“Then trust me.”
Their eyes met—a tether hung with too much regret. The druid pulled away and let it stretch taut.
“The crown is a symbol of vitality and growth. It is also said that he who wears his wreath through the night can drink without consequence,” said the druid.
“Then there’ll be ale?” asked the Vaich.
“Of course not.”
“Mm. The longer I stay, the more I’m sure I’ll turn just as mad as you.”
“I could enjoy the man, if he be mad.”
The Vaich smiled, and the druid couldn’t decide what to make of that.
Once, the king had been the predator, then the prey, and now he was neither. He looked at the druid, not in threat or fear, but something far more pitiful.
Something more devout.
He squirmed out of the thought.
“I ken you’ve no reason to wish to…” The Vaich’s hesitation was abnormally loud. He shifted uneasily, and tapped his leg. He had never hid his emotions well and his discomfort was contagious. “I thought I might… I mean, there’s things I’d like to ask…”
“What would a king ask of me?”
“There’s much I dinnae ken of your kin.” The Vaich’s face strained as if he’d misspoken. “Of you.”
“No,” the druid agreed, “and why should you like to? It has never bothered you before.”
“Is it so wrong for a man to wish to know of his…” The Vaich’s fingers clenched upon his knee, his amber signet glinting. “Forget it.”
The words vanished, but the sensation remained. The druid felt bare, as if he had been stripped raw. And his fear grew. Not from the cold that lapped his bones, but the unpalatable realization that he enjoyed it.
This was a man he could not forgive. A man that had stood against him. Even now he was an anchor, whether by choice or fate, and the druid could not forget what he stood for. Outside the green walls of his ancient forests was a world of brute power and cruel faith. He could not save one without the other, thus he had allowed that power to permeate. But what had grown in that fertile soil warmed him like a raging fire.
And fire was terrifying.
The Fíor called out and the children gathered watching as he conjured shapes in mist and smoke—faceless people made of tufts of little clouds.
“It is beautiful magick,” whispered the Vaich.
The sage spoke an old story in their elder speech and the Vaich leaned towards the druid and whispered, “What does he say?”
“He tells the story of the Awakening, when men first hatched from the trees. Long ago, when we were all as one, before fire and ice divided us. When the forest covered all of Cúil Cullach and we honored the earth, the wind and sea. He tells of the Naém’a who taught us to speak, to listen and answer the land’s spirit.”
In the oldest stories, the first of men lived in primal peace. Though, little was known of that ere. What followed was a fracturing into east and west, and the clans that lived in the highlands. Still, for a time, they were congenial and compliant. They bartered, and traded, and learned as one. But not long after came the first of the faiths and men gave the gods form. Back then, they were animals and bodied creatures, and that persisted for a long while. Those who warned against it kept to the root belief that the spirits were forces of nature. They were called druids, custodians of the earth, but their words grew less wanted. Thousands of years later, they were all but forgotten. And now here they were, in solitary.
The druid watched his kinsmen in their mantles of woven grass. They sang songs and told stories; tales of the stars and the trees.
And he remembered.
He had forgotten being a child. Forgotten the simpleness and fragility. Watching the bonfires burn beneath the green sky, he recalled that faraway life. The one he could no longer claim his own.
The one he had betrayed.
“How strange I have become.” The druid spoke the words to no one, but the Vaich had heard.
“You still belong.”
