THE ROCKS KNEW HIS NAME
The moss was amazing. It was like velvet under her feet, a gentle caress of the woods, first carrying her like she was flying… and suddenly the green carriage would turn out white and grey, gross thick lichen that would crumble beneath her step and tore her bare toes to scratches.
Simply amazing. The richness and texture in these strange new forests made up almost all answers for Dôn when she asked whether she liked here or not. It was alien and new to her, but yet the power of it bowed in no shame against her own memories of her homeland’s old oak groves.
Her trip had brought her in edge of small canyon, a cut off of some sixty feet’s deep into the grey rock, a hidden stony hill under the velvet green and spruces. Stunted trees tried to reach out from its bottom to match their brothers erected on the actual land level, and the grey rock hold no quarter for anyone. It just stood there, revealed from the brushes and the hollow coldness echoed with Dôn’s dreams over this land…
At the bottom of it, the old man waited.
He was not a mortal, but somehow Dôn didn’t see immortality in him like in some more vivid companions she had met in the Islands. He was more of a ghost, unwanted spirit that no one really welcomed home, no one claimed as its own. A bit like someone, who would be expected to dwell in places like these… Dôn landed down from the hills to the canyon. The sky above the trees was grey and unpleasant, but the warmth of the summer still cuddled Dôn as she slowly walked aside the old man and sat in front of him without any invitation. They just stared each other for some time, neither revealing anything from themselves to the other.
“I have wandered through these lands.”
“Oh, and what have you seen my fair lady then?”
And Dôn smiled as the man poorly hid his image of Dôn as some fancy fairy Queen, too couth for the barren wilderness of this land.
“I’ve seen things.”
“Things?”
“That have brought thoughts to my mind”
“Ah, a philosopher? Thoughts with ideas?”
“Ideas and wondering”
“Of…?”
“mortality, immortality, death and divinity…”
“hmm…”
And Dôn let little smile run across her face as she let the old man ponder her words and look her suspiciously enough to reveal that if these lands ever had any “other side”, that old man was there something not so far away what Dôn used to be for the Fair side in Wales.
A King, and now his powers were questioned by a newcomer from faraway.
“And what did these ideas let you realize?”
“Mmmm…”
And Dôn knew how to remain covert enough to tease the man speak out more that he probably wished for:
“That divinity is in spare and sparse in these lands? Perhaps even sparse enough for a one new goddess?”
It made Dôn smile. Goddess…that was a word she had not heard for long, long time…neither of her children had ever used such title for her. She remembered to been one before more subtle title, Queen of Fairland was given to her, after the one god and his son had arrived the Islands.
“Well In my lands, there was only one god left, with her son and a holy mistress. It seems like that god had not yet arrived here.”
“Oh but it is. Just look: A Missionary of foreign faith sits in front of me!”
And now Dôn laughed out aloud.
“Is it me? Or my children? Does this land hold mothers responsible for the sins of their sons?”
“I don’t know? Have you asked the land about it?”
And the man kept her grin longer than Dôn could hold the confidence in her own. She turned her gaze bit elsewhere and the man had to struggle to keep out too smugness out from his own.
“It is actually what I brought you here to discuss.”
“Oh?”
“Yeas. Children of Dôn are seemed to be quite happy to whack any pagan they see.”
“God move in mysterious ways.”
“God moves like a thief raping and ravaging uninvited.”
“Well what do you want me to do? Tell them to stop? To take our…
yours faith instead?”
“Tell them to stop would be sufficient for beginning. Another thing would be great…”
“And that is…?”
“That they could …stop taking them into their service, seek out all able man and wife and give them stool in their court…and after that King of the Cross-believers from Milano sends his letters, the axe falls and time to pick another new unbeliever to the strange play.”
And while the old man explained his concerns, Dôn silently agreed with him in all of this. They were strangers, invited guests and now her children were forcing the old folk to accept their strange and fearsome religion, despite perfectly knowing that their own lineage was not so piteous or deeply baptized as their actions might betray to believe.
Gwydion, son of Dôn, Arnoul’s grand-father had the choice to live a mortal life as Prince of Wales, or to come with Dôn to the fair lands and reign there as a king of the fair folk.
Dôn looked at him. Old and weary, as grey cloth as the rocky slopes of the canyon surrounding him. who was he? Dôn wanted to discover his secrets, his identity, his dreams and his goals…and she wanted not to hide her plans that carefully from him. After all, what harm would such petty competition between them bring?
“I have a suggestion to you.”
“speak out.”
“You tell me … something, something about yourself, and I’ll make my children to kill no more pagans in these lands.”
“Very well then. Speak out then…”
“Hmm…I don’t want to ask you, I want you to tell me.”
But the old man just smiled, in such way that Dôn could never wear him down despite all the powers her own glance concealed inside. He had come to her in a dream, in a misty borderland in the fair side, not so sure whether it belonged to the land of the livings anymore. And in that dream the Man had ruled those who ruled England, just like Dôn could see herself as a mother of her line to do as well. And the man had fled away, and by mere suggestion, Dôn had taken his council and followed him, followed into this northern borderland in Russian edges. Clearly a flight back home for him. The Path they had chosen was something that had been walked before, and the weight of those steps still remained in Dôn’s soles.
Who had walked on that trail? When? And where did it eventually lead? There was hidden greatness deeply buried inside that old man, but Dôn had only faint recollection of any great men from these parts of the world…
And with the smile still remaining in his face, the old man and Dôn departed and she felt herself lost and defeated. The old man had not revealed anything. Dôn still didn’t know his name. The grey rocks and the dark green softwood certainly did.
