I scroll through the charts of stars I've memorised near to Earth. Corona Australis Nebula, five hundred years out, in the constellation Southern Crown. A smudged cirrus of debris and two bright eyes of new stars, where the radiation from explosions has cleared away the gas. It looks like an owl. Or the Pleiades, whose seven sisters are really a thousand or more. A blue light, Merope six hundred times more luminous than the sun.
I try to remember the next stage further out. As a boy, I took pleasure in devouring these sky maps but now I draw a blank.
I know. The dark nebulae are next, looking like
streamers in a background so thick with stars it's
almost solid. Those are seen in the ionised light of stars six to eight hundred light years away, like Antares. Or the Helix Nebula, with its cometary knots, each one twice the size of our solar system, but looking like fancy stitches in a craftwork, or the firework of a second â a rocket shot into the night. Or the Snake Nebula, seen against stars twenty-five thousand light years away. Is that far enough?
She
Campion, I really think that, as Lleu, you should come home. That's our way forward.
He
Well, none of my other ideas have worked. You've taken every part requested of you, done everything I've asked. OK. Nona, anything you say.
*
He
Loving a woman made of flowers isn't easy.
She seems compliant, smiles at my talk. She looks
as though she's concentrating hard, struggling to
understand my words. I try to help her and explain the ways of the court, but it seems to me that she's bored. She goes walking constantly and I find her wandering outside the fort, as if she's more comfortable in the open air.
She
He thinks he's some kind of conservatory, a hot
house, in which I will thrive. He looks at me
endlessly, I pretend not to notice.
He
I visit her timidly, like a humming-bird. I'm cautious,
however, look at the bloom, dash off. I return,
coming closer, lean back in the air, resting my wings on an invisible wire. Then I scare. Then finally I have the courage to sip. She lets me in.
She
Tell me, I say to him one day. How can you die?
I ask because I'm worried. What would become of me if anything happened to you?
He
So that's why she's always so distracted. My wife has been fretting. I can put her mind at ease.
She
And here's where the story goes all medieval again. He says it's not easy to kill him with a blow.
The spear that would strike him has to be made only when people are at mass on Sunday.
He
Nor can I be killed indoors, nor outdoors. Nor on foot nor on horseback.
She
Tell me, I beg him, how exactly you may be killed.
He
It's a matter, I say, of acting out contradiction. I'd
have to be under a sort of roof but out in a field. Then I'd have to be standing with one foot on the
back of a goat, the other on the edge of a bath. If
I were hit like that, I could die.
She
Darling, your secret is safe with me.
*
He
Nona? Are you there?
She
Mm⦠I'm half asleep.
He
So am I, but I'm thinking whose magic stipulations
are these? It must be a stage of the game with a
different series of parameters.
She
This tells me more about Lleu than anything before, and I'm married to him.
He
Like what?
She
Well, look how he's already imagined his death in such detail.
He
But it's a highly unlikely set of circumstances.
She
Lleu's a balancer. Look at his uncle Math, who's not to be touching the ground, but yet not in the air. Lleu could easily be knocked over.
He
Just as his life has been a balancing act between his mother's curses and his uncles' magic spells.
She
Exactly.
He
But this is nothing to do with Aranrhod's hostility to Lleu. Where did it come from? It feels like we've missed a crucial part of the story.
She
Yes, like maybe a bit where, as a wedding gift,
Math decrees that Lleu will be immortal, except in circumstances which only he shall know and which should remain secret, or the gift is voided.
He
Then why tell Blodeuwedd?
She
Have you never told somebody something you shouldn't have? Something deeply personal? As part of a desperate bid for intimacy?
He
I can't say I have.
She
Are you quite sure about that? I can senseâ¦
He
Quite sure. Lleu's life depends on keeping Math's gift to himself. Why would he risk everything?
She
Oh, I don't know. Maybe part of him wants to see
what would happen if he stood in the riskiest
place. Here's a man whose life has been subject to conditions. He can live, but he'll have no name. He
has a name, but he'll have no weapons. He has
arms, but he'll have no wife. At last he reaches full maturity, has his own home, so no wonder he wants to live like any other man.
He
But he's not other men and he's inviting BlodeuÂwedd's betrayal. Why would he do that?
She
Imagine you're married and you love your wife.
There's one thing you can't tell her. What more
precious gift could you give her than that, a token that you totally trust her with your life?
He
But Nona, do you think he can trust Blodeuwedd?
She
That's not the issue, it's what Lleu must do to make himself feel most alive. He needs a betrayer. Think! He drew his first breath and was denied by his mother. That's the primal scene of his being. He loves his wife precisely because he's not sure that she'll
keep his secret. It's the only language he knows
approaching intimacy. Ironic, he gives Blodeuwedd the secret of his own death and that's the most married they'll ever be.
He
Of course, his uncles have always saved Lleu's hide.
She
So far. But any man would want to prove that he could make his way without being rescued time and again by his elders.
He
What does Blodeuwedd desire most?
She
To eat the light and be free to follow her nature.
And what about Lleu?
He
He wants, I think, to be fully seen by Blodeuwedd, apart from his uncles' conjuring tricks. His death is the best gift he can give her.
She
I'm feeling tired. Need to go back to sleep.
He
I'll leave you alone.
She
Campion?
He
Yes.
She
You know you can trust me. Tell me your secret.
He
Bugger off. I'll tell you tomorrow.
*
He
Can't sleep. Keep thinking, going round and round this current scenario. Nona's right, Lleu's a balancer, he's always walked a tightrope. They say such artists shouldn't look down. But what if the thought of falling takes root in his mind? The air whistling around him becomes attractive and he wants to see
the ground rushing up to kiss him with its real
embrace.
After all, there can be safety in falling. What else is our orbit but a fall towards the surface of Mars at a consistent rate, so that we describe the arc of
a circle?
Now I have to ask myself:
What is my secret? I'm a man who's lived alone. But isn't the truth that I'd ditch the fortress I've built round myself in an instant if I knew that a person saw me, could imagine me whole, including my dying?
I know why Lleu's crazy about his wife. She's the only one who's bothered to ask him the basic
question. How will he die? Everyone else is so deeply concerned with making him live. Only BlodeuÂwedd
can see that his death is the sole event he has under his control. And he chooses to give it to her; he loves her for everything that will happen now.
This investigation has entered a completely new phase. It would frighten me if I thought too long about it, but it makes me so alive that I can't stop. This isn't professional, nor even sane. But I'm willing to wager my own death to find out what happens. Will she?
I look to see if Nona's sleeping. I catch the glint of an eye, but I might be wrong.
*
She
So I tell Lleu, You have to show me exactly how it could be done, so that we may avoid it.
In VR time it's a year later. The hunter's hidden in the woods, with the spear he forged each Sunday while people were at mass.
He
As Lleu, I'm enjoying the game, want to see how
close I can come to the scenario of complete disaster
without succumbing. After all, every time so far,
I've survived.
She
I've had the arched roof made sturdy and thatched. And under it men have placed a tub, and filled it with water. Would you care to bathe?
He
I will, with pleasure.
She
So I watch Lleu wash. I admire him, how streams of diamonds fall from his body. I point out the billy goats grazing nearby. I invite him to see if he can stand on the tub and a goat. An experiment.
He
We laugh.
Won't be easy. The goat is skittish and pulls against the halter that holds him. I put my bare foot
on his warm back and it falls into a reverie. I'm
balanced on the bathtub's ridge, not inside and yet I'm under a roof, standing tall between heaven and earth.
She
I turn to the woods and see a spear hurtling towards Lleu. It's a shaft made of time. No man, however enchanted, can stand against it.
He
It surprises me utterly. I jolt awake to find the emergency alarm sounding, lights flashing.
The hull's been pierced by a javelin of light that hits me, stays in me, burns.
She
I find Campion in the docking module. He's jammed against a tear in the seal between our ship and the wreck. I close the hatch manually, cutting off the leak, then haul him back into our ship.
He's white as a sheet. Tenderly, I put him to rest in his sleeping net.
I wait.
*
He
Suddenly, I enter Lleu's mind completely.
I leave the scene of my death, an eagle.
13
The Tree
She
Think, think what to do.
Yes, of course, a Mayday to the Department, they'll send a relief vessel as soon as possible. But I need help now. Campion's absent or, rather, his mind's been taken by the VR. I'm in the virtual story too, so why don't I turn to one of the characters there for help? It is an emergency. Who would know what to do?
Not Blodeuwedd. She celebrates with the hunter, rejoices that she's free of her husband. Math? He's perplexed and saddened that all his plans have come
to this. He's sitting in court, with his feet in the lap of a virgin. No good. Aranrhod? She couldn't care less.
Gwydion's the man. The one who'll never give up on Lleu. He's never discouraged and won't take no for an answer. His magic will take on even the most hostile of circumstances.
Because he trusts his imagination.
*
He
I feel overwhelming shame. For telling all. For being betrayed and killed by Blodeuwedd. I fly up from my body. I should have died, but someone has rescued me with a spell for which I never asked. Gwydion or Math intent, as ever, on making me live when I choose to die, so I flee.
I rise almost vertically, with no regard for the Earth now miles below me.
I soar till I can hardly breathe, into the fierce winds of the stratosphere, up to the dark of night, the stars.
*
She
Campion, I'm coming! With Gwydion's help.
I lie next to the old man in his net and hold him. I close my eyes, let Gwydion's cunning take possession
of me. We've gone so deep into this game that, it seems, we can choose our roles at will. Or is it that they pick us? No matter. It's Gwydion I want, and Gwydion I get.