Walking Shadow

Summary: Twenty years after. Memories are still lost, Will is still alone, and something is stirring…

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Chapter one

A family gathering

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It was almost time.

Will sipped his orange juice. The ice cubes chimed together, then drifted down again. They were beaded with specks of air, like raindrops caught out of time. He watched them settle, then raised the glass to his lips again. The juice was sweet and sharp, and still cold enough to hurt, even though his hands were melting the ice, making it bleed colourlessly into the orange.

People swirled past him. Their chatter was all of the here and now, but it was not so difficult to think of it as the chatter of centuries. The people were wisps of memory. Their faces were like the faces of ghosts, and soon they would fade away, and he would remain, alone.

He raised his glass again. The ice cubes were smaller, fading, gone.

A swirling figure stopped. Indistinct features smiled, and became the face of his brother James.

"Cheer up, Will." James slapped him heartily on the back. "Why're you standing there like that?"

Will blinked. "Like what?"

James watched him expectantly. Feeling awkward, Will began to take another sip of his drink, but James crowed in triumph. "Like that! Standing there, concentrating on your drink, as if it's the most interesting thing in all the room. That's what people do when they're nervous." He said the word as if it was disgusting. "And do I see correctly? Is that only juice?"

"Yes, just juice." Will gave a faint half smile. "You know I don't drink."

James laughed. "Ah, one day, dear brother, I'll change you." He clapped Will on the back again, almost hard enough to hurt, and went off laughing, calling for more wine.

"You never could," Will murmured. He drained the last mouthful of juice. "And now it's too late."

His hands felt empty when he had laid the glass down. It felt as if his last protection had gone. Words whirled around him, but now the faces of the people that uttered them were clear and sharp. He knew each and every one of them. He knew their names, and their birthdays, and lists of facts about each one. My family, he thought.

He drifted close to Max and Barbara. "Have you decided whether to get a puppy?" Max was asking.

"I don't know," she replied. "The children want one, but I'm not so sure. You get attached to an old dog, you know? I don't want to be hasty."

Old dog? Will thought. Her dog died? Max was nodding sympathetically. Should I have known that? Will almost drifted forward, but stopped himself. The conversation carried on.

Perhaps he would get another drink. He turned sideways to squeeze through a narrow gap between two huddles of conversation. An elbow jogged him. An uncle murmured an apology, and someone else laughed, but he thought the laughter was nothing to do with him. Distant and fading, Max and Barbara were still talking about dogs. Most of the others were talking about children, but some were talking gravely about the state of the world, about crime and impending war.

Will turned away from those, too.

A large man came up to him, looking older than his years. "Hello, Will."

"Robin." Will nodded a greeting.

"Long time no see," Robin said.

"No," Will agreed. "Not since…" He trailed off. The last time the family had been gathered together had been at their father's funeral, two years before.

"Well…" Robin shrugged. "You should come and visit some time. You're not that far away. Barely two hours, really. The boys talk about you a lot."

"Really?" That bit, at least, was a surprise.

"They think you're mysterious." Robin chuckled. "I think they think you're some sort of international spy, what with all those unexplained absences and the, er, interesting presents. Of course, I keep telling them that you're just my kid brother, but you know what children can be like. Don't understand it myself, though."

"Oh," Will said. "They're wrong, of course." Robin said nothing. "About me being an international spy." Robin was not looking at him. "I'm just an immortal wizard, the last of his kind, keeping watch over mankind to make sure no old evils rise again to threaten them."

"Ha ha," Robin said. "You always were the joker."

Will blinked. "No, I wasn't."

Robin looked at him. "No, you weren't." He drained at least half of his glass of wine. "Wouldn't it be funny if you were, though? Watching over the world…" He gave a harsh laugh. "You must be pretty bad at it. I mean, the things we see on the news every day…"

"They're man's own doing," Will said, "done by their own free will. Things like that have to take their course."

Robin grimaced. "This is too deep for me." He clapped Will briefly on the shoulder. "See you around, mate."

Will watched him as we went to get another drink. James was already the drinks table, deliberating between two wines. Perhaps he would go and find something to eat instead, Will thought. Perhaps the aching hollowness inside him was caused by hunger. He often forget to eat, or failed to notice the passing of days.

"Will! Have you heard?" Mary cried gleefully as he passed. "They just phoned back. I've got the job!"

"You… Oh. Well done!" Will congratulated her. "That's great!"

He had not realised that she had applied for one. She had probably told everyone the night before, but he had been… away. Paul or Stephen might have noticed his hesitation, but Mary had always been self-absorbed. She saw in his response just what she expected to see. He could have said anything at all. He could have been absent entirely, so there was just nothingness where he was standing.

After she had gone, he wondered for a moment what job she would be doing, but he did not call her back and ask.

The buffet table was deserted, and nearly empty. A few nuggets of some indeterminate substance sat dejectedly on a plate, and shreds of lettuce and cress lay scattered across the table cloth, looking like the aftermath of a riot. Will hesitated a moment, then reached for one of the nuggets.

"I wouldn't if I were you," Stephen said.

Will frowned at the brown lump of batter. "Do you know something I don't know?"

Stephen gave a wry laugh. "No, but I saw the children descend on the scraps like a swarm of starving locusts. I'm willing to bet that anything left over has been sat on, or dropped, and had something unspeakable done to it."

"In that case…" Will put the nugget back on the plate. "These children… Tell me we weren't this bad when we were young."

"You were worse," Stephen stated, with a chuckle. "The bane of my life. You've no idea how hard it is to be fifteen, trying so hard to seem manly and impressive, when you've got eight little brothers and sisters crawling around underneath your feet, putting glue in your hair, being sick all over your leather jacket…"

"I never did!" Will cried, but there was a deep place inside him that was not as cold as it had been just a moment before. Stephen had been his hero right through his childhood, until his eleventh birthday when he had stopped being a child.

"No, not you, perhaps," Stephen said. "James was always the worst. But…" He sighed. "Still, something must have gone right. Look at all these children our brothers and sisters keep on having. How many is it now?"

"Twenty-three so far," Will replied. "That's counting yours, of course."

He had not said it with reproach, but Stephen apologised nonetheless. "I'll bring them over one day, I promise. The flight…"

"I know," Will assured him. Stephen had settled in Antigua following his service with the Royal Navy, and came home rarely, and always alone. "It doesn't matter, really."

Stephen took a step back, and studied Will, a strange expression on his face. "You know, I think you mean it. The others all say it, but…"

"Of course I mean it," Will said. He made his mouth smile.

Stephen ignored him. "It's as if you're not really one of us," Stephen said. "You stand there, and you smile, and you listen, but you're…"

Will turned away, closed his eyes, let the words drift away to nothing. He ate the nugget after all, and it tasted of ashes. "I think they did something to it, after all," he said, when he could speak again. He smiled, and Stephen laughed, but a shadow lay long on the room, and the cold place inside him was like ice, and hurting.

Then Stephen left him, grabbed joyously by Gwen and her youngest, dragged away laughing by both hands. He seemed to grow taller as he went away, as if the uncomplicated warmth of their laughter expanded him. With me, he feels a weight, Will thought. He doesn't know why, but he feels it. They all do.

Skirting the laughing groups, he walked to the open patio doors that led into the garden. He stopped just outside, on the cusp between sunshine and shadow. Most of the children were out in the light, playing and shrieking. They were making dens in the undergrowth, stalking each other, conducting elaborate games of pretending.

"I don't think I ever did that," Will murmured.

"What?" asked Paul.

Will snapped his head around. Paul was leaning against the side of the house, as if basking in the shadow. Will stood and watched him, but he did not smile. Paul did not smile back.

"Play," Will said. "Even before…" He stopped.

"You were always different from the others," Paul said quietly. "They say I was, too."

"You are different," Will found himself saying.

There was a sensitivity to Paul that came, perhaps, from the same place as his gift for music. Music was a form of magic, after all, and long ago musicians had been magicians in truth. A thread of that remained. Sometimes Paul looked at Will, and Will thought, He knows! Then, when the glimmer of nascent knowledge died in Paul's eyes, Will could think, more quietly, One day, he will know. One day… And he yearned for it, and was terrified of it, both at the same time.

"Well, yes." Paul have a self-deprecating smile. "Different is one way of putting it, I suppose."

Will was slow to realise what Paul meant, and he blushed as he did so. Paul was secure in his sexuality, but not everyone in the world felt the same. "I didn't mean that."

Paul's smile faded. "I know you didn't, Will. I'm sorry. It was a clumsy attempt to… to deflect…"

"It really doesn't matter," Will said.

"No," Paul said, fixing Will with his deep eyes. "It never does with you, does it? I remember… I don't know why I remember it, but I do… You must have been eleven or twelve, and Mary was doing her teenage girl thing, screaming at you about something or other, but you just sat there quietly and didn't respond one little bit... I remember James laughing, thinking it was a great trick, because the less you responded, the more furious Mary got. But it was no trick. I knew that. Nothing she said made any difference to you at all. Nothing."

First Stephen, and now Paul. Will had no idea how to respond.

"And you were always like that," said Paul. "A little apart. Quiet. Not quite with us, even when you were a baby. You always seemed older than you were."

"Not like now," Will tried to joke. His family frequently commented on how young he looked. He was thirty-two, but he looked a decade younger.

"No, you still seem older than any of us," Paul said seriously. "I used to envy you, you know. I made my own space in my head and barricaded it with music, but it was hard, with so much bustle all around me. You made it seem so effortless."

"I didn't…" Will's words dried up. He was very aware of the garden at his back. Beyond the garden were fields, and the fields led to hills, and the hills were quiet and ageless, flowing with the power that asked no questions, but just was.

"The others were made for this life, but you and I, Will, should have been born into a smaller family," Paul said. He made as if to clasp Will by the forearm, but did not. "And here we are, the only two of the Stanton clan without children of our own. Fated by birth, was it?"

"I think it was," Will said, for neither of them could help the way they had been born.

Paul's eyes went distant and dreamy. What did mortals dream of, Will wondered. Did they yearn for the vast impossible things that they could never know? Or was it only small and human things that they dreamed about, like jobs, and children, and love?

"Where's John?" Will asked, to break the sadness in his brother's eyes.

Paul smiled, as he always did when his partner was named. "Gone for a walk. He's an only child, and finds these enormous family gatherings quite alarming."

"You should have gone with him," Will said. "No-one would have minded."

"No." Paul pushed himself away from the wall. "These things are important, and no matter what I say…" He raked his hair back from his brow with his elegant musician's fingers. "I wouldn't be without them, you know."

Squaring his shoulders, Paul walked into the house. Several voices cried his name. Hands closed on his arms, and dragged him into the warm and beating heart that was the family.

It was cooler outside than Will had expected, even in the sun. He wrapped his arms around his body, and headed out into the garden. The words that he might have said to Paul still lingered in his mouth, unsaid. He knew that he would never say them aloud, not to anyone.

The children were playing and laughing, and Will smiled a little to see them. Two boys were fighting with sticks, dreaming of glory and King Arthur. I met him, Will thought, but you will never know that. No-one will ever know.

"Uncle Will!" one of them called to him. "Grandma wanted to see you."

"Wanted?" Will asked. "Not wants?"

"She told me to run and get you," the boy replied, "but I didn't want to stop what I was doing. It's boring inside. But I've told you now."

"You have," Will agreed. "And don't worry. If she complains that I'm late, I'll tell her it's my fault."

"It was only about an hour ago," the boy said. "I'd have told you when they called us in for supper."

"I don't think they'll call you in for supper until they've eaten most of it," Will confided in them. "You left them hardly any lunch. You can't go starving your elders to death, now, can you?"

The boy lowered his sword. "They wouldn't do that, would they?"

"Grown-ups," Will told him, as he walked on, "are capable of anything."

He heard their scattering footsteps, and smiled to himself. After they had gone, he remembered that he had forgotten to ask them where his mother was. Not that it mattered. He could locate her with minimal effort. For today, at least, he was still bound to her by family ties.

She was sitting in the hotel's flower garden, leaning back on a carved wooden bench. He came up behind her silently, and watched her for a while. Today was her seventieth birthday, and she had borne ten children, but there was nothing worn about her. She was an active and vigorous gardener, and she regularly led the local ramblers on sturdy walks that left people twenty years younger than her panting with exhaustion.

She was his mother, the first and earliest memory of the human aspect of his life. The woman who had nursed him through childhood illness, held him when he cried, rebuked him when he deserved it, and fought for him when he did not.

He would never see her again.

He blinked, but they could not be tears that blurred his vision so. He had not cried in twenty years. And this was right, he told himself. This was the only thing to do.

He took a breath to speak to her, but she got there first. "Come on, Will. Don't just stand there watching me, pitying this frail old thing on her chair."

"I wasn't," Will protested, but he walked forward. "And how did you know I was there? I thought I was quiet."

"Oh, you were," she said, smiling. "But I'm your mother. When you've brought up nine children, you get used to knowing where they all are, even if they don't want you to. Call it a second sight we mothers have."

Will stood facing her. Her voice was light and her eyes were merry, but he could see the sadness that lay beneath them. She had been widowed for two years, and none of her children lived at home.

"Don't just stand there," she chided him. She shuffled along to one end of the bench, and patted the seat beside her. "Sit down."

"Yes, mum." He obeyed her. They watched a thrush settle on the ground, glance around briefly, then fly on. They were rare now, when not long ago they had been common. Will was careful to look at it only as a mortal might do. His mother followed it with her eyes until it was gone, and did not turn back again. "You wanted to see me?" he prompted her.

She turned back towards him, her eyes misty. "No." She shrugged. "I just asked where you were. I don't get to see you much, it seems. Will. My littlest boy. My baby."

She ruffled his hair. He did not protest.

"It's not as if you live very far away," she continued. "You can drive it in half an hour."

"I know." He lowered his head. "I've been a disappointment…"

"Don't be stupid." She slapped him on the arm. "I'm just saying what some of the others say, those silly old ladies down in the village. You don't have to see someone to be close to them."

"No," he said faintly.

"That's why I came out here." She was looking earnestly at him, as if trying to convey a message that he could not read. "My seventieth birthday party, and the guest of honour absents herself. And have they noticed? No, don't answer. They probably haven't. And I don't mind one little bit. They're together, talking, strengthening bonds… They're probably doing it a lot more naturally because I'm not there. If I was there, they'd feel they had to put me at the heart of it all, and that would be distracting."

"But you're…" he stammered. "Aren't you…?" Lonely, he wanted to say, but he could not.

"I feel them here." She pressed her hand, not to her chest, but to his. He flinched at the touch. "You can bring people together without being the centre of things."

"Why…?" He swallowed hard. "Why are you…?"

"Why am I talking like this?" She gave a light laugh. "I don't know. I'm an old woman, and it's my birthday. I'm allowed to act a little strangely, aren't I?" She sighed. "And it just seemed to me that you needed to hear it."

"I just want things to be like they used to be," he blurted out.

"Oh, Will." She put her arm around her shoulder, and drew him into her embrace. "Dad's gone. My babies are all grown up, with children of their own. I've got twenty-three grandchildren, but inside I still feel as young as you are. Things change. That's how life is. But the really important things stay the same. You'll always have your family. Whatever else happens, you've always got that to come back to."

But I haven't, he thought, closing his eyes. I can't have

She hugged him closer, kissed him on the brow. "You're still my little boy."

He let her hold him for a very long time, until the others came from the house, shouting for them; until the sun had turned and covered them in shadow; until he had almost lost the strength to do what he knew he had to do.

But she released him.

"I think it's time for supper, Will," she said gently. "Oh, I've gone stiff. Help me up?"

He stood up, blinking dazedly into the world of shadows and emptiness. It felt impossibly cold, now she was no longer holding him. Voices shouted from the house, but he did not hear them as words, only sound.

"No," he whispered. He took a step back.

"Will?" She looked puzzled, then she looked hurt.

"I'm sorry." This time it was not even a whisper.

She stood up, and reached towards him.

Will raised his hand, five fingers spread wide. "Forget," he said. His voice was firm, not even a crack in it. He moved his arm, encompassing everyone in the hotel, everyone in the garden. He reached deep, tore himself out of their lives and their memories, erased all trace that he had ever existed.

"Forget," he said. Then he turned and walked away, alone.

******

She stood outside the door, and smiled, waved again, waved again, and smiled.

"Goodbye!"

"Good luck next year!"

"I'll miss you, too."

"Thank you!"

Only a few remained. A girl came up and shyly presented her with a parcel, its impeccable wrapping clearly done by her mother. "Thank you for teaching me this year, Miss Drew."

Jane took the gift with a smile. "Ooh, is this for me? Thank you so much. I wonder what it is?" She opened it carefully, and found that it was chocolates, of the very expensive sort. Clearly the mother had chosen the gift as well as wrapping it. "My favourites!" Jane lied. "Thank you so much, Amelia."

Amelia was led away by her mother. "Do come back!" Jane cried out, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Let me know how you're doing."

Most of them would not, of course. She would see them at the start of the next school year, looking small and lost and overwhelmed in their new school uniforms. For the first few weeks, they would flock to her when they saw her in the street, clinging to the security that she represented. Within a few months, though, they would be settled into their new schools, confident and old and far too grown up to seek out their old primary school teacher. She would see them around the village, but that would be all.

She let her smile die. A few more left with only a mumbled word, and barely a glance at her. Not that she blamed them. It was hard to say goodbye, and still harder to find the right words when you were only eleven, when your parents were standing behind you hissing loudly at you to be polite. She knew she had done a good job with them. She saw it every day in the way they responded to her questions, in the way they clamoured to join in, in their eyes. They were a good class, and she would miss them.

"Thanks, miss," a voice mumbled.

She smiled again, turning round to see Joshua, one of the tougher boys in the class. He had gone through school with the reputation of being a trouble-maker, destined for nothing but failure, but she had refused to treat him as such. Although he had not blossomed, he had done well, far better than anyone else had expected.

"It was fun," Joshua said. He looked more awkward than she had ever seen him. "I never used to like school. You could have… you know… but you didn't…"

"I had fun, too, Joshua," she said. "I won't forget you. I'm sure you'll do wonderfully in your new school."

He mumbled something, and rushed away. There had been no gift, no expensive chocolates, but she felt that he had given her the most important gift of all. Brushing away tears, she caught the year five teacher looking at her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, and was amused by it. Yes, I know it's a cliché, she thought, but better that than your coldness. Mr Hanson treated everyone, adult and child alike, with irony and detached amusement. She sometimes felt that the first half of every year was spent in teaching her children how to be human again, after a year with him.

The last of them had gone. "Well, that's that," Mr Hanson said. "Seven weeks without the snivelling brats. Oh, what a chore! I wonder what I'll do with my time."

"Evaluate, plan, prepare…" said Louise Mayhew, who taught year one. "But not yet. I plan to forget about school completely for at least a month. I need it. I feel like a zombie."

"I can't forget," Jane found herself saying. "I don't like to forget."

"Ah, but it's harder for you," Louise said, with all the wisdom of someone who had been teaching for all of two years. "You've got year six. You send them out into the big wide world. You're bound to worry about them. We see our little ones come back the next year. We can watch them grow. We know they're in good hands. Well…" She lowered her voice. "Except for Emma, who knows her lot are getting him next year." She jerked her chin towards Mr Hanson, who was already half way back to the main building.

Jane watched the last car drive away, the last child disappear around the corner. She looked beyond, at the green hills and the hedgerows, at the roofs and the birds and the drifting clouds. "It's not that," she said quietly. "I just don't like to forget. Anything, I mean. People shouldn't forget."

Louise chuckled. "I can think of lots of things that people should forget. Bad dates. What it was like to be fourteen." She paused for a moment, and said in a different voice, "The things we see on the news…"

Jane shook herself. "I'm sorry. I'm just in a strange mood…"

"The end of term does that to you," Louise said briskly. "Go on holiday. Recharge your batteries. You can't give your whole life to your job."

"Are you going anywhere nice?" Jane asked.

Louise started telling her. I should listen to this, Jane told herself. I should absorb every word, memorise it, keep it forever. But her thoughts were drifting, and the words seemed to mean nothing. Louise was talking about drink and sun and fit young men on some far distant beach. Only six years younger than me, Jane thought, but it seems like so much more. She felt old and staid sometimes, but at other times she felt young and innocent and tiny.

"Have you ever been there?" Louise asked.

Jane shook her head. "I usually holiday in Britain, if I go away at all."

"Hey, why don't you come next year?" Louise nudged her conspiratorially. "We always go in a group. You'll fit right in. Learn to live a little."

"I don't think…" Jane began. "Maybe," she said. She looked at the clouds gathering on the southern horizon. She often thought there was pictures in the clouds, but when she turned to look at them, they were always gone. "I thought I might go to Cornwall," she murmured. "Or Wales. I think I went to both of them when I was young."

"Oh well…" Louise shrugged. "Best get back to the classroom. The quicker I get started, the quicker I'm out of here." She looked back anxiously after a few steps. "Don't get me wrong. I love my job. It's just…"

"You don't have to explain," Jane said. "I know."

She watched Louise walk away. She watched a tendril of plant hanging down from a gutter, and watched a piece of chocolate wrapper twitch sluggishly on the playground. She watched a bird settle on a tree, and saw a cat in a far window start twitching as it watched it, gnashing its teeth in a token attempt to chase it. She watched the flashes of silver that were distant cars on the hill, some of them bringing tourists to the village, some of them carrying her children home.

She watched them all. Every moment, she thought. Every memory. She would hoard each one, and then, when she got home, she would write them down in her diary. She had shelves of them, recording every moment of her waking life, and all the dreams that stayed with her. She never looked at them again, but there were there, just in case. They were her insurance.

Because once, long ago, she had forgotten something.

******

end of chapter one

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Chapter two

Violence in the night

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"Too hot," Bran complained, fanning himself with his hat.

"Be thankful you're not in some crowded city, then," John Rowlands said.

Bran did not answer. If he had to be too hot, then this was the place to be too hot in. There was always a breeze on the mountains, even on the hottest day, and there were enough trees in the valley to offer shade. He had been to Cardiff a few times, and Liverpool, and London, and each time he had been struck by the airlessness of the streets. Cities absorbed the heat and would not spit it out again. People rushed and jostled and there was no room to breathe. People stared…

"I'd rather be in the sea, though," Bran confessed.

"Leave that to the tourists," John said. "This is good work, and there's beer waiting for us at the other end of it."

They started to walk towards the valley, both moving away at the same time, although not even a look was exchanged between them. The dogs followed without their usual exuberance. Still, Bran thought, at least they had hair to protect them from the sun. With his fair skin, he had to cover himself up at all times, and slather himself with sticky sun cream.

"How are you for dinner, John?" he asked, as he paused for a moment before a stile. The dogs slithered through, and waited on the other side.

"Well enough," John said. "I've got something in."

Bran crossed first. Before stepping down, he hesitated just for a moment, wondering whether to offer John an arm up. It was only for an instant, but John saw it.

"None of that, boy," he said. He was not smiling. "I'm not past it yet. And when I am, it's for me to say, not for you to ask. So none of this worrying if I can cope with cooking dinner. None of this helping me over stiles."

Bran nodded, but did not apologise. There was no need for such words with someone like John Rowlands. Still, he could not help but worry. John Rowlands was not old, but he had had a bad fall on the mountains some years back, and had never fully recovered his old vigour. And, despite what John claimed, Bran knew that he would keep going until he dropped, rather than ask for help. It did no harm to keep an eye open.

He did not wait for John on the far side of the style, but carried on without him. Soon he reached the shade of the mountain, and the dogs recovered some of their usual energy, trotting in elongated circles between him at the front, and John at the rear. The path dropped steeply for a while, then levelled out. "Almost home," he heard John say to his dogs. Bran smiled, and said the same to his own.

"Any plans for tonight?" John asked, as Bran paused outside his cottage.

Bran gave a wry laugh. "When do I ever have plans?"

"Well, perhaps you should have." John Rowlands looked uncharacteristically earnest. "You're over thirty now. It's not right for someone like you to…"

Bran's eyes narrowed behind his dark glasses. "To what?"

John Rowlands always seemed to be able to see right through the glass and into Bran's unshielded eyes. "Waste your life here," he said.

"Waste my life? Is that what I'm doing?" Bran's hand closed on a gate post, and clutched it tight. "I thought I helping to keep Welsh land in Welsh hands, being true to the old ways, being true to my blood… All those things the old boys in the pub say people my generation should be doing."

"Yes, you are," John said.

"So what's your problem?" Bran demanded.

John reached down to pat his dog's head as it leant patiently against his leg. "People like me, you see… There never was anything else for us. We were born to the land, bred to it… We will live it, and die still with the dirt of the land behind our nails. But you…"

"I am like you." The words were almost spat out.

John passed his hand across his brow. "Hear me, Bran, please. You were always such a bright boy. Different, yes, but different in a good way. You could have done anything. Instead you chose this."

"I chose this," Bran hurled at him. "I chose this."

"No," John said. "You took it because it was the only thing you knew. You can't call something a choice if there were never any alternatives. You could have gone to university. You could have got a job anywhere. You could have done anything. Try the world outside, and then decide whether you want to stay in it, or come back to the land."

"You would have me be like Rhys Evans?" Bran asked incredulously. "Swanning off to England? Coming back with his fancy English accent and his new ways of doing things…"

"He chose." John's voice was still infuriatingly reasonable. "He sampled other things, then came back of his own accord. He chose with his eyes open. I fear that you didn't choose at all, and one day it will occur to you to hate everything associated with this life. One day, when you're too old to do anything about it, you'll look back and think of all this as a prison."

"I will not," Bran spat. "I chose this. I did it with my eyes open. What do you think I am? Stupid?"

"No, Bran, you're not stupid." John Rowlands smiled.

The smile only served to infuriate Bran even more. "Stop it!" he cried. "What gives you the right to talk to me like this?"

"A friend has the right," John said. "No, a friend has the duty. Besides, I knew you as a child. You're the nearest I have to a son."

"I already have a father," Bran said. "He doesn't see anything wrong in the choices I've made."

"No." John shook his head. "He wouldn't."

"Just leave me alone!" Bran shouted. "I'm not allowed to worry about you. I'm expected to sit back and watch you as you struggle to do things that are too strenuous for you. You don't like me saying anything, but now you turn round and say all this to me!"

"True." John Rowlands nodded in agreement. "You're right. I could say that it is the prerogative of the old to have some pride, but I won't. Friends should speak up when they are concerned. Pride is not helpful. I don't want to see you unhappy, and I know you feel the same about me."

Bran almost snapped a reply, but bit it back just in time. He did not want to argue with John Rowlands, but neither was he ready to make peace. It would blow over if he left it alone. Next time they came across each other, neither of them would mention it, and soon it would be forgotten.

Instead, he gave a terse nod. "I'd best get in."

John Rowlands looked at him for a while, as if expecting something more, then gave a barely perceptible shrug. "See you tomorrow, Bran." Bran got the sudden impression that John was not remotely upset by Bran's reaction to his comments. It made Bran want to say something that would truly shock him. At the same time, it made him want to apologise for even thinking such a thing.

He watched John walk away. He looks like an old man, he thought, with a pang. Most of them men on the farm were old, and only getting older. And where will that leave me when they're gone? he wondered. He closed the gate behind him, and whistled the dogs to his side. I chose this life, he told himself. I chose it, and that's that. John Rowlands doesn't know what he's talking about.

The dogs rushed past him eagerly into the house. "Is that you, Bran?" came a voice from inside. From the kitchen, Bran thought, by the sound of it.

"Who else would it be?" he called back.

Once in the kitchen, he walked past his father, and went to the sink. Only when he had drenched his face in cold water, and patted it dry with a towel, did he turn to face Owen Davies. His father was sitting at the large table, with a newspaper spread in front of him, that Bran knew he had not read a word of.

"The windows are open," Owen said. "I heard voices. It sounded like an argument."

"John… said something he shouldn't have," Bran said. "It's over now."

His father accepted it. Sometimes he accepted the most momentous news with the barest of phlegmatic shrugs; other times he worried endlessly over trivia. He had much changed over the last dozen years. His mind seemed to have aged far faster than his body, and he was almost useless around the farm, even though his body was far healthier than John Rowlands'.

"I was sitting here," Owen said, "thinking of your mother. She should have been a child of the summer, but sadness had shrouded her in winter."

Bran pressed his lips together, and did not reply. He still knew so little about his mother. Beautiful, his father said, and unearthly and sad. As a child, he had sometimes entertained fantasies about her, but he had long grown out of all fantasies.

"I should never have left the old place," Owen started fretting. "What if she tries to find you? She would never come here."

"She's never coming back," Bran said. He started to soap his hands, quick and angry. "She's had thirty-two years."

"But we're in Caradog Pritchard's old house," Owen continued. "He wanted her, too, but she chose me. She'll never come back here."

"She's not coming back," Bran snapped. He walked out, shutting the door behind him, and locked himself in the bathroom. He turned the cold tap on full, and the hot tap only a trickle. As the bath filled, he looked at himself in the mirror.

Who was she? he wondered. Perhaps he could read his mother's face in the shape of his own face. He leant forward a little, then snapped his head to one side. "No," he said aloud. He would not ask. He would not wonder. He had been through this a thousand times before. He had his father, and now he had the farm. He had made his choice. He had enough.

He took his clothes off, and climbed into the cool bath. His muscles ached, and his skin felt tender from the sun. The bath did nothing to ease him. He tried to close his eyes, then opened them again.

John Rowlands was wrong, of course. He didn't need to leave his home in order to discover that this was the life for him. He was bound here, by his past, by his memories, by family ties. The farm was as good as his now, his alone. He would make a success of it. He would have something special to leave to… To who? He gave a wry smile. To no-one yet, but there was still time. None of the local girls had taken his fancy yet, but one day someone would. One day someone would come who found his looks enticing and his old-fashioned bachelor ways interesting. One day.

He heard his father moving around outside, and he heard the sound of sheep and dogs outside. The curtains stirred as a gust of breeze blew in through the window. The same breeze brought the sound of a distant tractor, on the neighbouring farm. Bran knew that he, too, should still be out working, but it was just too hot.

Bran had been running the farm in practice for three years. Before that, his father and John Rowlands had shared it, and had done so for nearly twenty years. When Bran was young, the farm had belonged to Caradog Pritchard, and both Owen Davies and John Rowlands had worked for David Evans on the adjacent farm. Then Caradog Pritchard had lost his mind, and shortly afterwards had died. His heir, a distant relative, put the farm up for sale, and David Evans had bought it. To everyone's surprise, he had leased it to his two most reliable men. Five years ago, they had bought it outright, and both of them had named Bran as their heir. By tacit agreement, they had both ceded control to him.

My farm, he thought, as he stood up. My place.

John was wrong. He had chosen this. He could not explain his certainty, but he knew that it was true. Once, long ago, he had been asked to choose. He could choose to stay here, in Wales with his father, or go… elsewhere. He had chosen this life. He had given up something marvellous in order to live like this.

And so here he was. This was his life, because he had chosen it. There could be no going back on choices, and there could be no doubting, either.

******

Will watched the river as it flowed sluggishly beneath the bridge. A leaf floated by, framed by his clasped hands, and then an empty crisp packet. Then there was only dark water, flowing ever so slowly towards the sea.

It was almost night, he supposed. Clear summer days tended to drift into evening without anyone noticing, marked only by a gradual fading towards grey. It was still hot. Earlier he had heard distant rumbles of thunder, but no storm had come.

The stone parapet pressed against his forearms, whispering eagerly of all the other people who had stood here throughout the centuries. He could not listen to the echoes. It was nearly a week since his mother's birthday party, but he still felt drained. It was strong magic, to erase himself so completely from the lives of so many people. He had no memory of stumbling home from the party, and the week that followed felt like a dimly-remembered dream.

A group of people walked past, but he did not turn to look at them. They sounded young, by their voices. They were heading for a pub or a restaurant, chattering eagerly amongst themselves. Heels clicked on the ground, and the scent of perfume reached him as they passed. When they were gone, there was nothing but the sound of cars, passing steadily on the road behind him.

I wonder what they're doing… he thought, then stopped himself. His family were gone. He had sundered himself from them, and it was the right thing to do. Let them live and flourish without him. If he ever saw them again, it would be as a stranger, lingering to watch for a while, and then passing on. As far as him family was concerned, Will Stanton had never existed.

A train passed over the nearby bridge, heading away from the station to the south. Its windows were squares of light, and made the evening around it seem like night. When he turned away from it, back to the river, the evening looked almost as bright as day. Even so, he knew it was time to start walking home. He could not stay here forever. At the moment, though, it felt as if the bridge was the only thing keeping him upright.

"You okay?"

Will had not heard the man approach, but he turned to face him calmly, as if he had known he was there all along. "I'm fine."

"You don't look it," the man said. He was young, with a battered leather jacket and sandy hair. "You're not thinking of jumping, are you?"

"Of course not," Will said.

"Well…" The man looked embarrassed, and that was making him talk. "It does no harm to check, does it? I know they say you shouldn't talk to strangers, and all…"

"I assure you, I am no threat whatsoever to you," Will told him. "I'm just tired, that's all."

"Busy week?" the man said. "Believe me, I know how it is. I'm off to the pub myself." He ran his hand through his hair. "Well, if you're sure you're okay…"

"I'm fine," Will said again, with a smile. "Thank you for your concern. Not many people would stop and ask a stranger in this day and age."

"Well…" The man looked at his watch. "I must be off."

"Yes."

Will was still smiling as he watched him go. Perhaps he was ready to walk home after all. There were many things wrong in the world, but some mortals, it seemed, were still doing the right thing. The Light had departed; the world was left to man. Mostly it seemed as if man was making a horrendous mess of it, but there were always small gleams of hope.

He started to walk. His steps felt heavy and dragging, as if he was carrying the weight of a hundred worlds on his back. It was just exhaustion, he reminded himself. He was carrying nothing at all. Once, long ago, he had done things that had helped shape the world, but now he was just a watchman. My Will the watchman, Merriman had called him, speaking it fondly, as if it was a favour. Will the watchman, stranded and left behind. Will the watchman, who…

His head snapped round. He heard a sound, there, down on the tow path, and dark shapes scuffling. He stopped, quested towards it. A woman, wrestling with a slim man for possession of her handbag. Another man was watching, laughing. She was shouting, shouting for help…

Will lashed out, then cried out aloud as he had to snatch his magic back. I can't! he thought. I can't! The world was man's, for man to deal with. There was no Light, no Dark. He could not interfere.

She was putting up a fight. He watched, hands clenching and unclenching at his side. Why wasn't anyone else reacting? Couldn't anyone hear her? He could take her voice and spread it through the city, so everyone heard her. He could nudge that oblivious person there, and that one, and that one. Even without intervening directly, he could do so much, but he could not, he could not.

The muggers won. The woman lost her grip on her handbag, and fell backwards heavily. One of the attackers punched her, another kicked her where she lay. Will was edging forward, but then someone else was there, rushing from the other side, shouting furiously. The attackers fled, and the rescuer began to chase them, then returned to the woman. He got out a phone, and put it to his ear. Will made sure that he was really phoning the police, and then turned away.

"I couldn't," he murmured to himself. He was breathing fast, as if he had been running, but all he had been doing was standing still.

The world was in the hands of humans. All he could do was watch the future unfold. He could not stop the big things, and he could not stop the small. More than once, the fate of the Light had rested on the free decision of a single man. The Dark had always tried to seep into men's thoughts and change them, but the Light had always watched, and let the choices unfold. It made them seem cold, sometimes, but it was the only way they could be.

"It would have been wrong to help," he said aloud, but his steps felt so heavy that it was all he could do to drag himself home. When he got there, he sat in the darkness of his window, and looked up at the sky, until the stars appeared and shone there.

******

Evening turned to night.

Bran's father had gone to his bedroom and shut the door, but Bran doubted that he was asleep. He was probably sitting in the darkness, staring out onto the mountain, lost in his delusions of past love. He did that more and more. Bran never sat beside him when he had that dreamy look in his eyes.

The windows were still wide open, though Bran had shut the curtains as soon as it had started to get dark. He did not like to think of people looking in on him, while he sat there in a pool of light, unaware that he was being watched. He never liked strangers looking at him, except when they were both in the dark.

He was restless. He had read for a bit, without absorbing the words, and he had watched television for a bit, without really hearing it. The argument with John Rowlands was still preying on his mind, he knew, or maybe it was just the heat.

He wandered to the window, peeped through a gap in the curtains. A car was passing down on the road, and then another. People returning from a night out, perhaps. Rhys Evans was a farmer, but he went to concerts and restaurants and cinemas, just like any town-dweller. As if this life isn't good enough for him, Bran thought, with a snort. He never went to any such things.

A puff of wind stirred the curtains. It brought with it the sound of harp music, sweet and sad. Bran pressed his lips together, turning away from the window. John Rowlands often played like that at night, proclaiming his melancholy to the stars. He probably had no idea that he could be heard.

Bran had played the harp once, but not for years. Sometimes, very occasionally, he felt a yearning to play it again, but mostly he thought he was well rid of it. His life was about other things now. Even if he tried it again, and practiced, he would never be as good as John. Bran did not like to fail at things.

A dog started barking, and stopped abruptly.

"Dad?" Bran called softly, but there was no sound from within the house. The curtains were still. The clock had stopped months before, and they had never bothered to start it again. Time meant nothing when you were alone.

There was no sound from outside, either. The harp had stopped.

Bran reached slowly for the curtain, then drew his hand back. Instead, he walked to the light switch, and pressed it. The room went dark. There was nothing at all in the darkness at first, but slowly, as he blinked, there were squares of grey where the windows were. When he thought his eyes were adapted to the dark, he moved back to the window.

Something hurled itself at him, all scrapings and scratchings on the windowsill. Bran's heart lurched inside his chest, but the only sound he made was a faint gasp. Only a cat, he told himself, pressing his hand to his chest, forcing his breathing to return to normal.

A cat who was terrified, though. It was clawing at the door, trying to get deeper into the house, mewing piteously. "What is it?" Bran asked her. "What scared you?" All the farm cats were proud and fearless, and ran from nobody and nothing.

The harp started up again, far away. The music was serene, and made Bran think of silver, and the moon. It made the world seem normal again. John Rowlands was out there, just as he always had been. Nothing could really go wrong out here, where life never changed. The people of the mountains endured forever.

"Let's have a look, then, shall we?" he said to the cat. He opened the door, and it darted through, paws thundering. The rest of the house was dark, and there was no slit of light under his father's door. The outside door was locked, and the house was silent.

Bran went into his bedroom and unlocked the chest that held his gun. He loaded it, but that was all. Walking softly on bare feet, he went to the front door, and opened it on its chain. "Is anyone there?" he called. "I have a gun."

No-one called back. No-one shouted back to say, 'Don't be an idiot. It's only me.'

There was no sound from the dogs. The mountain stood dark and solid on the far side of the yard. There were no lights visible whatsoever, not a single place where people lived. Just the wilds, Bran thought, and normally I like it like that, but there were times when it could be terrifying. As if the mountain has eyes, and the moors are full of enemies, all watching me…

"Stupid," he said aloud. He stepped out into the yard, holding the gun where it was clearly visible. "Leave, whoever you are," he commanded. "If I see you, I'll shoot."

But he never saw them. One struck him from behind, one kicked him in the stomach. He lost his grip on the gun, and then he was falling, falling to the arid ground, and there was dust on his lips, and it tasted horrible, so he spat, but there was only more, and something else, too, that tasted of iron and was wet and warm and thick. Blood, he thought thickly. My blood.

He tried to fight, oh he tried, but they kicked him again and again, and struck him with something hard. They stamped on his hand, made him curl it pathetically against his chest. He tried to kick them, but they darted away. Their faces were blank, leeched of all colour by the darkness. Their eyes were pools of shadow, and their mouths were thin slashed lines. They did not laugh or gloat or…

"Why?" he forced out, gasping on the question, choking on the blood.

They did not speak.

"I've nothing worth stealing," he tried to tell them.

Blood filled his eyes, and then he could not even see them.

"What have I done to you?" It was pathetic, wheedling, like the broken victim he had sworn never to be.

"It's not you," they said. A cold, cold voice, devoid of emotion.

"You're nobody." A different voice, but exactly the same tone.

"But now he will come."

A ripple passed through them that could have been laughter, and then they cast him aside, and walked away. Silence swallowed their soft footsteps.

Got to get up, Bran thought. He pawed at the ground, trying to push himself up, and then the silence swept him up, too, and there was nothing at all but darkness, and dreams.

******

end of chapter two

******

Chapter three

Summer storm