Some business before getting started.

First, a quick pimping of another story, and my mailing list. I wrote a rather dark DiR fic called "Departure" which can't be posted here because it uses formatting not supported by ff.net, but you can find it on my website (go here: http://arcadia.envy.nu/arcframe.htm and follow the links to Dark is Rising Fanfiction), I'd still like to hear what you think if you're inclined to go and read it.

And of course, the Dark is Rising Slash ML is still a great place to get a fix and discuss and have fun with this stuff. Information here: http://arcadia.envy.nu/dirslash

For this fic:

Thanks go to Malting, DdraigCoch, Sam Davidson, aistar, and Mundungus42 for leaving such nice comments! And of course thanks and love to the goddesses of the DiR-slash ML. :)

Luned is from a story in the Mabinogion called "Owein and the Lady of the Fountain," which, if you are interested in such things, can be found here:

http://www.lundyisleofavalon.co.uk/texts/welsh/fountain.htm

There are a lot of Arthurian legends, and I am adapting and interpreting them to fit my story. Some things may be familiar, some may not seem to quite mesh with what you've read before, just go with it. There are a lot of Arthurian legends, and I am adapting and interpreting them to fit my story.

Which I'll just go get back to now. :)

You know the drill!

Ash

Midsummer's Country

by Ashura

archive: Arcadia (http://arcadia.envy.nu)

pairing:  eventual Bran/Will, but not for a while

warnings:  drama, and everything that goes with it.  sex, violence, mythology. ;)

disclaimer:  Bran, Will, various other characters and excerpts from Silver on the Tree all belong to Susan Cooper.  Characters and scenes from the Mabinogion and various Arthurian legends are free for anyone's using, and the order of the words of the story are mine.

soundtrack:  Derek Bell "The Magic Harp," Enya "The Celts"

Chapter Two:  The Lost Land

He meant to go right away and explain the entire situation to Merriman, but instead the first person Bran told of his encounter with the strange young woman in the faery ring was his mother.  He had no real idea of what to expect of her, so he broached the subject casually ("Something a bit strange happened last night, can I ask you about it?") and found she was not only willing but delighted to listen to him.  She remained silent through his tale, and he studied her reactions only from the expressions flitting across her fair smooth face:  self-recrimination at his boredom and dissatisfaction, surprise when he mentioned finding the mirror, wistfulness and a trace of mischief when he told her of his years of watching through it, incredulity at Luned's appearance, pensive thoughtfulness at the idea of a quest.

"What do you think I should do?" he asked, when he finished.

A smile played around the corners of her lips, a faint glimmer of sorrow in her eyes.  "We have never been in a place, you and I," she said after a moment, "where I might give you advice and admonishment as a mother ought—my own fault, is that, and perhaps I regret it, though I think it came out for the best after all.  So I can advise you only as a Lady who has watched many young men grow into themselves."

"I don't regret it," Bran interrupted, reaching for her hand.  She had smooth white hands, soft-skinned, thick only on the tips of her fingers from needles and harp-strings. 

She smiled at him.  "Then I am much relieved.  But as to the matter at hand—I think, my son, that you and Luned are right.  If you will go on a journey, then I will help you as I can."

A grin broke bright and wide across Bran's face.  "Thank you!"

Gwenwhyvar laughed.  "As if I could ever do otherwise!"  She raised her voice to catch the attention of the ladies chatting at the other end of the chamber.  "Laudine!  Come talk with us!"

The Lady in question turned at her name, and rose, and came over to them.  Bran realised she looked very like Luned, in the colour of her hair and the structure of her face, only the Countess of the Fountain was carefully coiffed and her dress was grand.  She did not look like a person who would wander about in the woods.

"Majesty," she said, sliding into a chair.  The term was a title of respect, but the tone was that of an old friend.

"Laudine," said Gwenwhyvar, as if she were imparting a secret—and perhaps she was, "your handmaiden intends to take my son on a quest."

"My handmaiden?" Laudine asked, startled, her eyes flickering up to Bran as if she had not quite noticed him before.  "Luned?  I thought she had decided not to join us here."

"Apparently," said Gwenwhyvar diffidently, "she has changed her mind.  But that is as it may be—what is more important, Laudine, is that my son is not sent off empty-handed.  We have only one course of the moon, I am told, to see that he is outfitted as befits an errant prince on a quest."

 "You speak as though we have forgotten how it is to send young men off on journeys.  I assure you, Majesty, we have not."  Laudine looked again at Bran, and her green eyes sparkled.  "My handmaiden will lead you into danger," she told him, "but she will help you out of it, too, if you heed her."

"Oh," said Bran, and then, because it seemed to be expected, promised, "I will.  Listen, that is."

Laudine smiled the tolerant smile of one who has heard the same words entirely too often from young men.  "They always say so at first," she noted, and then with a curtsy, she returned to her weaving.

A smile was playing about Gwenwhyvar's lips, and she took Bran's hand between her own small smooth ones, her ivory skin still dark against his.  "I am glad of this," she told him honestly, her eyes fixed on the lines that creased the skin of his palm, tracing his life-line with the tip of a slender finger.  "I wonder sometimes—what would have been the harm in all of us passing away as mortal folk do?  I am mortal myself, and so are you, we note it not merely because time does not pass here.  I have not the blood of the Tylwyth Teg in my veins, and part of me thinks it would not be so terrible a thing, to grow to be an old woman and sit by the fire with grandchildren in my lap.  I would tell them bedtime stories, the way I did not have a chance to tell you."  There was a trace of wistfulness in her voice, and Bran curled his fingers around her hand.

"It's all right.  I heard plenty of bedtime stories," he said.

Her smile widened, but remained a little sad.  "Not the stories I would have told you, I think."

"Probably not," he agreed readily enough.  "But you would have known them.  A good many Bible stories, that's what I was told."  He bent quickly and kissed her on the cheek, because it seemed the right thing to do at that moment.  "It doesn't matter now, anyway.  We are here, living like immortals, and I am too old for bedtime stories and a good deal too young for grandchildren.  But, as you speak of the Tylwyth Teg, perhaps we can enlist one to kidnap a changeling for you to play with a while."

She slapped his hand away, and he was gratified to see the light had returned to her eyes.  "Impudent boy.  Too old for stories you may be, but too old for a sharp word from your mother you are not, I promise you.  Now off with you!"  Bran fled, laughing.

****

The wind eddied around the ship like the sea.  But it was not, for this ship had not touched true water in many years.  Mist swirled around her, obscured the lower parts of her, and it was impossible to tell whether she touched anything, or if she simply faded into magic.  But she sailed, strong and tall and dragon-prowed, and when Bran touched her, he felt fierce joy pulsing through his fingers.

His parents were with him, and Merriman, and Luned, dressed in mottled brown and gold brocade.  She had appeared at the castle door at sunset, curtsied to Arthur and kissed Owein's cheek.  "Are you ready?" she asked Bran, and he nodded, and all had watched silently as she went to lead him away.

"Wait," Arthur said.  "You will take my ship.  She longs to go journeying, and I will not ever leave this land again."

And so all of them had come to the place where Pridwen moored.  The North Wind blew wild and cold, whipping their cloaks around them and teasing frigid fingers through their hair.  Bran shivered and grabbed hold of the edges of his cloak, and pulled it tight around him.  He felt something heavy drape over his shoulders. 

"My journey-gift to you," Gwenwhyvar said.

It was a cloak, large enough to serve as a blanket, and so thick it warded off even the brutal chill of the wind.  The way she had draped it over him, the outside was woven of some vivid, shiny fabric that shimmered and shifted colour when it moved.  In a moment, it was deep violet or indigo or green or crimson, and silver threads formed runes that looked like letters.  The other side, now the lining, was dull green-grey, the colour of trees and mountains and shadows, and he saw that if he turned it around on him, he would fade into the shadows himself.

"Thank you," he murmured, and fingered the fabric his mother had made, and pretended he did not notice the glint of tears in her eyes when she kissed him.

"I have something for you as well," said Arthur, with a curious thickness to his voice that Bran had never heard before and could not identify.  He turned to Merriman, who wordlessly, solemnly handed him a long bundle.  The High King unwrapped a length of brown cloth from a dull steel sword and held it out to Bran, cradled in both hands, ceremonial. 

"I have held many swords," he said, "yet this one remains forever the most fondly in my mind.  It has been broken, on the blade there, but think no less of it for that.  It has been forged most sturdily anew, and I think it would not break again in your hand." 

Bran turned it over in his hand, feeling out the balance of it.  It was long but light, a sword for one who was no longer a boy but not yet a man, with a strong firm blade and a plain hilt.  The rune of destiny engraved in the pommel was its only decouration.  It trembled for a moment in his hand—it was ancient, immortal, youthful, fated.  "What is it called?" he asked.

"It has not had a name in a very long time," Arthur answered seriously.  "You must give it one, when you find the right thing to call it."

Bran nodded soberly, fastening the scabbard to his belt.  "I will."  The moment was heavy with meaning; two parents who had never raised their son but received him nearly-grown, and now would see him off into the world with ceremony, but only a few memories.

"There is one more thing you must take with you."  Merriman broke the silence, tall and proud and it seemed to Bran a little sad.  "That is the shard of the mirror, the one you have been gazing into all this time.  There will be a use for it, yet, and you will know when you have need of it."

Bran meant to reply, but Luned spoke first.  "Never in the habit of speaking plainly, are wizards.  You take too much pleasure in your cryptic prophecies, Old One."

Merriman shrugged; not a graceful movement but only the quick rise and fall of one angular shoulder.  "And well we might, those of us who have not the grace to be cryptic by nature," he returned mildly.  Luned looked pleased, and Bran realised that the exchange had been a kind of joke, though he had not been quite privy to the meaning of it.

"Come," Luned said then.  "We must sail, before the moon sets."  Without warning or assistance she vaulted onto Pridwen's deck in a swirl of bright curls and gold brocade.  She turned to face them once she landed, gazing down over the side of the warship.  Her eyes shone, and her smile was dazzling.  "Come," she said again, reaching out a hand, and Bran took it and let her pull him aboard.

Almost immediately the great ship began to move, lazily at first as she stretched her sails like wings, then faster, as she found her stride and caught the wind.  Bran rested his hands against her planks and her passion thrummed beneath his fingertips, pulsing in his veins like his own heartbeat.  She sang to him, her voice the breathy whisper of the wind in her sails, songs of quests and battles that intoxicated and coursed like fire in the blood.  It was as Arthur said, she was eager to be gone.  An eternity of solitude was no fate for a warship, not for the dragon-headed vessel that had braved the depths of Annwn, the seas of Mannwyddan, the North Wind itself.  She was a creature of legends and tales, and without them she was empty.

He looked around for Luned, and saw her standing still and proud at the bow, her fingers curled over the carved scales of the dragon's neck, her gaze fixed on some point in the mists that Bran could not make out.  Her hair and cloak and hood blew behind her.  She turned, as if she felt his eyes on her, grinning wildly.

"Do you feel it?" she asked, throwing her arms out to her sides.  A wave of ecstasy as strong as magic wrapped around Bran and he nodded, wondering if he was smiling, if he looked as mad and joyful as she did.  "It's Time," she said, jubilant laughter bubbling out of her like music.  She seized his hands and whirled them both around til they collapsed, dizzy, onto the deck, and they lay there still laughing at the grey swirling sky.

*****

Bran did not remember falling asleep, but he remembered waking.  The sound that drew him slowly, gently into consciousness was soft, rhythmic, a happy sploshing sound like water against wood, or poetry read rapidly in Welsh.

Splashing.  Pridwen had taken to the sea.

He got to his feet, patting reflexively at the wrinkles in his clothes and untangling his limbs from the cloak his mother had given him.  Luned was still lying next to him, blinking sleepily.  She pushed herself up onto an elbow and rubbed one palm against glassy eyes.  Bran grinned at her and turned into the wind, wrapping his cloak tighter around him as he moved to peer over the side of the ship.  There was real water there, blue-grey, whitecapped and rippling, splashing playfully against Pridwen's keel.  The bulk of land jutted from the water in the distance, all stone and trees and the glimmer of the sun against glass windows near the shore. 

"Is that where we're going?" Bran asked.

Luned murmured assent, joining him against the side of the ship.  "It is where we begin."  She cocked her head, peering at him through windblown yellow curls, a curious smile playing about her lips.  "You have been there before, once.  We are going to the City."

"The Lost Land!" Bran said, and hurried to the bow where he could watch the land grow on the horizon as they sped toward it.  The City had not changed since he had seen it last, but this was a different part of it than he and Will had seen.  The rooftops were not gold here but dark brown sod, and the houses were wood and piled grey stone.  There were fishing boats in the harbour at the water's edge, but no ships so large or sleek as their own.  These were short and deep, draped with nets, their sails bound to their tall masts.  Pridwen glided up to the shore between them, and the men working on the docks cried out first in alarm, and then what sounded like recognition.  Luned seized Bran by the shoulder and pushed him down to the deck.

"Last time they couldn't see us!" Bran gasped out, breathing hard.

"I'm not sure if they can see you now," the girl answered, "but they can see her. The ship.  And they know her."

"What should we do?"

She winked at him through her hair, and quite suddenly he felt like a rather ordinary boy again, and that this was all a grand prank instead of a quest.  "Sneak off once they're not looking, of course.  Turn your cloak around first, and pull the hood over your head." 

They turned their cloaks round, so that Bran's was the shadowy grey-green and Luned's mottled brown, and stayed lying on the deck with their cheeks against the planking until the sound of the surprised fishermen died away.  Luned held her finger against her lips in a 'stay quiet' gesture and poked her head up over the deck.  A quick nod and motion of her hand, and Bran scrambled to his knees.  They crawled over the side on their bellies and dropped into the water a few feet from the shore.  The splash as they hit the surface didn't attract so much as a glance from the men on the dock, and Bran let out a sigh of relief without really understanding why it was important that they not be seen.  They slogged to the beach, their cloaks sodden and heavy with saltwater, and no-one spared them so much as a passing look.

"I guess we didn't have to hide," said Bran, ducking to the side to avoid a trio of giggling young ladies about to walk through him.

"Perhaps."  Luned shrugged, her wet curls bouncing, coiling against her back.  "But we are not touching Pridwen now.  They might have seen us, when we were."

"Why do they know her?" Bran asked.

Luned turned, shooting a long look back toward the dragon-prowed warship, standing still and graceful in the harbour, bobbing in the waves.  "She is Arthur's ship," she said after a moment, "and in many ways this is still Arthur's land.  But in other ways it has not belonged to anyone for a long time.  That is why I would not have them see you, Bran Pendragon.  There are those who would read too much meaning into your coming here."

It answered some questions for Bran and raised others, but he only nodded and followed her.

She led him through the streets of the City, over cobbled pathways and through flower-strewn arches, past shops and bakeries and statuary, til they came to a modest stone house with a small wooden door.  It was completely unfamiliar to Bran, but Luned seemed to know what she was about, and she grabbed his wrist and pulled him to a halt, and knocked once, solidly, on the door.

It swung open, and Bran found himself looking down at a small boy, no more than six or seven, with bright yellow hair and light blue eyes like the palest part of the sky on a summer afternoon.  The boy eyed Bran and Luned and their wet clothes suspiciously for a long moment, then he jerked the door full open and moved aside to allow them to enter.

"We've guests!" he called into the house, and he had a strange unplaceable accent that made Bran wonder if he was actually speaking some completely foreign language.  He followed Luned inside.  The cottage was small and very warm, with a fire crackling and a tall harp next to it, and it smelled of warm bread and cider.  A man sat in a chair near the fire, with his back to them, and he turned when he heard the boy.

"It's been a long time, old friend," said Luned.

The man stood, and Bran could get a look at him at last.  He was small and a little stout, with very bright eyes and the creases of laugh lines on his face.  His hair was grey and curled against his head, and he had a grey beard with a single streak of darker hair down the middle of it.  An excited laugh burst from Bran's throat when he recognised him.  "Gwion!"

"Welcome, welcome!"  It was Gwion indeed, Taliesin the Bard, a little older than when Bran had seen him last, but the same man all the same.  He opened his arms and Bran ran into them, breathing in the scent of woodsmoke and cider, and Gwion held him and patted his damp shoulders.

"It's good to see you," he mumbled into the bard's collar, and knew from the way the strong firm arms tightened around him that the sentiment was returned.

"What brings my old friends to my door?" Gwion asked, letting Bran go and embracing Luned, who had shed her wet cloak and hung it by the fire.  The firelight glinted off her hair, and she looked very young.

"We're on a quest," she answered, with a flicker of a wink toward Bran before she sank down to the hearth, folding her legs beneath her.  "We're hunting the prince's destiny, and you're our first stop."

"Ah," said Gwion knowingly, ushering Bran toward the fire and returning to his chair.  "Well come in and dry off, both of you.  Ben, lad, could you put on a kettle before you're off home?  Ah, thank you."  The boy was already scurrying, and the bard watched him fondly.  "He comes to help me here, these days," he explained, "because I am not so young as I once was."

"Ha," said Luned.  "You're never going to grow old, minstrel, and you know it."

"Perhaps not," he replied, his voice mild but resonant and rich.  "But I /am/ old, nonetheless, and I claim the privileges of my age.  Something you could do as well, lady, if you chose to."

"Hmph."  She tossed her hair and pouted, but her eyes were shining.  "I shall grow old gracefully, and even more slowly than you."

"Indeed," he agreed.  "The stories can not even decide whether to call you girl or woman, so long have you hovered between the two."

"And that," Luned said sourly, "is why I shall never be the one to ride off with the hero, when the story ends.  Still, I think that I prefer making heroes to wedding them in any case."  She grinned brightly at Bran, who was following the conversation with the feeling that he was witnessing the reunion of two old but dear friends.  "We shall be having adventures, the Pendragon and I, and perhaps one of us will grow up at the end of it.  Perhaps not.  We shall see."

"What is the next stop on your adventure, then?" Gwion asked.  Luned stretched lazily, like a cat, and rested her head against the side of his chair. 

"That is for you to tell us, minstrel.  Have you no clue for us?"  She tilted back her head and caught his eyes, and Bran was so caught up in watching their silent conversation that the boy Ben had to poke him several times before he realised he was being offered a slice of warm bread with honey.

"Tonight you will stay here," Gwion said finally, "and we will find your clue in the morning.  I think you will go through the Country, from here.  Perhaps to see the Stag."

"Then that is what we will do," said Luned.  "And tonight, if you are not too tired, old man, we shall sing and tell each other stories.  For it has been a long time since I have heard you do either."

"It would be my pleasure," said Gwion.

"And you," Luned continued, looking at Bran now, "must play the harp for me."

"What should I play?" he asked.

"Something you have almost forgotten," she answered.  "You learned songs of the new world, when you lived in it, and you are close to losing them forever, now."  She motioned to the harp, and Gwion nodded permission.  "Play something from Clwyd farm, Bran Davies."  Some part of his mind, the part in the back that watched everything and kept it to be sorted through later, registered how often she changed what she called him by, as if each time she spoke his name directly was an incantation.  He nodded and sat down at the harp, with the golden firelight sending flickers of light up and down the strings, and began to play.

The careful smooth notes of the Bach sonata melted through his hands before he realised he had decided what to play, spilling from fingertips to harpstrings as if they had been waiting there for indefinite years for a chance to escape.  He had not played it in years, for all that years counted, but it came now as naturally as if he had only just set the music aside.  John Rowlands had taught it to him, long ago when he was another boy entirely, and it was the first song Will Stanton had ever heard him play.  With the lilting notes flowing from his fingers, he imagined for a moment that he was back there, in Mr. Rowlands' cottage on Clwyd Farm.  He smelled bread baking and raindrops and sheep, and almost he could hear the low up-and-down tones of his father and Mr. Rowlands talking in the doorway, and the barking of dogs.

He did not know how long he played, but it must have been a long time, because when Luned's smooth soft hand closed over his and halted him, his fingertips were pink and raw, and his eyes stung with more than just the smoke from the fire.  "It is enough," she said, touching his cheek gently, and he surrendered the harp to Gwion.  Long into the night they sat by the fireside, and all their songs rang with hope and melancholy.  Luned pulled out a small flute when Gwion asked her to, but mostly she merely listened, or added her voice in a few lines of descant when he sang old songs of heroes and quests and love and dying.  After a time the songs began to blend together in Bran's mind, and he realised he was dozing off against Luned's shoulder only after she nudged him in the side to wake him.   They bedded down with their cloaks wrapped around them like blankets in front of the fire, and somewhere in the night while they slept they drifted closer, and Luned's head rested in the hollow of Bran's shoulder, and his hand circled loosely around her arm.

At least that is how they woke, in the red-grey hours of false dawn, with Gwion shaking them into wakefulness.  "You must hurry," he said urgently.  All traces of laughter and ease gone from his face, and his voice was dark.  "If you are to have any hope of leaving the City today, you must leave at once."

"What?" Bran asked, groggy.

"The ship," said Luned, alert nearly at once.

"Yes," said Gwion sadly, "they have seen it.  And Bran at least must hurry away, or they will see him, too."

"Who are you talking about?" Bran demanded, rubbing at his bleary eyes, trying to will away the taste of sleep from his mouth.  His tongue felt thick.  "And why is it so important to stay hidden, really?  Are 'they' really so bad?"

"These are not like the fishermen on the docks when we arrived," Luned said, already untangling her cloak.  Her hair was mussed and her eyes glassy with sleep, but her voice was firm.  "These are the ones who have seen Pridwen and know that you must have come with her.  It is all a sign to them."

"A sign of what?" Bran was getting irritated, and his neck was stiff from sleeping on Gwion's floor.

Luned swung her cloak over her shoulders.  "An important lesson," she said.  "All Times are one, and they exist at once.  So nothing ever really begins, where High Magic is concerned, nor does anything end.  Even battles."

Something in the pit of Bran's stomach began to anticipate the next words, and grew dull and heavy in his gut. 

"They are Those Who Wait for the Dark," Gwion said tiredly.  "And they have found you."

****

tbc.