#chronicles of prydain
“Oh, isn’t that pretty!”
The voice startles her, coming as it does from close by, when she had thought herself alone. But she isn’t frightened. Eilonwy is rarely frightened.
She looks up and sees a woman standing on the path down from the cliffs, watching her; a tall woman, quite pretty. Not so pretty as Mam, of course. But her hair is dressed in long silver braids that sparkle in the sunlight, and her traveling gown is richly embellished. The woman looks at the Pelydryn in her hands and smiles. “What a lovely thing you have, darling. Wherever did you get that shining bauble?”
The child hesitates. The smile is sweet and gentle, and the words kind and engaging, but there is something in the air that grates, somehow, like when she rubs a cat the wrong way, down to the tingling sparks that pop at the edges of her mind. She clutches the Pelydryn to her chest in her small fists, somehow not liking the intensity of this foreign gaze upon it.
“It’s mine,” she says, with blunt finality. “Mam gave it to me.”
The woman’s eyes gleam - blue eyes, like Tad’s but yet not like. Tad’s eyes are twinkling and merry and warm, and these are clear and sharp and cool, like ice. “Of course she did,” the gentle voice says coaxingly, “a lovely gift. Where is your Mam? Does she know you are out here alone?”
Warned, the child takes a step back. She is, in truth, not supposed to be here alone. Mam and Tad never allow her to go far alone, but it is full moon, and Tad is out for the day telling stories to the fae, and Mam is sleeping in the cottage. She is tired, always, of late, too tired to play, and Tad says to let her rest. Eilonwy, restless, crept out, and her play has taken her further down the beach than she meant, certainly further than is allowed. They’ll be upset, Mam and Tad will, if they find out. Will this stranger tell them?
“She’s resting,” she answers evasively, “up at home. She was tired.”
“In the middle of the morning?” the stranger’s eyes flick upward toward the cliffs her gesture indicates. “Is she ill?”
“No.” The child takes another step back. “There’s a new babe coming. In winter, she says, I shall have a sister, probably. It makes her tired.”
The woman straightens up abruptly, staring up the hill, and the sparks on the air suddenly change to a sharp crackle. Eilonwy feels it sizzle through her; it feels like fire but tastes like metal, sharp and tart, mildly unpleasant but also intriguing; it sets her skin abuzz. “Who are you?” she asks curiously.
The woman looks at her again, and her eyes are open a little wider, as though there are many thoughts racing behind them, chasing each other like seabirds. She does not answer the question, instead asking one of her own. “Do you like magic, pretty one?”
This breaks through Eilonwy’s reserve. “Yes,” she says promptly, eagerly. “Mam teaches me. She’s an enchantress, and so shall I be. Watch!” She sits upon a boulder, paddling her bare feet in the tide pool at its foot, and twists her hands in the air, frowning in concentration. The water ripples and bunches itself into shining ridges; they become tendrils and ropes that wind themselves into the air, twisting and turning in a dance. It isn’t long - she can only sustain it for a few moments - but when the water splashes back down to the pool the stranger claps her hands in delight.
“Oh, that is marvelous!” she enthuses. “So much skill for such a little one! You shall be a great sorceress indeed!” She crouches on the sand across from her, looking her eagerly in the face. “Now, tell me - have you seen this?”
She picks up a twig of driftwood with a sinuous white hand, and snaps her fingers. The air moves in a familiar fashion, and there is suddenly a tongue of flame flickering bright at the end of the twig. Eilonwy laughs out loud. “Oh! You are one of us. Are you…”
She pauses, thinking. Mam has always said there are more of them; that perhaps one day they will find them again: the people of Llyr, their family, the ones that make her sad to talk about, especially…
“Mam says…that I have an aunt, somewhere.” She peers hopefully into the beautiful, sharp-boned face. “Are you my aunt?”
The ice-blue eyes glitter, and the flushed lips break into a wide and illuminating smile.
“Oh, yes,” the woman purrs. “That is who I am.”
The child reaches for the outstretched hand, white against the moaning darkness of the sea.
Finally finished this short Taran/Eilonwy side story, adapted from one of my High King-era fics. See the rest here:
“…did you know, child, that salt water is your first home? Before you open your eyes into sunlight, before you take your first breath of this corrosive, burning air, you are formed in salt water and born from salt water. Many forget; men forget; but you, daughters of Llyr, daughters of Rhiannon, you remember…
You feel the pull of the moon in the tides, in your bodies, as one, you sway under her power. You feel it in the embrace of water: the return to your home, to the spark of your creation. One with water, one with sea…you are the sea and it is you.”
~Daughter of the Sea, chapter 37
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Still working on commissions but this at least fits in here.
Angharad/Geraint and this one just makes me want to cry like a baby.
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Her hand fell, by chance, upon her knife, unused at the meal; before any cautious, conscious thought could interfere the princess flipped it blade-up and raked her palm along it, held up her clenched fist, dripping red upon the table linen. “I swear it,” she repeated, voice suddenly steady, buoyed up by a surge of power that filled her lungs and throat, pulsed through her veins, twined around her fingers in invisible strands. “My daughters will be free to wed whomever they please. They will choose by their own hearts: sorcerer or shoemaker, prince or pauper. And if they find none worthy of their hearts they will be free to belong to themselves alone. If our line perishes for it, then it perishes.”
