Chapter 12 - Reunion in the deep

by james attwood

The squalid depths of Cantre’r Gwaelod had not been a welcoming sight. Left at the daunting ramparts by the Eagle, the children had wandered its murky grounds for an hour now. Expanding from those gates to encompass this long-forgotten kingdom were the towering walls. Bulging bulwarks of unkempt stone, they were the only thing standing between the grounds within and sea outside. Their cracks trickled with sea water like the bowels of a sinking ship as they descended below the tide. Thick mud covered what signs there might have once been of a road, though numerous structures remained somewhat intact, crumbling frames an echo of what Cantre’r Gwaelod had once been. Watch towers, farmhouses and churches all bore the touches of the fabled flood. Each one was coated in barnacles and seaweed aplenty, indistinguishable from each other when so uniformly painted in this undergrowth. It appeared man had not made it far in their reclamation of this place.

            One structure stood prouder than most however at the furthest end of this kingdom, the tops of its cobbled walls battered clean by the spray of the sea. It was Caer Wyddno, the shadow of a once innovative stronghold, built not only as a seat of power but to also house the flood gates that were key to this bastion’s integrity. Its entrance was as grand as any castles, dripping teeth of a portcullis hung above, atop it a momentous gilded bell fallen from its supports, its once golden surface a glimmering blueish green. As they walked through these gates into the semi-circle of the courtyard, the furthest point of this kingdom’s reach into the sea, the mire that bathed the floor began to thicken. Great rifts of mud seemed to have risen and fallen around them as if emulating the stormy waves beyond in stillness.

            It reminded Maeve of what this place might have looked like under the sea all those years ago, prompting her to regale the tale of how this place had fallen below before. How Seithenyn, a prince and a drunkard, had neglected his duties over the sluice gates. Inebriated and absent, he left the gates open for the high tide to come crashing in, over the dyke and through the defences, to ruin the land of Cantre’r Gwaelod. What they saw before them now however was certainly not ajar. On the far wall of the courtyard stood gargantuan wooden slabs stacked forty feet high, locked into one another. Affixed across their beams were wrought iron machinations, heavy girders and creaking cogs seemingly holding the entire structure in place. Its surface was draped with green weeds and those metal locks were rusted through far more than one would have liked, yet they still held strong, the occasional groaning creek the only reminder of just how much water was held at bay behind them.

            They’d walked the breadth of this place, into its deepest confines, yet still there was no trace of their family, or even a monster for that matter. Their waning torch light struggled to pierce the encroaching night now as they scoured this farthest reach. The crashing of unseen waves was all that could be heard amidst the deathly silence, their unnerving solitude in this empty shell of civilisation began to unsettle them. They felt as if they were foolishly searching a graveyard for signs of life.

            “Where are they?” Hope grew frustrated and increasingly afraid the longer she had to spend in this watery tomb.

            “I don’t know...” Maeve ran her flashlight across the swampy floor, hoping some tracks had miraculously survived in the quagmire, “...they’ve got to be somewhere.”

            “MUM! DA-” Orson clasped his hands together like a speaker and began to shout out, but Fred hushed him.

            “Shush!” He hissed, stepping through the muck towards him. “There’s meant to be a monster around here don’t forget.”

            A faint call rang out from behind them. The distant utterances of preciously familiar voices, though what struck them first was the black and white mutt bounding towards them. Tongue lapping wildly from his mouth and wild eyed with excitement, Gelert caught up to them from across the way.

            “It’s them...oh my god, it’s really them.” Zoe stuttered, barely able to believe her eyes. In the murky night, barely illuminated by the dim of their torches, stood her children. They all began to trudge as quickly as they could towards them, dropping the caution with which they’d entered this sunken land. The dreary setting seemed not to matter once they were in each other’s arms.

            “Maeve! Hope! Fred!” Zoe embraced her children; everyone was overcome with emotion as it felt as if it had been an eternity since they’d seen each other last. Gelert now went from one to the other leaping up to their chests, leaving muddy prints in his place. As she loosened her hug she held their hands and worried over the scratches and plasters they’d adorned themselves with. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

            “We’re fine mum, really.” Maeve was embarrassed as she pushed away her mother’s hands but couldn’t conceal the giddy smile on her face.

            Lewis held Orson up high and spun on the spot in a dizzying bear hug, his boy giggling away at their reunion. He winced once the moment had caught up with him, his bandaged shoulder still aching.

            “Are you okay dad?” Orson’s euphoric expression dropped with concern.

            “Me? Yeah I’m fine, just a scratch.” He plopped his boy back on his feet and crouched to his level, “I should be asking you if you’re okay!”

            Together in the twilight they embraced and talked, their reunion a beacon in the dark. What was important and what was not didn’t seem to matter as they told each other what they had been through, what wonders they’d seen.

            “We met the Lady of the Lake!” Hope beamed with childlike wonder, “And rode Ceffyl dŵr!” She listed on before she stumbled over to other events.

            “Well, your old man beat a knight in a duel.” Raymond gleefully boasted, delighted to have the admiration of his children again. “And your mother took out that nasty Efnysien!”

            “I lost a finger!” Idris eagerly displayed his incomplete hand for all to see, much to their revolt, except for Fred who took a macabre interest. “Ice dagger, clean through it!”

            “Woah.” His nephew mouthed at the sight of it.

            This tit for tat of tale trading continued. They spoke of helpful bwbachs, the crazed elder in the cave, the maiden made of flowers, the knowledgeable crone and her unlikely son, their quest for the symbolic sparrow and how the dreadful mice had crossed both their paths, the wisdom of the salmon and his very old friends, and how it had all led them here, to one another. Eventually, almost inevitably, conversation halted on the less whimsical. The fate of the children’s grandfather was confirmed, and soon they became entangled in the mystery that was their link to Pwyll.

            “Pwyll? Blod was telling us Dad could’ve actually been Myrddin, like the wizard.” Idris couldn’t wrap his head around it; the revelation was simply another outlandish theory on top of what felt like a web of outlandish theories. “Which is it?”

            “I don’t know, but whoever we are it’s enough for Gwydion to think he can end a war...” Maeve struggled to articulate all they’d discovered with the Salmon, and her elders seemed not to care for it regardless.

            “It doesn’t matter who our ancestors were, if they were anyone for that matter.” Zoe quelled the tangent Maeve was seemingly spiralling down, “What matters is that we’re together now. We need to get out of here, we need to get back home.”

            “Not yet. We need to fix what’s happening here Mum, who knows-”

            “No, we don’t honey, I’m sorry, but we don’t. I know this all means a lot to you but-”

            “If we go back home now Gwydion will only come back for us!” Maeve’s outburst took her mother by surprise, she hadn’t raised her voice like this in years. “What’s going on is bigger than us, we can’t just go home and close our eyes. If the Otherworld carries on like this it might ruin this world and ours...it might ruin grandma and grandad’s rest...”

            “It could what...” Her mother gasped.

            “It’s true.” Hope, Fred, and Orson backed Maeve’s worries in the hopes that it might sway their parents, though this was not simply a matter of belief.

            “Maeve, it’s final.” Raymond put his foot down, if he had to be the enemy to get his children out of this place, he’d gladly do it. He laid out their course decisively, “It’s a day’s ride to Llyn Tegid, back to Ceridwen’s. From there we can make our way back up the mountain and out of this nightmare.”

            “But don’t you realise this has to be important-” Maeve stuttered.

            “What I realise is that these men are dangerous, they killed your grandad and damn near killed us!” Raymond stopped himself and let his frustration boil down, resuming with a more endearing tone. “Please Maeve, I don’t know if I can protect you from these people, but we can get out of here. We burn the tree behind us like they did, they won’t be able to follow.”

            The children stood sullen in a glum silence; their fresh victory suddenly bittersweet. This entire time Aria had been examining those worn gates, the seeping cracks and warped rivets giving her cause for concern. She thought it less steadfast and more on the precipice of collapse, as if one sudden force could see them all under water. “Listen kids, I get it, there’s a lot to consider. But I think we should continue this conversation on the road, away from this death-trap.” She looked at those huge convolutions of mud that carved through the courtyard, their rigid, almost hypnotic, grooves doing nothing for her nerves either. “We should get back to the horses.”

            The others nodded but it struck another chord in Maeve’s restless mind. “So, you do have horses?”

            “Of course, it was a long way...” Lewis explained. “They’re hitched outside, beyond the bank. We weren’t sure if they were going to be underwater by the time we came back if we left them any closer, besides they wouldn’t come any further even if we wanted them to.”

            “But we saw you ride them across the bank hours ago...” She almost spoke to herself, perplexed.

            “Hours ago? What do you mean hours ago, we just got here.” Lewis was as confused as his niece was. The group began to look over their shoulders nervously, even more so than before.

            Aria stared at the floor, at the confounding swirls in the sodden mire beneath her feet. Almost in a trance, helpless before an impending storm, all she could put to words was, “Something’s not right.”

            With that the heavy slam of the portcullis thundered from behind, their way out of the courtyard slammed shut by a seemingly invisible force. Behind its latticed grill stood an unknown figure to them, the stubby coranwr Grigor, his greyish skin and dirty ensemble blending him into the sunken hovel behind. They could see the whites of his eyes however as they shied away in shame, he didn’t appear to take any pride in their imprisonment. The clapping of one who did started from the dilapidated bell tower atop, Gwydion stepping forwards with Efnysien at his side.

            “Well, isn’t this a delightful reunion.” Gwydion’s regal welcome was subverted by a snide undercurrent, he stopped his applause. “So easily drawn out into the open, after all you’ve done. I’m disappointed.”

            Maeve’s lips quivered, “That’s him.”

            “So, you’re the bastard that’s after my daughter!” Zoe erupted, terrified but feverish to finally meet the source of their pain. Aria held the shotgun high beside her sister, its barrel’s trained on the villains.

            “Your head better grow back like your friend’s because that’s where I’m aiming!” Aria taunted, still hoping the advanced power of their shotgun might afford them some leverage, painfully aware they only had four shells left.

            “Easy now, show some patience. I understand your encounters with Efnysien have been...unfortunate.” Hands held open he spoke calmly from up high, only having to raise his voice to overcome the thrashing waves. “I think you’ll find me a very different man; I can be reasonable.”

            “So, it was you that tricked us, brought us here?” Maeve shouted out from behind her father, who shielded her from view.

            “Indeed. We could play cat and mouse for eternity, you and I. But I do not have an eternity to spare.” Gwydion pandered to his own genius, pacing before the fallen bell as he began to reveal his method. “Bringing you here was simple really, especially for a man like myself. Once I realised you had help in these lands, from the ladies of the lake perhaps, or even the ancient animals of the woods, only their secret hideaways could keep you hidden from me, I knew I had to bring you out into the open. I knew that whatever pathetic force that deemed to help you in that wilderness might in turn help you find what you seek. I had to have bait.” He dropped a mushroom to the ground below and weaved his fingers mesmerically towards it, transforming it before their eyes into the form of a woman, keeled over. Its head flicked up, the mirror image of Zoe, and smiled a devious smile.

            “Maeve, darling, come to mother and all will be fine.” The illusion spoke to them with a disturbing likeness, the family reeling at its uncanny visage before Gwydion whisked it away with another flick of a finger.

            “And what lost child doesn’t long for their parents?” He smirked, indulgent of his own machinations having worked so well. “After that it was simply a matter of time. Your real parents would undoubtedly be lured here by their ignorant friends, blind to the fallacy of their prophecies. Their sight would tell them, truthfully so, that you would be making way for Cantre’r Gwaelod, and they would come rushing to the rescue.” He breathed a weary sigh and ended his long-winded tale, standing still once more to face them directly. “Little girl, you and your family should be proud, you’ve caused me more trouble than far greater men have done in the past. But I do not wish to kill you, no matter how well laid my trap. I brought you here to offer you a chance, an opportunity.”

            “Just like you did two days ago?” Lewis yelled through the growing storm, the fresh downpour beginning to add to the spray of the sea.

            “Why the hell should we trust you?” Idris echoed behind him, the adults now forming a defensive line around the children.

            “So quick to temper...” Gwydion peered back at Efnysien as if to blame him for this. “Listen, I have you trapped like rats, you are at my mercy. All I ask is you give me the girl, and the rest of you may go free.”

            “What’s so special about my girl?” Raymond’s questions rang with aggression, he was moments away from telling Aria to pull the trigger.

            “They don’t even know...” Efnysien murmured beneath his breath.

            “Whoever you think we are we’re not!”

            “Oh, but you are...” Gwydion saw no issue in telling them the truth now that he had them in his grasp, “...you are from this world, even if you have no knowledge of it. You are the children of Pwyll Pen Annwn, Arawn’s most treasured friend.”

            “How…just...how do you even know this?” Maeve pushed through between her parents. If this were their fate she’d at least have answers.

            “Our ugly friend down there, Grigor, is a coranwr.” Gwydion was pleased to see Maeve’s curiosity peaked; he could see why she would have to be the one. “Yes, see, you know what that means don’t you. His kind are all but extinct, yet he survived, and my what tales he’d heard through the ages. Friends of your ancestors, conspirators against fate, Myrddin and Taliesin hid away Pwyll’s son all those years ago. You see they’d foreseen my battle with Pryderi, they knew it would come to pass that I would slay him, so they took it upon themselves to alter the course of this yarn, unbeknownst to anyone.

            “They hid the true Pryderi away in another world, cloaked him with magic and transported him through the trees, leaving an impostor in his place. I’d thought all these years that I had slain the son of Pwyll that day, yet he was nobody, some peasant child wreathed in fortune and destiny. The true son was in another realm, safe to grow old and raise children of his own. You may be his granddaughter, great granddaughter, it matters not. Your blood is proof all the same that the family Arawn once cherished so lives on.”

            There was a pause of silence amidst the family as the rain itself seemed to be drowned out by their thoughts, only Gelert’s guarded snarling still made a sound, though his attention seemed split between their aggressors and the ground beneath them.

            “Even if there’s the smallest chance all of this is true, why on earth do you want Maeve? Christ, just take me instead, get this over with.” Zoe struggled to consider this to be the truth, but she was aware they were far beyond the point of a simple misunderstanding.

            “I wish it were that I could...yet I doubt the king of Annwn would see the truth in anyone else.” He hunched down and peered into Maeve’s very soul from afar. “Arawn was fond of Pwyll because he was a man of the land, a man of substance. He loved the realm; he knew the realm. I mean truly, a mortal man capable of putting the problems of the Otherworld to rights. Even I must admit my respect for Pwyll. Yet in you lot, sadly, I do not see the same quality. Too transfixed with the present, with the immediate. ‘Let us flee back home, let us be done with this world’. Take no offence, I too, often fall for such short-sighted decisions. But her. No, no. She knows this land as well as she does her own. She cares for it like she would her own home.” Gwydion laughed softly to himself as he sat up, “This girl, this Maeve...oh he’ll see her as a daughter of Pwyll’s, I’ve no doubt about that.”

            “You’re insane if you think kidnapping a kid is going to fix all your problems.” Aria’s speech was stern, still fixing her sights firmly on the trickster.

            Maeve was dumbstruck, it was as if her love for the stories her grandmother had passed down was now being turned against her, as if she’d been steering her siblings wrong this whole time. As ever though, when Maeve couldn’t find her voice, Hope spoke for her. “You can’t pin this all on Maeve, we had nothing to do with this. Even if you’re telling the truth, even if we are the children of some old king, you’re the one who got the world into this mess! You’re the reason your brother is a prisoner.”

            “You stole the roebuck, you made king Arawn angry, we know the story!” Orson backed his cousin up, yelling into the hollow grounds with surprising volume.

            “You’re meant to fight him; you’re meant to win this war.” Fred held the Child of Dôn to account with conviction, as if his crimes had been a personal affront to his own ideals. “How could the great Gwydion be such a coward, go and face up to him yourself!”

            Gwydion was stunned, they’d uncovered his weakness with such ease, his failings laid bare by some ignorant children. This had to be someone else’s doing, some witches sight or demon’s tricks, I will not have the realm know of what I’ve done, of what I must do. He sputtered a few meagre words, too quiet for them to hear, then growled what they had bled from him.

            “I... I…I killed her! I killed queen Abertha...” His voice trembled at the confession, as if he’d done the unspeakable.

            “Queen...Abertha?” Maeve had never heard this name.

            “Queen of Annwn, eternal wife to king Arawn. A timid creature, rarely seen or written of, Arawn has...had kept her hidden, safe, in the depths of his kingdom in the Otherworld. Yet she was there...she was…I trained my bow, the perfect shot, then I blinked, and she was there, struck dead by my arrow in the buck’s stead...” Gwydion spoke pensively now, as if his game had become a dark reality. He could no longer indulge this idle talk, “I have wronged him so and he has my brother. This is not a tale of heroes, there will be no grand battle, he will leave me to squirm in the darkness until the day he comes for me…”

            Maeve raised her chin, this time she stared into Gwydion’s eyes, into his soul, and recounted the old saying she’d always associated with this dreaded king of the afterlife. “Long is the day and long is the night, and long is the waiting of Arawn.”

            The words were all too familiar to Gwydion, shuddering at their utterance. He muttered to himself, “I will have my offering.” He then declared his proposition one last time, Efnysien behind him drawing his sword wide before the bell. “Give me the girl now or you will all suffer for it!”

            No longer a timid flock huddled together, but a family stood firm in defiance, the Elderkins wouldn’t give in. Zoe placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder and gave their answer, “Never!”

            “So be it. Call the beast!” Gwydion spat out his command, Efnysien slamming the flat of his blade against the massive bell. A blast from the shotgun sparked from below, Aria sparing not a second with her attack. The trickster’s shape flittered on the spot like an after image, yet the pellets ran fast and wide, striking both Gwydion and his illusion. He fell with a cry, tattered leather pauldron and flesh alike riddled with bloody buckshot. It was too late however, the bell had been rung, and its cacophonous call echoed throughout the sea bound walls.

            Behind them the earth began to swell, mud churned and stone broke to form a mound of molten ruins. They stood in the shadow of this pile as it writhed and bulged with some unseen presence. First to break from its surface was a paddle like tail, twenty feet long, that slammed to the ground behind, cleaving a groove in the swamp as if it were butter. Next came a pair of elongated limbs, scaly, bulbous, and tipped with gnarled claws, each planting themselves like bracing stilts either side of the boggy mound. With a momentous heave the mud-covered beast raised its monstrous head from below, displacing slews of muck and soil as it arched its black sinewy back. A three-pronged maw sprang upwards unlike anything they’d ever seen, two terrible mandibles jutted from below like a beak split in two and between them clasping downwards was the grievous upper jaw. Serrated teeth ran the length of this vice like snout, so long it could swallow a horse whole.

As if witnessing a land bound whale lift its girth, they watched in disbelief as the monstrosity raised that grim maw to the stormy sky to let out a blood curdling roar, the very noise an unnatural choir of distorted wailing. It was positively prehistoric, no, older. A flash of lightning illuminated its nightmarish silhouette in white as it uncoiled before them, a hideous beast only the darkest depths could conjure.

            “Good god...” Aria sighed as she saw the fiend in full.

            Up above, slouched on the ground, Gwydion grimaced at the injury he’d received. “Hurts doesn’t it.” Efnysien wryly smiled.

            “Just get down there.” He snarled, nursing the wound with a clenched hand, “Grab the girl before the Afanc kills them all.”

            Efnysien tutted at the order before begrudgingly leaping down into the fray. The family were in disarray. The Afanc, now roused to their puny presence below, slumped back to the floor with its horrific jaws ajar at the promise a meal. There were no eyes to be seen, just a flaring pair of nostrils at the tip of this mangle of scales, claws, and wiry hair. Hearing Efnysien’s thud at their backs they tried their best to decide on their next move. Eyes darted the span of the courtyard until Raymond caught sight of the dilapidated walls of the castle proper, its doors long collapsed yet offering the promise of shelter.

            “Make for the castle!” He shouted before gripping Maeve’s hand tight and speaking to her alone, “He’s coming for you honey, we’ve got to go.”

            The pull of her father’s hand led her with ease, she was too white with fright to resist fleeing to anywhere but here, as the rest endeavoured to follow behind. Their jaunt across the courtyard caught the beast’s attention, their feet plunging in and out of the dank mud a sensory symphony it could appreciate all too well. Its sole limbs, those crooked forearms, heaved its torso towards them without grace, just an animalistic desire. It stopped short of them however, flummoxed by a deafening noise to its side. Gelert stood defensively on all fours before it, the size of a mouse before a cat, barking incessantly.

            “Gelert no!” Idris shouted back yet the dog was unresponsive, intent on repelling the monster. His voice cracked, “Come here boy! Please!”

            The dog remained defiant until the Afanc plunged those jaws into the dirt where Gelert had once been stood, digging its snout meters deep before it realised the source of its ire was no longer there. It turned its body back on itself to sniff out the elusive dog’s location. Its bulky reptilian tail dragged behind it, carving those familiar patterns in the mud as Idris had to give chase.

            “What the hell are you doing!?” Lewis shouted behind him, the rain battering their every word.

            “I’m getting the damn dog! I’m not leaving him.” Idris yelled over his shoulder, pressing on behind the single-minded behemoth.

            “Son of a...” Lewis sighed. He placed a hand on Orson’s shoulder and reaffirmed his son of what he should do, “You follow the others okay, dad’s going to be right behind you.” His son stood there dejected to be torn from his father so soon until Hope took his hand.

            The brothers gave chase together, bounding through the slurry as best they could. They hadn’t made it far when they heard a whimpering from an unseen Gelert. He was backed against the courtyard wall, before him the subterranean beast submerged itself up to its chin in the swamp, its nostrils snorted with wafts of mucus laced steam as it awaited its prey’s next move. He was helpless, he’d outran the creature in the open as it moved clumsily like a fish out of water yet, cornered now as he was, he knew it would snap him up before he could escape. The faithful hound couldn’t even see it’s masters past the eyeless embodiment of death before it.

            “Hey ugly, over here!” Idris shouted as loud as he could to try and elevate his presence above the deluge.

            The Afanc rose from its filthy depths, sightless but dreadfully aware of its company. Idris hadn’t quite thought of what to do next as the creature turned on a dime with alarming speed and began to trudge towards him. He’d been stood still for a few seconds and already the bog had consumed him from the shins down, sticking him to the spot as he panicked. That tangle of ancient teeth was almost upon him when a rock struck the side of its head, and then another ricocheted off its hunched back.

            “That’s right you...” Lewis continued to lob what he could find at the beast until it was all too evident it was coming for him. He ran as best he could in the difficult terrain yet soon he stumbled and fell as the vacuous clay caught his steps as well. Slumped in the muck he turned to see the beast already atop him, vats of caustic saliva running down the bony ridges of its jaws. Stuck in the web that was this beast’s lair he clenched his teeth, ready for the worst.

            At the courtyards opposite side the others were already at the doors of the castle, Raymond and Maeve scrambling over the rotten gates for safety, the others close behind. Aria caught the briefest glimpse of their pursuer in her peripheral, yet it was too late. Efnysien struck her side as she let off a reactionary shot, blasting skyward, missing her mark. She fell hard into the others behind, clinging on to the shotgun for dear life but helpless to stop her tumble because of it. The immortal spared no time in continuing his chase however, springing back to his feet and bounding past Zoe up the collapsed hallway, sword drawn, towards Maeve and her father. Zoe turned back to Aria and shouted, “Give me the gun!”

            The shot had rung out across the courtyard as it had done before. The Afanc froze above the powerless Lewis, its massive skull like head tilting to the side as if to narrow down the source of this outburst. Satisfied with its direction it rolled from atop Lewis, plunging headfirst into the ground, forcing earth and debris aside once more as if it were weightless. Beneath them it began to trail the noise, the surface of the swamp bulging in its wake.

            Lewis let out a sigh of relief and then craned his head to see the Afanc’s trajectory. That tremor was heading straight towards the others, straight towards his son. “Shit! No, no, no.” Idris caught up to him, sticking a stray boot that had slipped loose back on. They began to double back with Gelert streaking ahead, but the Afanc was deceptively fast in the silt. All Lewis could do was warn them of what lurked beneath, “Aria get the kids out of there!”

            Their sister hadn’t much time to react before the earth fell from beneath them. Wide eyed she acted on a reflex, pushing the children away as the Afanc rolled underneath her like a wave. All the children could do was watch as that mound of rubble sunk for a moment, then erupted in an explosion beneath their aunt’s feet with the fresh emergence of the beast. It flew straight up, arms folded in, its form stretching into the night sky like a serpentine torpedo.

            Aria felt as if she should be dead, as if the nausea she felt in her stomach had to be an incision from one of this creature’s fiendish teeth, yet she wasn’t. Overcome with the vertigo from having been flung so high she now realised she’d managed to cling to the tip of the beast’s snout. Suspended in the air she felt as if time itself had given her a moment before the end, the only sensation she felt was the noxious heat wafting against her bloodied hands from within the Afanc’s maw. And then, as all things must, it all came crashing down. As if her unwilling ride had only just accepted it could not fly, the beast crashed into the side of the castle walls. Aria loosened her grip and sprung away in time to avoid the cascade of hewn rock, falling just shy of the Afanc’s self-burial, but she fell hard, nonetheless.

            As the girth of the monster had exited the hole the ground beneath it began to collapse from the displacement, the murky swamp draining into what quickly became a slippery sinkhole. Hope’s feet slipped first as the depression widened and swallowed masses of earth before the castle gates, but Fred caught her, an act that saw him sliding into the funnel in her stead. As light as he was on his feet he couldn’t find purchase on the sliding slopes and was soon waist deep in the muck, slipping ever closer to the centre. He felt no triumph in his courageous act, no satisfaction from his daring heroics, just crushing terror at the void that bubbled and slurped at the bottom of this hole. Even in this dire situation he looked up and prayed that Orson wouldn’t do what he knew he would, yet there was no adult nearby, no saviour at hand, and so Orson leapt in.

            “Hold on Fred!” He called, even his brave voice trembling a little at the prospect.

            He threw off his coat and stuck one empty arm into Hope’s hands as she stood there speechless and, clinging tightly to the other, began to slog towards his cousin. Orson found himself sinking but wouldn’t let it slow him down as he stretched as far as he could, their fingers barely gracing each other tentatively before finally Fred managed grasp onto his cousin. With a herculean heave the three pulled on each other’s strength as hard as they could, as Fred was freed however, Hope’s footing gave way beneath her. She fell to her bottom, the sudden jolt sending the chain into an untethered free fall.

Soon Fred and Orson found their positions reversed as one slipped beneath the other. Like some feral animal scrambling for survival in a drain Fred caught hold of the dangling coat and Orson’s hand in an instant, latching on for dear life, yet his cousin was already up to his ribs in the whirlpool. Once more Fred was terrified and this time he couldn’t put on a brave face for his cousin, the dreadful realisation struck him, I’m not strong enough. Orson stared back, unblinking, mortified.

            “DAAAAD!!!” Orson howled, the danger suddenly becoming real as a numbness set in his legs.

            “Orson!” Lewis cried out his son’s name in a short, unabated frenzy as he caught up to the scene.

            Idris gripped the coat and dug down besides Hope, Gelert paced and panted, too wary of the precarious footing, and Lewis fell on all fours, trying as he might to reach his boy. Aria, in a daze yet miraculously intact, stumbled from behind the rubble to witness their desperation. Everything was happening too quickly, there was no time to prepare, no time to think. She felt as if she were drowning in the chaos without a window to come up for air.

            “ORSON!” Lewis’s disgruntled cry rattled her from the internal crisis she was caught in.

            Idris had pulled as hard as he might and Fred had found himself flung into the air and back to safety at the cost of his grip on Orson, who now steadily descended from everyone’s view. Lewis fell in after him, digging in deep to catch what he could of his son before his face submerged entirely. Together they found themselves caked into the epicentre of this sinkhole, Lewis strenuously holding his son aloft to save his teary face from being consumed by the pull of the mire.

            Aria snapped to action, she threw her bag to the ground and began to rifle through its contents like a woman possessed. Raw concentration threw any other experience from her mind, she had to find what she needed and secure it quickly or this might be the end, monsters be damned. She yanked a length of rope from deep within her bag of wonders and tied it with precision to a carabiner. She found the other end, affixed another carabiner, and thrust it into whoever’s hands were closest, this being a ghostly pale Hope. She insisted calmly yet firmly that she loop it around the stump of the tree that stood not twenty paces from them. It was old and sodden but to have remained intact after being flooded as Cantre’r Gwaelod had been its roots must have run deep. Hope could barely speak but nodded frantically, she was a smart girl and knew how these worked, Aria trusted her niece could do it, their lives depended on it. As soon as she ran off Aria tossed the other end down to Lewis, highlighting the clip of the carabiner before she did.

            “Wrap that around yourselves as best you can and lock it in!” Again, she spoke with a calm, reassuring certainty, as if this were all just another climb gone awry. She had to, otherwise she knew she might falter.

            Within the castle’s walls the impact of the Afanc had shaken the bastion to its foundations. The circular stairwell the single minded Efnysien bounded up held fast for now, though stone and steps alike were beginning to crumble away. Regardless he made it to the top, exhausted but invigorated all the same by the thrill of the hunt. He stepped into the half-destroyed room, its far wall now an open window to the courtyard below, to be met with a weighty blow to the back of the head.

Raymond, gripping a dislodged slab, went for another strike but the hunter was, as ever, quick to recover. He took no hesitation in drawing his sword this time, wildly lashing out at Raymond. Brittle chairs and upturned tables were thrown between them in the scuffle, each one cut to pieces as the two raged at each other. Maeve huddled in the corner behind what must have once been illustrious curtains, now a mouldy drape to cloak her presence. She tried not to make a sound as she watched her father fight for their lives in this decrepit ruin. A task she’d been given but found most difficult as she saw that blade sweep ever closer to her father. She couldn’t hold her tongue any longer.

            “Leave him alone! Please, I’ll come with you!” She pleaded as she revealed herself.

            “Ah!” Efnysien smiled and held his blade low for a moment, “There you are.”

            The freshly hewn back of a chair bludgeoned him across the face, sending him rolling to the room’s edge away from an exhausted Raymond. “Really? Must we do this dance again?” He staggered to his feet and wiped the viscous blood from his broken jaw, “You know how this ends.”

            BOOM!

            A blast to the chest sent him flying from the balcony’s edge and down to the yard below.

            “I do.” Zoe uttered, stood in the doorway, smoking gun in hand.

Raymond smiled an exasperated smile at his love, though the sudden rumbling of rubble below cut short his endearment.

            The landslide of stone and timber began to shift as the Afanc unburied itself. This, coupled with Efnysien who’d just fallen flat in the dirt near them, only gave those who struggled with the sinkhole further cause for panic.

            “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Idris sighed as he and Aria pulled on that rope as hard as they could. The loop was solid yet still the power of this vortex seemed insurmountable.

            “I’m. Getting. Very. Tired. Of. That. Thing.” Efnysien grumbled as he pulled his face from the muck and wiped his eyes. His bleary sight just made out the blurry shapes of two more familiar children, they’ll do. “YOU!” He roared, thrusting his sword towards them in some grand declaration of his intent, clueless of what roused behind.

            THUD.

            A heavy claw landed behind him. He turned, body blackened by a daunting shadow, finding himself suddenly devoid of that vigour he breathed, “…fuck.” The second claw landed directly upon him, its weight crushing Efnysien down into the quagmire to become one with the mulch below. The Afanc lingered before them, those nostrils billowing as they worked to sniff out its quarry amidst the stench. Its ridged head jerked with some sensory notion, towards those on the floor.

            “We need to draw it away...” Aria whispered to the others as they struggled to keep their efforts silent.

            “I’ll do it, hold tight.” Idris handed his stretch of the rope to his nephew and niece and began to skulk away, giving one parting look to his struggling brother. “You hold on okay; I’ll be right back.” Lewis could barely shift an inch now, yet he pursed his lips and nodded.

            “No-wait.” Aria caught her brother as he left, “My pocketknife.”

            She rocked her head towards the pouch on her belt, unwilling to let go of the rope. Idris understood and slipped the knife, Merfyn’s old tool, from the leather pocket. He nodded and turned for the beast. He’d crept closer until its eerie stillness fell in an instant. If he had to guess it almost appeared as if it had been playing dumb, it baited me in. It opened its jaws and roared a deafening roar, that emotionless skull staring right at him.

Above Zoe trained the gun at the base of its neck, last shot, she told herself, make it count. The pellets riddled the beast’s back, causing it to recoil in pain and squeal a blood curdling cry. Yet it hadn’t been the fatal blow Zoe had hoped for. Its instinctual defences kicked in as those fibrous hairs stood up on end like a porcupine’s, they were spines. Dozens of them shot out into the air hoping to dissuade whatever unseen force had struck it. The boards of the castle ceiling and stone walls alike were riddled with them, turning the front of that fortress into a pin cushion.

            The beast coiled and turned towards those above, again whipping its torso about with unbelievable speed. Not a single spine had come down Idris’s way yet the flat of its tail was unavoidable. The bulk smacked him with such force that he slid across the swamps surface like a skipping stone until he cratered in the mud, winded and hurt. The Afanc, oblivious to the flea it had knocked aside, began to scale the collapsed wall.

            “Zoe come on-” Raymond threw an arm around his wife before he realised.

            A metre long, clean through her abdomen, ran one of those black spines. Her grip on the gun loosened as it slipped from her grasp to the Afanc below. She was in a daze, staring down at this unreal thing that had pierced her in the blink of an eye. The rest became fuzzy as her sight fell dim, leaving her with the thundering rain and wails of an unseen beast that was coming for her. Were it not for Raymond and Maeve’s worried words she’d have sworn she’d fallen into a nightmare as she collapsed in her husband’s arms.

            Down in the mud, beneath the climbing beast, Aria still tugged at the rope. Her hands ran red from wounds whose origin she wasn’t even sure of. The rope? The teeth? My burns? All of it? It’s not helping. The rope grew slippery, stained from her efforts. Hope and Fred tried as they might to help yet they were there in body only. They’d watched their family be torn apart by this creature. Their parents and sister were beset by the beast even now, their uncle lay battered in the distance, and they still couldn’t pull them free of the hole.

            “Just go-” Lewis’s words were interrupted by the bubbles of slurry that seeped over his mouth. He held Orson above himself even now, though they both still sank all the same. “Save-save-the rest-”

            Aria readied a reply, a denial of her younger brother’s selfless wishes, but he and Orson were already gone. Hope and Fred welled with tears, but Aria didn’t, she sat there in unblinking silence, staring at the puddle of mud where they’d disappeared. She thought of their home those couple of nights ago. She’d been distraught to lose her mother, she’d never show it, but everyone had known how close they were. She’d been prepared to go through the motions of grief, to mourn and cry together for days on end, to accept the finality of Derwen’s passing. She hadn’t expected to repeat the motions for her father, or even here in this disastrous quagmire.

            Yet back then, much to her surprise, it had been nothing of the sort. Sure, tears were shed, painful realities were met, yet her family had come together to embrace Derwen’s memory, not discard it. Sat here in the mud, her brother and nephew having slipped through her hands, she realised these past days before now had perhaps been some of her fondest. In the direst of circumstances, she’d truly felt the closest she’d ever had to her brothers and sister, that she’d played her part in this painful puzzle and would gladly do so again. Here and now the pieces had fallen apart, and she would do what she had always prided herself in doing, she’d solve the problem for those she could.

            “Hope, Fred! Go get your uncle Idris and climb as high as you can!” She looked to her brother who seemed to be alive, that was enough, then to the thatched wooden roofing that lined the portcullis wall. Thank goodness, there’s stairs, they can make it. “That bell tower should be high enough.”

            “What about you? What about mum and dad?” Hope asked, distraught and all but ready to give up.

            “They’ll be fine, there won’t be time to come back, you’ll run into the beast again.” She spoke almost to herself in a hurry, time was against them all.

            “But-” The children couldn’t understand.

            “Just get up those stairs! Please!” Aria shouted, they were dismayed but quietly agreed, their sullen faces turned from her for what she feared might be the last time. She turned to Gelert who’d stood next to them this whole time and shooed him towards the castle entrance. “Get up there boy, go!” He whimpered and protested, but a final shove saw him running into the building, tail between his legs. Aria looked skyward and saw nothing, but prayed they were still okay up there, yelling to the nothingness in hope. “Ray!? Zoe!? Anyone!? Call the dog, keep him with you and for god’s sake hold onto to something!” She didn’t wait for a reply, she trusted she’d done enough, it had to be enough.

            Maeve tip toed towards the building’s edge once she heard her Auntie begin to rant and rave at the Afanc. The beast took the bait as she screamed to her lung’s capacity, dropping from the wall back to its swamp to give chase. She spotted her siblings fleeing up the stairs across the way and onto the wooden beams of the bell tower, its collapsed innards thankfully devoid of Gwydion’s presence. Where are they going? Where are Orson and Lewis? She wondered, then sure enough Gelert came clambering up the stairs behind and into their fold. She held onto him tight, just as her father did her mother. Then came the noise. A metallic clang that rung like an ominous warning of impending tragedy. It wasn’t the bell; it was the steely sound of rough metal works. Again, its clatter pierced the heavy downpour.

            “What’s she planning Hope? Where are the others?” A dazed Idris shot questions as they helped each other up the rafters, yet she was clueless.

            Raymond looked over his daughter’s shoulder, upon seeing it he gripped Gelert’s collar tight and pulled her back. Maeve understood now. She saw it plain as day, her aunt Aria face to face with the Afanc.

            Down in the expanse of that mired tomb Aria beat a rusted length of iron against the gates from which it had fallen. Over and over, she beat that towering bulwark. What lurked her way, ready to strike, didn’t scare her anymore. What lay behind these sluice gates didn’t give her pause either. It was, as she’d deemed, the only solution. The only way to allow what remained of her family to escape. And so, she swung that old piece of scrap against those heavy locks, over and over, until it had chipped and splintered to nothing. Only then did the Afanc come for her. She had no words, no thoughts of what the others might think, she hoped only that this wasn’t for nothing. It lunged for the kill and struck those worn gates with a gargantuan force they never could have withstood.

            Aria simply vanished in the destruction as the Afanc ripped its splintered head from the gates. First they creaked and gushed with fonts of briny water, then those metal locks pinged and buckled, and finally burst. The gate to the ocean had been broken and with it came the full force of the sea. The beast was dwarfed by the crashing waves and was swept up with them, flailing in formidable currents far too strong for any monster to swim. Soon the courtyard was flush with dark foamy seas, gushing and rolling back on themselves as they struck the inner walls.

The tsunami carried the Afanc a distance and threw it against the portcullis wall. Idris held onto Hope and Fred as they all clung to the thatched roof of the tower in desperation. The other’s gasped as they saw that tower collapse with the wall itself, into the sea at large. Almost half of the castle grounds lost to the waves in a fleeting moment along with the beast itself.

Eventually all became still, as still as any sea, and Cantre’r Gwaelod was claimed by the depths once more. The waves lapped at the edge of the fortress’s upper floor, but the others were safe and dry. Maeve could only gaze at the serene carnage. The light of her family had been extinguished so quickly, they were naught to her eyes now but moonlit specks in the deep, far from reach.