Hood

CHAPTER
20

winter laid siege to the forest and set up encampment on the hilltops and valleys throughout Elfael. The tiny, branchframed patch of sky that could be seen from the mouth of the cave was often obscured, cast over with heavy, snow-laden clouds. Bran, warm beneath layered furs and skins, would sometimes wake in the night and listen to the gale as it shrieked through the naked trees outside, beating the bare branches together and sending the snow drifting high and deep over the forest trails and trackways.

The cave, however fierce the storm outside, remained dry and surprisingly comfortable. Bran spent his days dozing and planning his eventual departure; when he grew strong enough to leave this place, he would resume his flight to the north. Having no other plan, that was as good as any. For now, however, he remained content to sleep and eat and recover his strength. Sometimes he would wake to find himself alone, but Angharad always returned by day's end-often with a fat hare or two slung over her shoulder, and once with half a small deer, which she hung from an iron hook set in the rock at the entrance to the cave. In the evenings, she cooked their simple meals and tended his wounds while the pot bubbled on the fire.

And at night, each night of that long winter, the cave was transformed. No longer a rock-bound hole in a cliff face, it became a shining gateway into another world. For each night after they had eaten, Angharad sang.

The first time it took Bran by surprise. Without any hint or warning of what was to come, the old woman disappeared into the dark interior of the cave and returned bearing a harp. Finely made of walnut and elm wood, with pegs of oak, the curve of its shapely prow was polished smooth by years of handling.

Bran watched as she carefully brushed away the dust with the hem of her mantle, tightened the strings, and tuned the instrument. Then, settled on her stool, her head bent near as if in dose communion with an old friend, a frown of concentration on her puckered face, Angharad had begun to play-and Bran's bemusement turned to astonished delight.

The music those gnarled old fingers coaxed from the harp strings that night was pure enchantment, woven tapestries of melody, wonder made audible. And when she opened her mouth to sing, Bran felt himself lifted out of himself and transported to places he never knew existed. Like the ancient harp cradled in her lap, Angharad's voice took on a beauty and quality far surpassing the rude instrument. At once agile and sure and gentle, the old woman's singing voice possessed a fluid, supple strength-now soaring like the wind over the far-off mountains, now a bird in flight, now a cresting wave rolling upon the shore.

And was it not strange that when Angharad sang, she herself was subtly changed? No longer the gray hag in a tattered robe, she assumed a more noble, almost regal aspect, a dignity her shabby surroundings ordinarily denied, or at least obscured from view. Well-accustomed to her presence now, Bran was no longer repulsed by her appearance; in the same way, he no longer noticed her odd, archaic way of speaking with her thee and thou and wouldst and goest, and all the rest. Neither her aspect nor her speech seemed remarkable; he accepted both the same way he recognized her healing skill: they seemed natural to her, and most naturally her.

In fact, as Bran soon came to appreciate, with a harp in her weathered hands, Angharad became more herself.

Extraordinary as it was to Bran, that first night's performance was merely the seeding of a disused well, or the clearing of a brush-filled spring to let fresh new waters flow. Thereafter, as night after night she took her place on the stool and cradled the harp to her bosom, Angharad's voice, like fine gold, began to take on added luster through use. A voice so rare, Bran mused, must come from somewhere else, from some other time or place, from some other world-perhaps from the very world Angharad's songs described.

The world Angharad sang into being was the Elder World, the realm of princely warriors and their noble lovers. She sang of longforgotten heroes, kings, and conquerors; of warrior queens and ladies of such beauty that nations rose and fell at the fleeting glance of a limpid eye; of dangerous deeds and queer enchantments; of men and women of ancient renown at whose names the heart rose and the blood raced faster.

She sang of Arianrhod, Pryderi, Llew, Danu, and Carridwen, and all their glorious adventures; of Pwyll and Rhiannon, and their impossible love; of Taliesin, Arthur Pendragon, and wise Myrddin Embries, whose fame made Britain the Island of the Mighty. She sang of the Cauldron of Rebirth, the Isle of the Everliving, and the making of many-splendoured Albion.

One night, Bran realised that he had not heard such tales since he was a child. This, he thought, was why the songs touched him so deeply. Not since the death of his mother had anyone sung to him. This is why he listened to them all with the same awed attention. Caught up in the stories, he lived them as they took life within him; he became Bladudd, the blighted prince who sojourned seven years in unjust servitude; he became the lowly swineherd Tucmal, who challenged the giant champion Ogygia to mortal combat; he flew with doomed Yspilladan on his beautiful wings of swan feathers and wax; he spent a lonely lifetime in hopeless pining for the love of beautiful, inconstant Blodeuwedd; he was a warrior standing shoulder to shoulder with brave Meldryn Mawr to fight against dread Lord Nudd and his demon horde in a land of ice and snow. All these and many more did Bran become.

After each night's song, Angharad laid aside the harp and sat for a time, gazing into the fire as if into a window through which she could see the very things she sang about. After a time, her body would give a little shake, and she would come to herself again, like one emerging from a spell. Sometimes the sense of what he had heard eluded himshe could tell by the frown that knitted his brow and tugged at the corner of his mouth that he had not understood. So, wrapping her arms around her knees as she sat on her three-legged stool, she would gaze into the fire and talk about the story and its inner meaning-the spirit of the song, Angharad called it.

As Bran's knowledge grew, so did his appreciation of the stories themselves. He began to behold possibilities and portents, glimmerings of distant hope, flashes of miracle. The things he heard in Angharad's songs were more than mere fancy-the stuff itinerant minstrels pliedthey were tokens of knowledge in another, deeper, rarer form. Perhaps they were even a form of power, but one long dormant. At the very least, these songs were markers along a sacred and ancient pathway that led deep into the heart of the land and its people-his land, his people-a spirit and life that would be crushed out of existence beneath the heavy, unfeeling rule of the coldhearted Ffreinc.

It snowed the day Bran finally regained his feet. Leaning heavily on the old woman, he shuffled with agonizing slowness to the mouth of the cave to stand and watch silent white flakes drift down from the close grey sky to cover the forest in a fine seamless garment of glistening white. He felt the cold air on his face and hands and drew it deep into his lungs, shivering with the icy tingle. The sensation made him cough; it still hurt, but the coughing no longer made him gasp with pain. He braved it for the chance to simply stand and watch the swirling flakes spin and dance as they floated to earth.

After being so long abed, with nothing to look at but the dull grey rock walls of the cave, Bran considered that he had rarely seen anything so beautiful. The dizzying sweep and curl and gyre of the falling flakes made him smile as he turned his light-dazzled eyes to the sky. The old woman seemed to approve of the pleasure he took in the sight; she bore him up with her sturdy peasant strength, watching the enjoyment flit across Bran's thin, haggard features.

When he grew tired, Angharad fetched him a staff. She returned with a sturdy length of hawthorn; placing it in his hands, she indicated that Bran should go and relieve himself. He hobbled gingerly out into the little clearing; the snow fell on him, the fat, wet flakes stinging sweetly as they alighted on his exposed skin, stuck, and instantly melted.

Although it felt odd standing in the snow within sight of the old woman at the mouth the cave, Bran was glad to be able to stand like a man on his own two feet once more and not have to squat on a pot like a child. He returned to the cave, shaking and sweating and tottering like an invalid no longer able to lift his feet, but beaming as if he had journeyed to the very edge of the earth and lived to tell the tale.

The old woman did not rush out to help him but waited at the cave mouth for each stumbling step to bring him back. When he entered the cave, she took his face between her rough hands and blew her warm breath upon him. "You can speak," she told him, if you will,"

Up until that moment, Bran did not feel he had anything to say, but now all the pent-up words came bubbling up in a confused and tangled rush, only to stick in his throat. He stood swaying on the staff, his tongue tingling with half-formed thoughts and questions, struggling to frame the words until she laid a sooty finger on his lips and said, "Time enough for all your questions anon, but sit down now and rest."

She did not lead him back to his bed as he expected, but sat him on her three-legged stool beside the fire ring. While he warmed himself, she made a meal for them-a stew with meat this time, a nice fat hare, along with some leeks and wild turnips and dried mushrooms gathered through the autumn and dried in the sun. When she had cut up everything and tossed it into the cauldron, she took a few handfuls of ground wheat, some salt, water, honey, dried berries, and dried herbs and began making up little cakes with dough left over from the last batches.

Bran sat and watched her deft fingers prepare the food, and his thoughts slowed and clarified. "What is your name?" he asked at last, and was surprised to hear a voice that sounded much like the one he knew as his own.

She smiled without glancing up and continued kneading the dough for a moment before answering. She shaped a small loaf and set it to warm and rise on a stone near the fire. Then, looking him full in the face, she replied, "I am Angharad."

"Are you a gwrach," he asked, 11 a sorceress?"

She bent to her work once more, and Bran thought she would not answer. "Please, I mean no disrespect," he said. "Only it seems to me that no one can do what you do without the aid of powerful magic." He paused, watching her mix the flour, and then asked again, "Truly, are you a sorceress?"

"I am as you see me," she replied. She shaped another small loaf and put it beside the first. "Different people see different things. What do you see?"

Embarrassed now to tell her what he really thought that he saw a repulsive crone with bits of leaf and seeds in her hair; that he saw a grotesque hag with smoke-darkened skin in a filthy, grease-stained rag of a dress; that he saw a hunchbacked, shambling wreck of a human being-Bran swallowed his blunt observations and instead replied, "I see the woman who with great skill and wisdom has saved my life."

"I ask you now," she replied, rolling the dough between her calloused palms, "was it a life worth the saving?"

"I do hope you think so," he replied.

Angharad stopped her work. Her face grew still as she regarded him with an intensity like the lick of a naked flame over his skin. "It is my most fervent hope," she said, her voice solemn as a pledge. "What is more, all of Elfael joins me in that hope."

Bran, feeling suddenly very unworthy of such esteem, lowered his gaze to the fire and said no more that night.

Many more days passed, and Bran's strength slowly increased. Restless and frustrated by his inability to move about as he would like, he sat and moped by the fire, idly feeding twigs and bark and branches to the flames. He knew he was not well enough to leave yet, and even if he could have limped more than a few paces without exhausting himself, winter, with its blizzards and blasts, still raged. That did not hinder him from wishing he could go and making plans to leave.

Angharad, he knew, would not prevent him. She had said as much, and he had no reason to believe otherwise. Indeed, she seemed more than sympathetic to his plight, for she, too, nursed a low-smouldering hatred for the Ffreinc who had seized Elfael, killed the king, and wiped out the warband. Outlanders, she called them, whose presence was an offence under heaven, a stink in the nostrils of God.

While Bran shared this view, he could not see himself effecting any significant change in the situation. Even if he had been so inclined, as the matter stood, he was a man marked for death. If he was caught in Elfael again, Bran knew Count de Braose would not hesitate to finish what he had almost succeeded in accomplishing at the forest's edge.

The fear of that attack would come swarming out of the night to kindle in him an intense passion to escape, to flee to a safe haven in the north, to leave Elfael and never look back. Other times, he saw himself standing over the body of Count de Braose, his lance blade deep in his effete enemy's guts. Occasionally, Bran imagined there might be a way to unite those two conflicting ambitions. Perhaps he could fly away to safety, persuade his kinsmen in the north to join with him, and return to Elfael with a conquering warhost to drive the Ffreinc invaders from the land.

This last idea was late in coming. His impulse from the beginning had been escape, and it still claimed first place in his thoughts. The notion of staying to fight for his land and people had occurred to him in due course-seeded, no doubt, by the stories Angharad told, stories that filled his head with all kinds of new and unfamiliar thoughts.

One morning, Bran rose early to find his wizened guardian gone and himself alone. Feeling rested and able, he set himself the task of walking from the cave to the edge of the clearing. The day was clear and bright, the sun newly risen, the air crisp. He drew a deep breath and felt the tightness in his chest and side-as if inner cords still bound him. His shoulder ached with the cold, but he was used to it now, and it no longer bothered him. His legs felt strong enough, so he began to walk-slowly, with exaggerated care.

The ground sloped down from the mouth of the cave, and he saw the path trodden by Angharad on her errands and, judging by the other tracks in the well-trampled snow, a multitude of forest creatures as well. He hobbled across the open expanse and arrived in good order at the edge of the clearing.

Flushed with the exhilaration of this small achievement, he decided to press himself a little further. He entered the forest, walking with greater confidence along the well-packed snow track. It felt good to move and stretch. The downhill path was gentle, and soon he reached a small rill. The stream was covered by a thin layer of translucent ice; he could hear water running underneath.

The track turned and ran alongside the stream; without thinking, he followed. In a little while he came to a place where the ground dropped away steeply. The water entered a deep cutting carved into the slope and disappeared in a series of stony cascades. The path followed this ravine, but it was far too steep for Bran, so he turned and started back the way he had come. When he reached the place where the path joined the stream, he continued on, soon reaching another impasse. On his left hand, a rocky shelf jutted up, twice his height; on his right the stream flowed at the bottom of a rough defile, and dead ahead, the trunk of a fallen elm blocked the path like a gnarled, black, bark-covered wall.

He did not trust his ability to clamber over the fallen log-in his present condition, he did not dare risk it. He had no choice but to retrace his steps, so he turned around and started back to the cave. It was then he learned that he had walked farther than he intended, and also that he had seriously misjudged the slight uphill climb.

The rise was steep, and the snow slick underfoot. Twice he slipped and fell; he caught himself both times, but each fall was accompanied by a sharp tearing sensation-as if his wounds were being ripped open once more. The second time, he paused on his hands and knees in the snow and waited until the waves of pain subsided.

After that, he proceeded much more carefully, but the exertion soon taxed his rapidly tiring muscles; he was forced to stop to rest and catch his breath every few dozen paces. Despite the cold, he began to sweat. His tunic and mantle were soon soaked through, and his damp clothes grew clammy and froze, chilling him to the bone. By the time the cave came into sight, he was shaking with cold and gasping with pain.

Head down, wheezing like a wounded bear, Bran shuffled the last hundred paces to the cave, staggered in, and collapsed on his bed. He lay a long time, shivering, too weak to pull the fleeces over himself.

This was how Angharad found him sometime later when she returned with a double brace of woodcocks.

Bran sensed a movement and opened his eyes to see her bending over him, the birds dangling in her hand and her brow creased with concern. "You went out," she said simply.

"I did," he said, his voice husky with fatigue. He clenched his jaw tightly to keep his teeth from chattering.

"You should not have done so." Laying aside the birds, she straightened his limbs in his bed, then arranged the fleeces over him.

"I am sorry," he murmured, sinking gratefully beneath the coverings. He closed his eyes and shivered.

Angharad built up the fire again and set about preparing the woodcocks for their supper. Bran dozed on and off through the rest of the day; when he finally roused himself once more, it was dark outside. The cave was warm and filled with the aroma of roasting meat. He sat up stiffly and rubbed his chest; the wound was sore, and he felt a burning deep inside.

The old woman saw him struggle to rise and came to him. "You will stay abed," she told him.

"No," he said, far more forcefully than he felt. "I want to get up."

"You have overtired yourself and must rest now. Tonight you will stay abed."

"I wont argue," he said, accepting her judgement. "But will you still sing to me?"

Angharad smiled. "One would almost think you liked my singing," she replied.

That night after supper, Bran lay in his bed, aching and sore, skin flushed with fever, barely able to keep his eyes open. But he listened to that incomparable voice, and as before, the cave disappeared and he travelled to that Elder Realm, where Angharad's tales took life. That night he listened as, for the first time, she sang him a tale of King Raven.