"Demons from the Sky"
The Seven Wolves and the Hunt of Ysbrydnos
(Folklore from Dunland based on the Welsh tales of Cŵn Annwn, Hounds of the Other World.)
The little boy was too young to understand. He sat alone, far from the fireside, drawing shapes in the dirt with his stick. He was too young to know why the Draig-lûth had come, breathing flames in all directions, caring not whom they killed. Elders. Infants. Women with child. All who once knew his name.
Howling again. Wolves in the night. Yet this night it was no trivial thing. The boy raised his stick and shook it, rattled the snail shells tied to the end. Other children made their own signals. Several elders tapped ringed fingers on their wooden cups. The howling faded.
He was not too young to understand the cursing, the muttering and spitting of these elders. The Draig-lûth had broken clan laws. Laws of battle, of murder and its cost. Laws that kept the summer raids and blood vendettas from erupting into war. And now it was broken. Now war had come. In the dirt he drew a warrior.
Howling again. He shook his stick. Most were distracted, discussing what would be done in the days ahead. But always there were some who joined the chorus of tapping and rattling at the howls. As long as someone else had heard the wolves, you were safe. If others had heard, it must be beasts of the earth and no threat to the gathering. No threat to their painted fighters, their roaring bonfire.
But there was another hunt tonight. The biggest in years, thought the boy. For how many ghosts were wandering Dunland now? Scattered from the attack, burned in their homes, no burial rites, no songs of slumber. How many waited, haunting the dark woods until Ysbrydnos? Until the Hunt found them at last. And why did Rhi Helvarch not collect them himself? Why did he send down wolves from the stars — spectres of the night that could hardly tell living soul from dead? In the dirt he drew their constellation.
He looked up into the glittering sky to see if he had drawn it right. The howling came once more. He rattled his stick and shivered. These wolves were bold. These had been close. He blinked and looked around him. He looked into a circle of eyes wide with fear and alarm. Eyes staring at the little boy who had shaken his signal alone.
Had it been mistake? Had it been deliberate? Was he a child making mischief? Or had he heard a howl that no one else had heard? Other children pointed at him, staggered away in fear. A man cried out — a wretched scream of horror that could only come from a father who had once lost a son. They howl alone for the hunted. He leapt forward, scooped the child into his arms, rushed him to the bonfire.
It was too late. In the warm, flickering light the boy grew cold. He shrieked and his body trembled. Voice died in his throat. Light died in his eyes. Distant eyes staring into the sky. Eyes that had seen horrors beyond words, demons of another world.
Tears would never bring his spirit back. But the man held him close and cursed the blind demons. And he wept. He wept for this child, and for all the children taken when the hands that rule the heavens care not whom they kill.
(For Gryffudd)
