Emyr's Smile by Amy Rae Durreson Page B

that man yet, and
only time and luck would tell whether it would be on canvas or
whether he’d be tracing color onto smooth skin.
     
    HEILYN WAS woken the
next dawn by the soft sigh of rain. It pattered down gently on the
roof of the attic of the village inn, and plinked off the bedpan
Heilyn had put under the leak. It drowned out the snores of the
overnighting sailors in the other two bunks and made the air
suddenly taste clean and cool. Strange, he thought sleepily, how
rain sounded the same on every island. He had been traveling since
the spring, island-hopping on the ropes, and the rain sounded the
same tucked into a shepherd’s hut on the slopes of Callestr, high
in the sky, or in a shrineside hostel below Luaith, where the
priests of Dwynwen lived on actual searocks, lower than any island.
Even on the mainland, where he’d spent a bewildered weekend, the
rain sounded the same.
    Now summer was drawing
to an end, and he would have to slow the pace of his travel, as the
ferry services became less frequent in the face of winter storms.
He wasn’t ready to plant his feet in the ground and grow roots, not
yet, but it was time to start thinking about his route a little
more. Winter wasn’t quite such a forgiving season for just jumping
on the next boat out when you were bored of a place.
    He thought of Emyr, and
smiled up at the scraps of paper pinned over his bed, all covered
with charcoal attempts to capture Emyr’s face. Perhaps there was
time for one last fling before summer was over.
    With that thought, he
slipped back into sleep, and didn’t stir until he was woken by the
clang of pots in the kitchen below. The rain was gone, and the sun
shone through the open windows as he dashed down the stairs to the
kitchen. He was traveling for the sake of his art, but art wasn’t
as useful in getting cheap accommodation as a willingness to scrub
dishes, so he was working for his stay.
    The sunshine came
spilling in the window again as he splashed and scrubbed with
goodwill, that amazing low island light that made his heart feel
light and his fingers hungry for a brush. He whistled as he worked,
the music spilling out of him as if he were a lark flitting across
the base of a high island, loose and bright and happy.
    “You’re in a good
mood,” Elin the innwife remarked, bustling in with more dirty
plates. The crew of the Gylfinir, the trading ship that had
docked overnight, were making a good breakfast while they waited
for the wind and everyone in the kitchen was busy.
    “I’m in love,” Heilyn
informed her happily.
    She snorted, dumping
the plates beside him and picking up the clean stack. “Oh, yes?
What is it you’re in love with today, boy? The flowers outside the
window, is it? The birds in the trees? A handsome sailor?”
    “My heart is as wide as
the ocean,” Heilyn told her.
    “Aye,” she said with a
snort of derision. “And as shallow as a puddle.”
    He chose to ignore
that. Slander! “For your information, I’m in love with a smile I
haven’t seen yet.” He thought of Emyr’s mouth and his sad, sad eyes
and sighed again.
    “Dwynwen save us,
should I be telling my friends to lock up their daughters?”
    Heilyn wrinkled his
nose at her. “Girls? No, thank you. This smile belongs to a man.”
Emyr was definitely all grown-up, though he wasn’t old, Dwynwen
forbid.
    “Does this lucky man
have a name?” Elin asked, openly laughing at him now. It wasn’t his
fault he approached his life with such enthusiasm, was it? Some
people would think that was a good thing.
    Heilyn was about to
answer when he realized that he knew nothing about Emyr except his
first name. He clearly lived here, but beyond that he could be
anyone. He could even, Dwynwen forbid, be married. Well, today
would be for finding out more. To cover, he simply grinned at Elin.
“He’s a mystery.”
    By the end of serving,
everyone working in the inn was teasing him about his mystery man,
but Heilyn just felt his mood bubble higher