February 6, 1977, early morning

[theravenboy]

-- running hard for the little cottage, Cafall running grim and silent at your side, heather and brush tearing at your ankles and the tattered grey clouds sneering down from Cader Idris

(and out of the corner of your eye the white of Cafall's fur is the white of bare bone, a grinning skull with red ribbons wreathing around the broken stump of a horn in the forehead, but when you look at him straight on it's only your dog)

and a woman's scream tears the air ragged, outrage and terror and pleading all together, and you can't run any faster but somehow you run faster --

slam the heavy wooden door open, so hard it breaks one of the hinges, and Owen Davies twists half around to glare at you over his shoulder -- a glare that turns into a sneering laugh when he sees it's you. "Eh, bachgen, come to watch, is it?"

The woman he still grips by one arm stares at you through tumbled strands of black hair, a wild lost look in her cornflower-blue eyes, and tries futilely to pull her torn white dress back up onto her bare shoulder.

"I will not have you watching such things," says Owen, his voice coming sanctimonious through an ugly grin. "It is not proper, indeed no, I have told you before. You should not have come here."

And you can't move as he turns back to her and she begins struggling in earnest, you can barely breathe, and your heart is hammering in your ears like pounding hoofbeats, pounding hoofbeats --

pounding hoofbeats coming up behind you, and a shrill whinny, and the woman in Owen Davies's grip lets out a cry almost as shrill as the sword drives down out of nowhere and into Owen's back.

Arthur pulls back the sword and looks at you, but only for a moment; his sea-blue eyes are all for the woman in her torn dress, and they are cold and sharp as the blade he carries. She takes a trembling step towards him, her hands stretched out imploringly, and her mouth opens to shape a word, a name, a plea.

You see Arthur's movement a split second before he makes it, and the cry of protest dies stillborn in your throat as his sword goes into hers. She falls without a sound, her dark hair spreading about her with her blood, and beneath it you can just make out the shape of a small gleaming golden harp.

He smiles at you then, and whistles to Cafall, who heels to him eagerly, tail waving in an ecstasy of devotion. Stepping back, he remounts his horse, which nods its skeletal head to you and grins with naked jaws; Cafall, his eyes gleaming silver-white in a bare skull, leaps and frisks about its bony legs as if impatient to be off.

And off they ride, away from you, off into the ragged grey fog that closes in around the cottage. Your knees give way and you sink slowly to the floor, where a white ewe lies with her throat torn out.

And Will is there, his hand gentle on your shoulder. "Don't be sad, Bran," he says kindly. "This is how it was meant to be. It's all part of the long pattern."

Your hand clenches into a fist.

"Like the stars and the sea."

Clenches around the hilt of Eirias.

"And no one could have played their parts in the pattern better --"

And you come up off the floor, driving the blade of Eirias before you and into Will's chest, and your voice grates like blade against bone: "Shut. Up."

Will stares at you, his mouth a little open, and slides limply off the blade. The crystal sword falls from your hand, and shatters on the floor into uncountable glittering fragments.

And there's nothing left to do but turn, and pick up the antlered mask, and slide it down over your own head, blinking the owl-eyes against the light. It's yours now. You've earned it.

And you'll never have to take it off again.

Comments

[theravenboy]

The mask blocks Bran's mouth and nose so that he cannot breathe. He is choking on tears and snot and bile and has nowhere to spew it and he is awake, crumpled in a ball of bedding. He pushes the blankets away and runs to the loo to vomit.

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

Owen, dressing early for chapel in his sparse bedroom, hears Bran through the walls. He calls, "Are you feeling well, then?"

[theravenboy]

Bran hears Owen's words, but louder, more clearly, he hears the other words --It is not proper, indeed no, I have told you before. You should not have come here-- and sees Owen gripping his mother's pale arm, Arthur's sword dispatching them both, so much blood-- He retches again and again, until the pain in his throat begins to push aside the pictures in his head.

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

Bran is very rarely ill, but lately he has been sleeping poorly and looking drained and tired. Owen is concerned.

In fact, he is concerned enough to say, "If you are truly not feeling well, perhaps you should stay home from chapel today."

[theravenboy]

Bran splashes water on his face and walks out of the loo to stand in the hall, shouting at Owen's closed door.

"Iesu Crist! Chapel? Of course I will not go to chapel. My hands are bloodstained and yours are no cleaner. What is there in chapel for us?"

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

Owen, his face dead white, opens the door and stands in the doorway in his shirtsleeves.

"I do not know what has gotten into you this day, but I will not have you speak to me like that."

[theravenboy]

Bran's eyes blaze in the dark hallway.

"No? Not speak to you like that? It is not proper, is it? Not proper like carrying a black-haired girl down from the hills and out of her life? She died, she must have. He killed her and it was your fault."

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

Owen's voice shakes, and his hands.

"Maybe he did, boy.

"I have thought of that, over and over. I have tried to atone, to raise you as she would have wanted, safe from all of those cycles of revenge. As a good Christian."

With sudden, naked anguish, Owen asks, "What went wrong, Bran?"

[theravenboy]

Ordinarily, Bran would fall silent here, shamed, but the dream is still burning before his eyes, Arthur's sword in Owen's back and Eirias in his own hand.

"Everything went wrong! It was always wrong, always. Only now I know that we built our lives on treachery and murder, and there is nothing that can clean it off of us, ever. And no point trying."

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

"Do you not think I knew that?"

A terrible suspicion is growing in Owen's mind like a rising wind.

"Why is it now that you ask? What is it that is burning in your eyes, Bran?"

Owen's face fills suddenly with bleak, open despair.

"Has the Brenin Llwyd come down to take you back from me?"

[theravenboy]

Bran cannot look at Owen's face, bare, for once, of all of its defences. He turns aside to stare at the blank white door of the loo, feeling the weight of Will's body fall from Eirias, watching the sword shatter. Turning from Owen is another betrayal, and Bran knows it.

[theravenboy]

Then at last Bran remembers the refuge the dream has given him, the place to hide from all human treacheries. As the air around him fills with a rising, prickling tension, Bran stretches out his arm and reaches for a large, heavy, invisible object. He slides it over his head, and as it falls his stance changes to something proud, arrogant and utterly alien.

The Hunter turns, descends the staircase, and paces out of the cottage in the early morning light.

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

Owen does not see what Bran puts on his head, but Bran's motions tell him that the answer to his question is yes. Owen returns to his bedroom to stare out of the window.

Bran's shadow, stretching west before the cottage, has antlers.

***

Owen, feeling old at last, sits at his kitchen table with cup after cup of tea.

The absence of Owen and Bran Davies is the major subject of gossip at chapel today.