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The Winning of Olwen
When an Arthurian tale comes to life in a modern city
Legend claims King Arthur himself helped the hero Culhwch meet the demands of the giant Ysbadadden so as to win the hand of his beloved Olwen. Cully Logan knows the old story all too well, burdened as he is with the modernized name Culwich. But he is surprised and enchanted when he meets an ethereal young woman named Olwen walking in the small city graveyard where he’s having a take-out lunch, just after being let go from his corporate job. Before he can react, she slips away into the crowded streets. They are brought together again by chance during the sale of an old painting. “Perhaps we were destined to meet, like our namesakes,” Olwen tells him, and laughs. What happens next will change his life forever.
The graveyard appeared empty. I went inside the gates and wandered through the tumbled headstones until I found one large enough to sit on. I took out the brown bag I’d packed for my lunch. There were worse places to think about the end of the world, I thought. I laughed and let the sound die a second later. My world, anyway. Ten years of sixty-hour weeks had meant nothing to the ones setting up the company merger and implementing the “necessary” downsizing. My manager, safe in his job, this time, at least, didn’t even bother to say goodbye. No matter. Soon enough the man’s toadying would backfire.
It was a peaceful place to be in late summer. I’d never come there before, since lunch was always eaten at my desk as I concentrated on the next project coming my way. Yet I wasn’t a workaholic. I’d never wanted that way of life. The joke was on me. You get what you focus on, I’d read once. In hindsight, I’d been using tunnel vision, maybe. And now? Plenty of time to think, but no time for feeling sorry for myself. I wouldn’t be self-indulgent that way. Show no emotion, that had been my mother’s mantra. Strange, I thought, how a parent’s flaws can become the child’s way, by agreement or rebellion, and lie hidden in the days that come after.
The singing came on the wind, high-pitched and sweet, like faint chimes, and then it stopped. I almost got up to see where it had come from, but I didn’t care enough. My sandwich was finished, my coffee gone. The afternoon stretched before me as empty as the graveyard. Job-hunting could start tomorrow. Today, I would forget…
