Chapter Text
‘Oh,’ said Will. And then again, ‘Oh.’
‘Yes,’ said Bran. ‘It’s something, isn’t it?’
Will nodded, mutely; his chest was tight with an emotion he did not care to identify.
Bran shot him a glance. ‘Tide’s fully out, now, you know—we can walk down, have a poke around. If you want.’ His words were half a question, and his brow was furrowed.
Will pulled himself together, cleared his throat. ‘Yeah, I’d love to. There’s still a couple of hours before dark, isn’t there?’
The dry dunes whispered under their feet and the wind blew away all trace of their footprints as if they were followed by hungry ghosts.
‘Can’t imagine why there’s not more people here,’ Bran joked, speaking loudly to be heard over the sounds of the wind and the grey waves. He pulled his woollen hat down further over his ears; his lips were chapped. ‘Perfect tourist weather, this.’
Will grinned; his own gloved hands were jammed firmly in the pockets of his down jacket. ‘I’m the perfect tourist, then.’ He walked on a few more steps before realising that Bran was no longer beside him, and wheeled round to find him standing, still and straight, on a low rounded rock. Bran’s face looked very white beneath the dark hat and dark glasses that he wore even on this sunless afternoon, and his head was cocked to one side, as if considering something.
‘Bran?’ Will walked back and stood with his head thrown back to meet Bran’s gaze. ‘What is it?’
‘You have never been a tourist in my country, Will,’ Bran said, and his voice seemed remote yet clear. A sudden shiver went down Will’s back, and it had nothing to do with the cold. ‘You… belong here, in some way that I don’t understand.’
A thousand things that he could possibly say—and at the same time could never possibly say—flooded Will’s thoughts, and he blinked. The wind stung his eyes. ‘I suppose I do,’ he said at last, and stamped his feet. ‘Let’s keep going, I’m freezing to death just standing here.’
Bran shook his head as if to clear it, and stepped down from the rock, and they walked on.
They were fully amongst the remains now; petrified stumps emerged darkly from the dregs of wet sand, and a little ahead there was what looked like a walkway, jutting out forlornly towards the withdrawn sea.
‘Hey, look at this,’ Bran said suddenly, squatting down and pointing at a shallow impression, caught forever in time by the action of peat and petrification. ‘Looks like a footprint.’
Will followed suit and looked closely. ‘I think you’re right. And see, here—is that a paw print?’
Bran rocked back on his heels, looking out to sea. ‘I wonder what it was like, back then? With the forest and the buildings and all that?’
‘Oh, beautiful,’ Will said lightly, but his heart ached. ‘Buildings of white and gold, and seven different kinds of trees growing right down to the river bank, and a glass tower shining in the distance…’
Bran gave him an incredulous look. ‘What, in the Palaeolithic?’
‘Oh! Well, if you’re going to be so literal—’ Will rolled his eyes. ‘Where’s your poetic spirit, you sorry excuse for a Welshman?’
‘I’m saving it for the Eisteddfod tomorrow.’ Bran straightened up and stretched. ‘Hang on, what’s that?’
A beam of sunlight had been flung out from beneath the low clouds; it turned a patch of the wet sand to white brilliance, and the suddenness of it struck their eyes like a pillar of cold flame. Will squinted. ‘Just the sun, I think.’
But Bran started forward, hand outstretched. ‘Ah, duw, he is mad, what is he doing?’
‘Who? I can’t see anyone—’ Will hastened after, blinking away the afterimages as quickly as he could. Then Bran stopped almost as suddenly as he had started, and Will could not prevent the collision. They went down in a tangle of knees and elbows, narrowly missing an outcrop of stone.
‘Ow.’ Will rubbed his arm ruefully, and pushed himself to his feet, offering a hand up to Bran. ‘Sorry about that. You all right? Lord, we’re too old for this. What on earth were you chasing after?’
Bran opened his mouth, shut it again, and said in a voice that strove for normality, ‘Ah, nothing. Trick of the light, like you said, wasn’t it. Didn’t mean to be an idiot about it. Forget it, eh?’
Will raised his eyebrows. ‘Come off it, Bran. Tell me what you thought you saw? After all, I’m not going to tell you you’re crazy—we spent the night on Cader together all those years ago, didn’t we—’
‘—and I’m the one who came down a poet, so you’re the mad one, yes, yes.’ Bran finished their shared litany in good humour, but his smile was strained. He squared his shoulders. ‘All right, then. I thought I saw someone running along that walkway. All the way along, mind—and straight on past the end as if he was not treading the thin air.’
Will looked sharply out to the walkway and then back to Bran. ‘What happened to him?’
‘He vanished. As if—’ Bran gestured as he sought for the right words ‘—as if he had gone through a, a door.’ He laughed uneasily. ‘Imagining things, me. It couldn’t have been real. Could it?’
The question came out more pleading than Will had expected, and Bran’s face was drawn. Will hesitated a moment, then asked, ‘What did he look like, this man you saw?’
Bran’s exhalation of breath was a little shaky, but he flashed Will a quick, grateful smile. ‘Tall, he was. Very tall, with white hair. And a blue cloak. I never see much else.’
And now Will’s heart was in his throat, and he could feel the hammering of the pulse beneath his skin. ‘Then you’ve… you’ve seen him before?’
Bran shrugged, helplessly. ‘I think I have, a few times. Now you’re the only one I’ll ever admit this to, mind—’
‘Well, of course.’
‘—but he reminds me of someone. I can’t think who. Someone I met a long time ago, it seems, only I have racked and racked my brains, all the way back to when you came visiting for the first time. Because he reminds me of, of you too.’ Bran removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, settled the glasses back in place. ‘But I am thinking it must only ever have been a dream. Perhaps one I had about the same time as I met you, and that would account for the connection, wouldn’t it?’
‘Mmm,’ Will said noncommittally, and then seeing the expression on Bran’s face, managed to add, ‘that, that does make sense, I suppose.’ But he felt that the words left his lips strangely, for with a crash as of a dam breaking his Old One’s senses came alive as they had not been for years. For long moments he struggled with the now-unfamiliar need to stand in two worlds at once; his head was spinning and his vision was doubled, and in his mind Will called out, desperately, Merriman, Merriman!
Bran’s look had changed to one of concern, and he put a hand under Will’s elbow to steady him. ‘Here, now, Will, what’s the matter, are you ill? Is it a migraine?’
‘No, no— just give me a minute, I’ll be all right.’ Will took in a deep breath and exhaled to a slow count; he blinked, and blinked again, and things slotted back into their rightful places. But now he stood between a grey sea and a white shore, looking out on a world washed with a new vibrancy, and he could not stop the smile that was breaking upon his face.
‘I thought you were going to faint,’ Bran said, examining him suspiciously. ‘And now you look like someone just gave you a puppy for Christmas. Are you sure you’re all right, then?’
‘Yeah,’ Will said, grinning like an idiot. ‘More than.’