“Please. Won’t you tell me more?” I try to meet her gaze. “What have I ruined?”
“That girl of yours. She sits in her room and wails for ’ee, as if she hasn’t a mother a’tall.” She shakes her head. “Comes over for warm milk in the morns, she does, and follows me about while I milk and feed. An’ bully if I don’t sweep her up with me own young’n and mother the poor waif.”
Milk and feed.That’swhat I smell. The world tips, another life eclipsing my current reality at the edges. I force a sliver of it into focus and realize, looking intently into those faded eyes, that she hasn’t got it right. Almost, but not quite. The woman leans close and the earthy smell of sheep and pigs and moldy old straw sharpen the images floating just out of view. The barn is red on top, stone on bottom with a swinging lantern and a double door that won’t latch. She busies herself out there every morning until…
Until I join her. I’m the girl. Not Anwen Dunn, but the girl Anwen left behind.
A sense of the familiar streaks through my brain the more I stare at this woman’s shrunken form. The waves of my past are just off the shore, gaining height as they roll in, ready to swallow me. My heart’s in my throat.
“Now get ’ee inside and see to that chile ’ee had the gall to leave behind. G’on now, get!” A decisive shove and she’s off, lifting her burden onto her back, securing the band on her hat, and trundling side to side up the narrow footpath. “Y’call to oleMorveth when you want to give that Merryn girl a proper mum, hear?” She emphasizes the first sound in my name, softens ther. Mern.The way she says it…it’s right.
Sand blows about my feet, and an odd dizziness besets me. I walk up and push open the door. It’s stone cold and dark inside but the past stirs in the musty air. Low timbered ceilings, a long-dead hearth, and bare whitewashed walls that offer a humble embrace, and when I close my eyes there ismusic. I blink, and my throat closes. There it is—on the wall opposite the door, carved into the timber, are the words my soul had tried to remember.
He hideth my soul
In the cleft of the rock
Yet there’s more. Music has tantalized me from the fringes of my mind for weeks, and this house, this cottage, is where it all originated. I step inside and let history wrap around me, breath shallow as I wait for my eye to catch upon something familiar. Something that will trigger memories to come cascading back.
But there’s only a hint.
“Do you know it?” AJ whispers behind me.
I inhale the damp air as the songs swell, all playing at once. I cling to the doorframe wrapped in thick rose vines, and the music settles into one song, strong and lilting.
Oh, the bonny bunch of roses,
They are bloomin' on the lea…
I close my eyes ashomewraps around me. The musty, earthy smell, the pewter dishes upon the shelf, the scratched and battered refectory table crowding the room…
And people. I hear their lost voices, see their faces. Especiallyher—the gorgeous dark-haired woman with teasing eyes, her songs echoing about the rooms.
How I’d like to be there,
With my love a-sittin’ on my knee…
Images, sounds, and sensations crest over me in soft waves. I grab the table, letting myself float in them. I feared drowning in the memories, but now I’m submerged. I open my eyes under the water…and see clearly.
But she left me once,
She left me thrice
And now I’m clinging to
The bonny bunch of roses
With the thorns upon the lea…
I rise and walk to the fireplace, placing my hand on the letters carved there. “I made these.”
“You remember.”
“I wanted to leave my mark. To make certain people knew I had been here.”
“You must have been quite happy here.”
“Yes. That is…no.” Sadness curls through my soul the longer I stand before the cold, dead hearth, and her song strengthens.
