Buying Trouble
Maelchwn's Tale - by The Emu
The first we knew something was wrong was when the night slipped in and Eab didn't come home. Eab never stayed out alone when it was dark; it wouldn't do to let people wonder, not when he was supposed to be pledged to the Trees.
It was a quiet, moonless night, so clear and still that you might find yourself speaking in whispers for no reason, far too peaceful for such a terrible thing. I was sitting outside our home, cleaning my hands, watching the women prepare the youngest children for bed. The casual enquiries into Eab's whereabouts grew earnest, and then concerned. The frown crept deeper on his mother's forehead with every curious look.
I keep trying to remember if I heard something and dismissed it, like an animal cry, but I never heard anything. I would have noticed, in the quiet.
As the last of the sun's light faded, there were voices shouting, men organising a search, women organising the men. Children were playing, caught up in the tense excitement, only understanding that they weren't being put to bed. A huge fire was lit to mark the centre of the search.
I was considered old enough to join in, though maybe that was only because I was Eab's friend, and I knew all his favourite places. Eithne convinced them to let her come, too, by saying she knew places that I didn't. It wasn't true, but I didn't say anything because it would be quicker if we split up, and I knew that I wouldn't have wanted to wait at home with the women.
I stood with my arms folded around me while the men fanned out around the old ruin where Eab and I used to play, checking everywhere in case he'd fallen. I had forgotten to bring a warm cloak, and it was an effort not to shiver, but I didn't want them to see that I was cold and send me home. I bounced a little on my feet, impatient to be moving.
Eab wasn't there, and there were a hundred other places to search.
I'd never seen adults at the castle. It was where children played, especially Eab and me. We still went there sometimes; we kissed on those stairs. He wanted to know what it was like, and I didn't mind at all. He was the handsomest boy in the village, and my best friend. The Trees wouldn't have just anyone.
We didn't find him.
We didn't find him down by the stream, either, or in the woods. We met up with the other party by the old cherry tree. There was some grass kicked up under the tree, but that didn't mean anything, the men said. They kept saying it, and agreeing with each other. A few clumps of grass didn't mean anything.
Nobody walked on that ground.
Eithne told them that Eab like to talk to this tree best, and the men all nodded. Eab had been quiet lately; just that morning he'd said he needed some time alone with the Trees. They muttered about what a good boy he was, that the Trees had chosen well.
Eithne and I exchanged a glance. Eithne knew about Eab and me at the castle, and I knew that Eab and Eithne had done more. I wondered how much more, but I never asked. I know it wouldn't have been enough to make the Trees forsake him. Eab liked to kiss, but he loved the Trees.
We continued the search, but night grew deeper, and that ice cold of dawn's approach chipped at our fingers and noses, and we began to know, and we grew quiet once more.
The next night it rained, terrible sheeting rain, and no one would look at Eab's mother, not properly. Because we knew. We knew the stories, and we knew that the soldiers travelled nearby. And nobody said it out loud near the women, but we knew where Eab had gone.
In the morning rain of the second day, the men gathered under a tree far from the village. They were talking about organising a group to get Eab back.
"The soldiers take what they want, and then they kill them. Eab is already dead."
"And if he isn't?"
"Would you abandon him to those animals?"
"Too many people will be killed, for nothing."
"Nothing? Eab was marked for the Trees."
A moment of uncomfortable silence. If the Romans ... The Trees would not want him now. Rain trickled down my neck.
"Surely we would save any of our children from those monsters."
"It's too late for him. Do you know the size of the Roman camp? There are hundreds of soldiers; we would need to unite all the nearby Tuaths, and we can't. Not for this."
Eithne pushed forward through the group. Like me, she had been waiting on the outside, unsure whether she would be welcomed or pushed away like a child. "Surely you should at least look, be sure. You don't know until you look. It might be only a small camp, or he might be at the edge, where you can sneak him away. You don't know. You have to look."
Her pleading eyes moved from man to man, until she caught sight of me in the back and then she held my gaze, as though I might say something, too. Only I knew that she didn't want Eab back to serve the Trees. She wanted him to be her husband.
I didn't say anything, and none of the men noticed me. I was old enough to fight, and I didn't want to fight the soldiers. I didn't want them to capture anyone else, or cripple our people like all the soldiers from Mona. Cadwan had said Eab was dead and that was better than if he wasn't.
They sent a few men to scout, and I was never so relieved as when I saw the disappointment in their returning faces. The camp was so big they didn't even know if Eab was there, but they told us they had captured two Roman soldiers. Daegre and Cadwan were taking them to the Druids to sacrifice so that the gods would protect Eab. I hoped they would sacrifice them slowly. Maybe burn them alive in the straw, and throw their skulls away.
His mother is nearing the end of her mourning. I don't know how the men explained why there was no body to lay out in the field, but she stayed by the stream until the women dragged her away.
Eithne has been promised to a boy in another Tuath, and she doesn't seem to mind, but she isn't very excited, either. We don't talk anymore, at all.
Nobody speaks of it now. Or him. He's become a thing of silence, just like that still night when he was taken. You could think he was forgotten, except that women and children never go out alone, anymore.
Sometimes I believe that the quiet swallowed him. There were no soldiers; maybe he just sank into one of his trees. (I've heard about people who climbed trees and were not seen again for years.) When we had searched everywhere a hundred times, and knew he wasn't anywhere, I went back on my own and checked all the trees to see if any had new branches. I could never be sure – I don't know the Trees as well as Eab did. When Spring comes, I am going to look again, to see if any of them have birds' nests in them. Eab always liked birds.
THE END
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