Gone Tomorrow
Amazingly, I'm back. Not sure how long that can last, but no matter. Many thanks to CompanionWanderer for her expert feedback.
Deep down, he had known it for some time. But it took the intrusion of a ragtag band fleeing Arawn's Huntsmen to make him admit the truth: the Gwystyl he pretended to be was as much his real self as the Gwystyl who was his real self.
It was not a welcome revelation. It would be better if the fretful, feeble creature whose role he played were no kin to the shrewd, resourceful soul hiding beneath the sniveling surface. Better if, when left to himself, he could cast aside his contemptible persona like a discarded glove.
But maybe that was why the glove fit. It was a second skin, another layer of who he truly was. Able to respond to danger with lightning speed, he was uncomfortably aware that, somewhere in a corner of his agile brain, lurked a shadow-self wringing his hands in terrified indecision. Brave enough to live alone in the shadow of Annuvin, he often felt himself teetering on the verge of sheerest panic.
Of course, brooding over this dual identity would scarcely help him do the job with which King Eiddileg had entrusted him. So he tried to forget that this less competent self existed. But then Doli happed along—a trail of hunted, haunted humans in his wake—and Gwystyl could no longer overlook the connection between who he played and who he was.
Of course, he managed the business associated with his official duty expertly. With the air of blurting out information he'd intended to keep secret, he admitted he knew that Arawn's cauldron, for which the group was searching, was missing. Kaw helped too, squawking out clues to the cauldron's current whereabouts that Gwystyl claimed not to know. Even Doli was useful. Though addressing him as the weak creature he pretended to be, Doli seemed to suspect the truth, obligingly pelting his Fair Folk compatriot with a volley of insults that allowed him to play his part to perfection.
It should have been quite satisfying. But it wasn't.
The ideal thing would have been for the humans to bear their new-found information about the cauldron back to Prince Gwydion, who, from what Gwystyl gathered, awaited the band at some warrior's castle. But then two young hotheads got into a quarrel that ended up sending the group in a more dangerous direction, to the cauldron's current location, the Marshes of Morva.
There wasn't much Gwystyl could do about that, of course, and he didn't even understand what happened. Why didn't anyone listen to Doli when he tried to talk sense into them? Why would the young man apparently in charge of the quarrelling youths allow one of them to decide where they would all go?
None of it made sense. No sense whatever.
In typical Fair Folk fashion, Gwystyl thought of humans as bungling clodhoppers. Yet, though he professed himself glad to see the last of these particular bunglers, he couldn't really be happy they were departing to almost certain doom. It wasn't just that another member of the Fair Folk was their companion; Gwystyl didn't want any of them to die. Not the little fuzzy one, not the spiky-haired bard, not the tall, kind one with the healing herbs and—unless Gwystyl were much mistaken—a troubling secret; not the young man who rashly decided they go to Morva. And certainly not the tart-tongued, bright-haired girl who inexplicably sported a Fair Folk necklace. No, not even the boorish prince whose temper sent them haring off in pursuit of the cauldron.
Then they were gone, and Gwystyl was once again sole inhabitant of the stuffy, smelly way post that the rude prince had called a "rathole." Unkind as the description was, it was painfully accurate. Only moments after the group had left, Gwystyl found himself scrubbing with his threadbare sleeve at eyes watering from the makeshift fire's acrid smoke. At the same time, he was compelled to acknowledge that probably not every drop of that moisture could be attributed to poor ventilation.
And Gwystyl was forced to admit something else. He felt abandoned in a way he never had before. Not lonely so much as alone: lone, lorn, forlorn. Once again the role he played bled into his inner self. He played a pessimist, a cobwebby, disheveled proclaimer of doom and gloom, and he had to say he did it very well. But he now realized more piercingly than ever that the assumed melancholy in fact penetrated to his very bones.
Most uncomfortably of all, Gwystyl felt mortal, and thus all too much like a human himself. So disconcerting was this realization that he found himself actually doing what the shadow-self did in the corner of his brain—wringing his hands in terrified indecision—and fighting the urge to run after the fugitives and drag them back to safety.
Of course, he did nothing of the sort, merely unclasped his hands and sighed. He felt a reassuring grip and weight on one shoulder, and glanced sideways to see Kaw fixing him with a beady eye.
Between them, they would figure out a plan that might avert disaster. But, in the meantime, Gwystyl shuddered as his words to the departing band seemed to echo in the dusty air: "`Here today, gone tomorrow, and what's anyone to do about it?'"