Eira's father's name was previously Llwyfen. That would be a feminine name if it were ever used. His name is now Ieuan (YAY-an).
Eira
She climbed out of the rimy bottom wood. Further up the slope, dead-brown gorse became less crisped with frost under the sun's low reach. Eira stopped a moment, took the open flaps of the front of her coat, and shook off the rime she'd collected in the timber. Probably, she mused, she looked like a great crow flapping its wings in a manner likely deemed idiotic by other crows. As she continued upwards, her boots and the wintering undergrowth brushed away the frost that had stuck to her robe's skirt. She wore a favored green robe, soft from many washings and faded, worn at the elbows, and torn at the hem from thorn bushes. The cuffs and bottom hem were patterned with tiny purple flowers, still bright enough to tease the eye. She'd found her old black cashmere hat, pulled it over her loose hair. A tuft of something fluffy and white—fur from a rabbit, or some bird's soft down—had once been attached to the side. Perhaps one of her children had pulled it off. No matter. It kept her head warm.
Merlette's house was in the distance, nestled between two hills. The garden was wide and given exclusively to growing ingredients. Stone walls made three sides, the fourth side serving as the wall of a hothouse where more things could be grown in winter. As Eira knocked on the front door, two cats slithered over the garden wall, eyes wide and alarmed at the intrusion.
Merlette looked surprised to see Eira but waved her in easily enough. Nicander's parents may have disowned him, but that didn't mean everybody else in their clan had. Most, true, but most is not all.
"That tea's gone cold." Merlette said, grabbing a pot from the center of the table. "Let me make it fresh."
Eira watched Merlette's broad back disappear into the kitchen. She was one of those relatives of Nicander who looked much like he did, genes from their one same link reaching out to see who they could find. They shared the complexion that turned rosy at a blink, hair in that dull-black shade, wide cheeks, and solid trunks. And Branda, the very same.
Eira looked around a house that was better appointed than what she'd ever done with Ty'n-y-cwm. The sitting room led off to a dining room, which led to a kitchen at one end of the house. Carved furniture sat in places that didn't make you feel clustered in, nor left in the open. Photographs in glimmering frames lined the walls alongside delicately painted China plates. A shelf held books and the knickknacks of past travel. The place smelled like burning rosemary and washed cauldrons.
"'Ere's some cream and sugar for ye if ye like, dearie."
Merlette was Donius and Onyxia's first cousin, making her Nicander's first cousin once removed—however the removing was meant to have happened. (Wasn't blood just blood?) She had been born a Burke, married a Fawley, and been widowed a Fawley. Most of the women Burkes around her went back to the name of their birth or hadn't changed it for their husbands' in the first place. Merlette had never seemed to care one way or the other.
She sat across from Eira at the little round table she'd always favored. She set the tea things down with a plate of thickly sliced bread next to a butter dish.
"Want some bread?"
After half of five minutes filled with slurping and chewing, Merlette shifted her bottom further back in her seat, placed her palms on her knees, which she spread wide like a man, and broke the first asking.
"So, it's been some years!"
"Been more like a decade." Eira lifted her bread up, admired the speckling of the brown grain, and bit off another slathered chunk.
"I miss when you two sold to me." Merlette said. "Missed you at Ralph's funeral."
"Yeah, well, things got complicated after a while."
"How's that, duck?"
Eira breathed in the scent of old wooden furniture and bread. "I came out here to let his people know—Nicander's probably dead, I think."
Merlette stared stunned into Eira's eyes. "Dead? D'you reckon how?"
"He left me and the kids too many years ago; haven't heard from him since. No one I've asked says they've seen him."
Merlette leaned back against her chair, her mouth forming a tight O shape as her eyes hooded in her disbelief and confusion. "Wha—well then, why d'you reckon him to be dead then, my girl? If you haven't seen 'im?"
"I've got to move on, Merl." Eira said, voice lower than intended. She'd had a full explanation prepared in her mind coming here but putting it out there for real was proving harder than she'd thought it would. Already she could feel the scratchy claws of emotion at the back of her throat. She swallowed, forced concentration on her fingernails scratching the wood of the tabletop.
"But— 'ow's he dead? I don't fathom it. Nic, dead. Are you sure that's likely?"
"I've been looking for him ten years, now. If I han't heard from him, and no one's seen him by now, then he's either dead or out of his old life enough that he may as well be."
The tight O of Merlette's lips had gone slack and oval, her eyes wider and brighter.
Eira flicked her eyes to the wood of the table, swallowed the truth she'd kept hidden nigh on a decade.
"Anyway, I came out here to let one of you know. Even the way things stand between Nic and his family, it in't right only me saying it."
Suddenly heavy in herself, Eira stood up to prepare to leave, but Merlette caught her sleeve.
"I can't be the one to tell everybody this. You can't just put that on me! Especially not telling Arbrand and Deverra."
No way. There was no way Eira would ever feel ready to talk to those two, and she pulled her sleeve from Merlette's grasp.
"I can't talk to them, Merl. You know I can't. They fucking never talked to him again because of me!"
"Parents do stupid things sometimes, but you're the last one to know him. You've got to tell them their son is dead. Anybody else would be wrong."
"There in't nothing right about any of this, Merl!" Eira snapped before looking away to take a breath in.
Merlette still sat at her table, body tilted in a sideways lean to convey the illusory image of closeness. "I'm not asking you to tell me anything else, Eira. But I am telling you: you've got to be the one who tells his old man and woman that their son is dead. Their oldest son, Eira. Can't be they hear it from a cousin four-times removed while they pass each other on the road."
Eira spoke staring out of the window. "My own parents didn't hesitate—not for a second—to take me back when I ran away from school to fuck Death Eaters. They took the baby and the man. I don't see how I owe his people a fucking thing."
"They han't forgotten him, love. Believe me. They act well like they have, but we're not stupid out here—we know he's still on their minds—especially Deverra's."
Eira grabbed her coat. Her voice, previously husky with the misery of her lies, contracted tight into a sneer. "I don't care what's on that old woman's mind, or who makes her thoughts heavy, or whatever grief she's given herself!"
Merlette rose as Eira hurried into her coat. "Eira, please—don't make me the one who knows about this. It's not fair at all."
Eira scoffed. "'Fair,' eh?"
"You tell his parents, Eira. I won't do it. That's your place."
"Can't have a place where you aren't welcome."
Eira opened the door and didn't shield her face from the bite of the breeze that hit her face. Merlette had followed and all but stood on Eira's heels until Eira began to walk away.
"You tell them, Eira! You tell them he's gone!"
Even as she stepped higher, Eira heard Merlette's final pleas as clear as if she were walking beside her. "And stay away from them that serve him! You should know better now, love! You know!"
*
Eira had been thirteen when Lord Voldemort declared himself in 1970.
His followers, the first Death Eaters, were not so wide-ranging in their cruelty. Not at first.
They had started with the Muggles. Disappearances and deaths, first. Then corpses bearing signs of torture began to be discovered. Stories of Muggles found alive in confused and brutalized states would also surface. Some of these stories were reported in the Daily Prophet, others not, only to be leaked through whispers in pubs, then in the corridors of Hogwarts.
The Death Eaters brought their specific brand of viciousness to Wizardkind when they began targeting witches and wizards who'd married Muggles or muggleborns, often turning their wands on whole families. Then, different whispers could be heard, usually in some corner, or else in tightly packed groups of teenaged girls. The whisperers said they raped the wives—Muggle or witch—but many argued back that Death Eaters, who had proclaimed allegiance to the sanctity of magical blood, were unlikely to touch either Muggles or blood traitors that way. No one knew what the truth was. Barely fourteen then, Eira and her friends heard little of this, the older girls hushing each other whenever they saw them drawing near.
Throughout her years at school, Eira would learn that your opinion on what was happening in their world only mattered in simple eithers and ors: either you supported Dumbledore, or He-who-must-not-be-named. Either you practiced the Dark Arts, or you were staunchly against them. Soon, you could hardly breathe for being forced to choke on some righteous diatribe from a purge-hungry pureblood who thought the Dark Lord had the right idea, or else a spitting condemnation from those who decried You-know-who.
Eira had believed in staying out of it all.
So did her father.
"People like them because they are united the way the devils at the Ministry are not," Ieuan said to Eira one day during the summer she turned sixteen.
Ieuan had puffed a gust of white smoke into the outside air as they sat for a rest on their way to the neighbors'. "They put on a strong front, these cythreuliaid newydd."
To Ieuan Cadwallader, the Death Eaters were just that—new devils—the opposing force to the old devils in government. He certainly was not alone in his thinking.
"They talk a big game about tolerating the Muggles whilst keeping wizards hidden away as usual, but listen to what they really say, fy ngeneth, when they aren't putting on a show for the public. Most of them don't like the Muggles any less than these Death Eaters do."
Ieuan took another drag from his pipe and said, "It's practically in our blood to hate Muggles." Then, his expression turned thoughtful. "That Grindelwald dressed it all up by saying the Muggles had their specific place, that everything he did would end up being good for them." Ieuan snorted then, sending billows of smoke from each nostril. "Lembo!"
"This new man—this Voldemort—he doesn't have any pretenses, has he? That's another reason people like him."
In the years after Ieuan's declarations, the portion of the wizarding world that truly despised Muggles would shift its ground where support for Voldemort was concerned. Even regular practitioners of the Dark Arts could not have anticipated the horror he would bring.
"I for one won't cry if he does manage to tear up that fucking Statute." Ieuan bit his pipe's stem and shrugged. "Can't see myself actually caring if he succeeds or not, though."
He mused about the current state of the Ministry's leadership. "Jenkins was competent for a while; now they're all rooting for Minchum to handle the trouble being caused. He'll be harder than Jenkins."
A gust of wind rustled their hair. Ieuan had to shield his pipe from going out. When it passed, he spoke again.
"If the Death Eaters and their master—" A shadow crossed Ieuan's face; he leaned over and spat in contempt. "If they continue as they are now, or if they grow worse, could be we'll need someone harder than Minchum."
By Christmas that year, the Wizarding wireless was dominated by reports of the Death Eaters' antics. Even story programs were peppered with interruptions about the appearance of the Dark Mark above a Wizarding house here . . . over a park in a Muggle city there . . . a duel fought between Aurors and Death Eaters (the Death Eaters always won, it seemed). Eira and her parents had always listened to the wireless whilst preparing dinner, but anymore it was on during and after the meal, as well.
"I know boys at school who say they're joining Wyddost-Ti-Pwy." Eira said one night after they'd eaten.
They were all in the sitting room listening to the wireless again. Ieuan switched it off. He turned to Eira. "Want to parade around in those costumes, do they?"
Eira's mother, Rhoslyn, spoke from a chair nearest to the fire, its light dancing over the knitting in her lap. "I saw a picture of them in the Daily Prophet yesterday. Two of them. They wore black masks with their hoods pulled up. They looked like ghost widows, to me."
"They make enough living widows, as it is," said Ieuan. He turned his attention back to Eira. "You think that's mighty clever of them lads, then? Wanting to dress up like grieving widows?"
Eira chewed her lip, uncertain as to how she felt about it all—really felt.
Easy to feel uncertain when one has not had to suffer the way others have.
Ieuan gazed at her for a while. Finally, he said, "You're going to have to pay more attention, Eira fach. This isn't going away anytime soon. You can hardly trust your own relatives anymore, even out here. You've got to figure out where people stand before you let them get close to you. These boys—the Death Eaters—they want to purify the Wizarding race—so they say—but how many of them can recite their genealogy the way we can? Not even half, I'll wager. Don't get it wrong, fy ngeneth—they certainly believe in throwing out the mudbloods already in our society, if not killing them outright, which they've been doing. But you see, people like them really follow someone like him because of what he can do for them—or what they think he will."
Eira stared at her father. Sometimes, she couldn't tell who or what he stood behind.
Ieuan leaned back, gave his daughter a knowing look over his pipe. "So, be careful, Eira fach."
*
She disapparated to the crossroads, turned south, and walked the rest of the way to Luscinia's.
Luscinia was Nicander's first cousin on his father's side. Eira had fallen pregnant only a few months before Luscinia popped out a baby girl she and her husband named Urania, after Luscinia's mother. Both women had thought to put their daughters together as playmates, but Nicander's family's distaste for Eira and his eventual disownment had put a hard stop to that little plan.
Luscinia was far more surprised to see Eira at her door than Merlette had been.
"Eira!"
Luscinia stepped outside with wide eyes, as though she could not believe she was seeing things correctly. A breeze rustled sandy curls about her shoulders. At around forty, Luscinia's face was still smooth. She'd always been pretty, Eira thought.
"Yeah, it's me. Long time, no see, I guess."
Luscinia shook herself. "By 'eck, you guess. I—" Luscinia looked over her shoulder and seemed to realize they were standing in the cold outside. "Won't you come in, then?"
Inside, Eira followed Luscinia into a small but well-stocked kitchen.
"I've just been making dinner. I'll get you some tea."
Eira shucked her coat and looked at the half-made sandwiches and the soup that was still simmering on the cooker. "I can help you, Gale. Here. . ."
Luscinia's name meant 'nightingale.' Sometime in her childhood, the adults closest to her had given her the shortened moniker for affection's sake, leading more than a passing neighbor to remain unsure as to the curly-haired witch's actual Christian name.
They finished making the meal and sat at the table in the little dining room Luscinia said her husband had built for her some years ago. Probably, Eira suspected, he'd always felt a touch inadequate with the simple cottage he'd provided his wife, whose mother had raised her daughter in the largest house in that part of the neighborhood.
"I went and saw Merlette just now," Eira began.
If Merlette had been shocked that Nicander could be 'dead', Luscinia was confused.
"But—no. . ." Luscinia leaned away from Eira, shaking her head. "No, he can't be dead."
"I'm sorry, Gale." Eira's fingernails contracted over the polished tabletop.
"But—when did you last see him?"
Eira exhaled slowly. "Han't seen him in almost ten years."
Luscinia gaped, stunned. Eira couldn't look her in the eye.
"Anyway, I've got to move on, Gale. Can't hang on to him anymore."
Luscinia leaned forward in her chair, shaking her head in disbelieving, jerky movements, and clasping her hands between her thighs as she forced herself to reckon with Eira's words. Eira hated herself.
Then, as though the spirit of some infected animal had clawed its way into her heart, Eira experienced a different thought, one accompanied by a feeling as repulsive as the disgust she'd been feeling for herself this entire morning: if Merlette and Luscinia were so shocked to hear that she hadn't seen Nicander for so long, how might they react to learning she had lost his and her children?
Eira stood. "I should go."
Luscinia's head shot up. "What? No—you only just got here!"
But Eira was upset. Actually upset. It was not a feeling she was accustomed to allowing herself in front of others. Not anymore. She was already pushing her arms into her coat. "I can't, Gale. I can't."
"I don't want you to go." Luscinia said mournfully as she stood.
Eira straightened the lapels of her coat. "Merlette wants me to tell his parents. I was hoping she would do it."
"I can't tell them either, Eira. Please—stay longer. Talk to me!"
But Eira was already walking through the sitting room. Luscinia followed, grabbing Eira's arm, pleading with her. "Eira, don't leave me alone right now."
Eira needed a drink. She needed a drink badly.
"I'm sorry, but I've got to go. Could be I'll see you—"
"Please. I don't want to be alone right now." Luscinia's words became much faster. "Ennis won't be back for another month—Tolman is always looser on the weekends, and I can't stand waiting to see if he'll pass my house again. . ."
Eira finally looked at Luscinia properly instead of at her shoes. Luscinia's face was as pained as when Eira had lied to her about Nicander being dead.
"Please stay a little longer!"
Eira had thought Luscinia's entreaties to be an effect of her grief over Nicander, but as Eira listened to Luscinia, really listened, she realized she wasn't the only one suffering something terrible.
"What are you saying, Gale?"
Luscinia suddenly dropped Eira's arm; water welled in her dark gray eyes. Eira stared. Luscinia had always been strong, but the woman before her now was like a child who'd found themselves in the dark without a candle.
"Gale . . . what's going on with Tolmander?"
Luscinia struggled to speak now; her face flushed. "I—nothing. Nothing has—happened. He just changed so much after Azkaban."
Eira watched Luscinia carefully now, wondering if she blamed Nicander for Tolmander's incarceration the way others did. It did not seem to be so with Luscinia, but Eira had her own thoughts on the matter, and her voice hardened even as she meant not to hurt her old friend.
"Tolmander was a bastard before prison, Gale. They should have kept him longer if you ask me."
Luscinia made an odd sound in her throat. "He just—he—it's even scarier now that my daughter's home. I worry about her being here. Oh! I wish she'd been a better student!"
Eira felt a rushing sort of hollowness in her mind, felt the hollowness expand to the rest of her. "Have you told your husband about this?"
"No." Luscinia said pitifully. "Not yet." Now she was looking anywhere but at Eira. "I'm afraid that people—" She swallowed audibly before continuing. "They might think I've invited it. We had a bad stretch, Ennis and I; long time ago, now, but—it was my doing then, no doubt about it, but—" She paused again, stared out her window at the damp winter moor. "I don't know what I did. Truly, I don't!" And here, Luscinia's face crumpled. "I didn't mean to lead him on, Eira! I really didn't!"
Eira hated hugging people—hated reassuring them, too—but in that moment, even she had the wherewithal to pretend otherwise for Luscinia's sake.
*
She'd always disliked Tolmander.
He had had little personality beyond his rivalry with his older brother and what he got from a bottle or the outcome of . . . whatever it was he'd found to entertain himself of an evening. And while yes, Tolmander had been that worthless, he had still been dangerous in his own right. Whether on his own or with the handful of his cousins that equaled him in malice, Tolmander had managed to become someone you avoided fucking with; he'd simply lacked any gravitas that his brother had. That, and he'd had no goals that Eira could see. Put bluntly, Tolmander was an arsehole.
She'd seen him last when Branda was two, a few months before Chrysandra's death. Tolmander and Eira had ended up in the same pub one night, which inevitably led to their exchanging cruel jibes and insults until Eira, thoroughly soused, had decided to leave. Tolmander, still acting a cunt, had followed her to the threshold of the bar, then grabbed her as if for side-along disapparation. Eira hadn't been that drunk. Instead, she threw him bodily down the stone steps where he rolled onto the cobbled street below before she disapparated by herself. She told Nicander what had happened the next morning. He went out and fought with his little brother; Mr and Mrs Burke called Eira a slut who had led Tolmander on, probably, and that was that. Tolmander and Eira never saw each other again. Good riddance.
*
The sun managed to jump out from behind its gray veil, and Eira considered visiting another Burke. But her need for a drink or a quick fuck was growing, so she disapparated back to her home and pulled out the Ogden's from where it had rolled beneath the sofa last weekend.
She'd gotten the word out, at least. Nicander, dead—most likely. But she was far from done.
In three days, she would have to leave Ty'n-y-cwm. What would happen in the spring when Nicander would dare a visit? They did not exchange owls, would not dare. Nicander had made himself Untraceable after he'd first left, anyhow, largely due to Branda's constant owls to him. He'd been afraid of the possible consequences for his family if the Werewolf Capture Unit ever intercepted her letters to him. Eira did not remember how she had reacted to this. Probably, it was best if she didn't. Probably, it was another one of the hundred reasons Branda vehemently ignored Eira to this day.
Eira drank until her stomach burned, then she went into Diagon Alley for food so she might drink some more without getting sick. In the pub, it seemed everyone was buzzing with the story they'd read in The Quibbler. She heard Death Eaters' names whispered as though saying them properly aloud would somehow summon their owners. She heard snatches of repeated stories of the Death Eaters' worst crimes, the names of their victims also spoken in hushed tones. Eira wanted to get away from them, but it had been the same in every tavern she'd visited since the article had come out.
By the time proper dark came on, Eira was still steady enough to walk and disapparate as she pleased but pissed enough to have lost much of her caution. She stood up from her table and was recognized by Avery and a wizard he was with whom Eira did not know, but who seemed to think he knew her. Avery and the other wizard 'accompanied' her to the street despite her protestations, which were heavy-lidded and half-mumbled. They became annoying, and when the cold air touched her face, and Avery and the stranger tried to take an arm each, Eira snapped almost to sober.
It was over in five seconds, with Eira having whirled around out of the men's too-loose grips with her wand in her fist, and Avery and the stranger falling back against the tavern swearing oaths of surprise after Eira's first warning BANG! Several patrons screamed and ducked for cover. Others, though, recognized Eira—recognized the type of situation—and laughed.
"You better get home, Eira girl!" A woman cackled from across the street. "Your daddy doesn't know you're out!"
Eira turned to look at the woman. Her black overcoat had slid down one arm, her eyes burned with alertness, and her wand remained tight in her grip.
"My daddy's dead!"
Eira looked back over her shoulder to make sure Avery and the stranger were not coming near her, then disapparated to her home. Once inside, she threw her wand across the sitting room and screamed until she was on her knees.
*
February's final freak day dawned blue-gray with chill. Eira had hardly noticed when she'd rushed between buildings to enter the Ministry of Magic.
On the bottommost level, at the end of the corridor that was lined by courtrooms, Eira turned right, walked down a second corridor, and eventually found herself in the section of the Ministry where those awaiting trial were sometimes kept.
Eira knew that one room would be large, accommodating several holding cells that looked like cages pressed up against each other. Another room was middling in space, but still held tiny cells built along the walls, and this was where she sat down in a chair offered by the kindly though serious guard to talk to Cleddyf, who was detained behind a wall of bars.
"God, Cleddyf. What were you thinking?"
The guard, who did not understand Welsh, called out, "You gotta speak English here, Eira. I'm sorry, but I have to know what you're saying."
She'd gone to school with this guard. He'd been one of her guards when she had been arrested before losing her children. She made a gesture with her hand to show she understood and turned back to Cleddyf.
He shrugged a little, the movement slight, as though he were weighed down. He took a long time to answer. "I don't know."
Cleddyf looked Eira dead in the eyes, shook his head slowly. "No."
Eira wanted to believe him, but she wasn't stupid enough, nor unquestioningly loyal enough to her family not to wonder: had Cleddyf truly never mistreated one of the many women he kept around him, or was he lying to Eira, and had finally struck the wrong girl?
"Why'd you hit her, Cledd? I mean—just—why?"
Cleddyf exhaled heavily, running a hand over his black hair and looking away from his cousin's stare.
Eira did not know what to think. She felt shocked, hurt, and angry that Cleddyf would do what he had done—and he had admitted to it.
The emotion made her rock forward in frustration, made her voice strained. "I mean, what the fuck?"
Cleddyf looked Eira with a face dulled like stone. "Don't—don't bother trying to make sense of it, because I'm not even trying to."
He hadn't denied it, the guard had told Eira. Not once. He'd simply accepted what he had done.
Eira did not speak for a while; neither did Cleddyf, their only sounds being the creaks from the wooden chairs, and the occasional shame-filled breaths between them.
Finally, Eira, looked up. "I don't know how to deal with this, Cledd."
She saw Cleddyf swallow, saw his eyes dart away from hers for a second. Then he shrugged and said with steely resignation, "Can't do anything about it."
*
It was difficult to put Cleddyf from her mind as she reckoned where to go that day. Late morning now, Eira drained the last of the strong, liquor laced coffee she'd brewed after returning from her visit with Cleddyf, and considered her options.
The word was out with the Burkes that Nicander might be dead, so that was done. (A pang twisted Eira's gut at the memory of Merlette begging her to go tell Nicander's parents.) What she needed now was to find Nicander.
His having made himself Untraceable complicated matters even more. An owl could not find him. Some witch or wizard who might have developed the skills needed to trace him—probably in Knockturn Alley; probably for an exorbitant fee—might be found, but then they might raise questions to their friends as to why a certain witch with a half-done smiley scar was so desperate to track down a werewolf. Would they discover that Nicander was a werewolf? Eira did not know—she was ignorant of the process. That, she decided, would be a very last resort.
She needed to talk to other werewolves. She'd already wasted her time on Wright. Eira didn't know any other werewolves, and going to St Mungo's to see if Nicander had been in lately would be as attention grabbing as going to somebody who could Trace him.
She checked the Werewolf Registry for names she remembered from the Werewolf Capture Unit, but again, only Wright's name stood out to her—his, Nicander's, Fenrir Greyback's, and Remus Lupin's.
Well, Fenrir Greyback was not, and never would be, an option, so that left Lupin.
Eira read and reread the details of his most recent addresses—what was likely to be a cottage up in Yorkshire; Hogwarts; the same place in Yorkshire again—then folded the registry so that his name and details were still visible, and grabbed her coat.