Prologue - planting the seed
By James Attwood
The winds whistled a frightful chorus amid the woods this eve. This gale blew a storm, a storm that kept any sensible folk indoors. The most devoted shepherds shied from tending to their flocks, the most determined travellers held down for the night. Even Pwyll, Lord of Dyfed, lamented over the loss of his son Pryderi behind the closed doors of his castle this one night rather than search the dreadful deluge for him. The downpour kept all at bay. But not the two men having a clandestine meeting this foul night. No weather, no matter how fierce, could make them delay. They dealt with urgent prophecy, with imminent fate.
Taliesin, a handsome bard in well-tailored attire sheltered behind the broad back of an oak. His lantern clanked and squeaked in the wind but somehow remained lit as he conversed with Myrddin, an elderly gentleman whose stature belied his age. Myrddin’s waist length beard and illustrious robes flowed wildly with each gust, but he stood proud, unfaltering like the trees around him. Underneath his cloak he hugged something precious in his arms, he stepped closer and revealed a baby. Wrapped head to toe, only its little face exposed to the elements.
“So, you found the boy!” Taliesin had to raise his voice above the raucous mayhem of the storm. “Tell me Myrddin, is this truly Pryderi? Truly the son of Pwyll?”
“Indeed, my sight confirms it. This is the boy who come the time would be slayed by Gwydion...” He braced against the tree with his conspirator, watchful of the child’s reddening cheeks.
“The boy who if saved might come to save us all in turn.” Taliesin ended the wizard’s fortune telling. “Will Ceridwen’s magic keep him safe?”
“Born anew, much as you were, he would be untraceable by any spell. Any who would search for Pryderi would not find him for he would no longer exist as they knew him.”
“Truly?” Taliesin looked at the child’s face, regretful to be putting something so young through so much.
“It is the theory my boy!” Myrddin gripped Taliesin’s arm to reaffirm him of what they must do. Taliesin would follow Myrddin anywhere, few had as many tales to tell as this old man, and he was intent on becoming the greatest storyteller of all.
“And what then? Where shall we hide him?”
“A place far from here, where no troublesome Children of Dôn might reach him. Another realm...another world.”
“Another world?” Surely, he couldn’t mean the Otherworld, Annwn. Surely, he would not send one so innocent to the afterlife before their time. Many considered Myrddin a madman, but Taliesin was certain he would never do such a thing, no matter how wild his fancies.
“Indeed, one beyond our own, beyond Annwn.”
So, it’s not Annwn. “But how?”
“How else?” Myrddin stared up at the grand old oak they stood beneath. “Through the trees.”
What transpired that night was thought to be secret, thought to be safe from prying eyes. These designs were made to keep the raging sea of the realm calm, yet the ripples of these decisions would be felt in other worlds altogether. The winds that blew that night blew so fiercely, so far, that they carried the words of their plan to the ears of the coraniaid. A race of beings who’s hearing was so acute that no utterance was safe from their ears so long as the winds were witness to them. They would later be considered a plague, their knowledge of all that came to pass considered a threat to those that had things to hide. They would be eradicated for this, wiped from the face of Wales. Yet one would survive. One would remember the words he heard on this fateful night. Words that would, eight hundred years later, have dire consequences for a family who lived in another Wales. In our Wales.