worry about it, Will Stanton. I’ve wanted a visit from you for years now—and I know that Bran wants to see you. He misses you something terrible, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” he replied. His words fell to the floor like so much dust, he thought, and he said goodbye to Jane.
*
A rider sheathed in mail bore down on him; Will could not see the man’s device, or tell if he was friend or foe. Foe, most like—all the friends had been dead long before it had come to open war. The head of the knight’s lance pierced his shoulder, and a dark gritty pain followed it down the length of his body. He cried out, gasping, and fell to his knees in the muck. Couldn’t hear, he couldn’t breathe.
He saw Bran charging down on them astride his warhorse, his silver sword striking down into the strange knight’s neck, cutting through him at the joint of his helm where the lifeblood thrummed close to the surface and unprotected. The knight fell silently, and Bran pulled his sword from the body as it plummeted. “Will!” he cried, shock clear in the shrillness of his usual warm tenor. Will looked up at him weakly, considering. He’d not known, then.
Bran’s hands were on him, holding him upright. “Iesu Mawr! Will, stay with me, stay—”
Will screamed as the spear haft shifted, tiny motions at the tip of the rod working down into the point, jarring the wound terribly. Bran broke the haft, leaving the head buried in Will’s tendons and arteries and bones, and he screamed again with the pain of it. Molten iron. “Will, come on, os gweli di'n dda, are you all right?”
Will gasped again, almost limp in Bran’s arms. He could see his own blood dark against the green of Bran’s tunic. “My lord,” he said, struggling to get the words out, “My lord Pendragon, I fear I am sore wounded.”
The loose scrub around them could not conceal the wrath of the battle. Not five feet away, a dead man lay sprawled in the loam. His curling fingers were extended toward them in futile pleading, but there was blood dripping out from the hem of his hauberk, and his eyes were open but unseeing.
Bran shook him gently, and Will could feel great tremors running through the young Prince’s hands. “None of that, now. I am no lord of yours, dewin bach, Old One. My name from your lips is Bran, and no more. You always,” he added, touching Will’s face with a still-gloved hand, “get so formal when you’re anxious.”
Will sagged against him, strength running from his body like the blood from his wound. “Leave me,” he said. “Bran, go, you’re needed. I can’t—you go, Bran, I’ll be all right.”
Bran didn’t interrupt his caress. “The King my Father is dead, Will. The battle is already lost. I cannot save his kingdom, nor keep alive the dream of the Table, you know that. When Arthur falls, Camelot vanishes into legend, and the Dark wins for a time.” Will looked up at him, and the young Pendragon’s pale, pale hair was tousled by his helm, and his eyes were closed, and there were tears glimmering on his cheeks. “My father is dead, Will,” he choked out in a whisper, “but you’re not yet. I can save you, my dewin, my sais bach. You I will keep, against the coming of the dark times.”
“Bran,” Will said, voice low and solemn, “You know that you cannot go back.”
Bran looked up at the field, the shroud of interlaced branches and green shoots allowing him only a partial view of the last pathetic sallies of his father’s knights, and of the slaughter of kerns on all sides of alliance lines. Will thought with some distraction that the Pendragon’s eyes were burning like a meteor come to earth, or like the final bloody moments of a sunset. “Yes,” Bran replied. “Too many factions, now, and not a one that would welcome the continued existence of an heir. I know.” He sighed. “Rest well, my Lord,” he said, glancing skyward. “Hic jacet arturus, rex quondam rexque futurus.”
His silver mail chimed bell-like as Bran lay down in the bracken beside Will’s prone form. “And so the dream is ended,” he murmured. “Tomorrow will be a strange awakening. But I am so tired, Will. Would it—do you think it would be all right, if we just rested here for a moment? I swear, just a breath and then I’ll get you cleaned up, and we can find shelter for the night. But I can’t yet.”
Will nodded, too worn even to speak. He shared Bran’ weariness, and his wound ached dully, like a memory of a great agony long past. Bran’s breath warmed his cheek, and he could smell the other boy’s scent of green things and damp air, and the sandalwood of the case where his tunic had been packed away. When Bran’s arms wrapped around his, he couldn’t refuse their solace, couldn’t pull away enough to chivvy the young King onwards. For a moment he was all human, the Old One submerged beneath the need a young man exhausted and in pain, desperate for Bran’s warm strength.
*
Sunlight streamed down in shafts between the thick leaves, turning the light warmly green all around her. She heard not a sound besides the fall of her palfrey’s feet on the loamy path and the small sounds of the forest, but she had no doubt that they were close. “Bran! Wi-ill! Bran ap Arthur! I know you’re out here, you can’t fool me,” Jane called. “It’s all right, I’m on my own, and I’ve told no one why I came.”
She’d expected it, but she gasped nevertheless when Bran stepped out from behind a tree, his white hair shocking against the deep blue of his raiment in the sunshine. “Jenny,” he said with a smile. “I wondered how long it would take you to find us.”
Catching her breath, she grinned back. “You might have sent me some notice, and then I’d have got here the sooner,” she said. “In all earnest, my lord, I’ve been worried sick. Would it have been the end of you, to have sent me some word or token?”
Bran caught the lead of her horse, and offered her a gentlemanly hand down from her perch. She slid down to the forest floor, not letting go of him. Her fingers were tight around his wrist, clinging fervently to his solid form. He shot her a look, aged and full of cares. “How bad is it, Jenny-wren?” he asked her. “And—what of the dead King’s body?”
“It was recovered from the field of battle,” she told him, “But not by any man of the court. A Lady, they say, came for his corse, and wrapped and anointed it, and bore it down to the deep places of the earth to entomb him. But he will have no monument from any man above-ground. I wasn’t sure,” she added, faltering, “if that was good news. On the one hand, I can’t think of many yet living whose hands I should like to touch him, and in this way none of them can do him violence in his death. And yet, oh Bran, your father’s body, and you unable to walk to the spot of his grave. I’m so, so sorry, for everything.”
Bran bowed his head for a moment, and with his eyes in shadow he looked like a charcoal drawing of a boy, and not one of flesh and blood—all monochromatic light and shadow, with no color to grant him life. She drew her hand away, not daring in that instant to touch him. But then he stood erect, slender and proud, and a light burned in his eyes that gave her comfort. “Come walk with me, Jenny,” he said to her. “I need to return to Will; he was wounded in the battle, and he’s still very weak. And tell me everything, sparing nothing. It’s odd, isn’t it? Here I am, abdicating as completely as ever man did abdicate, hiding out in the woods licking my wounds with my dewin and a runaway girl, and yet I cannot bear to leave my kingdom without hearing the final words of this tale.”
“Not so strange,” she said, taking the palfrey’s reins and falling into step beside him. “But Will? He’s all right?” Bran nodded, though Jane noticed that the thin lines of care about his eyes and mouth did not smooth away. He was worried, she thought. “The factions are near wild with all that’s come to pass,” she reported, “but no one of them has much more power than the next. I can’t think who the next King will be, but he’ll be a harried and uneasy one. Some are mourning Arthur, some cursing him,” she said, and looked out of the corner of her eyes at him to see how he would take it, “but not a soul knows what’s become of you. Most are of the opinion that you were slain in the aftermath of the battle, but a small and vocal group are holding out for the belief that your wizard spirited you away, either to protect you so that you might save Ynys Prydein some day, or to do away with you once and for all and have all your power to himself.”
Bran sniffed. “Will? As if!”
Jane asked with trepidation, “Was he very badly hurt, Bran?”
“I wish that he did have the power to spirit me away, because then he might have the power to heal himself. It could be worse, but there’s no healer here, and he’s been…very tired. This last gasp of our struggle has exhausted him greatly, I think. It’s hard for him, to watch the destruction of everything the Light has worked so hard to build.”
“But surely he’s seen worse before, Bran, living as long as he had.”
Bran looked at her, and his usually kind eyes were hard as flint. “Surely. Why would you think that would make it easier, and not that much harder on him?”
*
He could feel the earth around him. It was not still, nor silent. In each instant a thousand things came to life, and a thousand things died. Small animals and leaf tendrils sought nourishment. Insects emerged from cocoons. Everything that the slanting, filtered light touched was affected by it in some way.
He heard the footfalls with his fingers long before any sound reached his ears—the ground trembled beneath them. He was sure it was the ground trembling, and not his hands, he was sure. He was so tired. But he gathered the last of his strength to press himself back against the trees, to try and hide. He kept his eyes open as best he could, trying to focus them while the forest clearing around him wheeled and spun. When he saw Bran he couldn’t keep erect any long, and crumpled down to the mossy floor. “Bran,” he gasped out. He wasn’t sure why he was speaking. He wasn’t sure why he had been alone.
Bran knelt by his side, pulling him into his arms. He brushed a kiss against Will’s temple, warm and present and real. “Here then, Will bachgen,” he said gently. “I’m back, and here’s Jane come to find us.” For the first time Will noticed that she was there: smiling, her dark blonde hair catching the light coming through the trees. She wore a green gown over a brown smock, tied up for riding and walking through the wood.
“Jane,” he said, and reached out for her.
She sat down in the leaves beside him. “Will, how’re you feeling?”
“I’m all right,” he said, and coughed. “What news at the court?” he wheezed.
Bran raised one hand forbiddingly. “We’ll talk of that later, Will. Everything’s all right, and you’re too worn to deal with issues of policy right now. You know I want you to rest for a bit.” He shifted closer to Will’s form, laying the Old One’s head in his lap. He looked up at Jane, frowning at her, and one of his hands started combing through Will’s dull brown hair. “How’s the wound?” he asked Will.
“You can dress it again later, and have your fill of poking me then,” Will said witheringly. “But Jane, just the one thing: we’ve no reason to fear pursuit?”
“No,” said Jane, and incongruously she giggled. Both boys stared at her. “I have a plan,” she said. “I’ll have to go back, either tonight or tomorrow. Well, I’d have to anyway, to get us provisions and those things that we’d rather not lose. But I’ll have it be known that I saw the two of you on the edge of the field of battle, and that you, Will, held the young Prince captive in your sorcerer’s wiles. You boasted to me that you’d lock the Pendragon in a cave of crystal out of time, and that there you’d keep him until you’d taken all his secrets and powers. You were, of course, only his friend in order to seduce him into your confidence.” She was smiling form ear to ear, and slowly Bran joined in.
“What on earth are you talking about?” Will asked.
“No, I see it,” said Bran. “It’s perfect. Confirm for them all their own silly superstitions, and they’ll never think to look for us again. Jane, you’re brilliant.” Standing, he began to declaim, “Three primary illusions of the Island of Prydein: the illusion of Math son of Mathonwy; and the illusion of Uthyr Pendragon; and the illusion of Jenny-wren my darling and most clever girl.
“Now, Jenny,” he went on, “do you want to make it back tonight? If so, you should go now, otherwise it’ll be to dark.”
She nodded slowly, considering it. “Yes, I think there’s time.” She bent down to touch Will’s cheek, gentle as anything. “Be at peace, Old One,” she said to him. “I’ll be back tomorrow, and you can read to me for a bit if you like. I’ll bring all your books, and anything else?”
“No,” he answered. “Only yourself back safe again, Jane.”
Bran stood, and offered Jane a hand up. She brushed the leaves from her skirt, and reached up to twist her hair back. “Your horse, my lady,” the young Pendragon said. He might have been at a great feast in his hall, so courtly was his manner, but around him were only trees and the small noises of the wood.
“Bran, be safe. Look after Will,” Jane said, and mounted her palfrey. “I’ll be back tomorrow.” She called over her shoulder, “Pob hwyl!” and then was gone in a whirl of brown leaves.
“She’s a rare, girl, that one,” said Bran, and sighed. Turning back to Will, he said seriously, “Now, Will, how is the shoulder really? No need to lie for Jenny’s sake, and I will have the truth.”
“It hurts,” Will admitted, “and everything seems like it’s happening behind a veil. Or under water. But I don’t think it’s worse.”
Rolling up his sleeves, Bran said, “Let me have a look. It’s time to change the bandages, and I want to check it for infection.” Looking down at Will, he added, “This is going to hurt, Old One, but you knew that.” He started gathering wood and kindling for a fire. “We’ll need hot water, and there’s still some cloth left from my haversack to bind you up with.”
“Here,” he said. “You lie down on my cloak, and I’ll get these old bandages off of you.”
It was a long, messy business. Will bit down hard on one of Bran’s leather gloves to keep from screaming as the Pendragon cleaned his wound, but only managed it for a quarter of an hour or so before he fainted from the pain. He slept uneasily all that night, only waking slightly when Bran lay down beside him and covered them both with his camp blanket. The Pendragon smelled like steam and herbs, and Will pressed closer to the human warmth of him.
Will slept like the dead all that night, not stirring until the sun was long up, and Jane came riding back into the clearing. Bran looked up from tending the fire, and Will sat up from his nest of cloaks and blankets as best he could, and Jane beamed at them brighter than the rising sun.
“Well,” she said. “Let us now begin our life as merry woodland outlaws. Wherever do you boys sleep? We’ll have to build a shelter of some sort, and do this properly.”
*
The doorbell rang loud and discordant; Will, who had been dozing in his chair, started up with a muffled yell. He realized, moments after, why he should do his best to avoid such things. He’d jarred the wound. His shoulder throbbed abominably, and pain streaked up behind his eyes. Fighting through the pain, he called, “Come in!”
“Will,” a young tenor voice said, accompanied by the stomping of boots against the threshold, “This is all the hospitality you show to an old friend, one that you have not seen for nearly six years? I did not know the English were so impolite.”
Bran. Still standing in the entryway, waiting. His voice had changed, Will thought, but not as much as it might have. Deeper, but still recognizable. Lilting and musical. One corner of Will’s mouth twitched upwards as he thought, wetter. I bet Welsh babies dribble a lot. His ears were filled with the memory of Bran’s laughter, and he nearly forgot to respond to the adult version of the same that was now standing in his foyer.
He didn’t know what to say to Bran. What on earth was still safe? Something in his chest twisted at the thought of chatting over rugby scores with the Pendragon, and he could ask after nothing else. Oh, how’s your da, Bran? Yeah, that’s right, you’ve no idea that he’s not your father. The two of you have gone back to living a lie.
“Will?” The voice was rougher, darker, and Will struggled to sit up. That was never Bran’s voice. Someone else was with him. “Will bach,” it said, sounding very Welsh, “Are you all right?” Footsteps rounded the corner, and Will found himself looking up into the brown, creased face of John Rowlands.
He stared stupidly at the man for a moment, remembering Jane’s warm voice on the phone: up in London with John Rowlands. Of course. How could he have forgotten that Bran wasn’t traveling alone? “John,” he said aloud. “Yes, I’m sorry, it’s just a bit hard for me to move around. Sorry I didn’t come greet you at the door.” He’d been so focused on…other things, he supposed, that it had slipped his mind that John would be there. Somewhere in the darkness of the chilly apartment, Bran was there. He could almost feel him, like cold needles of rain or light underneath his skin.
John smelled of herbs and lanolin. It was an oddly comforting scent, despite its strength. The shepherd crouched down beside Will’s chair and pushed back the boy’s sweater. “Your shoulder, bachgen, yes?” Will nodded as John got to the bandages. He turned Will’s arm over in his hands, examining the dressing. “What happened to you?” John asked.
Will looked up, and Bran was standing there, leaning against the doorframe. His mind whirled, and his breath came short. It was harder than he’d expected, seeing him now after so long. His memories slipped when confronted with this older version of Bran, like and yet unlike Will’s companion. The two images patterned over each other, Bran doubled against himself, and Will felt giddy with the strangeness of it. The Welsh boy was tall now, taller than Will, his body long and lean and graceful. His hair was brushed down, less spiky that it had been when he was a child, but no dark glasses concealed his golden predator’s eyes. He was the most beautiful, kingly thing that Will had ever seen, slouching arrogantly in his dark sweater against the dirty white wall. “Hallo,” Will said quietly.
The other boy—man now, it would be—inclined his head ever so slightly. “Will Stanton.”
“Come in,” Will said. “Take a seat.” He looked around his tiny apartment, seeing it for the first time as an outsider would: the shabbiness of it all, the scuffs and the stains that he hadn’t managed to get out of the cheap used furniture, the dinginess of the paint on the walls and the threadbare mud-colored carpet. There were books piled on every available surface, and on the floor along the walls, and papers scattered about. But the poverty of the place was worse than the clutter. He blushed; he’d never thought anyone would see his home. Or anyone who would matter. He said, “I’m sorry things aren’t tidier, I’ve been a mess. What had you and John to do in London?” And every word was agony worse than a lance point.
Bran looked at him, piercing through him with those hawkish, merciless eyes. Will looked away, down. It was Bran’s own choice, he told himself. Bran’s choice to give up his high destiny, to forget everything he’d known. He could do nothing to break or damage it in any way, give no hint of anything inappropriate. They had met when they were boys, twice, when he’d been on holiday. Will knew Bran’s girlfriend. There was nothing more between them than that.
John, from the settee next to him, said, “We were up for a harp concert. It does Bran good to hear a real harper, one better than myself.”
“None better,” Bran said instantly. “Finest harper in Wales, you are.”
John smiled slowly. “Aye, well then. That’s as may be. But Will, there is a story here. These bandages are quite new, and yet already there is blood coming through. What’ve you been into, lad?”
Bran shot Will a glance. “Blood? Jane said you were all right.”
He was going to have to tell them something. How would it sound to say that he’d been wounded while fighting in the battle that had killed Bran’s great father? “There was an auto accident,” he heard himself saying. “The man was decent about it. Paid for my hospital and everything.” That was a flat-out lie; he’d paid the hospital bills himself, and they had been more than he could afford on a tutor’s salary. “Bit of metal shrapnel went flying through my shoulder, but it could have been much worse.”
“Well,” John said, “as far as I can tell, it’s bad enough. You must be in a fair bit of pain, Will.”
Will nodded in assent. “Mmm. The medicine they gave me helps a bit, but it makes everything so foggy that I’m not sure it’s better. And I can’t do for myself. Bran, I wouldn’t have asked, if I hadn’t…”
Bran grinned a bit, the corners of his mouth pulling back sharply to reveal his gleaming white teeth. “Aye, I’ll believe that,” he said. “So long it’s been since we’ve heard from you. Really heard, mind, not a card at the holidays.”
“I’m sorry,” Will said. “I’m not very good at remembering, sometimes. I get so caught up in things.”
Bran looked around the dingy little apartment, and at Will’s pain-twisted face where sweat was beginning to bead, and raised one pale, elegant eyebrow. Will closed his eyes, unable to bear the uncomprehending censure that covered Bran’s face. There was nothing he could say or do, anyway.
*
Jane had decided that Will needed a change of scenery. “It’s making him melancholy,” she said to Bran. “He needs to remember to good parts of the world.” And so Bran had carried Will—Will had objected to that last strenuously, but found that he could only walk by himself for moments before being overcome by exhaustion, and so surrendered to his friend’s attentions—up to the spring, where the river that ran down the forest had its beginning. They sat together on the riverbank, looking down at the smooth stones beneath the surface of the glassy, bright water. Jane thought she saw a particularly bright pebble in the current, and climbed down to fish for it. Her feet were bare, and she’d hitched her gown up round her knees to wade in the stream.
“Rivers are a paradox,” Will said. “They are always the same, and yet always different. Not so different from time, I suppose. Panta chorei kai ouden menei: we both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not.”
The water was very green, reflecting the leafy canopy above them. Jane’s blue-grey eyes looked verdant in the afternoon light as she slid down the bank toward them, laughing as she slipped in the mud and loose earth. And Bran’s were nearly brown, nearly human. “Greek?” the Pendragon said, laughing—at Jane, and at Will also, and maybe from just simple happiness. “You’re slipping, Old One. That wasn’t nearly as obscure as your usual utterances.”
Will sat up indignantly. “That was Heraclitus!” he said. “Cicero called him ‘the dark’ because he was so completely incomprehensible! How on earth could I be more obscure than that?”
“Yes, but rivers?” Bran said. “Talk about obvious. Now, if you decided to pontificate about water beetles, that might be more impressive.” The blond boy rolled over onto his stomach along the bank to watch the little water-striders skipping over the eddying currents.
“Here,” Jane said to Will. “Hold still for a minute.” Her slim fingers brushed against the curve of his ear, and he shivered involuntarily. He could smell the freshness of the flower-chain she was in the process of pinning into his hair.
“Posies, Jane?” he said.
“Forget-me-nots.”
Bran sat up again. “Jenny-girl, I’d not say our Will had much trouble with his memory. No flowers for me, then?”
Jane looked over at him. “You’re supposed to be forgotten, Young-King-in-Hiding.”
“Aye, but not to forget myself,” he replied. “Or did you want me to forget myself so you could have my Will all to your own selfish little self? Bring me some flowers, wench, or I’ve a mind to duck you in yond stream.”
“I shan’t,” she retorted. “There are no flowers here for exiled princes. Duck me if you dare.” Her mouth was stained red from the wild berries they’d eaten on the way up to the spring, and her hair was bound back with a green ribbon at her neck. Will watched as Bran pulled her down to him, the Pendragon twining the girl’s hair round his fingers.
“Actually,” Bran said, “I rather fancy a swim. You for it, Jenny-oh?”
She laughed, silvery-warm. “Yes, all right. Though I’ll have you know I’m not half such an abandoned creature when I’m not around you. Will,” she said, turning to him, “you shouldn’t wet the dressing on your wound, but there’s no reason why you can’t cool your legs. Will you come in with us?”
He nodded; Bran had already stripped down to his hose. He helped Jane pull off her dress, leaving her in nothing but her white linen chemise. They dove in together, their bodies describing matching pale arcs against the dark green of the water, and Will stood on the bank with his bare feet against the wet, rounded stones and felt the ripples of their wake brushing against him.
*
When Will woke that evening, it took him a moment to remember all that had passed in the last, oh, the last decade or so. He was in Wales. He’d arrived by train the day before yesterday, with Bran and John Rowlands, and had promptly collapsed in abject exhaustion. Jane had nursed him all the previous day, bringing him soup and tea and hot water bottles and cold compresses, talking quietly about her life with Bran in Clywyd, and all the small news of the village. He must have slept through this day, though—he could see nighttime gathering outside of his window, and the stars beginning to come out. But those things were not what had disoriented him so badly.
Bran was playing the harp, long arpeggios of sound rippling through the air, and for a moment he was a child again, standing on the mountain with his greatest friend, not having to hide or pretend to be other than he was. He rose and dressed still half in the embrace of a dream, and it wasn’t until he opened the door and began his descent down the stair that he remembered all that has transpired, and all that he had lost.
He stood for a moment clutching the banister, letting the loss and the memory and the sound of the harp-strings roll over him like waves, incapable in that instant of resisting the force of the music, and the strength of the emotions it summoned in him. It was dark outside, and in the room below him he could see lamplight glowing. He must’ve slept for hours; it had been late afternoon when he’d lain down.
Jane saw him, and half-stood to come to him, but he held up a hand. “I’m all right,” he said, and Bran broke off sharply.
“Will!” the other boy said. “Are you feeling better?”
Bran sat behind a great concert instrument that towered over his pale head, and his fingers still rested on the strings. He was wearing a smoky blue sweater, in a departure from his usual harsh monochrome, and his eyes looked very gold in the soft, warm light of the evening.
“Yes, thank you,” Will said absently. “You still play?”
In answer, Bran swept back into his music. The melody began simple and sweet, playing along a tonic chord in breathtaking, pure simplicity. And then the bass line took up the canon, twining round the original line. The piece used no easy tensions, no moments of discord tightening the musical line pulling toward resolution. Instead, each moment of song was perfectly in tune, harmonious and gentle, and yet the music in whole still carried momentum and a swelling motion. But then Bran stopped again, and his mouth twisted in frustration.
“Here, Will,” Jane said brightly. “You give it a try.”
Will started, jerked out of the half-dream the music had cast him back into. “What?”
“The third line,” Bran said. “I play for the bass and soprano voices, but some of the richness of the music gets lost that way, you see. I’ve only got half the voices singing, and it’s no good. The harmonies are never quite right, and I can tell that there’s something missing. Like a misplaced thought, it is. Enough to drive a man mad.”
“I try to sing the alto part for him,” Jane said, “but I’ve not enough voice to match with the harp, and I’m afraid I don’t do much good. But you’ve a lovely voice, Will. I remember your singing from when we were small, up in the hill somewhere. It was beautiful, and it echoed back from the other hilltops.”
Will looked at her ruefully. “I was a soprano then, Jane, and my voice broke years ago.”
“Yes,” she said, “but a voice that good would carry over, I’d think. Do you never sing any more, then?”
He smiled at her. “Here,” he said, shifting awkwardly against the pain in his shoulder, levering his body up to standing. “Let me see the music, and I’ll give it a try, if Bran’s willing.” Bran nodded shortly, and waved the sheaf of music at him. Will took it, and sank back into his chair—it bothered him, more than he liked to say, that he was still so weak, that his body tired so easily. But he smiled at them both, at Bran, almost holding his breath with the effort of his semblances. “Shall we?” he said.
And this time Will began the music, singing the tenor line clear and strong as a tolling bell. The song was in Latin, and felt old, but not ancient, to his Old One’s senses. Sicut cervus desiderat, he sang, almost four whole measures before Bran’s harp rang out, and in the space of those measures he felt his voice strengthening, gaining a richness and depth that it had lacked when he was a boy treble. He hadn’t lied to Jane: he did still sing, but it had been years since he’s sung like this.
Now the harp was playing with him, and he and Bran wove the three lines together in a cascading canon, melodies singing one after another into the quiet air. The harp slid down a long descending run, resolving down from a suspended fourth to the comfort of the tonic chord again, and Will became dimly aware of Jane’s soft, breathy voice singing the alto part. Her singing was scarcely audible in the great waves of his and Bran’s melodies, but he could feel the hum of it down his breastbone as he sang, a link in the chain.
Bran’s eyes were closed, and he drove his harp on to the great peak of the music, soaring in a long resonant arc on the high D at its climax, and then it was Will’s turn. He took a breath, and launched upwards into the longing note: anima mea, he sang, ad te Deus, drawn out along a falling line like a great gasping sigh, like the utmost expression of a heart’s desire. And then it was all over, falling down the last remaining tension. The treble voice faded first into a long sostenuto, and Will heard Jane trailing down the last ornamentation of the alto part, and he reached up for his last high, pure note, and they all met at the end in one warm chord that they held perhaps a moment or so longer than was strictly necessary.
“Well,” Bran said at last. “That was a bit better.”
“What do the words mean?” Jane asked him.
“As the hart longs for the running stream,” Will answered without thinking, “so too does my soul long for thee, O God. Psalm 42:1. It’s Latin.”
“It’s lovely,” she said.
Will looked up, looked at Bran for a moment with every guard down, and loved him so hard he could scarcely breathe. “Yes,” he agreed.
Bran met his gaze, and Will felt dizzy, and then Bran looked down and away, pulling his hands back from the harp-strings. “Jane,” Bran said. “Come along up. I’m tired, and we’re to be up early tomorrow morning. I have to take the flock up to the high pasture, and that will mean setting out before dawn.” He stood, stretching his long lean body, and his sweater rode up to reveal an expanse of pale flesh. There was again something arrogant in his motions, and Will wondered miserably just how much Bran knew, and how intentional his actions were.
“I’ll be up in a moment, cariad,” Jane said, vanishing into the kitchen.
“Do you need help, Will?” Bran asked him, laying a hand on the Old One’s back. Will melted into the touch, but said aloud that he would be fine, that he was going to sit up for a minute more before going back to bed. Bran nodded, and climbed the stairs. His footfalls were firm against the wood paneling, sure and quick.
Will sighed as he left the room. In the silence that followed, Will hung his head and nearly wept for what he’d lost, and for what had never been. He didn’t know how to deal with this arrogant man who was not a King, or the cold man who was not his friend. Bran had been proud and prickly as a boy, but that had faded as he’d come into his power and his destiny, and the boy that Will remembered from their last great adventure together had been bright and kind and perceptive, a leader, compassionate, not afraid to show fear or emotion to his wizard-companion. And that boy was gone now, as clearly so as if he’d died.
This, Will reflected. This was why he never came back to Wales.
*
Will could hear the train whistling through Clywyd valley, the long note drifting and echoing through the mountains. He looked out of the window, toward the direction of the sound, and thought of distances and motion. He scarcely noticed it when Bran pushed the door of his room open and came in; his stockinged feet were quiet on the oak floor.
But he felt Bran’s bright, crackling presence at his back, and turned over to look at him.
“How’s the shoulder?” Bran asked.
“It’s mending,” he said. “Itches now more than it hurts.”
“Well…good then.” Bran scuffed his toe against the floor, looking quite a lot like a small boy, and not at all like a strapping young shepherd.
Almost giggling with the strange awkwardness of it all, Will asked, “How’s your da?”
“Oh, he’s well,” Bran said. “He’s retired now, you know. I think he’s very glad I’ve stayed on at the farm. He was worried that I might leave—for a while, John was talking up a music school in London.”
“I can see why. You’re marvelously good.”
Bran smiled. “Well, you’re good enough yourself, choirboy, but I don’t see you going to any music schools.”
“And studying English Literature and early British history is so much more practical?” Will snorted. “I may as well be.”
He looked at Bran consideringly, and fleetingly wondered if the other boy was content. If he wanted to leave, if he would be happier if he’d left years ago. But Bran had already given up everything for the love of Owen Davies—his education didn’t seem like quite so much beside all of his memories, Will supposed.
But Bran stood there looking out the window, and his white face was drawn in long, harsh lines. He looked very stark, standing there in the brightness with his hair uncovered, contrasting wildly with his dark clothes, with the dark glasses that hid his eyes. “Yes, well,” he said shortly. “There’s work that must be done, English. Rhys Evans is expecting me up the mountain at the sheep pen, I’ve got to be off. I shan’t be back before dark tonight.”
Will looked up at him, and smiled fiercely. “I’ll see you then,” he said firmly, insistently. And Bran returned the smile. Will might have said something, might have blurted out…something, but Jane came down the hall with a tray of tea and toast for him, cheery and present, an unavoidable reminder of that which had changed.
Bran dropped a kiss on her cheek as he passed, slipping silently out. Will could hear him descending the stairs, going for his coat.
Jane set down the tea tray with a sigh. She flopped down on the bed next to him, and he rolled over to look at her. “How’re you feeling?” she asked.
“Better,” he said. I…Jane, thank you for all you’ve done. I wouldn’t be nearly so healed if it weren’t for you.”
“Nonsense. Thank you for thinking it, Will, but I’ve done no more than I ought.”
“More than anyone else has,” he muttered.
Jane sat up, and looked at him with a little wrinkle of worry between her brows. Looking back at her, Will marveled at how grown-up she was. She was old enough to think outside of herself, to implicate and to be delicate and to nurture.
“Will,” she said slowly, “I don’t mean to pry, but…are you terribly poor? Bran said your apartment was pretty bad, and if there’s no one who would take care of you but us, who you haven’t seen in so long…”
He smiled at her. He schooled his face into blandness, innocence. “No, I’m fine really. You know me. I’ve always been better with books than with people.”
“Do you know,” Jane said, “you always were different, even then. But I didn’t think that anyone could change him so much.”
Will sat up. There was hurt in her voice, and something with hard edges. “What do you mean, Jane?”
Jane sighed. For a moment, Will could see with terrible clarity how very young she was. “I know my lover, Will,” she said quietly. “And I do love him. But he’s always been an arrogant prick, in his own way. He was teased so badly as a child, and it’s made him rather bitter. I’ve tried, for years now, to break his shell, to show him that he doesn’t need it anymore, but every time I try the walls grow higher. But you,” she said, looking at him. He was grateful for the quilts that hid his face. “Will, you’re here less than a week, and I can see it melting away as if it’s never been there. He’s so happy with you.”
Will offered, “Perhaps it’s because we were friends as boys, and I help him remember simpler times. Childhood friends often have that effect, you know. He loves you very much, Jane, I can tell.”
She smiled at him. “And what of you, Will? Are you happy? Sometimes you look so utterly alone that it near breaks my heart.”
“I have you to love, Jenny, and Bran as well. How could I be unhappy?” But he knew that his answering smile didn’t quite meet his eyes, and hoped she wouldn’t see it.
“You ought to come more often,” she said to him. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of you dating in Oxford?”
Will raised an eyebrow at her. “Jane, have you ever met any academics? No, there’s not.”
Jane looked at him out of the corner of her eye, appraising. He was looking down, twisting a ring around his left index finger, watching the play of light along the band of silver. “I know that you’re in love with Bran,” she said.
Will’s smile died, and he scrambled to deny it. “Jane, what are you—”
She cut him off. “It’s all right,” she said. “The two of you are like…like lightning rods, or stars, or. I don’t know what you’re like, but you’re different from me, both of you. There’s an intensity to the two of you that I sometimes think could burn me alive. Bran can hide it when you’re not here, and I suspect that you do the same, but put you in the same room and it’s all trumpets and glory and thunderbolts.”
“Jane, I hope you’re not saying that you don’t think he loves you, because he does.”
She reached out to caress his face, running her hands through his hair. The hard fragility of her face melted away, released into the morning, out the window. “Oh, Will. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.” She looked up at him, her face shy and blushing and tender, and said to him, “You’re not the only one who knows some Shakespeare.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“Oh no, Will, I’m the one who should be apologizing,” she exclaimed, genuine dismay in her voice. “Here, lie back down. Oh dear, that didn’t go at all how I wanted it to. I’ve been saying things all wrong, Will, and you must forgive me.”
He allowed her to gentle him back down to the pillows, and to fuss over him for a moment. “Jane,” he said, “you’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve every right to resent me. I’ve…behaved badly, Jane, in coming back here.” He looked up at her unguardedly, letting her see the nakedness of his emotion. “I am in love with him,” he confessed. “You know why; he’s easy to love. And I knew I shouldn’t come here, because of it.”
“Will,” she said. Her voice was full of something that sounded almost like love. “I don’t mind. There’s something between the two of you that’s complicated, that crackles like electricity.”
Will laughed bitterly. “Complicated would be the right word,” he said. “He could never…there’s no way, Jane.”
“I know. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I’m not upset about it…oh, but that does sound dreadful, doesn’t it?”
“No.”
“He’s such a strange boy,” she said, picking at the stitching along the border of the quilt. “There’s so much of him that I don’t know, that I’ve never seen. He’s hard to love, sometimes. And you’re just as strange, if not moreso, but there’s nothing easier than loving you.”
Looking over at her, Will said, “You mean that?”
Jane laughed, clear and clean and free from all guilt and anxiety. “I think I fell in love with you during that first holiday in Cornwall,” she said. “Because I had to spend so much time defending you to Simon, you see.”
Will gazed at her in wonder, as she sat there smiling in the sunlight that turned her hair to gold, “As boundless as the sea, indeed,” he said, and her smile grew even brighter.
“I’ve always loved the sea,” she answered, “and the smell of it. So wild and old and full of forgotten things.”
*
Bran’s shoulder jostled against Will’s as they wandered down the narrow forest path. Will’s arm was bound up in Bran’s blue surcoat—there had been a frost the night before, and the cold had ached terribly in his still-healing wound. It had been the first freeze of the year, and while it was still August, the frigid crystals edging the leaves heralded autumn and cold weather.
“This will be a different sort of adventure in midwinter,” Will said wryly, his mouth twisting with anxiety. “Do you think we’ll manage it?”
Bran’s feet were so close to his that their footfalls sounded in unison. Will could feel the heat from the Pendragon’s body, and could see every one of his pale eyelashes outlined against the grey, cloud-covered sky. “We’ll be fine,” Bran said. “We’ll manage. Plenty of peasants get by with less, and we’ve got enough money. We can ride out to the village every now and then, maybe. It’s been months. They’ve likely forgotten all about us, save as a part of songs and stories of the glory days gone by.”
“More fool they, then,” Will said. He gasped a bit as he spoke, out of breath already.
“Are you feeling all right? Not in too much pain? That frost must have been brutal,” Bran said sympathetically. He wrapped a long-fingered hand around Will’s forearm, pulling him to a halt and scrutinizing him piercingly.
“I’m fine,” Will said in exasperation. “I’m not that fragile, you know. Worrywort.”
“Well, I don’t know about you,” Bran retorted, “but I’m hungry. I have some of that hearthbread Jane baked yesterday. Come sit down and have something to eat. You’re pale.” He took off his dark cloak and spread it out on the ground, guiding Will down with a strong, steady hand. “You think far too much,” he said as he did so. “Look at you: not three days on your feet again and you’re calling up council meetings and strategies of war. You do not always need to be the King’s right hand, you know. I will not say that you’re only human, for it isn’t true, but neither are you invulnerable. And for all that, I’m no longer a king.”
Will leaned back against and old oak, resting the aching musculature that arched along his shoulderblades. “It’s funny,” he said in an abstracted tone, his eyes seeing past the reality of the August forest into Time. “You’re the one who’s connected to the tradition of the unhealable wound.”
“Tell me,” Bran said, sitting down beside him and once again wrapping his fingers around Will’s upper arm, soothing the tremors of pain and weariness that ran through him under the skin.
“Through your name,” Will answered. “In the ages to come, scholars will say that King Bran the Blessed, whose name you share, is like the Grail King in the later Arthurian romances. He guards the Holy Grail, and he has a wound that will never heal until the Grail is found by the purest Knight. Bran the Blessed also had such a wound.”
Bran cocked his head to one side like a falcon. “Bendigeidfran, that would be.”
“Yes.”
“I remember a story, from when I was young, that Bendigeidfran had a marvelous cauldron that could return the dead to life. I was always petrified of it.”
“For good reason, I suppose,” Will said. “And that cauldron is not so different from the stories about the Grail. Men have always pursued the great mysteries, and that in itself is a good, but I shouldn’t like to think what would happen if the objects of their quests were ever attained. Better that some things be disbelieved and forgotten.” He felt old, old and sorrowful and weighted down by knowledge and by difference. The stand of elms at the edge of the path had already begun to turn gold, pale and paper-thin.
Bran’s hand slid down Will’s arm to clasp his palm firmly. “And yet here we are,” the young Pendragon said, “and for any who did not know we would seem as legendary as Bran the Blessed. But we are not, though the times for high deeds have perhaps passed beyond us.”
Will looked up at him, puzzling out the odd colorless face. “Does it not bother you?” he asked. “You are the Son of Arthur, born to high deeds. You are, in your own way, no more like an ordinary man than I myself. And yet you have lost all that, and are living in the forest like an outlaw and hiding your great heritage. Can you truly be content with this life, Bran? Can you live like this with only Jane and myself and not go mad with longing for what might have been?”
“You are content with it, wizard boy.” Bran’s face was clear as water and as firm as stone, and his eyes shone very bright. “You hide what you are, pretend to be an ordinary boy, nothing special. Can I do less?”
“But it’s different for you,” Will said softly. “I was made to be this way; you were not.”
“Yes, it is different,” Bran agreed, just as soft. “Because I can still live as a man, and be in the world, and love and toil and all the things that we do as denizens of life. And you cannot, not really, because you will still be alive long after this oak has withered and died, and these saplings have grown mighty and perished in their turn. Do not pity me, Old One.”
Will held their still-clasped hands up to his cheek, pressing a kiss against Bran’s knuckles. He did his best to smile, though Bran’s words had struck through him like an arrow to stand quivering at the heart. “Don’t pity me, then,” he said, doing everything he could to turn his inflection towards sarcastic jest. “Or if you will, pity me because I have to live with such a failure as yourself. Meant to be King, he was,” he went on, addressing the oak, “and now look at him: dirty face and leaves in his hair, and breadcrumbs all down his front. That’s majesty for you!”
Bran only sat up taller, the very image of haughty grandeur. “Eat your bread, lunatic wizard. And leave off, and let me eat mine. If anything is to drive me mad it will be you.”
Will obeyed, biting into the tough brown crust and sinking his teeth into the soft flesh of the loaf beneath. The bread was good, rough and hearty and filling. He thought maybe Jane had added rosemary to her dough, and maybe a pinch of dill. It smelled sweet in his hands as he ate.
The afternoon around them was beginning to get really warm, shaking off the fetters of morning frost and growing heavy and golden with heat. Somewhere to the left down the path a swallow struck up a burbling tune, trilling and piping fluidly up the scale. Will felt soft and warm and a bit sleepy.
Eventually Bran, having eaten his fill, said, “Tell me a song, Will. I’ve heard nothing since we left court, but I know that memory of yours. You’re as good as any bard.”
Will cut his eyes over to look at him, surprised but not unpleasantly so. “I…all right, then.” He felt his spine like an oak rod, straight down from his mind and between his shoulders and pressed against the ground, a lightning-rod of connection. He felt his voice deepen, becoming more resonant, more rhythmic. Bran pressed up against him, shoulder to shoulder, and he could feel the weight of the other man’s head laying against his temple. For him, he drew in a breath and began to chant the old Song of Taliesin, feeling all the while the oak at his back and the dappled sun on his face and the heavy sweetness of Bran’s breath against his neck.
“Of nine-formed faculties, Of the fruit of fruits, Of the fruit of the primordial God, Of primroses and blossoms on the hill, Of the earth, of an earthly course, When I was formed, Of the flower nettles, Of the water of the ninth wave. I was enchanted by Math, Before I became immortal, I was enchanted by Gwydyon The great purifier of the Brithon.”
The music of the words wound up around the tree trunk and dissipated into the blue sky above them. With the small part of his mind that wasn’t taken up with the chant and the song and the power of the ancient words, he remembered that Jane was going to climb up to the spring and do some washing. Maybe they could go meet her there.
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