The Truth Against the World Read online

Page 2


  I wished I could hear it a thousand times more.

  It wasn’t just because of the name “Olwen”—the name Gee Gee herself suggested for me on the day I was born. It was all the names, the sounds of Welsh rolling off my great-grandmother’s tongue like the strange liquid language of some unearthly being, undulating like the hills of the seaside town in Wales where she grew up, whispering, beckoning. The language of heaven, Gee Gee always said.

  She cleared her throat, adjusted her reading glasses, and began to speak.

  “Kilydd, the son of Prince Kelyddon, desired a wife as a helpmate, and the wife that he chose was Goleuddydd, the Daylight One.”

  Her voice always comforted me, like a warm blanket of sound. While she read, I reached onto the end table for the lovespoon that had hung on her kitchen wall for as long as I could remember. My fingers traced the carvings in the rich reddish-brown wood: an intricate tracery of knotwork and heart shapes, twining together and apart like vines until they joined at the bottom in the smooth bowl of a spoon.

  “They had a son through the prayers of the people. From the time of her pregnancy, Goleuddydd became wild, and wandered about … ”

  The knots and twists of the spoon symbolized togetherness, two becoming one; the hearts symbolized love. I could almost hear the echo of Gee Gee’s voice explaining it to me. That morning, I had carefully swaddled it in bubble wrap and put it into a box of other keepsakes, scrawling the word “fragile” across the lid with a blue marker.

  The wood was soft under my hands, surprisingly unworn despite year after year—decade after decade—of being nestled in the palms of my great-grandmother, and then in the hands of Grandpa William, who’d died in Vietnam long before I was born; and, much later, my father’s. And mine. The only thing interrupting the smooth surface was a tiny incised shape on the back of the spoon’s bowl, the carver’s mark—two tiny squared-off hillocks like a blocky M, or an E. I knew every millimeter of that spoon and it felt familiar, reassuring.

  “ … And Kilhwch’s father inquired of him, ‘What has come over thee, my son, and what aileth thee?’ ‘My stepmother has declared to me that I shall never have a wife until I obtain Olwen … ’”

  I closed my eyes and let Gee Gee’s voice wash over me, rich and low. It wasn’t the voice of someone with less than a year left to live. I tried to picture her as a girl in love; tried to picture a handsome young man presenting her with the lovespoon as a token of affection, like in a fairy tale or an Arthurian legend. An old friend, maybe, or a former love. Not my great-grandfather; I knew that much. All she would ever say about the spoon was that it was from someone in her past, someone who was gone now.

  If only I could have known her then. If only we had more time.

  3

  Ni ddaw doe byth yn ôl.

  Yesterday will never return.

  Welsh proverb

  Gareth sat up in bed and rubbed grit out of his eyes. His legs were tangled in the sheets, half-exposed to the chilly air, and the rest of him was drenched in sweat. He’d been dreaming about—what was it? Some kind of headstones and whatnot. Next he’d be dreaming about zombies drooling their way out of the graveyard and eating his brains. Playing Resident Evil late into the night had perhaps not been his cleverest idea.

  After shaking off the cobwebs, he had a shower. His dream had been vivid and sharp, like a memory, though it was dissipating rapidly now. Was it possible to have a dream that was a memory at the same time? Pondering, Gareth rinsed the shampoo out of his hair and shut off the water. The problem was, you’d never really be able to tell whether it was more than just a dream. The brain was good at making things up. He suspected you couldn’t really even trust your memories, could you? It was all subjective. Shaking his head, he wrapped a towel around his waist and jogged barefoot down the drafty hallway back to his room.

  He pulled on his school uniform—dark blue pants and jacket, white shirt, dreadful striped tie—and wandered down the narrow staircase looking for breakfast. His mum was just running out the door with Tommy, and his dad was already gone.

  He glanced at the clock; how did it get so late? After rapidly inhaling two bowls of muesli, he stuffed various books and papers into his school bag and dashed to the bus stop just as the bus was pulling up, wiping the sweat from the back of his neck.

  His first day back at school after the holidays, and he already felt tired.

  After a history test, double maths, a horrifying lunch of gray mystery stew, and a new project in Information Technology on web animations, Gareth was eager to get outside and be somewhere that didn’t require higher brain functions. He joined the crush jostling through the hallway toward the doors.

  On the way out, Amit fell into step next to him, grinning. “Brought a souvenir back from the countryside, I see.”

  “What?”

  “Your head. You look like you’re wearing a miniature tan sheep.” Amit snickered.

  “Don’t take the piss. I will kill you. Very slowly and painfully.” Gareth tried to pat down his hair, but without a comb it was useless.

  “Oh, speaking of death and destruction,” Amit said, “I started animating a zombie for the IT project. Decaying bits falling off and everything.”

  Gareth frowned. “I wanted to do a mythology thing,” he said, “but so far I can’t get Medusa’s hair to writhe properly.” They stepped onto the bus behind a crowd of other uniformed students.

  “It seems like I should have something obscene to say about that. But I can’t think of anything,” Amit replied a bit mournfully, sliding into a seat near the back of the bus. “I’m off my game.”

  “Your brain must still be on holiday.” Gareth slid in next to his friend and jabbed an elbow into his ribs.

  After a brief scuffle, Amit said, “Speaking of the holidays, how were the wild Welsh hinterlands? That sad photo was the last thing I got from you.”

  “Yeah, sorry. The charge ran out on my mobile. I dropped it down a hole and it must have dislodged the battery or something.” Gareth pulled out his phone and scrolled through the pictures from the past week. “Look at Tommy,” he said, pointing to a photo of his brother wearing Great-Granddad’s old mining helmet. It covered the entire top half of his head. Great-Granddad was in the midst of reaching out to snatch the helmet back, looking furious.

  “What’s the old guy’s problem, then?” Amit asked.

  “Dunno. He always looks like that.” Gareth scrolled through a few more photos. “He’s all right, though.”

  “For a Taff.”

  “No need to be racist.”

  “Sorry, Mum.” Amit grinned. “Seriously, I was afraid you’d come back spouting all that Welshy unpronounceable gibberish.”

  Gareth gave him a look. “You’re one to talk.”

  “Gujarati is a noble language.”

  “The only words you know are insults,” Gareth pointed out. “Anyway, what’d you do here all week? Play Halo until your eyeballs started bleeding?”

  Amit launched into a lengthy story about his cousins visiting from Blackpool. Meanwhile, Gareth continued flipping through pictures. He rather liked the one he’d taken of the ruined church, the sea in the background a pale blue blur blending into the cloudy sky. There was a faint figure just disappearing around the back of the collapsing building; probably one of his parents. He scrolled to the next photo: a view of the dismal churchyard with its lichen-covered headstones, the ancient cromlech looming behind them, and his parents holding hands and looking out to sea. It had been a peaceful day, just the three of them. No Tommy to give him a headache.

  Just the three of them, and the girl. Gareth suppressed a shiver. He hoped she’d found her parents. He really hadn’t seen anyone anywhere else around; he was sure of it. She seemed a bit young to run away from home, but what did he know? And then she’d just vanished. Maybe her family lived somewhere nearby.

&n
bsp; Had to be.

  Amit finished his story and turned to talk to a girl across the aisle, so Gareth scrolled to the next picture: a shot of the sad little cairn with the grave plaque of the girl who’d died in 1950. The greenery grew close, partially obscuring the inscription, but he could still read it.

  As he stared at the photo, something else began to take shape. It was a faint, fuzzy outline, a small figure, transparent white against the background of dark gray stone and slate. He blinked his eyes rapidly, took off his glasses and cleaned them, and then held the phone close to his face.

  The shape was even clearer than before. Gareth knew it hadn’t been there when he’d taken the photo.

  He knew she hadn’t been there.

  It was a little girl in a white dress, her feet bare. The same girl he’d seen under the cromlech. The one who’d called herself Olwen.

  Just a moment ago, the photo had been normal—just a picture of old rocks and a grave. He’d swear to it. He remembered the moment he’d taken the shot, too, and he’d been completely alone. But now there was something else there—someone else.

  The skin prickled on the back of Gareth’s neck. He scrolled back to the photo of the ruined church and zoomed in on the figure he’d thought was one of his parents.

  A flash of white dress. Slender, almost skinny limbs. A bare foot. Long, dark hair.

  He frantically scrolled ahead again, to the picture of the cairn. He could see the girl’s face relatively clearly now, though her whole image looked like someone had gone into Photoshop and smudged it with a Gaussian blur. He grasped onto that thought—maybe this was someone’s idea of a joke? Had Amit gotten hold of his phone? Altered his photos somehow?

  But Gareth’s entire body had gone cold, because he knew for a fact that there was only one person who’d handled his phone in days, besides himself.

  And he wasn’t even sure that person was real.

  4

  Hir yw pob ymaros.

  All waiting is long.

  Welsh proverb

  I picked up my spoon and slurped up a mouthful of minestrone soup, organic store brand. My parents were arguing without trying to sound like they were arguing. I stared blankly across the dinner table, thinking about verb conjugations and wondering how I’d ever learn to pronounce the letter “ll” and trying not to worry about Gee Gee, alone in the hospital overnight.

  “Ll,” I muttered, but I couldn’t seem to do it without spitting. “Llangollen. Llanelli. Llyn y Bala.” I could just see myself visiting Wales someday, riding the bus somewhere, asking where Llangollen was and everybody laughing at me. “Llwy.” Spoon.

  “Everyone speaks English there, Wyn,” my mom burst out, sounding annoyed.

  “Don’t take this out on Wyn,” Dad said mildly.

  I was sick of this. “Don’t take what out on me?”

  There was a long silence, then Dad put his spoon down inside his empty soup bowl. I got a strange feeling, suddenly scared of what he might say, and I stopped eating.

  “What?” I asked.

  Mom sighed. “There’s no sense in keeping it from her, Rhys.”

  “I know.” Dad looked right at me, shut his eyes tightly for a moment as if in pain, and then opened them again. “It’s Gee Gee. She wants to—” He broke off.

  I twisted my hands in my lap, looking from one to the other.

  “She doesn’t want her life to end without having seen her home one last time,” Mom said bluntly. “She wants to go back to Wales.”

  Dad pressed his lips tightly together. “We can do this. As a family.”

  “Wait—what?” I stared at him. “Right now?”

  “Summer,” Mom said shortly.

  There was a long, painful pause. “It’s going to be expensive.” She was talking to Dad again, and I could sense the argument threatening to boil over. “A month, maybe two, abroad? With only a few weeks to plan?”

  I couldn’t believe it. I’d always wanted to go to Wales. And yet now I wanted to cry, because I knew what it meant. I knew what they weren’t quite saying.

  Gee Gee wanted to die there.

  Dad put a hand on my shoulder. “Your Welsh will come in handy,” he said, his voice strained. “You’ll be able to pronounce all the place names.”

  He was trying so hard. Too hard. I forced a smile.

  “Just don’t let it interfere with your sleep,” my mother added. “You’ve been awake a lot lately. I hear you muttering in there.” My smile disappeared. I hadn’t been sleeping well and the whole family knew it. It was impossible to hide anything in our house; all four of us were crammed into our second-level flat. It had only been a few months since Gee Gee first moved in, and I started having the dream soon after that.

  Stress, my mom said. I wasn’t so sure.

  I’d always had vivid dreams, but this was … different somehow. Maybe because it just didn’t feel like a dream. Or maybe because I would wake up with my heart pounding, covered in sweat. Sometimes more than once a night.

  “My sleep is fine,” I said flatly, not meeting my mother’s eyes. Lately, whenever I woke up in the wee hours, I’d turn on my laptop and start listening to things in Welsh—

  podcasts, Internet radio, anything at all—losing myself in the rhythms, the music of the words. It was better than lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, one word repeating itself over and over in my head: cancer. One word my parents never seemed to say.

  “When is Gee Gee getting home again?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

  “The day after tomorrow,” my mom said. “She’s finished with that clinical trial, but they want to run a few more tests.” Tests. Once liver cancer metastasizes, the prognosis isn’t good; I didn’t need more tests to tell me that. That was why Gee Gee had refused further treatment. That was why there was a hospital bed in our office.

  That was, clearly, why we were going to Wales.

  I’d be surrounded by Welsh people, speaking Welsh for an entire summer. It felt unreal. I’d tried out other popular Celtic stuff: Irish folk dancing, Scottish Highland Games, Elizabethan dress-up at the Renaissance Faire, even steampunk outfits at the Edwardian Ball. You can do anything you want in San Francisco, and I had cardboard boxes full of costumes to prove it. But Wales was better. The minute I heard the language, I knew.

  And in a few short weeks, we’d be there for real. I looked down at my hands, turning my Celtic knot ring from the Ren Faire around and around on my finger. It would be my first time overseas, my first vacation out of the country.

  It might be Gee Gee’s last.

  Born to Wyn, May 15, 12:32 p.m.

  I’ve learned enough Welsh to say “Hello, my name is Olwen Nia Evans and I come from California.” I can also say “Please,” “Thank you,” and “Where are the toilets?” If I can manage to hold a conversation by the time we get there—even a boring one—I’ll be happy.

  Other than visiting Grandma Hazel in Orlando (and her new husband Angus, who served with Grandpa William in Vietnam—a long sad story that actually had a sort-of happy ending!), this will be the farthest I’ve ever traveled. I’ve even started dreaming about the trip.

  It’s a nice change from the other dream, the recurring nightmare.

  I deleted the last line and typed instead, Maybe if I keep listening to Welsh music while I sleep, I’ll learn by osmosis.

  I didn’t talk much about the dream, even though my blog wasn’t really all that public. Judging from the lack of comments, I was pretty sure nobody was reading it. Not even Rae. I tried to tell myself that a minimum of unsolicited advice is a sign of a good listener. If so, my blog was definitely a good listener. A bit less satisfying than talking to a real person, but better than nothing.

  The after-lunch bell rang. I logged out and pushed my chair back from the computer in the library. Rae just kept having more and more student governm
ent meetings, leaving me in lunchtime limbo. There were too many days like today, spending my lunch period doing homework or blogging in the library.

  I tried to make it romantic somehow; tried to see myself as a solitary writer, not needing anyone. In the long vintage sundress I was wearing today, at least I looked the part. But it still felt like an act.

  I hitched up my backpack and pushed open the library doors, squinting into the late spring sunlight—pretty, but I preferred our usual gray weather, the sky pearly with soft clouds and the air cool and smelling like the sea. Clearly everyone else disagreed with me. The masses of Geary High School students were a rowdy, happy, shouting mob in jeans and T-shirts, ready for the weekend to start.

  I stood off to one side, feeling very alone.

  Maybe it was a good thing I was going to be gone this summer.

  Just a couple of hours later, I paced back and forth across the living room, all the lights blazing. Being home alone in a converted Victorian that creaked and cracked during a rainstorm was too creepy. Mom and Dad had called to say they were stuck in traffic and wouldn’t be home with Gee Gee until later. Plus, water was pouring out of the sky, complete with thunder and lightning, which would make their drive even slower.

  I really didn’t want to be alone right now. But I didn’t want to brave the storm, either. My steps led me into the kitchen. Silent and empty. Then back to the living room.

  This was crazy. I had to talk to someone. I grabbed my phone, sat in the tiny window seat at the corner of our living room, and called Rae. She would know the right thing to say; she always knew how to distract me, how to make me laugh. The first day we met, in third grade, she made vampire fangs out of French fries and made me snort milk out of my nose in the middle of the cafeteria. We still laughed about that.

  The phone rang seven times, long enough for me to wonder what she was doing and whether she’d been avoiding me all day, and then she finally picked up.