Louisa Shorney

Whilst Breac and Bredda join in the evensong that fills the dusk air, Louarn finds a smooth depression in one of the giant slabs of granite that form the cave floor and curls around himself, letting the chattering song tales relax his weary mind and body. Usually this would be the perfect time for a snack hunt but he has no will to muster fur, flesh and bone, instead he drifts into sleep listening to the snuffle, scratch and snaffle of Broc chomping up a belly full of grubs, bugs and squirming worms. As he slides deeper and deeper into sleep, chomping snaffles turn to burbles and slaps that echo back, then rattles and laps like the breath of the giant that sleeps in the cavernous hollow. Awakening in his memory, the darkness is complete by the shore of the stillness lake, deep in the dragon’s belly. Eyes open or closed matters not, Louarn can smell the water, the damp that runs through the rocks and the microbial slime that clings to the lake’s edge. The gentle breath of breeze tickles through his whiskers and fur. Apart from the occasional drip, drip that reverberates around the chamber all is still, all is calm, all is quiet. Caught between reverence and curiosity, Louarn does not want to disturb the tranquility but he is itching to find out what causes the water to lap back and forth upon its shore, he can sense its gentle current, there must be an inlet somewhere. First he sniffs the air around him for any signs or clues, then he drops his muzzle to the surface and lets his consciousness slide into the water, seeking the current and its source. Waves softly undulating his fur draw his attention, focusing his awareness a luminosity begins to glow in the current, gathering intensity as he finds its flow. Fully immersed now the current picks up speed, faster and faster he is drawn along the flow, brighter and brighter the intensity of its glow. He can vaguely make out the terrain through which he passes, it is not long before the current surfaces from the bedrock channel and flows between peaty banks, tumbling over rocks and under looming lumber, passing by meadow, hedgerow and crop until it is funnelled into concrete under oilsand. The speed drops but the intensity of light does not as he travels though a tomb of concrete interspersed with gaps of sky and polished white marble until his way is bared by a cast iron grate. Current and light continue to flow through but his consciousness can not pass these iron bars. Flummoxed by his inability to travel any further Louarn’s consciousness swirls against this impenetrable blockade.

‘Come now fox you’ve got cunning enough for this conundrum. Consciousness is iron bound but water is not. Water holds the reflection of everything it touches. Yes, yes, yes, of course.’

Louarn holds his consciousness into the flow of light and thinks his thoughts into the current hoping that the water will be able to carry them through the ferris fence to whom or whatever lies at its end. He does not have to wait long before, to his surprise, a wet crow mimicking a duck swims up to the bars and presses her beak through so that she can make contact with the water on the other side.

‘Who is come? Are you far?’

‘I am Louarn, how far I know not. I come from the Lake of Stillness in the belly of the Dragon.’

‘Ah! Then she has sent you, good. What are you?’

‘I am fox, though I was not aware that I had been sent, I simply followed my curiosity. Who and what may you be?’

‘I may be a crow but then again I may not, either way my name is Morrigan. So she was right you do have some cunning and some clarity, as for the courage that’s to be seen, but it would seem that she has chosen well.’

‘I presume by “she” you mean the Lady Achren?’

‘You can presume and assume all you like but you will not find any truth like that. Although I am indeed speaking of our Lady. So what’s your plan cunning one?’

‘Plan? What plan? What are you talking about crow.’

‘You haven’t got a plan? Well how are you going to get me out of here with out a plan?’

‘I wasn’t aware that I was. I wasn’t even aware that you existed and I have no idea where here is to get you out of it.’

‘Well I must say I don’t see how you can have cunning and clarity when you seem to have no awareness at all. What was she thinking sending me a sleeping dog.’

‘Excuse me but I am no dog! And if you wish to insult me so then I will return the way I came and leave you to your watery prison.’

‘It’s an arboretum actually.’

‘What? What are you babbling on about now Mad Crow?’

‘My prison. It’s an arboretum, a house of trees. With a fake sun and concrete culvert. She ripped them out of the forest and brought them here for me.’

Morrigan’s forlorn and soul torn expression nearly rips Louarn’s heart from his chest, whilst his head spins with consternation.

‘The Lady Achren did this? But why? She is the spirit of the forest, why would she defile her own body to entrap you this way and then send a rescue party, it makes no sense crow.’

From chagrin to malice, Morrigan’s countenance changes so abruptly that Louarn’s blood would have curled in his veins were his fur, flesh and bone present with him.

‘I speak of the usurping Eve-blood, my Meseer, not the Annwm.’

Morrigan almost spits her words with the distaste of their utterance.

‘My name is Morrigan, do not call me crow, fox!’

‘I apologise Morrigan, it is a disrespect I know, so please do not call me fox. But what do you mean, your Meseer?’

‘The Lord High Commissioner, Lamia, is my Meseer. Pppth! She does not deserve such title, but there must be seven and there was not an eighth to give us choice.’

‘I know nothing of sevens and eights nor what those may mean and I gather that a Lamia is a who and a she but what is thlord hirecom ishona?’

‘She is spite and greed and malice and cruelty and madness and hatred and bile and sickness and blackness and VILE.’

‘Her pleasantness or unpleasantness does not explain to me her beingness cro..Morrigan, sorry. But what kind of being is lorid hicommon ishoner, I have never heard of this clan.’

‘It is no clan! It is her human power and her weapon. It is a title, a name, fox.’

‘Louarn! Remember? Or would you prefer that I call you Crow?’

‘Excuse me brother, I have none to converse with but my own bent mind and that vile witch. I can not remember the last time I saw the sky nor danced with her turbulences.’

Morrigan seems to have drifted off into her rememberances, Louarn waits calmly not wishing to disturb her momentary pleasure. The mere thought of being locked in a half dead world with nothing but a human to relieve the monotony is enough to make his skin itch and he didn’t even bring it with him. No wonder this crow has gone crazy. Even with no fur, flesh and bone he struggles to take his consciousness deep enough to get a good measure of the metal impasse. This should be kits play to Beabhair and Dobharchu, they should be at the Fall in the morning he can ask them then. With clarity comes excitement and impatience, Louarn can not wait to show Morrigan that the Lady’s faith in him is not misplaced.

‘What is it fox? The water roils with excitement, which certainly isn’t mine so it must be yours. What ever it is spit it out Louarn before you drown me with enthusiasm.’

‘You asked me if I had a plan, to get you out, well I think I just might.’

‘Well, well, what is it then? What is it? No! No! You mustn’t. If I know she’ll find out. She’ll pluck it out of me one feather at a time. No, no, you mustn’t.’

Her momentary infection of enthusiasm is anaesthetised with the crippling certainty of cruelty and pain. As her mind returns to drivelling, she recedes from the grate and returns to her perch over the water. Louarn knows that he will get no more from her now. It pains him deeply to leave her alone in her suffering but he is more use to her if he leaves and gets the help that she needs. Reluctantly he withdraws from the current and follows his flow back to himself, making sure to attend carefully to the route so that he can tell Dobharchu and Beabhair how to find her again.

*

Cerri wraps a blanket around Roshan’s curled up and sleeping body, stokes the fire to keep them warm and creeps quietly from the living room to join Meg and Tom in the kitchen. She leaves one snug and cosy room to enter another where Tomlin and Meg are sitting opposite each other deep in conversation. Joining them she takes an empty glass and reaches across the table to grasp the bottle of aged Braichleann, barely raising an eyebrow at the goshawk perching on a back rest at its head.

‘Ah Cerridwen dear. Is thee wee lassie seetled teh sleep?’

‘Aye Meg she’s curled up on the floor but I didn’t have the heart to move her from her mah’s side. I see we have another guest. Is anyone going to introduce me?’

‘Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Taliesin, I am one of the Falconari, we serve the Seven. It is an honour to meet the last of the bloodline.’

Taliesin bows his head reverently. The vitriol that has been lying in waiting, boring a black hole into the core of Cerri, now erupts uncontrollably, inking her irises and spattering from her tongue.

‘Oh I’m the LAST all right, but I don’t know what BLOODLINE you’re squawking on about. I’m certainly the LAST to know what is going on, the LAST to know anyone, the LAST to know anything, left out in the dark whilst everyone else knows everyone else and everything that’s going on. So, who’s Messeer are you BIRD? Aunty Meg’s I suppose, because I’ve only known her my entire life so why would I be entrusted with such knowledge. It seems everyone has just pretended to be, all of you liars. Liars and pretenders, thieves of the truth and I trusted you. I TRUSTED YOU!’

‘SIT DOWN ye wee fool and calm yersel lassie.’

Meg rises up out of herself, twice the stature of her petite frame, and bathes Cerri in an intensity of light. There is no venom strong enough to resist such an antidote, the vitriol reluctantly mutates. Returning to her usual stature the Crone retains her light, banishing every shadow from every corner and crevice of the kitchen.

‘No it is ney fair teh have kept yees in the dark, neither o ye. Aye an I said ney good cood com o it. Wits don is don an thers ney undoin o it. Gee a grip an gee o’er yersel Miss Morgan or ye ney kin o mine. Next time that slitherin worem leaps up an tries teh bite ye grasp the wee buggar by the throat an take control o it. An weel have ney mere o yer sel pityin drivel at my taeble.’

Cerri scrapes the chair across the flagstones as she pushes herself away from the table. Without raising her head to catch anyone’s eye, she turns and heads for the door like a petulant teenager.

‘Is the harma locked Tom?’

‘The keys are just there in the bowl by the door. Cerri don’t go….’

‘Ach leave her to her sel lad. She’ll come to her own mind if you gee her some time.’

As the door calmly latches itself behind Cerri, Meg reaches across to the bottle of Braichleann and tops up their three glasses. She turns to address Taliesin but is interrupted by the clack of the latch as Cerri opens the door and returns to the warmth of the kitchen. Wearing a wreath of honeysuckle and ivy she regains her seat at the head of the table opposite Taliesin. Taking her glass of amber nectar she raises it in a silent toast and chugs it down, pushing the empty glass towards the bottle for another dram.

‘That looks like the work of our Lady, there is fine magic woven into the tendrils of your crown Last Blood, you have been blessed in deed. Where came you by this?’

‘A fox and a badger in the river.’

‘We stopped to rest at the place of my birth. Cerri had..’

‘An eruption. I was vile. I went to calm myself in the water but it just made it worse, there was a crow calling for help and I lost her and I couldn’t find her and I just got so angry.’

‘A crow? Did she give you a name? Morrigan perhaps?’

‘Yes that was her.’

‘Did she tell you anything?’

‘She just said that she was trapped, iron bound, dungeon, the key’s Lamia’s..then I lost her.’

‘Ah yes Gwern had said as much. And your connection was severed before she could give you the key. Never mind a way will be found. She will not be left lost.’

‘Forgive me for earlier, Taliesin is it? I don’t notice it until the shadow’s upon me, then it just blots me out before I can take a breath and I’m left screaming in a void that sucks all the sound out.’

‘It is understood Last Blood, think no more upon it, besides I have endured much worse at the hands of the Fallen Clan.’

‘Fallen Clan? Who are they?’

‘Us Cerri, Humans. We betrayed the brotherhood when we decided that we were greater and more intelligent than the other clans. Believing ourselves to be superior in creation we fell for the illusions Azrial wove into the great smoking mirror and lost our sanity.’

Meg replenishes the glasses with the last of the bottle.

‘Reet on we business kinder. We’ve plans teh make an Taliesin must fly with the first light and we have teh strike our trail as soon as our sel. The Old Elm needs us to be takin’ the wee bairn an her ma to the Dragon’s nest with out a trace. Our sister Belili will be meetin us on the shore of the Silent Lake. Cerridwen dear ye shall ha teh learn to master yersel yeh canny be wearing that as a crutch, I will teach ye all I ken as we go. Tomlin, he needs a brother to take a seat at the Fall, a council has been called, we must be presented.’

‘No Meg, Tom can’t go he must take my research to the Collegiate, they must see the data for themselves. If we don’t stop them it’ll be the end of us all. After what Dah said and Louarn, we may already be too late.’

‘What’s this lassie?’

‘CERC, they’re going to frack into the sulphur pits at the edge of the Western Waters. It will trigger seismic tremors and she’ll blow!’

‘Who will blow child?’

‘Breo Seaghead! The mountain. She’s a sleeping volcano aunty, that’s why they call her the Dragon’s Lair or Brigid’s Burning Arrows, don’t you see. I tried to tell them but they wouldn’t listen and now they’re tryin to shut me up. That’s why we’re here.’

‘An who is this Louarn fella?’

‘He’s the fox that brought me my crown.’

‘Och, crown now is it?’

‘That’s what he called it.’

‘Mmm, weel yel ha to take this to the Master laddie the hawk canney, he must away teh yer uncle. An we shall ha to take the Fall into oor path, but a dunne think we can wait fir the council. But that’s as mebe we all need rest an an early rise. I’ll bid yehs good night an I suggest ye do the same.’

Terrified by the possibility of a resurgence of venomous bile, Cerri continues to wear her crown as she cleans her teeth, dons her pyjamas and readies herself for bed.

‘Yer not plannin’ on wearin’ that thing to bed are ye hun?’

‘Well yes, actually.’

‘Won’t it be gettin’ in the way?’

‘Gettin’ in the way of what exactly?’

Feeling more herself wearing the crown, Cerri is fully aware of Tom’s insinuations but is enjoying the flirtatious tease.

‘Well, yer head on the pillow of course. But come to think of it we’ll be goin’ separate ways in the mornin’ an’ who knows when we will find each other again.’

Tom leans across her wrapping his arms around her waste, scoops her up, swinging her over him so that she is sat astraddle his upper thighs and props himself up against the headboard. Those sparkling blue pools of light that he looks out of melt Cerri’s icy pretence every time. She leans in to kiss him but a bush of ivy and honeysuckle prevent contact. They both laugh at the foolery and let the tensions of the day subside. Tom reaches up and gently lifts the crown from Cerri’s head and places it against the headboard above her pillows.

‘I think we’ll be safe enough now and it’ll be right there if you need it.’

Cerri takes his lips in hers and submerges herself in their passion.