Once Upon A Time (5 page)

I had not
forgotten my promise to her. I wore the necklace she had given me,
but each time I saw her, when I might have returned it to her, it
was strange, but she had shaken her head, almost as if she had
divined my intent and wished me to keep her gift for the moment. I
lost track of her when she married, not realising that the man who
would become our public liaison for the Foundation was none other
than her son. When I found Eliana again, she was an old woman,
dying from cancer. Still, that smile was there, when she recognised
me.

"Have you come
to take me home, my friend and protector." She had whispered, a
combination of the morphine and her own fatigue.

I nodded,
unable to speak initially. "I looked for you, as I promised. I said
that at the very least, I would do this for you." I held out the
gold chain and its little pendant, perhaps a bit more worn from my
wearing it every day. Gently, she had folded my fingers around
it.

"Keep it safe
for me." She whispered. "I have lived a long life, full of love and
laughter, but you? You still grieve, my angel and protector. Keep
it, and perhaps one day, you too will know love and you too will be
able to laugh again."

She had given
a soft sigh, as I absorbed her soul, her life fulfilled. In her
memory, I will continue to wear her gift and I will treasure the
memory of a young girl.

Dear Rhys

As I write
this, I cannot but help look at you, asleep in your cradle. I
regret that I may not be there to see you grow, and to see you
become the Sentinel whom I could not be. I regret that you will
think that perhaps I have chosen the easy option, of leaving you to
be raised by the Pack. Perhaps grief has dictated my choices, but I
hope that in time, you might come to understand that I did not make
those choices without long and careful consideration and thought.
So, this letter comes from the heart, my son, and I hope that you
know this. If I had the courage to do what I must and then live for
you, I would have done, but losing my Lili, losing your mother has
changed me. Your mother was my Mate, and we had bonded as seemed so
right at the time. Losing her is like losing the other half of my
soul. Even as I watch you, as I hear again the words of my
Pack-mates, telling me that you are as much a part of her as a part
of me, even as the tears trace down my face, I wish I could be
stronger.

The only
consolation I have is that when you are given this letter, I know
that you will be ‘a man grown’, an adult Cŵn Annwn, and I know that
you will also have found your own Mate. I know that you will grow
to be the Cŵn Annwn to which I might only aspire. I know that our
Alpha, and my friend, Gavril, will have raised you to be a Cŵn
Annwn who is a credit to our Pack. More to the point, I hope that
when you read this, you will understand why I acted the way that I
did.

Like me, your
mother was born in Wales, and came out to our home in the
Carpathians when Gavril found his own Mate, Aaleahya. We were both
juveniles then, and as was the norm, we were raised with our
age-mates, fostering the bonds which make us Pack. This land where
Gavril chose to make our home was a beautiful place. I could recall
stories told of when our home in Wales was more like this, maybe
not with the woods in which Lili and I would run with our friends,
but by the time we came here, Wales had changed. The Industrial
Revolution had taken hold, and the new class of industrialists were
gaining ascendency. It was the start of a toxic time for soul
readers like us, when humans started … how would I describe it?
They started to not just want more, because that has been a feature
of humankind for generations. No, it was more that they ceased to
care that they wanted more, that showing envy was acceptable or at
least becoming more acceptable. Aspiration, they called it. Seeking
to better oneself, to rise above the station into which you were
born.

When Gavril
suggested we come out to this new home in the Carpathians, Lili and
I, along with our age mates jumped at the chance. It was a chance
to be in a cleaner environment, both physically and mentally, and
that was something that was essential for us as soul readers. At
the time, I didn’t know that Lili was my Mate. That was yet to
come. We were but juveniles ourselves, children in the world of the
Cŵn Annwn, and there was still time for us to grow.

The humans in
this world did not live an easy life. The Roma from whom Gavril’s
Mate had come were seen as little more that slaves by the local
landowners. They lived their lives bound to an estate, and were far
from being the free spirits of our homeland. As local landowners,
the Pack was expected to have similarly bound farm-workers on our
estates, but it would have been against everything that mattered to
us. How could we act as the soldiers of our Goddess if we were
doing the very thing for which she would punish the human souls we
harvested? So, we struck a compromise. To those around us, other
landowners, who held the same rank in the human world as Gavril
held, we held Roma slaves bound to our estates. But with us, they
had the chance to be free, at least where others might not see
them.

This practice
was to prove invaluable to us in later years. I shall skip forward.
There is no need for me to prattle on about the Great War, the war
that was supposed to end all wars. Would that it did, because it
would mean that I would not be writing this letter to you, and I
would not be contemplating a course of action which would leave you
without parents, to be raised by Pack.

…

I had to stop
for a moment, because it hit me then what I was doing. I was
leaving you, my child, to be raised by Pack, rather than being
there for you, but I could not face my life without Lili at my
side. I could not face a life without your mother, my flower taken
from us both. And why? Why did Lili have to die? She died because
she was doing what she felt was necessary, when the world around us
descended once more into war. I wonder how history would be written
about this war. World War II: a war which should not have happened.
The Great War was supposed to end all that, but happen it did. The
reparations forced on the Germans at the end of the Great War sat
ill with many, and with the links between Romania and Germany as
they were, there was support here for the German people, and a view
that it was hardly surprising that the National Socialists came to
power. But, I move slightly ahead of myself, because I should tell
you more about your mother, about my Lili.

Without her, I
would not have you, but now I am without her, and that is more than
I can bear. Call me coward if it makes it easier for you to
understand. It was like a thunderclap. Lili went from being the
bubbly young female who had taken such pleasure in running with me
and our other age-mates to something so much more. She lost the
loose-limbed lack of co-ordination that is the bane of all young
females and became something else. How can I describe it in a way
that makes sense to you, my son? Her smile, her laugh. The light in
her eyes when she met my gaze. The smile. Yes, that was the thing
that everyone noticed, Lili’s smile. Then came the full moon when,
instead of running with our age-mates, I plucked up the courage to
ask her if she would run with just me, just the two of us. It was a
cold night, and the snow was thick on the ground. Our breath made
little clouds in the night air, as her tail flashed before me. The
dance is old as time, and long after the moon had set did we return
to the Hall. When the time is right, we know our Mates, and that
night, the time was right for me to realise that Lili was the one
with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

Goddess, the
rest of my life. That’s what we thought we had that night: the rest
of our lives. We thought we had time aplenty to spend together, on
that night when we confirmed our Mating through sharing the Mating
Bond. In the winter of 1940, that was when my Lili and I realised
that the Goddess had chosen the other to be the one soul in the
universe to offer support and succour. It also meant that, as a
male Cŵn Annwn, I could take a more active part in the soul
harvests, now that I had my Lili to help me with the taint of evil
that was part and parcel of our duties to our Goddess.

But now we
come to the reason why I mentioned the Roma people who worked on
the Negrescu lands. By 1940, these were the grandchildren of those
whom we had known when we had first come to the Carpathian region.
Their grandparents may have been born into virtual slavery, but the
generation living in the time that saw Western Europe engulfed in
war once more, they knew a different life. It was still not
freedom, but they and their parents knew that those who made up the
Negrescu tribe, as they chose to see us, would not hold them in
bondage as their grandparents had been. Aaleahya had maintained
friendships with members of her blood tribe, even if her own
father’s death had meant that she had had to flee, until Gavril
‘married’ her, and her new rank assured her safety. It mattered not
if they thought that it was Aaleahya’s rank which gave them the
protection of her husband, and the greater level of freedom that
they enjoyed compared to others. They were free, and that was
important. Of course they knew that we were not normal, or at least
not in the way that others of rank might be.

But all that
would change. We both had many friends amongst the Roma
communities, and as it became clear that the government were siding
with the Germans and the Nazi party, so their attitudes towards
particular nationalities started to become apparent. We heard
stories of pogroms, of attacks on Jewish communities, and the
number of harvests that we had to carry out started to increase.
Each time I returned, having delivered the souls I carried to
Gavril, my Lili would lie with me, and her gentle light would clear
the despair that might otherwise prove overwhelming. Lili feared
for her friends amongst the Roma community and it was good reason
that she did, for they, too, became a target for the authorities,
keen to show their German allies that they shared the same disdain
for those populations not seen to be pure.

We had to be
careful ourselves, as Cŵn Annwn. Rumours started to spread, of how
there were elements of the Nazi party who were interested in
anything which might give them an advantage. Fears were kindled,
deliberately, so that those with whom we might have done business
in saner times, saw an opportunity to gain by guile what they could
not gain honestly. Gavril instructed us to be cautious, and with
good reason. We were but one Mated pair, but there were many more
in the Pack, and each might be targeted: threaten one Mate to gain
the co-operation of the other. So we were careful. We dealt with
those whom we knew we could trust, and only because we had the
advantage of being able to read souls.

It was not the
best time for us to bring a child into the world, but these things
happen. We hoped that despite all that was happening around us,
that Lili was expecting our first child might mean that the war
would end soon, that the hatred and intolerance, the belief that
whole races should be exterminated would be consigned to history.
We hoped, because we were young, and we wanted to believe that
those around us were essentially good. We wanted to believe that we
might be like any other couple deeply in love. We wanted to believe
that we could be a family and watch our child grow to manhood.

I remember
that Lili would take each little garment that she made for you,
Rhys, and lay it carefully in a chest which I had made for that
purpose. Each little shirt which she sewed for you was layered
carefully with dried herbs, so that when the time came for them to
be needed, they would bear a relaxing scent. Each little blanket,
each sleeping robe went into that chest, in preparation for your
arrival. Rhys, your mother loved you so much, even before you were
born, because you were proof that our Mating was strong. You were
proof of the blessing of the Goddess on our Mating.

I have never
felt such pride when you came into the world, Rhys. My son. I had a
son, who would follow in my footsteps, I hoped. A son to whom I
might teach all that a male Cŵn Annwn needed to know, so that he
might carry out the harvests that were necessary. Your hair is the
same colour as your mother’s but other than that, the only thing
that you bore of her was your smile. From the moment you were born,
you smiled at us, waving your fists as if to say, “I am here!”
There was no greater feeling of contentment for me that to watch
you at your mother’s breast, as you took your nourishment. Lili
would rest against me, my arms around her waist as she held you to
her breast, and my hand would wander up, to stroke your soft
hair.

She wanted to
show you to her friends. I suppose it was only natural, and how
were we to know how dangerous that might be. How were we to know?
These were people we had known for years. These were Roma whom we
had watched be born. They knew what we were but even with the
suspicion starting to permeate the atmosphere around us, we did not
consider that they would pose a danger to us. And they did not. It
was not Lili’s Roma friends who posed the danger, but others, who
saw your mother’s beauty, and would follow her as she visited her
friends. It was others who were jealous that such beauty, her
features being all that they saw as signs of racial purity. It was
one other, who had watched Lili from afar, and somehow convinced
himself that Lili should be his. The sight of Lili visiting with
her friends, with you in her arms had acted as some sort of
incendiary to this person.

I remember the
day so clearly. Lili had come running back to the Hall from
visiting her Roma friends. They didn’t live at the Hall, as their
grandparents had done, so habitually, Lili would flash to a
location close to their home, and arrive on foot. What had started
as a happy day had turned to anything but a joyous visit. As she
had turned to leave her friend’s simple home, this person who had
put your mother on some sort of pedestal of racial purity saw that
she carried a child with her hair, but with the features of
another, with the eyes of another. For the first time, your mother
felt the vicious hatred of another, and she had taken a step back,
holding you closer to her, even though you were wrapped safe in a
carrying blanket. Shaking her head, she had turned to flee, wanting
to protect you, her precious babe. The man had grabbed her hair,
pulling her to a stop, turning her around, and pulling the blanket
from your face. The damning proof that she had lain with another.
That was how the hatred which pulsed from this individual felt to
your mother: you were the visible proof that she was no longer
pure.