made to be future memory

Once I'd birthed my son I sat there, dazed. It was not so much the pain which undid me, caused tears to sting my dry eyes, fractured every part of me into a roiling crucible and then reforged me into a sturdier, if sapped, whole, but the revelation of seeing the tiny babe I'd carried and murmured to every night for nigh on ten months. It was as if when I'd pushed him out, fingers gripping the underside of the hard birthing chair my maids had coaxed me onto ever since the contractions had begun two days ago, he'd uncorked the innate sensibilities of gleaming conjurings all us tylwyth teg keep bottled within us.

Those buttercup-beams, enticing trails who winked and fluttered aloft like a cloud of spring dandelions, whirled around the room in one great plume, until, at last, the sun dissolved them into a curious vapour that half-resembled smoke but mimicked mead in its consistency.

And I felt its thread snap within me.

Fire followed it. Scorched through my trembling limbs, my bloodied fingers - for in my delirium I'd somehow torn them down to the quick - my burning lungs. Every breath ached. For the first time I became acquainted with what it felt to be truly human, as, in that moment, humanity's sweetness and sourness coalesced. I became elated at that! I exhaled one rasping, shattering breath and then another until I barked out a laugh where joy and sorrow co-mingled. Odd, isn't it, when something as intrinsic to their condition is experienced in such an alien manner. Oh, I knew my husband's lord's disdained me, for they could not hide their sullen sulks, their darting eyes, and their strange silences whenever I entered a room well. In fact, I do not believe they ever hid them at all.

But I was quite inured to that. No longer could they mutter about using iron in their jewels settings as gifts for me, nor attempt to lame my horse afore a hunt. In contrast, I could no longer counteract their murky dissemblings. Yet, for the precious radiance of the babe who I now drew to my breast, whose grasping hands gently tugged on my daffodil-hued tresses, and whose soft mews were filled with an air of curiosity, well, I felt quite at ease. I had accomplished what they’d craved. When they'd urged Pwyll to put me away so he might have a child - "a real human babe, not one of those pesky changelings!" the arglwyddau had sniped behind their hands - he had stood firm, becoming my bulwark.

Cousin Arawn had sensed well with him. Humans talk of crowns being treasured, of torcs or rings or other insignificant things, but wits are for moreso – for us tylwyth teg, at least.

Or they were for me. Before my son.

But, to belabour the point, I did feel my being shift innately. My father had whispered to me when I was but 10 and had just used my magic to muck out my horse's stall with a flurry of pavonine wisps, that, “should you wish to take a human as your husband, wife, or lover, Rhi, then you are beholden to their world as you have pledged yourself to them and your blood and body will mimic theirs to compensate for the loss of our food and drink.”

I'd nodded, somewhat distractedly. Nia, my newest mare back then, my oldest and most-ridden now, had shunned the oats I'd placed in her trough in favour of mouthing at my hair. Yet I knew by the gravity with which my father spoke that his words were measured, steely, weighted with extraordinary import. Food and drink were the things with which we tylwyth teg sustained both our magic and our essence of self. To consume such mediocre victuals akin to the ones humans satisfied themselves with, in our eyes, was tantamount to death.

A severing.

“I cannot say when your magic will leave you, only that it will.” Clasping my hands, his grey eyes rested upon me with a forlornness hitherto unseen and he drew a sigh that carried with it sorrows’ breath.

“And from whence will this lover hail?” I had almost queried him bitingly, until, head bowed, an apology had trembled from his lips and and hereupon he fled from the room. Never before had I been witness to him in such dolourous torment. I'd mulled his words over ever since; until I was a woman grown; until Pwyll Pen Annwfn, he of the dark countenance and surpassingly black eyes.

I journeyed on my own errand that day and every subsequent one.

But, I'd deemed it a worthy trade: my magic for my babi bach. Beneath my fingers, I traced his cheek which was replete with velvet’s softness. Like my bird's wings, my heart quickened, goosepimples shivering over my skin. I did not know then what name I would yet bestow upon him, but I was suddenly struck by this: his hair was as gold as mine, his straight nose was all Pwyll's, and his eyes?

Grey.

How they resembled my father's!

And as I cradled him, murmuring blessings in a language of surpassing ancientness which no human ear could parse, I inhaled his milk-sweet scent and drifted off myself.

When I first heard tell of the Chief Maiden of the Isle of the Mighty I knew at once that I wanted her. She, the radiance of all of Britain, the most beauteous in the world, a woman beyond compare, the sea's own daughter, oh, at the time I thought she'd be a worthy addition to my court. The hardships I'd endure upon the trek to Britain were worth it for her alone. Yet my men proclaimed it lunacy, muttering that I'd lost all sense.

“All this for a girl,” they hissed behind their hands as they lined my hall, side-eyeing me as I strode past, gleaming in golds and jewels like my brother. “He'll perish before winter’s out.”

Others were not so well-mannered: “If the High King saw this he'd shit himself all over again.” “I'd take a corpse over whatever steam bubbles Matholwch's brains.” “We should just dig Fionn up and place him on the throne again, eh? His rot would clear the halls of spittle-lickers.”

I paid them no heed. Counselled myself that I'd issued my decrees in good faith. Assuaged my lingering doubts that my men's swords would remain unblunted. Why, I even set my own gossips' about the place, gave them leave to slither and hiss whatever would advance my position.

‘Bards,’ I'd thought, my very being tingling at the mere idea, ‘Will sing my name even after I am gone for undertaking such a journey. For bringing back such a pearl. And our blood will intermingle, enrich my coffers and my crown.’

You may protest that Éire's bounties are rich, aye, luminous, luscious, as plentiful as salmon in a river, and as glorious as gold. Your attachment to our island is to be commended, mo nia. Were your father still living then doubtless he would say similarly. Alas. Unlucky Fionn. Never will he rise. Not even he could foresee the Dord Fianna's demise.

Ah, it grieves me even now!

How careless one can be with ivory!

Calm yourself. I had the brigade who had such clumsy fingers skinned. His jaw made a pretty replacement.

But, indeed, you queried me upon my wife.

None had gained such a notoriety as she, even before we'd set out to claim her. I took horses and men, spears and swords, rings and jewels and plate so that I might ingratiate myself within the High King's circle. And this I did, with startling alacrity, for his men rushed down when we made land at Harlech with all the swiftness of cormorants glutting their fill. Their eyes were bright, their voices carrying across the howling winds as they made me welcome.

Of course, I know you were privy to all that occurred thereafter. Efinisen was as careless with my possessions as Diarmuid Love Spot was with my brother's. You do remember all that happened with Grainne, do you not? Did your boy not shame your father's water-trickling hands that day in the grove until, chastened, he repented, only to discover too late of Donn's son's expiration? How he wailed. Of course, I had cautioned him against doing such asinine things. I only meant for him to… twist the knife as it were.

Gods, I did not account for Fionn getting so worked up! Frothing at the mouth he was, like a rabid dog!

No, no, mo nia, I would not scorn my brother! Do not be so hasty as to think that! Why had I the cauldron Bendigeidfran bestowed upon me, then I would cast him into its frothing waters forthwith! He would of course be tongueless but… well, I can make do with that.

Dead men do not need to speak.

But when I had gotten my prize and loaded her upon my ship I found her… lacking. Oh, she was not docile! Not in the manner I had thought when I had mounted her upon our wedding night, her face buried in silken pillows. She nagged bitterly throughout it all, brayed her words like the horses her half-brother had so contemptuously maimed.

Father always maintained that bastards were scheming little cuckoos. They who would dump you out of a nest just as quickly as they burrowed in. Oh, yes, and when my darling brother inflicted such a grievous blow upon me, convinced the Lords to pass me over so he might rule….

Forgive me, Oisín. I am too warm-blooded this morn. Perhaps it is the hippocras I imbibed late last evensong, I fear it rather marred my wits. Oh, Branwen… no, you needn't concern yourself with her. She is perfectly happy prancing about the kitchens, covered in flour. Gwern's absence hardly grieves her! Look at him, is he not a strong lad, lusty-lunged and chubby-cheeked. I daresay I could use his cries to awaken my brother, eh?

Ah. I meant it as a jest! I esteem his throne and memory just as I do your presence in my life! I know how you adored your aunt. But, trust me, won't you? I needed to ensure her safety. I could not bring my men's tongues to heel fast enough! If she makes up such spurious stories then that shows you how beastly she is!

(Oisín speaks little. Let's his Uncle Matholwch babble, content to aid him in digging his grave. Alcohol had always impeded his wits, loosened his tongue, and his father had impressed upon him before he'd perished that that was the easiest way for him to discover any falsehoods.

Bile sours his tongue. Revulsion thickens his blood. 'His wife, my father… How many lives has he ruined?’

His dark green eyes stare straight ahead, over the churning Irish sea. Briefly, the mist lifts. Squinting, he can just barely make out Harlech in the distance. His uncles-in-law's domain, that green-grey blob, seems like a wound. Overhead, a bird caws, resonant and deep. His head shoots up in surprise.

A starling, inky-black, its fanned wings iridescent, stares back at him, unfazed, uncaring of the breeze ruffling their wings. It chirps even when his uncle directs his sling at it and, when the shot goes wide, chortles a laugh. Almost as if mocking him.

Oisín, though he does not comprehend why, lowers his. There will be no hunting today.

For a moment, the bird lingers like a knife between his ribs.

‘How long,’ he thinks, his fingers irrepressible trembling having little to do with the cold. ‘Will it be until they undertake a quest of their own.’

He exhales. Steam curls across the breeze.

The starling chirps once.

And turns away.

When I was small my mother cradled me with one hand and smiled at me with meadowsweet white teeth, while her eyes, which were as dark as the tall, craggy hills which buttress our caer the way penteuluoedd do their pendefig, glimmered softly in their sockets. She smelled sweet - although she had said that of me also when she'd my hands with her trembling ones. Her skin bore vellum's smoothness, although her face was grained with the lines like that of a gnarled oak tree. She had grown feeble, bent over like a sapling split in twain, and her hair, once so dark and smooth, had grown grey and coarse from her days spent wasting in bed.

But... I don't think I'll forget her radiance in a hurry. Even when she was nothing more than a husk she still glowed. The bards had sang of it for weeks in a effort to aid in her recovery, the way an farmer sings as he reaps, steady, sweet, and strong. Yet, like my darling cousin Gwyn's mother, my own faded in the birthing bed. The babe went with her too.

And now, Father declares that I possess her glory - although I fear he only says so to increase his reputation's formidableness.

Why, he would say I walked with flowers blooming in my wake if it served him, of that I am certain. Or... perhaps he does already and I, being as cooped as a dove within my bower, cannot strain my ears to hear such lofty praise as it wings its way across Dyfed and beyond.

No. The shattered teeth of the Preseli Hills loom above and around me. Yet if you think me some weak-willed, wilting flower with its stalk snipped off then I must caution you of that.

Trefoils can set swine to spasming just as easily as I can wring a man's neck.

And no man has bested my father's spears yet – although few bards sing of it.

For I am Olwen ferch Ysbaddaden Pencawr. Olwen ferch Ffion ap Morgant, Y Brenin y Bernicia, and you, my Lord ap Cilydd, will soon be swallowed by the forest's maw.

After all, I do not think our goodly cousin, Y Brenin Arthur, would aid you without a war prize.

And Iwerddon's boar-king's glittering glories serve well, do they not? For do they not ape my hair's hue, the flame-red of my gown, the dainty paleness of my feet? "Mimicry," you wail? "To torment me! Oh, Pencawres, cease-"

I torment you?

My lord, my cousin, my heart's-balm, such mealy-mouthed words sputter from your lips! My aspect is no more reflected in those shears, comb, or razor than yours is in a stye. Such foolishness!

I will not be swayed by your ineffectual pleading or inaction, any more than my father might have been by your bravado! Why I doubt you are a simpleton - though you may seem so - you are aware of the savagery we Cewri have enacted? You should know of Rhitta Gawr! He who ripped Ninniaw and Peibiau's heads off their bodies and thereafter fashioned a cap from their beards. And, when word had reached their allies, twenty-six petty, squabbling kings, who set about avenging him Rhitta routed them atop his stony fortress and snicked off their beards to craft himself a handsome mantle.

Only our noble cousin cresting Rhitta's rocky fortress brought about his demise for he had demanded another king's beard.

Arthur's to be precise.

Now he can no more demand than he can eat. Our cousin saw to that under the guise of breaking bread with him.

He hollowed out Rhitta's stomach, if you must know, after claiming he was fit to burst. Gutted him, like a sow.

I speak of carnage in so queenly a manner? Pshaw, young man! It was my father who relayed to me this tale. His fingers, no doubt, itch to do the same to you.

But... should you return hither with those tools - and I do not say so lightly for the boar is vicious - then I will consent to be your bride.

Thought you may claim it will be easy for you to get me, it will not be so.

Mother had always told Branwen never to venture too close to the mountains even though Braith was sturdy and nimble. Her coat was speckled - hence her name - and her eyes, those deep brown pools, were docile and brilliant. That docility extended to her temperament, for she'd never thrown her off even when she was five and had tugged upon the reins too harshly while urging her to quicken.

Of course, this did not mean that Braith lacked tempestuousness. She was born of the sea, after all. Not like her cousins, those ceffylau dŵr whose seaweed-sticky coats hostaged unfortunate souls until the swollen waves swallowed them whole.

No. Instead, her coat was whiter than those white horses which cantered and trotted upon the waves. “Smoke-silver,” Bendigeidfran whispered, grinning joyously, when they were younger and joined at the hip, as he plaited Braith's mane after a long day’s ride, “like those ravens Da found in the cliffs.”

“Those ravens,” so their Da had murmured late at night with a merry twinkle in his eye long afore Euroswydd had imprisoned him within sea and stone, before Efnisien had even darkened their door, “gave you and your brother your names. He ‘blessed,’ for one was a runt just as Brân seemed to be, and you ‘white.’ Your mam thinks they were an omen and I cannot dissuade her.”

She smiles wistfully, heart clenching with a fierce longing. That had been when she was but a child. Wild. Carefree. Filling her head with infantile dreams of never marrying, of racing Braith through the waves. She wished forever for her hair to remain salt-matted, for her gown's sodden hems to cling to her chilled ankles, like she was Rhiannon's sea-song double.

And, during the night, Branwen swore, she heard them braying their council across the waters.

Now she is a woman grown, married, reined in. A red-gold ring encloses her porridge finger; a pretty, fragile jewel. ‘In some ways,’ she reasons, 'I am too. Begat upon one man and bestowed upon another. Gods, had I an inkling that this was Aerfen's plan for me then I would've wished for the sea's maw to consume me.’

Her father would've greeted her without outstretched arms, she is certain, were he not dwelled in a dark hovel within a chasm. Nine fathoms deep it lies, so Euroswydd had crowed after he'd brought the deed about, snatching her mother away. He had brought her back three months later, her belly apple-round, her sea mist eyes dimmed.

Thereafter, Efnisien had followed.

And with him came a bloody, calamitous ravaging.

Matholwch's eyes, cold, hard, leaden, had raked over her the night afore their bestowal, assessing her body the way a man does a breeding mare. She'd overheard him late at night, chortling with his men as they huddled around the fires, their bellies fat on her brother's mead and meat, pronouncing her to be “of fine stock” - although he had not said so within Brân's earshot.

Not even he would've been so asinine as to say so around Bendigeidfran Morddwyd Tyllion. (So called, for the limp a spear wound he'd received upon his right thigh whilst training had left him with. Thereafter, his men had roared his epithet with all the furore of a thousand ravens’ caws.)

‘Perhaps,’ she ruminates, fully aware of the way her body conjures up the phantom press of his body over hers, skin goose-downing with how he'd pressed her into their mattress face down, snorting and rutting like a great stallion, ‘that is why my husband had been so hasty to set course for his domains that morning, lest his spittle-flecked lips run away with him.’

He'd paced her brother's halls like a restless gelding, tossing his head in blatant disapproval, having taken up the task expeditiously soon after they’d married, thumbing a strand of white horse hair, thick, blood-spattered, as he did. “I wish to wing over the waves in the manner of a starling above a wood. To prevent my ships from doing so is an insult of the utmost degree!” he had roared while his men crooned platitudes to him behind the doors of their marriage chamber.

Manawydan, gentle, mouse-like, had tiptoed in, anxious to tenderise her new lord's heart. Candlelight raked across the walls, meagre, watery. Branwen was denied entry, stuck fidgeting her wedding band's bloody wound.

Presently, her heart trembles as Matholwch's voice rises. “And I would hope, my lord-” he spits his courtesies like poison - “that you of all your brothers would not impede my path.”

Through the door Manawydan laughs, strained though it is. “Efnisien's deed was his own, lord. Neither I nor my brother will allow you to depart until our sister has either quitted you, or you have quitted your vessels. You will not prevent her. To do so would be at your men's cost.”

Branwen shudders. Though it is couched in politeness the threat is sharply spoken. Testing the waters, cautious in the same manner as when dealing with a riptide, that's Dan.

Standing by the window, she watches listlessly, swaying on the balls of her feet, as the men feed the fires more wood. The rich velvet drapes ripple in the sea breeze and, through the open shutters, smoke wafts, thick and sour, mingling with ash's chaff. She cannot help but recoil, having to grip the windowsill for stability as her stomach lurches. Decay tangs her tongue. She presses a hand to her mouth, battling the urge to gag. Tears twinge her salt-stung eyes.

Upon seeing her distress, her husband - who has vacated their chamber after yanking the door open - strides over, skin as pallid as freshly milled oats. Hay's sweetness clings to him. She wants to move, to brush past him and up the hall towards her rooms, those summer-years’ sanctums, but alas he curls around her, impeding her movement.

“My lord-” Her cheeks burn as her voice cracks.

“Shh.” His freckle-dappled hands stroke down her sweaty flanks, whispering soothing words in a too soft voice. “I know, mo chara. All is well.” Up close, his blackened teeth bear resemblance to a horse's. Ground down, they are, too, like weathered cairn stones.

A lump chokes her throat.

Outside the men heave away the last few shovelfuls of her husband's mounts ashes.

Then, with a kind of gentle ceremony, they lower Braith's body onto the pyre.

Her bloodied mane chars. Silver curls, crisps. Flames lick her slashed fetlocks, her bulging, lidless eyes, the fatty white of the remnants of her twitching lips. Her guttural screams of panic had split the frigid midwinter air. Blood had coated her stall, the courtyard, the tack. All morning Branwen has smelt blood.

He, the firstborn son of moon and magic, a porpoise's babe, a sea swell's lad, often bounced amongst the waves, locked in an embrace that was as comforting as it was disconcerting. Their rhythm pulsed through his body, shoring up his blood. His heart, that syncopated-swell, beat joyously in his chest afore he even knew his name, his bloodline, his kin.

Dylan, they called him. Dylan Ail Don. He of the wave, the salt spit splash, the ever-churning currents, the wrathful waves, and yet he was always borne by the tide. Not aloft like those birds sailing through the sky like wool tossed in a breeze, but beaten back again and again, like a bobbing coracle.

He knows, when he is fourteen and old enough to be called man, to be named god, to send waves up salt flats and rivers, esturies and streams, that he has a twin. A aureate, kingly half to his own segmented, battered shell. A brother, in fact. Lleu. He is golden-crowned and tawny-eyed; an eagle in every aspect, and men whisper of him from Ynys Môn to Caerdydd, from Gwynedd - for that is the seat of Lleu's blood kin and his own, or so his uncle had told him, gesturing all the while with his dented hammer, when he'd been chrysalised in soot and riven with sweat in their cramped forge - to Morgannwg, where once, so the waves roared when he submerged in them, his other uncle had once claimed to hail from when he'd visited Dylan's mother. Gods had whispered louder, harsher, embittered and embattled, of transgressions between them.

"The moon wept its chalky tears for a full week, bachgen," a fisherman lisped through broken teeth as they sat together on the rickety wooden harbour, his brows knotted. "And not even our offerings soothed her."

Dylan smiles thinly. Seagulls screech, splintering the silence. Of course, he knows precisely *why* the moon had done so. His uncle, stormy aspected though he was, had never shied away from precisely *who* the moon goddess was or who his magic-veined uncle purported to be.

(Dylan does not believe a god like Gwydion Blaidd would ever be so... monstrous. Not when his tongue is honey and his voice is velvet. So, he nods, subdued, and twiddles his thumbs together, watching as his uncle spits blackly into the fire, like a lump of coal has loosened from his belly.)

No. Dylan does not believe that his uncle Gwydion would be monstrous.

But men lurk in animal skins. And animals lurk in mens.

(Curses rattle through Gofannon's lungs, although the smith dares not speak them. His older brother is cunning, has been ever since he warped and twisted Gilfaethwy's mind the way fire does to iron. Shale-eyed and sharp-toothed, and as cutting as an axe's blade, Gwydion is all that and more. There is a reason, Gofannon thinks, why men fear wolves, and why wolves favour the moon. They hunger, that is the weft and the weave of it. Aranrhod's milky fingers had scrabbled at the door, beating, clawing, begging-)

(His sea-blooded nephew writhes beneath his boot like a fish upon a line. His fingers claw the leather of his sooty boots.