A Whisper to the North

Chapter LXVIX ✠ Epilogue

It had been a week since the last reaping of the wheat. Everyone, especially Una, believed that the winter was far too harsh to survive until the harvest. Mainly after they used the lands of Mercia to grow crops on their hills, their soil was rich, but their waters were bitter.

After the Pendragons were defeated, their name faded into oblivion. No one knows if there are any left, and they had hoped there weren't. However, two remain from that lineage, Una and her son Emyr.

They've kept quiet from most of Bryttania since the defeat, staying in the mountains in Gwynedd. King Gareth had come by to see Emyr a few months after his birth. He told Una that one of Laurel's distant cousins had ascended the throne of Cornwealas, and all seemed well. Other than the few Viking attacks they occasionally get, all of Britannia was relatively as it was before the war started.

Now the earth was still warming, but the season of rebirth had long passed since. Now was the time for apples and pears. Una was quite fond of apples, but Emyr had taken a liking to pears. He refused to eat them the year before, but now that's all he talks about.

"Emyr," Una called for him.

He was running barefoot in the tall grass. Una feared that a snake or perhaps an unkind insect would bite him.

"Emyr, come here!" Una beckoned for him again.

He was running to the forest again, evading his mother.

"Humph, well, if he steps on something, I told him so!" Una sighed to herself and turned back to the apple tree.

She had been in the orchard all afternoon, picking through ripe apples.

"Don't wander too far!" Una shouted to him.

She could spot him very far away with his white-blond hair flowing in the wind of the dark forest.

"But alas, you should," Una said, remembering her own restless spirit.

Una twisted an apple and pulled it from its stem off the tree, placing it into a thick woven basket. As she pulled more off of the tree, she looked back at Emyr, making sure he would not stray from her sight. Whenever Una looked at him like this, it overwhelmed her because she knew one day, he would be old enough to leave her company and perhaps would never come back.

"Mam, look at this pear!" Emyr laughed and pointed up in a tree as he walked back to Una.

"A very large one indeed! I will pick it when I make my way over there soon." Una said, scanning the tree.

"Aww." Emyr pouted and sat down on the soft grass, gazing up at his prized pear.

Una looked over at him and laughed.

"You must wait, Emyr, for patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet." Una smiled and turned to the next tree.

Emyr sighed again and stared back up at his pear. Suddenly a bird came and sat atop one of the branches near the fruit.

"Mam, a bird! He'll eat it!" He stood and cried out to Una.

"It's alright, Emyr. The bird must eat too. There is plenty for you and the birds alike." Una said without turning around.

"But that's my pear!" Emyr said, disappointed as he looked at the bird.

"Emyr, please, the fruit at the top if for the birds, the fruit below is for us, the fruit on the ground is for the rest of the animals. You'd be stealing his pear." Una grinned.

Emyr watched as the bird began to peck at the tender flesh of the ripe pear. He had enough watching this bird eat his prize he had gazed upon only moments before. He walked up to the tree and jumped with his arms high in the air. He hung on the lowest branch and brought the rest of his body up. He sat on the branch and stood again, climbing slowly but silently up the tree.