Seren Matthews is a normal, modern-day 19 year old girl studying photography at university. She lives in an apartment in the city and has just been gifted a car by her abroad dad. She has a mental Welsh-American-British family but she doesn't care, she's far away from them now, studying in England. Or so she thought. Her dad's business in America has become bankrupt and with that, Seren's university funding went down the drain. She needs money for a new camera to finish her course and her wacky Welsh-American Aunt Maggie and Uncle Rhys have agreed to pay it for her, as long as she goes on holiday to Wales with them to photograph everything as they rediscover the location of their Welsh family roots, before it's bulldozed for council houses.
So she reluctantly agrees to go along, having no other choice, and they make their first stop in their family's "ancestral home" of Tŷ'r Gorffenol [tee gorf-ennol], an old estate that was renovated and modernised to be a holiday home/community lot to rent for parties and weddings. However due to its unpopularity the owners have sold it to the council and are renting it out at a much reduced price until that time in the hopes of getting some money.
It takes them a while to get there, taking many wrong turns, and before they ascend up the hill to the house they decide to take a break in the village. As Seren's relatives stretch their legs and make a beeline for the first "quaint" post office they see, she catches the eye of and is winked at by a young, dark-haired guy crossing the road; not something that's happened to her very often.
When they arrive Seren's Aunt and Uncle are enthusing over the place and puzzling over it's unpopularity while Seren's quiet 10 year old cousin, Caylie, (a stark contrast to her loud and boisterous parents) immediately slips off to her room. So left alone with her aunt and uncle, Seren is forced to be their obligatory photographer as they go around exploring the house and the grounds.
At night when Seren's aunt and uncle were finally too exhausted to explore any more she leans out of the window in a moment of rare solitude. Though oddly shaped (curved at the bottom), her room is bigger than the one in her apartment and looks over onto the estate's grounds. Past the lake she notices an overhang of willow trees with an odd stick poking out of them, it's somewhere that her Uncle & Aunt oddly didn't go anywhere near so she makes a mental note to go there as soon as she gets a free moment, but that doesn't happen for awhile.
Throughout having to tag along behind her Aunt and Uncle, her thoughts are preoccupied by the boy who for some reason picked on her to wink at, and a dull homesickness as all this countryside and beaches are so different to the city she's used to. She's chastised for not being more enthusiastic about discovering her ancestry but she finally gets an opportunity to investigate that stick while they go into the village/with the excuse of taking photos of the foliage.
It takes her a while to get around the lake and to the exact same location, but eventually she finds it and discovers the stick is actually a rusty handrail. There are steps that go down to a small and seemingly pointless clearing in the trees that has a path between the bushes to lead back to the main gardens; but on the fifth step down she discovers that the steps also turn sharply to the right in a concealed gap in the bushes and go downwards in a spiral. She follows them down and as they still don't stop and get darker and darker, her ears pop halfway down and wonders if she's discovered a secret cellar. Eventually she comes to the bottom and emerges in a dimly lit circular room. Hearing muffled voices bickering, talking about something like "why did you let her in here? It's your job to keep people away!" she walks forward and as she passes through an invisible barrier of some kind the room suddenly floods with light and she's standing only a few feet away from the guy who winked at her the other day. "But I did!" Is the protest that Seren hears from the other participant in the conversation as the young man stands before her, frozen in an awkward smile of shock, amazement and a grimace as they look at eachother. He's dressed in some kind of clothing you'd expect to see in a Lord of The Rings movie and both are looking at eachother in abject horror, praying that they'll wake up from this nightmare any second now. He is the first to break and poorly tries to usher her off and persuade her it's a dream with: "Yes I'm the fairy king. You can't be here or the tooth fairy won't like you any more, now off you trot twinkle-toes! May fair, chubby youngsters be born to you and all your kin!" He tries to guide her back to the stairs but she dodges out of the way and looks between him and his short, portly friend who'd just emerged from another room, also dressed in fantasy-like clothes.
"What the...Is this some kinky cult gathering I've just found or something?" She asks with a vacant smile verging on hysteria.
"Yes that's exactly what it is. You'll wake up soon with nothing but a fair dusting of glitter on your brow sweet child, so out!" The young guy said, latching onto her thought path eagerly and again tries to push her towards the stairs. Seren is not sure whether she wants to try and resist or not and is stumbling forwards, almost at the invisible barrier again when they hear a booming voice coming up the hallway behind them.
"It's the Viscount." The short, portly man said apologetically and the young guy spun around.
"Shit!" He exclaimed in horror and looked despairingly at Seren. "Sorry, you're involved." He said to Seren, wrapped his arm around her waist and spun them around into an arched door frame built into the wall next to them.
"Hey!" She was protesting then stopped dead in her tracks as instead of banging into the wall they'd emerged on the other side into a field that definitely wasn't her aunt and uncle's ancestral home. "Fairies don't say shit." She whispered weakly as she stared at the field and he laughed wryly.
"Welcome to the real world, darlin'." He smiled with a sudden Welsh accent, realising that he couldn't get rid of her with the dream-façade now, and flung his arms out around him to indicate the "real world".
"What...just happened?" She asked squeakily, frozen in place with shock, scared to move in case everything was vaccumed into a rabbit hole or something.
"Portal, and not a big one at that. I'm surprised we managed to fit." He explained as if it was obvious and looked her figure up and down skeptically.
They stood there in silence for a few moments and then he blew his cheeks out heavily.
"I'm Aron Connah." He said with a smile and held his hand out to her, not expecting her to take it.
She looked blankly at it for a moment. "Seren Matthews." She replied finally.
"Seren. That's a pretty name."
Aron is a prince of his people, the fourth in-line, and Seren has unexpectedly managed to get through their blockades and spells to ward away people, and venture into a portal/door to their city, which is in a parallel universe. The eldest son is an evil one and about to inherit their recently deceased father's kingdom so Aron had just announced he's going on a mission to find his other six brothers so they can contest the eldest's rule and claim to the throne when Seren walks in. The portly man Aron was bickering with was his friend the portalkeeper who's responsible for the hiding and defence of the portal Seren walked into, somehow bypassing every defence he'd put up. The Viscount is the eldest prince's henchman and was chasing after Aron to stop him from getting away and finding the other princes. The portal Aron pulls her into leads to the home of one of the princes and he took her with him to prevent her being found by the Viscount.
Aron spends most of the time going down to the house helplessly explaining the situation to her, and convincing her it isn't all a dream as he needs her to have her head about her if he's going to find and persuade his brother to join him. It's Seren who actually spots the brother.
When it's over and they return home, Seren goes to bed claiming all the exploring, and manages to convince herself it was all a dream.
(Turn up the volume to hear the heartbeat)
"Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run!" The American couple in the front screeched along to the track playing on the radio. The girl in the back cringed and sank further back into her seat.
"Come on Seren, sing along!" The man driving called over the sound of the radio and the air rushing past the open window.
"I don't sing." Seren replied hesitantly and drew her worn blue hoodie over her head.
"Course you do," Her Uncle laughed. "Or you should with all that music you listen to!" He said and she glanced despairingly at her 11 year old cousin in the seat opposite her. Casie just looked back at her silently with wide, grey eyes from underneath her wispy blonde hair and Seren huffed in resignation. Getting a single syllable out of her was a miracle, getting support against her uncle would be impossible.
"We'll be at uhhh, at...what was it again honey?" He asked his wife as she finished screeching in unison with Bruce Springsteen.
"Tur
No comments:
Post a Comment