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  "Aye, that’d be her,” continued the barkeep. "The Lord, whose name was Rauth, sent one of his trusted men to fetch her in the castle of her father, who was another nobleman. But something happened; there was a fight. If you ask me, the father decided not to surrender his daughter to a man reputed to be able to change into a great beast."

  "So what happened?"

  "Gwendolyn was killed in the fight. I don’t know how or why; no one does. It seems that she got in the middle of it all. The lord Rauth, they said, never forgave his man for his failure to bring her to him. And he roamed and roamed the land, never finding his love. It is said that on dark nights he can be heard howling with the wind among them, searching eternally for her."

  "That's so sad," said Gwynne. "But he never even met her, did he?”

  “He didn’t. But somehow it seemed that he knew that she was to be his. Who knows? In the olden days it seemed that love worked quite differently, or didn’t exist at all. Or, more likely, it was simply one of those romantic tales that never really occurred and has changed over the years.”

  Gwynne sat for a moment, pondering the story. “Are there books about the subject?” she asked. “I mean, it’s a bit weird to walk into a pub and be told this story about a woman who looks like she could be my twin. I’d love to find out more.”

  “I don’t know. But up on the hill west of the town are the ruins of the castle Dundurn, where Rauth is said to wander. Maybe it would hold some clues. Or perhaps there’s a plaque or something up there.”

  “I’ve seen those ruins. Not up close though. I would have assumed you locals would visit the place.”

  “No, we don’t. Most are too frightened. They say there are strange goings-on up by the ruins. I wouldn’t go near the place with a ten-foot pole and a missile launcher.”

  "Well,” said Gwynne, “I might just do it. Minus the missile launcher. This afternoon, in fact.”

  The barkeep looked at her, a nervousness permeating his expression. “You’re here seeking answers,” he said. “To what, I can only guess. They say there’s magic in the place. Whatever the case, you be careful. It’s not always safe, a young woman like you prowling around the countryside.”

  “I’m a big girl. I can look after myself.”

  “To be sure,” said the man, looking her up and down. Gwynne was tall and far from a shrinking violet. It would take more than a tale of giant hounds to frighten her off.

  “I’m confused about one thing,” she said. “Why’s there a dragon in the painting? The wolves I understand.”

  “Rauth, Gwendolyn’s betrothed, was a King of sorts, they said. Some people think that the dragon represents him.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Who knows? There are legends about him, just like there are about so many other figures. Arthur pulled the sword from the stone and Rauth was a dragon. I’m sure they’re only myths, like so many other tales.”

  “So you think it’s a metaphor or something?”

  “I think it was probably some sort of symbol of nobility. And as for the wolves—who knows if they were real? Another symbol, perhaps.”

  “Well, thank you,” said Gwynne, rising from her stool. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  She went back to her table, feeling as though she finally understood where to start her search for the answers that had eluded her for over a decade, though a voice reminded her that tales of kings, wolves and dragons weren’t exactly likely to solve the issue of where her mother had gone. She sat and fondled her pint for a moment again before taking a sip.

  “What the bartender doesn’t know is a lot,” said a deep voice to her right as she drank. She started, turning her head, and saw that the man who had been examining her from the dark corner table now stood over her shoulder and was circling around so that she could see his entire form.

  He was tall, as well as too good-looking to be real. His shoulders were broad, athletic. And the eyes which had seemed piercing from afar were even more so close up, looking through Gwynne as though they could read everything inside her.

  “Oh?” was the only response she could muster. “You were listening to our conversation, then?”

  “I was. And I know more about the story than most. If you’re interested in hearing it, I’m all yours.”

  All mine. Wouldn’t that be something, Gwynne thought. “I’m very interested,” she said. “I’m curious about the lady Gwendolyn.”

  “And, perhaps, why she looks so much like you,” said the man, sliding in to sit opposite her.

  “I suspect that’s just coincidence, don’t you?” said Gwynne.

  “No.”

  “No? All right, you’re going to need to expand on ‘no.’ It’s too cryptic for my taste.”

  “I suspect that you and the lady are…close…relatives,” was all the man said.

  “Well, maybe we are. I do have roots here, apparently. But it sounds like she lived hundreds of years ago.”

  “She did, in a manner of speaking. Also, the bartender was wrong about the lord Rauth roaming through the ruins. It isn’t he who does so.”

  Something in this man’s manner of speaking was so odd; at times he sounded like he’d stepped out of another era. Or maybe it was simply some Cornish dialect that Gwynne didn’t know about.

  “But there is someone else roaming through the ruins, from the sound of things,” said Gwynne, shifting her glass around the table with a nervous hand. Who was this man and why was he so confident about the telling of this legend?

  “The man who walks among the ruins is the one who was sent to bring her to Rauth’s kingdom, to take her from her father. He is the one who laments the loss.”

  “Ah. So he had a thing for her?”

  “He did.” Somehow, the blue eyes seemed still more intense now, penetrating Gwynne’s flesh with their gaze. God, how did he do that?

  “He still has a thing for her to this day,” the man continued. Gwynne felt herself blush; it was almost as though he were talking about her.

  She considered asking him to expand on this, but the intensity of the thought almost frightened her. Instead she steered the questioning in another direction. “Do you know about the animals? The dragon and the wolves?”

  “I know some things,” the man said. “But perhaps they’re best left for another day.” With that, he stood and walked away without saying another word. Gwynne was left feeling breathless, her heart racing for no reason that she could fathom. She had to admit to herself that something in his look and his voice had hit her as one is confronted with a gorgeous landscape of mountains under the setting sun; it’s hard to believe that there’s such beauty in the world, and yet for a moment, there it is. Unfortunately this particular landscape made her knees weak, her nipples hard, and the area between her legs throb.

  After a moment she settled into a sort of determined resolve. She downed the last of her pint and grabbed her jacket, dropped payment for the beer on the table and left to hike up towards the ruins on the hill.

  In the darkest corner of the Boar’s Head Pub a man set a few heavy coins on his table and made his way out the front door, turning in the same direction that the young American woman had gone.

  * * *

  Encounters 4

  Gwynne was pensive, questioning her own common sense as she set off on her hike. There was no rational explanation for heading up to the ruins except as a sort of temporary satisfaction for her own curiosity, and possibly to escape from thoughts of Mr. Gorgeous-Blue-Eyes. At this point she’d discovered a sort of treasure hunt that was at the very least a distraction from her own troubles and from the loneliness that had set in since her father’s death.

  She turned over the questions that sat in her mind as she walked: Why had Gwendolyn been standing in front of that castle in the painting? The story told that she’d never married Rauth; that she’d never been mistress of the place. It was possible that she’d never even seen it. And yet, what could some ruins on a hill possibly tell Gwy
nne about what had happened hundreds of years previous?

  The most pressing question, of course, was the one of Gwendolyn’s appearance. How had she borne such a close resemblance to Gwynne herself? Maybe she was one of the ancestors that Yvonne Drake had spoken of in her letter. Surely it wasn’t mere coincidence.

  As she made her way up the lush green towards the ruins, Gwynne wondered how it was that she’d spent so much time hiking since she’d arrived in England, so little eating, and yet she seemed very much to be the same shape as when she’d first arrived in Cornwall. She’d always been curvaceous and somewhere around the age of eighteen had accepted that she would never know what it was to be skinny. Much, she supposed, as a skinny woman would never know the joys (or sorrows) of a wide set of hips. Now, six years later, she’d come to terms with her shape. More or less.

  Still, she felt intensely energized by the salt air and the exercise. For once the clouds were gone and the sun beat down upon her. And as she approached the ruins atop the hill their full majesty beckoned to her. Their walls, crumbling to pieces from centuries of war, weather and neglect, nevertheless stood tall in places. Glassless arched windows occasionally revealed themselves, and even the odd piece of vaulted ceiling remained. Something in the structure filled Gwynne with excitement; it was the novelty of discovery that children experience almost daily but that adults forget until confronted with an unexpected adventure.

  She stopped in the center of the assembly of rock, wanting to acknowledge and greet the structure with reverence, though it seemed a little insane. The walls were, after all, inanimate. But she was alone and felt a need to communicate her presence.

  “Hello there," she said quietly, placing a hand on the flat surface of a nearby façade of stone. It was cold to the touch despite the sun’s rays hitting it directly.

  “I wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”

  It was a man’s voice, raspy and slightly high-pitched, coming from behind her, though at first Gwynne couldn’t see from where. But she extracted her hand from the stone’s surface, for the first time apprehensive.

  * * *

  Encounters 5

  “Why not?” Gwynne asked the empty space around her.

  “They’re reputed to move. The walls, that is,” said the mysterious voice in a pleasant, smooth English accent. “Sometimes of their own volition. Shifting around, changing places. You never know if one might come crashing down on you.”

  Just then a figure stepped out from behind the tallest of the walls. Gwynne didn’t know how he’d seen her and yet remained invisible, but she smiled, attempting friendliness, though the stranger had invaded her space.

  “Well then,” she said. “I’ll be more careful from now on. I’m really just passing through this area.”

  “Are you?” The man approached her. He was young; in his twenties, Gwynne estimated. And fair. His eyes were a sort of yellowish-green.

  “Yes,” she lied, the stranger’s proximity rendering her nervous. “I’m off to…meet someone. My boyfriend.”

  The man was still coming closer, only stopping when he stood directly in front of Gwynne. He studied her face and she tried her best to look back at his, attempting to seem more confident than she felt.

  He was handsome, but pale. His skin seemed almost translucent, like fine porcelain which allowed the light to pierce its surface. When she looked at him Gwynne thought of the old-fashioned ivory dolls she’d seen in the movies when she was a child; pallid, sickly-looking even. People didn’t look like that in real life. There was a coldness in him that she didn’t like, as though touching him would be like making contact with a shard of ice.

  “I was rather hoping that you’d come to meet me,” said the man. Gwynne felt a shiver run the length of her spine. She stepped back.

  “But I’ve frightened you,” he continued. “I’m sorry. I suppose that came out badly. It’s only that I’ve been looking for you for some time.”

  “I don’t entirely understand,” she replied. “No, scratch that. I don’t understand at all. But I really should go…” She turned to walk away, wondering how fast she could run with the pack on her back.

  “You are a descendant of the Lady Gwendolyn, are you not?”

  She stopped in her tracks.

  “Who are you?” she asked, staring at his face. “Do you know someone who looks like me? A member of my family?” She thought in that moment of her mother and hope flashed in her like a distant beacon.

  “No, I do not. Nor do I know any of your kin now living. I knew Lady Gwendolyn, though, and she was very much like you.” The man looked now as though he wanted to touch her. Something in his eyes seemed to glaze over, as though he were recalling another time and place.

  In spite of the man’s seeming eagerness to tell Gwynne about the woman who so resembled her, every instinct inside her told her to run. Surely this guy wasn’t the only source of information around here; there had to be someone less creepy.

  “Okay, well, I’ll just be off now. It was nice to meet you though…”

  “Kapral.”

  “Kapral. Yes, very good. Nice to meet you. Well, I really must go now.” With that, Gwynne turned her back and wished him and herself far away.

  “Oh, I won’t let you go so easily. Not this time.” The voice was behind her now, and Gwynne quickened her pace as she walked downhill in her attempt to leave the ruins behind her. For all the legends of great hounds, this Kapral seemed to her more threatening.

  Gwynne walked fast, her legs breaking into a jog as she went, the distant silhouette of the town on the horizon below. “If I can just make it,” she thought. She didn’t look back. But she didn’t need to.

  She’d only gained a few feet when she felt herself fly forward, as though a great force had swept her legs out from underneath her, and she fell face first towards the ground. There was no time to register what had happened; all she knew was that something had knocked her down and seemed now to hold her there, though Gwynne couldn’t see what; only blades of grass and the distant town were in her sightline.

  “Let me go,” she mustered as she felt hands—no, not hands—something else—on her back. Hot breath collided with her skin, raising goosebumps on the back of her neck. “What do you want?” she asked, desperate to negotiate her release.

  There was no response at first but the huffing of breath. Then the voice returned, hissing in its nasal, threatening tone.

  “I want you gone. I want you to cease existing. You nearly ruined my life once. I won’t have you attempt it again.”

  Hands now reached around her throat from behind and Gwynne reached for them, helpless under their great strength as the increasing pressure seemed to close down her breath. She gasped for air, each second straining to inhale yet failing.

  As she felt herself fade into a state of semi-consciousness, her eyelids growing heavy, a shadow moved before her, and fast. At first it seemed like a hallucination. “This is what happens when you die,” she thought, resigning herself for a moment to the notion. This, perhaps, was her life flashing before her eyes.

  And then the hands, the pressure around her throat, disintegrated and she could inhale, breath coming in deep gasps now.

  She rolled over onto her back, hand on her chest as she tried to regain her senses. A flurry of movement directed her gaze to the right as a sound permeated the air, reminding Gwynne of hearing neighbourhood cats fight and mate late at night.

  But this was no housecat.

  A large grey wolf was attacking her assailant, clamping a giant jaw on his shoulder and driving him to the ground as he cried out in pain. “No!” yelled the man, attempting with futility to fight off the beast.

  The wolf pulled him, his body flailing, towards the edge of the cliff. Gwynne thought that she must be dreaming. No wolf, regardless of how clever, would think to do such a thing. As her breathing deepened, her throat opening properly at last and she watched.

  The wolf flung its victim over the cliff’s edge as t
hough he weighed only a pound, sending him to what could only be his death. Gwynne closed her eyes, convinced again that it was a dream. When she opened them, she thought she saw an eagle fly off into the distance overhead. More dreams.

  She lay, breath coming more easily, waiting for the inevitable wolf attack. But it never came. Only the blue sky stretched overhead, and somewhere in the distance a seagull cried out. The long grass which cushioned her swayed gently in the warm breeze.

  Her eyes closed and the world went black.

  * * *

  Encounters 6

  October 7, 2014

  Gwynne awoke to a veil of darkness. Her first thought was that she’d been blind-folded or imprisoned somewhere underground, but as her eyes began to adjust she noticed flickering light reflecting off the surface of a stone wall ahead.

  Lying on her side, she turned to see a small fire burning several feet away. Her palms, flat on the ground in preparation to push herself upwards, felt a mixture of moist earth and stone under their touch. Slowly she sat up, looking around, ready, she hoped, to run.

  Portions of tall stone walls surrounded her and a star-filled sky lay overhead like a blanket. The ruins that she’d visited, where she’d been attacked, were all around her. If she was a prisoner, at least she wasn’t shackled.

  “You’re awake,” said a gentle voice which had a familiar ring to it, and for that alone was soothing. But given the fact that she was outside, had just awoken from a state of unconsciousness brought on by a man trying to strangle her to death, and that it was almost impossible to see her surroundings, there was little that could calm her enough to compensate for the fear which sat in her like a brewing illness.

  “Who are you?” asked Gwynne, trying to place the timbre of the voice. The last time she’d addressed a man she couldn’t see it had ended poorly.

  A silhouette moved in the dim light, and a moment later stood opposite her by the fire. As the flames lit his face, she recognized the gorgeous man from the pub; the one who’d talked to her about the bartender’s tale of Gwendolyn.