This is a dream.
This is where it starts.
It is a hot day. The sun is as warm on Merela’s skin as her heart is in her breast. The lizards trill and flit and move with the same intemperate, shivering excitement that flutters in her stomach. The sky is as blue as her finest kilts.
And yet, in the way of dreams, there are impossibilities here: a cloud in the clear sky; a cloud that does and doesn’t exist; a cloud that is black and grey and silver and cold.
It is a cloud of foreknowledge.
She is waiting for him, her golden boy. As golden and warm as the sun, as bright and perfect as the swords and blades her father brings across the Taut Sea. She is waiting in the wood, waiting to dance for him, to dance the old dances he loves, the ones she has spent her life perfecting. She is waiting for him in a clearing which nature has created for them, especially for them, a bed of warm grass and thickly scented flowers, and the scars and casual cruelty of this foreign place can be forgotten in gentleness and laughter and kisses.
She is waiting for the storm, for the cloud to break.
When she sees him she grows, stands on her tiptoes, hands behind her back, smile on her face and the strange feeling and taste of the lip colour, made of sheep fat and crushed petals, on her tongue. Here he is, Vesin ap Garfin, on time as always—but something is wrong.
He carries the storm with him.
He carries the cold rain in the slump of his shoulders. He carries the roll of thunder in his averted eyes. He carries the howl of wind in a voice that does not greet her.
Her heart skips a beat.
Her stomach sinks.
Behind Vesin are his older brothers, Gart and Bolin, all swagger walk and hard face. Fists around sword hilts, brows like caves for their small cruel eyes. They are these foreign lands made flesh.
They push Vesin forwards. His golden curls hang limp. His eyes are red-rimmed and damp with tears, his mouth is unable to lift itself into his summer smile. Pain is coming, pain for everyone.
The swelling of unseen clouds. The atmospheric pressure of agony.
“Tell the bitch, Vesin.”
Her stomach flips like an acrobat. Clouds cover the sun.
“Tell me what, Vesin?”
Gart, the older, pushes Vesin on the shoulder.
“Tell the bitch.”
“I …” but no more words come from him. Even though she knows what those words will be, dreads them. Is almost unable to believe he could think them, never mind say them.
“Dead gods,” says Bolin, “he’s done with you, right? Had his way, got up your skirts and now he’s done. Right, Vesin?”
Don’t do this.
“Vesin?” she says. He nods, can’t speak, can’t talk. Doesn’t want to say it.
“Sorry,” he says.
“But, Vesin—”
“He’s done with you now,” says Gart. “Take your foreign ways back to your lands where they belong.” He grabs his brother by the scruff of the neck, pulling him around, pushing him away from her.
And the words are in her mouth. She wants to stop them because now, in the way of dreams, she can feel the power and danger in them. Feel how they are as lethal as any weapon and she sees the long trail of pain and death that loosing those words will set her upon.
Wake me.
Girton.
Wake me.
But this is a dream, a mummers’ play of times past, and it can no more be altered or stopped than a charging mount. She says the words. She says them in a voice so small she wonders if her past self heard her dream self beg them not to be said.
“I carry your child, Vesin.”
The brothers stop. Vesin turns and she sees it. She sees it with relief and with thanks. Joy. A moment of joy crossing his face and it is as bright and blue and wonderful as a yearslife sky before the storms block out the sun.
“Truly?” he says, as if she would ever lie to him.
Wake me.
“Truly,” she says. And he leaves his brothers, walks toward her. Takes her soft hands in his soft hands.
Behind Vesin, Bolin shakes his head.
“Come on, Vesin, her bastard is no concern of yours. We’ll sort that out.”
But he is not going to leave—go—she can see it in his eyes—just go—he is as certain as she is that this is right. And, because they are young and they are in love and they are—stupid—full of the belief that they are in the right, Vesin turns.
“We will marry. Her father is rich, we need the money, Bolin.”
Bolin steps forward.
“It’s not about money, Vesin. Look at her, look at her skin, the colour. That is shame, do you understand? We’re an old Maniyadoc family, pure. She brings shame on the ap Garfin line.”
Wake me.
“I’m third in line, no one will—”
“Bolin,” says Gart to his brother, “look at him. He’s like a dog with its own vomit. He’ll keep going back to her. You know he will.”
“We’ll go away,”—no—Vesin steps forward. “No one needs me, Gart. We’ll go away.”
Gart steps forward. Puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder.
“Vesin, she’s right. We don’t have much coin. And if you run off with his daughter, then her father, the merchant, well, he’ll want recompense off our father, won’t he?”
“I’ll leave a note,” she says. “My father will just—”
“Shut up, bitch.” He doesn’t even look at her. “And you’ll marry her, Vesin, make her halfhedge child one of us. It’ll always be out there somewhere, out there with a claim.”
“Gart …” She can hear it, the fear. She can hear the fear in Vesin’s voice when he says his brother’s name.
Girton, wake me.
“We can’t have that, Vesin. Do you understand?”
“Father will …”
“… agree, Vesin. Father already agrees.” He pulls back so he can look into his younger brother’s eyes. “Do you understand?”
Don’t say it.
“She is having my child.” He steps away from his brother.
Don’t say it.
“I won’t leave her.” His hand goes to his sword.
Don’t say it.
“I love her.”
His blade comes out, slow, like cloth in water, drifting through the air into the first position. Her hands come up to her face as she is confronted by the violence her family carry and trade in, the violence she has always been hidden from. And Gart, does he look sad or amused? She can’t tell. He becomes a monster, a hedgelord, all anger and teeth. Vesin lunges, a perfect strike, just like they teach them in the dirty ground outside the longhouse.
Wake me.
She is screaming.
Wake me.
Gart is fast. Before the lunge is anywhere near him, he moves, dipping to one side, quick as current while Vesin still moves in slow motion. Gart’s stabsword slides out of its sheath and he steps forward, under the guard, and guts his brother in one strike. Vesin doesn’t scream, or if he does she can’t hear it over her own terror. Gart is quick, the blade pulsing back and forth, stab stab stab, and Vesin falls.
“You were right, Vesin,” he says. “You are third in line and no one cares about you.” Bolin is holding her tightly. In the way of dreams he never moved, he is simply there.
“What about her, Gart, shall we have some fun with her?”
“One of us dirtying himself with a foreigner is bad enough, Bolin. No. I’ll cut the child from her and be done with it.”
And the blade bites into her stomach.
This is where it starts, the pain.
In a dream.