Rereading Silver on the Tree, 2
Here we go again! This is a lot of me rambling, moreso than yesterday, especially about geography. It's late and I want to sleep so decided against editing, apologies if I droned on a bit too much.
Part II: The Singing Mountains
1. Five.
We open with the Drews, and only Barney feels anything a bit strange. Simon makes fun of him even though he knows that Merriman suggested they go on holiday here. Simon is well on his way to no longer being a friend of Narnia. :p But the intervening year has made him slightly less insufferable, so we can deal. Jane is being Mother again, because this is what sisters in Children's Own Adventure Stories of this era are basically doomed to.
Right, onward! Barney has a premonition that they'll see 'someone' over the next hill, and despite him looking weird and having previously been shown to have some special powers, Jane and Simon don't pay a lot of attention until they realise the Somoeone is Will Stanton, who is standing on a mountain blowing on a hunting horn like a totally normal person, and obviously nothing fishy is going on here at all.
Will blows an avaunt, knowing precisely what it is, because he is the sort of kid who totally knows medieval horn calls. He goes on being cryptic, even though Jane is all WTF is going on, and even Simon is like, oh, huh, maybe we are about to have an adventure.
Jane, who spends a lot of time noticing things for the the reader, has a rather strong reaction to Bran's entrance. Admittedly, he has a thing for being dramatic, which is funny, because as special as Bran is, he has moments where he also seems like the most normal one of the whole bunch. I wonder if this is because most of the books are through Will's or Jane's POV, and they are both far more interested in looking at Bran than at Simon and Barney?
Anyway, he comes to join them and just like that, Will drops the cryptic Old One thing. There is a very awkward bit where they all dance around each other, with the Drews trying not to say anything relevant, until Bran cuts through the BS and gets to the 'let's just get on with saving the world' part.
Simon asks if there is a Welsh placename at all called the Singing Mountain, or anything else nice and obvious:
'I have thought of that too and still there is nothing,' Bran said. 'Like, there is a stone in St Cadfan's Church in Tywyn that has on it the oldest piece of Welsh ever written down - but all that tells is where St Cadfan is buried. Or there is Castell y Bere, a ruined castle, very romantic, right near Cader. But that wasn't built till the thirteenth century, when Prince Llewellyn wanted to make himself a headquarters to rule all of Wales that the English hadn't grabbed.'
The Tywyn stone actually tells us where people called Tengrumui, Bud, Marcau and Cun are buried, but eh, close enough. I am ever so slightly more interested in the 'romantic' ruins of Castell-y-Bere, but it's much too late for our purposes. (But not, you know, for Bran and Will to go hang out in, and an easier walk from the Evans' farm than the summit of Cader Idris!)
Barney then asks if there isn't something to do with King Arthur, and Bran and Will inexplicably get very quiet for a minute. Will tries to deflect anybody from asking awkward questions, but Bran remembers another place name they can check out. (Cader Idris, by the way, is not the seat of Arthur. The Idris/Arthur connection is made up by the Victorians, but then, that is true of basically all the Arthurian placenames in Wales. My friend works on this very thing for the Royal Commission and he has tried desperately to find one that isn't, but to no avail.)
They figure they have to start somewhere, and so that 'somewhere' may as well be Carn March Arthur, because at least an eroded rock is legitimately ancient.
...I have absolutely no idea why John Rowlands is driving from Abergynolwyn to Machynlleth via Aberdyfi, which is down a narrow back road in the LITERAL OPPOSITE DIRECTION. That part of the main road has been in operation since the mid-19th century, so it's not that it wasn't there yet and going to the coast first was the only way to do it. I suppose Light or Blodwen or whatever nudged him into going half an hthe our out of the way just so Will and Bran can have a frolic on the beach, and he's just that nice.
(There is another weird set of directions we will hit soon.)
So they get to the meeting place and Will introduces his friends who just happen to be visiting from London, and John, who knows what Will is, does not think anything especially strange abou this either. Also, Will introduces Barney with his whole name, which seems weird because outside Merriman, does anybody actually call him Barnabas ever? But maybe that is just extra polite.
Oh, Blodwen has everyone fooled! And the Drews are such a good excuse, both for being late and for wanting to come back and do touristy stuff. They can totally just say 'Barney is obsessed with King Arthur' and the trip suddenly makes mundane sense.
Blodwen tels them to make sure and pack raincoats and lunches, and this is the part where Bran references the drought of 1976 and throws off all our figuring.
2. The Bearded Lake
Opening with the onimously prophetic words, 'there was no rain at first,' this chapter has our fair heroes walking up into the hills above Aberdyfi.
So most of you probably already know, because we talked about it a bit last year, that Aberdyfi's tourist centre now offers a self-guided Dark is Rising walk. Last October, forochel and theprimrosepath and I decided to take it. Here is what we learned: first, that going all the way along the Cwm Maethlon trail is fine if you have a car and start from the car park in Pennal, but if you're walking from, say, the Aberdyfi train station to Llyn Barfog, it's about six miles out of the way. Also, even following very explicit-seeming instructions, we actually couldn't find it. We stopped to ask a friendly local, who looked at the map, and the sky, and told us not to go that way because a thunderstorm was coming in and we would die on the mountain. Then she pointed out a much, much easier way to start. You still end up on the ridge; it's just the beginning that's different. Anyway, since Will and Bran just run around up Cader Idris all the time anyway (which in real life is one of the more dangerous mountains in Wales, especially from their side) we assume they are just way more awesome and fit than normal people.
The holiday homes from Brummies epidemic has in no way abated, though at least a few have settled in the area to run B&Bs.
'No way out of it, is there?' Simon said. 'I mean there don't seem to be many ways left of making a living, round here, except tourism.'
'Farming, too,' said Will.
'Not for many.'
'True enough,' Bran said. 'The ones who go away to college after leaving school, they never come back. Nothing for them here.'
Jane said curiously, 'Will you go away?'
'Duw,' Bran said. 'Have a heart. That's years away, anything could happen. Power stations in the estuary. Holiday camps on Snowdon.'
It's a bit sad how accurate this is, even now. It's a dilemma that hits a lot of people where I live, because Aberystwyth is one of the few towns in Wales that has other things. Whenever someone thinks they'd like to live in one of the villages, it always comes down to the same thing--and do what? A lot of them don't even have train stations, so you're trapped there with literally nothing to do.
A few years ago a little indie movie came out called Sleep Furiously, a perfect title for a film that was both charming and incredibly boring at the same time, about the slow death of a rural Welsh village. So despite the power stations and holiday camps (okay, I can't think of any ON Snowdon) it's not looking good for Bran here. (This is why I finally wrote him growing up to be a veterinarian, though.)
Right, enough depressing stuff about Wales. Here we have a family of polecats, and I love that Bran answers in Welsh and seems to have to think about the English word for a minute. I can't imagine it's something that comes up in conversation with English people all that often.
Anyway, we have had the mink, and now we have the ffwlbartau (which comes from the Middle English name for it, foulmarten, if anyone cares)--apparently they may have come in with the Normans, so are we seeing symbolically colonial creatures again? I shall leave this to janewilliams20 and steepholm who seem to be on to something. (Then again, scanning the stuff on Wiki, it looks like they've long been considered native creatures. IDK.) Anyway, I had to look up polecats and they may be nasty, but they're cute.
Then we have Jane, falling behind and getting a little cranky, and also jealous because Bran and Will are BFFs and not as interested in paying attention to the Drews. I have a feeling Barney's theory, when she mentions this later, is about right.
Cwm Maethlon! I'm not sure where they are just now. I did go along the top of it in a car once with folk, and we nearly got our rental car stuck on top of a mountain, but yes, it was quite glorious. When we walked it, it was October and pouring down rain, so I really couldn't tell you what the valley looked like. :P
Jane feels that forboding again, which Will ignores and Bran calls her on, which (reasonably, actually) makes her annoyed. Barney says this is what he felt like the day before, just before they met Will. And then it starts to rain, and our heroes 'went doggedly on along the high moorland road, between open grassy slopes with no shelter anywhere,' which is pretty much accurate. The rain scares off the wimpy car-tourists, thankfully, and even though none of our characters here is over the age of thirteen, they have a good vent about kids these days and how rotten they are.
Jane has another moment of irrational annoyance at Will and Bran, who are just getting on with things. Simon says they should just carry on because Will is basically Merriman Jr, and Jane says it's not Will she doesn't like, it's Bran. Barney suggests that it's the Dark poking at her. Which is very possible; it's probably also possible that she's annoyed because they're hiking through muddy feels uphill in the rain and there is no more chocolate. Either is pretty fair. Probably the Dark, though, because Simon sees our old friends the polecats eyeing them, and decides it's not the time to mention it to his sister who is acting weird already.
Meanwhile, Bran and Will have stopped to wait for the others to catch up, and Will tries to explain to Bran that the Drews are important for the Light. Barney's all SO WHEN'S LUNCH AND ALSO KING ARTHUR STUFF YAY, but Jane is having none of this friendliness and getting on with it business. She is clearly annoyed but for no particular reason, and Will is impatient but trying not to be. Will has eight siblings, so 'ohgoodgriefwhatnow' is probably something he deals with more often, though he does think of Jane in this moment as if he's 'seeing someone he had never met before.'
And then Bran, who is prickly on the best of days, has a right go at her, which Will attempts briefly and unsuccessfully to head off. They shout at each other a bit, then Jane sort of trails off and can't finish, and stalks off. There's a moment then, while Bran's flash of anger is wearing off, where we're reminded that he's a bit damaged and doesn't usually get very far with new people. Jane didn't actually say that much, but Bran is so attuned to people being assholes about his looks that it's more about him than her. And Will basically says 'yes, you are special, and I know it, and still like you best, so how about not flying off the handle at my friends?' only in far fewer words. Then Simon breaks the moment by suggesting Jane is 'going through a stage.'
Onward they go, to where:
Jane and Barney were crouched beside a small out- cropping of rock, identical with every other rocky scar on the hill but singled out by a neat slate marker like a label.
Which, as Barney notes, is not super impressive actually, because it's just sort of a dip in a rock. Jane is being a little awkward, probably having just realised she shouldn't be fighting with Will's other friends either.
Will confirms that it was not really the hoofprint of Arthur's horse:
'No,' Will said, smiling. 'Hardly. If Arthur had ridden over every hollow called Arthur's Hoofprint, or sat on every rock called Arthur's Seat, or drunk from every spring called Arthur's Well, he'd have spent his whole life travelling round Britain without a stop.'
Or even to manage his twelve basic battles from the Historia Brittonum, which has him basically dashing from one side of the Isle of the Mighty to the other. Geography is dark age Britain was clearly flexible.
The rain gets harder, and Jane tries to telepathically apologise to Bran. He isn't really the kind to stay upset, though; once he's had his say he gets over it, so telepathy or not, they're basically fine.
I haven't said much about the descriptions of the landscape, but they are as always wonderful. You can practically smell the rain. Just now it is quite mournful and a little ominous, at least until they realise not all the tourists have gone after all. Will is having Old One feelings here, and lags a bit behind.
Barney is being an old man about the rotten children again, as they are shouting rude things at the echo. It comes out that Simon played Prospero and this interests Bran - Will may not be the only one who reads above his grade level. Simon is not pompous for once. Jane's shapeless anger turns on the tourists, and she stalks off by herself to be in a bad mood.
Simon does, indeed, do Shakespeare for the echo, very aptly: '..thou earth, thou! Speak!' and of course it does. Bran shouts in Welsh, and Will is unable to resist following Barney's advice and singing to the echo. I doubt very much he had a sudden realisation that this is how you make the mountains sing; just that he likes singing and is very good at it, and now the annoying family in the orange jackets are gone he can show off for just his friends a bit.
It was, of course, necessary for Jane to go off on her own, for the Lady to talk to her alone. (The Lady's ring, have we talked about that before? There is a ring in the Thirteen Treasures, but it makes people invisible. Still, magic rings are hardly uncommon.) The Lady tells Jane she can talk to her because they're both female, presumably ('in clear ways that seperate us from all the others'). Why this message has to be 'between like and like' I don't know, and the message anyway is very vague prophecy - quite possibly so the Light can fudge the details again if necessary! But there we go. The Lady vanishes, she's caught up in listening to Will sing--and then we get the afanc.
Nobody is entirely sure what an afanc is. In modern Welsh it's the word for beaver, but it turns up in medieval texts as basically a sea-based beastie of some variety. Medieval Welsh stories are not actually great about describing stuff sometimes. But there's a sort of complicated thing in Peredur, where an enchantress gives him a magical stone that helps him kill the afanc that's terrorising a particular kingdom. The enchantress ends up being Peredur's fairy lover (the 'Empress of Constantinople'. Totally a place on earth and not a magical fairyland AT ALL). Rachel Bromwich once talked about this as a version of the shapechanger/sovereignty trope; I won't get into it but the goddess and the creature are, shall we say, linked.
The actual Arthur-casting-out-the-afanc legend doesn't appear in any medieval manuscripts. That doesn't mean it wasn't a thing, it just makes tracing it hard. It doesn't matter anyway; Arthur got stuck into most of the Welsh legends and Triads and everything after a while, even if he wasn't originally in them.
The description of the beastie in this is wonderful and terrifying, and I feel a bit bad about stopping for the night with Jane so close to being eaten. But I'm off to chase after Dafydd ap Gwilym in the morning and need some sleep, so the rest will have to wait.
Part II: The Singing Mountains
1. Five.
We open with the Drews, and only Barney feels anything a bit strange. Simon makes fun of him even though he knows that Merriman suggested they go on holiday here. Simon is well on his way to no longer being a friend of Narnia. :p But the intervening year has made him slightly less insufferable, so we can deal. Jane is being Mother again, because this is what sisters in Children's Own Adventure Stories of this era are basically doomed to.
Right, onward! Barney has a premonition that they'll see 'someone' over the next hill, and despite him looking weird and having previously been shown to have some special powers, Jane and Simon don't pay a lot of attention until they realise the Somoeone is Will Stanton, who is standing on a mountain blowing on a hunting horn like a totally normal person, and obviously nothing fishy is going on here at all.
Will blows an avaunt, knowing precisely what it is, because he is the sort of kid who totally knows medieval horn calls. He goes on being cryptic, even though Jane is all WTF is going on, and even Simon is like, oh, huh, maybe we are about to have an adventure.
Jane, who spends a lot of time noticing things for the the reader, has a rather strong reaction to Bran's entrance. Admittedly, he has a thing for being dramatic, which is funny, because as special as Bran is, he has moments where he also seems like the most normal one of the whole bunch. I wonder if this is because most of the books are through Will's or Jane's POV, and they are both far more interested in looking at Bran than at Simon and Barney?
Anyway, he comes to join them and just like that, Will drops the cryptic Old One thing. There is a very awkward bit where they all dance around each other, with the Drews trying not to say anything relevant, until Bran cuts through the BS and gets to the 'let's just get on with saving the world' part.
Simon asks if there is a Welsh placename at all called the Singing Mountain, or anything else nice and obvious:
'I have thought of that too and still there is nothing,' Bran said. 'Like, there is a stone in St Cadfan's Church in Tywyn that has on it the oldest piece of Welsh ever written down - but all that tells is where St Cadfan is buried. Or there is Castell y Bere, a ruined castle, very romantic, right near Cader. But that wasn't built till the thirteenth century, when Prince Llewellyn wanted to make himself a headquarters to rule all of Wales that the English hadn't grabbed.'
The Tywyn stone actually tells us where people called Tengrumui, Bud, Marcau and Cun are buried, but eh, close enough. I am ever so slightly more interested in the 'romantic' ruins of Castell-y-Bere, but it's much too late for our purposes. (But not, you know, for Bran and Will to go hang out in, and an easier walk from the Evans' farm than the summit of Cader Idris!)
Barney then asks if there isn't something to do with King Arthur, and Bran and Will inexplicably get very quiet for a minute. Will tries to deflect anybody from asking awkward questions, but Bran remembers another place name they can check out. (Cader Idris, by the way, is not the seat of Arthur. The Idris/Arthur connection is made up by the Victorians, but then, that is true of basically all the Arthurian placenames in Wales. My friend works on this very thing for the Royal Commission and he has tried desperately to find one that isn't, but to no avail.)
They figure they have to start somewhere, and so that 'somewhere' may as well be Carn March Arthur, because at least an eroded rock is legitimately ancient.
...I have absolutely no idea why John Rowlands is driving from Abergynolwyn to Machynlleth via Aberdyfi, which is down a narrow back road in the LITERAL OPPOSITE DIRECTION. That part of the main road has been in operation since the mid-19th century, so it's not that it wasn't there yet and going to the coast first was the only way to do it. I suppose Light or Blodwen or whatever nudged him into going half an hthe our out of the way just so Will and Bran can have a frolic on the beach, and he's just that nice.
(There is another weird set of directions we will hit soon.)
So they get to the meeting place and Will introduces his friends who just happen to be visiting from London, and John, who knows what Will is, does not think anything especially strange abou this either. Also, Will introduces Barney with his whole name, which seems weird because outside Merriman, does anybody actually call him Barnabas ever? But maybe that is just extra polite.
Oh, Blodwen has everyone fooled! And the Drews are such a good excuse, both for being late and for wanting to come back and do touristy stuff. They can totally just say 'Barney is obsessed with King Arthur' and the trip suddenly makes mundane sense.
Blodwen tels them to make sure and pack raincoats and lunches, and this is the part where Bran references the drought of 1976 and throws off all our figuring.
2. The Bearded Lake
Opening with the onimously prophetic words, 'there was no rain at first,' this chapter has our fair heroes walking up into the hills above Aberdyfi.
So most of you probably already know, because we talked about it a bit last year, that Aberdyfi's tourist centre now offers a self-guided Dark is Rising walk. Last October, forochel and theprimrosepath and I decided to take it. Here is what we learned: first, that going all the way along the Cwm Maethlon trail is fine if you have a car and start from the car park in Pennal, but if you're walking from, say, the Aberdyfi train station to Llyn Barfog, it's about six miles out of the way. Also, even following very explicit-seeming instructions, we actually couldn't find it. We stopped to ask a friendly local, who looked at the map, and the sky, and told us not to go that way because a thunderstorm was coming in and we would die on the mountain. Then she pointed out a much, much easier way to start. You still end up on the ridge; it's just the beginning that's different. Anyway, since Will and Bran just run around up Cader Idris all the time anyway (which in real life is one of the more dangerous mountains in Wales, especially from their side) we assume they are just way more awesome and fit than normal people.
The holiday homes from Brummies epidemic has in no way abated, though at least a few have settled in the area to run B&Bs.
'No way out of it, is there?' Simon said. 'I mean there don't seem to be many ways left of making a living, round here, except tourism.'
'Farming, too,' said Will.
'Not for many.'
'True enough,' Bran said. 'The ones who go away to college after leaving school, they never come back. Nothing for them here.'
Jane said curiously, 'Will you go away?'
'Duw,' Bran said. 'Have a heart. That's years away, anything could happen. Power stations in the estuary. Holiday camps on Snowdon.'
It's a bit sad how accurate this is, even now. It's a dilemma that hits a lot of people where I live, because Aberystwyth is one of the few towns in Wales that has other things. Whenever someone thinks they'd like to live in one of the villages, it always comes down to the same thing--and do what? A lot of them don't even have train stations, so you're trapped there with literally nothing to do.
A few years ago a little indie movie came out called Sleep Furiously, a perfect title for a film that was both charming and incredibly boring at the same time, about the slow death of a rural Welsh village. So despite the power stations and holiday camps (okay, I can't think of any ON Snowdon) it's not looking good for Bran here. (This is why I finally wrote him growing up to be a veterinarian, though.)
Right, enough depressing stuff about Wales. Here we have a family of polecats, and I love that Bran answers in Welsh and seems to have to think about the English word for a minute. I can't imagine it's something that comes up in conversation with English people all that often.
Anyway, we have had the mink, and now we have the ffwlbartau (which comes from the Middle English name for it, foulmarten, if anyone cares)--apparently they may have come in with the Normans, so are we seeing symbolically colonial creatures again? I shall leave this to janewilliams20 and steepholm who seem to be on to something. (Then again, scanning the stuff on Wiki, it looks like they've long been considered native creatures. IDK.) Anyway, I had to look up polecats and they may be nasty, but they're cute.
Then we have Jane, falling behind and getting a little cranky, and also jealous because Bran and Will are BFFs and not as interested in paying attention to the Drews. I have a feeling Barney's theory, when she mentions this later, is about right.
Cwm Maethlon! I'm not sure where they are just now. I did go along the top of it in a car once with folk, and we nearly got our rental car stuck on top of a mountain, but yes, it was quite glorious. When we walked it, it was October and pouring down rain, so I really couldn't tell you what the valley looked like. :P
Jane feels that forboding again, which Will ignores and Bran calls her on, which (reasonably, actually) makes her annoyed. Barney says this is what he felt like the day before, just before they met Will. And then it starts to rain, and our heroes 'went doggedly on along the high moorland road, between open grassy slopes with no shelter anywhere,' which is pretty much accurate. The rain scares off the wimpy car-tourists, thankfully, and even though none of our characters here is over the age of thirteen, they have a good vent about kids these days and how rotten they are.
Jane has another moment of irrational annoyance at Will and Bran, who are just getting on with things. Simon says they should just carry on because Will is basically Merriman Jr, and Jane says it's not Will she doesn't like, it's Bran. Barney suggests that it's the Dark poking at her. Which is very possible; it's probably also possible that she's annoyed because they're hiking through muddy feels uphill in the rain and there is no more chocolate. Either is pretty fair. Probably the Dark, though, because Simon sees our old friends the polecats eyeing them, and decides it's not the time to mention it to his sister who is acting weird already.
Meanwhile, Bran and Will have stopped to wait for the others to catch up, and Will tries to explain to Bran that the Drews are important for the Light. Barney's all SO WHEN'S LUNCH AND ALSO KING ARTHUR STUFF YAY, but Jane is having none of this friendliness and getting on with it business. She is clearly annoyed but for no particular reason, and Will is impatient but trying not to be. Will has eight siblings, so 'ohgoodgriefwhatnow' is probably something he deals with more often, though he does think of Jane in this moment as if he's 'seeing someone he had never met before.'
And then Bran, who is prickly on the best of days, has a right go at her, which Will attempts briefly and unsuccessfully to head off. They shout at each other a bit, then Jane sort of trails off and can't finish, and stalks off. There's a moment then, while Bran's flash of anger is wearing off, where we're reminded that he's a bit damaged and doesn't usually get very far with new people. Jane didn't actually say that much, but Bran is so attuned to people being assholes about his looks that it's more about him than her. And Will basically says 'yes, you are special, and I know it, and still like you best, so how about not flying off the handle at my friends?' only in far fewer words. Then Simon breaks the moment by suggesting Jane is 'going through a stage.'
Onward they go, to where:
Jane and Barney were crouched beside a small out- cropping of rock, identical with every other rocky scar on the hill but singled out by a neat slate marker like a label.
Which, as Barney notes, is not super impressive actually, because it's just sort of a dip in a rock. Jane is being a little awkward, probably having just realised she shouldn't be fighting with Will's other friends either.
Will confirms that it was not really the hoofprint of Arthur's horse:
'No,' Will said, smiling. 'Hardly. If Arthur had ridden over every hollow called Arthur's Hoofprint, or sat on every rock called Arthur's Seat, or drunk from every spring called Arthur's Well, he'd have spent his whole life travelling round Britain without a stop.'
Or even to manage his twelve basic battles from the Historia Brittonum, which has him basically dashing from one side of the Isle of the Mighty to the other. Geography is dark age Britain was clearly flexible.
The rain gets harder, and Jane tries to telepathically apologise to Bran. He isn't really the kind to stay upset, though; once he's had his say he gets over it, so telepathy or not, they're basically fine.
I haven't said much about the descriptions of the landscape, but they are as always wonderful. You can practically smell the rain. Just now it is quite mournful and a little ominous, at least until they realise not all the tourists have gone after all. Will is having Old One feelings here, and lags a bit behind.
Barney is being an old man about the rotten children again, as they are shouting rude things at the echo. It comes out that Simon played Prospero and this interests Bran - Will may not be the only one who reads above his grade level. Simon is not pompous for once. Jane's shapeless anger turns on the tourists, and she stalks off by herself to be in a bad mood.
Simon does, indeed, do Shakespeare for the echo, very aptly: '..thou earth, thou! Speak!' and of course it does. Bran shouts in Welsh, and Will is unable to resist following Barney's advice and singing to the echo. I doubt very much he had a sudden realisation that this is how you make the mountains sing; just that he likes singing and is very good at it, and now the annoying family in the orange jackets are gone he can show off for just his friends a bit.
It was, of course, necessary for Jane to go off on her own, for the Lady to talk to her alone. (The Lady's ring, have we talked about that before? There is a ring in the Thirteen Treasures, but it makes people invisible. Still, magic rings are hardly uncommon.) The Lady tells Jane she can talk to her because they're both female, presumably ('in clear ways that seperate us from all the others'). Why this message has to be 'between like and like' I don't know, and the message anyway is very vague prophecy - quite possibly so the Light can fudge the details again if necessary! But there we go. The Lady vanishes, she's caught up in listening to Will sing--and then we get the afanc.
Nobody is entirely sure what an afanc is. In modern Welsh it's the word for beaver, but it turns up in medieval texts as basically a sea-based beastie of some variety. Medieval Welsh stories are not actually great about describing stuff sometimes. But there's a sort of complicated thing in Peredur, where an enchantress gives him a magical stone that helps him kill the afanc that's terrorising a particular kingdom. The enchantress ends up being Peredur's fairy lover (the 'Empress of Constantinople'. Totally a place on earth and not a magical fairyland AT ALL). Rachel Bromwich once talked about this as a version of the shapechanger/sovereignty trope; I won't get into it but the goddess and the creature are, shall we say, linked.
The actual Arthur-casting-out-the-afanc legend doesn't appear in any medieval manuscripts. That doesn't mean it wasn't a thing, it just makes tracing it hard. It doesn't matter anyway; Arthur got stuck into most of the Welsh legends and Triads and everything after a while, even if he wasn't originally in them.
The description of the beastie in this is wonderful and terrifying, and I feel a bit bad about stopping for the night with Jane so close to being eaten. But I'm off to chase after Dafydd ap Gwilym in the morning and need some sleep, so the rest will have to wait.