Page 40 of Broken Veil
Carys didn’t speak Welsh like her parents did. Sometimes they tried to get her to talk to them in Welsh, but Carys felt shy. No one at school spoke Welsh. She wished she could learn Yurok like Laura and her sisters.
“Carys, do you want to see?”
“No.” There was blood on the ferns, and it made Carys nervous.
“Birth is nothing to be afraid of. It’s natural.” Tegan soothed the deer with long strokes down her neck as the deer leanedforward, then back again. “Remember, sister, your body knows what to do.”
The doe stumbled back when the small bloody creature fell into the fern patch, nearly stepping on the tiny fawn.
Carys winced, but seconds later she saw tiny hooves kicking through the bloodstained mess.
“Good girl!” Tegan praised her. “I’m so proud of you.”
Despite Tegan’s words, the doe’s body kept heaving.
“Another?” Tegan’s voice went soft. “Of course you have another.” She bent to the deer’s head. “Would that I were you,” she whispered. “Mother of two souls.”
Her mother’s voice made her sad.
Carys wished she had a sister. Laura had four sisters. Sometimes she complained about them, but Carys could tell she really loved them, and if Carys was her best friend, then Laura’s sisters were her second-best friends.
When Carys asked if she could have a sister, Tegan smiled and said that she was as lucky to have Carys as if she’d had a hundred children.
That made Carys laugh. A hundred children didn’t sound very lucky to her. That sounded loud.
As the doe labored to birth the second fawn, Tegan sang something in Welsh. It was an old song, a lullaby her mother sometimes sang when strange dreams haunted Carys and she couldn’t sleep.
Pan elei dy dat ty e helya
Llath ar y ysgwyd llory eny law
Ef gelwi gwn gogyhwc
Giff gaff dhaly dhaly dhwg dhwg
Sometimes Carys dreamed of running across green hills and jumping in streams she didn’t recognize. The place in her dreams was soft and green and foggy, but it wasn’t home.
And sometimes when she was sleeping, she heard her mother singing. But when Carys heard the song in her dreams, she understood every word. She saw her father going out to hunt, a fur cape on his shoulders and a spear in his hand.
Tegan urged the doe on. “There you are, mother, there you are.”
The second fawn fell into the ferns, and a flock of birds took flight.
A branch broke behind her, and Carys turned with a gasp.
Carys wokewith her hand clutched over her heart and a harsh breath sucked into her lungs.
There you are, mother. There you are.
“Carys?” Duncan sat bolt upright. “What’s wrong?”
“I had a strange dream.”
Mother of two souls.
“My mother…” She blinked the tears from her eyes. “She knew. I’ve never let myself really think about it, but of course she knew. She knew when I was born that Seren would be born in the Shadowlands. She knew that she had another daughtershe would never know.” Something in Carys’s chest folded in on itself. “And if I ever have a baby…”
She’d always wanted children… but maybe she didn’t now.
