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.
Coll’s hands, busy scraping the fat from the deer hide stretched across the frame before him, slow to a somber pause. In silence, she waits, sensing something heavy and bleak in his stillness. “Aye,” he sighs at last, in a voice like gravel. “Aye, cariad, it does. I take no pleasure in it.”
She reaches out her hand - strong and sun-gilded for the first time in her memory - and touches the golden-brown fur at the edge of the hide. It is silky but not soft; the winter undercoat pushes out the prickling outer hairs into a standing-up stiffness, glittering in the fading light of the smoky afternoon. She thinks of Medwyn and his valley, and the fawn that had pushed its velvet nose beneath her palm, and pulls her hand away abruptly, as though her fingers stung.
“We could just eat turnips,” she offers sadly, a counter to the justification no one had spoken.
Coll smiles a little, his sinewy brown hands at work again; Coll’s hands are never still for long. “You’ll get plenty tired of turnips before Spring,” he says wryly, “and cabbages and beans, hearty as they are, won’t fill your belly through a long winter, nor would there be enough for all of us. Meat we must have, at least a little, whatever, to weather the snow. And leather for shoes and caps, fur to warm your hands and ears, and tallow for candles and lamps.”
“I suppose,” she sighs, and returns to her own work: braiding the long stems of bright oak leaves together, into garlands for harvest cheer. They fill her lap like a pool of ragged fire, scarlet and crimson and gold, parchment-thin, cool in her hands. “Medwyn got along without all that, though, somehow,” she remembers, thoughtfully.
Coll grunts, and glances up at her wryly. “Maybe he did. But what do those wolves of his eat, d’y’reckon?”
She opens her mouth in surprise and closes it again, considering. He chuckles, “You see? But he doesn’t hold it against them. He loves his beasts for what they are. We, also, are what we are.”
She stares at the toes of her soft suede boots, stuffed with wool. Warm against the chilled air, she wriggles her feet inside them, thinking. “It’s a shame it can’t all be like wool, though, isn’t it? Or like milk and eggs, taken without harming anything.”
“Aye,” he rumbles again, “but such is the way of it. Life feeds on life. Even vegetables must die to be eaten.” He raises his gaze toward the garden plot, looking fondly upon the fallow rows, resting now. “As every living thing, one day, returns to the earth. And so we give life to others in our turn.”
She thinks, unwittingly, of grinning white bone, and clawed fingers crumbling to dust around a sword pommel. “Not all of us,” she whispers, shivering.
Warm brown eyes flick up quickly at her and then down again. His face is impassive, careful. “It’s how it should be, whatever,” he murmurs. “Not a cold barrow of stone, but a bed beneath a tree, if the world was at rights. I could sleep well, out there.” He nods towards the edge of the woods, where, she knows, others, precious to him, sleep already. “But it’s not given most of us to choose.” He shrugs, resigned, and continues his work.
She pulls another leaf stem through the braid and gazes out at the trees: a smudged line of glorious colors running together, a flaming banner streaked by lingering threads of clinging green. “I don’t like thinking about it,” she says slowly. “What do you think happens to us? After?”
“Oof,” he sighs, “that’s a question for Dallben, not for one such as I, whatever.”
“I already asked him,” she says, with a touch of acerbity. “He said it’s not for us to know, and trailed off into I don’t even know what-all about eternal mysteries and the energy of the universe.” All she had wanted to know was if Achren were really dead, and if there were any way of finding out, but Dallben had moved the topic elsewhere before she could get around to admitting her fears. “I don’t think even he knows, really.”
Coll’s shoulders twitch with the force of a rough chuckle, and he shakes his head. “Well, I suppose that may be a fence even his vine won’t climb.” He sticks his knife’s point into a nearby log, wipes off his hands, and picks up the end of a garland to admire it. “Here’s what I do know, cariad.Every year these leaves burn to gold, like all the light of summer blazing out of them one last time before they fall, and a beautiful death it is. And next spring, as sure as the sun rises, from every twig will come a new green leaf in place of the one that fell, and more besides. Where the seed falls, there the sprout rises, and life follows death in a circle, always, all things made over new. If that is how the earth makes and remakes its fruit, why should it be any different for us? Eh?”
He rarely makes such a long speech, and she looks at him in wonder, at his creased, open, honest face, his crinkled dark eyes as peaceful as the earth. No, the thought of returning to earth does not disturb him, not Coll; he is already such a part of it that death should be no more than stepping into the door of a home he’s loved for years.
She is comforted, but not so resigned.
“I wish we knew for certain,” she sighs. “I wish I knew that…that my parents might be waiting for me, just on the other side, you know. That they could tell me if they were.”
There’s a quaver in her voice, and she hates it, hates how it makes her feel small and alone, and she looks down quickly at the leaves in her lap, and braids feverishly for a few minutes, swallowing whatever it is trying to come up in her throat, blinking away the traitorous welling in her eyes. Coll is silent, settled like a tree, though from the corner of her eye she sees his hands moving.
Then the garland rustles and he leans toward her, his arms raised. She looks up in surprise just as he settles the red-gold leaves, wound into a circlet, upon her head. He sits back, smiling, at the effect, and murmurs, “Proper crown for our princess.” His voice is a low growl like a bear’s, rough with emotion. “Suits you better than cold metal, whatever.”
Her heart swells. It’s an answer - not to her impossible wish, but to something else, something she needs more, maybe, just now, than knowing the unknowable, and she hiccups and smiles back at him, a wavering and watery smile, full of unspoken belonging.
“I always liked autumn,” she admits, “even though it seemed like I shouldn’t. When all it meant was that winter was coming.”
“But that’s not all it means,” he counters, twining a garland around his own bald head. It slips down around his neck, a collar of bright ruffles and spikes, and she giggles. He grins broadly. “It’s a reminder that there’s beauty even in endings. That what goes away comes back again.” With a grunt, he leans forward, and rises to his feet, taking up the deerskin. “Time to go salt this. Need more leaves?”
“Yes,” she says, “but I’ll get them. I like gathering them up. It feels like treasure-hunting.”
He sighs quietly, and places a warm hand on the top of her head, very briefly, as he steps past her. “Aye, the land provides treasure enough if you know where to look. And sometimes it shows up on its own when you never expected it.”
She glances up at him, at his sweet and affectionate smile, and he winks and walks away, whistling, into the smoky air. She squints, until his bronze jacket and rust-colored breeches and leather cap are lost against the browns and reds and ochres of the orchard beyond.
My first Prydain fic from dark-ages-ago contained this scene. Circa somewhere during the summer before Castle of Llyr…she’s returning from the well, stops to watch him working in the smithy, and gets flustered when he catches her. He asks for a drink; she has no ladle; they have an argument about her lack of foresight, and in an impulsive fit she cups water in her own hands for him to drink. I still love this scenario but I had never tried to visualize it. Now I think I’ll make it my next comic project. :)
Entry 4 in my historical Disney Princess series: Eilonwy, placed in 9th-11th century Wales!
I really wanted to do this character, even though she isn’t an official Disney Princess, since I’ve always liked her as a character. I also am hoping to read the entire Chronicles of Prydain series soon (so far I’ve only read The Book of Three). As I felt that the Chronicles of Prydain and Disney’s The Black Cauldron both take place during the Early Middle Ages, I decided on placing my historically-inspired Eilonwy between the 9th century and the first half of the 11th century, before the Norman invasion of England. Fashion changed little, if at all, during this time frame and the several centuries prior, and men and women wore virtually the same garments, so researching was in fact a little easier than I thought it was going to be. But it was still pretty challenging, due to the fact that there are such scarce authentic materials that display fashion from the Dark Ages, and so I had to rely mostly on text. It’s also safe to say that I may have taken a few artistic liberties with Eilonwy.
In medieval Wales (as well as in Ireland, where the style and ways of life were very similar), men and women both wore a “leine”, a type of over shirt. Women’s were longer, generally, and I read that they were often worn over a “gunna” (an underdress that was apparently a predecessor to the kirtle). I made both the leine and gunna in the colors of her skirt, and I’m not even going to go into detail about how difficult it was to achieve those muted pink shades with colored pencils (I still think I’m kind of a novice). I’m not sure if pink leines existed, as I read somewhere that they were chiefly white or yellow, and I also don’t know if pink clothing dyes existed back then; if not, those are two of the artistic liberties I took. I also added a golden border along the hem of her leine so it wouldn’t look so plain; if you look closely, you can see my sad attempt at drawing a super tiny Celtic design. Another chief garment of medieval Wales was the “brat”, a type of cloak that could be wound around the shoulders multiple times. I incorporated the color of Eilonwy’s bodice in the original design of her dress into her brat. The pennanular brooch I added to hold it in place is heavily inspired by the 6th - 7th century-era Tara brooch. I referenced the illustrations on this website for Eilonwy’s overall outfit, as well as John Peacock’s book “Chronicles of Western Fashion”. I retained Eilonwy’s circlet, just placed it lower on her head, and also pretty much kept her hair the same, just made it slightly more disheveled and maybe a bit longer. Whatever, I just really have a thing for ridiculously long hair. Oh; and I couldn’t forget her golden bauble!
I don’t typically share images of filmEilonwy because she’s not really Eilonwy and I despise her, but this is beautifully done and an enormous improvement on the Disney version.
It’s only her second day at Caer Dallben, when it rains the first time.
Not the first time in her life, of course. She’s well-acquainted with rain: that cold, grey, miserable substance whose frequency had made the cheerless interior of Spiral Castle even more chill and damp, its clammy breath impossible to bar out by shuttered casements or drive away with hotter hearthfires. It was the goad that had driven away what few rays of sunlight had crept past the walls to wink timidly within the fortress’s unfriendly courtyards. It was the unbidden traveling companion on their journey to Caer Dathyl, chasing them all from open meadows to the dismal cover of dripping trees, turning the ground to slippery, squelching muck beneath their feet, their clothing to sodden, dragging weight at their backs.
So it is unwelcome now, so soon, just when she’s getting used to working in the garden. She’s been happy, blissful even, surrounded by the sharp smells of sap and root, the green, light-filtering rows of leaves, the fluttering butterflies and droning bees. It’s hot work, but satisfying, and now this: this spotting of the bare earth at her knees, a warning message from the woolly gray smudge obscuring the summer sky, which up until now had been a sea of calm blue. Straightening from her task, she looks around, sees it coming: a curtain of haze blotting out the green hills to the southwest, its surface striped with darker streaks. A damp breeze lifts the sweaty strands of hair from the edges of her face like caressing fingers, but she feels nothing but resentment.
“Rain’s coming,” she announces, preparing to rise and dust off her skirts, but her companions, working in the rows nearby, only glance up mildly. At the sight of the oncoming shower, Coll smiles, his brown face creasing like the wrinkles on a drying apple.
“Ah,” he says, “good. Days overdue, that is. It’s good luck you are, love. Must’ve brought it back with you.” His hoe ceases not in its movement, a series of pulling slices so rhythmic and gentle that they seem unconnected to the weeds scraped root-bare at the end of his blade. Taran rolls his eyes, bemused at the comment, but, seeing her watching, flashes his lopsided grin at her before returning to his work.
She waits, expectant, but there is no indication of imminent departure. “Shouldn’t we go in?”
Taran glances up again, surprised. “Go in, why?”
She’s almost too astonished to be indignant at such a foolish question, but a little ire does seep into her retort. “Because of the rain.”The spots on the earth are now joined by others, freckling the dirt; a muted percussion like hundreds of tiny footsteps has begun to tickle at her ears, layered over by the warm gravel of Coll’s sudden laugh.
“We don’t stop work for rain, cariad - not unless it’s coming down like old-women-and-sticks! We’d get little done, else.” He grounds his hoe for a moment, and bends his back at a reverse angle, working out the kinks. “Summer rain’s a gift. Cools us down, and brings life to thirsty crops. You mark it, now - smell the air as it comes on. You’ll see.”
“But,” she stammers, “we’ll be soaked.”
“We’ll dry off,” Taran grunts, “nothing to fuss over. You’ve got spare clothes.” He glances her way again, looking somewhat askance at her confusion, and his mouth twitches wryly. “Come, Princess, you who are so proud of your ancestry. No one who claims kinship with the entire sea should be put off by a bit of rain.”
He’s called her princess for the last two days whenever she’s complained or gotten upset about something, a subtle dig that irritates her beyond speech, and stings, too, somewhere deep. She scowls at him and he shrugs, chuckling, grasps the handles of the wheelbarrow and trundles off toward the barnyard for a fresh load of manure, unconcerned with the rapidly-increasing sprinkle.
Bewildered, she returns slowly to her task of turning over the spent and chopped beanstalks, raking them into the topsoil, mixing and tamping it down. The top layer is damp now, beneath the pattering drops, as are her garments and hair and her bare forearms and feet. Rain mingled with sweat makes her skin salt-sticky, and she feels herself shrink small, trying to avoid the sensation. She works doggedly, swallowing further protest in embarrassment.
But she mutters to herself as the sprinkle turns to a drizzle and the drizzle to a steady pelting, and the water skims from the curls at her temples and down her cheeks, droplets quivering at the end of her nose, at the ends of her braids, washing the salt from her skin and down, carrying it into the earth.
The smell of her own body cooling, of the upturned soil, wet and glistening, rises to her face, fills her nose and mouth and lungs, and she pauses, presently, thoughtful. Smell the air as it comes on. Well, here it is, and the air is…is…oh.
She inhales, sudden and deep, conscious of the change, her fingertips tingling. What is it? Something rising up from the quivering turnip leaves or the rich loam, or condensing itself from the very air. Something rich, and deep, and vital; if green had a smell, if goodhad a smell, and sproutingandbeginningandgrowing, it might be this thing shimmering savory upon her breath right now. She shuts her eyes, turns her face up toward the giving sky, and smiles without knowing it, sensing the pulse of life in the space around her, the fluid, ripe current of the rain mingling into the open warmth of the ground.
Sweetness fills her mouth in a gush of warmth, as though she’s just crushed a ripe berry in her teeth, and for just a moment, a suspended, heart-pounding second, she can feel every raindrop, not “the rain” as a formless mass of broken water, but each individual drop, as unique and perfect as if they were solid diamonds, or bits of crystal cut from the stars and fallen to earth. It’s a rush of sensation, a glimpse of something beyond her reach, and the glittering delight of it makes her open her eyes with a gasp, swept with a perception of something somehow familiar. The droplets on her arms and hands cling like tiny sentient creatures, unwilling to be separated from her.
Coll is watching her curiously from his row, and nods when she notices. “You see,” he says simply, with a knowing smile.
“What makes it happen?” she demands breathlessly. “Is it magic?”
He laughs again. “Bless you! It’s just earth and water and sunlight, mixed up and doing what they were meant to do. But together they forge life itself, so I suppose that is magic, of a kind.”
Water and sunlight, she thinks to herself wistfully, watching a droplet tumble from her fingertip. I am fire and water. I should know these things. I should…be able to…. Another drop gathers, its bottom edge swelling and rounding and dangling, and she tries to wrap her mind around it, to recapture that tingling moment of ecstatic awareness. The sweet fluidity teases at the edges of her mouth, but she does not know the words to give it form, and the drip falls, releasing its broken fullness to the earth. To forge life. She sighs.
Taran is returning with the wheelbarrow, his wet clothes sticking to him like plaster, his dark head sleek and shining —as drenched as though he’s been drowned, yet looking elated, brimming with energy. He dumps the barrow and shakes his wet hair out of eyes glowing green in his sun-brown face and he’s all brown and green, she thinks suddenly, just like the garden, and something in her chest twists and expands open with a warm and wistful ache.
He grins at her, that crooked streak of white. “Not washed away yet, I see.”
She forces herself to make an impudent face, because it’s what he expects, and because it’s more comfortable, by far, than the face that had almost been surprised out of her, which scuttles away and buries itself behind her consciousness, not ready to be seen by anyone.
“You need washing,” she retorts, “after carting all that manure. We could smell you before we saw you, so thank goodness for rain.”
He laughs, and throws a clod at her, earning a mild reproof from Coll.
Overhead, a ray of sunlight rips through the clouds, turning the tumbling drops into stars.
Same Eilonwy as before, but scanned and tampered a bit with digitally. The colors aren’t as good but the picture is clearer. Sigh. Oh, the joy of having a bad camera.
