Chapter Text
Danny knew the landscape fairly well and had planned the route on her own, but to her mild annoyance Laura turned out to be able to pronounce the Welsh place names better. She had received a beaming reception from the woman who ran the youth hostel last night when describing their day. Mind you, beaming receptions were par for the course when hostel owners came face to face with five excitable feet of brightly coloured jumpers and bobble hats.
Yesterday had been a steep and scrambling day: up from Capel Curig and looping through the precipitous peaks around Tryfan. Danny had been in her element. Today was a change: a long way along the spine of a ridge north-east across Carnedd Dafydd, Carnedd Llewelyn and a half-dozen other subsidiary summits and valleys with names that Danny was forced to Anglicise while Laura skipped her way through the consonants with ease.
“She's coming in before long,” the hostel landlady said as they were leaving after breakfast. Danny nodded seriously. “Pob lwc i chi.” Good luck – one of the six sentences of Welsh Danny did know.
Laura waited until they were out of earshot to ask, “Who's she?”
“The weather,” Danny said. “It's a she in Welsh, I think. Gendered noun, or something like that. Apparently we're going to have some unpleasant stuff before the end of the day.” She scanned the sky, which was light grey with a thick blanket of late October cloud but nothing more ominous. Somewhere high up were the circling specks of a pair of buzzards.
“Yuck,” said Laura, and then after a little further up the road, “I wonder if anyone asked her. She might not like being assigned female.”
“Better than being assigned inanimate in English,” said Danny, and Laura agreed to this. They crossed the bridge over the river as it flowed out of Llyn Ogwen and turned off onto the path climbing the shoulder of the ridge. This side was subsumed in a sea of heather and shrubs, and the path was broken by lumps of rock pushing through the thin soil.
Laura let out a whine of protest at the steepness. “Oh, come on,” Danny cajoled her. “It's just this one steep bit to get up onto the ridge and then the rest of the day is along the spine. You get like four peaks for the price of one!” She started upwards and enjoyed the mild pain of stretching yesterday's aches out of her legs. She was overly masochistic when it came to exertion, Laura always said.
The day was blustery but apart from the ceiling of cloud overhead the view was sharp even to the horizon. Once they had struggled up the stony shoulder of Yr Olwen and positioned themselves on the ridge, they could even see the sea ten miles off to the north. Moving towards them, the little fields of the thin coastal strip gave way to an ocean of rough grass sweeping upwards until the rocky peaks of the Carneddau broke though, scattered with shrubs and the occasional wind-stunted tree.
There was easier going now, high in the air along the spine. Danny felt her spirits rise with the rolling her her shoulders and tramping of her boots, and the conversation with Laura resumed now that they had caught their breath. They'd hardly seen each other this last half-term. Danny's time was so taken up at her school and Laura's work at the newspaper was no respecter of evenings or weekends. It pained her – of course Laura had her own life as well and couldn't be seeing Danny every time she had a break, but still.
They took an early lunch looking over the precipitous cliffs at Ysgolion Duon, where Laura nearly gave Danny a heart attack leaning over the shelving edge to spot the sources of the little streams crashing waterfalls on the rock below. The wind was beginning to blow stronger as they moved on, picking the narrow way between sharp slopes, to the high point of the day at the cairn surmounting Carnedd Llewelyn. Laura was disappointed to discover that they couldn't see the sea any more. She made a screwed-up face for a photo and Danny tried not to smile too much at it.
She set a faster pace now that the path was a gentle downhill walk and kept her eye firmly on the skies. Clouds were thickening. The hostel landlady had been right; she was coming in. Above them, the light grey of the morning had become a mottled darkness and though it was still early afternoon the light was getting poor. From each side the horizon advanced inwards.
Conversation should have been easier on the down-slope but instead they found themselves raising their voices over the stiffening wind. There was a cutting edge to it that had even Danny buttoning up extra layers. Laura was a mobile bundle of fleece. Raindrops fell, and then a sort of incessant horizontal drizzle buffeted around by the oncoming front. Visibility dropped as a wall of cloud circling in from the south caught up with them and threw the mountains into a stew of fog and chaotic water.
“How can it be foggy and windy at the same time?” wailed Laura. “That’s against nature!” She dragged her waterproof hood back over her head yet again.
“We’re in a low cloud,” shouted back Danny. “The wind just blows more and more of it in against us instead of clearing it away. Come on, we should get down off the ridge before we’re blown off it.”
“Can that happen?” asked Laura, fearful. Danny thought it best not to confirm that it could and instead opted for a waggle of her eyebrows that suggested it wasn’t quite as bad as all that.
She led the way down and to the left. The wind at their backs was lessened in the lee of the ridge, but the walking which before had been well-compacted earth and stone gave way to a tangle of wet, slippery grass punctuated by loose piles of shattered slate fragments. The difficulties of the ground meant they couldn't stay directly under the ridge, but had to diverge from it more and more to find a workable path. Danny found a stray boulder to put her back against and watched Laura stumble in behind.
It was no quieter in the shelter of the boulder - not to mention its sharp edges - but conversation was at least possible huddled close together.
“What do we do? Do we wait for it to pass by?” Laura asked. She blew on her fingers and rubbed her hands together a few times.
“No telling when it’ll end,” said Danny, as she tried to unfold the map in a way that showed the area without the wind stealing it. A drop of water found its way through a crack in her collar and traced her spine downwards. “It’s three o’clock already, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t last until dark. We don’t want that. No, I think we head north, down the slope, and we’ll get down off the mountain the slow way.”
“Is that safe?”
“Should be fine,” Danny shrugged, and tapped a couple of blue lines in the mass of contours. “We’re not all that far off – we could see the sea already before the fog closed in, remember? Head north, hit one of the rivers, follow it down to Abergw- um”
“Abergwyngregyn,” Laura finished for her and smiled. “Sounds good. Let's go.”
The north side of the ridge was home to a collection of smaller peaks, round-topped but still craggy. They were joined by saddles and smaller slopes rolling down in different directions and enclosing a mess of little waterlogged depressions. Somewhere between them should have run the stream that would lead them to the coast. Somehow it did not happen.
“We’re lost,” Laura stated. Her nose had long since lost any life, and her hands were too damp with blowing rain to warm up even in her pockets.
“We’re not lost! We just – can’t find the stream.”
“By which you mean: we’re lost.”
Danny slapped the nearest available part of the overhang they crouched under. “Fine. We’re lost. Fuck it, all we need to do is go north and we’ll hit the coast. Even if we don’t know where on the coast.” She fished into her pocket and pulled out her compass. The needle pointed behind them, through the pile of rock.
“Isn’t that-” Laura began.
“-pretty sure it’s the way we just came from,” Danny finished for her. “Have we got that badly turned around?” She took a few steps out of the inadequate shelter of the jutting rock and tried to take stock. Laura pushed herself further back into the vague hollow.
There was not much to see. The cloud had enveloped them in a stifling fog, and boulders even twenty yards away were almost invisible. The rain was not as heavy as it had been, but the penetrating dampness of the air coated everything from rushes to the top of her head in a patina of water.
The wind was strong, and came in unpredictable gusts. Laura found herself listening to the textures of it for want of anything else to do. There was the immediate sound of her hood flapping next to her ears. Around her, the grass was thrown around at all angles and added its own ripping sound. There were the deep levels of the strong winds farther above them, piling the cloud in. And lilting in and out, the howls generated as air was dragged through gaps in the rock.
Laura followed behind Danny as they attempted the third plan of heading directly north. In the back of her mind was the tickling feeling of patience evaporating, but she tried to push it away. Now was not the time to get annoyed. Besides, Danny had been this way before, and in a dozen other mountain ranges from Ireland to Greece. She knew what she was doing, and Laura trusted her.
Admittedly things that been a bit awkward this last year. There had been their... sort-of relationship in the final year of university, and then the inevitable breakup. They had moved on – except that Danny was always just that bit too keen to meet her subsequent girlfriends, a bit too sympathetic when the relationships ended.
But then she was being unfair, wasn't she? Danny had hardly stayed single herself – there had even been something quite serious with Betty. The hot, irritating feeling in the pit of Laura's stomach when she saw their holidays photos from Malta was something she had tried to blot out ever since as being unworthy. And then Danny and Betty had split up, one year ago. She covered her ears to anyone asking whether she and Danny had ever considered-
She froze in the middle of her reverie. “Do you hear it?” Danny turned round to look questioningly at her. “Listen!” she urged again.
There was a voice, floating on the wind. It came and went with each gust, too far for words to be distinguished, but unmistakably crying out. Layered in with the howlings and roarings, someone was wailing in pain.
“Can you hear what she's saying?” asked Danny. Laura couldn't, but Danny was right about 'she'.
Laura cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hello!” she cried out. “Who's out there?”
The wind brought no clear reply, only the keening of the voice somewhere in the distance.
“Where are you? Are you lost?” shouted Danny, but the voice raised itself to a scream. More joined it, other voices shouting and crying and wailing. Laura still couldn't hear any words, but there were sobs in amongst the howls.
“I don't like this,” she said. “This is wrong. Danny, something's wrong. Go away!” she burst out to the invisible chorus, but the reply came in stiffened wind, colder than anything they'd yet suffered and strong enough to drive them back into the dubious shelter of the rock.
“What do you want?” she called out, and heard empty-throated sounds of despair in answer.
The next gust brought with it a shudder of rain and Laura shrank into Danny’s side, closing her eyes against the cold attack and wishing that something normal and comprehensible would happen.
“Well don’t you look like a couple of lost lambs.”
Laura opened her eyes. The woman standing before them was short, dressed in black, and wore no shoes. She stood a few feet away, having appeared suddenly with no sound of arrival preceding her words.
“Are – are you all right?” asked Danny, at the same time as Laura asked “Were you the person we heard just now?”
The woman cocked her head, dropping a loose black curl over her shoulder. “One at a time, cuties.” She wandered across and leaned down to peer into first Laura's eyes and then Danny's. “Hmm. Colourfully iced cupcake and a redhead Valkyrie. What are you doing here?”
“We're lost-” began Laura, and stopped. She was becoming aware that all around, without the slightest fuss, the wind was dying down and the rain petering out.
“That's obvious.” The woman approached and fingered Laura's jumper under her waterproof as if she were deciding on a purchase.
“We heard voices on the wind,” said Danny. “Did you hear them?”
The woman raised one of her eyebrows. She had the kind that raised well. “No,” she said finally. “I heard nothing. But then I've only just got here. I'm Carmilla, since you didn't ask.”
“Laura. This is Danny. Are you from round here?” asked Laura. Carmilla didn't really sound Welsh – but then her accent didn't seem to be anything else either. Certainly not English. Perhaps a hint of French, maybe something of Scandinavia.
“Been here for some years, cariad,” she said – all right, a touch of Welsh in amongst the other influences - “But not originally. I live on the other side of that.” She indicated a shadow in the fog that marked the nearest high point.
Danny held out her map. “Do you think you could show us how to get down?” she asked. “Just to get us oriented.”
Carmilla looked undecided for a moment, and then spread her arms with a wide smile. “Better than that. You two adorable things are coming home with me. I like new faces.”
The house squatted unhappily under an overhanging bluff of rough grey rock, slick with water but dull under the grey sky. It was made of the same stuff as the mountains, not smoothly cut but tightly and robustly built up into two main stories and a gabled attic. Short spurs of living rock on each side embraced it so that quite probably it could only be seen from the front approach. Danny felt somehow that the house was pulling back into the embrace of the mountain’s arms. Carmilla led the way between massive slabs of stone arranged in a vague avenue.
“This isn’t on the map,” Danny said. There were plenty of rocky crags in the packed contours but no buildings marked save the occasional piece of Gothic lettering indicating an antiquity – a cairn, a barrow, a standing stone.
“You’d be amazed what isn’t, Red,” drawled Carmilla. “We keep ourselves to ourselves here.”
“We?” asked Laura.
There was the briefest of pauses. “Me and the house,” Carmilla clarified.
Inside was scarcely warmer than outside, but at least it was dry and they were safe from any resurgence of the wind. Carmilla led them up a flight of narrowly shadowed stairs into the wider shadows of a landing, and thence into a room. Everything was dark in the late afternoon. The windows were small and let in the light grudgingly. There didn’t seem to be any electricity, but Carmilla lit and pumped up a kerosene lamp standing on a side table.
“Make yourselves at home.” She indicated the one creaky iron bedstead and musty pile of blankets. “Come down when you're dry and there'll be food.” She drifted out. Laura felt the hairs stand up on her neck as Carmilla passed by a little too close.
Danny divided the blankets and insisted that she would take the floor, a suggestion Laura nobly resisted for no more than three seconds. She busied herself upending her rucksack and pouring everything out on to the mattress, studiously not looking up as clothes previously worn by Danny flashed past the edges of her vision and the occasional end of a bare limb intruded.
Not only were the clothes Laura wore soaked, but the rain had got into her inadequate rucksack and several of the spare pieces were rather damper than they should be. Eventually she separated the few dry ones from the many wet ones and got changed into something suitably comfortable, if not exactly co-ordinated. She draped the others over the bed as best she could.
“Like it, Hollis,” commented Danny with a thumbs-up when she was ready. “The leg warmers really do set off the yoga pants.”
Laura made a face at her. “We don't all have your fancy quick-drying hiking gear and super-waterproof stuff. Besides, the warmers match my bra which proves I've made an effort.”
Danny involuntarily darted her eyes downwards and then blushed. “What do you think of Miss Pale and Interesting?” she asked after moment.
“She seems... nice!” Laura thought about it and conscientiously added, “Quite odd. And sort of sarcastic. But she did rescue us!”
“It doesn't strike you as – well, as a bit weird? The girl with no shoes out on the mountain in the rain? The house not on the map?”
“Oh, please. She has literally saved our skins. Not going to be complaining about her footwear. Or lack thereof. Come on, she mentioned food!”
Downstairs the house was simple. The front door opened straight into a wide hall holding a large heavy dining table. At one end beyond the table was a trio of high-backed armchairs clustering around a fireplace and an overlapping pile of rugs. At the other end of the room were a pair of doors leading presumably to the kitchen or storerooms. The staircase from the upper floor entered in the middle of the room opposite the front doors. Carmilla was curled up in one of the armchairs in front of the fire, her legs folded into the seat.
“Hey!” Laura waved. Carmilla stretched, and turned the stretch into a sort of wave in reply. She gestured the girls into the two remaining chairs. Laura took her place next to Carmilla, while Danny faced her across a low spindly table.
“Got you some dinner,” Carmilla said, and dragged across from the side of the hearth a blackened and battered frying pan. She pushed around the logs in the fireplace until it could balance roughly on top of them and rescued a bundle of waxed paper from its place under her chair. It turned out to contain rashers of bacon. A crocket lying on the pile of rugs gave up thick slices of bread that she tucked into the grate.
Dinner was therefore slightly charred, but nonetheless very welcome. Danny tried to maintain some reserve despite the satisfaction arising from her meal. Laura, however, was soon sitting perkily upright in her seat and looking very much at ease.
“I feel like we should be asking riddles,” she said. “Like in a fairy tale, all around the fire as the dark comes in.”
“Voiceless it cries,” quoted Danny, “wingless flutters, toothless bites, mouthless mutters.” She watched Laura squirm in her chair, torn between shouting out the long-memorized answer and letting Carmilla guess.
Carmilla didn’t answer at once, but Danny saw the firelight reflection in her eyes fix her. “A spirit,” she said eventually.
“Wind!” crowed Laura, released from her restrained eagerness. Danny inclined her head towards her.
“Same thing, in a way,” Carmilla murmured. Laura scoffed, but she persisted. “No, I mean it. Latin spiritus, breath, wind and spirit. Greek psyche, the same thing. Hebrew – I think – ruach, which is wind or soul. Sanskrit prana, which is the breath and the vital force. Same with qi.” She stretched cat-like. “People have always known that the wind is the breath of life. And not just our lives.”
Danny gently applauded Carmilla's reading. Laura frowned. “Why not in English?”
“Oh, but it is, cupcake. Inspire. Expire. Respire. And so on.” She half-closed her eyes and seemed to lapse into a reverie. “I like listening to the wind. It's comforting, to think of how unimportant we are in comparison. All the lives we've led, people we've been. Nothing to that long, slow breathing. Listen.”
The gale was back up and from somewhere in the distance came a faint whining carried by the gusts. Danny would have thought nothing of it had it not been for their experience in the open earlier.
“What is that?” she asked. “That sound, the howling. We heard something earlier, almost like voices. Is it always like that up here? I've never found it so before.”
Carmilla settled down lower in her chair and waved a bare arm casually in the direction of the windows. “It's an odd spot here, Miss Ginger. The rocks have gaps for the wind to whistle through. And there's a lot of wind. Or,” she added with a glint in her eye, “maybe it's the Coraniaid.”
“The what?” said Laura.
“From the old stories,” said Carmilla. “They came from the East – nobody knew from where exactly. They could hear every voice that the wind touched and communicate with each other the same way. The Triads call them one of the Three Afflictions of the Island of Britain. Everything comes in threes in the Triads,” she added unnecessarily.
“What were the other two Afflictions?” Danny wondered.
“Oh, you know. The Gaels.” Danny felt Carmilla's eyes trace her red hair while she said this. “And the English, of course,” she said, throwing a glance at Laura.
“Of course,” Laura giggled.
“Feeling a bit nervous, Red?” smirked Carmilla. “Don't worry. I'll hold your hand up to bed.” Danny felt herself colour and tried to think of a way to change the subject.
Fortunately Carmilla did it for her. “Wine,” she stated firmly. It came out of a rack somewhere in the back shadows of the hall. She poured three generous glasses and crossed the hearth to hand the first to Danny, who flinched and shifted uncomfortably in her seat until she took a sip and the wine brought a smile to her face.
“Thanks,” she said to Carmilla. “Been a tense day.” Carmilla was pretty when she smiled, and Danny watched the firelight mark out the highlights of her face, and of Laura's more familiar prettiness.
The evening relaxed. Before long Laura was recounting the previous four days of walking, Carmilla was commenting on the bird life seen that summer, and Danny herself told some stories of a section of the Pennine Way she'd tackled over the Easter holidays.
“Why did you jump?” Laura asked later on, as she rearranged the pillows and tried to get comfortable. “I saw you. When she gave you the wine, you flinched.”
“Oh, just a bit of a shock,” murmured Danny from her pile of blankets. “Carmilla's hand. It was so cold.”