She was telling herself more than him. Her own grief was like drowning in the ocean, swallowing his own. Behind her, their house began to burn, blurred by tears and the jolting of how she carried him. He was almost too big now, but she tried.
‘We’re nearly at the woods,’ she told him, fighting to sound calm. ‘Hold on, calon bach. Hold on.’
This was Meilyr’s fault. He wanted to apologise again, but it hurt in his throat, like swallowing sharp stones.
More shouting on the hill. His mother ducked down and slid into the dip of earth before the woods and set him down, pulled him to face her, where she crouched before him. ‘Meilyr – Meilyr, listen to me, you’re going to run into the trees – run, as soon as I tell you. As fast as you can. As fast as a red kite flies, all right? Faster. You’re going to run, and you’re going to meet someone there – someone your da and I called to look after you, all right?’
She heaved him into her arms and kissed his hair so fiercely it must have hurt her mouth. When she looked at him, his face cupped in her hands, there was blood on her lip. ‘I love you, Meilyr. Your da loves you. Forever.Live.Live, and run – run, Meilyr. Don’t look back. Run – now!’
She pushed him and he almost fell – would have were it not for something in the breath of the night, or her voice, that caught his feet and steadied him. Steadied him as the wind wrapped around him and pulled him towards the woods.
He could feel her moving away. Going back towards the sharp, cold rift in the world that had been his da. Back towards the shouting and the metal sounds, and the men with their white cloaks and white swords.
Meilyr looked back, and it was only the wind that made him run again. The wind, and his ma’s will, and the fear that lit him like a pyre. The night-grasses and sodden earth streamed with the rain and his tears, the heavy dragon pendant thudding against his sternum.
He almost did not see the fox until he was right at the edge of the trees, sobbing, ripped in half and then in half again.
Shattered, and so alone he was certain he would die from it.
SIX
So much
has faded into the west.
With Khaim came
the ebbing of the Old World,
the dissonance of a land bereft
of the small magics
once natural as breath.
Blood in the Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year Slaughter,
H. M
SIX
Meilyr awoke with a start to a leaden morning sky, the secret in his blood rearing against danger.
The fox and the forest receded, dissipating like smoke into the hangings of the bed, the walls beyond.
Agony beat through him. He wiped his eyes roughly, and his hands came away damp. That was the past, not the present. Only a memory. He pushed his nails into his palms to ground himself and exhaled slowly.
That was thepast.
After a while, he reluctantly got up.
If only there was something for him todo. He flexed his hands uselessly. It was still very early, but he always rose before dawn, avoided every creaking floorboard on the landing and stairs, slipped down into the apothecary proper and got to work without waking Celyn. There was always so much to be done – tisanes to boil, dried roots to crush, ointments to strain. The work was soothing and methodical; the heavy scents and his connection to each plant made it seamless to lose himself somewhere far away. Work that gave him focus, and purpose.
Most of his patrons he had known for years, some since he had still been apprenticed to Lowri, Celyn’s aunt. The apothecary was open from dawn until dusk, rain or snow, and he treasured even the grumpier regulars.
His life had been a gift. One hard-won, through the sacrifice of others.
Would he ever get it back…?