Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven (47 page)

Constable Ewynnog gaped at him, mouth working like a fish trying to breathe air. The other constables exchanged glances.

“You!” Idwal said, with a fierce frown, pointing at Ewynnog. “I know you! You are that interfering old maid who sat through my banns, scribbling notes as if you thought you were learning something! A fine piece of work that was, and in chapel too!”

“But—but—but—” Ewynnog sputtered. “You were missing! You were dead!”

Now Mari and Idwal looked at him as if he had sprouted tentacles. “When?” Mari asked, finally.

“But I found you here, the babies were gone, you were crying, and—”

“You must have fallen and struck your head; that is the most daft thing I have ever heard anyone say,” said Mari crossly, and went over to Idwal, who put his arm around her shoulders. “I never was.”

“But I arrested your father! I had him in my cell!” Ewynnog was spluttering now, and the other constables were moving, not at all surreptitiously, away from him.

“You what now?” Daffyd looked around from behind Idwal. “I don’t think so. Mari and Idwal and I took the babies up north to Stromness to meet their kin. His half-brother Rhodri came to fetch us in his ketch—look, there’s Rhodri now.” He pointed out to sea, and right on his cue, as alerted by Idwal via one of the Elementals, Rhodri sailed into view in his conventionally hulled fishing boat quite big enough to carry half a dozen. “He brought us back a couple days ago.”

“Is that so, sir?” asked one of the other constables politely.

“You can ask him yourself; he’s anchoring his craft now, he’ll be ashore in a bit.” Daffyd looked with pity on Ewynnog, who was going red and white by turns, and seemed quite unable to utter a single coherent word now, much less a sentence. He turned back to the constable that had addressed him. “You know, I don’t like to repeat gossip,” he said in a confiding tone, “But Blue Ruin has been the
downfall of many a stout fellow. And if people
will
send a man out alone to find something that can’t be found, and keep putting him under terrible strain when he can’t find it, you can’t blame the poor fellow for—” And Daffyd made a loose fist and put his thumb to his mouth and tipped back his head as if he was drinking from a bottle.

The other constable nodded wisely. Obviously, he couldn’t
say
anything without impugning Ewynnog, and by extension, the rest of the constabulary service. But what he did say was, “I am very sorry that we wasted your time, Mister Prothero. There was obviously a grave misunderstanding.”

“Quite all right,” Daffyd said grandly. “No harm done. We’ll just go and have our tea.”

“Very good, sir,” said the constable, pulling on the brim of his helmet. Then he turned to Ewynnog. “Come along, lad,” he said in a condescending voice. “It’s clear you were mistaken. Let’s just get all this sorted out now, shall we?”

“But they—but I—but—” Ewynnog said weakly, as they surrounded him and more or less herded him back to the carts. “But—but—but—”

Mari heard a peal of hysterical laughter at her feet. She looked down to see the malicious little Water Elemental contorted into a knot of hilarity.

“You know,” Daffyd said meditatively, watching the carts drive off again. “That was almost worth getting arrested over.”

“I have to say,” Mari said, looking at the fish pie, a pie in which half a dozen herring heads were staring up at her from the crust, “This thing is kind of… uncanny.”

“I promise, and I swear to you,” Nan replied, looking up from where she was playing with the babies on the floor, “That is exactly how they make it in Cornwall.”

“When you said they called it ‘stargazey pie,’ I was thinking it was going to look… well, not like this.” She shoved it in the oven. “I hope it tastes better than it looks.”

“It does,” Sarah assured her, and laughed at Grey, who was playing peek-a-boo with Aled by flipping a cloth over his face, then whisking it off. The baby found this hilarious. “But I warn you, the Cornish say that the reason that the devil never comes there is because he is afraid a Cornish housewife will make him into a pie. I don’t think there is a thing in the world that the Cornish haven’t tried to stuff into a crust.”

Mari laughed. “Oh, I am going to miss you two so much!”

Nan scooped up Aneirin and stood up, going over to hug her friend and handing Mari the boy with the same motion. Mari sat down and cuddled him. “Oh, you won’t miss us that much. You’ll have Rhodri here. Pish-tush, probably before too long, you’ll have far too many Selch here for comfort. Just because Gethin barred Idwal from going to the clan, he’s not going to be able to bar the clan from coming to Idwal.”

“That’s true,” Mari replied, looking up from her baby. “But they won’t be you.”

“Well then,” Sarah told her, with a smile. “We’ll just have to keep coming back to visit.”

Mari heaved a great sigh of relief. “I was afraid we were too backward for you,” she confessed. “After all, we don’t have all the things there are in London.”

“Oh, like air you can’t breathe?” asked Sarah. “We’ll just have to make sure the Old Lion thinks it’s important enough for us to come see how you are doing now and again.”

“Well, he should, for all he’s a heathen English lord,” said Daffyd, kneeing the door open so he could bring in the things he had traded for in Clogwyn. “After all, there’s two Water Masters here. And from the look of it—look at that little lad a-gurgling at the sprite there!—there’s like to be four before very long.”

Mari glanced down at the baby she held, who was, indeed cooing and gurgling at the kindly water-sprite, who was playing in the kitchen barrel and making fountains for him. “Oh—” she gasped. “He’s never done that before!”

“That’ll be important enough!” Nan said with a huge grin. “Problem sorted!”

“All right, my loves, time to go to Criccieth for the train. Rhodri’s got the ketch unloaded so there’s room for you and the birdies.” Daffyd hugged Nan and Sarah as if they were his own daughters. “Off you go, and come you back as soon as you can.”

The girls picked up the carriers, and the birds jumped onto their shoulders. Everyone agreed it was safer for the birds out of the carriers than in, at least while they were on the water. There were hugs and kisses all around, and a little basket of laver-bread pressed on them for the journey “for you won’t get it anywhere but here!” and then they were gone, and Idwal and Mari were alone in the cottage except for the babies, watching the ketch sail down toward Criccieth from the doorstep.

“How long do you think they’ll keep coming to visit?” Mari asked, missing them already.

Idwal put his arm around her. “As long as we are here,” he said, sounding quite certain of it.

“And how long will we be here?” she asked—something she had not dared to ask until this moment, even though the question had been eating at her ever since Gethin had asked her what she would do if the world she knew became too painful for Idwal to bear.

“Well now… as long as your da is alive, for I’ll not leave him alone, and he won’t take to the sea,” Idwal said easily, which made some of the knot of fear in her chest loosen. “And as long as Gethin bars us, which will be seven years at least.”

“But—” she ventured.

“But—” he stayed her words with a kiss. “We are not barred from other clans. And Gethin can rage all he wants, the Selch are not one body; so should need drive, we can find shelter with other Selch or even Selkie.”

A little more of the fear ebbed.

“But I’d rather not.” He held her close. “True it is that the power is thick and pure on the other side of the barrier. But there are other things in the world than power, or why do you think the little ones like yon sprite stay? Perhaps one day, it will be too hard to live in this world, and on that day you and I and all our family will come
away. Or perhaps not.” He shrugged, and she felt the last of her fear melting with his love. “But until then, dear love, and dearest friend, you can truly say that we are in our proper place, doing our proper work; guarding the world, doing what needs doing, home from the sea.”