They said that in the north of Wales, where the mountains leaned close to the sky and the sea breathed against the stone, the birds did not merely sing. They remembered.
On Gŵyl Forwyn, when winter loosened its grip and the land stood poised between sleeping and waking, the birds carried the voices of the old gods in their throats. The first song of the morning was not just a promise of spring — it was a choosing.
Seren had been told this since she could walk.
Her mam had whispered it while plaiting her hair by the hearth. Her taid had murmured it in the fields, his voice carried away by the wind off the Clwydian Hills. And her grandmother, long gone into the earth, had sworn that on her own Gŵyl Forwyn morning, a bird had sung from the west, and set her on the road that led to love, loss, and the sea.
So Seren rose before the dawn, wrapped in her wool cloak the colour of storm clouds, and slipped from her family’s stone cottage while the world still dreamed.
The air tasted of frost and salt. Somewhere far off, the Irish Sea sighed against the shore, though she could not see it from here. Above her, the stars burned cold and bright, caught in the black bowl of the sky.
She walked the old path worn thin by sheep hooves, barefoot children, and centuries of belief, toward the standing stones above the valley.
They were older than any name. Three of them, tall and narrow, rising from the earth like the ribs of some buried giant. Lichen painted them in pale greens and ghostly whites. The villagers said they marked the place where Arianrhod once cast her silver wheel across the heavens, and where Rhiannon’s birds had rested their wings on their way between worlds.
Seren pressed her palm to the nearest stone. “Mother of stars,” she whispered to Arianrhod. “Queen of birds,” she breathed to Rhiannon. “Let me hear what is meant for me.”
The wind stirred her hair. The stones, as always, kept their secrets. She stepped back and waited.
The sky began to pale, black softening into indigo, indigo into the faintest wash of pearl. The mountains stood in shadow, hulking and patient, as if they had all the time in the world. Frost silvered the grass at her feet, and her breath drifted like a wandering spirit in the cold.
For a long moment, there was nothing but the hush of the land holding itself still.
Then — from the north — came the song.
It was low at first, almost mistaken for wind. But it rose, clear and strong, carrying a wild, bell-bright note that seemed to tumble down from the mountains themselves. A curlew.
Seren’s heart stumbled in her chest.
The curlew was an old bird, a liminal bird. The elders said it walked the line between worlds, its cry echoing both in this land and Annwn beyond the veil. To hear it on Gŵyl Forwyn meant a path shaped by fate and courage — and a love that would not stay quietly in one place.
The song came again, closer now, curling through the air like a beckoning hand.
Seren turned toward the north.
The mountain pass lay that way, a narrow, winding path that cut through slate and heather and vanished into the high country. Few from the village travelled it unless they had to. The hills beyond were steep, lonely, and steeped in old stories of spirits in the mist, and lights that led travelers astray.
A soft crunch of boots on frost made her spin.
A figure stood at the edge of the stones, breath rising in a pale cloud, hair dark and wind-tangled. He wore a traveller’s cloak, weathered and mended, and carried a carved ash staff in one hand.
“Did you hear it too?” he asked. His voice was gentle, but there was something in it that suggested he had crossed long roads and stranger things than the path from the village below.
Seren nodded, unable to find her own words just yet.
“I’m Iestyn,” he said. “I came over the pass last night. Slept in the shepherd’s shelter by the ridge. Thought I was dreaming when the song started.”
The curlew cried again, sharper now, slicing through the thinning dark.
Seren felt it in her bones. “My name’s Seren,” she said at last. “It’s Gŵyl Forwyn. The first bird tells you where your heart will go.”
Iestyn’s mouth curved, not quite a smile, more like recognition. “Then it seems the north has claimed us both.”
They stood there as the dawn unfurled, slow and solemn. Pale gold touched the highest peaks first, then slid down their sides like a blessing. The standing stones cast long, thin shadows across the frost.
Seren should have been afraid. The north was not the safe direction. It was not the hearth, or the fields, or the gentle road to the coast. It was the wild.
But when she looked at Iestyn — at the quiet steadiness in his eyes, the way he held himself like someone who listened to the world instead of trying to conquer it — something in her settled.
The curlew took flight. Its wings were wide and dark against the brightening sky, its cry trailing behind it like a silver thread.
Without speaking, Seren stepped forward. Iestyn fell into stride beside her.
The path into the mountains was narrow, hemmed in by rock and bracken. The air grew sharper as they climbed, carrying the scent of stone and thawing earth. Mist curled low in the hollows, shifting and parting like a living thing.
“Why did you come this way?” Seren asked after a while.
Iestyn tapped the ash staff against a stone. “I’m a harp-maker. Or trying to be. I was told there’s an old woman beyond the pass who still knows how to string a harp with hair from a horse’s tail and a blessing from Rhiannon herself.”
Seren laughed, surprised and delighted by it. “My grandmother used to say Rhiannon’s birds could lull the dead to sleep and wake the living to love,” she said. “Maybe your harp will do the same.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe it just wanted me to be here today.”
They climbed until the village below became a scatter of gray dots in a bowl of green. The world opened up around them of rolling hills, sharp ridges, and the long, shining promise of the sea far to the west.
At the crest of the pass, the curlew waited. It stood on a standing stone half-buried in the heather, watching them with dark, knowing eyes. When they reached it, it lifted its wings and cried once more — not wild now, but warm, like a farewell.
Seren felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes, though she couldn’t have said why.
The bird rose into the sky and vanished into the light.
They stood there, the wind tugging at their cloaks, the whole of the north spread before them.
“So,” Iestyn said softly. “What does the folklore say happens next?”
Seren took his hand. It was warm, callused, real. “It says the song doesn’t show you the end,” she replied. “Only the direction.”
Together, they stepped forward into the wild hills, where the land remembered the gods, the birds carried stories in their wings, and love — like spring — came not gently, but bright and brave and impossible to ignore.
And so, as the first birdsong rises over the hills and the frost begins to melt from the valleys, the night loosens its hold. Even if the cold lingers a little longer than we wish, the promise of dawn stretches across the land once more.
From me to you, whether you honour Gŵyl Forwyn, the turning of the seasons, or simply the return of the sun, may this time bring warmth, wonder, and the quiet courage to follow your own song—and to carry your own light into the world. 💙
