* * *
“Of course you may bathe.” Seren smiled so warm and so sweet, her teeth flashing like white stones in the dimming interior of the little house. She motioned to the door. “Idrys, why don’t you stay and help me prepare our meal while your brother washes? Then he can come and tell me more stories of your exciting hunts while you take a turn?”
The twins exchanged a look. They’d expected she might not let them go together but disappointment still wormed its way into their young hearts at hearing their expectations fulfilled.
Emyr went to bathe. He emerged from the hut and saw the same burbling waterfall, the same pond. The trees looked much unchanged as well. The sun had dipped quite low, though the air remained warm enough.
He gratefully stripped off his tunic again, having not bothered to pull on boots or trousers, and plunged into the cold water. He used sand from the bottom to scrub himself clean and then finally rested on the same wide, flat rock Seren had laid her own clothing upon the fateful day they’d met.
There was birdsong as the winged creatures settled for the evening. A light breeze ruffled the leaves, twisting them from green to silver and back again in the fading light. The hut perched next to the pond, looking for all the world like any normal cabin save for its lack of a chimney.
It never even occurred to him to run. Even if he’d had boots and supplies, Emyr could never leave his twin. He glanced to the sky again, watching the sun sink lower. Was its angle different? How much time was passing? Was the air cooler than it should be at high summer?
He sighed and pulled on his tunic. Idrys still needed to bathe and it would be selfish to take all the daylight moments for himself. With a deep breath, Emyr walked back to the cabin, pushed open the door, and stepped across the threshold.
They gave themselves wholly over to Seren that night, all doubts pushed aside as the twins did their best to make their host believe their whole hearts lay with her and only her. Neither asked when or if they might go home but instead told boisterous stories, well embellished, of their various hunting and fishing conquests as well as tales of the pranks that, while mostly Idrys’s conception, they’d both pulled around the llys.
When Seren finally let them sleep, they fell into exhausted and satiated slumber. If they dreamed, neither could recall in the morning.
Idrys awoke first again. He forced himself to wake fully this time, slapping at his arms and finally biting his lip so hard it bled. The stinging pain pushed away the final clinging vestiges of sleepy comfort.
Emyr beside him slept on through it all. Idrys shoved at his brother to no effect. He finally pulled Emyr off the bed and left his twin lying there, tanned and muscled limbs in disarray, as Idrys grabbed the pitcher of fresh water that was set out for them. With a smile and a prayer, he dumped the contents over his brother’s head.
It worked. Sputtering, Emyr awoke. He sat up naked on the floor and stared about himself with a confused look that slowly cleared.
“Was that necessary?” he asked, annoyed.
“Probably. You weren’t waking. Be glad I didn’t bite you.” Idrys pulled down his lower lip to reveal the red, swelling sore.
“Indeed. I should be glad my twin is so determinedly strange.” Emyr offered a small smile as he used a skin from the bed to dry his face and chest.
“We’re still stuck in here, though I think we’ve more time ‘til she realizes we’re awake if that languor was any indication,” Idrys said and his own smile faded. He collected their clothing and the twins dressed, donning their boots as well.
“Let’s break the window. It’s worth a try, mayhap.” Emyr nodded toward the cooking kettle.
Idrys gripped the kettle and heard the sudden rush of wings in his mind. He ignored the strange touch and swung the kettle at the pane as hard as he could.
The window rang with a strong clear tone and the kettle split cleanly in half.
The boys stood, ears aching from the reverberating sound. It faded and they stayed still as rabbits spotting the shadow of a hawk, waiting for their captor to storm through the door. Moments passed and she did not appear.
Slowly they both exhaled and stared at the kettle, half of which Idrys still gripped mutely in one hand. He released it.
“What now?” Idrys said softly. At Emyr’s shrug and lost look, Idrys’ strength crumbled and he sat heavily onto the skins before the brazier. “Come on, Em, you always have some brilliant plan or another.”
“Usually because you’ve gotten us into some bind or another,” Emyr said bitterly. “Oh look, back here again are we?”
Idrys’s eyes flashed with anger and he half rose before falling back with a shake. “Fair enough, but fighting gains us nothing. What would father do?”
“Throttle her, probably.” Emyr sighed and sank down across from his twin. “Better to ask what mother would advise. She’s far more practical.”
“She’d outwit the Lady. Or turn things about so that Seren might think letting us go was her very own clever plan.” Idrys shrugged.
Idrys stilled suddenly and then jumped up. “That’s it! Emyr, we know what to do.”
“What are you talking about? If you’re about to suggest we kill the Lady, I think you know how badly that would go. I’m not even sure how to kill a Fair One, not to mention I’m not sure I could face her with malice in my heart.” Emyr folded his arms across his chest and raised his brows.
“No, no, of course not. I’m not bloodthirsty, you loon. But we dreamed it, don’t you see?” Idrys motioned at the brazier excitedly.
“Set the hut on fire?” Emyr rose as well so that he could stand eye level with his raving twin. “What will that do other than kill us? The walls look to be stone and earth; they’ll hardly burn.”
“The door is wood, those shelves are wood. We can pile them against the door and set the whole thing alight. Once the wood weakens, we can break through.” Idrys turned and started to empty the shelf of its earthen cookware and various little shells, bone carvings, and other pretty sundries.
“What about the smoke? There’s no chimney, stupid. What about us? We’re going to what, just leap through fire? You dumped the water on me, remember?” Emyr didn’t move.
“We’ll wet the skins from the bed with our piss and use them to damp the fire so we can get out. Once the door burns through, we can use the brazier itself to bash a good opening. It’s large and heavy enough I think.” Idrys had that specific determined look on his face that only came with the more daring or harebrained of his plans, the ones he wouldn’t be rationally talked away from no matter the arguments against.
“Urine and fire? Gethin said that sex made men mad, though I’d thought he meant it less literally.” Emyr shook his head again and closed his eyes.
He could see the flames from his dream and feel the choking smoke in his lungs. Wings beat in his mind, soft and nearly silent but for the telling rush of wind. Idrys might be right, but from a practical perspective, setting the only door in a small space on fire seemed too risky.
“Think, Emyr. How long will we stay here? Already I struggle to hold familiar faces in my mind. How long ‘til I forget? What if we forget each other?” Idrys stopped moving items and held his hands out in supplication.
Emyr sighed, his resistance crumbling under the weight of that plea. He too, during the telling of tales the evening before, had found the familiar stories and comforting faces of home slipping like fish from the grasp of his memories.
“If you get us killed when we could have settled for a century of having our every desire filled, I’ll never forgive you,” he said even as he moved to help.
Idrys laughed, relief flooding through him. “I’ll never forgive myself either, never fear.”
Their minds set, the youths worked swiftly. Soon they had the shelf pried apart and the planks set against the door. They used sheep’s wool scraped from the skins as tinder. Emyr used a broken pottery shard to gouge the door, roughing the thick woo
d that the fire might take purchase more quickly.
Wrapping their faces with strips of cloth torn from the pillows and their hands with leather ripped from the bedding, they lifted the brazier and dumped the coals onto their makeshift pyre. It took both to lift the heavy bronze and tip it. Emyr grunted and nearly dropped it as his leather hand coverings slipped. He fixed in his mind their goal and hung on despite his awkward grip.
They’d both emptied their bladders into the chamber pot and then used the contents, smelly though they were, to wet down a couple skins. The skin that had been underneath Emyr when Idrys dumped the water pitcher on him was still quite wet and they took it also.
Hunkering down on the bed, wet skins ready, they waited as the flames leapt and ate at the shelving and finally the base of the door. The splinters they’d managed to raise in the wood of the door caught flame and curled in the heat. Smoke, thick and acidic from the wool and wood, spread out over the roof of the hut, finding no outlet. Soon they were coughing behind their crude masks.
Emyr pulled Idrys off the bed and they lay on the floor, struggling to breathe.
It was too hard to see, though the fire looked to be burning fiercely enough despite the dwindling air supply. The boys closed their eyes. Breathing was getting harder and harder. Idrys gripped his brother’s arm tightly with one hand, the other resting on the wet, stinking skins.
There was a rush of flame suddenly and the smoke abated. The sound was much like the sound of the owl’s wings and it roused the twins from their dazed and labored state.
Idrys raised his head and forced his stinging eyes open. The fire burned brighter than before, the flames eating hungrily at the door. And beyond it was daylight. The fire had eaten through the thick old oak.
Unable to form words from his dry throat, Idrys tugged at his brother’s hand and pulled on the leather. Emyr squeezed back and leaned over to grab a wet hide.
They struggled to their knees, crawling toward the oppressive heat, each holding a damp skin out like a shield. The power of the fire’s blaze was such that they had to avert their faces. They tossed the thick, soaked leather onto the flames, which damped the fire’s fervor but did not quite quench it.
It was enough.
They’d left the brazier near the door. Ignoring the heat, they lifted the shining bronze and heaved it into the leather, flame, and charred wood.
It crashed through, leaving an opening in its wake large enough for a man to dive through.
“Go, you first,” Idrys said.
“You, what if she returns? You run faster.” Emyr shook his head. His voice sounded graveled and strained despite the sudden gasp of fresh air to breathe.
“I’ll not leave you, nor you I, so what does it matter?” Idrys glared, his throat raw and painful as well.
Emyr, scared and full of adrenaline, shook off the desire to argue further and rose. He dove through the opening head first, coming to his feet in a neat roll on the grass outside. He turned and moved to the side as his brother quickly followed him.
Their tunics were smoke-stained and their hair around their faces singed. Above the strips of colored cloth, now blackened with soot and smoke, their eyes were red-rimmed but clear and bright with hope.
“Run,” Idrys said, taking his brother’s hand as he tore away the strips of cloth from his face.
They ran. It was mid morning judging by the sunlight that filtered down through the forest. They set their path to the south and west, toward home and all things known and normal. Fleeing the Lady and their own confused desires, they plunged through the wood in a strange parody of the mad hunt that had brought them to her doorway.
Fatigue, hot and persistent in their muscles, forced them to slow eventually. The sun had risen past the midpoint and begun its long descent toward the night.
The twins slowed to a fast walk, picking a more careful path through the wood. About them they began to notice changes they’d been oblivious to before in that first mad rush of freedom.
The leaves had started to change. The green of high summer was fading and the wood was now tinged with gold and brown. Not fully, for it was not yet fall, but still, the beginnings of the shift in seasons was evident around them.
“It’s been three days. But how long out here?” Emyr lifted a golden leaf, fresh fallen, from the ground as they walked.
“I’d say late summer, perhaps,” Idrys said.
“Good we left when we did, then.”
“Aye. Though the time passing will lend truth to our story.”
“They probably think us dead.” Emyr shivered.
“Don’t think it, brother. They’ll still be hoping, searching. Our parents won’t give up easily without answers.” Idrys clapped Emyr on the shoulder and then took up his brother’s hand again. Their fingers entwined, each clinging to that familiar comfort.
It was late afternoon before they heard the pursuit. The forest grew mysteriously quiet around them. Then, just as they noticed this unnatural stillness, the far-off cry of hounds sounded through the wood.
Emyr looked at his brother. “Father’s hounds?” he said hopefully, though they were at least a day’s hard travel from home.
“I think not,” Idrys said, pausing to listen.
“I think we’d better run again,” Emyr said with a shudder.
The twins kept their grip on each other’s hands and ran at a more sustainable though no less urgent pace. The woods here were open under the thick, old canopy, with only small patches of fern and hazel blocking their path.
The sun was dropping and gloom rising when the hounds got close enough to sight. The chilling baying struck renewed energy into the exhausted twins and they pushed their already burning legs to further speed.
Idrys wasn’t sure he could have outpaced his brother at this point even if he was considered the quicker of the two. His lungs labored and his throat was choked with thick phlegm. His lip throbbed where he’d bitten it, though now it seemed such a small ache compared to the rest. He glanced behind and wished he hadn’t.
A score of hounds flowed perhaps fifty meters behind the twins like a wave breaking over the landscape. Their bodies were tall and lean in the way of hunting hounds, but their fur was bright and shining with the white of the moon and the red of fresh-spilt blood.
“Find a tree,” Idrys cried. “We’ve got only moments.”
“Gwydyon’s balls.” Emyr looked behind as well and pressed his speed further.
Ahead of them a spreading oak loomed out of the descending darkness. Its branches started just above their heads and reached out to create a clearing of sorts. The brothers veered and made it to the tree with the hounds so close they could hear the dogs breathing as they ran.
Idrys jumped, catching the lowest branch with sore hands. He hauled himself up and swung a leg over. Emyr jumped as well, his hands catching the limb. Idrys wrapped a leg tightly around the branch and grabbed his brother’s tunic with both hands and hauled him up.
A hound, the first to reach them, leapt as Emyr heaved upward. The jaws of the creature caught his trouser leg, ripping free as its teeth found no purchase on the thick spun cloth.
The twins climbed to a deep crook in the tree where they were well above the snapping jaws and frustrated cries of the fairy hounds. They rested there, breathing hard as they clung to each other.
“You think she’ll come and call them off?” Emyr gasped finally as the painful ache in his chest eased a little with each breath.
Idrys thought of Seren’s face when they coupled the eve before. She’d had a look of detachment, yes, but also one of desire, the kind of possessive passion he usually acquainted with owning a particularly fine horse or a rare gem.
“She’ll come,” he said.
“Promise me, whatever she says, whatever she does, you’ll stay with me. Don’t let me go, Idrys.” Emyr shook, his voice trembling.
Idrys wrapped his arms tighter around his brother’s shoulders. He felt as scared as Emyr sounded b
ut steeled himself against his own tremors.
“I so swear, Emyr,” he whispered into his brother’s dark hair, breathing in the familiar scent of his twin beneath the lingering smell of smoke.
“I so swear, Idrys,” Emyr echoed, feeling at once both too old and too young.
The twins sat in the tree, each with their head on the other’s shoulder, waiting as the red-and-white sea of crimson-eyed hounds circled and sang beneath them.