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The green man led them through the forest. Walking along the path, winding this way and that, the green man sang his nonsense songs in a galloping, joyous sort of melody. Emrys bounced along to it, paying less and less attention to where they went.
Alwyn shifted Rhian in his arms.
Emrys whispered, “Need some help?”
Alwyn grunted and lifted her higher, adjusting his grip so that both hands met and held one another. “S’all right, Birdie.” He spoke through strain, sweat marking his face.
The green man stopped walking and singing and they stopped with him. “Oh, ho ho, here we be. Welcome to me home, me bairns.”
The path went on past them and Emrys saw nothing but the walls of trees on either side. He looked past the green man, who stood between two trees angled towards one another as if they caught each other as they fell, but saw only the darkness, the silver bark of more trees.
Cerys sucked in a breath but Sian said, “Where is it?” Her voice quiet, just loud enough for all gathered to hear.
The green man whistled and laughed. “Ho ho ho, ye cannot see what ye cannot believe. Fear, oh says I, says I, blinds ye to the truth before your face.” He waved his hand through the air and tapped his stave against the space between the angled trees.
And it rapped against the solid darkness. The darkness rippled, like a drop falling in still water. Emrys opened his mouth to ask if this was magic but the home took shape while he opened his eyes wider and wider. A small shack struggling, or so it seemed, to remain standing emerged from the blackness and swirling foggy fingers.
Cerys said, “It’s beautiful.”
Rhosyn said, “Is it?”
Alwyn said, “Can you not see it?”
Rhosyn spat. “See it fine.”
“Oh, ho, oh,” said the green man. “Less than ye hoped but more than ye should expect to find out hyere so says I, oh says I. Come, me bairns.” He rapped his stave against the blackened wood of the door and pushed it open.
Without hesitating, Cerys and Alwyn ducked and followed him through. Sian and Rhosyn looked at Emrys, who shrugged and watched them enter.
He followed them all down into the home. He hadn’t expected that, but down they went several steps until they came to a large and spacious home. But for an earthen floor and walls of earth and mud with a roof shaped from living trees, the green man’s home would have set well beside any of the homes Emrys had ever seen. Furniture like any human home but all of it grown rather than built. The large table at the center of the hall and its accompanied chairs appeared to be a living tree. Growing parallel to the earth, its branches forming large cupped shapes for a person to sit. The same was true of the other chairs and the ornate bed seemingly made from leaves.
The green man sat at the table and stretched a large hide map over his table. “Oh, ho, oh, ho ho,” he stabbed his gnarled green finger into the map. “Hyere we be, so says I, oh says I.” He dragged his finger across a vast stretch of white representing the forest. “Hyere is where ye want to be, for the forest is not for such as ye. The lord of bones and the rest caught yer scent and they shan’t give up on a hunt no matter which gods ye cry and beg to.”
Cerys walked along the wall, trailing her fingers against the rough surface while Rhosyn, Alwyn, and Sian crowded round the map. Beside it, on the table, lay Rhian.
Sian said, “How do we get there?”
The green man cocked his head. “Ye cannot.”
“Why?”
He scowled. “Ye’re human. The trees will nay let ye pass.”
“What?”
“Oh, ho, oh, I shan’t let ye stay neither,” he said, his voice growing deeper. “Stay too long and ye may survive but not before ye blossom verdant and let loose what hold kin and humanity have.” He whistled and tapped the map. “Looks deceive for what seems far is only a blind walk away, oh says I, so says I. For now, ye must rest, oh yes, rest and recoup for the night is long and full of terrors. Come along,” he gestured to the seats, “and old man I shall tell you a tale of the lands swallowing ye.”
Emrys looked to the others. Alwyn, Sian, and Rhosyn sat at the table they leaned over, all three of them with their eyes on Rhian who lay motionless but for her steady breathing.
Cerys drifted around the room, her fingers playing against the wall while she stared up into the living roof of the green man’s home. She came to the far end of the room and the wall opened at her touch. “What’s this back here?”
“Labyrinth,” the green man said, his voice deep and thick.
Cerys stepped back from the opening and then moved on, leaving the wall ajar to whatever the labyrinth was.
“Will she ever wake up?”
Sian snapped her head to Emrys. “Yes.”
Rhosyn reached over and put her hand over Rhian’s. “But will she?”
“She will,” Alwyn said. So intent was his expression as he watched the unconscious woman that Emrys wanted to pull him aside, tell him to remember himself.
Emrys had never been in love. Not in a serious way. But watching Alwyn watch Rhian, he felt a pang in his chest. A constriction. He swallowed, sniffed, and opened his mouth to speak.
But the green man spoke in a strange voice. Less singsong and more subdued, edged with longing. Deep and sonorous. A voice shaped by the depths, by isolation, by the vast claustrophobic forest. He, too, watched Rhian. “Long ago, there lived a woman named Caoimhe. A daughter of the syunne if ever one did live, but her father was the great god Eluvier, worshipped by the Old Ones south of Chalon.”
Sian said, “Kind of a name’s Eluvier?”
Rhosyn hissed at her to shut up.
The green man continued. “Was a god’s name. Older than humanity. Older than language. What kind of a name had he? Well, he had his own name, oh says I, so says I. Though he be forgotten in the south, his children wander still these unhumaned lands. Ye can tell them by their antlers.”
Emrys was not the only one to react, but the green man took no notice. He faced away from Emrys and he knew the green man watched Rhian.
A tingling fear at the back of his neck. The green man lured them to this place.
And as the green man spoke, his voice became less ethereal and strange, his cadence less melodic. “Caoimhe, oh Caoimhe, envy of the gods, beloved by all who looked upon her, whether they be man or woman or beast. Her joy shined across the land turning the highlands into a neverending summer. Year after year, the syunne did shine and the rains did come but only when necessary and even the night touched only briefly upon our sleeping eyelids, for the sister moons wore their jealousy and the syunne was loathe to let her favorite daughter out of sight.
“She grew into a woman and even the blind took note for when she laughed the wind blew gently and when she sang even the birds stopped their flying to listen and when she danced the syunne shone all the brighter so none were there in all the world like Caoimhe, sweet Caoimhe. Even her father, mighty Eluvier, turned his great eyes upon her and sought to claim her.
“He came in all his dark glory, glittering blackly, and said to her, ‘Dear daughter, I desire thee.’ But Caoimhe rebuffed him so kindly, so sweetly, so gently that he came away more pleased than had he sated his lust.
“All men of the highlands followed after and hunted her love but there was one above all men who journeyed over mountains and across the narrow seas of the distant souths following the echo of her voice carried along by the wind to those long, distant, syunneless shores she called her home. ‘Goda am I, says I,’ she said to Caoimhe. ‘Wilt thou honor me?’”
“They lay down in the heather and the clover and found the sources of honey within one another. And Goda told Caoimhe, ‘I want never to let thee go,’ and Caoimhe said, ‘Never let me go,’ and Goda never did for a year and a day. For all those endless summer days did they taste the honey of love and let it ferment into the golden glow of mead washing over the life they dreamt of for the many lifetimes they promised to one another. And it was the taking of such endless vows that caught the attention of the lord of bone on his skull throne.
“He caught scent of the lovers in a field of grass high enough to hide in and there he did observe their touches and words, their songs and dances, the wondrous worship of one another’s honey where thee and thou were always passed between their lips. The lord of bone, after a week and a day, revealed himself in one of the brief moments when Caoimhe was alone while Goda slept beside her. He said, ‘I desire thee.’ And though Caoimhe had rebuffed a thousand and a thousand more she had never encountered the lord of bone.
“When Goda woke cold and alone with the leaves falling from the trees for the first time since Caoimhe’s birth, she wandered the fens and moors and glens and the settlements in between seeking her but none knew and none could believe the misfortune of the brutal winter falling swiftly upon them and blanketing the land with icy winds and snow blanketing the landscapes.
“In those days, she became known as Goda the Sleepless or Cursed Goda. And so the people of the highlands avoided her and she took to the night seeking only her stolen heart. For she knew Caoimhe had not abandoned her.
“And there in the sky high above Chalon shined the strangest lights. Rivers of purple and blue and red snaking across the stars and on the wind blowing wintry from the distant endless north brought the faintest echo of her voice, Come to me and run to me and never let me go. So spake the wind and so Cursed Goda the Sleepless journeyed north.
“Along the way Eluvier appeared before her and demanded word of his daughter but Cursed Goda knew nothing but for the northern lights shining through the nights. ‘Taken from me, says I,’ said Goda. ‘But I shall take her back, though all the gods—yourself included, great antlered one—may stand afore me. Nothing shall turn me from my course for my heart belongs to only one.’”
“And great Eluvier thought that was good. He pulled one of his antlers from his skull and released a fount of ichor that burned through the snow and penetrated the soil beneath where dozens of flowers blossomed and died and from that brief creation sprouted what would one day become one of the ancient and ageless FatherTrees. ‘Take this for thine heart and bring her back,’ said Eluvier, the one-horned. He gripped the antler in one hand and passed his other hand over it and the antler straightened into a single blade that his other two hands held out to her, to Cursed Goda.
“And when she took, it for take it she must, her arms scorched black and the blackening covered her whole body and so she became Black Goda, a name that would ring fear and echo across generations. And north she continued after Eluvier made his demands that numbered three: find her, lover her, kill her captor. ‘Aye, oh aye, says I,” said Goda.
“And she did not slow when she came to the forest’s boundary but plunged into the deep and the dark and the violent inhumanity. For days she toiled against the evershifting trees and the gods and monsters. They came by ones and two and then legion by legion only to break and scatter at the sight of Eluvier’s antler wielded like a sword by this strange woman. They came and they died and always the lord of bone watched though never did he show himself to Black Goda, Cursed Goda, Sleepless Goda.
“And sleepless she remained covered in the blood of her enemies who had taken an eye and then a hand and the rest of the arm but still she fought on. The tides of monsters seemingly endless and it was only when surrounded by thousands with the trees imprisoning her with their wooden arms and long claws that she gave up the sword forged from Eluvier’s flesh and instead opened her mouth to release her lament.
“None had heard her sing since before she left her home. Not even Caoimhe. Dear Caoimhe, beyond beauty was Caoimhe. And the sorrow pouring forth from Black Goda, Cursed Goda the Sleepless turned all of Chalon to weeping. The hoards and the legions gave up their attack and fell to their knees and wept for the love and the loss.
“And even the lord of bone on his skull throne shed a single tear.
“And when Goda the Bard’s song ended and her lungs heaved and the tears she shed thickened to blood pouring from her eyes to sizzle into the dirt, the soft gentle humming of love lost wrapped round her, carried there by the gentle breeze of a long promised spring. When Goda the Bard lifted her eyes she did not see the blossoming from her tears or the soft shining silver of their petals and leaves.
“And there she stood, Caoimhe, her long hair blowing in that same breeze, bringing Goda the Bard the scent of her love from beyond death. For when Goda ran to meet her, to hold her, to never let her go, she found only the phantomed flesh of her love and when new bloody tears sprang to her eyes, Caoimhe hushed her and told her that the lord of bone could not have her love and refused to take her by force and because never once did she submit though the lord of bone tortured her often, he had said, ‘If not me, then none,’ and he severed her hands and plucked out her eyes and made a necklace of her feet.
“Caoimhe, sweet Caoimhe, told Black Goda the Cursed that the lord of bone watched from his skull throne as she bled to death on his bone floor. ‘But I am free for thee,’ Caoimhe the Dead said, and Cursed Goda sang once more but exchanged death and lost love for the joy of life.
“And far beneath and across the membrane separating realms, the lord of bone shed yet one more tear. Flicking his terrible hand, he released his hold upon her soul and Cursed Goda reached out and touched Beloved Caoimhe. Solid and warm and real.
“And Cursed Goda took her hand and felt the familiar caress and the beautiful touch as the hand of Caoimhe the Beloved held hers. When he turned to go, she followed until they saw the edge of Chalon’s trees and the blanket of snow covering those mortal lands. There she stopped, rooted to the spot, and said, ‘I cannot leave for I have supped of this place and drank of her waters. I have become of this place and cannot go beyond without losing once more my body and soul to the lord of bone who owns all here.’
“Cursed Goda did not cry or weep or sing. Instead, she turned back and they lived long in the forest that became their world.”
In the telling, the green man’s skin flushed black as if the color bled out from deeper within him. His voice grew bitter and pained and strained, all music dying within him, and even the room of his home blackened despite the silver glow of the living bark all around and above.
Emrys watched the green man blackening and turned to his cousin, to the sisters, to Cerys, but all of them watched only the greenblack man.
After a time, the green man continued. “And when Beloved Caoimhe gave up her life on the edge of her father’s sword, Cursed Goda gave up her flesh and her womanhood for never again would she love in the body that held Beloved’s. And this new flesh he made from the blossoms and roots and growth of the forest was untouched and unknown by the lord of bone for all thoughts Cursed Goda followed Beloved into the realms beyond this one where all is one.”
While the greenblack man told his story, his voice growing bitter and solemn and sorrowful, they all watched. Yet none watched Rhian and none saw her wake.
Rhian sat up and Emrys, Sian, Rhosyn, and Cerys gasped as if startled awake. Alwyn only watched as she put her hand on the greenblack man’s gnarled hand and said with a voice half-asleep and fried from disuse, “I’m sorry.”
And then the greenblack man wept, his great bushy head falling to the table. Rhian lifted his chin and smiled with tears in her own eyes. “You have been so very brave.” She pulled him closer and he climbed atop the table to curl up in her lap, shuddering with tears, while she held him and said to him, “I won’t ever let you go, dearest. I’ll never let you go again.”