Chapter 13 #3
At first, Ciwa was taken with the Lady Angharad, who fed Ciwa the sweetest bites of fruit and made for her little dolls that delighted her. But the lady was a sorceress and knew the way to Lord Talan’s heart was through his beloved daughter.
“Ciwa needs a mother,” he said to himself one day as he watched the lady and his daughter walking hand in hand in the garden. “And I have no heir. I shall ask for the Lady Angharad’s hand.”
She accepted, and they were married in the spring. Ciwa thought herself blessed indeed to have been given such a beautiful and kind stepmother.
And for a time, all was well in Gwent.
—
A year later, when the meadows were again carpeted in flowers, the Lady Angharad gave Lord Talan a son.
Dochau, as they named him, was a pale, unhappy boy.
He broke the vases that had been Lady Coemel’s dowry and pinched his older sister when the nurses were not looking.
He bit the dogs until they bit him back and had to be killed.
The creatures of the castle were afraid of him and relayed to Ciwa stories of his cruelty until she cried.
But when the girl repeated their words to her father, Lord Talan shut his ears to her.
“I’ll hear no more lies!” he shouted. “You are jealous, that’s all, and trying to turn me against my own son.”
Ciwa, frightened to lose her father’s love, begged his forgiveness, and from then on only spoke of matters of the castle. But to those, too, Lord Talan was deaf.
The sparrows told her of a loose chimney on the roof, and though Ciwa told her father, he did not listen. The chimney fell on the head of a passing lad and killed him.
The horses told her their hay had gone moldy, and though Ciwa told her father, he did not listen. The horses writhed with colic.
The hawks, who flew high and far and saw many things, told her of an illness in the south.
A ferocious fever that felled the strong and old alike and burned through villages like a fire.
Ciwa told her father to shut the castle doors to any strangers, lest they carry the sickness with them, but he did not listen.
The castle doors opened to merchants and minstrels, priests and pilgrims. And one of them carried the fever in his lungs.
—
Lord Talan fell ill one morning and was dead by sunset.
“Oh, God!” cried Ciwa, as she held her father’s cold hand in hers. “You have taken both my mother and my father, and left me all alone! Have mercy, and call me home!”
But God had not forgotten Ciwa. For she still had her gift.
No sooner was Lord Talan buried than Angharad and Dochau banished Ciwa from her father’s kingdom.
“You are a creature of the devil,” the lady said. “You who claim to speak with animals, who knew of the fever before it arrived in our lands.”
“My gift comes from God!” Ciwa protested. “I warned my father, but he did not listen!”
“You have the devil within you!” Lady Angharad screamed. “Go now, begone! And never show your face here again!”
And so, fearing for her life, Ciwa fled to the forest.
She walked until her feet bled. She cried until her eyes ran dry. When she finally collapsed on the forest floor, she looked up at the sky and saw it was nearly dark.
“Oh, Lord!” she cried. “You have forsaken me!”
But God had not forsaken Ciwa. For she still had her gift.
Just then, something moved in the trees.
“Who’s there?” called the girl. “Please, show yourself!”
A huge she-wolf emerged from the forest with her three pups. Ciwa shut her eyes and waited for death. But it did not come.
“Hello, poor creature,” said the she-wolf. “I see you are lost, and it is nearly night. My den is close. Follow us.”
And off trotted the she-wolf with her three pups.
Ciwa, knowing not what to do, only that she was cold and hungry and alone, followed.
“Come,” said the she-wolf, when they had reached her den, “and sup with my children. For I see that you are hungry, and my milk is nourishing.”
And so Ciwa, who had known silver plates and roasted meat, lay beside the wolf pups and drank of their mother’s milk.
The den was small: the ceiling made of tree roots, the floor made of leaves. It was nothing like Lord Talan’s fine castle. But it was warm and dry. Ciwa’s belly was full, and she was weary, and she curled up beside the three wolf pups and fell fast asleep.
Years passed.
Ciwa slept each night in the she-wolf’s den and spent the days hunting beside her. She learned all the forest’s secrets, but she missed the world of men and grieved for her father.
One day, a sparrow flew into the she-wolf’s den and fluttered its wings over Ciwa’s face until she woke.
“What is it, little bird?” she asked.
“Lady Ciwa,” said the sparrow, “I have news! Your brother, Dochau, has overthrown the king of Llangiwa and rules in his stead. He has asked all creatures of the forest to find his half sister and bring her to him, for he is sickened by the fate which befell her and wishes to make amends.”
Ciwa thought of chairs and fires, of fresh bread and goose-down quilts.
But she thought most of all of her brother, Dochau, whom she had painted, with time and distance, to be nothing more than the sad child of an evil mother.
She longed to sit among her fellow men and hear music. She longed to worship God in a church.
So, with many tears, Ciwa bid farewell to the she-wolf who had suckled her beside her own pups and walked into the west.
—
The land of Llangiwa was rich with forests and streams and all manner of wild beasts.
But the crows told Ciwa where to find the ripest berries, and the rabbits told her which hollow trees were safe for sleeping, and when she arrived at the city gates her heart was light with love for her half brother.
“I am Ciwa,” she told the guards. “Half sister of Lord Dochau. I have come to embrace him, after all these years.”
The guards were alarmed by her matted hair and strange manner of speaking, but they had heard of their lord’s cursed sister and rushed to find him.
“Sister!” called Dochau from the tallest tower of the castle. He was dressed in furs, with a golden circlet on his head. “I have been waiting for you!”
“Brother!” called Ciwa, smiling up at him. “Let me in, and I shall embrace you!”
“If only I could,” Dochau replied mournfully. “But the city gates open for no one. There is a beast terrorizing the land.”
“But it is I!” cried Ciwa. “Your sister!”
“It near kills me to turn you away,” said Dochau. “But I cannot risk the safety of my people. If only the beast were captured, then I would throw the gates open and welcome you into my city.”
“But I could capture the beast,” Ciwa said.
“Would you?” asked Dochau, clasping his hands at his heart. “Oh, sister! If you capture the beast, then I shall seat you beside myself at the table and feed you the best cuts from my own plate, for you would be the savior of my lands!”
“I shall try. And if I die, I shall be reunited with my mother and father at last,” Ciwa said resolutely, and turned back into the forest.
The forest of Llangiwa was darker and older than that of Gwent. No creatures greeted her, and when she called out to a bird or a squirrel, they flew or scampered away.
“Strange,” thought Ciwa.
Soon, she came to a stream where a deer was drinking.
“Good day,” said Ciwa. “I am searching for the beast that lives in this forest.”
The deer began to run from her, but Ciwa called, “Please! I am here to capture it, so that all men and creatures of this land may live free of fear!”
“The beast lives in the densest, darkest woods,” said the deer over her shoulder. “No creatures who enter its lair are ever seen again!” And the deer bounded away.
So Ciwa walked through the forest until the trees became so dense and dark that she did not know if it was day or night.
—
When the trunks stood so close that she could not take another step, a branch snapped behind her. She turned but saw nothing except the forest. A strange odor hung in the air, and she felt a pair of eyes on her, and she knew the beast was close.
“I am Ciwa,” she said, “only daughter of Lord Talan of Gwent. And I am here to capture the beast who terrorizes these lands.”
“And if you capture me,” said a low, growling voice, “what shall you do with me?”
“I shall bring you to my half brother, Dochau,” said Ciwa, “who rules as king of this land.”
“And will you kill me?”
“No,” said Ciwa. “Not unless you threaten violence.”
“Would you swear it before God? That no harm shall befall me?”
“I swear it,” said Ciwa. “Before you and God and the trees of the forest.”
“And why, pray tell,” the beast asked after a moment, “did your brother send a young woman, alone, to capture the most dangerous beast in the land?”
“Because I can speak to animals,” said Ciwa.
“You must tell me the entire tale,” said the beast, “from beginning to end. Then I will decide whether or not to accompany you.”
So Ciwa told the entire tale, from beginning to end.
She told the beast of her mother’s death, and the arrival of Lady Angharad, and her father’s fever, and her banishment into the woods, and her life with the wolves.
She told the beast of her journey to Llangiwa, of her brother, Dochau, in his furs and golden circlet, and the promise he made her from the highest tower.
And then the beast emerged from the trees.
He was huge and terrible, taller than any man, with a long snout and pointed ears and fingers that ended in claws.
“Are you afraid?” asked the beast.
“Yes, I am afraid,” Ciwa answered.
“But you do not run? You would walk beside me to the castle at Llangiwa and present me to your lord brother? I could kill you with a bite of my teeth or a tear of my claws.”
“I do not run,” said Ciwa. “And if you kill me, I will be called home to heaven, where my mother and father wait for me.”
“I will not kill you,” said the beast, “for you have made me a promise.”
So the two unlikely companions walked through the forest to the castle.