Clawyn After Celyn Leaves
Ellis had a thick pottery flask swinging from a leather strap and an expression Llew could not quite find a description for. It was neither dour nor brooding. Melancholy, perhaps. Melancholy would have to do. Llew frowned minutely before raising one hand to wave to his twin. “Play or talk?” he asked.
“Walk. Talk after. Pryce has the goats in the near field though.”
Llew nodded and, since Ellis wasn’t looking for music, did not go and fetch one of his instruments. He did, with an eye to that flask Ellis had, grab a hunk of cheese and some bread, because too much wine on a completely empty stomach didn’t go anywhere useful. Without bothering with talking, they fell into step next to each other and took the curling path up to the edge of the hills, not as far as any of the standing stones, but into the common apple orchard that spilled out over the hilltop before the forest proper began.
It was a place the two of them had spent a lot of time with Celyn, practicing music and cracking jokes, and Llew wondered how much of Ellis’s choice in where to wander was driven by that. Celyn had set out that morning, walking away, and he knew his brother was heartbroken about it.
They settled in under a tree and Ellis uncorked the bottle, took a swig from it, and offered it over, which was better than hogging it, things weren’t as bad as they might be. Llew took it with a nod, handed back a hunk of bread and some of the cheese, and spilled a splash of wine on the ground before taking a drink.
Ellis laughed. “Oh he’d’ve gotten his elbow in my ribs for not doing that wouldn’t he.”
“Yup.” Llew shrugged and set the flask down between them. “He’d never forget. Particularly not this close to the forest.” The forest didn’t have the offering stones set outside cottage doors, stained with years and years of splashed wine; the forest would just have to deal.
Ellis nodded and let his head fall back, hitting the trunk of the tree with a thunk. “You won’t believe what he said when he came up from Nefyn the other day.”
“Prob’ly not,” Llew said around a mouthful of bread.
“He said,” One of Ellis’s hands flipped helplessly in the air. “He said ‘It was always doomed, wasn’t it?’ That was the first thing he said to me.”
This was suddenly rather more complicated than Llew was prepared for, so he stole the wine out from under his brother’s groping hand and took a deep swig before handing it over. “How’re you feeling about that?”
Ellis laughed, a slightly broken sound. “He’s not wrong, is he? He’s always had that piercing sense for things. And usually he’s kind enough not to cut with it. That cut, a bit.” He sighed and drank some more wine. “But he’s not wrong. Years I’d see him flinch when I said something about leaving Clawyn, or, or, his eyes would go all hollow when we were bouncing plans back and forth, figuring out how much we’d need to earn at the Golden Sheaf for the next thing we wanted to put in place, or— he’s not wrong.”
Llew nearly said something, and Ellis cut him off with a sharp gesture with the bottle, had another drink, and added, “Usually kind. When the madness was on him, less so. Especially before— before.”
“Before the miracle?”
“Yeah.”
“Was he still mad after the miracle?”
“Yeah. But he liked it a lot better that way. After, I mean.”
Llew demanded the bottle with a gesture and had another drink. “You know I’ll never understand the two of you. Mostly him. But you, with him.” He handed it back.
“That’s why he had to go. What made him have to leave. Was that he was still mad.”
“I don’t understand.” Llew tried to sound patient, and was not sure he succeeded, but Ellis grinned over at him anyway, because Ellis knew how much he hated not understanding things.
“The thing that absolutely sets him off, the thing that makes it all go sideways on him, is people not seeing who he is. For real. It’s not about,” Ellis gestured with the bottle hard enough to splash wine on himself, and wiped at it vaguely, laughing. “It’s not about intimacy, not about seeing all of him, but it’s about not seeing wrong things. So it was as bad as it was before he realized he wasn’t a girl, because even he was seeing him wrong, and he was just, it was bad.” There was a shadow in his expression, the sort of thing that had stories to it that Llew didn’t know.
Llew wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Not if his brother didn’t want to share those things. It was an odd feeling, to not share them. To not be able to help with that haunted look. “And it got better after he knew, after the miracle.”
“But the madness was still there. Just … sleeping.” Ellis set the bottle down. “Then people were praising the Mother about him healing Ifan, and I could see how he was sliding, losing his ability to pretend he was all right with that. Because it’s so, so wrong.”
Llew grimaced. “It is. I guess I understand how it started but I don’t understand how it kept going. People are stupid sometimes.”
Ellis laughed and nudged his shoulder. “And then you get that fussy expression about it and forget to be charming because once someone is that clueless you just can’t respect them anymore.”
Llew shrugged. “I’m just not as charming as you are.”
“You’re absolutely as charming as I am when you want to be, you just find some people beneath your notice. And you don’t kiss boys, which is absolutely your loss.” Ellis shook his head. “We need to get out of here before the people you’ve dismissed notice that you won’t flirt with them seriously anymore.”
He snorted.
Ellis sighed and let his head hit the tree again. “I’m going to miss him.”
“Promise me you’re not going to pine forever.”
“I’m not going to pine forever. He’s right. It was always doomed. He just wanted to have a simple life here, and I always wanted more, and he doesn’t get to have what he wanted, and we’re still sitting in the apple orchard spinning plans about how we’re going to go seek our fortune. He doesn’t have plans. I don’t even think he has much money. Why would he have money? He has no reason to be saving it up. He just … he’s just trusting to luck, or fate.”
“He’s blessed by the Wyrdling, of course he’s trusting to his luck,” Llew said. “We don’t have that sort of fortune.”
“… glad you didn’t say good fortune, because I’m not sure it is. He’s gone, because of it.”
“I am just as careful with my words as you are,” Llew pointed out. “I am just,” the words had to be correct, now that he’d said he was careful, and so of course he had to think. “I am just concerned about you. About how you’re doing.” He flicked his fingers against the bottle, making the pottery ring. “Whether you’re going to turn yourself into a drunk before you heal.”
“He’s more of a drunk than I am. Or was, sometimes. When the madness was bad.” Ellis grunted and picked up the bottle, drinking more in defiance of the topic of conversation before tucking it back in against his thigh. “It worried me. So I understand you worrying.”
Llew considered, and gently tugged the bottle out from under Ellis’s hand, not to drink, but to roll back and forth between his palms. It was still heavy, but much of that was probably the ceramic. “Do you think he’ll be okay? On his own?”
“I don’t know. He’s been gone before.” Ellis curled his arms around his knee and shifted to rest his cheek on it, peering over at his brother. “I know, I know I’ve helped him. Manage the madness. But maybe it’ll be easier for him where people haven’t known him forever.”
“But do you think he’ll be okay?”
“I hope he’ll be okay. I hope he’ll find someone out there better than me.”
Llew made a noise of objection, which made Ellis laugh at him, laugh at the loyalty.
“Don’t you give me that, Llew. It was always doomed. We were always going to leave, right? And he was always going to stay. We spent ages and ages pretending that wasn’t going to be a problem someday. And that’s before anything else happened, that’s a rot that we weren’t tending to.”
“Crown gall? Anthracnose? Rugose wood?” Llew raised an arm to shield himself from the pebble that Ellis managed to find to fick at him. “Black spot?”
“Not a grapevine, you bookish weirdo.” But Ellis was laughing, and that was the important thing. “It was always doomed, but we did the best job we could loving each other in spite of that, and isn’t that what hope is about?”
“Okay. Fine. But what’s better than you, since you clearly have an idea,” Llew grumbled.
Ellis held out a hand to demand the bottle and refused to speak until he got it back and got a good swig of it. “He needs someone who can see the man that he is. Someone strong enough to handle the madness, when it comes out, even if the Wyrdling can blunt the worst of it for him now. Someone who sees that he is a bright, hopeful light, that burns the brighter because he has wrestled with his internal demon and won, because he can be in the pain he suffers and still smile, still love the flight of birds, still laugh. Who can love in spite of it being doomed.” He glanced over at Llew. “Yes, I know, I could do all that, that’s the minimum standards I want to establish here.”
“It’s important to establish these things,” Llew said with exaggerated primness.
Ellis snorted. “The thing is, though. He’s touched by a god. He didn’t want that to matter, that’s why he came back here, tried to fit back into the life he always wanted. But he couldn’t. He’s got something heavy to carry now, and I don’t know what that means, and I do know that even if I - if we - leave Clawyn and make our fortunes, we’re not carrying more than our own lives. Maybe the lives of our lovers, but they’re carrying us too. You see? But from the moment that he healed Ifan, he carried more lives than we ever will.”
Llew grunted and it was his turn to lean back against the tree, thinking hard. “You think?”
“I know. I knew before he did the healing, when he gave me a stone that glowed with the light of hope. It didn’t last, the light. I still have the stone. Just an ordinary pebble, now.” Ellis shrugged and took another swig of wine. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to carry so many lives. How heavy it has to be. Someone ordinary like me, we’d break under the weight of it. He needs someone who won’t break under the weight of it.”
“… someone else god-touched?”
“Maybe? I don’t know. I don’t know if everyone who’s god-touched has to carry lives like that.” He looked over, head canted to one side. “I’ve wondered if I wanted to be that, be someone like that, so I could keep him. But here’s the thing: I don’t think I do. I don’t want that responsibility. I love him, but I don’t … I can’t carry that much. I could carry him. But not that. That’s too much for me to carry.”
Llew flicked the pebble back at him. “Where do you get off sounding like an old man? We’re not even twenty-one yet.”
Ellis shrugged. “You know me. I don’t want big responsibilities. He was a lot. About all I could handle.” He sighed and stared off into the distance, through the trees. “I think I’ll always want someone I can take care of. But maybe someone less demanding would be better.”
Llew snorted and scooted around so he could bump his brother’s shoulder with his own. “More confident you’ll heal now. Gimme the bottle.”
The voices echoed down the slope of the hill, two of them, near enough the same voice save that they were doing harmonies; the Crowther twins, then. Several of the goats and the guardian dog were peering that way to see what was up, and Pryce levered himself to his feet and made his way over to the wall to see what the commotion was.
The twins were leaning on each other, not quite holding each other up, but certainly not entirely steady; both of them were quite drunk. Pryce was a little surprised by that; Ellis being drunk only made sense, but Llew, Llew was unexpected. Of course, Llew was also singing, which he almost never did; his voice was a little rougher than his brother’s, a little less practiced, which was how it was easy enough to tell which one of them was doing which of the harmonies. In this case, Ellis had the high melodic line and Llew was filling in the harmonies, doing a genuinely tricky counterpoint that Pryce suspected was probably something he would have rather do on a flute or pipe.
Ellis’s voice, though, was only helped by the drink, and soared. “None but a pure heart can sing, sing in the day and in the night…” was what came out as he made his way down the slope.
Pryce gave them a nod as they got close enough to actually notice that sort of thing, and was unsurprised that Ellis steered the teetering edifice of their walk his way, coming to a halt on the far side of the stone wall. Llew was a little slow to catch up, mentally, and sang on his own, “… the riches of a virtuous, pure heart…” before noticing his brother had stopped singing.
“Even’, Pryce.”
He nodded again.
“You doing all right? With, with—” Ellis’s hand traced a lopsided circle in the air. “Him leaving?”
Pryce sighed and tried to assemble words. If he had half a dipperful of the Crowther boys’ glibness conversations would be much less complicated, really, but just because he had thoughts did not mean they came out of his mouth with much smoothness or fluidity. “More or less,” he eventually managed. “Worried ‘bout him.”
“Us too,” Llew said, in much the same moment that Ellis drawled, “He’ll be fine.” Llew peered at his brother in drunken bewilderment, and Pryce snorted and nudged his brother firmly. “I told you. He knows things. Clever. Fierce. He’ll be okay. He’s, he’s. He’s ‘mazing.”
Pryce snorted. “Not worried about him not having you to look out for him?” he asked, the words coming out startlingly easily.
Ellis jabbed a finger at him. “Worried, yeah! But he’ll be fine.” He leaned his head on his brother’s. “Gonna miss him, Pryce. Miss him so much. That wide-eyed wonder. Good steady beat. That thing he can do with his han—” He broke off abruptly as Llew jabbed him in the ribs. “What?”
“That’s his brother,” Llew hissed.
It was Ellis’s turn to snort. “You think he don’t know we fooled around?”
“Still!”
“I am going to take you home, you are going to sleep this off a bit, and then we are going down to Nefyn and find you a pretty girl who’s looking for a good time,” Llew declared, in tones that were, Pryce figured now, a good bit less drunk than Ellis, if still quite tipsy.
“Narrow-minded bookworm. You should try charming a pretty boy sometime,” Ellis pointed out cheerfully.
“Fine, I’ll find a pretty girl, you find whatever you want,” Llew declared, nudging Ellis into motion again.
Ellis waved at Pryce. “You wanna talk about worrying about him, you know where to find me.”
Pryce could only nod. He did, indeed, know that. He watched the two of them sway their way down towards the village, and heard Ellis take up the tune again.
“Rising to heaven on the wings of song—”
Pryce shook his head, watching them go, and walked back towards the herd, who had decided that whatever the nonsense was, it was of no concern to goats. Also not of concern to goats was the symbol he scratched into the dirt with the foot of his staff, the branching seedling with its eight overlapping leaves.
“Mother keep him safe and healthy, Mother keep him rich in flowers, Mother may the changing light of the moon give him guidance, even as he has his own changing light. Mother, look after him, my baby brother, Mother please. Mother ask the Wyrdling to treasure him properly, Mother ask the Wyrdling to give him a gentle fate.”
That was many more words at a go than Pryce usually spoke aloud, but the goats did not mind at all.
Pryce did go down, after thinking it over, to the village, which was something he had done rarely since moving into the shepherd’s hut. He reckoned the dog could mind the goats for long enough for him to see how his mother was doing.
Olwen was, really, doing about as he expected. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying but she was still diligently working at the spinning, blending fibers together and making smooth thread that could be woven, the task that occupied her days. Sometimes she sang doing it, the old charms for spinning strong thread that might not have any magic left in them, so worn as they were, the things that they had learned from the fey generations ago and passed parent to child - mostly mother to daughter - since.
“Mama,” he said, as he came in.
“Pryce, bach, good to hear your voice. How— how are you doing?”
“Saw the Crowther boys. Thought I’d come see you.”
She sniffled thoughtfully and nodded. “That Ellis would’ve made a fine son-in-law. Useless in the vineyard, that boy, he never did work hard at anything other than taking care of my baby.” It was fond, despite the criticism.
Pryce thought that Celyn would have pointed out how hard Ellis worked at his music, in fierce defense of his beloved, but Celyn was not there and Pryce neither felt an obligation to the defense nor the need to spend words on it. “And that’s the important part, right, Mama?”
“Of course.” She did smile. “Come, sit a few, if you can.”
“Goats are fine for now. Bedded down with hay.” He came and sat. He was not one to sit like Celyn had and rest his head against her leg; that was the privilege of the baby. And he was more reserved. “You?”
“Better my boy break my heart this way than any of the ways we were afraid of,” she said, with a lift of her chin. “This way, he’s alive, and he may find happiness.” Olwen had never spoken of those fears before, or not to Pryce, but of course they all shared them, the helpless worry that the storms in Celyn’s heart would send his soul into the care of the Wanderer and the Night Queen young, before his time.
Pryce nodded, and sat in silence for a while, trying to find thoughts that went into words that he could figure out how to say. Eventually he said, “He’ll be a bit finding his feet but he’s stubborn as a goat.”
“And as hard to keep penned,” Olwen said with a smile.
Pryce snorted his agreement. After another long pause he said, “I’ve hope for him.”
“Do you?”
“Cloaked in the Wyrdling like that?” A snort, a wave of his hand. “Yeah.”
“A fair point, bach. A fair point.” She sighed and set the spinning into the folds of her skirts, looking out the window. “It’ll be quiet without him.”
Pryce nodded.
They sat for a while in silence before Olwen said, “I’m thinking you should make sure that your goats aren’t taking advantage, now.”
Pryce pulled himself to his feet and went over to give his mother a gentle kiss on the cheek. “If you need me.”
“I’ll send someone for you, don’t you worry. Get you gone, you’re a working man.”
Pryce nodded and left her alone with her thoughts, taking his own back up the slope and past the wall and around to where the goats were penned for the night, near his own cottage. The dog joined him, tail wagging at his return, and he ran his fingers over her ears and went inside.
“You’d think,” Alys said, as she thumped the tankard down in front of Adri, “that none of them knew he could fight.” She dropped down into her own seat with a thump and leaned back.
The halfling snagged her own beer and snorted. “I’m not sure many of them did. If any.”
“Really? I’ve been babysitting him on and off for something like two years, making sure he doesn’t get into another bar brawl, and nobody knew he could fight?”
“Did he get into any more brawls?”
“Not usually,” Alys admitted with a laugh, tossing her deep red hair back. “And I suppose he’s such a little guy, he doesn’t look like a brawler. More spirit than strength in him. He’s not dangerous in a brawl, he’s dangerous with a knife.” Her tremendous biceps were probably twice the diameter of Celyn’s arms. “And he’s so cheerful.” She shook her head. “I’m gonna miss that little guy. You don’t often find someone who’s such a good loser who’s actually worth dicing against.”
Adri snorted, and noted, “He’s taller than you.”
“Just about everyone human’s taller than me,” Alys pointed out. “But I’ve got better shoulders than some dwarves.” She was indeed built a bit more like a dwarf than a human, broadshouldered and solid that way. “So he’s still a little guy.”
“Am I a little guy?” Adri asked with a grin like a knife.
Alys snorted. “Naw. Don’t you even try that one on me, askin’ me to get myself in trouble.” She grinned and tipped her beer in toast. “You know what I mean, though. It’s not just that he’s small. It’s the way he just wanted to be in the background. Supporting, making sure things come out right, but not anyone important. Just a little guy.”
“I think that’s why people were surprised,” Adri said, after a moment. “That he could fight like that. Josse said that he came up behind the bandit in his wagon, no hesitation, knife right into the kidney. Some’d find it upsetting to think that sweet, happy boy could do that.”
“Doesn’t bother you, though?”
“I’ve seen things.” Adri shrugged. “And like you said, the bar brawls were a hint there was more to him.”
“You’re not at all surprised he could fight like that.”
“Nah. Not the way he moves, the footwork.” Adri smirked over her beer. “You were, even with the bar brawls.”
“The magic was a bit, well. Not that I saw him appear out of nowhere. I just heard about it.”
“I saw it.” The halfling shrugged. “Knew he had magic. Suspected he had more than he talked about. But he helped me with the illusion work sometimes. Just little things, he couldn’t do anything complicated. And the lights he put on the juggling balls sometimes.”
“Why’d you suspect? And what’d you actually see? I didn’t think anyone actually saw the whole thing he did.”
Adri peered at her over the rim of her tankard. “He plays his cards close to the chest, even if cards aren’t his game. But even with that, he talked about learning tricks from the fey, back in Tyrwingha. More than one trick. So him pulling out a more potent trick when the situation calls for it? That’s no surprise.” She swallowed a deep draught. “As for what I saw? He jumped out of Josse’s wagon with a bloody knife in his hand when he heard the screaming - like I was coming when I heard the screaming, took three strides across the campsite and then dissolved into silver mist. Came out in the wagon, just as I came in the actual door. Scared the bandit half to death.”
“And then he healed Antonin?”
“Then we went and dealt with the last bandit, and he went back for Antonin. And he tried to play it quiet. He didn’t say anything about miracles, he was just saying ‘now you’re okay’, things like that. Like he didn’t want the attention. Of course after all that he got the attention, didn’t he? And not in ways he fancies, I reckon.”
Alys nodded. Very slowly. “He was born a girl,” she said, after a long pause. “I mean, out of season like that.”
“Was he?”
“Yeah.” She leaned back a little. “And it’s, he never talked about it, but he never hid it. He swore by the Wyrdling of course, but so does most of the troupe, they’re actors after all. That wasn’t as much of a hint as it might be elsewhere. But it was right there, the Wyrdling’s blessing on him, and it was just— he never made a point of it, so it was easy to overlook.” Alys snorted. “Maybe he should take up cards. I’d never have figured it out if he hadn’t told me that he didn’t join the acrobats because binding his breasts makes him short of breath.”
Adri chuckled. “Hiding in plain sight, then. Not bothering to tell anyone things that he didn’t think they had reason to care about.”
Alys shrugged. “The things he took for granted…”
Adri put her head to one side and peered at the human. “He never did tell you he fancied you, did he?”
Alys nearly spilled her beer. “What? No. What, did he tell you?”
The halfling chuckled. “You’re not a people person, Alys,” she said. “But he did have a warm eye for those arms you’re so proud of. And he liked to spend time with you.”
“We played dice,” she protested.
“Mmm,” said Adri.
“Why didn’t he tell me? I mean, as a friend.” Alys was baffled.
“I’m guessing he didn’t want to bother you because you were ogling the barmaids,” Adri pointed out with a laugh. “And if you didn’t need to know, why say anything? Like telling people he knew how to fight. Or miracles. Or whatever else. For someone who’s got a line of bright chatter like he does, he never did say much about himself.”
Alys shook her head. “What a funny little fellow he is. You think we did all right by him?”
“I suspect he’ll want the sword wherever he’s going.”
“He knew how to handle it, too.” She frowned into her beer. “Funny thing to know.”
“He’d probably tell you fairies taught him if you asked.”
They both had to laugh, and agree, and settled in to finish off their beer and then return to the Players’ wagons.