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Emrys woke and slept and woke and slept and each time, she sat watching him and came to his side to place her fingers on his wrist or neck and wipe the sweat from his brow. He woke once to her prodding at the red flesh of his wound and observed.
Brushing away the scab forming, she sniffed at it and muttered to herself. Reaching into her pockets, she pulled out a leaf that she chewed into a paste and reached into another pocket and pulled out some reddish moss that Emrys had never seen before. An expression so serious, so focused, that she didn’t notice Emrys had woken. She spat the paste into her hand and formed it into a line about as thick as his wound then pressed that into the moss in her other hand. With great care, she pressed the moss over the entire area.
A burning cold bite caused him to wince and she pressed it firm, ensuring none of it slipped off. She muttered some more words over him while holding the moss tightly over his wound. Eyes closed as if in prayer, she held her hand there.
His head no longer swimming and the pain no longer causing him to swoon, Emrys said, “Who are you?”
The slightest reaction. He surprised her and took some gratification in that. She said, “I’m the shadow of the laird.”
“His half-sister?”
She snorted. “Do I sound or look like his sister?”
“A druid then.”
Her head bounced from side to side. “That is not so wrong though also perhaps a misunderstanding. For one, I do not wear the white.”
“Druids are more than clothes.”
“They call you unbeliever.”
“Who?”
She shrugged, the indifference clear in her posture as she pulled her hands away from the moss. “Do not remove that.”
“What is it?”
“Will heal you.”
“Why?”
“Properties within the plant. They—”
“No,” Emrys sighed. “Why are you healing me?”
“Do you wish to be dead?”
“My wound was killing me?”
“Worse.”
“I had dreams. Of the lord of bone.”
“Still?”
Emrys ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to recall the feverish, fitful dreams he’d had since she discovered his blackened wound given to him by the boneblade Home from across the forest. Aswim through pain, through blackness, but no images stuck to him. His dreams came and fled like tattered fabric blown by a gale. “Don’t think so.”
She nodded. “That is good. If you dream again of the lord of bone,” she shook her head. “He is not one worth dreaming about.”
Emrys snorted. “Suppose you’ve met him.”
“Would never be so foolish.”
“You’ve never been to Chalon Forest?”
“All go to Chalon. Not all are so foolish as to draw the attention of the lord of bone.”
“Met Black Goda too.”
Her scowl deepened. “I do not know this one. Another god of the forest?”
It pleased Emrys, in a childish way, to know something she didn’t. The question surprised him, however. He had not thought of Goda or the lord of bone in that way. “What makes a god?”
“This is the land of gods. You have so many.”
He’d never heard that before. “Who calls this the land of the gods?”
“Have you never left home, boy?”
“You’re Owain’s shadow. Shouldn’t you know?”
“Some questions are asked out of politeness.”
Emrys snorted. Just like his father. Like all of Matauc. “He sent you to train me in the ways of the shadow. The bastard son to watch over his true born brothers.”
“Yes.”
She had noticed none of his sarcasm or she ignored it. Her expression remained serious, intent. He said, “Is this a game? I ask endlessly and learn nothing while you gloat and congratulate yourself?”
“Could learn some humility.”
“Owain has given me at least that.”
“It may be his favorite lesson to dole out.”
The smile came to Emrys. “So. What is this? Who are you? What are you to teach me?”
She sighed and got up from where she crouched beside the bed. Standing over him, she turned to the window, black with night. “Your father has told you that you are to be your brother’s shadow. Bleddyn will need you when it comes time to rule but he will need you most when your father dies.” She turned back to him. “Owain rests precariously atop Matauc. Without Ariana, he would have remained a minor branch of the family and many remember his place before the death of Emlyn. Had Emlyn’s sons not died abroad fighting along the Eire coast for nothing but glory and blackened stone, your father may have had his happiness. Instead, he fought for power and now must walk the dangerous path while tempests rage on all sides.”
“My mother?”
She nodded. “Or some other. He loved her most, yes. Or so he tells himself, if nothing else. If he remained what he was born to, he may have called you son. None would have cared.”
“Suppose that’s a comfort.”
“If you say so.”
Emrys turned to the window and swallowed. The cold burn radiated out from his wound, which he supposed meant it worked. “Did you know my mother?”
“Yes.”
He hadn’t expected that. Only asked to find the limits of this. The start of it. How all of this came back round to him. The tears came before his question did and he wiped them away, sniffed. “Was she happy?” He could not look at her. Could not bear to see her respond.
Owain’s shadow waited a moment before responding. “That question may seem quite important to you now, Emrys, my fool, but it is not. Do you know who asks about happiness?”
Emrys kept his eyes on the window full of black night to keep from looking at her. The fire cracked and burned and licked against the flickering shadows cast against the wall. He watched her shadow then and found it almost funny. The shadow of a shadow.
She said, “Your mother did not think like you. She did not have time to wonder if she was happy or fulfilled or if this was the life she wanted. It was her life. Simple as that. Would she have changed it?” Her shadow shrugged. “Had she wanted a different life, she would have chosen one.”
“She was a slave.”
“No. Owain freed her before you were born. No one would have kept her from leaving.”
Emrys swallowed. Everything hurt. Everything so opaque. “Why did she stay?”
“Look at me.”
The tears rolled down his cheeks. He pawed at them, squeezed his eyes shut to slow them, to stop them, then rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyesockets. Blooms of black and white and grey, like expanding circles, grew in the dark behind his eyelids.
“Look at me, Emrys.”
He did. Her expression had softened. All sternness washed clean of her small features. A button nose, big eyes, a wide mouth. She looked like no one. Like she could be anyone. Her eyes darted across his face, as if she saw there what she hoped he’d see on her face.
“Ah, Emrys,” she slumped where she stood. “You do not know even where she was from, do you?”
She did the strangest thing then.
She sang. In a language unknown to him but the melody struck him. A melody, a lullaby, he had known all his life. Since before memory. Out of the black gauze of his soul came the lullaby his mother sang throughout his childhood.
His body remembered and reacted. He loosened, relaxed, even as dread followed, as if led in by the lowering of his guard. He closed his eyes and let the melody surround him, soak through him, heal him. He had never thought of those sounds his mother made as words or as anything but the sound of a mother, the song of love, the murmur of one heart teaching another how to beat, how to live.
When she finished, she wiped the sweat from his forehead but left the tears on his cheeks.
He said, “Where was she from?”
“Does not matter any longer. She chose here, Emrys. She chose him. Chose you.”
It was that final word more than the pain, more than the lullaby, more than all else, that broke him. He brought his knees up towards his face and wept into his hands, forehead pressed against his knees.
She did not climb into bed to comfort him or reach a hand to steady him but instead sang another lullaby from his mother in that language he had never even considered anything but sounds for a song, boats to carry melody.
He woke again with sunlight streaming in through the window. His bladder full, he felt strong enough to walk once more. Not caring that she watched him still from the corner, he emptied his bladder into the night pot, which had been drained of his last piss. Climbing back in bed, he pulled the sweaty bedding around him, covered himself in the heavy blankets. “Will you always be watching me?”
“You’ll be better soon.”
“What’s your name?”
“Fionnuala.”
He snorted. “What a name.”
“Fiona will do.”
“Will.”
“Are you ready to begin your training?”
“What training is that?”
She smiled. “Some call it magic.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You, unbeliever, doubt me?” She laughed. A quiet, gentle sound. Musical. She came alive, her face more mobile and all of her body in motion even as she sat there.
“You needn’t mock me.”
“You will have to believe in something, boy. May as well believe in this.” She snapped her fingers and the flames flashed bright for moment.
It startled Emrys and he lurched to the side. “Seen that before. Seen a hundred magicians claiming incredible powers. Just like the druids. Liars, all of them.”
She shrugged, still smiling. She’d found her happiness, Emrys supposed. Teasing and mocking him while she cured him of the poison blackness the lord of bone injected inside his body. Her hands wove through the air in fast, complicated movements and the firelight of the room changed. He felt it against his skin like a brush of wind. He turned to the fire.
It would take Emrys many days to come to terms with what he saw there in the flickering flames. It was as if the fire shifted into the shape of a toddler. This strange fiery child grabbed its left leg and yanked it from the burning wooden logs and nearly fell as the right remained caught. Stepping out from the fire to the brick fireplace, its arms wrapped round its right leg and it pulled and pulled until it freed itself. Turning to face Emrys, the fire seemed to lean to the side, cocking the flames making its head.
“What is this?”
Fionnuala said nothing.
The fire shook and shivered and grew until it was the height of a young boy. Then the size of Bleddyn and it kept growing until it stood there about the size of Emrys. Despite the size of the fire standing there in the shape of a man, in the shape of Emrys himself, the heat had not increased. He turned to Fionnuala but she only smiled, watching.
“It’s not burning.”
Fionnuala laughed. “Oh?”
“It’s not hot.”
“Would not recommend touching it.”
“How are you doing this?”
“Magic.”
Emrys snorted and began some cutting remark but the flame leapt onto the bed, a fiery foot planting right beside Emrys. Shocked, he lurched away to the edge of the bed and began tumbling over, but the flame leapt past him and into the far wall. While Emrys fell from the bed, the fire smashed into that same wall just above him where it lost its singular solidity and instead burst into a thousand smaller fires raining down upon him.
These flames, hot as cinders, burnt him but they also leapt away on tiny legs. All these tiny fires ran around his room where they fell to ash or combined together, growing, until they were toddler sized once more.
Emrys pushed himself up, brushing at the soot, the burns, and watched as the toddler bowed deeply towards him.
Fionnuala clapped her hands together and the fire dissolved, like a great gale swept through the room, blowing it out.
Emrys swallowed. Knew none of this was possible.
And yet.
The burns on his skin were real. The scorches to the bedding, too. He said, “How did you do this?”
Her smile remained and she leaned forward from her seat in the corner, pushing her face into the light. “Would you like to learn?”