Aleswina stuffed the money bags into Caelym’s pouch, slung the bulging satchel over her shoulder, and called to the boys, “Come quick!”—adding, “Brother Cuthbert is waiting!” in case Barnard was listening to the door.
Both boys jumped up. Lliem rushed to her side but Arddwn, to her dismay, dashed back to the door and pounded on it—shouting that he wasn’t going to leave, and neither was Lliem.
All the while Barnard and Aleswina had been talking, Arddwn and Lliem had been listening.
Terrified of Barnard, Lliem sometimes dreamed of living in a distant land where there was music and dancing and wonderful cakes to eat—and in that dream, just before he woke up cold and hungry, someone who was very tall would smile at him and hold out the most beautiful cake of all. When Aleswina (who looked very tall to Lliem) smiled at him from across the room, it seemed that the person from his dreams had come at last. All the while that he and Arddwn were being bartered over, Lliem had silently repeated, Please, please, please, like the word was a magic spell.
Unlike Lliem, Arddwn could clearly remember his life in Llwddawanden. He remembered his father, and he remembered Caelym’s promise that he’d come to get them after they learned to speak English. For two years, he’d whispered to himself, “We will travel together on great adventures and return to your mother with gifts from all the wondrous places we have seen,” while he huddled next to Lliem in the woodshed where Barnard locked them up at night. As much as he hated Barnard (which was a hundred times more than Lliem did), they had to stay where they were or else their father wouldn’t know where to find them.
So when Barnard threw them out of the house, Arddwn rebelled. He wasn’t going to leave. Not now. Not after he’d learned English, like he was supposed to. And especially not today, when he’d woken up somehow certain that this was the day his father was going to come to get them. And Lliem couldn’t go either. Arddwn had promised he’d take care of his brother, so when the door opened up again and Barnard poked his ugly head out, yelling at him to go away, Arddwn ran like lightning, grabbed Lliem by his shirt, and pulled him back to the door, yelling, “Our father said to stay here until he comes!” as he tried to push his way back inside.
Barnard, however, caught the boys by their collars and threw them out again, shouting, “Go on, damn you! Get out of here!”
Arddwn picked himself up and, standing with his feet set, one hand clinging to Lliem’s shirt and the other balled into a fist, shouted back, “I’m not leaving! My father is coming for me!”
“Your father is dead! He’s burning in hell with the rest of them!” With that, Barnard slammed the door, leaving Arddwn standing still, his lips soundlessly shaping the word “no.”
Not daring to take time to comfort the boys or tell them the truth—that their father was alive and waiting not very far away— Aleswina took hold of their arms and pulled them along with her down the road and around the bend, toward the path up to the ridge.