Read by David Mildon (5th story in podcast, at 1hXXmin, here) *Aelwyd: Welsh for hearth, and for home.
Braith fills her lungs with the chill morning air, petrichor on the breeze. She avoids slipping on the icy path winding to the cottage doorstep (thanks to those sturdy legs; that broad, stomping gait). To her left, there is lavender — a solitary bee braving the frost. A gold-speckled moth flickers between the dwindling mint and hardy rosemary on her right. Raised in an underground world, Braith has yet to learn the names for perfumed plants, or creatures that flutter. Her fingers find their way to the moon of her scalp and worry at the few downy tufts left there. She takes another breath and paints on a smile, careful to cover her missing teeth.
CAW! The echo disturbs a murder of crows, who take off testily from the bare, drooping limbs of a Black Poplar.
Bronwen though, cosily ensconced within the cottage, does not flinch at the sound. She has been waiting for her visitor to pluck up the courage since the smell of coal dust seeped in under the door five minutes ago.
“Come in.”
Here is what Braith will see when she enters —and again in years to come, whenever she closes her eyes, warm in bed at night. Sitting in a rocking chair, a shawl the shade of the forest floor draped over her shoulders, Bronwen is stripping willow bark with a paring knife at her thumb. A gentle fire crackles in the aelwyd beside her; a black cat winds itself around her shins. In the firelight, glass jars of tinctures glow amber on carefully curated shelves. If Braith could read at this point, she would read now: Criafolen, Llysiau’r Dryw, Ysgallen Fraith (Mountain Ash, Agrimony, Milk Thistle) on their neat little labels.
Here is what she will smell: damp soil, honey, woodsmoke, moss. And this is what she will feel: Cartref. Home. Later, she will also recognise that same feeling as Gobaith— Hope—though she has none of that right now.
“I need something. Something to kill rats. I heard you can make things like that.” Braith barks (forgive her this, would you – soot has blackened and roughened her airways since she was orphaned). She clears her throat. “Potions.”
“Potions, f'annwylyd, my dear?” Another strip of willow bark falls into Bronwen’s lap.
Braith waves her arm, thick and clumsy as a tree limb, toward the shelves of delicate vials.
“Ah yes, those. But never to take a life, dear.” Bronwen takes in Braith’s hunched frame, her sinewed back, her bald head (rubbed raw from pushing coal carts with it, you see. Well, how did you think orphaned girls survive in the valleys? They’re just small enough to fit down those awkward crannies, aren’t they? And half the price of men, too). Finally, Bronwen’s mushroom-grey eyes rest on Braith’s, asking: and whose life is it you wish to take?
Something dark and tar-like seeps from Braith and swarms round Bronwen’s heart, which drops like a stone. Bronwen knows in that moment Braith’s answer: My own, of course. A wind howls down the valley, whipping up grey spray from the waterfalls winding through crags of black rock. Hail slams against the window of the old slate cottage.
Bronwen takes Braith’s right arm in her hands (how warm they are!) and turns it, palm down. She scans the constellation of freckles dusted there, narrowing her eyes in concentration.
“Here.” Bronwen points to a mole beneath a knobble of Braith’s wrist bone. “You are Marked.” Bronwen turns Braith’s arm again, gazing this time at her palm. She traces an intersection of palm creases, marking an X near the centre. “Ahh. See here? You are from a long line of us. Healing is in your blood, Braith.”
“How do you know my name?”
“How could I know it? You just got here. I just called you ‘Freckle’, that’s all.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that’s what my name meant,” Braith gulps. “I thought it — I thought I — meant nothing.”
“Welcome home, Braith. Croeso.”
*
The women forage, dig, plant, harvest, mix, sprinkle, peel, nurture, heal; they never hunt. They answer the door to women who need them (and men too, if they are not too scared to come like the others). As Bronwen’s fingers curl and stiffen with age, Braith learns delicacy enough for both of them. Bronwen still reads to Braith by the fire: recipes, songs, stories from her ancestors (you might call them spells, f'annwylyd, my dear, and perhaps you are right). Braith learns to read herself — people as well as books. She beckons them to come sit by the aelwyd, and waits. She waits for something to seep from them, and for something in her own body to respond in kind. A corporeal echo. A rumbling in her stomach, and she will give them hawthorn bark for digestion. A tickle in her nose: elderberry.
Two years more. Bronwen finds it hard to leave her bed now. It is late November, apples have dropped from their tree and rotted where they fell; Wood’s Ear goes unharvested on the trunk. Braith is fretting over new combinations of root and seed, anything that might help Bronwen.
A knock at the door. The visitor needn’t have knocked; Braith has known for five minutes they were outside. She can smell the storm coming.
“Come in.”
A young woman enters, pale as the moon but with none of its brightness. The rain begins. Braith’s heart cools and drops like a stone. Wind howls down the chimney bringing sleet with it; the fire sputters. Braith takes the woman’s forearm in her hands. Turns it over. Her skin is unblemished. Unmarked. Braith studies her palm.
What was it I was supposed to look for? Where is the Mark?
“Wait here.” Braith rushes to Bronwen’s bedside, panicking, and clasps her frail hand between hers. “Bronwen, Bronwen— can you hear me? I can’t remember what you taught me about the Mark! Oh and I can’t see one, but, but— we must help her. The way you helped me.”
Bronwen smiles. Her mushroom eyes give their reply: no freckle, or freckled all over, what’s the difference?
“I have no Mark?”
I saw what I needed to see; what you needed me to see. Gobaith. Hope. Cartref. Home. Go to her.
Braith goes back to the pale young woman and cradles her palm once more, narrowing her eyes in mock concentration. She finds a subtle, random V, a valley in the girl’s palm.
“Ah, yes. Here. You are Marked. One of us. Healing is in your blood, Ceridwen.”
“How do you know my name?”
“How could I know it? You just got here. I just called you ‘pale’, that’s all.”
From her bed, Bronwen smiles again. Ceridwen has come home. The White Witch. Sit by the fire a moment with her, will you? Croeso.
(c) Lianne Warr, 2023
* f'annwylyd: Welsh term of endearment, ‘my dear’
Lianne Warr is an NHS psychiatrist. Decades after being, quite frankly, a weird child who wrote stories about magical Tesco bags, she started writing again during the pandemic. In 2022, she won a Cranked Anvil short story competition with ‘Year of the Tiger’, & the Balint Society’s Creative Writing/Essay award.
David Mildon is an actor, playwright & founding member of Liars' League. His stories “Worms’ Feast” and “Red” were read here & appear in Arachne Press anthologies London Lies & Weird Lies. Plays The Flood & Leaves have been produced on the London stage along with many shorter pieces. Acting work includes the National's production of Consent at the Harold Pinter.
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