Ten Years Ago: Ffion

I was seven years old when I met wild magic.

I shouldn’t have been out at all, what with it being midnight and there being Mercian soldiers at work only a few miles to the east. But I was a stubborn little gremlin even then.

It was my mam-gu’s fault, really. Earlier that day, she’d shown me some amber she’d found in Foxhall Forest, and I’d thought the stones looked like a fistful of honey. “Why didn’t you bring me some?” I’d asked. Amber made for powerful protection charms.

But my grandmother told me it would serve me better if I got it for myself. She hadn’t told me it would take half the night to find, though. Nor had she told me what to say to Mam when she scolded me for disappearing for hours after dark. But that was a problem for later. Besides, I wasn’t alone, not with Cadno trotting after me, red tail swishing as he snuffled at the roots of trees.

Mam would’ve said I didn’t need a protection charm, as long as I didn’t go looking for trouble. But with Dad gone half the time, and Mercian soldiers digging ditches and piling up dirt only a few miles off—well.

I was a witch from a long line of witches. I already knew better, even as a child.

As I came to a glade of naked birches, my irritated sigh smoked on the air. Mam-gu had found the amber in a stand of pines; it was late, and I was certainly already in trouble, and these still weren’t the trees I wanted.

But when the dragons emerged into a strip of moonlight, I forgot about charms, or trees, or trouble. I forgot about everything.

They were dreigiau goch—red dragons. Red like cinnabar or copper or blushing dawn, red like foxes or flame or fresh blood or madder dye. There were six of them.

The larger adults had flanks grown over with lichen and mushrooms and ivy, but all of them were scaled and horned, with power in their wings and chests and jointed legs. They looked like fire and moved like water, like boulders tumbling downhill; they were the brightest things in that winter forest.

Later, I would learn that the color of a dragon’s scales reflected the heat and age of their flame. I would learn that dreigiau goch could fly from one Welsh kingdom to another, farther than gwiberod or afancs or ceiliogau neidr, without even stopping to rest. I would learn how easily they could destroy farms or fields.

As a child, I only knew that they were made of magic.

I stepped into the glade slow as slow, making myself smaller than I already was, knotting my hair around my fist so it wouldn’t catch a sudden breath of wind and spook them.

The largest of the six—it must have stood twenty-five hands high, it must, I was little and all the world was large but I knew the beast was truly massive—hung back. So did the other full-grown dreigiau.

But the smallest dragon stepped forward. The forest was quiet enough that I heard its amber claws clinking against pebbles on the ground, like rain falling on glass.

I waited, breathless, for it to come to me. And it did.

The smallest dragon’s back came as high as my chest. I longed to run my hand over its side, to see if its copper scales were cold or if it would feel warm like the horses stabled at the Dead Man’s Bells. But I didn’t move a finger.

It pawed at me gently, lifting one blunt-clawed forefoot to nudge at my bare shin as if to ask what are you? It sniffed at my kirtle, too, snorting and sneezing when it reached my underarms; I’d been as ill-washed a child as I was a woman. When a laugh rippled out of me, the little dragon startled back, like it was surprised to find me as loud as any bird in the woods.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, desperate to save the broken moment, watching it watch me out of curious gold eyes.

But when the largest of the six roared a soft summons, even I wouldn’t have dared to disobey. The smallest dragon bumped me once with its head, then turned back toward the others and galloped with them into the woods.

I’d stared after them, watching their scales shimmer until they faded out of view, feeling the woods fall silent once more.

In that moment, something in me fell silent, too. Something that would always be listening and looking.

I would search for dragons in later years. I would search the roads for gwyllgwn, the rivers and lakes for ceffylau dŵr. I never found them.

And I was never the same again.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***