Check out the Table of Contents.
Or start here: Chapter I.
Manage your subscriptions here.
When Emrys woke the next morning, it was not to Fionnuala’s silent presence but Owain knocking on his door. Before Emrys could answer, his father entered. “Get up. Get dressed. I’ve a job for you.”
Emrys obeyed and was soon following Owain through the halls to the guest chambers where five of the strangers sat at a table eating porridge. They smiled and raised their hands when he entered and rose from their chairs, but Owain gestured them to sit, to continue eating. The woman so interested in Ariana’s arm sat among them cleaning her glasses with a small handkerchief.
“She convinced them,” Emrys said.
Owain snorted. “The rest left.”
“How many were they?”
“About seventy.”
“Five must be the minimum required to make their skywhale fly.”
Owain scowled at the word. “Skywhale,” he snorted. “Metal monstrosity. While they’re here, we’ll investigate it. See how it’s made. How it works.”
“You’ll steal from them.”
“You may not realize it but that thing is a weapon. Maybe not to them but to anyone who laid eyes on it. Either we learn to wield and make that weapon or we risk being crushed beneath it. No skywhales will save us.”
Emrys had realized it. Couldn’t help but understand the implication of a flying machine and what that might mean for warfare, for politics.
“I want you to learn from them.”
“Can’t even talk to them.”
“Learn that, too. They may have flown here on a weapon but these are not warriors. They’re like you. Aspiring witches tinkering with metal and fire and harnessing greater power to perform unbelievable feats. You and Fionnuala, you’re no different than them. Just different paths to the same endpoint. Power.”
“Curiosity—”
“Is a seed that sprouts power. You may only seek to know and understand but there will always be men like me behind you.” He put a hand on the back of Emrys’ neck and gave him a gentle squeeze.
Emrys turned to Owain then but Owain kept watching the strangers eat. “Never forget who I am or what I demand of you for there is a man like me behind them. Behind everything. Even your University that you dream of. It may be full of noble men and women toiling for truth, for understanding, attempting to build bridges. But the man behind that University wants those bridges for war and conquest, not for doling out treats and spreading his wealth.”
Emrys didn’t bother to contradict him. Knew it would go nowhere. Just circles where all things led back to himself. It was the comforting lie he’d come to know from so many.
Rather than face their own failings, people instead generalized them across all people.
And so Emrys said nothing but only wondered how he would do anything of value with people who could not communicate. Not only did they not share a language, Emrys didn’t even know what language they spoke.
In the day that followed, while Owain’s men and women studied the mechanical skywhale, while the rest of the clan continued celebrating Gynhaeaf, Emrys made little progress with the strangers. He learned what he believed their names were.
The pink man with red sideburns and moustache but a bald head was Benoit. Claude was the young man with the oil stained shirt and fingers. The huge man with tattoos like woad covering his forearms in geometric patters was Lyosha and the woman forever at his side was Yana. And the woman with the glasses touched her chest and said, “Mari.”
Emrys nearly fell over at the sweetness of her voice when she said her name. A soft, gentle huskiness that stirred desire within Emrys. He touched his own chest and said, “Emrys.”
And she smiled. She smiled so wide, her whole face becoming animated as if this was a gift she had long waited for.
He learned nothing else that day and when he returned to his room, Fionnuala stood in her usual corner and told him he was late.
“Where you been?”
“There’s a festival going on, Emrys.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m tired.”
“The greatest threat to your people in generations falls from the sky and into your home and you wish to sleep it away. Do you not see the danger for your brothers?”
“It can wait until morning.”
“Can you protect them come morning? This one or the next? Or shall their enemies wait until you’ve rested and eaten and had the decades required to learn all that you must know?”
Emrys tried until late into the night.
Though he failed repeatedly, Fionnuala said, “You’re progressing quite well.”
“I keep failing.”
“But you fail better each day.” She pressed her palm to his chest. “Do you feel the power in you here? It grows. You learn control. Perhaps too much control. You’ll need to let go of some in order to release the power within you. Once you move past the fear of torching yourself alive from the inside, you’ll be able to make the fire again. After that, the training will truly begin.”
The words, though meant as encouragement, depressed Emrys. He had not yet begun. Weeks and he remained at the very start. Not even the start. The space before the beginning.
The next day, he took the strangers to the Gynhaeaf fair after spending half an hour lifting objects and saying their name while Mari said their names in her language. It may have been progress but such a slow and stuttering form that it would take the rest of their lives to speak with one another this way.
It was the last day of Gynhaeaf and if he was to remain in Matauc land, he may as well enjoy himself. Let them enjoy themselves as well. They may not speak the language but music and dance were beyond language. He didn’t think it would help but it might and it gave him and them something to do besides stare at one another with encouraging smiles.
As soon as they entered the fairground, Lyosha pulled out a fistful of coins and counted them in his huge palm. Bigger even than Alwyn, he towered over even the highlanders. Could’ve passed for one of them if he could speak the language. He had the right beard and size for them. Only the clothes didn’t match. After counting his coins, he said something in a language that seemed different from the one Mari had spoken to him.
Only Yana laughed and the two of them walked away from the rest and into the crowd. After walking deeper into the fair, Claude and Benoit saw a pack of Traveler women and followed them, leaving Emrys and Mari together. Emrys waited for her to go with her companions but she stayed by his side and muttered something under her breath. Then she hooked her arm round Emrys’ and said something that sounded encouraging. Emrys placed his hand on hers and kept walking.
The fire burned within him. His thoughts sloshed and his entire body felt loose and unstable, like his legs might give out at any moment. Thankful for the cold bite of late autumn because it kept him from sweating.
He led her towards singing, towards the cookfires and stalls. When they got close enough to hear the words of the song, a circle formed round them all at once and a handful of dancers wove through the circle.
Mari laughed and Emrys wanted to hold onto it. Bottle it. Capture it in some way to keep with him always. And then she turned to him and he saw her eyes even through the dark glasses. Smiling, she took his other hand and swung before him and began spinning, pulling him along with her so the two of them spun circles through the circle of other dancers as the flute jostled them along and the fiddle sawed a jig. When the drumming began, she ceased the rapid spinning and instead led him through a dance.
There was no kicking or difficult footwork, but instead a sequence of steps in and away. Their chests nearly touched and he could look nowhere but at her face. Her smile. And then she pushed away, their hands still held, and she turned to the left, stepping out, then to the right, stepping out again, and finally back to him, their chests almost touching. Their faces breathing the same air for the briefest moment.
He said, “I love you,” and she laughed and he wondered if she understood and he wanted to take the words back but was hoping that those words, of all the things she might have understood in the time they’d spent together, were the ones to take root in her.
And she let go with one hand and pushed their other hand high and she twirled beneath it and he laughed, ecstatic, lost, his chest full of fire, full of hope, full of ease.
It was easy.
So easy.
And they danced until the song ended, her always leading him, the smile never leaving their faces, but she didn’t stay for another dance. Breathing heavy, she fanned her face with her free hand. The other remained in his. He held it gently, afraid to hold her tightly, but she made no move to take it back.
He led her to the counter where they could buy a drink and Ealar leaned over the counter and Aeronwen leaned towards him, and Emrys thought, for a moment, they shared the same glass.
Ealar glanced at him and then straightened but Aeronwen remained leaned over, watching him, her eyes roaming over him, her whole body captive to desire. It made Emrys self-conscious and he slipped his hand from Mari’s.
Ealar didn’t seem to recognize him and asked him what he wanted. He ordered two meads and he called back to the big man who had given him the silver chain with the delicately wrought leaf.
As soon as Ealar spoke, Mari exclaimed and leapt into the same language as Ealar.
This shocked him so thoroughly that he nearly fell over. He said something to her and that was when Aeronwen took in the world around her once more. Seeing Mari, a rival for Ealar’s attention, her mouth puckered. She saw Emrys then. “Cousin, where you been?”
“About my father’s business.”
She snorted. Her attention focused on Ealar speaking animatedly with Mari. Emrys knew the jealousy within her because it matched his own. “Who’s she?”
“She came on the flying machines.”
“She a Traveler?”
Emrys shrugged and the big man noticed him. His face transformed, his smile taking over his entire face. “Brother!” He set the glasses of mead on the counter and took Emrys’ hand. “Brother.” He clapped him on the shoulder and turned back to his work.
Emrys smiled and Ealar said, “Ah, you’re the boy from the other day.”
The smile shrank to be called a boy in front of Mari. Dislike for Ealar erupted within him but he pulled the leaf out from his tunic. “We still brothers?” The heat in his voice was unmistakable, uncontrollable. He handed Mari her glass of mead.
Ealar blinked. “Course.”
Aeronwen said, “She a Traveler too?”
Ealar laughed. “No. Not even a little bit.”
“She speaks your language.”
“Shockingly.”
“Thought that was a secret. Not for outsiders.”
Ealar’s smile took on a new meaning as he leaned closer to Aeronwen. “Jealous so soon?”
Aeronwen snorted. “She’s old. Know what they say about women that age unmarried.”
“No.” Ealar said to Emrys, “Where’d you find her?”
“Came from the sky.”
Ealar scowled and studied her as she sipped her mead. He said something to her and they spoke for a time before he turned back to Emrys. “She says you’re her guide.”
He shrugged.
“You two can’t speak though.”
“Presents a problem.”
“What,” Aeronwen said, dragging attention back to herself, “does she want?”
Ealar and Mari spoke for another minute and they both laughed. The big man turned and began speaking with Mari as well, and conversation flowed freely between them.
Ealar said, “Think she’s desperate for conversation. She wants to know about you people here.”
Emrys said, “What you tell her?”
He smiled and let his hand drift to Aeronwen’s arm, where he grazed his fingertips against her skin in a swirling pattern. “Told her I don’t know anything about any of you.”
She snorted, smiling. “Flirt.”
“Will you teach me her language?”
“Don’t know her language.”
“Teach me yours then.”
Ealar’s smiled faded and he stopped stroking Aeronwen. “Don’t know what you’re asking.”
Aeronwen said, “They don’t speak to outsiders.”
“Call it a safety measure.” The smile didn’t return to his lips. “If you want to know our language, you’ll have to come with us. Become our true brother.”
“Told me,” Aeronwen said, “that you wouldn’t teach me even if I came with you.”
“No, I told you that you wouldn’t leave your family.”
Emrys didn’t care about their new infatuations or any of this. He said, “Then be my translator.”
He shook his head. “Leaving tomorrow.”
“I’ll pay you. The laird will pay you.”
“This is why you can’t come with me,” he said to Aeronwen and stood up to his full height.
“I’m not a laird’s daughter.”
“You’ve no idea what it is to be despised.”
Aeronwen scowled. “You know nothing of me.”
“Maybe so.” He turned to Emrys. “Our language is our life and our life is the road. You want one, you must take the other. You’ve been given the invitation,” he pointed to the leaf round Emrys’ neck, then lifted his own. “You may become our brother in truth whenever you wish, but until you become our brother, you will know nothing of us.”
The big man and Mari laughed at something she said.
“Then how’d she—”
“Want me to ask?”
Aeronwen grabbed her half-full glass of mead and threw its contents at him and left without a glance backwards.
Mari and the big man stopped talking and turned to Ealar as he wiped the mead from his face.
He shrugged at Emrys, like this happened to him all the time. He spoke to Mari for a time. Emrys waited, hoping to learn something. Anything.
Ealar told him that Mari spoke Faro.
“What’s that?”
Ealar shrugged. “She said it’s south and east of her, across the seas.”
“You’ve never been.”
“I’ve never left our little island here. My whole world,” he stretched his arms wide, taking in the surroundings, the whole of the Shattered Isles.
“How’s she know your tongue?”
“Wouldn’t say.”
Mari smiled at Emrys and none of it mattered anymore. He listened to her talk with the Travelers and then she began to talk to him through Ealar, who quickly lost interest in facilitating a conversation that he was not actively involved in. Without a way to speak directly, they made their way through the fair, dancing, laughing, and knowing nothing of the other’s words.