Author's Note

Nice long chapter for you J

Sorry - I didn't update as fast as I'd hoped as Bran had far more to say for himself than I'd anticipated. These Welshmen can talk when they want to, you know!

I'd really appreciate some feedback on this as this fic has turned into something of a character study and I'm usually far more plot driven. I usually 'bring the funny' a lot more as well, so I'm a bit unsure about the tone of this. Too melodramatic? You decide!

I always thought that the friendship between Bran and Will was one of the most touching aspects of TDiR and was desperate to get Bran's side of this story. There's no doubt in my mind that they would continue to be friends whatever, but given that Bran has just had his memories, not to mention knowledge of his birthright, erased, I was interested in exploring how this affected their relationship. BTW, this is NOT slash…not that I have any objection to slash, ;-).…but, they are only 12!

Thank you to:

kalariah: Ooh, I love long reviews :0) I think you've got Simon, Barney and Jane spot on and that's pretty much the way I wanted to portray them. I'm guilty of indulging my prejudices a bit though, 'cos I never forgave Simon for being such a prat in Greenwitch. I think Bran is the only person Will could ever tell the truth to, but I'm not gonna do it here, as that would destroy the whole point of the story and I think Bran knowing the truth would kind of negate the whole Owen/Arthur choice he made.

jlynn: Thank you, I'm glad you think it's faithful to the story. I wanted to explore some of the unanswered questions bugging me after SotT without getting bogged down in 'Oh no, the Dark has come back' senarios. I'll start tackling exactly how he might approach the whole 'watching' thing in the next chapter, so keep reading!

liptonrm: Wow! What a fantastic review, thank you so much. I hope you find Bran's voice authentic in this chapter as I was a bit unsure about using the first person here, but he is so distinctive, I couldn't resist the challenge. Hope you keep reading.

norah-hunt: Thanks Norah, glad you're still enjoying it. This chapter is a little different, so I hope you stick with it. More of Will in chapter 6.

silent H: Poor old Bran, he's the one that's really confuzzled in this chapter. I couldn't stop him from lapsing into Welsh either…

CHAPTER FIVE

My Friend, Will Stanton

I said goodbye to Will this morning.

When I got back from the Evans' farm, Da asked me when 'that English boy' would be coming back to Wales.

Sounds a bit cold, doesn't it?

He didn't mean it like it sounds, though. You've got to know him to understand him, and I can tell you this much, not many people get close enough to Owen Davies to say that they really know him. Sometimes he's a mystery to me, too. But I knew what he meant by the question. He's never said so, but I think he worries that his private ways have isolated me; I've never been known to bring a school friend home at any rate…

My choice.

No…mostly my choice. Can't say I ever liked not have friends, but when you feel apart because of the way you look, the way I see it, you either get all bitter and twisted, or…well, you end up sort of liking it.

Sounds daft, I know, but there's enough truth in that for me to say it here.

Anyway. 'The English boy'. Da was saying two things when he asked me that question. I heard his worry for me, his concern that I'd let my solitary habits push away a potential friendship, and with it a kind of reassurance. He meant that if Will came to Wales, he would be coming to see me as much as the Evans'.

I told him I didn't know, which was my way of reassuring him too.

It's what works for us.

What I didn't tell him was that I was absolutely certain that Will would be coming back here soon, and not just because I'd asked him, but because he seems to belong here. For a Sais, he's pretty damned Welsh.

I don't mean that he had a way with the language (although he wasn't bad), or some strange skill in sheep farming, or anything, but…well, he just seemed to get us. He got me at any rate.

That was a surprise, I can tell you. Appeared out of nowhere, he did, and I found myself telling him things I'd never told anybody before. Although it was Cafall that found him first…

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The truth is, he's my best friend and I can't imagine ever not being friends with him. A strange thing to say about someone I've only seen twice in the space of a year and a half, but then again, I'm pretty strange myself and Will…Will is stranger that anyone I've ever met before.

How can I describe him? He's a tricky customer is Will Stanton. You can't depend on first impressions with him - or even second ones, in fact you've got to work pretty hard to get any impression of him at all. It's not just because of that odd blank expression he gets on him either, the trouble with Will is that you've got to read between the lines - what he doesn't say is often more important than what he does say, and most of the time he's quieter than my Da.

I think I'm making him sound shy, but he's not that. I've seen him completely unintimidated by an angry Caradog Pritchard, which takes some doing, even from a grown man. He's not afraid to tell someone when he thinks they're wrong, either - he had some stern words for me when I blew up at Jane a few days ago. What was it he said, now? Something like, "you may not…let go, like that."

Sounds a bit pompous, doesn't it? Truthfully, it wasn't at all. Made me feel bad, he did; reminded me that I was the leader of the little expedition to Happy Valley and should treat the poor geneth with more respect. Funny thing is, I can't even recall exactly why I got into heated words with Jane in the first place. I remember thinking at the time that she had a black cloud over her the size of the Cwm Maethlon and the only explanation I could come up with was that she was jealous of me being there and interfering in their cosy little reunion with Will. Ironic really, because I soon realised that the Drews barely knew him, and Simon (more on that one later), didn't even like him.

Didn't stop me getting angry. Even if I sometimes quite enjoy my oddness, doesn't mean I like being made to feel like an outsider. In stepped Will and sorted me out. A few words from him and I suddenly felt like an idiot, like my anger and the chip on my shoulder were as nothing compared to…

…Well, I don't know what exactly, but that's Will all over - saying things, important things, and making you believe them, even if you don't understand what he's going on about half the time. There was a look in his eye as well, intense and serious, telling me he was with me and understood.

Am I making him sound arrogant now? Perhaps he is, a little bit. Not in a bad way, just a sort of…confidence when he looks at you and says something so certain that you never doubt the truth of it.

Doesn't sound much like a twelve-year-old, does he? Can't say I've ever seen him behave like a twelve year old either and that may be what comes from being the youngest of that ridiculously large family of his but I know it's more than that. Will Stanton was born old and no one can tell me any different.

As I said, a tricky customer.

Trouble is, I'm thinking about what I've just said, and it doesn't really explain Will at all; all right so he's quiet and he's sometimes confident and he's mature and...and he's all of those things and none of them too because he's far more than the sum of his parts. Looks ordinary, he does; one of those you never notice – medium height, round face, brown hair, pleasant smile, normal, normal, normal.

Duw, normal my foot.

You just have to make the effort to notice, really notice him for half a minute to see how far from ordinary he is; one moment he's standing there, all polite smiles and bland words, the next his eyes go all distant and strange like he's watching things you can't quite make out and suddenly he's so vivid and so real you want to close your eyes against a non-existent glare and at one and the same time, he's so insubstantial, he's like a will'o the wisp, stretching himself thin upon the wind.

Iesu caradig, don't I sound the total nutcase? (and wouldn't my Da have hard words for all this blaspheming I'm doing). That's what Will does to me, though. Scares me silly with his ways so's I don't know if I'm coming or going; does something so completely unexpected, or just plain mad as a hatter that I wonder if that's what having a nervous breakdown feels like. How do you cope with a twelve-year-old who sticks his hands in his pockets and sings his heart out slap bang in the middle of one of the busiest tourist trails in Mid-Wales without a trace of embarrassment on his face? They don't exactly write a manual for that one, do they?

What can you say to the boy who will run himself ragged and argue with angry farmers and look shattered by despair just because a boy he'd just met had lost his dog? I don't think that he realised at the time that I'd noticed just how much he cared about what was happening and I never thanked him for it, even later when my grief for Cafall was less sharp and hurtful. Truth is, I didn't understand then why he should care, just as I didn't understand until later that he cares for everyone and everything, except himself. He's one who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders.

That's what's so worrying being his friend. Why you have to watch out for him. He'd probably deny to his last breath that he needed looking after, but I know better and so too does John Rowlands and David Evans, although we've never discussed it amongst ourselves. We've all three seen him at his worst, pale as an ysbryd at All Hallow's Eve, breathless and vulnerable with those dark circles beneath his eyes. His worst and his best all in one – beating flames back from a burning hill with more strength than you would credit him, saving Pen with nothing more than a grin and way with a bicycle. We watch him and we worry because he's Will Stanton. He's special. He's important.

I couldn't tell you why or for what. I couldn't even tell you how I know, but I knew it as soon as I first saw him, rolling down that hill and Cafall staring at him and grinning as only dogs can grin. This odd boy, pale and shaken, looked at me and there was a look in his eyes, strangely knowing, as though he recognised me. Something clicked in me then, not exactly the same recognition, but more like realising I'd finally reached a moment I hadn't known I was waiting for. I think I knew that he would change my life.

He gives me the willies, that one. Mad English, but mad in that Welsh way, like Myrddin ab Morvryn, the poet of the hills. One who sees what isn't there and dreams of the stars and the mountains and the ancient places.

Who's poetical now? I'd laugh if I heard anyone else say things like that. Will's not a loony, however I may be describing him. In fact he's as sane as anyone I've met is, and sensible with it. It's just…you can't ever know him without realising that there is a part to him that is different, that's all. It's not something I think about a lot, really, however this might appear, it's just that this last day has been a worry to me.

He's troubled.

More than troubled sometimes. Yesterday he…fainted? Something very like it, anyway. This morning he was as upset as I've ever seen him. And, I don't really know why.

Something happened yesterday.

And fool that I am, I didn't even realise until later. Something…changed somewhere and, Duw, I'm so vague about it, I'm starting to annoy myself. I thought about it lying in bed and was surprised how little I remembered about our little walking trip - lots of hills, a good view of the sea, I found a pretty stone and gave it to Jane…something about a tree? Odd and disconnected memories, except for one - Will standing at the bottom of a hill with his eyes shut, looking terrified and uncertain like he'd been cut adrift on a small boat in a storm. I went over to him, of course, and glanced at Simon as I passed. The look on his face shocked me - he was staring at Will with something like hatred. Had he been doing that all day? I didn't think so, but he was doing it then. Did something happen that turned the on malevolence in him, like the snap of a light switch?

And fainting like that. Was it just shock? I don't know. I was scared when I saw him turn white and fall like he did, but I was scared already by what David Evans had told us and we were all of us still shocked by it later. My Da felt it most, I think, Mrs. Rowlands dying like that, so sudden, like. He wanted me home early and for once I didn't argue with him. So maybe that was what it was with Will?

But I know that wasn't all. Not with what happened last night when Simon came, not with what Will said to me this morning.

I should explain. We met this morning near the paddock behind the main shearing barn on the Evans farm. That is, I was walking that roundabout way to the farm on a whim and found Will sat on the gate waiting for me. As this sort of thing seems to happen so much around him, I couldn't be bothered with surprise so I smiled at him instead. He smiled back but looked pale as if he hadn't slept much. But then I'd not slept that well either and…I can't help but look pale, now can I?

We chatted a bit. I can't remember the exact words now - silly things like, "You're off, then?" and "How's Mr. Davies?" and such like. I think I might have said something, half joking, about him maybe staying another week and he became very still and silent and stared very hard at the mist rising off the valley.

"I have to go home," he said very quietly.

He was so serious that for a moment I wondered if he'd had some bad news from his family. I think he realised this too, because he shook his head as though he'd heard the question in my mind.

"It's not them," he said, so softly I barely caught it. He looked away and I watched the back of his head.

I could have kicked myself for being slow on the uptake. Of course. Whatever it was going on in his head had him spooked so badly he wanted to run back home with his tail between his legs and lick his wounds for a while. Security, like. I could understand why he just didn't say it either. Not the sort of thing that boys talk about, is it? Not even half-mad English dewinau.

So. Whatever was bothering him was not something he could cope with alone, then? But how to ask?

"Will…"

He turned his head back and smiled. He had his blank face on

"I like how you give my name two syllables when you say it."

Did I say he was a tricky one?

"Be serious, man! How's a good Cymro supposed to have a decent conversation with the likes of you?"

He chuckled softly, "All right. A decent conversation needs a decent question…" he paused, then a more tentative look came into his eyes.

"What do you think of the Drews?"

I could have been surprised, but this was Will and he didn't shirk the difficult stuff unless he wanted to. That Simon was one of the things troubling him was in my mind and I could see he was leading up to the subject.

"I don't know. You know them better than me."

He smiled, but the smile didn't reach his eyes.

"I'm not sure I do. I mean, I thought I knew them, but I'm not so sure any more."

And I wasn't so sure what he meant either. He was groping for his words as though he was trying to say something and not say it at the same time. Or avoiding saying something. He was worrying me again, but I tried to keep my answers light.

"Barney's a nice boy. Keeps you on your toes with those questions of his."

Will smiled and nodded, so I kept on with it,

"Mad keen, that one. Enthusiastic, I mean. That thing he's got with King Arthur…"

Will's face didn't change, but I stopped talking anyway because he had that stillness about him again. He looked at me, really looked I mean, and his eyes got so sad that I blinked and wondered what I'd said.

"Yes. Arthur."

His voice sounded as though it was coming from far away. He turned his head quickly then as though he was self-conscious. Odd.

"I like Jane." I said it quickly and without thinking because the silence had suddenly become uncomfortable.

"Yes, so do I."

"Do you now?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

I'll give Will this, he recovers quickly. His voice had that half-joking indignation it gets when I tease him.

"Nothing at all," I said innocently.

To my relief, he looked back at me again and grinned. He looked so normal when he did that; it was easy to forget that there was anything wrong.

"I think she might write to me," he added, "she gave me her address."

"Oooh."

"Oh, shut up."

"Now there's a come back."

He just grinned again and shrugged, looking a bit embarrassed

"When do you expect to see them again?" I asked. I didn't think he'd be able to answer, but he seemed more cheerful and I wanted him to keep talking. Trouble was, I think I asked the wrong question again.

"I don't expect I shall." He answered quickly and easily, his eyebrows raised, surprised like.

"Why not?"

Here's where I started getting confused. I'd thought it was a simple enough question, but he just looked disconcerted as though he wished he'd not said anything in the first place. He was groping for his words again too.

"There wouldn't be a lot of point to it…now," he said quietly, then bit his lip and turned his head away.

It was that "now" that did it for me. Did he mean that there would have been a point to it before? What had changed? He sounded so sure…

"Will…"

"Why don't you just ask me?" he said a bit crossly. "You know you want to."

Easier said than done, boyo, I thought. I had so many questions I didn't know where to start. Then I got what he meant.

"Simon."

He sighed and kicked his legs against the gate.

"He hates me," he said quietly. He sounded more uncertain than I'd ever heard him.

I didn't say anything. Not a lot of point in denying it was there?

"I don't know why," he added.

"Don't you?"

I could have kicked myself for asking like that. I hadn't meant to sound so…harsh. I think I was fed up with mysteries and worrying.

Will puffed out his breath and hunched his shoulders like he was in pain or something. He didn't answer for a while and I started to worry that I'd really offended him, when he jumped down from the gate and leaned against it, staring down at his feet with his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

"He's never really liked me," he started tentatively. "In Cornwall…" He trailed off uncertainly and shuffled his feet.

Was this Will Stanton who always knew the right thing to say?

"We don't have anything in common," he said at last, which I thought was a bit lame. I think they had a lot in common. Middle class all the way through, they were. Maybe he meant they were different types of people?

"Simon's not very…imaginative," I said, which wasn't very helpful because it could have meant anything.

Will just hunched his shoulders up even further.

"It doesn't really matter, anyway," he said, sounding resigned.

I wondered why I was more angry about it than he seemed to be.

"Of course it matters."

"It doesn't," he said, meaning that I should drop it.

Fat chance.

"Doesn't it?"

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and almost smiled.

"Tenacious, aren't you?"

"Impressive vocabulary haven't you? Answer the question."

He shrugged. "I'm not going to see him again. Our…business is finished."

Funny way to put it.

"Working with him, were you?"

"In a manner of speaking"

He sounded agitated, which was pretty much how I was feeling.

"And when are you going to say something I can understand, then?" I asked and didn't bother to hide my annoyance.

He definitely caught it, because he turned around quickly as if he wanted to run.

"Bran…"

"Will, just tell me."

"I can't!"

And, Duw, there was so much anguish in his voice that I felt it right in the pit of my stomach. My heart started beating madly because I realised then that the problem with Will wasn't just Simon after all.

I was looking stupidly at his back. He turned to look at me again and for once, everything showed on his face.

"I can't."

I'd never seen Will cry and I don't expect I ever will, but he looked close to it then. He'd worked himself up into a right state and I hadn't even noticed because I'd been so intent on getting answers.

"Will…" What to say?

"There's…something I have to do," he said quickly and breathlessly as though he was afraid of his own words.

"Something…important. And I…I don't know how to do it and…" he stopped and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. I realised, all of a sudden, that I was the only person that he could say any of this to and I had to bite my lip to keep from talking.

"I just thought…I mean, I realised yesterday that…if I can't even work out what my own friends are thinking, how on earth will I be able to…?" He stopped again and was silent for so long that I knew I was not going to get anything more out of him.

Didn't stop me trying, though.

"What?"

"…to do what I have to do," he said softly. His words sounded like an apology.

"I can't tell you," he added and there was a kind of sadness in his voice made me realise that above everything else, he was my friend and I had to help him.

"Then don't tell me," I said.

He slumped in relief and I would almost have found it funny if I hadn't been so frightened for him.

"I want to tell you", he said and I believed him.

"I know"

He nodded and was silent.

It was strange to be stood there with the sounds of the farm all around us and a stiff breeze blowing the grass about. Almost normal. Trouble is, 'normal' and 'Will' don't belong in the same sentence. Didn't I say he needed looking out for? I was even surer of it then, but he wasn't going to let me do it, it seemed. I hoped his family would help him, but I guessed that they probably knew as little as I did about…whatever it was he had to do.

"I have to go," he said, "Uncle David's taking me to the station."

He sounded tired and looked drained.

"You'll come back, won't you?"

"Of course."

He looked surprised that I even had to ask, which was something at any rate.

"I'll try, anyway. I…I could work, you know. Help out around here. I could help your Da, or you if you need it?"

It was odd that he seemed to think he would only be welcome if he helped out. It made me feel sad, too.

" Dyn ni'n helpu ein gilydd," I told him quietly.

I doubt he understood me, but he put his hand on my shoulder in one of those odd, adult gestures of his and smiled slightly before turning away. I watched him trot away, his head down and his hands in those pockets again. I was certain he'd come back.

We had a lot more to say to each other, Will Stanton and I.

We were friends, after all.

TBC

Glossary

(I've never had to use one of these before!)

Sais - Englishman

geneth – girl

Duw - God

Iesu caradig – gentle Jesus

Cwm Maethlon – Happy Valley (as if you didn't know)

ysbryd – ghost

Myrddin ab Morvryn - 6th century Welsh poet who may (or may not) be the inspiration for the legend of Merlin.

dewinau - plural of dewin - wizard

Cymro - Welshman

Dyn ni'n helpu ein gilydd - "We help each other"

Coming soon: Chapter 6 - The Kingdom of the Lost

What happens when Will goes home to Buckinghamshire?