Between Stations

"Never seen so many blooming sheep," the Londoner commented in a feeble attempt at a Yorkshire accent to his wife as the train rumbled onwards. "Must be more sheep up here than people." She provided the obligatory laugh, then both of them lapsed into silence for which I was grateful.

Though tempted to tell them they should try travelling through Wales, I kept silent and stared out the window. Sheep and green hills here, of course, in Yr Hen Gogledd, the Old North, which had once, historians said, been part and parcel of Wales.

Not that anybody believed me if I mentioned this fact with the lilt of my Southwalian accent. They would think I was making it up, having them on, telling a porkie, taking the Michael. Odd how many expressions there were for telling lies. I should list them sometime and see whether I could even think of any way to say telling the truth except in those plain and simple words.

I didn't lie, no, but I tended to withhold information sometimes. Sometimes, no, often I found it was best to keep what I knew to myself. But today was going to be different. This afternoon, when I reached my destination, I would have to share my truth. I tried not to consider what the consequences might be.

Listen to the rhythm of sounds that the train made. Observe the sheep. Be aware that these green hills, too, were home, Yr Hen Gogledd, the old North, though I had always felt so very much a stranger here, in a strange land. Hiraeth, longing for Wales, accompanied me every hour of every day, but I wasn't sure I could ever return. I doubted that Yorkshire would let me go.

“Have we met before?” the woman across the aisle asked me, an old photograph that I could not quite make out cradled in her hands.

I studied the liniments of her face, my fingers itching for my sketch pad because I saw character shaped by decades of living. Her eyes searched mine as if doing so would retrieve my name from the mists of memory. “Perhaps in another life,” I told her. “Not recently.”

She paused to consider this and nodded slowly before returning her attention to the old photo.

I felt the resonant possibility of some antique connection between us like a tunnel under the earth blocked by detritus. On a different day in another mood, I might have explored further, but not today. Not when I had deliberately left my sketching materials at home.

The train slowed as it pulled into a station and came to a smooth halt.

I watched the woman tuck the photo into a protective cardboard envelope. Expecting her to disembark, I tried to think of something suitable to say. Godspeed rose to my lips, though it was not a phrase I normally used.

However, she settled herself in her seat as if preparing for the onward journey.

I folded my arms over my chest as if to regather my forces. I, too, had somewhere else to be, no matter how disinclined I felt to make this journey. The crow had spoken in my dreams when I could not avoid listening. When a cawing jackdaw awakened before the alarm, the words came back to me as if freshly spoken. Though I yearned to roll over and bury myself in sleep, I had done as I was bidden and betaken myself to the train station.

Hibernation seldom solved any problems. I knew that any delay, any deliberate tactic of avoidance only made things worse. One of a few lessons learned in my twenty-seven years of circling the sun.

The couple from London gathered their belongings at the next stop without any fuss or bother. As they passed me, I squashed the thought of asking them whether pigeons outnumbered tourists in the Big Smoke.

A man flashed me a grin, sharing the relief which I guessed everyone in the carriage must feel. I nodded my understanding.

He held my gaze as though he was going to say something. A moment later, I could clearly see him putting his chosen words back on the shelf of his mind.

If time was mine today, I might have shifted to a seat near him and started a conversation out of curiosity, but instead I looked out the train window at the sheep. Almost all of them were eating the grass below their hooves.

I wondered whether any of the woolly creatures ever woke up in the morning and considered their lot in life. Even if the grass was greener, if one of them could get beyond the fence, would expending the effort be worth it? Perhaps not, if human opinions of sheep lacking in personality or ambition could be trusted.

Dismissing them from my mind, I unfocussed my gaze and let the motion of the train lull me until the next station where a small child was escorted onto the train by a very old woman. I never had a Nain myself, used to feel cheated when a friend at school went on and on about his grandmother. Odd how a child’s attitude toward perceived unfairness gets directly expressed at times while adults hide all their secret grievances away.

I noticed then, too late, to wish the woman with the old photograph well without shouting along the length of the carriage. That would have caused more awkward feeling than benefit, surely, though even as I watched her walk along the platform, I wished I had acknowledged her departure as if we were old friends who might never meet again.

I felt bereft. This missed opportunity might never surface again, not in my current life at least. Wat did I care about any other life when I was sat here in this body, employing this configuration of a brain and trying to make sense of these random messages my heart sent me. They mostly might as well have been in some other language that I did not even know the name of, much less understand a single word.

Now that it was too late, I could imagine sitting at a café with her for a cup of tea or even a meal. The conversation definitely interesting, possibly verging on fascinating. I rarely met anyone I could actually talk with rather than just pass the time of day. I liked to immerse myself in the ordinary by listening to their mundane troubles to balance things out.

As the train pulled away from the station and gathered speed, the soothing sound and hypnotic rhythm comforted me. I had somewhere else to go, someone else to meet, definitely no chance encounter could surpass that obligation. The crow had spoken.

Between stations, as if summoned by my thoughts, she appeared.

A breeze played with the black tendrils of her hair, the edges of her silver cloak, fretting the hem of her pearlescent gown above her bare feet.

Although I recognised that she could not possibly be here, the impulse to rise from my seat and drop to my knees was so strong that I folded my hands in my lap as if praying, clenching painfully tight to distract myself.

A natural compulsion, no doubt the self-same that a human in Middle Earth who had only ever heard tales about elves might feel when finally meeting one face-to-face.

Only a seeming, not real, I told myself. Woven of sunbeams and raindrops, an illusion created with more sparkling starlight and a generous cluster of lunar rays.

She could not inhabit this train carriage, enclosed on all sides by cold iron, any more than I could bear being immersed in the volcanic fires of Mount Doom.

Closer to nature than any human could be, she embodied beauty the way the sun embodies light, fierce and radiant but impossibly distant, unreachable. I flinched away from even the thought of touching her, not sure whether she would perceive that flicker of hopeless desire and be offended.

Was that pity in her smile? I might be wrong. I was not fey, myself, so what chance did I have of understanding her? Though I had once been told some fey blood, much diluted, ran in my veins, I did not trust the person who told me. Despite all the tales of romance (or worse) between fey and human, I had it on good authority that mixed blood resulting from such a union was as likely as a bird and a fish producing offspring.

She is not here. Hands still clenched as in prayer, I felt sweat trickle down the back of my neck as I resisted the urge to kneel to her. She is merely occupying the obviously empty space between my ears for this short interlude.

Her slight smile faded, then her lips moved. Words arose as more song than speech, holding natural sounds which no human could voice, like the ripple a waterfall made and, somehow, the noise caused by a falling star. The rational part of my brain struggled in her presence, as always.

She began with my name “Ewan ap Meredith ap Gwilym. . .” and continued beyond the few ancestors I knew about until the sounds blurred together, perhaps spoken in the Brythonic language that preceded Welsh.

Had she witnessed all of those generations? The fey were notoriously long-lived, perhaps immortal. Throughout history, had she been trying to assemble the pieces of a puzzle scattered throughout the British Isles in the beginning? And to what end? Only she knew.

Then she began to tell me where I must go after I reached the station that her crow messenger instructed me in a dream to seek out. The landmarks that would guide me. What I must avoid and what I must needs watch for on the way. I was not to drag any human follower with me, accidentally or not. I must arrive with only my shadow for company.

I felt my pulse quicken at the threat beneath her stipulations. The fey showed mercy sometimes in stories, but that could be merely the wishful thinking of the storyteller. I did not care what happened to me, though I would prefer to carry on living, but I would not want anyone else to die due to my carelessness.

Clackety-clack. Clackety-clack. The definitive noise of the train intruded, sounding too loud.

Her image disappeared.

I gasped in a breath as though surfacing from a depth of water. I had forgotten to breathe.

I stared at the space she had occupied, feeling strangled by the lack of her, adrift and so insubstantial that I wondered if I were only a ghost before I felt tears leaking from my eyes. No wonder it was said that the fey could drive a mortal into madness.

A movement distracted me, pulled my gaze to the man who had grinned at me earlier after the tourists from London disembarked.

Would he speak to me now? Had he somehow perceived her visitation? Even if he only glimpsed a shred of her glamour, he would surely be influenced.

He tilted his head in a silent question with a concerned expression.

It took me a moment to find the capacity but I managed to nod, trying to signify that I was quite all right, really, though I felt sure he was in no way reassured.

Although his lips never moved, I heard the words: And what’s your story, I wonder.

Her invasion of my mind might have opened me up to sensing ordinary thoughts.

I could not look away from him even though I tried to persuade myself that was the best course of action.

Weighing the possibilities, I considered. If he asked me aloud, right now, I might perhaps tell him the entirety. For his part, he might come to the understandable conclusion that either I was possessed of a more vivid imagination than most people or that I inhabited my own shadowy reality which only coincided with everyone else’s intermittently.

A glint of humour brought me a daft idea which tugged me back toward normality. What if this man was a travelling writer looking for a character to add to his novel in progress? If I confided in him, he would certainly get more than he bargained for, but then I was used to keeping my secrets.

I finally managed to turn my head toward the window and began to count the sheep I could see. Not in pursuit of sleep, but because I knew that numbers being logical and rational were the best antidote to being overwhelmed by emotions. I had learned that as a child in the upheaval of family life and, in more recent years, discovered that counting helped me recover from any encounter with the fey.