One
Dumnonia ~ 256 AD
DEMAIRO SAT ON the shore, staring out to sea. The waves were whispering to him again, soft words, strange words. He didn’t understand them, and yet he did. The words were unfamiliar, but they tugged on his heart. Hopeless, homeless and lonely, so lonely. They were lost and ever more would be.
They wanted him to help them, they begged him to save them. But he couldn’t. He was just a boy; hopeless, useless and lonely, so lonely. He too was lost, for all that he had a home.
Shush, shh, the sea sighed as if to comfort him as it whispered up the sand and curled around his bare toes. A hermit crab scuttled through the soft foam, dragging its home behind it. Demairo wished he could do the same. To be free to wander wherever he wanted to go, to pick up everything he needed and walk away. If only he could do the same.
“Demairo!” This voice was a shout on the rising wind, using words he could understand. “Mairo, where are you?”
Wishing the crab silent luck, Demairo scrubbed his arm across his face and looked up. His hair blew into his eyes and he shivered beneath the chill wind. He hadn’t noticed it picking up, nor had he paid attention to the dark clouds crowding over the horizon.
“Mairo!”
Turning his back on the storm, he sprang to his feet and ran up the beach, stumbling in the soft sand and rough winds. “Here, Mam!” he called. “I’m here!”
“Oh, Mairo.”
The wind blew him into his mother’s arms, and she held him close against the strong buffets. “Didn’t you notice the storm?” she scolded lovingly, running a hand through his curls. “I was worried I wouldn’t find you. That you’d already been swept away.”
He let her words wash over him, burying his head against her chest, feeling her warmth and love wrap around him. Here was home, here was safety. No voices could reach him here; not the strange whispers, nor the harsh words.
“Lowena?”
The voice made Demairo tense, his mother’s arms tightening hard around him. He didn’t look up, didn’t need to. He didn’t want to see that angry face. The words were bad enough.
“Bring the boy inside. It’s late. The storm will be upon us soon.”
“Yes, Dewydd,” his mother murmured, but didn’t move. Instead she waited for the heavy footfalls to crunch away, then hunched tighter over her boy.
Demairo held her just as close, wishing it was only the two of them, that they could pack up their things in giant shells and set sail across the open sea to a new world, a new home, a new hope.
The wind howled, pushing hard against them, almost taking them off their feet, and his mother pulled back with a breathless laugh. “Well, keresik, we’d best get in before this wind carries us both away.”
Demairo didn’t say that he wished it would. Nor did he tell his mother to wipe her eyes. As the storm broke over their heads, pouring ice-cold rain across the island, he knew he didn’t need to. Within moments her tears had been washed away, draining deep into the sand at their feet.
As his mother took a tight hold of his hand, fighting against the wind to lead him home, Demairo sank deep inside himself. The voices were back, screaming in the storm. He couldn’t understand the words, but he knew what they were saying.
Help us.
Save us.
Free us.
But how could he, when he couldn’t even help himself?
ELISUD WAS WAITING when Lowena burst into the house. He had a blanket and a smile, both of which he wrapped around Demairo, hauling him close to the fire, leaving Lowena free to check on the evening meal.
“Been out having adventures, eh, Mairo?” Elisud laughed, rumpling the boy’s curls.
Lowena listened to their chatter as she tasted the broth, wondering where Dewydd was. She didn’t ask; she didn’t want to know. The last thing she especially wanted was for him to appear at the sound of his name. Instead she stirred the broth and watched Elisud dry her son, continually astonished at how different two related men could be. Dewydd and his younger brother looked so alike, but Elisud seemed to carry sunshine and lightness in his heart, while Dewydd brought only darkness.
It hadn’t always been like that. Sighing, Lowena pushed the thoughts away. They were old, familiar things, worn smooth and small like pebbles on the beach. She would learn nothing new by going over them again. Some things were the way they were, and there was nothing she could do to change them.
“Me now, Da. Dry me!” Ceri, Elisud’s young daughter, pulled on her father’s arm, begging to be allowed into the game.
“But you’re not even wet, puffin,” her father laughed. “You’re as dry as tinder, and just as like to go up!” Suiting his actions to his words, Elisud lifted his little girl high, making her scream with laughter.
It made Lowena smile, until she saw the look on Demairo’s face. Pure longing, for a father who would play with him, tickle him to make him laugh, who would smile and love him.
“I thought someone was being murdered, or Elisud had brought home a live gull chick again.” Dewydd stumped into the room, solid like the stones that held up the door lintel.
And just about as warm, Lowena thought wryly to herself, while Ceri ran around the fire to throw herself at her uncle.
“Uncle Dewi, Uncle Dewi, Da said he’ll throw me on the fire!”
Lowena’s heart almost broke as her gruff husband looked down at the little girl and laid an affectionate hand on her head. “That’s enough now, cariad,” he said gently. “The storm’s enough noise for tonight.”
“Uncle Dewi,” she giggled. “I’m not nearly so loud as a storm!”
Dewydd just patted the child on the head and looked at his wife. “It’s late.”
Lowena hunched her shoulders and hauled the broth away from the fire. “We can eat,” she told him, beckoning for Demairo to come help her with the bowls.
The look in Dewydd’s eye as his son carried his broth to him sent a chill down Lowena’s spine. She tried to remember how gently he’d dealt with Ceri, how he’d been almost kind. But Ceri wasn’t his child, and Demairo wasn’t a giggling little girl.
“Do you enjoy scaring your mother, boy?”
Demairo’s head hung low, his shoulders hunched, braced for a blow. “No, Da.”
“Do you think she has time enough to go haring about all over looking for you?”
“No, Da,” Demairo murmured, his voice getting softer.
“Do you think you’re the only person on this island that matters, to make everyone drop their work and go searching for you?”
“No, Da.” He lifted the bowl a little higher, silently urging his father to take it, to eat, to let the subject drop.
“Then why do you do it?” Dewydd shouted, lashing out with his arm.
Demairo flinched back and Dewydd struck the bowl, splattering the broth across the floor and all over the boy.
“Fool!” Dewydd roared. “Now look what you did. Wasteful, selfish, spoiled brat. Go clean yourself up, and wipe away this mess while you’re at it.”
As Demairo scuttled off to obey, his father watching him like a despised insect, Lowena quickly filled another bowl. Anything to distract her husband. “Here, Dewydd. There’s plenty more to go around. No harm done.”
“Have we so much that we can throw food about now, Lowena?” he growled, taking the bowl. “Have we enough to paint the floor? Or is there something you’re not telling me? Set up some trades, have you, wife of mine? Been out fishing when my back’s turned?”
“No, Dewydd,” she whispered, pulling her hair across her face. An old gesture, a defensive one. She’d tried to stop it once, almost managed it when she’d first married, but times had changed and old habits never truly died. Her shoulders hunched in an echo of Demairo’s earlier stance, and she silently urged her boy to stay in the shadows. She could feel him watching, damp from having been outside, shivering in just his linen undershirt.
“You think me a fool, Lowena?” her husband growled.
&nbs
p; “No, Dewydd.” She thought him many things, but not a fool. Never a fool.
“Then don’t treat me as one. Boy, clean this mess, then to bed with you. Time you learned the meaning of wastefulness. No food for you tonight.”
Demairo skittered out of the shadows, using moss from the rocks outside to dab at the broth busy soaking into the floor. There was no point to it. The broth was thin, with few enough chunks of meat or anything else to liven it up. Better to leave it to dry overnight then wash it out in the morning. She didn’t bother saying such things, though; Dewydd would only get angry again.
So she watched her boy patting pointlessly at the floor, tense and waiting for his father to lash out again. Neither Lowena nor Demairo relaxed until Dewydd gave a low grunt of satisfaction.
“Bed,” he growled.
Demairo crept away like a whipped dog to his grass mattress, which was laid far apart from where the others slept. The lowest place in the house, as commanded by his father.
Only then was Lowena able to move again, scooping broth into bowls for the others. Ceri was huddled against her father, quietly waiting for the anger to go away. Elisud’s face was blank as he accepted their food from Lowena’s shaking hands.
There was a time when he would try to interfere, try to defend her and her boy. But Dewydd was bigger than his brother, meaner too, and Elisud had Ceri to think of. So now he stayed silent. They all did. No one wanted to attract more of Dewydd’s attention than they had to.
He wasn’t a bad man, Lowena had to keep reminding herself. The man she’d married had been loving and kind. It was just that life hadn’t treated him the same. He was a disappointed man, angry at the world. They were poor, life was hard, the island was bleak. He wasn’t a bad man, he was just angry.
Outside the sturdy walls of their home the storm raged on, with howling winds and rattling rain. Inside the fury had passed, settling into the temporary lull between rages. No one ever knew how long the calm would last, but each hoped for a long peace.
Slowly eating the broth she had no appetite for, Lowena stared into the shadows at where her boy was huddled, and wished she knew what to do. But there was nothing, not in this life, not in this world. So she finished her meal, cleaned up after the others and when the fire was banked, lay down beside her husband to sleep for the night.
* * * * * * * * * *
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About the Author
~ ~ ~
Becca lives in the wild British Westcountry where she runs around with her dogs, gets bossed about by her cat and takes lots of photos of gorgeous landscapes, preferably with rocks in.
When not doing yoga or gardening for bees and butterflies, she has been known to write stories. The Aekhartain are just one of the many universes she likes to play with. And if you think she has a thing for corvids, you’d be right.
Got something to ask or say, or want to know more, then visit her at: beccalusher.com.
Or you can send her an email:
[email protected].
She’d love to hear from you.
Also by this Author
Tales of the Aekhartain series
The Historical Aekhartain
Unbound and Free
The Future Aekhartain
Orion’s Kiss
Sing to Me
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