The Truth Against the World (2 page)

2

Four white trefoils sprang up behind her wherever she went; and for that reason she was called Olwen, of the white track…

“Kilhwch and Olwen,” from
The Mabinogion,
in The Red Book of Hergest

I still felt like I was caught in a dream; my mind, all cobwebs. Seven a.m.

By seven p.m., we
'
d be back home again and everything would be different.

I pulled on a block-printed skirt and sat on the edge of the bed, lacing up my calf-high boots, then paused for a moment, listening to the prerecorded voice coming through my computer speakers.

“
Mae'r tywydd yn braf
, ” I repeated haltingly, trying to concentrate. The weather is fine. “
Sut dych chi?
” How are you?

“
Olwen ydw i
.” My name is Olwen.

With every repetition, I tried to remember how Gee Gee, my great-grandmother, added that special lilt at the end of every word. When she spoke Welsh, it almost sounded like singing, more magical than ordinary speech.

I'd learned the words, but I wanted to get it
right
.

I swallowed past a sudden lump in my throat and closed my eyes for a moment.

“
Wyn!
Five minutes! And bring those empty boxes down with you.”

I winced, my mother's voice piercing even through the closed bedroom door. “Coming!” I called.

With one hand, I grabbed my black sweater off the back of the chair; with the other, I hit
Publish
on my latest blog post, letting the past few weeks of my life fly off into the ether. Disappearing into unread oblivion, probably, like everything else I'd posted. In a way, it freed me up to write whatever I felt like writing, no matter how weird.

Language is like music, and each language is a different instrument,
one of my posts began.
Welsh is like gently plucked harp strings.

Another one:
Finished up book on Norse mythology. Back to the Mabinogion—Ceridwen and Gwion Bach, the original story. So much better than the Black Cauldron movie. Mind blown.

Or:
Sometimes I feel like I'm too strange to relate to anyone. Even my strangeness is strange.

Ruminations, obsessions, fascinations. Things I couldn't even talk about with Rae, let alone any of my other friends. But this morning's post was different.

It was harder than I'd anticipated: putting into words all the constantly shifting feelings that well up inside you when you find out someone you love is going to die.

I closed my laptop and grabbed the stack of empty file boxes from under my desk. The drive to Gee Gee's house in Mendocino would take three hours, and then we'd bring her back here to San Francisco and move her into Mom's cramped office. There was already a hospital bed, delivered yesterday and wedged into the corner under the window.

“
Gwely
,” I mumbled, maneuvering the stack of boxes through the hallway and dropping them near the front door. Bed.

I'd been learning a lot of new words.

Metastasized. Carcinoma.

I closed my eyes for a moment and leaned against the wall next to the door.

My mom walked in, footsteps clacking on the hardwood. “Where's your father?”

I shook my head.

“I need him to hang up his bike so we can put Gee Gee's boxes on that side of the garage,” she said, dropping a roll of packing tape into my hands as she breezed past into the back of the house.

I slipped the roll of tape onto my wrist. Everything around me was changing so quickly. But I had to keep up. I had to learn; I had to feel like I was accomplishing something.

If I didn't, then I'd have to admit that I really didn't know anything about
anything
. That this situation—Gee Gee's illness—was something I couldn't control or fix, no matter how many words I repeated to myself, no matter what I wrote or who might read it.

That night, after hours of driving, of carrying boxes and unpacking the car and moving Gee Gee's life into our small Victorian-style flat, I was exhausted, and so was Gee Gee. But she called me into her room in Mom's office anyway.

She was already holding the musty old book open on her lap, carefully turning its thin, foxed pages until she reached the right spot. This had been our bedtime ritual for years, whenever she visited, but this time it felt different. It felt like there was a catch in my heart.

Not quite able to look at her, I settled in on the adjustable bed, snuggling in the way I used to when I was little. As a child, I'd had no trouble fitting under the covers beside her, but today, at age fifteen, I felt tall and ungainly next to her fragile frame.

“‘Kilhwch and Olwen, or the Twrch Trwyth.'” It was a myth from the
Mabinogion
, a collection of medieval Arthurian legends. A book I'd loved almost to tatters. A story I'd heard a thousand times.

I wished I could hear it a thousand times more.

It wasn't just because of the name “Olwen”—the name Gee Gee herself suggested for me on the day I was born. It was
all
the names, the sounds of Welsh rolling off my great-grandmother's tongue like the strange liquid language of some unearthly being, undulating like the hills of the seaside town in Wales where she grew up, whispering, beckoning. The language of heaven, Gee Gee always said.

She cleared her throat, adjusted her reading glasses, and began to speak.

“Kilydd, the son of Prince Kelyddon, desired a wife as a helpmate, and the wife that he chose was Goleuddydd, the Daylight One.”

Her voice always comforted me, like a warm blanket of sound. While she read, I reached onto the end table for the lovespoon that had hung on her kitchen wall for as long as I could remember. My fingers traced the carvings in the rich reddish-brown wood: an intricate tracery of knotwork and heart shapes, twining together and apart like vines until they joined at the bottom in the smooth bowl of a spoon.

“They had a son through the prayers of the people. From the time of her pregnancy, Goleuddydd became wild, and wandered about … ”

The knots and twists of the spoon symbolized togetherness, two becoming one; the hearts symbolized love. I could almost hear the echo of Gee Gee's voice explaining it to me. That morning, I had carefully swaddled it in bubble wrap and put it into a box of other keepsakes, scrawling the word “fragile” across the lid with a blue marker.

The wood was soft under my hands, surprisingly unworn despite year after year—decade after decade—of being nestled in the palms of my great-grandmother, and then in the hands of Grandpa William, who'd died in Vietnam long before I was born; and, much later, my father's. And mine. The only thing interrupting the smooth surface was a tiny incised shape on the back of the spoon's bowl, the carver's mark—two tiny squared-off hillocks like a blocky M, or an E. I knew every millimeter of that spoon and it felt familiar, reassuring.

“ … And Kilhwch's father inquired of him, ‘What has come over thee, my son, and what aileth thee?' ‘My stepmother has declared to me that I shall never have a wife until I obtain Olwen … '”

I closed my eyes and let Gee Gee's voice wash over me, rich and low. It wasn't the voice of someone with less than a year left to live. I tried to picture her as a girl in love; tried to picture a handsome young man presenting her with the lovespoon as a token of affection, like in a fairy tale or an Arthurian legend. An old friend, maybe, or a former love. Not my great-grandfather; I knew that much. All she would ever say about the spoon was that it was from someone in her past, someone who was gone now.

If only I could have known her then. If only we had more time.

3

Ni ddaw doe byth yn ôl.

Yesterday will never return.

Welsh proverb

Gareth sat up in bed and rubbed grit out of his eyes. His legs were tangled in the sheets, half-exposed to the chilly air, and the rest of him was drenched in sweat. He'd been dreaming about—what was it? Some kind of headstones and whatnot. Next he'd be dreaming about zombies drooling their way out of the graveyard and eating his brains. Playing
Resident Evil
late into the night had perhaps not been his cleverest idea.

After shaking off the cobwebs, he had a shower. His dream had been vivid and sharp, like a memory, though it was dissipating rapidly now. Was it possible to have a dream that was a memory at the same time? Pondering, Gareth rinsed the shampoo out of his hair and shut off the water. The problem was, you'd never really be able to tell whether it was more than just a dream. The brain was good at making things up. He suspected you couldn't really even trust your memories, could you? It was all subjective. Shaking his head, he wrapped a towel around his waist and jogged barefoot down the drafty hallway back to his room.

He pulled on his school uniform—dark blue pants and jacket, white shirt, dreadful striped tie—and wandered down the narrow staircase looking for breakfast. His mum was just running out the door with Tommy, and his dad was already gone.

He glanced at the clock; how did it get so late? After rapidly inhaling two bowls of muesli, he stuffed various books and papers into his school bag and dashed to the bus stop just as the bus was pulling up, wiping the sweat from the back of his neck.

His first day back at school after the holidays, and he already felt tired.

After a history test, double maths, a horrifying lunch of gray mystery stew, and a new project in Information Technology on web animations, Gareth was eager to get outside and be somewhere that didn't require higher brain functions. He joined the crush jostling through the hallway toward the doors.

On the way out, Amit fell into step next to him, grinning. “Brought a souvenir back from the countryside, I see.”

“What?”

“Your head. You look like you're wearing a miniature tan sheep.” Amit snickered.

“Don't take the piss. I
will
kill you. Very slowly and painfully.” Gareth tried to pat down his hair, but without a comb it was useless.

“Oh, speaking of death and destruction,” Amit said, “I started animating a zombie for the IT project. Decaying bits falling off and everything.”

Gareth frowned. “I wanted to do a mythology thing,” he said, “but so far I can't get Medusa's hair to writhe properly.” They stepped onto the bus behind a crowd of other uniformed students.

“It seems like I should have something obscene to say about that. But I can't think of anything,” Amit replied a bit mournfully, sliding into a seat near the back of the bus. “I'm off my game.”

“Your brain must still be on holiday.” Gareth slid in next to his friend and jabbed an elbow into his ribs.

After a brief scuffle, Amit said, “Speaking of the holidays, how were the wild Welsh hinterlands? That sad photo was the last thing I got from you.”

“Yeah, sorry. The charge ran out on my mobile. I dropped it down a hole and it must have dislodged the battery or something.” Gareth pulled out his phone and scrolled through the pictures from the past week. “Look at Tommy,” he said, pointing to a photo of his brother wearing Great-Granddad's old mining helmet. It covered the entire top half of his head. Great-Granddad was in the midst of reaching out to snatch the helmet back, looking furious.

“What's the old guy's problem, then?” Amit asked.

“Dunno. He always looks like that.” Gareth scrolled through a few more photos. “He's all right, though.”

“For a Taff.”

“No need to be racist.”

“Sorry, Mum.” Amit grinned. “Seriously, I was afraid you'd come back spouting all that Welshy unpronounceable gibberish.”

Gareth gave him a look. “You're one to talk.”

“Gujarati is a noble language.”

“The only words you know are insults,” Gareth pointed out. “Anyway, what'd you do here all week? Play
Halo
until your eyeballs started bleeding?”

Amit launched into a lengthy story about his cousins visiting from Blackpool. Meanwhile, Gareth continued flipping through pictures. He rather liked the one he'd taken of the ruined church, the sea in the background a pale blue blur blending into the cloudy sky. There was a faint figure just disappearing around the back of the collapsing building; probably one of his parents. He scrolled to the next photo: a view of the dismal churchyard with its lichen-covered headstones, the ancient cromlech looming behind them, and his parents holding hands and looking out to sea. It had been a peaceful day, just the three of them. No Tommy to give him a headache.

Just the three of them, and the girl. Gareth suppressed a shiver. He hoped she'd found her parents. He really hadn't seen anyone anywhere else around; he was sure of it. She seemed a bit young to run away from home, but what did he know? And then she'd just vanished. Maybe her family lived somewhere nearby.

Had to be.

Amit finished his story and turned to talk to a girl across the aisle, so Gareth scrolled to the next picture: a shot of the sad little cairn with the grave plaque of the girl who'd died in 1950. The greenery grew close, partially obscuring the inscription, but he could still read it.

As he stared at the photo, something else began to take shape. It was a faint, fuzzy outline, a small figure, transparent white against the background of dark gray stone and slate. He blinked his eyes rapidly, took off his glasses and cleaned them, and then held the phone close to his face.

The shape was even clearer than before. Gareth knew it hadn't been there when he'd taken the photo.

He knew
she
hadn't been there.

It was a little girl in a white dress, her feet bare. The same girl he'd seen under the cromlech. The one who'd called herself Olwen.

Just a moment ago, the photo had been normal—just a picture of old rocks and a grave. He'd swear to it. He remembered the moment he'd taken the shot, too, and he'd been completely alone. But now there was something else there—some
one
else.

The skin prickled on the back of Gareth's neck. He scrolled back to the photo of the ruined church and zoomed in on the figure he'd thought was one of his parents.

A flash of white dress. Slender, almost skinny limbs. A bare foot. Long, dark hair.

He frantically scrolled ahead again, to the picture of the cairn. He could see the girl's face relatively clearly now, though her whole image looked like someone had gone into Photoshop and smudged it with a Gaussian blur. He grasped onto that thought—maybe this was someone's idea of a joke? Had Amit gotten hold of his phone? Altered his photos somehow?

But Gareth's entire body had gone cold, because he knew for a fact that there was only one person who'd handled his phone in days, besides himself.

And he wasn't even sure that person was real.