Bread-Boy and Not-an-Elf

Taliesen corn-born, unglamorous and bready skinned, stayed in the sea for 7 years.

After 7 years he found himself drifting near the green bulk of Ireland, and was caught up in a net. Fish nibbled at his feet, took crumbs of him into their mouths and puffed them out again with mouths in Os, their faces full of surprise.

Elffin was a fisherman prince of green bulk, known for his fumbling ways, and for his gentleness. On seeing Taliesen in the net he took out his knife and cut him down, fumbling unquickly at the rope and exclaiming Help him, Help him, until the bready god plopped onto the deck of his ship, gasping, and leaking milky starch.

I have been submerged for 7 years, says Taliesen. Whose ship do I find myself aboard after 7 years? And the wind struck up an orchestra of howling and clanging in the rigging. I am Elffin, cries the Prince. But not an elf.

At his answer the ship was whipped and whiled by the wind until his men began to believe that Taliesen the bread boy was perhaps a bad omen, bad luck, ill news. All together they hollered for him to turn the swollen boy overboard, and – as if in answer – a wave crested high above the ship’s prow.

And the boy tipped his head back. His doughy mouth roared open in a smack of wetness and song. And oh, what a thing, to hear bread singing! Taliesen so soothed the storm that by the end of the song, the waters were purring and the clouds had swooped low to listen, and so broken, dissipating over the water, and each of the men who had hollered for his drowning was reduced, cross-legged, to gathered children, all their eyes bright with the pretty of it.

And the sopping crust fell from Taliesen, and was washed away with the last eddies to reveal a boy underneath; fresh-baked, and beautiful.

The people welcomed Taliesen into the court with adulation and hunger, encouraging him every day to sing, sing for us, give us a poem and recite it to us, sing the wind-down, shining head (for shining head is what Taliesen means). And Taliesen did not mind public consumption so much as most artists claim.

To keep the bread boy close and to appease public demand, Elffin appointed him a bard, and all-day watched him at his work, until, one day, he bent down before him and told him, Taliesen corn-born, I love every part of you, I adore your crusty skin and your doughy heart, to hear your yeasty song is my only wish until death, until death, I will want nothing but you.

And grateful Taliesen lay with Elffin, who after all had saved him, who after all had dredged him up from the sopping depths, and had pulled him up into the sun to show that new boy beneath, fresh-baked and beautiful.

So Elffin took Taliesen to his bed and called him his husband, his corn-born wife, for all the long years of the rest of their lives – at least, for all the years in which they were not imperilled, kidnapped, at war with the Welsh, or barding for their freedom.

And for the years they were safe, and he was Elffin's husband and lover and corn-born wife, he found that there was happiness to be had in that; in each night being cracked open, in being consumed daily, and waking fresh-baked once more.