Read Emyr's Smile for Free Online

like,”
Heilyn said and did kiss him, just a peck on the end of his nose.
He’d never considered talking about himself something that actually
required practice, but he would make sure that Emyr got some now.
How long had he been coming home to a silent house?
    Emyr was definitely
blushing now. “I thought you weren’t going to do that sort of
thing.”
    “I’m not going to
seduce you without invitation,” Heilyn clarified, “but I’m still
allowed to flirt, and that was flirting.”
    “I think you’re
changing these rules as we go along.”
    “More fun that way,
isn’t it?”
    “Heilyn.”
    For a moment, Heilyn
really thought he was about to be kissed, and he was already
turning his face up for it when Emyr stepped back, looking away. “I
have some leftover honeycakes, and a hotpot in the oven, if you’d
like to stay.”
    Heilyn stayed, of
course, and after that he remembered to ask after Emyr’s day every
night. Emyr himself slowly managed to choke out more than the odd
strangled sentence about his life.
    Summer slipped slowly
into autumn. The apples weighed heavy on the bough, and the common
was wreathed with mist as Heilyn walked to the shrine every
morning. Rain came, soft and quiet, and he took to timing his
departure from the hospice so that he got back to the village just
as Emyr locked up the trade office. Emyr had an oilcloth cloak
which would cover both their heads if they walked close together,
and it made the rain something that Heilyn could laugh about rather
than a misery.
    Emyr still didn’t
smile, but some of the ingrained sadness faded slowly from his
face. It made him less compelling as an artistic subject, but
Heilyn had discovered within himself an insatiable urge to make
Emyr happy. He didn’t quite understand where it had come from,
unless it had grown from that original desire to see Emyr’s smile,
but every evening in Emyr’s kitchen and every time Emyr blushed or
made a dry insightful comment just made it burn brighter.
    Heilyn didn’t get
kissed, either. There had definitely been times when he had
expected it, as Emyr had lingered right at his side a little too
long, or stared at Heilyn’s mouth as he blushed. The closest they
came was on a night when the storm came rolling in out of the west,
tearing across the sky with crunches of thunder and sending the
rain spitting down like broken glass. Father Cian brought Heilyn
back to the village early, offering him a seat in the pony trap so
that he didn’t have to slither across the common where it was
already awash with mud.
    When he tried the door
of the trade office, it was already locked and bolted. He staggered
next door into the shop as the wind caught at him, trying to drag
him down towards the quay.
    “Emyr will be home by
now, dear,” Dilys said, shaking her head. Behind her spectacles,
her gray eyes were misty and concerned. “He doesn’t care for
storms, poor boy. It was a night like this that
the Gwyfyn went down and young Aneirin died, poor
soul.”
    Heilyn swallowed hard,
his heart clenching, and dashed back out into the storm. Father
Cian and his trap were gone, probably back to the shelter of the
shrine, so he simply ran along the coast road. Here, without the
shelter of trees or buildings, the wind kept buffeting him into the
hedge, tearing at his hair and clothes with cold claws. He had to
slow to a walk in the end, but he could feel the island stirring
under him, the wind weeping through the hollows in the rock and the
waves lashing up to swipe at the base of the isle, hungry to drag
it back below the water.
    When he reached the
house, it was dark. The sky was so heavy he could barely feel his
way across the garden, and he could only see by the dim light of
the starflowers tumbling across the sky as the storm ripped them
off the boughs of the trees. The front door, when he reached it,
was locked and he could hear the bolts rattling and straining
against the force of the wind. Swearing, he put his hands