Rosario and Annwn - Part 2

Rosario and Annwn - Part 2

Almost immediately, I regretted bringing the Peacock King along, because the silly thing was fussier than a woman. Jenny thought he was cute and funny, though he had nothing but disdain for either of us.

As he began to complain once more about the heavy rain that had plagued us since shortly after we stopped for lunch, I took the opportunity to accidentally shove him into a puddle. It was childish, but it was satisfying. I didn’t help him up, not that he would’ve let me, but Jenny offered him a hand. He accepted, too sulky and embarassed to protest her help. Jenny wasn’t too pleased with all of the rain, either, so she was more sympathetic to his complaints, but not I. The anxiety that I’d initially felt upon entering the country had returned, and, like before, I couldn’t leave the back of my neck alone.

Jenny didn’t notice my squirming, her already terrible eyesight rendered nearly useless in the rain. I couldn’t understand how she’d managed to forget her glasses that morning, if her eyesight was that bad, but she forged on ahead despite it, powered with enthusiasm. The Peacock King and I hung back, sulking on his part, distraction and lack of stamina on mine.

“Would you stop that?” he finally snapped at me, and I glared and called him a colorful name. He stopped dead, eyes wide with genuine shock, and I continued on. After a moment, he caught up to me and fell in beside me, bike squeaking as he walked it beside him. “I didn’t even know you knew how to swear. This place must be bothering you,” he said.

“No,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck, “something else is. Keep an eye on Jenny, will you? She’s nearly blind.”

“Do it yourself,” he said irritably, and we glared at each other before both deciding to go after her. When we looked ahead, however, we couldn’t see her at all, and my anxiety spiked dangerously.

“Jenny!” I called out, and when she didn’t answer, I hurried up the path. The Peacock King followed, cursing, and as the path narrowed, he finally set the bike aside and followed me.

“Calm down, you stupid woman!” he said, grabbing my arm. “If you panic, you’ll hurt yourself!”

I tugged my arm free and eyed him curiously. “I’m not panicking,” I said. “If I was, d’you think I’d still be on my feet?”

He wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, so I turned and continued my ascent. He followed in silence, which suited me fine, though occasionally I’d look back to make sure he was still there. I continued calling for Jenny, but I was starting to get suspicious. We hadn’t been all that far from the top when Jenny had vanished, and the fog we were wading through hadn’t been around at that time, either. It wasn’t that I was afraid she’d fallen, because something told me she hadn’t, but I wondered if something else hadn’t gotten to her.

It was then that I realized that the ground didn’t feel right, and I stopped dead. The Peacock King narrowly avoided running into me, then scowled. “Why’d you stop?” he demanded.

Ignoring him, I knelt down and pressed my hands to the ground. I watched my hands vanish under the fog, going down and... down. I found myself falling, and uttered a yelp. Arms flung themselves around my waist to keep me from falling further, and I was pulled up - but not before I saw that we were far, far above Cader Idris. I sat down hard, feeling dizzy, and the Peacock King knelt in front of me, looking worried.

“Hey, are you all right?” he asked, lightly slapping my face. “Hey!”

I blinked, then pushed his hand away. “I’m fine, for the moment. Whatever you do, do not do what I just did,” I said, and attempted to get up. As soon as I moved, however, I remembered how high up we were, and had to sit back down.

“You’re not fine,” the Peacock King said. “What is it?” He turned, possibly to find out what it was, and I grabbed his arm.

“Don’t!” I said, images of him falling to the mountain below rushing through my mind. “Please. We need to go and... and find Jenny.”

Swallowing hard, I shakily got to my feet, and he followed, rather more easily. He eyed me uncertainly, then put an arm around my shoulders and began to march me forward before I could protest. “Let’s go, then,” he said.

When I was in Alaska as a kid, I nearly drowned. However, instead of leaving me with a fear of water, it left me with a fear of heights. To a five year old, the distance between the dock and the surface of the water was impossibly far, and the fall, though it hadn’t been long, seemed to take forever. Even so, climbing high places was never difficult - getting down was the hard part. In Italy, Benigno had been wonderfully patient with me, knowing immediately what the problem was.

Above Cader Idris, the Peacock King was doing the same, and given his previous attitude, I wasn’t sure why. I was grateful, though, and glad that I wasn’t alone.

The two of us walked on, and after a time, found ourselves in a healthy, vividly green woodland. The ground was solid, the only fog to be seen was thin, and I wanted to sink to my knees in relief. I didn’t, however, for beside the stream sat several people, one of whom was Jenny. She spotted us and waved, beaming.

“Your Majesty! Rosario!” she called. “I’m so glad you made it!”

We approached, somewhat incredulous, and sat near her on the soft grass. There were three people with her; a brown-haired man in furs and rough cloth, a heavy sword at his side; a light-haired man, wearing softer, paler clothing and holding a harp; a hideous man with brown skin and dark hair, clad in grey and clutching a thick tome. They seemed friendly enough, despite the intimidating presence of the darker two, and somewhat familiar as well, but I couldn’t place it.

As I pondered this, Jenny introduced the Peacock King and I to our new companions. I nodded absently, but I didn’t really listen until the man with the sword started to speak.

His voice was soft as mist, but it was as deep and ringing as a church bell. “I am Arawn,” he said, and indicated his companions as he introduced them, starting with the darker one. “This is Morfran, and our companion wishes to remain nameless for the time being. For now, Wyn will do.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said. Morfran and Wyn replied in kind, and their voices surprised me, for they were at odds with their appearances; Wyn had a moderately deep, resonating voice, and Morfran had an airy, lilting voice.

“Now, what brings the three of you to Annwn?” Arawn asked, nonchalantly summoning a large mug of mead from thin air.

“Jenny and I are here to find out why there’ve been sightings of ceffyl dŵr recently, and, if needed, to ask for protection of her home,” I said, watching him split the mug into six smaller ones and pass them around.

“I,” the Peacock King piped up, “am here to ask if you know where my father’s sword is.”

Arawn took a large swallow of his mead, then wiped his mouth. “All quite reasonable,” he said. “Though it surprises me, milady Rosario, that you don’t know the answer to your own question.” He smiled at me before continuing. “However, I know that you’ve only recently begun your quest, so I will tell you this much; we of Annwn - and similar places - are tired of hiding. We plan to reveal ourselves to your world once more - and while it should be safe, the land near entrances, such as Cader Idris, may be tainted by magics. That might include people, too.”

“Tainted how?” I asked, fascinated by the whole thing. “Mutations?”

“Possibly,” Arawn said, nodding. “But this is where you come in, milady. While some taint is neccesary, it isn’t always a good thing. You and your father are the only people who have any hope of curing this taint.”

“How on earth can I do that?” I asked, surprised and dismayed, but he couldn’t tell me.

My question answered, Arawn turned his attention to the Peacock King.

“Your father’s sword lies inside the heart of Tal-y-llyn Lake,” he said. “But the key belongs to Llywelyn of Abergwyngregyn. Seek him out - I’m sure he will aid you.”

The Peacock King bowed his head in thanks, and, abruptly, we back on the mountain, on the very same path where the Indian’s bike had been forgotten. For a moment, we were horribly disoriented, for it had been late afternoon when we arrived in Annwn, and now it was just before dawn. The Peacock King was first to recover, and he set about checking his bike to make sure it was okay. It was wet with rain and dew, and was muddy in places, but it must have been all right, for he righted it and mounted. I thought he would ride away immediately, but he fussed over his clothing and hat, then looked back at Jenny and I.

“Rosario,” he said, startling me out of my daze, “would you come with me? To Aberg... Ab... you know.”

I stared at him, baffled and a little shocked. “Why?” I blurted.

He didn’t look too sure himself, but he shrugged it off. Adjusting his hat, he said, “Well, I... might need your help.”

I started to say that Jenny would be more useful than I, since she was a witch, but then thought better of it. What was my issue with the Peacock King, anyway? He was vain, yes, but that was no reason to loathe him as I had been. So I shrugged. “Sure,” I said. “Can Jenny come, if she wants to?”

The Peacock King, startled by my abrupt agreement, nodded. “We’ll meet tomorrow morning in Tywyn, at the train station,” he said, and hurriedly pedaled off. Jenny and I glanced at each other, and she giggled.

“I think he likes you,” she said.

“Probably not,” I said, “Come on, let’s get back.” We threaded our way back to the road, and found a car waiting for us with Mort at the wheel. He nodded to us in greeting, and the three of us went back to the farm.



Mr. D was both pleased and troubled to hear the information Jenny and I brought him. We, on the other hand, were startled to learn that we had been on the mountain for three days. As I thought about it, however, it made more sense - Annwn wasn’t exactly like Earth, after all, so it wasn’t strange that time would pass differently there. Still, the time difference seemed a little too dramatic.

Jenny and I went to bed shortly after reporting to Mr. D. When I awoke around noon, Jenny was still asleep in her room, so I wandered out alone. The house was quiet, and a note on the refridgerator explained that the host was out for the day on business. I fixed myself some tea and a quick sandwich, then went out to the porch after eating. The sky was overcast again, and due to my nap, it felt as though it were still morning. Leaving the porch, I walked barefoot through the damp, trampled down grass, circling the house with curiosity. It was a quaint house, all stone and sturdy wood and moss, but as I neared the back, I heard singing, similar to that I’d heard on my first arrival, accompanied by faint music. Jenny had called it a ghost, but I wasn’t so sure, and as I rounded the corner, I found my suspicions confirmed.

Caerwyn was seated on a stump, gently strumming a harp, and he was, in fact, the singer. I sat down on an overturned bucket and discovered that it was cold and had collected some of the rain, but I ignored it and listened to my young companion. His playing strengthened, possibly because he was aware of an audience. Halfway through, it grew even stronger, though I couldn’t see the source, and I noticed that Caerwyn’s singing improved as well.

When he finished, he looked up and me and smiled, a little sheepishly. Neither of us spoke for a moment, and finally he said, “I suspected you knew.”

“Oh, I didn’t,” I admitted. “I wasn’t sure of anything.”

“Well, you were distracted,” the boy said, laughing quietly. “However, it was only a matter of time before I had to show you my true form.”

As I watched, Caerwyn’s form distorted, grew - the one constant was the harp he held, which remained unchanged. Just as my eyes were beginning to cross from my inability to focus on him, Caerwyn settled. His figure was familiar, even though the clothes he wore were the same, and he smiled at me.

“Wyn, is it,” I said. “You’re Taliesin, right?”

“At your service,” he replied, bowing slightly from the waist. His harp remained firmly on his knee, and as he straightened, it gently uttered a few notes, though nothing had touched it.

Movement caught my eye, and I turned my head to see Mort come into view. He’d been hidden behind the other corner of the house, and his face was so blank that for a moment, I wasn’t sure he’d known who Caerwyn was. But then he flashed Taliesin the quickest smile I’d seen in a long time, and I knew better.

“Hello, Mort,” Taliesin said brightly, and turned back to me. “Mort is really Morfran. He prefers this form when we’re not in Annwn. It’s more comfortable for him.”

Unthinking, I said, “That sounds like it might be a problem when Annwn comes here.”

Taliesin nodded, looking serious. “One of many problems,” he said. “Actually, we wanted to talk with you about that before you went to help the Peacock King.”

I started, and Mort - Morfran - inclined his head. “We were listening,” he admitted, leaning against the side of the house. “We didn’t really mean to, but we were going the same direction.”

“Well, it’s all right,” I said. “But what do you mean there are a lot of problems with Annwn coming here?”

“To begin with,” Taliesin said, thoughtfully running his fingers over his harp, “there’s the matter of magic corrupting the land, which Arawn mentioned to you. Unfortunately, he doesn’t grasp how much damage it will do, and it’s quite possible that he wouldn’t care. In his mind, Earth deserves to be damaged, since the human race has kept Annwn hidden away so well. There’s also the matter of how the human race will react to a sudden invasion as per Arawn’s vision. You know as well as I how easily alarmed humans can be - there would be combat.”

“And not all of the denizens of Annwn are friendly, I’ll bet,” I said. “So what should I do? Is there no way to convince Arawn to try another tactic?”

“You can try if you’d like,” Morfran said, shrugging, “but he’s near impossible to convince of anything. He’s quite stubborn.”

“There’s one way we know of that you can use to stop him, though,” Taliesin put in. “Before that, you need to finish your quest and find out who you are. When that’s done with, ask the wind, earth, or sea to find us, and we’ll tell you what needs to be done. We only wanted you to be aware that things aren’t as they seem.”

I frowned at him. “You’re teasing me with information, here,” I said.

Taliesin laughed. “Oh, hardly,” he replied. “We’re giving you a goal.”



The next morning, Jenny and I met the Peacock King at the train station, and that bike of his was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he was waiting for us with a car.


The drive was brief enough, only lasting a couple of hours or so, and Abergwyngregyn was exactly like the pictures we’d seen in the Peacock King’s little guidebook, except for one thing - where there was supposed to be nothing but barely-there ruins, there was a manor house. The tugging sensation in my neck returned after not showing itself since Cader Idris, and I clapped a hand to it before I could stop myself. Jane looked at me briefly, almost absently puzzled, but her attention was on the manor house. The Peacock King, on the other hand, shot me a concerned look that he thought I wouldn’t see.

We parked the car and headed for the manor, drawing shockingly little attention to ourselves. The only one who paid us any mind was an old woman with eyes that, I surmised, could probably see the manor just as well as we could.

Our entrance into the manor was not at all grand, for Jenny insisted on knocking first, and the door opened by itself after she did. The effect of the ominous door opening by itself was completely ruined by the smell of tea and breakfast that wafted out. The three of us followed the scent and found ourselves in a large kitchen with an enormous wood table in the middle. Hunched over this table was a little old man with a million wrinkles and his hand on the teapot. He looked at us and licked his lips, then flashed gums at us and lifted a hand to shake a bent finger at us.

“I knew you’d be here,” he said, voice creaky with age, and unsteadily got to his feet. Jenny hurried over to his end of the table and took one of his arms to keep him upright. He patted her hand, eyes almost vanishing in wrinkles as he smiled at her. “Thank you, my dear.”

“Are you Llywelyn?” the Peacock King asked, voice steady. I glanced at him, wondering if he saw something in the old man that Jenny and I didn’t.

“Last I knew, yes,” the old man said brightly. “You, then, are the new Peacock King?”

“I am, and I seek to recover my father’s lost treasures,” our dark companion said.

“Mmm,” Llywelyn said, stroking his sparse beard. “Let me see. You would be young Mayur, would you not?”

The Peacock King nodded stiffly. “Arawn told me that you possess the key to obtaining my father’s sword,” he said.

Llywelyn chuckled. “Your father had a lot of swords, bach,” he said. “But I do have the key for the one you’re after.” Abruptly, his spine straightened, and he rested a hand on a sword that had just appeared on his belt. “In order to get the key, you must do two tasks for me. If you can complete them, then you must best me in fencing.”

“I accept your challenge,” the Peacock King said, as Jenny and I gawked at the sword. “What is the first task?”


For the first task, Llywelyn set the Peacock King to polishing all the marble in the main hall, then went to finish his breakfast in the kitchen. Jenny wrote up a spell - she later admitted that her specialty was cleaning - and gave it to the Peacock King to use.

Llywelyn led us up the stairs to a long hallway, then drew handfuls upon handfuls of keys from his pocket and threw them. They scattered over the floor, all of them identical, and he asked the Peacock King to find the key that went to the door at the end of the hall. He vanished, apparently into the room behind that door. The Peacock King and Jenny both turned to me, faces grim, and I wondered what the hell I could do.

Just to look like I was doing something, I walked down the hall and set my hand on the door, hoping to buy myself a moment to figure out the plan. As soon as my palm touched the door, however, I was aware of a strange vibration, as if the ancient wood were breathing. Wondering, I moved my hand down to the lock, and discovered a different vibration there. I reached my other hand out to the lock of a nearby door, a theory forming in my head, and discovered that the lock of the other door had its own unique vibration. I removed that hand and focused on our door, then turned to face the hallway of keys. Holding my hand down close to the floor, I walked slowly through the hall, testing the faint vibrations of the keys. I almost missed the one we needed, for it had hidden itself in the shadow of a doorway. I grabbed it and gave it to the Peacock King, and my knees almost gave out when it opened the door.

Llywelyn stood inside, hands folded over the pommel of his sword, the tip of which rested on the floor. The Peacock King stepped in, Jenny and I behind him, and the door closed after us.


The fight was short but fierce, and I saw for the first time how much the Peacock King wanted this sword. I had thought before that he might just be gathering his father’s things because they were attractive pieces, or meant more wealth, but whatever everything else was, the sword clearly meant a great deal to him. His fighting skill wasn’t nearly as good as Llywelyn’s, so I doubt that he would have won if he weren’t so determined. As it was, he was completely exhausted when he did win - by knocking Llywelyn’s sword away, not by killing the old fellow - and the only thing that kept him from collapsing was that pride of his.

Smiling and merely out of breath, Llywelyn reached into a sleeve and untied a tiny, jeweled key from his wrist. He passed it over to the Peacock King, who accepted it with the smallest of nods.

We returned to the car and, with me at the wheel, headed back to Tywyn.


The Peacock King and I left Jenny with Mr. D and went to Tal-y-llyn Lake. I called upon the fourth of my seven gifts, the necklace that the Snake King had given me. I wrapped it around my left wrist and the Peacock King’s right, and we jumped into the water. It was freezing, but we could breathe, and we swam towards the center of the lake, the necklace glowing just enough to light the way. It seemed to take us an eternity to reach our destination, all the while doing our best to avoid the ceffyl dŵr. Eventually, however, we made it, and there, in plain sight, was a heavy oak chest. Using his free hand, the Peacock King unlocked it, and we both forced the lid to open against the weight of the water. In the midst of this, my hand came free of the necklace, but I found that not only could I still breathe, the water still wasn’t putting an uncomfortable amount of pressure on me. The Peacock King didn’t notice, for his attention had been captured by the two swords that were in the chest.

He picked up one, which had a rusty blade but a beautiful hilt of gold and rubies and padparadscha. The second, whose blade was even more rusted, had a hilt of gold and blue sapphires and a black gem I couldn’t recognise. The Peacock King thrust his into his belt, then pulled out the second sword and handed it to me. I had no idea how to use a sword, but his face asked me to please accept, so I took hold of the hilt. A jolt went through me, almost as if the blade were supposed to be mine, and after a moment, I put it through my own belt. I slipped my left hand back into the necklace so that my companion wouldn’t notice, and we returned to the surface.

We emerged, hair plastered wetly to our eyes, and found ourselves looking at a little boat headed our way. At the motor was Mr. D, who waved to us. I waved back, then looked to my left.

“Well, Peacock King, you got your sword,” I said, wiping my wet curls out of my face.

He looked at me oddly, then reached out to unwind the necklace from our wrists. “As did you, Painter.”

I raised an eyebrow and wished the necklace away as soon as it was free. “What’s with the sudden formality? Call me Rosario.”

“Call me Mayur,” he replied, and moved forward to meet the boat as it neared us.