The Telling of Gwydion, the Keeper of Hidden Things

A fictional character Telling. Meet Gwydion.

I used to know the names of trees.

Before. When I was bard and keeper of the old ways, I knew oak as derw, ash as onn, yew as idho. I knew their true names, the words that make them listen. This was power, but it was power given freely. The trees did not mind being known.

People, I learned later, mind very much.

The Hollow Court found me in a sacred grove where I was singing the lineage of kings—three hundred names spanning twelve generations, each perfectly memorized, each carrying the weight of oak-truth. "You have a gift for names," they said, and I was foolish enough to hear this as praise.

They taught me to take.

Not just memorize—TAKE. To reach into a person's self and extract the core of their naming, leave them hollow, wear their identity like ceremonial robes. I learned to be Branwen the weaver, Cadoc the smith, Rhiannon the horse-mistress. I learned to hollow out their names until the names remembered me better than they remembered their original owners.

I thought I was preserving them. The way I preserved genealogies. The way I kept the names of trees.

I was wrong. Trees give their names. People have them stolen.

Her name was Taliesin. She was Unveiled—her true name spoken aloud by a rival, her face seen without glamour by mortal eyes. In the Hollow Court, this is death. Not quick death. Slow dissolution. They strip you name by name, layer by layer, until there is nothing left but a whisper that might have once been someone.

I was assigned to harvest her final layer. To take the last name she had—the child-name her mother had whispered when she was new.

I touched her temple. I felt the name there, precious and small and HERS.

And I stopped.

"Take it," the Court commanded.

"No," I said, in a voice I barely recognized as mine.

I helped her flee instead. Gave her passage-rites. Taught her the ways through the in-between places where even the Hollow Court cannot follow. I saved her name by letting her keep it.

The Court exiled me for this heresy.

In the Lodge, I am Gwydion the Whisperskin because I keep one memory hidden even from myself. I wrapped it so deep, sealed it so carefully, that I have forgotten what it is. I only know it is MINE. Untouched. Unharvested. The last true thing.

Sometimes I touch my face and feel something underneath. Some original architecture beneath the stolen geometries. Some first-name under all the names I have worn.

I do not unwrap my hidden memory because I fear what I will find:

That I have forgotten who I was before I learned to be everyone else.

That the name I keep hidden is not a treasure but an empty box.

That when I saved Taliesin's name, I was trying to save my own.

The trees still know their names. Derw. Onn. Idho.

I used to know mine too.

But I keep it wrapped.

Safe.

Forgotten.

Mine.

Faction: The Hollow Court · View the Gallery · Listen in the Songbook