There were days when Hywel stood knee-deep in muddy water, a snow-capped mountain in his path; days when every passing flock of storks croaked warnings, and massing clouds obliterated his sense of direction. Wherever he was his name was stranger. He was an omen, looked at like a blood moon.
The rising sun was always at his back. Eventually, Hywel knew he would circle the Earth and meet a familiar face again. Believing in luck felt like work, so Hywel put his trust in his wits— he kept out of the rain whenever there was shelter, and wherever he rested Hywel wrote a poem.
Shadows were full of barbed teeth, and each tree bearing a peach was a snare. Hywel might have been swallowed alive by the earth, but he was shown ways not to go by magpies, and by drovers, and by choirs of women.
Hywel’s life collapsed into riddles, a joyous riddling, bounteous as a sun-speckled bay where imagination dances. He was never a tourist who travels only for pleasure. Hywel went out and came back, and he discovered his home was never a house, or a town. Home is where all the walls in the world fall away.
