A Welsh Story

By Christopher Woods

The air frigid around our bed in the night room, I tell her the story set in Wales, so far away I know she’ll believe it. She has never been to Wales, nor have I. And frankly, I have told her this story before, and it has never ceased to please her. I don’t mention this and, kindly, she does not let on that she already knows the story. Her blue eyes are bright with anticipation.

Making frosty clouds with my words I begin, I summon this story, not certain where I’m going, as each time the narrative leaves the road a bit, lands momentarily in a snowdrift it rises again - intent on being told.

It careens like an icy wind through bare old trees, across the harvested fields now wet and muddy, sometimes even scurries down a rabbit hole where fur warmth waits out winter.

Tonight, the story veers yet again, enters an ancient and maybe legendary dragon’s cave on a winter night in a different time, and then steals inside sleeping house in an ancient, now mostly forgotten village.

This newly freshened Welsh story is alive. I can feel it nearing our room. I do not see it, but sense it strongly as it approaches. It tiptoes around corners, drifts down the alley, stops in doorways to look for lights, for dream songs. Suddenly, it is in the room with us.

The story tonight is also about an assortment of new things, wayward dogs and frostbitten cats, dead and silent birds borne aloft on a shrill wind from the soft white hills the color of a full moon on a shattered sea. In this new story, no people exist. I did not exclude them. I would never have done that. They simply did not appear. Perhaps they missed the departure of the night bound story train. Or, they had already committed to another story in someone else’s room on this frozen night. If this is the case, then I do not blame them for staying inside where, hopefully, they are warm.

Gone for now, those people, vanished into their own good night, maybe to return again, or maybe not, on another night. For now, this story unravels like smoke rising forlornly from old chimneys. It wafts across the rose dawn, crosses this very room and bed, caressing, but not waking her.