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There was once a young, golden-haired man named Gwyn ap Nudd from a family so wealthy and beautiful as if they came from another realm entirely, who could never be the way his parents wanted him to be. While they were making their way up in the King’s court and charming even their bitterest rivals, he was playing with the hounds in the dog kennels or getting his courtly clothing sullied while looking for wild animals. He was as wild as they were civilized and his father made sure he knew the difference by beating him cruelly while his mother brewed poisons to take his life in a quiet manner because they had no need of an unseemly heir. When that didn’t work, Gwyn was sent out on various tasks, each more difficult than the last in the hopes that he wouldn’t return from one as his parents doted on his cousin Efnisien, who was everything they had wanted in an heir.
One winter, just as Gwyn had returned from a mission to imprison a dangerous dark mage, servants in the estate started vanishing. At first it was one or two young girls, believed to be disgraced women running from their shame but it didn’t stop there, more and more of the staff disappearing under mysterious circumstances as if they had vanished into thin air, until even the guests that stayed at the ap Nudd estate were not safe.
The family were scared for their lives, paying for a private guard for themselves while Gwyn was sent to go with the people searching their estate and learn of the cause. As they came across the lake in the nearby forest, it was curiously not frozen. One of the men stumbled across what looked like livers, rotting in the bushes by the lake but nothing else was found.
Desperate, Gwyn asked in the town if anyone had heard of a thing like this, but most couldn’t help, shaking their heads sadly and praying for him as he went, until a woman with regal bearing, carrying at least half a dozen daggers, curtly told him that it was the work of Each Uisge, a water-dwelling beast who had taken her family in the same fashion years ago, leaving only livers on the lake shore. She had travelled all over, chasing it for vengeance, and told him that the only way to defeat it was to lure it out of the water with the smell of roast meat and kill it on the land, but the beast was too wily and smart to be caught easily.
As Gwyn returned to the estate with the news, however, he was greeted with the wails and curses of his parents as they mourned his nephew who had come to visit, unaware of the danger and disappeared along the way. Angered by Gwyn being alive while their favorite lay dead, his parents cast Gwyn out of the house, to banish the beast and not return until he had done it, so with what little his parents had given him and a plan to lure the beast out by himself, he set out to the lake.
He had been given no horse to ride with, so his journey was slow and his fingers and face soon became numb in the freezing cold, but he pressed on, intent on helping his family. After walking for half a day, he reached the forest edge and stopped to make a fire to warm himself and prepare a meal.
As he ate, the heat from the stew leeching away to the relentless winter, he heard footsteps approach and soon a man appeared, with long, black hair and striking features, not shivering despite not being dressed for the cold. “Good day, stranger.” Gwyn greeted the man, “Are you not cold? Come, share my meal and warm up by the fire.” The man merely smiled in reply, gracefully sinking to his knees beside Gwyn and he felt his mouth run dry at the proximity even as a few paces separated them.
“Where are you headed, if I may ask?” he asked “It is dangerous land to be walking on, especially now.”
“Is it?” the stranger lazily replied, his eyes raking over Gwyn in a way that made him hotter under his collar than the stew had been able to.
They talked as they ate, the stranger had a beautiful voice that made even the darkest story sound sweet, and Gwyn found himself listening more than talking. All too soon the food was eaten, and no matter how much he wanted to stay and continue talking with the bewitching stranger who had such tales he had not heard of anywhere, he bid farewell, forbidding the man from following him as it was far too dangerous a task for an unwitting passer-by to which the stranger only smiled as he had in greeting.
After another hours’ walk, he came upon the lake, the water gently lapping at the shore as if unconcerned that the rest of the world was frozen over. Not wanting to wager his life before knowing what was lying beneath the surface, he called out to the still waters, his voice the only sound in the eerily quiet forest: “Each Uisge! I come to you with an offer. I ask that you cease your attacks on the app Nudd estate, leaving its people alone as long as you stay here; in exchange we can offer you whatever else your heart seeks, be it riches or the finest livestock in the land, or some other thing without the price of human life! However, if you persist, we will drive you out by force.”
After a few dozen heartbeats spent imagining how a horrifying figure would rise from below the surface at any moment, he heard not a ghastly monster rising from the waters to tear him limb from limb, but a quiet whicker of a horse from nearby, sounding almost like a gentle laugh.
Along the edge of the lake, the finest stallion Gwyn had laid his eyes on slowly trotted towards him, the light catching in his smooth mane and tail as if it too was transfixed by its’ beauty. Quickly digging out the last of the sugar cubes he had chewed on during the walk, he offered some to the horse, trying to lure it away from the waters’ edge where it would surely be devoured, starting to softly talk to the animal as he did in the stables at home, at times praising it’s glossy hair and fine build, at times asking it what was it doing out here alone, at times wondering aloud if there was even an spirit in the lake and if had he trekked all this way for nothing.
Between one blink and another, Gwyn’s hand was no longer lying on the flank of a horse but on the shoulder of the same man he had met in the forest, his eyes soft with amusement as he spoke: “I am the Each Uisge you seek.” as Gwyn tried to flinch away and get his sword, the man grabbed his hand with a fluid motion, holding him with a supernatural force as he continued. “Your offers of riches or four-legged animals do not interest me, Gwyn ap Nudd.” Gwyn felt a jab of confused terror strike his heart for it was the same beautiful man he had swapped stories with, who had also killed the servants he had grown to love, but the monster continued still, not letting Gwyn go. “However, I can agree to stop claiming your family and servants, if you give me something else my heart desires - if you abandon your parents and come live with me, let me warm myself by your fire and listen to your stories many times more”.
Gwyn was stunned into silence from the proposition, spoken both from the mouth of the man that made his heart beat faster in the dead stillness of the winter and a monster that could rip it from his chest and eat it whole. He thought of his family, mourning his cousin and with him what Gwyn could never be, and he thought of how his parents would never accept him no matter what tasks he accomplished, but how by accepting, he could both ensure that they were safe and lead a life away from them. As he thought, the grip on his hand receded as if the Each Uisge could tell that Gwyn no longer wanted to use his sword and he met eyes as green and calm as the lake itself and more beautiful still, and said “I accept.”
And so, Gwyn ap Nudd never returned to his estate and henceforth it was safe, the only people who disappeared were some vagrants and what townspeople were careless enough to not heed the warnings of what resided in their lake, the Each Uisge not seeming to mind his change in diet. Gwyn made himself a house in the forest, near the lake, where he had a big fireplace and he and the Each Uisge laid before it many evenings - when they were not out swimming in the lake together or hunting in the forest - telling their tales and learning each other’s bodies as well as their minds.