The Ways of Winter

Chapter 4-2

George sighed. Everyone felt free to comment on his lack of a honeymoon. “I’ll take them out tomorrow, as long as I’m here. You can take a break from it.”

As the meal wound down, Gwyn pushed back and rose to his feet. The crowd in the hall quieted.

“Our best prediction for tomorrow is that there will be more snow. I’ve decided there will be no travel Sunday for our guests. Please enjoy our hospitality for another day and prepare for the next stage of your journey.” The noise in the hall resumed at a louder level, as the travelers, all together on one side of the hall, discussed this change in plan.

George looked simultaneously pleased and regretful. Rhian glanced at him quizzically.

“The sooner we get these travelers to Edgewood the sooner I can get back to Angharad, but if I can’t, I have a fun project in mind,” he said.

“Oh, you mean your little tree, don’t you? Wouldn’t it be easier to just bring a branch in?”

“It’s not the same thing at all,” he protested. “It has to be a tree, an evergreen.”

“You’re sure you’re not some sort of druid?” she said, with a straight face, and he realized she was teasing him.

“Hey, this has been my family tradition for many generations. I bet I can convince you that it’s fun, especially when I explain about Christmas presents.”

It was an odd group that assembled on George’s doorstep after dinner. He’d brought Rhian and Brynach along from the great hall, and Cydifor and Maëlys walked shyly in their wake, the two teenagers keeping the conversation lively for all of them. Brynach picked up Maëlys’s pack as if it weighed nothing and carried it for her despite her protest.

When they came in they found Benitoe already there, talking with Alun. “Did Ives come?” George asked. Benitoe shook his head and George frowned. “It’s not good for him to be alone so much.”

“I usually spend part of the evening with him,” Benitoe said, “but, you know, it’s not easy for him to have me about, same as Rhian.”

George recalled his duties as host. “Cydifor and Maëlys, Ifor will have told you that Alun here has prepared rooms for you. Why don’t you let him show them to you and you can get settled. Come back down and join us when you’re ready.”

Alun led them upstairs, Brynach taking the steps two at a time to bring Maëlys’s pack along for her. He returned downstairs in a few moments, followed by Alun.

In the meantime George had shooed everyone into his front study, the comfortable leather chairs reinforced by a warm fire and soft lights. His dogs made the rounds to greet everyone in their own fashion. “Drinks?” he asked.

Alun came into the room in time to hear that and took over the task. Soon everyone was wrapped around their favorite tipple, with cider for the youngest. Footsteps on the staircase announced the return of the two house guests, and Alun made quick work of serving them, too.

George made introductions all around. “Cydifor, Maëlys, let me introduce some of the hunt staff. You’ve met Rhian, Gwyn’s foster-daughter. She’s serving as junior huntsman. Brynach, here is one of our whippers-in, and Benitoe is the other.” The lutin nodded at them. “Before his new duties at Edgewood, Rhian’s brother Rhys served a term as whipper-in, as well.”

He turned to his friends, “Please welcome Cydifor, hoping to find a place with Rhys as a musician, and Maëlys, from Iona’s place.”

Maëlys said, “Thank you for your hospitality, huntsman. I heard about you and Benitoe from Brittou, after your visit to Iona for ponies a few weeks ago.” She addressed Benitoe directly, “I’m sorry for your loss, your betrothed. I myself am seeking my husband Luhedoc, vanished into Edgewood these eighteen years.”

“Why were you on foot, coming from Iona’s? Couldn’t she spare you a pony?” George asked.

“I’ve never been much of a rider,” she said.

“I can help you with that,” Benitoe said. “It would be wise to improve, in case the journey makes wagons difficult. You’d have more options.”

He turned to George, “I’ve been meaning to tell you. Since the hunting is shut down for the weather, I intend to join this next expedition for a short while, if you can spare me. I’ve been approached to try and find out what’s happened to all of us there, the lutins, and to report back.”

“Fine by me,” George said. “If it turns out you’re going to be gone indefinitely, let me know, but in the short term we can manage with Rhian and Brynach, if we must. I’ll be coming along on this one myself.”

Benitoe looked relieved and turned back to Maëlys. “I’d be happy to spend some time tomorrow with you on our ponies, if you’d like.”

“That would be kind of you,” she said, “but I don’t have suitable clothes with me.”

“I can find breeches to fit you, if you don’t mind borrowed clothing, and you can even wear them under your skirts, for added warmth. Several of my friends have taken up riding. Come by the kennels in the morning after we’ve walked the hounds.”

George was interested to observe Benitoe’s courtesies to a woman old enough to be his mother. He was careful to keep her from being overwhelmed in the company of so many larger people and settled her on the couch next to him, where she curled up comfortably on the over-large furniture. He suddenly realized how much accommodation the lutins made in their coexistence with the larger fae here at the court, seeing it made manifest here. He also felt more conscious than usual of his own bulk, big even among the fae.

He turned to Cydifor. “And why have you decided to go traveling?”

Cydifor had taken a seat far from the fire and said little. Now he blushed to the roots of his red hair at the sudden attention. “Do you know my village, Tredin?” he asked George.

“Sorry, I’m new here.”

“We’re just a few families there, but they’re very large families. It’s a noisy life, and not everyone can work the land. If you can do anything else, why, you leave to make room for the others.” Benitoe nodded at this, and George made a note to ask him about his family. He’d been very private in the two months George had known him, but if they were going to be traveling together to Edgewood, maybe this would be a good time to find out more.

“I was always wild for music, pestering my relatives for songs and tunes, and saving my money to buy instruments off the traders that came through. But loving the music is not the same as living by it, and there are few opportunities for that, no empty positions at the courts or grand estates for professionals. When we heard about my lord Rhys’s call for settlers and experts, my dad told me ‘Now’s your chance, seek him out before someone else does.’ And that’s what I’m doing.”

“I’m sure his kinsman Rhodri will be glad to see you,” George reassured him, “and what he likes will probably do well with Rhys.”

Rhian chimed in, “Rhys loves music. I doubt he’s had time to even think about it, but that won’t last.”

“Thank you, my lady, that’s good to hear.”

George hid a smile at this careful display of manners to a potential royal patron, however young.

“I had already heard of you, huntsman, as I told you, coming through Danderi. It was just after the great hunt, and they were full of the story. But I could make no sense of it. Forgive me, I mean no offense, but are you fae or human, or something else?”

“Yes,” George said, with a shrug, “it’s complicated. The others know the details, of course, and I don’t want to bore them with it.”

“Ah, but you said you would tell me later, and later it is.” George demurred, but the others urged him to it, and he’d had just enough to drink to give in.

“Well, to keep it brief…,” he began, “I was a human, a whipper-in to a foxhunt in Virginia, and jumped my horse through a way, as I later understood, to Gwyn’s domain just at the moment when Iolo ap Huw, his huntsman of 1500 years, was murdered. This was a couple of months ago, just two weeks before the great hunt at Nos Galan Gaeaf. I was no random visitor, for Gwyn was my grandmother’s father, and so I call him kinsman. More to the point, my own father may, or may not, have been some descendant or avatar of Cernunnos, the beast master, the horned man. You know him?”

Cydifor nodded.

“We think he arranged my arrival, and perhaps my, um, breeding, to help defend this domain. With a great deal of help,” he gestured around to his hunt staff, “I took over as huntsman, and we judged the murderer at the great hunt.”

Benitoe said quietly, “That’s where my betrothed Isolda was killed, by the same hand.”

Brynach said, “He tried to kill Rhian, too. He would’ve succeeded, if George hadn’t stopped him.”

“Isolda stopped him first,” Rhian said, sadly.

Cydifor looked from one speaker to the next. “He hunted as the horned man, they told me.”

“Cernunnos and I have a sort of… arrangement,” George said. “Sometimes he breaks free.” This was more personal detail than he’d ever shared before with his hunt staff. Perhaps it was time for them to know more fully what had happened. “I can call up the forms of the horned man and Cernunnos, but they’re usually just that, empty forms. During the great hunt, Cernunnos was manifest, and I had to fight for control.”

It made him uneasy to admit all this, but the acceptance he saw on the faces of his friends, the ones who had gone through this with him, was comforting.

Maëlys asked, shyly, “What does he look like?”

Oh, no. Well, he’d opened this door himself. “Cernunnos is a great red deer, head and antlers on the body of a man. The horned man is the same, but with a man’s head.”

“Show her,” Benitoe said, quietly. “I think we all want to see, now that the great hunt is over and they are empty forms again.”

But they’re not empty all the time, he thought. He should quell this, before they became afraid of him.

The trouble on his face must have shown because Rhian leaned over and said, “Go ahead, kinsman. It’ll make it easier next time.”

She was right, there would be a next time, a great hunt every year.

He stood up, spreading his feet wide in anticipation of the weight. He called up the red deer’s form, his posture changing as he dipped his chest out and then up, the muscles shifting to support the head and its heavy antlers, hanging three feet behind him with many tines. As always, the objects in the room lost most of their color but the scents intensified greatly and his ears swiveled to follow every sound. The clothing on his upper body resettled, accommodating the narrower shoulders and thicker chest muscles and fur that he knew reached halfway down to his waist.

His guests and the hunt staff were frozen in place but not… alarmed. They trusted him, that it was still the man they knew and not some monster. He pulled back the form of Cernunnos to the horned man, the head unnaturally large to support the antlers, and let them get a good look. He knew the face didn’t resemble his own. Then he pulled that form back, too, and sat down.

Alun brought him another drink, and there was silence for a moment.

Cydifor regarded George soberly. “And so, not quite a human after all? Not entirely.”

George nodded.

“I see you decided to stay. Was it not hard, leaving your human family and friends?”

“Yes, indeed, very hard.”

Benitoe said, “You’ve never told us what that meeting was like.”

George was surprised. “Rhian was there.” He glanced at her.

She looked down. “It was your story to tell, not mine.”

“Ah.” Well, why not tell it now? He took a good swallow of his drink before he began. He stared into the fire, glancing at them from time to time as he spoke, but mostly averting his gaze.

“When I decided I would stay, after the great hunt, I went back and told my grandparents what had happened during the two weeks I was gone. They’re the only family I have, in the human world. After that, I went back again briefly to arrange my affairs.” He didn’t want to speak about the details of Gwyn’s and his own contacts between worlds.

“Then, two weeks ago, I took my formal leave of my grandparents. I met them on Gwyn’s human estate, where my grandmother was raised, and I brought Gwyn, Rhian here, and Angharad, my new wife, with me.” He couldn’t keep the warmth out of his voice at that last, or the smile off his face, and didn’t try.