The Song of the Gloaming (Fantasy)

By: Autumn Mayer

Writing Copy Editor of Wilder Things Magazine

Autumn is a fourth-year student double majoring in French and English and creative writing on the publishing track. When she's not busy coordinating and translating for TIP, copyediting for Wilder Things, or being a Writing Center tutor, she can be found making her way through an endless stack of books, writing novels, or rock climbing at the Rec.

Content Warning: violence, death, & religious indoctrination

The cantorion gathered under the waning moon at dusk. It was their most sacred hour, when the sun slipped into its oblivion behind the hills on the far side of the river. That the moon experienced its own phase of death augmented the feeling of sanctity among the Cân y Gloew. Everything was dressed in purple shadows and limned in fading gold. 

Elenydd joined her family at the river’s bank, water washing across the pebbled shore and between her toes. A wind with a chill bite at its edges dragged strands of her long red hair across her face. Her sister, Eirianedd, reached out to tuck the pieces behind one ear. The two were identical, born moments apart from the same womb, which was a rare thing among their kind. The eladrin, like all the fair folk, were not a fecund people, so it was all the stranger to them to bear double the fruit at once. Some of the Cân y Gloew thought the sisters an omen of evil, for they worshiped death, and too much life could thus not be anything good. 

It was usually a comfort, to see her own face reflected back at her when she looked at Eirianedd: the long lingonberry hair shot through with streaks of ice blue near the temples, the matching pale eyes, the knifepoint ears. Both sisters had tattoos of writhing, withering leaves across their cheeks and arms and chests. Both wore a pendant in the shape of a sword shattered down the fuller, the right belonging to Elenydd and the left to Eirianedd. Yet tonight, under the trilling of the nightjars, a shiver of uncanny cold ran down her skin to pool at the tips of her fingers and the base of her spine. 

The odd sensation was heightened when Eirianedd said in a low voice, “I saw the Helfa Wyllt today.” Seeing the Helfa Wyllt—the warrior psychopomps who rode mounts of mist and moonlight across the sky—at night was a blessed sign; if they were spotted during the lighted hours, it was another sort of omen entirely. The first heralded an honorable death, and the second was a harbinger of suffering. 

Before Elenydd could reply, the High Canwr walked to the highest point of the bridge that spanned the river and turned to face the cantorion. From the sheath slung in a diagonal across their bare back, they drew the Gloew Llafn. The sword was near as tall as a person, with a blade thick as a well muscled arm; it was forged of witch steel, an enchanted metal that seemed to drink in the dark yet glow with its power. The High Canwr laid the sword across their palms and lifted it for all to see. 

“Tonight is Medi Noswyl,” they said, “the most sacred of nights.” The day and night were in balance with each other, the second equinox of harmony in that year.

“May Gwyn ap Nudd look down upon us,” the cantorion chorused. Elenydd did not say the words, too lost in meditations upon Gywn ap Nudd’s riders to pray to him with the rest of the Cân y Gloew. This earned her a glare from her mother, standing on the other side of Eirianedd. 

“Every Medi Noswyl, the Gloew Llafn chooses a dienyddiwr and a dioddefwr—one to swing the blade, and one to feel its bite. One to exalt the land through the glorious kill, and one to feed the mouth of hungry death, so that we might pay back the world for our eternal life.”

“A balance between life and death,” came the reply. This time Elenydd spoke the words with the others, though she did not feel their power as she always did. She had been looking forward to this day—the spray of blood, the boat scattered with jasmine and poisonberry to carry the body downstream—since the last ceremony in the other half of the year. Now, with an inky, cold feeling curling around her bones, she found she could not enjoy any of it. 

The High Canwr thrust the blade out toward them, and the cantorion pressed closer. Medwyn, the son of the lead hunter, and his lover Anwyl jostled Elenydd from behind; someone else’s elbow brushed the skin of her side. The smell of the crowd was overwhelmingly one of rot, humus smeared across cheekbones, plums pulpous and sweet, broken only by the moan of the cool night breeze. The lovemaking pressure built to a fever, a fervor. The sword drifted loosely in the High Canwr’s grip, as though alive. 

Eirianedd took Elenydd’s hand. One glance was enough to communicate that she felt that cold feeling too, deep inside where the pressing humidity of their people could not reach. 

The sword, glinting shattered moonlight, jerked to one side. 

Someone to the left of the bridge, obscured from Elenydd’s view, began to sing a haunting hymn known only as Medi Noswyl. It told the story of Tristram Mabcaerwyn breaking from the Helfa Wyllt to reap souls rather than ferry them to the afterlife. He had stuck the Gloew Llafn through the heart of his lover, Angharad Mercheneuawg, to free her from their half life among the hunt. With the tang of her blood still upon his lips, he had begun the Cân y Gloew and commanded that forevermore, their purpose would be to bring balance to their world. Always, there would be a dienyddiwr and a dioddefwr. A compliment to the work of the Helfa Wyllt, the realization of its purest form. 

Other voices took up the song, and the dancing began. Sweat poured down limbs, slicking hollows already dusted with the decay of the forest floor. Fingernails crusted red scraped skin. One of the younger boys yipped like a coyote, and his friends took up the call until they sounded wolfish and raw. Elenydd turned into Eirianedd’s arms as their mother threw her head back, her wide mouth drinking in the heat of a moment about to burst. 

Elenydd closed her eyes, and against the lids, she could see Siriol’s face on the last Medi Noswyl as she was chosen to be the dioddefwr. She had been their leathersmith, a position now filled by her child. The sword had landed on her, and she had smiled and danced her way to the apex of the bridge. There had been no regret in her eyes. Her dienyddiwr had glowed with righteous delight at the honor of wielding Tristram Mabcaerwyn’s blade. 

That was how it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be the taste of venison and wine. It was supposed to be the heat of a lover’s kiss. 

But her sister had seen the Helfa Wyllt in the light of day, and the sword was swinging, and swinging, and swinging in search of one to hold it, and one to die by it. 

And then the sword stopped, and it was pointing directly at Elenydd’s heart. 

At first she did not understand. Then her mother whistled in delight. Her father cast her a proud grin. Eirianedd squeezed her hand, and there was something in her sister’s pale blue eyes that she could not read. 

In a daze, she walked through the shallows of the river toward the High Canwr and the sword, jostled by the front of the crowd. She mounted the planks of the bridge, smoothed by generations of feet, and took the sword. Its hilt was worn and cold. Gooseflesh raced over her breasts and down her stomach. Her palm felt as though it had turned to ice. 

The sword was alive in her hand, and it swung of its own accord, serpentine back and forth over the impassioned faces staring up at her. Until this moment, Elenydd had always thought it an honor to be chosen as the dienyddiwr; her stomach had roiled with jealousy as ritual after ritual had passed without her selection. Yet, now, with the sword in her grasp and the eyes of the Cân y Gloew—her people, her family, her friends—before her, all she could wonder was who she would have to kill. 

She had killed before—deer and squirrels and rabbits, birds and training dummies. But suddenly none of that felt real.  

The sword stilled in her hand, and she looked down its blade at Eirianedd. 

That could not be right. Eirianedd had seen the Hilfa Wyllt during the day, not at night. It had not been an omen of an honorable death but of suffering. Death was not suffering; death did not hurt. The Cân y Gloew did not fear its embrace. But if Eirianedd was to be the dioddefwr, and her death was not one of honor but of suffering . . . 

Elenydd tried to jerk the blade to the side. Tried to move it to point at anyone else. 

But the Gloew Llafn refused to move, and she found she could not move either, for the sword’s cold had burrowed its way into her marrow. 

The singing broke off. The dancing ground to a startled halt. 

All the cantorion could see her trying to move the blade. They could all see her not accepting its choice. They could all see her rejecting honor and tradition in favor of blasphemy. Sacrilege. 

Eirianedd moved slowly toward her. Knelt under the outstretched blade. 

When Eirianedd looked up, her eyes held the coming of winter, of leaves browning and cracking and falling away. Frost would coat the grass, and all the little creatures would hide away, and Elenydd’s sister, who had been with her since the womb and was supposed to be with her always, would be the rot that woke the leaves again come spring. 

“Elenydd,” Eirianedd said. “It is my honor to die by your hand.”

“I cannot,” Elenydd whispered. 

Eirianedd’s head jerked up, her eyes narrowing. In a distant corner of Elenydd’s mind, she thought of how she usually enjoyed the winter, the way their features would whiten and blue and sharpen, the way she could watch her changes in her sister’s face. With the cold of the sword in her, and the cold of her sister’s gaze piercing her yet more, all she wanted was to be warm. Dive head-first into a hot spring and drown beneath the glowing film of purple and red. 

Anything but this moment. Anything but her sister begging for something she could not give. Something she had to give.

Something she had to take away. 

Her hesitation stretched and stretched until Eirianedd lunged upward. Her palms closed around witch steel, and she pulled, drawing the blade toward her own heart. The brilliant crimson of blood seeping from her hands snapped Elenydd out of her frozen haze. She jerked the sword back with all her strength. Eirianedd came with it, stumbling into Elenydd, and the sisters crashed to the ground. The old wood of the bridge creaked; water rushed by darkly beneath, only the dazzle of moonlight on sunken stone or ripple cutting the black. 

Elenydd had dropped the sword in her surprise at falling, though she knew not why it had allowed itself to be let go, now and not before. The hilt was in Eirianedd’s bleeding hands. The tip was poised on Elenydd’s breast. 

She lay there, chest heaving shallowly, waiting for the blow. 

Eirianedd’s fierce expression slipped by degrees. Her arms sagged, and still, the sword did not come down. “You were right,” she whispered, for only Elenydd to hear. “I cannot.”

The cantorion on the shore all held their breath, needing the ritual to proceed yet not daring to interfere. That collective breath hitched as Eirianedd raised the sword high, its tip caressing the moon’s underbelly, and it released in a scream that shook the night as Eirianedd threw the sword with all her might into the river. 

Then Eirianedd was helping Elenydd up, and they were running across the bridge, to the far shore. A splinter of wood stuck into the base of Elenydd’s smallest toe. Mud splattered her calves. Eirianedd’s fingers were clammy in her own. 

Grassy shore turned to hooded forest, the vegetation so thick it tugged at their skirts and snagged in their hair. The others were behind them now, gaining fast. The ruckus of sharp-toothed dogs and feral boys wrapped around them until it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The deepest part of the river cut across their path and forced them to turn into the part of the forest that was still and silent and big. The part no one dared to hunt in. 

The undergrowth vanished. Pine branches interlocked above until the moon disappeared, until they were indistinguishable from the black of the sky. Gray trunks pressed closer and closer, and roots pressed higher and higher. Eirianedd pulled her forward, not sharing a plan or a destination. Elenydd knew they did not have one—how could they, when they were abandoning everything they knew, everything that was right?

A dog caught up and latched onto Eirianedd’s leg. She stumbled, and the sisters’ hands pulled apart. Before Elenydd could react, Eirianedd had shaken the dog loose and thrown a dagger through its skull so hard the blade stuck the body to the packed earth. 

They ran again, but Eirianedd was slower now, and the dog had given the others time to close the distance. Everything became the gap between this tree and the next, the jump over the jutting roots. 

Their hands split a second time as Elenydd dodged right around a tree, and Eirianedd went left.

On the other side, the trees crushed together like angry lovers. Eirianedd was nowhere to be seen. Elenydd ran forward, for there was nothing she could do but hope the trees would thin soon and reveal her sister once more. 

Sudden as a fall, the forest ended on the pale, pebbled shore of a lake, serene and silver with moonlight. Golden motes of light danced across the still surface. Elenydd’s momentum carried her forward, into the water. After three steps, the rocky bottom dropped off deep enough that she tripped. 

The cold cut at her. Sunk claws under her skin and flayed her open. She was falling, almost as if through air, but there was no bottom in sight. When she screamed, her breath bubbled lazily upward to the watery shadow of the moon. 

And then there was nothing. Her last thought was the hope that the Hylfa Wyllt would carry her home, to the warmth of her sister’s arms.