Chapter 64: Elderond

Neither peace nor tranquility lay ahead for Herrwn that day. Even before he reached the gate, he could hear heartrending sobs and wails. The girls’ servant met him at the entryway, wringing her hands and pleading with him to do something. Looking over her head, he could see Gwenydd sitting on the ground with her arms wrapped around Cyri, who was weeping inconsolably. Arianna lay next to them facedown, kicking her feet and pounding the ground with her fists, while the twins huddled nearby, hugging each other and keening in unison.

Herrwn rushed over to them and, looking anxiously for some sign of illness, asked, “What is wrong?”

It was Cyri who answered, raising her tear-stained face from Gwenydd’s shoulder.

“They’re going to kill Elderond!”

Whatever answer Herrwn had expected, it was not that. All he could imagine was that when he was later than he’d promised, their nurse had started to tell some story from the tales of Elderond’s battle against the giants, and she had not yet reached the point at which the frequently imperiled hero was rescued by an enamored nymph or wood sprite.

Thinking this, at least, was a matter he could easily resolve, he hastened to assure them that “as the greatest of heroes and the one destined to be the first and favorite of the Great Goddess’s mortal consorts,” Elderond would escape whatever perils so distressed them—but Cyri started to cry louder and Gwenydd spoke up in a quivering voice, “No, not that Elderond, her Elderond!”

“And mine!” Arianna broke in, while the twins nodded together, sniffing, “Me’glo Me’glo!” in the shared language they fell back on in times of stress.

Gwenydd continued to rock Cyri and pat her on the back as she told Herrwn that when the sheep and goats were giving birth in the spring, Rhonnon had taken them to watch, and that when the first baby goat was born she let them each hold it after its mother had licked it dry and let it nurse. The twins nodded and pantomimed how they’d cradled it in their arms. Going on, Gwenydd sniffed, “It was the dearest and sweetest little baby with the prettiest brown spots and the cutest wagging tail, and we all love him, especially Cyri, and she named him Elderond and goes to play with him every day, and now Ossiam—”

“Stupid, nasty Ossiam!” Arianna pounded the ground harder with her fists. “I hate him!” “Stubo níndo Ossiam! Stubo níndo Ossiam!” the twins chimed in, and stuck out their tongues in the direction of the oracle’s tower.

“—is going to kill him.” Clutching Cyri tighter in her arms, Gwenydd rocked back and forth as the younger girl sobbed, “He didn’t do anything! It’s not fair.”

Gwenydd looked up at Herrwn. “You are the chief priest. Can you tell him to sacrifice something else?” Cyri looked up too, tears streaming down her cheeks, and whispered, “Can you?”

Herrwn was tempted to equivocate—to say he would try—but he knew that would do no more than give them false hope, since once a sacrificial victim was announced, making any substitution would be risking injured feelings in the next world. So, instead, he said the only thing he could—“I am sorry.”

And he was deeply sorry, indeed was heartsick, to see the pain he had inadvertently caused.

Arianna pushed up on her elbows and glared. “Well, if you won’t—”

Before she could finish whatever childish outcry she was about to make, one of the twins grabbed her arm and pulled her off behind a hedge of elderberry bushes while the other asked in quite clear words, “Will you tell us a story?”

“Of course I will.”

Herrwn sat down next to Gwenydd, eased Cyri onto his lap, and began to recite one of the lighthearted tales he’d told Lillywen when her feelings were upset.

By the time the horn calling them to the midday meal sounded, the girls’ sobs had been reduced to occasional sniffles and Cyri was even managing a wavering smile at the funnier parts.

Having successfully soothed the five young priestesses-in-training, Herrwn only hoped he could do as well with his middle-aged cousin.

By that afternoon, Olyrrwd had calmed down enough to accept Herrwn’s invitation to go for a walk along the lakeshore. Grunting now and then, he listened to Herrwn’s explanation that, in his almost unbearable worry over the time it was taking Caelym to complete his spirit quest, he had indeed asked Ossiam to perform this augury to see where Caelym was and when he would return.

“You understand I had no way of knowing what sort of animal would be required, nor could I have guessed that the one he chose was so beloved by the priestesses-in-training, but please—and I ask this of you as my dearest kinsman and my best friend—please lay the entire blame for this on me and please, please accept my most deep and sincere apology and convey my deepest regrets to the good goatherd as well.”

It was, Herrwn thought, a quite well-worded and thorough apology and, as such, deserved more than Olyrrwd’s grudging retort, “Next time tell me when you are planning to do something stupid so I can talk you out of it.”

When Rhonnon returned with Aolfe late that afternoon, it was immediately clear that the chief midwife was no happier with Herrwn than Olyrrwd had been. While she let him repeat his explanation without interrupting and didn’t exactly say it was up to Herrwn to face the girls again the next morning while their pet was being prepared for its sacrifice, he found himself offering to do exactly that.

“That would be good of you!” she said stiffly. “I suggest you avoid stories about goats or oracles!”

Olyrrwd, at least, came around to agreeing that Herrwn was paying for his error in judgment by returning to the garden and facing a new round of tears, and he was openly sympathetic the next morning as Herrwn prepared to leave.

Strengthened by the knowledge that his cousin was on his side again, Herrwn took up his staff and went out to meet his fate, as Olyrrwd jokingly called after him.

That was, in fact, how Herrwn felt as he approached the garden gate, so he was more than a little surprised—and very much relieved—to find the girls bravely reconciled to their pet’s fate. Each one greeted him affectionately, even enthusiastically, and asked for a favorite story.

“Gwendolwn and the Honey Tree, please.” Gwenydd took hold of his hand and looked up sweetly.

“What about the brave stallion who fooled the mean sprite?” Cyri had taken hold of Herrwn’s other hand and had her head cocked to the side in a way that reminded Herrwn unexpectedly of Labhruinn—or would have, if he weren’t immediately distracted by the twins jumping up and down and crying in unison, “The one about the giant one-eyed ogres!”

“No! No! Caerwyn and the Fairy Queen! That’s the one I want!” Arianna announced with a toss of her head and stamp of her foot.

A veteran of responding to equally valid yet competing demands brought before the High Council, Herrwn responded with an alternative of his own.

“What would you all say to my telling you a story you have never heard before—the story of Rhiawana and the Lost Prince?”

The chorus of “oh yeses” and “pleases” that followed this suggestion quite warmed Herrwn’s heart. He took the cushion that the girls’ nurse held out to him, sat down, and, with the five of them gathered in a circle around him, began the tale of how Rhiawana, a beautiful and kindly forest nymph, used her wiles and cunning to save a king’s son who had gotten lost in a deep and dark forest and was being pursued by a pack of voracious ogres.

The prince, whose name was Pendorffen, was the firstborn son of the great King Pendorwn. A skilled archer, Pendorffen had pursued a white stag into the forest unaware that it was not an ordinary stag but the spirit-king of the deer clan. As the chase went on, the stag dashed deeper and deeper into the forest. Then, just as Pendorffen spent his last arrow, it turned on him, lowered its horns, and charged.

Pendorffen’s terrified horse reared, threw him to the ground, and dashed off.

“What happened then?” the five girls asked in a single voice.

Lowering his voice to effect the dread the hero would have felt, Herrwn answered, “The king of the deer could have trampled Pendorffen or gored him, but instead it strode contemptuously off into the mist and vanished—leaving him lost and alone.”

“Ohhh,” they all gasped.

Pleased to have captivated his young audience, Herrwn went on to tell how the prince’s plight went from bad to worse—accidentally knocking over a hornet’s nest, nearly drowning in a river he’d jumped into to save himself from the angry wasps, and then, finally, crossing paths with a pack of hungry ogres who pursued him as he had once pursued the stag.

They were gaining on him. He could hear their curses and war cries coming closer. As the last strength in his legs was failing, he saw an opening through the trees and in a final, desperate dash broke through the undergrowth to collapse in a flower-filled meadow, where Rhiawana, a wood nymph, was dancing in the twilight.

Although she was descended from the Rain-God on her father’s side and from the Wind-Goddess on her mother’s, Rhiawana was herself only a local deity and had nowhere near the power it would have taken to fend off the ogres who surrounded her, demanding that she give them the mortal who lay gasping at her feet. But looking down at him, she saw he was more handsome than any mortal she had ever seen, and so she resolved to save him if she could.

Fluttering her eyelashes at the chief of the ogres, she asked, “Have you thought of whether you would like to have him roasted or stewed?”

Herrwn’s use of a coquettish falsetto here made the girls giggle. He was about to shift to a low, gravelly bass to give the chief ogre’s answer when Benyon burst into the garden, gasping, “He’s back!”