Meilyr slowed, disappointment unfurling. Until he spotted the russet dapple amidst the henbane in the tended verge beneath the rowan tree, and the glimmer of eyes in the dim.
‘Highness!’ Pedr emerged from the hedges as Meilyr spun to meet them, and they collided into each other.
‘Pedr, sorry!’
‘Forgive me—’
‘No, it’s fine, could I have a moment? I want to pick some golden henbane, there by the rowan. There is some brandy mint on the other side of that terrace you could get for me? Please, they will help His Majesty’s recovery.’
Pedr struggled. ‘Highness, after everything—’
‘There is no one else here, please.’
They wet their lips, surveying the grounds, warring with trust and duty.
‘I will be here.’ Meilyr pointed, backing up across shorn grass. ‘And the mint there will be very useful. Thank you, Pedr.’
It was wrong to string them along, but he needed to be alone.
By the time he knelt by the henbane, Pedr had fought to a decision and swiftly moved out of sight as though an instant was all Meilyr would have.
He faced the undergrowth, dropped his voice and said in his native Cyngaleg, ‘Surprise guests often find themselves far from safe homes.’
Eyes opened in the shadows, unveiling the amber-hewn creature of soft, brilliant fur. Lying serenely, waiting for him.
‘How would such guests come to be here, I wonder?’ Meilyr asked.
The fox said, ‘This is your song. You called for me.’
Their voice was leaflitter over bones.
‘I did?’
‘You did.’
Meilyr sifted through memories. He had assumed himself another world away from the dealings of spirits and otherfolk – the world of the ysbrydion, and the Tylwyth Teg. Foolishly, it would seem. ‘I am afraid I do not remember summoning surprise guests.’
‘Human recollection is surface-deep, at best.’
A memory stirred.
It was not simply that the fox lay in the dark of the dappled shade. Their furwasmottled, fierce as flame in patches but black as night in others. A unique, unmistakeable pattern that left him without doubt.
He forgot to keep his address vague. ‘It was you! It was you, that night in the forest.’
The night his parents had died.
From fire and blood and death, to trees and cold and rain. The flash of those eyes – the embers of that tail, guiding him to the boy who would lead him to Idwal, and Lowri, and Celyn.
‘It wasyou.’
There was no admittance, and no denial, in the creature’s presence. Merely those deep golden eyes, gleaming as close to amusement as could be imagined on a fox.
‘What can I do for you?’ Meilyr asked, not in the way he had asked every patron of the apothecary, but in the way someone might pledge their soul, willingly, for the asking.
‘You called me, child of the wildest skies. What can I do for you?’
The absurdity of everything, on the back of the memory of that night, loosed a pained laugh from his chest. ‘My mother always warned me, a spirit never gives without seeking something in return.’