Celyn’s Childhood II

Llinos did not spend much time with Blodwen, who was a full decade older and entirely busy with adult things. She had finished her apprenticeship in the winery proper and had clearly constructed an ambition to pursue, about which she had a relentless sort of ferocity that Llinos actually admired, without having a clear sense of what might be worth pursuing. Blodwen was small - Cynog was the only one of the family that had inherited their father’s bulk, while the rest of them favored their mother - but always gave the impression of being twice as tall as she actually was.

All of which meant that Llinos was very startled when Blodwen turned up one day, hands on her hips, and said, “I hear you’re to apprentice with cousin Ilean and Tudur.”

“Mostly cousin Ilean,” Llinos said, after a moment. “Tudur says his knees don’t like to go up in the hills anymore.”

Blodwen sniffed her disapproval. “Well,” she said, “he’s not a Bettws for certain. Come on.”

“Blodwen?”

Blodwen did not wait; she strode purposefully past the common vegetable gardens and turned and Llinos had to scramble to keep up.

“What do you mean, not a Bettws?” Some people had family names, and some didn’t, and it didn’t matter much because everyone basically knew everyone in the village. Sometimes there was a need to distinguish - like Emrys of Nefyn was a different person from Emrys the Cooper or old Ithel and young Ithel - and sometimes jobs ran in families so the distinguishing marks stuck, but that was just normal. Llinos had not much thought about the fact of their family name, because it was hardly ever used anyway. There was only one Llinos in the village right now.

When Llinos caught up with Blodwen, Blodwen had picked up a pair of shortbows and a quiver of arrows and was waiting, foot tapping. “Come on.”

“What do you mean, not a Bettws?”

“You know the fairy sight runs in the family. Not for everyone,” Blodwen said. “I haven’t got it to speak of, and neither does Cynog. I probably oughtn’t use the name.” She gestured with the bow, and started off again towards the pastureland, taking steps quick enough that Llinos had to jog. “It’s an old name. Keepers of the bead-house.”

“Bead-house?”

“It’s an old word. For the families with the fairy sight.”

“Do I have beads? Do I need beads?”

“I don’t think so but maybe Tudur knows about it.” Blodwen shrugged and hopped over the fence into the pasture. “Pryce took the goats further out, we can shoot here.”

“Shoot?” Llinos spun in place, just to doublecheck that the goats were safely not present.

“You’re going to be going up in the hills. And I’m not going to let you do that when you can’t defend yourself at all. You’re small like me and Mama—”

“And Pryce.”

“Pryce is taller and has more muscle, but you’re right, he’s no Cynog.”

Llinos nodded firmly.

“That means you’re not likely to ever be able to depend on strength to keep yourself safe. But you have quick hands, and you pay attention, and that’ll make an archer of you.”

Llinos frowned. “You’re the only one who’s ever said I pay attention.”

Blodwen set one hand on her hip, the quiver dangling from her fingers. “You pay so much attention. You pay attention to birds. You paid enough attention to mushrooms that Gruff taught you how to tell the good ones from the bad. You pay attention to the sound of the wind and whether or not it means the fey are in a mood. You don’t pay attention to doing the same thing over and over again. That’s different.” She gestured with the bows. “Your problem is you have too much attention and you don’t know where to put it half the time.”

That only made Llinos frown more, and have to turn the thought around and around to determine how it felt. “Okay.”

Blodwen softened minutely. “How do you think I won my apprenticeship?”

“I … don’t know?”

“I do not have too much attention, but I have enough attention to see the whole vineyard at once. What shows in the color of the leaves, where they need to be thinned to bring out the fruit, which are at risk for mildew or black rot, the subtle signs of insects.” Blodwen leaned in. “I learned to pay attention to which vines were particularly fine, or which combinations produced the best drink. I poured my attention into knowing how things worked, and so my skill was respected.” She gestured with the bows again. “When you find what you love, you will do the same.” She spoke with a sort of confidence that suggested that the result was inevitable.

On the one hand, Blodwen was a terrifying force of nature and her positive regard was unspeakably precious; on the other, though, Llinos did not have much confidence of finding something to love like that. It made responding awkward. “Okay. I see.”

“Good.” Blodwen gestured for Llinos to take one of the bows. “Now, you need to learn to protect yourself so you can go up into the hills.”

Llinos felt stubborn, but did take the bow. “The fey like me.”

“Pff. There’s liking and there’s liking. The fey like all of us Tyrwinghans but do we plant rowans? We do.” She cut off Llinos’s objection with a gesture. “You have a tremendous Bettws gift, Llinos, but you must not take for granted what it gives you. The Queen’s fairies may like you, but they may want to keep you, and an iron arrowhead will let you return home safe.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” Llinos said, carefully, with a sort of careful skepticism about what the rules actually were, for the Queen’s fey.

“But are you sure it doesn’t? I’m not sure it doesn’t.” Blodwen waved a hand. “A fey who plays tricks - not nasty tricks, but more than you want to have to deal with - might hesitate if you can defend yourself. And there are darker fey, not of the Queen’s court, and if you’re out there on the border, how will you know for sure if you’re still on her lands?” She added, sharply, “And what if you come across a wolf, anyway?”

“I could climb a tree?” Llinos offered.

“A bear, then.”

“I don’t think arrows would be much good against a bear.”

“Ha! You’re right. But you’ll learn this too.” She paused. “Or a goblin. What if you ran into a goblin and there were no friendly fey there to keep you safe. Can’t climb a tree to get away from a goblin. It might set a fire and then you’d be in trouble and the tree would too.”

“Okay.” Llinos was willing to admit that Blodwen had a point and perhaps that trusting to only find gentle fey was a little too much trust for a human to have, maybe. Even setting aside the goblins. There were certainly enough stories about it, and apprenticeship would mean learning more. Llinos suspected that Llew Crowther knew them all already, though; he made a habit of collecting stories. “Why do you know how?”

Blodwen tipped her head a little to one side and then said, “I suppose you wouldn’t remember. You were so little. There was a bad winter, and we had to hunt. Tudur brought the offerings and prayers up to the standing stones on,” she turned in place and pointed, “that hill there. For permission from the fey, to take deer in the hills. Not elk, of course. But deer. Cynog was learning to shoot, to go out with the hunting party, and was I going to let my little brother learn something like that without me? Absolutely not.” She turned back, tossing her red hair back over her shoulder with a sharp, wickedly amused grin.

“Were you good at it?”

“Better than Cynog. He’s got big hands. Too clumsy.” She went down on one knee to demonstrate how to string the bow and encouraged Llinos to do the same. “I haven’t really kept it up, though neither has he. I shot an end at the midsummer fair in Nefyn once or twice, but I never took a prize.”

“Could I shoot at the midsummer fair?” Nefyn hosted the fair for all the surrounding villages and it was entirely grand and the idea of being part of it, rather than just someone who turned up to look at things, was absolutely thrilling.

“Well, you have to learn how first.”

“Okay!”

Llinos kept working at the bow, on and off. There was something about it that was interesting, the way that being actually good at it meant taking all the attention and focusing it down to a point. Maybe just for a moment, but it was a little bit fun to feel the way thoughts shifted and rearranged when that happened. It seemed likely that that was not what Blodwen was trying to teach, but that didn’t mean that Llinos was not going to learn it. It was interesting, the sliding around in various states of mind, manners of seeing the world, to slip from the whole sky to the flight of a single bird and back again. It had to be like what hawks do, only the other way around, to see the whole ground and then the prey, and back again afterwards.

The summer after turning eleven, Llinos decided to try shooting in the midsummer fair. It required a little explanation, but eventually saying, “I don’t expect to win, I just want to see how well I do” often enough got the whole family interested in the idea, and even Pryce was willing to brave the fair to watch. Llinos hugged him tightly when he said he would, because he didn’t even go into Nefyn if he could avoid it, especially on market day, and the fair would be even louder and more bustling.

“You don’t have to.”

Pryce had just ruffled Llinos’s hair and shrugged, with a little smile that was easy enough to translate: I know I don’t have to, but I’m doing it anyway, because it’s you. He had a huge straw hat to put on, with a brim wide enough that people avoided him a little, and he clearly felt that would suffice.

Nonetheless, at fair time Llinos stuck close by Pryce’s side. It was a different sort of being careful with noticing things, trying both to stay between him and things that might bother him, and reacting to each one of his flinches and pauses appropriately. This was too loud; they could go a different way. That was too crowded; they could step back and wait for people to move on. Pryce seemed more amused than anything else at his small bodyguard and let Llinos do it.

Which wasn’t to say that there weren’t a few bobbles along the way. Olwen had stopped to look over some preserves in a booth and dragged her husband in to the conversation, which was not a matter of great interest to anyone else, which meant that the older siblings drifted off a little, while Pryce and Llinos lurked at the edge of the conversation rather than risk getting separated in the crush.

“Flowers for your sweetheart?” The person who sidled up to Pryce was older than Llinos, but probably younger than Pryce, bright-eyed and earnest and androgynous in a manner that seemed deliberate. Pryce tried to wave them off with a little smile, but they were perhaps more interested in the sale than the awareness of making him uncomfortable, and persisted. “Or for courting?”

Pryce took a half-step back, and Llinos glanced up at him before interposing between him and the flower-seller. “Leave my brother alone.”

“But surely—”

“He can get his own flowers if he wants them.” Llinos stomped one foot, firmly. “Go on, stop bothering him. He doesn’t want to talk to you!”

At this point they were drawing attention from others, and their parents paused in their dickering over jam to frown that way.

Llinos ignored that, focusing hawk-attention on the flower seller. “Go away!”

Finally, they scurried off, and Pryce put a hand on Llinos’s shoulder and squeezed gently, even as Blodwen came over in a whirl. “Was that really necessary?”

“They were bothering Pryce and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Blodwen frowned slightly, and was clearly on the point of asking if Pryce had actually spoken, when their father made a quelling gesture and said, “It’s sorted now, we don’t need to make this a fight among us.”

“Fine,” Blodwen said with a sigh. “Pryce…” She was not quite going to say what she was thinking, not in public, so she stopped there, shook her head, and returned to whatever she had been doing.

After a few minutes, long enough for Llinos to calm down and for Pryce to maybe be able to speak, Llinos looked up. “Do you even want to be courting?”

Pryce shrugged.

“I wouldn’t court anyone.”

He chuckled. “You’re eleven,” he murmured, just above a whisper.

“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” Llinos muttered grumpily.

“Not something I fuss on,” Pryce said, after a pause. “Goatherd’s not in demand anyway.”

“But you’re my favorite brother.” It was an affront to sensibilities, was what it was, the idea that he wasn’t good enough to be courted, or to court.

He snorted and ruffled hair. “Don’t say that where the others can hear.”

Llinos was about to object, but stopped, going quite still.

“Mm?”

“Shh, you hear it?”

Pryce straightened, his immense hat tilting slightly as he cocked his head slightly to listen. His brow furrowed, and after a long pause, he nodded, slightly, tentatively.

The thin thread of music wisped around and then faded, and most people in the crowds did not seem to have heard it.

Pryce said, eventually, “Can’t make much mischief?”

Llinos frowned. “I’m sure people set up the rites properly for the fair.” Nobody in Tyrwingha would make an open invitation of it, not without the obligations to not do harm in the words of it. Because sometimes, there were fey. This one was probably just there for fun.

Eventually the conversation with the jam-seller came to a conclusion, and they got to moving again, picking their way along and dealing with being jostled. Pryce got bumped hard enough to stumble, and Llinos wheeled that way, hands in fists, only to be greeted with adult laughter. “Isn’t she adorable, so tiny and angry.” That only made it worse, but before any of the rest of the family could react, Pryce just tapped one arm gently, shrugged, and gestured towards a shady spot where they could wait out the crowd.

He waved off the others and drew Llinos to sit on a low stone wall. “Don’t fight.”

“You could’ve been hurt getting shoved like that.”

Anyone else might have laughed at the tiny child with hands in fists, ready to fight the world for an older brother, but Pryce just shook his head. “Wouldn’t make anything better, fighting.”

“But—”

Pryce made a shushing gesture, gently. “Couldn’t undo the push. They weren’t trying to hurt me, so you wouldn’t be stopping anything.”

“But—”

“People are careless.” Pryce shrugged. “Crowds are messy. Don’t care for ‘em. But watch.” He gestured, and nudged Llinos firmly.

Llinos scowled and turned to watch the milling people.

“Look. Clusters. Watch the herd. There, there’s a herding dog.” He pointed out a harried mother gathering her family into a group. “I think they’re like goats. What happens if you punch a goat?”

“The goat punches back, and they have horns,” Llinos said, grudgingly.

“Save your punch for when it matters.”

“For when it stops something.”

“Not when it starts something.”

Llinos nodded, and then sighed and leaned up against Pryce’s side. He ruffled hair and watched the people for a little, before gesturing a question.

“I should go make sure I’m signed up for the shooting, yeah.”

A nod, and they got up and picked their way to the range. After a short wait in the queue, the man at the front said, “Come to register for the shooing, young man?”

Pryce held up his hands and shook his head, and then gestured at Llinos.

“Really? And how old are you?”

Llinos sighed. “Eleven this spring. I don’t expect to win, I just want to know how I do.”

The man chuckled. “Gotten a lot of that, have you? All right then, what should I put down.”

“Call me Llinos of Clawyn.”

“Llinos … of … Clawyn. All right, youngster, you’re in the record. Shooting begins after noon.”

Llinos murmured thanks and let Pryce steer them off to a quiet spot where they could watch the setup.

“Of Clawyn today?”

Llinos shrugged and whispered, “Don’t want to say I’m a Bettws with the music. Feels like giving too much away.”

Pryce looked thoughtful and nodded.

They managed to find the rest of the family again in time to get lunch together and then returned to the range for the qualifying rounds. Llinos was faintly annoyed to be put in a qualifying group consisting mostly of children, which most of the family found funny; while the four arrows in the black and two just outside of it was good enough to make it into the next round, it was not the best shooting.

“You had too much strain in your shoulder,” Bronwen said.

“I was mad,” Llinos sulked.

“Just because you’re angry doesn’t mean the angry gets to control your body,” she said. “If being angry keeps you from being able to shoot well then shooting won’t keep you safe, right?”

Llinos frowned deeply, and then nodded. “Okay. But what do I do?”

Blodwen sat down. “When I get angry, and it’s not useful to be angry, I breathe like this.” She took in a breath and let it out slowly. “Which isn’t far from how you’re supposed to breathe with the bow, right?”

That got a more decisive nod.

“So pay attention to what the angry is doing to your muscles, where they’re tight they shouldn’t be, and breathe until it’s better. Then you can loose.”

“Okay.” Llinos sat and breathed, watching the next round of archers. The wind shifted, and there was a pause as everyone recalibrated their shots, and on the breeze there was a thin, reedy wisp of music that made the child sit up sharply and, a few moments later, both Pryce and Olwen looking briefly puzzled.

Llinos leaned back. Eagle attention went wide, eagle attention was broad and alert and caught the small flicker of things. The archers loosed their shots, and the thin music rose, and there, one arrow went awry in a way that might’ve been a gust of wind except that no otheer arrows seemed caught in it. Another set of shots, a different arrow seemed almost to flinch.

It was time to harvest witch’s herb, but Llinos did not know where it was around here, and figuring out what to do with it would be harder. That flower-seller had probably had the last of the primroses but that would be more likely to attract fey attention than ward it off. And while there was a rowan not far off, there would be no usable berries until the autumn. “Mama?”

“What is it, my chick?”

“That person you were talking to before, did she have rowanberry jam?”

“I believe so, why?”

Llinos peered at the archers to try to guess how long it might be before the next round. “Can I get some?”

“I thought you didn’t care for it?”

“I need some.”

Cynog frowned and said, “I’ll get some, Llinos should stay here,” heaving himself upwards and frowning into the crowd, which would at least part for his bulk.

“What’s wrong?” Blodwen asked, because she was at least able to figure out that something was wrong.

Llinos traced a little circle in the air. “Heard something. And the arrows are wrong.”

“The arrows are wrong?”

“Yes.” The best thing would be to do the fletching but that would mess up how they flew, so the important part was at least getting something protective on the arrow, treating it as a whole, that might be enough. Llinos scowled with furious intensity, fingers flicking distractedly.

Blodwen made a noise, and when Llinos looked up, her face had twisted into an irritated expression that made her already somewhat ruddy complexion go even redder. “You’re not explaining anything.”

Llinos froze. The whole situation was impossible to explain. Blodwen should understand about the attention, the way it went, how it was everywhere when it wasn’t, from what she’d said before. She should understand about noticing things, even if, like she said, she didn’t have the Bettws skill of hearing the thin reed of the fey pipe doing whatever it was that it was doing. It was impossible to tell which bit of information Blodwen needed, except maybe the fey presence, and saying ‘there’s a fey here and I’m pretty sure they’re messing with the archery’ out loud was probably not a good idea.

It wasn’t like Llinos could stop the fey doing what the fey wanted to do. The best to hope for was keeping it from happening to these arrows.

“Hey. Hey.” Blodwen waved a hand in front of Llinos’s face.

Pryce winced quietly, and then laid a hand on their sister’s shoulder. “We heard something,” he said. “And mum too I think.”

It took Blodwen a moment, but she backed down slightly with a, “You’re not going to get into trouble with… whatever you’re doing.”

“They like me,” Llinos said, finally freed of the impossibility of explanation.

It was for the best that Cynog had gone to get the jam, because Llinos was shooting when he was back, and practicing how to breathe through each arrow of the end, even though the music continued, and arrows were flying wrong. It was such a small thing, to send an arrow awry, perhaps. It still seemed like someone else should have noticed the arcs were wrong.

Llinos had heard that people in Nefyn tended not to be the ones who were fey-touched, though. The fey-touched stayed in the smaller villages, up in the hills, unless it took them badly, and the ones who were taken badly by it would leave the Mostreve area entirely and go to Tafolwern or even further. Without hearing the music, or having some sense of it, maybe they assumed that there was no way the oddness of the arrows could be a thing that was real. It was funny, how people didn’t see the things that were there when they didn’t have an explanation for them.

It was clear that someone had given Cynog an adequate explanation by the time Llinos got back, having - just barely - qualified for the third round. He murmured a gruff, “Good shooting,” and opened the preserves up when asked. He even didn’t make too many faces when Llinos dipped a finger in the jam and started carefully rubbing it on the arrowheads, and then brushing streaks of it down the shafts of the arrows.

“What are you doing?” he did ask.

“The fletching would be better but then they wouldn’t fly right.” The rest, though, could have it glazed just faintly, just a little hint of a ward against fey magic. Maybe not enough to do anything, but certainly enough to make a point.

“What’s going on here?” That was a list official, who was frowning thunderously.

Cynog rumbled, “She’s putting jam on her arrows,” with a sort of dry humor that was probably lost on anyone outside the family, but was one of any of a number of bland declarations of what his youngest sibling had been perpetrating. She’s putting jam on her arrows. She’s mixing wine into the flower petals she stripped off the primroses. She’s building cairns for ants.

The official was entirely unsure what to say to that, and eventually settled on, “What kind of jam? No magic involved I assume?”

“Rowanberry,” Cynog said. “Just bought it from,” he twisted and pointed, “lady there? Brown hair, a bit curly? You’d have to ask her about the magic.”

“Just the berries,” Llinos said. “No magic.” The phrase came out firm and fierce, but of course everyone knew rowanberries were protective against magic. Particularly fey magic.

The official drew a correct conclusion and asked, “Do you think someone’s cheating, girl?”

Llinos bristled, perhaps a bit more than the question entirely warranted. “No.” Someone was having fun, not cheating. Cheating implied trying to make something specific happen.

“Just making sure, then?” he said with a laugh.

“Yeah,” Llinos said, because it was easier than arguing, and Llinos was used to being thought of as a bit daft. It was fine. A gob of jam on the trailing edge of one arrowhead was not fine, though, and needed to be swiped off and eaten.

The final round, Llinos was the youngest contestant, tucked in at the end next to a tall, lithe boy with long fingers. The officials cleared the range, and the archers had their half-dozen arrows for their ends, and, “Loose!” went up the call, and the strings twanged.

The fairy music played, and Llinos saw, off to the left, an arrow flex and go askew. And then, oddly, heard laughter, simultaneously distant and very close, which was very much worth resolving to ignore. The important thing was to breathe, to not let the angry tighten up the shoulders, to catch the moment to release the arrow, to let it fly. The music resumed, and the laughter, and on the fourth shot Llinos saw an arrow spin a bit but still land true, which also provoked a spike of laughter. None of the arrows that were deflected by the music belonged to Llinos, which was the preferred outcome. The tall boy took the competition, to much general acclaim, and that was also a perfectly acceptable outcome.

“You keep practicing and you’ll give me a good challenge in a couple of years,” he said, and Llinos grinned at him before scampering off to rejoin the family for hugs and praise. The annoyances of the day had faded off in a general feeling of triumph, of doing well, and perhaps most importantly of thwarting the attempts to mess with the shooting, at least a little bit.

They were working on escaping from Nefyn - by general consensus, sparing Pryce the trouble of more town - when a man appeared out of the crowd, a tall man with red-gold hair and eyes that were entirely too green to be real. Not that Llinos looked at his eyes, but that did not mean Llinos could not see them. “You shot well, little bird.”

“I did my best. Without help.” The latter phrase came out with a bit of a growl to it, and the man laughed.

“So you did, so you did.” With a little wave of his fingers, the man vanished back into the crowd again, leaving Llinos with jaw set fiercely and, despite everything, the fury knotting shoulders upwards.

Pryce said, “Huh,” and reached for Llinos’s hand.