Balin al’Brennan

Biography — Writing History

Written By: Misty
Created: July 2010

Curriculum Vitae

  • Gender: M
  • Hometown: Unnamed small village, Andor
  • Rank: Mael’Tar
  • Weaponry Focus: Undecided

Physical Description

We don’t have one! :(

Biography

Do you know how commonly you hear the phrase, “I was just following a dream?”

It seemed so clear, that dream, etched with the lucid brightness of fever.  I knew I was ill, but it was an academic knowledge, and even that capacity, to know, flowed in and out with the tide of my sickness.  When the fever roared high as a winter fire, I could only sense the world around me through my subconscious, and it showed me only one thing.  Person, really: it showed me the same circle of concerned faces, the shock, the surprise.  That face, so clear when others merged and combined, trading features and names and slinking away unknown.  It wasn’t the sort of face you’d compose a sonnet to, but then again, I’m not a poet.  We are both – were both – simple country folk, and we carry our heritage in our faces and bodies as easily as we carry our burdens on our backs.

Cerawyn Bandevin’s was the face I saw when I sat upright, trembling and weak, shaking still from the breakbone fever.  She snatched her hands back from my brow, and she was gone before I could ask her to leave them there.  They were blessedly cool.  Hot and cold my internal thermostat had raged, and now it was even again – but why, and when Mistress Arryl had returned, bearing another possible cure in a chipped china cup, did her face close up as tightly as a pie safe before Bel Tine?  I did not know it – I swear I did not – but I was the end of the innocent era that had enveloped the new and bustling village.  There were those who rejoiced at my “miraculous” cure – but they should have been wailing, because I took another of the village’s few remaining children and forced her away.  After the White Tower had come some years before, bearing off so many of our village girls, we protected the rest, and when some of the lads left for the Black Tower as their sisters had gone to the White, we guarded our treasures, the few children content to make sure that the countryside still had Marrins and Stargars and Kerrs.

Bandevin was another fine village name: mother and father, three fine daughters and two fine sons.  Cerawyn was the eldest, and Adasine on her heels, and the rest blended into an amiable mass with their mother’s prettiness and their da’s friendliness.  That was the summer that Cerawyn braided her hair.  We all despaired of Adasine following such an outdated custom: she had already kissed most of the village boys under the pledge oak, and a few whispered of more.  But Cerawyn was different, and I felt a connection to her, although we had never been friends.  Her mother had sent her to the Wisdom, and everyone knew she was at my bedside, and so Cerawyn was the merciful angel that delivered me from the fever that killed or broke the mind like a glass lantern chimney kicked by a mule.  That my recovery was so full and so instant said something to wise old Rose, but she would never have suspected that it was the One Power if I had never gotten ill.

And so I have a dream to catch, and apologies to make.  When we sat together, hesitantly planning a future, we never once looked back at that simple miracle and wondered at its repercussions.

I caught the breakbone fever from staying out the night shoeing horses with my father’s portable forge: I apprenticed to the older man, although with the influx of villagers from the war-ravaged lands across the Mountains of Mist, he had no shortage of strong young backs.  But I was different: I was his son, and so, he collected my wages and sent me where he could so that I could make more, always with my goal in mind.  Cerawyn stepped in, her deft hands and skill with pies making my future seem almost assured.  I grew to appreciate her for more than her willing hands, but for her smile and her wit as well, and when she had had her hair braided a year, I realized that I loved her.  There was nothing to be done for it but to ask for her hand, and after a very tense standoff with all of her uncles (I was thoroughly beaten) I received permission to propose.

And then she was gone, a strangely convenient Aes Sedai whisking her away to Tar Valon.

At first, I honestly believed she would come back.  After all, a Bandevin kept her promises, unless she was Adasine, and she had lived here since before she had been born.  People from our village don’t leave home, not forever.  I was confident she’d come home.  There was still snow in the secret shadows as she left town: I thought then she’d be back before the first of the spring blossoms.  How could we have been so bold as to assume that our future was assured?

Aine 12

Dearest Cerawyn,

I wanted you to know I will wait for you forever.  I know the Aes Sedai have made a grave mistake, saying you can do anything so outlandish as “wield the One Power,” and that you will soon be home.  This absence has made me realize we should not wait to be married.  I know you wanted a traditional wedding, but they’ll be putting up their arches in Devon Ride in a sevenday, and I think that we should be wed then.  Ever since that horrible fever, I have had the strangest sense of you.  Now that you are gone, so is it, and I miss it, and you.

Your mother sends her love to you and hopes you are eating well on the journey.

Your brother caught Adasine in the hayloft with Maeri Corlin’s beau – you know, the one with the enormous ears?  If you hurry home, we can likely all be married at the same time.  He says he’ll tell your da if she doesn’t do the right thing.

Aine 17

Cerawyn,

It’s been almost two weeks since you left the village.  Where are you, and are you on your way home yet?  Rose Arryl says you’ll never come back, like all of those village girls the Aes Sedai took when we were children.  I told her she was a liar, and she dosed me with sheepstongue root and rannel tea!  Your mother’s not speaking to her at all now, but since she’s in the Women’s Circle, that will be difficult for her to keep up, I think.  I have almost managed to save enough to purchase the first anvil for shoeing horses, and when I have the gold for that, we can be wed just as we were planning. I can meet you in Tairen Ferry when I go there to buy ores and ingots for Da.  If you turned back at Whitebridge, we’ll meet there.

P.S.:  Maeri Corlin’s married now, and from the looks of her dresses, there’s going to be a big-eared little boy or girl tugging her skirts this time next year…your brother says Adasine promised not to go to any more haylofts.

Aine 28

Cerawyn, my love,

I’m finally in Tairen Ferry, and every time I hear the river bell, I find that I run to the side of the dock waiting for you.  I know you can’t know I’m here and waiting, because the White Tower would be months away and you’ll never go that far from home, so knowing that we’re so close to seeing each other again has my heart feeling light.  The adventures you’ve had!  We can tell our children how their mama nearly ended up being a Novice of the White Tower – at least, that’s what they call them in the stories.  One day we will laugh about these letters, but for now, I miss you, and the long talks we used to have about how our future will be.  I spoke to Da about buying the forge, and he is amenable, and so, we’ll have a home to begin in, and there’s steady work no matter how many apprentices he takes.  He says he’d like us to name our first daughter after my mother.

That bell was the last ferry of the day.  The day after tomorrow I must begin to return to Emond’s Field.  Aren’t you ever coming home?  I’ll be waiting here.  I hope I see you.

Adar 11

Cerawyn,

It has been almost a month since you left.  By now you could be in Caemlyn.  I want to send you these letters but I don’t know where I could reach you.  Old woman Arryl says since it has been a month, it is time for me to break our engagement, because you won’t be back.  I know she’s wrong.  Your mama is sad often and if I am honest I have to say so am I.  The whole village seems dull without you in it.  Is it true that you Healed me from the breakbone fever?  Everyone says my fever broke because of you.  Even if it’s true that you could be Aes Sedai, I hope you don’t.  Who could I love like I love you?

Adar 23

Cerawyn,

What will I do if you never come back?  My da says maybe I should consider going after you, but I know you’ll arrive home the day after I leave.  So I’m preparing things so we can get married right away.  Once you come back into my life I don’t ever want you to leave it.  Your mama gave me your dowry, and so we’ll have a cow and a goat and she says she has a whole shelf of pickles and jams for you when we are ready to settle down.

Adasine has been sneaking about the Jerrin farm.  If she’s not careful, she’s going to get a big belly.  You know she never listens to anyone, and she’s even worse now.  Your brother Tom got in trouble for breaking a window of the River’s Bend with a crabapple.  Now he has to work there every night, scrubbing the pots like a girl.

Saven 9

Cerawyn,

Sometimes I can’t remember what color your eyes are anymore.  It has only been three months but it feels like a whole year.  I think if you are not home by the time the haying starts, when Da doesn’t need me for the plows and the horseshoes, I am going to come and find you.  I remember they’re brown, but I forget how…I don’t forget how they light up when you smile.  But it’s been so long since I have seen you that sometimes I think you were the cruelest fever dream of all.  No, I have to believe you meant it all, because you’re not the kind of woman who strings a man along.

Not at all like your sister.  She let the Jerrin lad make a call to ask for her hand and she was off picking apples and she threw horse dung at his cart.  And she and Kailha have had a fight, which everyone says was over him asking for her hand when he’s been walking out with Kailha for almost a year now.

I almost wish they were us, with a whole year to waste walking out.

Saven 23

Cerawyn,

Your mama says I should come after you.  But you’ll be here soon.  Won’t you?

Anyway, Da needs me to handle the farm repairs now that the season is underway.  Liddy Harper asked me if I were stepping out with anyone anymore.  I didn’t know what to tell her.  If you are still mine I will always be yours.

Amadaine 17

That flaming chit Liddy is everywhere I go.  She says it’s ‘time I forgot about you.’  I can’t believe you’d give up on me so easily, and so I avoid her when I can.  Sometimes I sit at night and try to figure out what you’re seeing, right that instant.  If you were in the village I know what you would see.  Your uncle Joam, with the wood mill, he gave me enough lumber to frame a house in return for casting and repairing parts of his machinery.  We will have a snug little home on the upland by Choren.  But will you be in it?  It will be farther from the village, but I want you all to myself.

You’ll understand, I know you will.  Maybe by this time next year, you’ll be washing the dishes in our new home, and I can eat your famous pie again.  Liddy brought me a pie but it tasted like washing soap.

Maighdal 2

Cerawyn,

Tammaz came and went and it was too hot for anything save working and, well, working.  Our house is coming along: one room is framed and another is almost done.  I am going to barter some of your mama’s jams to have the roof thatched when I finish. Is that all right?  You know how Master Ellin loves her plum jam. Don’t tell her, because you know how she’ll get.  We talk often.  She misses you and wishes you would come home.  I am coming to get you after the house is framed. By Jumara we should be home and I will wed you right in Tar Valon – your mama says I can as long as we come home after.

Have you met someone else?  Light send you are still mine.

Choren 9

Cerawyn,

Glad tidings, for our home is complete!  Well, rather, it is completely framed.  It will be quick work to lay the siding and plaster the walls when we are together again.  I thought we could spend the winter at the forge, where it is always so warm from the furnace.  Spring is soon enough to start our life in our new home.  If only I were sure you would be in it by then.

But better news, Liddy Harper is leaving me be: she’s married Jak al’Herrin quite suddenly.  I don’t think I’ll ever understand women.

Nesan 8

Dearest Cerawyn,

I am coming for you now.  We will get closer each day, and at the end of the journey, you will be mine again.  Harvest season was lonely, and now that the plows are put away for the winter, Da won’t miss me so much.  I left him in a bind for willing hands but he’ll forgive me when we can show him little Amelia.  Or a son: I know he would like a grandson as much.  And I can be with you, and that is all I want.  Your mama gave me a horse and coin: it’s a fortune, but she worried I would not have enough!  She must have sold her eggs all year, and Light only knows how she got the rest!  I think there is enough to bring you home in a sedan chair the entire way.

But I am traveling with Master Oates’ peddling wagon.  Your mama asked him to hire me as a guard, and so I left in the dead of the night.  I am so impatient to be yours.

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