Chapter 16 Gwynedd
Gwynedd
Cathan was the oldest Druid in the land and remembered our island’s deepest and most ancient history.
He taught us everything he knew, including how to chart every constellation in the sky.
For eight years I studied Venus’s cycle as it made its way around the Earth.
The path’s geometry formed an exquisite five-petaled symmetrical shape, like a perfect flower in bloom.
Cathan enjoyed filling our minds with such wonders of the universe, knowing it was feeding the magic inside us.
During this time, I began to have dreams of Stonehenge, though my young mind did not know its name yet.
I could feel Stonehenge tied to me like an umbilical cord.
In my dreams I often saw a towering woman in iridescent robes standing within the ring of sarsen stones with a quartz hammer in her hand.
With great care she would tap on the stones until they began to ring, and the humming sound would travel out across the land like music.
I kept seeing this vision and hearing the song in my dreams—dreams that felt more like memories. Every time I woke, I knew with certainty I would have to travel to Stonehenge one day to understand why.
Merlin knew of my dreams. We were twins, our minds joined together like a Dara Knot, and yet looking back on my life, my brother and I had very different paths because he was a boy, and I was a girl.
Though we practiced the Old Way, as I grew older, I began to observe the differences between our sex in the outside world. The imbalance of power between men and women had not always existed, but in the time I was born, as a woman the choices for my future were limited.
My brother announced he would become a Bard, a Druid storyteller and wielder of words.
To become a Bard is not an easy path. Bards have to possess the highest mastery of language and memory.
They are the storytellers, the history keepers, and the entertainers of a court.
They used to train with a wizened old Druid name Alistair to learn how to recount the epic tales of the past. Bards are our living libraries, our poets and singers.
A Bard in his element is a powerful force, and it is believed some Bards—the most masterful Bards—can weave spells with their words like the magicians of old.
My brother became such a Bard. When we turned sixteen, I watched him don a Bard’s robes for the first time, and I was filled with jealousy.
Becoming a Bard was not an option for me solely because I was a girl.
Not since before the Roman occupation of our lands had there been a female Bard.
With my brother’s course set, I wasn’t sure what my future held.
I was almost a woman, coming fully into my maidenhood, and soon my father would marry me off to form a political alliance.
I had already heard whispers he was angling for a match with the king’s son, and I knew my time of freedom was limited.
If Merlin was to be a Bard, I needed to discover what I was meant to be.
The next time we arrived for our lessons, Cathan led us to the far side of the island where Alistair lived in a cottage overlooking the water. Cathan knocked and moments later the door swung open.
Standing on the threshold was the most striking young man I’d ever seen.
He looked to be a few years older than me.
His hair was golden brown and almost as long as my own.
He had pulled it back at his crown with a single braid, showing both his ears were pierced and decorated with silver cuffs.
He was wearing more jewelry than a woman, with an enormous belt buckle, bracelets, and a neck cuff.
I had the feeling each piece told a story.
His eyes were a startling azure, and he was staring at me just as intently.
Then he turned to Merlin. “You are here to see Alistair, no doubt, my torturous master.” His face broke into a grin. “I am Taliesin.”
I had heard of Taliesin, the youngest Bard in all the land, as well as the brashest and the brightest. He had not yet finished his apprenticeship and he could outspeak, outsing, and out-letter anyone.
The young maidens said Taliesin could reach for the stars and force one down just with his voice.
He knew words in Brythonic, Gaelic, Welsh, Celtic, Latin, and a myriad of other languages.
He knew the roots of the word, their dimensions and power.
He knew how to make vowels breathe, consonants crack, and every sound sing with perfect meter.
He was beautiful in his Bard’s robes, which were blue, not white, for blue was the color of truth.
And right now, he was looking at me as if I were the subject of his next poem. “You must be the fair Gwynedd.”
I could not help but laugh. No one had ever called me fair. I had been called fierce, stubborn, and headstrong, but never fair.
Merlin had a silly grin on his face too. We were all three starstruck with each other. Seeing Taliesin felt like we’d just found a long-lost friend we had not seen for lifetimes. Even Cathan could sense the immediate bond between us.
I was halfway in love with him already. I left my brother with him, while Cathan and I returned to his cottage.
Suddenly I felt alone and adrift. My life before me seemed to be a wide, cavernous abyss. What was my path?
Cathan in his wondrous way intuited my thoughts and said, “I think it’s time we see if the ring fits, don’t you?”
I nodded, not surprised by his ability to know my mind. He disappeared into his workroom and soon returned. Only now a lilting song permeated the air. He opened his hand and laid the ring on the table. I had not gazed upon it in years.
I picked the ring up reverently and slipped it on my finger. A perfect fit.
“Does the ring still sing for you?”
It did. A soul-stirring melody that filled me up on the inside.
“Can you play the song you hear inside your mind?” Cathan challenged me. He brought out a beautiful lyre and set it before me.
I frowned. I’d never tried to play an instrument before, yet somehow my hands knew what strings to pluck, as if I could conjure the melody from my own heart. I did not even need to see with my eyes what my hands were doing.
Cathan listened to the music, too stunned to speak.
For I had found my gift, my magic—music—and I could play like a master.
All my life, Cathan had shared with us the legends of powerful songs. How sound once upon a time could move mountains, build pyramids, and even open portals in time.
My musical ability was gifted for a purpose, and the answers lay at Stonehenge.
Answers to the riddles of my dreams and why I had a ring from Atlantis.
However, to reach Stonehenge in the far south would take a month on foot.
It may well have been on the other side of the world.
I had never traveled farther than Partick.
My father unknowingly helped me accomplish my quest. When he and his armies had to go north for an extended period to fight off Angle invaders, Merlin proclaimed the time for our journey had come.
Of course, my brother had foreseen it. His ability to see the future was growing stronger as he aged.
Although even without Merlin’s gift of foresight, I knew my whole life had been leading up to this moment.
Taliesin, my brother, and I set off alone. The journey took us thirty days.
The men did not wear their Bards’ blue robes, for many had not seen a Druid south of Hadrian’s Wall for centuries, not since Rome had come to conquer.
After we passed the wall we began to see the ruins and abandoned towns from Rome’s exodus a hundred years ago when their empire fell.
Overgrown weeds filled the aqueducts. Public baths were empty shells.
We passed deserted houses with fallen roofs and a Roman amphitheater left to an audience of ghosts.
We camped in dense woodlands, keeping to ourselves and encountering few travelers.
No one ever visited Stonehenge. Rome, during its four-hundred-year occupation, had outlawed gathering at any stone circle across the land, and the fear the Romans had planted was rooted deep. Many thought such places were haunted.
Only the Druids knew how to read the stones and the stars.
The stones could chart years, predict eclipses, equinoxes, and solstices.
The stones were guides to the cosmos and some even said ancient doorways to Ley Lines, Earth’s energy pathways, and only Druids from the ancient past knew how to make the stones sing.
As we journeyed south, the closer we neared to our destination, the song inside me grew like a beacon.
When we arrived at Stonehenge, we set up our camp right in the center of the sarsens’ ring under the dome of the sky.
The stars stretched above us like a peaceful canopy, and I knew I had arrived at the one place on Earth I was meant to be.
Then we waited. On the third day I saw a figure in the distance.
A man walking toward us, coming across the field.
As he drew near, I could see he was enormous.
Quite easily the tallest human I’d ever seen.
He was a dark-skinned, black-haired warrior, adorned with metal, and he moved with the fierceness of a wolf.
When he closed the distance, a feeling of recognition stirred within me.
I knew this man—or had known him in another life—though the memory escaped me now.
He stared at us with weary eyes, looking as if he’d weathered a war and lived to tell the tale.
“You’ve come,” he said to us. His unwavering gaze never left mine.
“We have, but we’ve not yet gone.” Merlin grinned, deciding to play the jester to offset the man’s fierceness.
The warrior said to me, “There is a price for the answers you seek.”
Taliesin cocked a brow in question. “What is this price?”
Whatever it was I would pay it. I’d come too far to turn back now. I’d been waiting my whole life for this.
“A lock of hair.” The warrior held out his dagger to me.
I hesitated. From my lessons with Cathan, I knew the power a single strand of hair held. The hidden code to the body and the imprint of the soul. Though after the Golden Age ended, humanity had lost the ability to access it. Perhaps this mysterious man still knew how.
Merlin, Taliesin, and I looked to each other, suddenly wary.
“What is your name?” I asked the man. If I was going to give him a part of myself, at least I deserved to know that much.
“Garesh.”