by Jess Evans

Content Warnings: Death, Substance Abuse

Not a soul in my drowned kingdom had known their king was visited by the Tylwyth Teg.

I sat shivering at the base of a ragged cliff, staring down towards the storm-tossed bay which, only a few days ago, had been my kingdom of Cantre'r Gwaelod.

After months of battle, horror, and pain, I had reluctantly agreed to give the order to return home, leaving the frontier behind. The journey had taken two weeks, my heart growing heavier with every day we drew closer to home. My host weakened as the miles sapped the last of their strength. Yet still they pushed on, driven by the thought of warm fires and the faces of their loved ones.

Only to find nothing.

The few coherent survivors we found described it to us: the ocean had disappeared, as if drawing in its final breath. Then surged forward with a vengeance that had drowned Cantre'r Gwaelod from the earth. This land had always been weathered, its torn edges brutalized by time and the relentless turn of the seasons. It had fought for centuries to keep its place on the precipice where land met sea, but now it seemed nature had finally won.

My kingdom was drowned—and my secret safe beneath the waves.

Many long nights I had prayed for freedom. For an end to my rule. Wishing that somehow I’d never have to see Cantre'r Gwaelod again. But never like this.

I lifted my battered waterskin to my lips and tipped the rough alcohol down my throat, trying to focus on its burn. Hoping it would distract me from the afterimages of the wounded survivors I had abandoned with my soldiers, their mutilated bodies lying on cloths in our makeshift medical tents at the base of the hill. I pictured my general, rushing from tent to tent, searching for me.

They all seemed to stare at me through the mist, faces frozen in laughter and screams. I took another swallow.

If ever there was a day I needed you—truly needed you—it would be this day, Gwyn.

The thought came before I could stop it, bringing such a painful ache to my chest that tears blurred my vision. My secret.

Ice wind whistled across the hilltop like the wails of Gwyllion spirits. I sobbed, thinking of my people drowning beneath the wall of water, their king a hundred miles away fighting an endless border-pursuit they cared nothing about.

I do not know how long I sat there, watching the waves, picking out the dark pinpricks of rock marking all that remained of Sarn Badrig, the dyke that had acted as our fortification for generations. The air was heavy with the tang of salt and the smell of it tinged every breath I took with nausea.

Gwyddno, the wind whispered. Gwyddno Garanhir.

A chill pierced the barren hilltop and fear sunk into my bones. Gwyllion. The spectral figures said to haunt the mountaintops. I had never seen one, but I knew better than to doubt the existence of hidden things.

I rose, straining my eyes as I tried to gaze through the mist. As I watched, it seemed to shift—fluid and malleable, as if a hand were twisting it. Gwyddno, the wind whispered.

But it was not the voice of the Gwyllion.

Shapes formed in the mist. At first I saw soldiers. Ghosts of the frontier toying with me, dragging corpses from my dreams and bringing them to life on the hilltop. I blinked away the visions, realising there was only a single figure approaching.

As I watched, the shade came towards me through the mist. Tall, thin, dark. His body seemed to twist with the tendrils of fog, simultaneously controlling them and composed of them, as if tugging one vaporous thread would unravel him. My breath caught. Heart beating a deep pulse that seemed to throb with the landscape.

It was him.

At war, in the cold still nights whilst my soldiers dreamed of home and family, it had not been Cantre'r Gwaelod that my heart ached for, but memories. Whispered conversation in the firelight. Thin fingers laced with mine. Cold, fathomless eyes—swirling gates to the passing of centuries. Moments that came with no human rhythm or reason. So I waited for his visits, clutching them tight when they came, yet losing them all the same.

Gwyn ap Nuud. Lord of the Tylwyth Teg of Annwn.

The mist solidified as he approached, throwing him into sharp relief. His long delicate hair was ebony black, as was his skin and knotted clothes. Fabric trailed from his tight, supple armour like rags, drifting in the chill wind. Pale white eyes shone like will o’ wisps.

When he saw me, he ran to me.

“Gwyddno.” His voice blended with the wind, hollow, and light, and then he was there, embracing me. I held on, my mind falling back to one hundred lost moments. One hundred dreams and hopes. His arms felt fragile around me. One could never guess this delicate being had seen the ages rise and fall.

“Did you hear me?” I choked out. I wasn’t sure if I meant this time, or another, or all of them. Perhaps it didn’t matter.

Gwyn drew back and searched my face, his eyes boring into mine. They were what truly set him apart from humankind. Behind his eyes burned the memory of every soul he’d ever loved, shifting in the pale mist of Annwn—the Otherworld. Eyes like those could only belong to the Tylwyth Teg.

“I am sorry,” he said gently.

I cried for a while, I think, although I am not sure how long. Time moves differently near the fair folk. Eventually, Gwyn lifted my chin with a long finger.

“Come,” he whispered. There was a strange weight to his words that made me wonder. Gwyn stretched his hand towards me. Strips of black fabric tied up his forearm and around his wrist, twisting between his fingers.

Even before I spoke I knew that I wouldn’t disobey. We were both kings of our land, but no king refused the lord of Annwn. As if you would ever consider saying no to him.

I nodded. “Where?”

“You will need to bring something,” Gwyn replied. “Something from this world. So you do not become lost in mine.”

Lost in mine. “You’ll take me to Annwn?” My blood ran cold. I had asked him, before, as we lay in the dark. He had seen my kingdom, I’d tried—could I not see his? But his answer had always been the same. Not yet.

“You need hope, Gwyddno,” Gwyn brushed my arm. “You lost it along with your home. But perhaps you could find it in mine. Choose something, to tether you to the land of the living. Or you may never return.”

I felt guilty. Gwyn saw my anguish and believed I mourned Cantre'r Gwaelod—and I did. Truly. I was sorry for the lives lost in the disaster. It was just… More complicated than that. I tightened my grip on the waterskin. My feelings about home were twisted and painful, a barbed web I tried to bury as deep as possible. After so many years, speaking of it felt impossible. Even to Gwyn.

Gwyn mistook my pause for hesitation. “Do not fear,” he said. “When you return no time will have passed.”

I cast around the hilltop, searching the rubble and brown grasses. Eventually, my eyes fell on a spill of red blodau. I bent down and plucked one. “Will this do?”

Gwyn smiled and nodded. “Now—come.”

So I took his hand and let him lead me into the shadows.

✿

The journey to Annwn was long and dark. Gwyn guided me through the liminal space of the world; down through the earth, deep within the oceans, and across the night sky. All that existed was his hand in mine, anchoring me to the path, and the blodyn clutched in my other, tying me to the land of the living.

Eventually, we emerged from the shadows and the world solidified.

Annwn, the Otherworld. Land of spirits and the Tylwyth Teg.

Gwyn smiled at me, his eyes dancing as he watched my mind attempt to grasp the wonder stretched out before me.

Black sand covered the earth, rising in hills and valleys, sliced with rivers dark as roiling tar. The sky was a web of stars, billions more than were ever visible in my world. We stood atop a rise, just as we had on the other side, surrounded by shadowy trees with leaves of twisting smoke.

But Annwn was not colorless. For before us, a little further up the hill, rose Caer Wydyr: a great fortress taller than any castle I had ever seen. Gwyn had told me stories of it—the Caer of glass tears, splitting the spectrum into piercing beams of color. It spiralled up into the heavens, colors shifting in its glass walls, its peak disappearing into the vaporous clouds.

“My home,” Gwyn said with quiet pride.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Is it as I described?” he asked. “I admit I struggled to find the words in your language.”

I nodded. “As near as anyone could make them.”

Gwyn stepped closer. His eyes seemed to glow brighter in Annwn. “Gwyddno… I am so sorry for what happened to your home. And your people.”

“I know,” I said, squeezing his hand tighter.

“You are upset,” Gwyn continued. Human emotions often puzzled him, but he was improving at reading them. I almost smiled despite everything as I remembered attempting to explain them to him. “That is understandable. But there is something else—isn’t there?”

I sighed and squeezed my eyes closed, picturing Cantre'r Gwaelod for a moment. Perhaps explaining human emotion had been a mistake.

“Do you remember when we first met?” I asked.

“Of course.” I could not see his face, but I heard the puzzlement in his voice. “You found me, in the woods.”

I nodded. “Your ankle was broken, so I took you back to my camp to heal and rest. After a few days you trusted me enough to reveal yourself. I should’ve been surprised, or scared—but I wasn’t. Because how could you not be who you were?”

Gwyn stayed silent, waiting for me to continue. After a moment I did, the words coming quicker now, spilling from my lips. Everything I could not say whilst I waited for him. Everything I had kept hidden from my siblings and my mother. The truth, forming a path to the barbed knot deep inside.

“After that first meeting I did not stop thinking of you. I wondered if perhaps you’d enchanted me. But when you visited me again and we talked and I got to know you better, I knew that wasn’t what had happened. I simply loved you.”

“And I loved you too, Gwyddno,” Gwyn’s voice cracked. “I still do. But you know—I told you—that I cannot visit more often, no matter how much I wish to. The veil between the worlds is not often thin…”

“I know,” I interrupted. “This isn’t about that. I understand why we can’t see each other more and that’s okay. What I’m trying to tell you is… I’m trying to say…” How could I find the words? How could I admit how I truly felt? Not about Gwyn, no—he already knew how much I loved him—but about... Home.

“Cantre'r Gwaelod was my prison, Gwyn,” I said softly, opening my eyes but not looking at him. “No one really knew me, even before I met you. When I became king, I fought wars, visited allies, established trade routes—anything to leave and to stay away. I don’t know why exactly. Why I felt so separate there, so trapped. I think perhaps it was thinking of the future—my place on the throne. A fate I could never steer away from. The feeling that my life was not truly mine.

“And I tried to forget. You know that. I drank. I drank so much Gwyn. When we gave up the campaign and were on the journey home, I drowned myself, dreading our return. I wished…” My voice wavered and I stopped. It took a moment before I could continue.

“Then when we did arrive, and my kingdom was gone… Despite the disaster, the deaths, the land we’ll never get back… Part of me was…” A bitter taste filled my mouth but I forced out the words. “Part of me was glad.”

It was a painful relief. The barbed knot torn out by force, ripping my insides as it did so, but leaving bleeding solace in its wake. I breathed hard, as if I’d run the journey from the frontier.

For a while Gwyn said nothing. There was no wind in Annwn, nothing to stir the silence.

Perhaps this is it, I thought. Perhaps I’ve finally pushed him away for good. He thinks me a monster—and perhaps I am.

“Would you like a new one?” he asked.

I startled and looked up at him. “What?”

“A new one,” he repeated. Gwyn took a breath and spread his hands. “Leave it all behind. Your people will need to start anew either way. Leave it to your brothers or sister. You could stay here. With me.” He motioned up at Caer Wydyr, shining in the darkness.

I lifted my head, the fortress of glass tears rising before me. Stay here, in the Otherworld. Abandon my siblings and what was left of my people to rebuild without their king.

What good a king were you anyway? Always drunk. Always off fighting pointless wars. And what good a sibling? Distant. Distracted.

Leaving them would be a mercy.

I could find all the reasons I wished, but I knew what they were. Conjured justifications and excuses. Could I really be this selfish? Was there really nothing about my world that I would miss?

The thought of it made my heart skip. Could I really do this? It felt dangerous. It felt possible.

Gwyn held his hand out to me, just as he had on the hilltop at Cantre'r Gwaelod, ready to lead me to Annwn. And just like I had then I knew I wouldn’t say no to him.

I looked down at the flower clutched in my palm. My last link to the other side. Gwyn’s gaze followed mine.

“Would you like to think about it?” he asked. “You can take all the time you need. As I told you, time flows differently in Annwn—when you return to your world, it will be as if you never left.”

As if I never left.

No. I lifted my hand and took his, crushing the blodyn between our fingertips. Gwyn’s lips parted in surprise and his eyes darted to mine. “Gwyddno…” I stared into the swirling mists of his irises—the memories of the loved ones he’d lost—and I knew in that moment that my memory would join them, burning behind his eyes forever.

Gwyn drew my hand to his chest, red petals slipping between our fingers. I could feel the cold emptiness where a human heart would be. We could have been the only beings in existence, standing there in the cold of Annwn.

And so, although my breath quickened and my cheeks flooded with heat, I felt a matching stillness in my own chest. A rhythm that I had never quite realized was there, suddenly halted. A part of me lost.

✿

On the hilltop, King Gwyddno Garanhir’s heart stopped beating.

The bottle slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground.

❀✿❀

Jess Evans (she/her) writes mini sci-fi and fantasy stories. She lives in Wales, where she reads books and imagines the rain hides all manner of mystical realms.