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any more about the sea-going venture. She is not sure she should mention it to Gwydion. Her father brought her up to speak her mind, to tell the truth and accept the consequences. But now . . . now she is like a scared mouse, small and brown, scurrying close along the edges of a high wall, keeping as quiet as possible. What happened? The world constantly shifts like this sand beneath her feet. What is right one day is wrong the next.
    Gwydion puts his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m taking your advice,’ he says and flops down on the sand to take his shoes off. She sits next to him and takes off her own shoes and stockings. The sand is scorching beneath her feet and between her toes. She andGwydion scramble to the top of the next dune and slither down the other side.
    The heat is intense out here on the open beach. It wraps itself around her arms and legs and torso as if it were a woollen quilt, enveloping and suffocating. Along the miles of beach to either side of them the air shimmers. Figures appear in the haze like mirages, daubs of watery paint in a desert. The sea itself, monstrous on this beach in winter with its roaring, heaving waves, is becalmed, barely a ripple showing on its surface, reflecting the sky and the distant hills of Lln in its depth. A perfect mirror image; it is hard to tell what is real from what is not.
    â€˜I always forget how immense the sea seems,’ Gwydion says. ‘It’s enclosed somehow at Aberystwyth. But here,’ he encompasses the bay with his open arms, ‘here you could almost imagine seeing Ireland on a clear day. It’s not so far away, is it, Non?’
    â€˜Do you remember me telling you the story of Brân taking his warriors over the sea to Ireland to rescue Branwen?’
    â€˜Of course I do,’ Gwydion says. ‘I can’t imagine what made Taid name Mam after her, though. She wouldn’t stand for that sort of carry-on!’
    Non laughs at the expression on Gwydion’s face. No, Branwen would have turned the tables on anyone who tried to harm her or her children. Especially her children. King or no king. Non was always somewhat in awe of her sister, a little scared of her.
    â€˜But she has a generous heart,’ she says. ‘Not many would have taken in a ten-year-old like me when our father died. I think I must have been a handful, left to do as I liked by Tada. Poor Branwen.’
    â€˜I expect she enjoyed the challenge,’ Gwydion says. ‘But, Non – talking of names has reminded me – do you remember Owen, the herbalist you knew in Aberystwyth during the War?’
    Non feels a warmth in her face that has nothing to do with the strength of the sun. She turns away from Gwydion to look out to sea, fanning herself with her hand as if it might raise a breeze to cool her. ‘Of course,’ she says, and is amazed at how calm her voice sounds.
    â€˜We were both at a meeting at the National Library a few weeks ago, he came up to me and asked if I knew you – don’t you think that’s odd? I don’t think I look like you, do I? Anyway, we chatted and I mentioned I was coming up to stay. He asked to be remembered to you. He said you were well-named – Rhiannon the enchantress.’
    She is too agitated to laugh at such a foolish thing. Not even Davey in his courting days had called her an enchantress.
    â€˜He said you’d tamed a bird just like your namesake. Though she tamed a flock of them, didn’t she? Anyway, I didn’t know you had a tame bird any more than I knew you had a tame suitor, Non.’
    She knows Gwydion is teasing her, he was always a tease. But it is too close. Owen is her shameful secret; a secret that she has been able to push into the farthest reaches of her mind. No conversation is safe, she thinks, there are twists and turns you do not see until it is too late. She swallows hard and turns back to Gwydion.
    â€˜Herman,’ she says, ‘he meant