CHAPTER FOUR #2
‘There have been times of peace and of plenty, where the good and the pure of heart prevail, but times of darkness are ever on the heels of such eras. Famine, war, pestilence, all combine towards the shifting, the move towards evil. The witches who fought this battle long ago knew they would soon be lost to us, and so they knew they must leave a legacy for our salvation. They placed their magic in but a few. A handful only, some men, some women, who would be born to the magic that must fight against that darkness. This magic they called the White Shadow. Heed my words, granddaughter, this is the only way that the shifting can be resisted. There is no other. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes, Mamgi. I hear you.’ Gwen was indeed listening, though she doubted she understood all of what she was being told. More than that, she began to fear what more there might be to come.
‘Each who is so blessed cannot refuse the call, for all and everyone of us depends upon them.’ She turned then, looking directly at Gwen.
Again, as had happened in the croft, the old woman had a glow about her, an subtle aura that seemed to pulse with white light.
Her face, though ancient, regained a more youthful vigour and clarity as she spoke, and her voice had lost its reed thinness.
‘You who are known as Lady Gwen, daughter of Llewelyn ap Ioreth, Lord of Cwmdu, you are one of the chosen! You were born with magic in your soul, and the time has come for that magic to be released. The time has come when you shall learn of your true identity and learn the ways of your ancestors, so that you may fulfil your destiny.’
‘What… what do you mean, my true identity? You have just said my name. You know who I am, everyone does.’
‘You were raised as the child of a noble family. They loved you as their own, but you are not of their blood. They fulfilled their part of the bargain.’
‘What bargain? Mamgi, your words make no sense. I have the same black hair and long limbed body as my mother. It has been remarked upon my whole life how much I resemble her.’
‘A happy chance which aided the deceit, no more.’
Gwen struggled to take in what she was being told.
The thought that the parents she had loved and lost were not her true kin, and that they had lied to her, was almost more shocking than the idea that she was somehow gifted with magic.
She shook her head. ‘No, whatever it is you think you know, there is some confusion. Some… misstep. I have no magic in me!’
‘You think not?’
‘I am certain of it.’
‘Oh? And when the danger in the carter’s cottage came to you, when you tasted it on the breeze, what was that, if not magic?’
‘How did you…?’
‘And when your actions were swift and sure, your knife wielded with a skill you had not learned, so that you defeated those violent men, was that not magic?’
‘Fortune favoured me. Did Dafydd tell you what took place?’
‘And when you saved Lady Olwen from the falling blade of your slave, was that not magic?’
Gwen opened her mouth to protest but no words came.
Mamgi could not have witnessed what happened in the garden that day, and there had not been time for her to have learned of it, unless Rufus, in all that had happened, had recalled the incident.
But he would not speak freely with the wise woman of the village. She waited, needing to hear more.
‘And when you survived in that well, when all others would have perished, was that not magic?’
‘I did what was practical. Everyone knows how to pack a wound. Good sense drove me to raise myself from the water.’
‘And who gave you the strength to hang there for hours? Who came to you to show himself for the first time?’
Now Gwen was struck dumb. There was no earthly way the old woman could have known about her vision of the ancient, brown-skinned man. She felt her scalp begin to prickle.
‘And your beloved honeysuckle,’ the old woman went on, ‘how thought you that it thrived beyond reason in your mother’s garden, through drought and frost, year on year?’
‘My honeysuckle? Why, that is easily explained! ’Tis a strong, wild plant, that will make the most of any soil and suffers sun and shade with equal temerity. Yes, it grew better than other flowers, perhaps, but my… my mother had a liking for tender plants. There is no more to the matter than this.’
‘You truly believe so?’ the old woman asked.
She lifted her walking stick and slowly leaned towards the small tree on the bank.
Raising the end of the staff, she poked it into the low branches until she rooted out a slender honeysuckle plant that was growing there.
Gwen gasped, surprised that she had not noticed its pale yellow blooms tangled among the leaves of the little tree.
As Mamgi pulled down a sprig of the plant and passed it to her she could smell its sweet scent.
The perfume was so familiar to her and so dear, it transported her at once to that garden.
To home. To her parents. A deep sense of loss swamped her.
Not only were her mother and father gone from her present and her future, if what she was being told was true, it felt as if they were being taken from her past also.
She lifted the flower to her cheek, letting it touch her skin, closing her eyes as she breathed in its scent.
As she did so, she allowed herself to weep at last. She wept for her lost childhood, for all who had fallen on that terrible day, for the future that they would never share.
As she sobbed silently her tears watered the little plant.
Mamgi reached out and placed her crooked hand upon Gwen’s arm.
‘Open your eyes, cariad,’ she said softly. ‘See for yourself what your magic looks like.’
Gwen felt something move in her hand and quickly opened her eyes.
Looking down she saw that the tiny sprig of honeysuckle had grown to twice its size.
More than that, it continued to grow. As she watched, eyes widening, its tendrils wrapped around her hand and travelled up her arm.
She leapt to her feet, staggering backwards as the plant grew with astonishing speed, spreading from her in all directions, covering the rock on which she stood, circling around the old woman and racing along the river bank, scrambling up the trunks of blackthorn and hazel and willow alike, smothering the trees and the woodland floor, rambling over rocks and patches of bare earth.
Suddenly, it stopped its progress, blooms opening along its many shoots and spurs, the air filling with its fragrance.
Gwen stood, stunned, not daring to move, afraid she might somehow set off some other impossible occurrence.
Mamgi looked up from where she sat, her face questioning. ‘Well, merch, do you yet doubt my words?’
Gwen was too astounded to form a reply. She looked at the beauty of the scene all around her; the beauty that had, somehow, inexplicably but unmistakably, come from herself.
Her smile grew wider and she started to laugh.
As her sadness turned to joy, her disbelief to awe, she laughed more loudly.
And grandmother Williams joined in, her wheezing chuckle adding to Gwen’s tuneful glee, so that soon the enchanted river vale was filled with their sound of their laughter.
For Gwen, what followed were months of wonders.
While she and the rest of the villagers continued to improve their settlement, to find ways to keep everyone fed and sheltered, to heal broken bodies and hearts, she also put herself under the tutelage of Mamgi.
Little had she suspected, all the years she had known her, that the grandmother of the village was her secret guardian.
After her own initial resistance to what she had learned that day by the stream, Gwen had surprised herself at how easy it was to accept the truth.
She pestered Mamgi for more details; who was her real mother and why had she given her away?
Why did her parents not tell her they had taken her in?
Who else knew of her heritage? Why did she have this spark of magic inside her?
The old woman was maddeningly slow with her answers.
She struck a deal with her charge that she would reveal a piece of her past in return for each step of advancement the girl made in her training as a new witch.
At first this had infuriated Gwen further.
Surely she had a right to know these answers?
But Mamgi had stuck to her bargain and would not be shaken from it.
Gwen was surprised, and even a little disappointed, to find that she was not to be trained in strange and fantastic magic as she had imagined.
Instead, the old woman bid her practice her skills with knife and bow.
She made her walk and then run the mountains until she was stronger and faster than she had ever been.
She had one of her father’s soldiers train her with a light sword.
She taught her remedies and herbal treatments until her head was full of them.
Gradually, as Gwen began to take on the identity that was truly hers and to grow in magic, she started to ask different questions.
What would be asked of her? How would she fulfil her destiny?
What if she fell short of what was expected of her?
The wise woman remained tight-lipped on these matters too, promising only that all would be shown to her in the right order and at the right time, and that such things could be neither forced nor rushed.