Free The Meat Tree by Gwyneth Lewis

urgent knocking at our door. I open and there’s a wild-eyed Aranrhod, gabbling about an enemy outside.

    He
    And just at that point, I decide to do my guerilla move. I’m playing Aranrhod but I make a freeze-frame and slip into the character of the boy to see what we’re dealing with.
    The clamour stops suddenly as if switched off at source. I enter the room of his mind. It’s a blank, a whitewashed cube. Outside I hear birdsong. Four walls, a floor, no furniture. It’s hardly human.
    It looks familiar.

    She
    I’m holding the whole situation in my mind. The soldiers outside, the attack on the fort, our disguises as poets.

    He
    Quick breath, then out into the racket and I’m Aranrhod again. The old man says that he’s willing to fight. We look out of the window and my heart sinks. There are so many ships that you can hardly see the water in the bay. I tell my women to bring two sets of arms. I’ll take care of the young one.
    So I make him stand still while I strap on greaves over his shinbones, then the sabaton, the gorget, the tasset, couter, pauldron, cuirass then habergeon. Then I give him his sword and, finally, hand him a shield. I step back to admire him and see myself reflected in the polished metal.
    Behind me, I see the old man put down his weapons. He starts to laugh. I berate him and make as if to help dress him too. He asks me if the boy’s properly armed. I say he is, that I did it myself.
    Then I recognise them both: Gwydion and Lleu.
    And it suddenly hits me. I’ve been tricked again. I rush to the window and the ships are gone.

    She
    I can’t help liking it when Gwydion gets his way. Aranrhod was furious this time, beside herself at having been tricked twice.

    He
    I look at the boy and he appears… more substantial. What I’m watching is the birth of the child into the adult world.

    She
    Still, it was a terrible curse, her third. First she called Gwydion an evil man and then said, ‘I will swear a destiny on the boy that he will never have a wife from the race that is on this earth at present.’

    He
    Lonely forever.

    She
    Gwydion will think of something straightforward to get round her words. I hope I play him when we get to that. It’s fun seeing the curses unravel as Gwydion walks the gaps between words and what they might mean.

    He
    That room. It’s me. A boy who’s been playing at being a man and has no life of his own to fall back on, other than what he gets by subterfuge. It’s my room in the dome down on Mars.

    *

    Synapse Log 7 Feb 2210, 21:30

    Inspector of Wrecks
    This is ridiculous. I refuse to be spooked.
    Nona’s tired, gone to her bunk early and is fast asleep. Before we quit the game, we started on the next scene. That was a surprise. Instead of beginning to plot his trick, Gwydion went with Lleu to see King Math. I took Math’s part and I’d completely forgotten that he was a magician. Or I never knew. Anyway, why would Gwydion go to him? Aren’t his own powers strong enough to rise to the challenge of Aranrhod’s latest curse?
    One thing occurred to me. I’ve been thinking all along that Gwydion was the chosen persona of the Mastermind, but now I think that it might be Math behind the whole thing. We’ll have to watch what he does very carefully on our next visit. This might change everything.
    Nona was flagging, so I decided to call it a day. We left Gwydion and Math deep in conversation, as if they were plotting something. I sent Nona to bed.
    Me, I can’t settle. My mind is reeling with the reappearance of Math, what it means for the story. And there’s been so much new information to absorb, that I need to go through it.
    Nona sighs. She’s dreaming.
    So what do we know so far about this ship?
    It appears to be a standard Earth vessel of the spaceship age. But its VR capability is much more sophisticated than you’d expect for that period.
    I feel watched,