Emyr's Smile by Amy Rae Durreson

Chapter
1
     
    HEILYN HAD just loaded
up his brush with the most perfect shade of blue he’d ever mixed
when he heard a very polite voice say, “I think you ought to know
this field usually contains an awfully bad-tempered bull.”
    Heilyn laughed without
looking aside from his canvas and the shimmering view before him:
the sea, still hazy with early mist, and the islands floating above
low-lying Sirig, the morning light catching on their undersides
where the moss velveted the rocks and brushed against the
interlocking brass pipes and cisterns, and the tumbling streams
where the water fell like Dwynwen’s tears down the islands’ craggy
cliffs, garlanded by misty rainbows . “I’ll take the chance,
thanks.”
    “I only mention it
because he broke the last artist’s arm and ate his canvas.” After a
moment, the unseen stranger added thoughtfully, “Which in his case
was no loss, but your work is much better.”
    Well, that was a new
approach. “Thank you, but flattery won’t persuade me to move.”
    “I don’t want you to
get hurt.” The stranger’s tone was a little frosty now. “Pumpkin is
going to be in an even worse mood than usual when he gets back, so
consider yourself fairly warned.”
    “If you really want me
to believe in the bull,” Heilyn suggested, “you should choose a
more likely name than Pumpkin.”
    “You
don’t believe…?” the stranger said, sounding quite bewildered.
“Why wouldn’t you believe in a bull?”
    Heilyn sighed and put
his brush down. He would have believed it without question at the
start of his trip around Ys. Travel, however, as he’d tried to
explain to his protesting family as they gathered to wave him off
from the wharf on Rhaedr, broadened the mind and taught new skills.
Including cynicism.
    “You see,” he said now,
“people like art.”
    “They do, yes, on the
whole.”
    “But that doesn’t mean
they like artists. Oh, people like to know what you’re doing, and
they love looking over your shoulder to criticize, but after that
they don’t really like you sitting around on their land, blocking
their view, and making them feeling embarrassed to scratch their
arses. But Dwynwen forbid they look like they don’t like art, so
it’s all, “The light’s bad there,” and, “Oh, the view’s better in
that other man’s field,” or “Mind the bull.” Heard them all.” There
was silence from behind him, and he belatedly realized that might
have been a bit much. “Uh, sorry. Didn’t mean to go into that much
detail.” He turned to offer up his most charming smile, the one
which had gotten him out of trouble in more islands than not, and
caught his breath sharply.
    The man on the other
side of the hedge was lovely—no, not lovely. That sounded too
pretty and delicate. This man was stunning. He was all lean clean
lines, even his face long and high-boned. His hair was cut close
enough to his head to display the perfect curve of his skull. It
could have looked too austere, on someone even a shade paler, but
there was just enough color to him: a hint of pink in his cheeks
and the darker blush of his lips, the dark otter-pelt hue of his
hair, and his eyes, the brightest thing in his face, blue as the
sky and so sad. Heilyn wanted to put his hands on that face and
feel the lines of it under the heels of his palms until he knew how
to shape it in clay. He wanted to mix those colors in watercolor or
ready to slide straight onto fine china.
    “You’re beautiful!”
Heilyn blurted out, his heart in his words.
    The vision of
perfection across the hedge looked a little disconcerted at that.
“Oh. Um, thank you. That’s very… I still have to put the bull back
in his field.”
    “The bull named
Pumpkin?” Heilyn was slowly coming back to his senses, though he
still couldn’t look away.
    “Is that a name I would
make up?”
    That was a fair point,
but Heilyn could refute it. “I’ve been painting here all week, and
there are no pumpkins in this