of the Mighty. She sang of the Cauldron of Rebirth, the Isle of the Everliving, and the making of many-splendoured Albion.
One night, Bran realised that he had not heard such tales since he was a child. This, he thought, was why the songs touched him so deeply. Not since the death of his mother had anyone sung to him. This is why he listened to them all with the same awed attention. Caught up in the stories, he lived them as they took life within him; he became Bladudd, the blighted prince who sojourned seven years in unjust servitude; he became the lowly swineherd Tucmal, who challenged the giant champion Ogygia to mortal combat; he flew with doomed Yspilladan on his beautiful wings of swan feathers and wax; he spent a lonely lifetime in hopeless pining for the love of beautiful, inconstant Blodeuwedd; he was a warrior standing shoulder to shoulder with brave Meldryn Mawr to fight against dread Lord Nudd and his demon horde in a land of ice and snow . . . All these and many more did Bran become.
After each night’s song, Angharad laid aside the harp and sat for a time, gazing into the fire as if into a window through which she could see the very things she sang about. After a time, her body would give a little shake, and she would come to herself again, like one emerging from a spell. Sometimes the sense of what he had heard eluded him—she could tell by the frown that knitted his brow and tugged at the corner of his mouth that he had not understood. So, wrapping her arms around her knees as she sat on her three-legged stool, she would gaze into the fire and talk about the story and its inner meaning—the spirit of the song, Angharad called it.
As Bran’s knowledge grew, so did his appreciation of the stories themselves. He began to behold possibilities and portents, glimmerings of distant hope, flashes of miracle. The things he heard in Angharad’s songs were more than mere fancy—the stuff itinerant minstrels plied—they were tokens of knowledge in another, deeper, rarer form. Perhaps they were even a form of power, but one long dormant. At the very least, these songs were markers along a sacred and ancient pathway that led deep into the heart of the land and its people—his land, his people—a spirit and life that would be crushed out of existence beneath the heavy, unfeeling rule of the coldhearted Ffreinc.
It snowed the day Bran finally regained his feet. Leaning heavily on the old woman, he shuffled with agonizing slowness to the mouth of the cave to stand and watch silent white flakes drift down from the close grey sky to cover the forest in a fine seamless garment of glistening white. He felt the cold air on his face and hands and drew it deep into his lungs, shivering with the icy tingle. The sensation made him cough; it still hurt, but the coughing no longer made him gasp with pain. He braved it for the chance to simply stand and watch the swirling flakes spin and dance as they floated to earth.
After being so long abed, with nothing to look at but the dull grey rock walls of the cave, Bran considered that he had rarely seen anything so beautiful. The dizzying sweep and curl and gyre of the falling flakes made him smile as he turned his light-dazzled eyes to the sky. The old woman seemed to approve of the pleasure he took in the sight; she bore him up with her sturdy peasant strength, watching the enjoyment flit across Bran’s thin, haggard features.
When he grew tired, Angharad fetched him a staff. She returned with a sturdy length of hawthorn; placing it in his hands, she indicated that Bran should go and relieve himself. He hobbled gingerly out into the little clearing; the snow fell on him, the fat, wet flakes stinging sweetly as they alighted on his exposed skin, stuck, and instantly melted.
Although it felt odd standing in the snow within sight of the old woman at the mouth the cave, Bran was glad to be able to stand like a man on his own two feet once more and not have to squat on a pot like a child. He returned to the cave, shaking and sweating and tottering like an invalid no longer able to lift his feet, but beaming as if he had journeyed to the very