Meg of Moranedd

         

Meg of Moranedd
by Madeleine Eblouie

It was the best day of the summer, hands down. Thirty degree heat bore down on the little Welsh village of Moranedd, and even the most dull of the elderly members of the community were out on the seafront. The beach was more pebbles and seaweed than sand, and quite grim for most of the year as much of North Wales was prone to be, but on nice days like that, it was as pretty and idyllic as the Caribbean. Or so thought Meghan Carew, a fifteen-year-old inhabitant of Moranedd. In fact, she was the only fifteen-year-old girl in Moranedd at all. Meg- as she was known by everyone- was the local baker’s youngest daughter. She had an elder sister who was now at University in Cardiff, and a seventeen-year-old brother named Huw, who Meg simply adored. Meg and Huw were the closest of siblings, and they used to spend a lot of time together when they were younger, but didn’t so much now that Huw had a girlfriend and went into town all the time to see her.

         However, on that beautiful day, Huw was home. The weather was fabulous and there had been a spectacular, golden sunrise at five in the morning: Meghan was an early riser, so she had seen it.
Huw and Meg walked down to the beach together. They chose a patch of nearly-dry, seaweed-coated sand, where Huw threw down his towel and sat on it in as ungainly a manner as he could. Meg laughed at him and flung herself down on her own towel beside him. She fished around in her bag until she found some suncream and pulled it out. Firstly, she rubbed it over her creamy white legs, then along her arms and across her chest. She smeared some suncream on her freckled face and placed a broad-rimmed hat on top of her wavy, dark-blonde hair to shelter her face, which was already slightly pink with sunburn from the walk to the beach. She asked her brother to cream her back, but he had his headphones in and, astonishingly, had already dozed off. Struggling, Meg tried to reach her shoulderblades, struggling until she was a messy mass of straggling limbs and windswept hair.

         “I’ll do it, Meg.” Offered a softly-spoken male voice from behind her. Meg abruptly turned her blue-eyed gaze on the newcomer, only to find that he was in fact her oldest companion. Although she was the only fifteen-year-old girl in Moranedd, she was not the only fifteen-year-old, as one of the local farmers’ sons was the same age as her. His name was Owain, and he was her nemesis. Some days, Owain and Meg were the best of friends, but other days they despised each other. Owain was a nuisance of the worst variety, who enjoyed winding up Meg until she was prepared to hit him. Likewise, Meg knew Owain’s weak points, and they both excelled equally at irritating each other. They were too alike to be friends, Meg’s Mum always said, but too similar to be enemies. Meg smiled lightly and passed him the suncream bottle, and he- ever so gently- massaged the cold, white liquid into her skin. Once he was finished, he pulled her hair back and pulled his fingers through the snarls in it to tidy it up.

         “You’re in a nice mood, O.” Meg said happily, smiling at him. “Fancy a swim?”

         “Here’s the thing, Meg.” Said Owain, sitting with his legs apart behind Meg and pulling her by the waist back towards his body. “I don’t fancy a swim...” He leant very close to her head, so that his lips were almost touching her ear. “I fancy you.”

         “Oh.” Replied Meg dumbly, her voice light as air. She looked down at the sand by her feet, and for a long while, the pair of them were silent; Meg in shock and Owain in anticipation. “I... I’m going swimming, O.”

         She flew to her feet and ran down the beach, away from miserable Huw; away from the suffocatingly peaceful little village and away from Owain. Annoying, teasing, lovely Owain who she had loved and hated in equal measure for all of her life. Meghan Carew dove head-first into the bitterly cold, salty water. She pushed herself under for as long as she could. Owain’s revelation had nearly killed her... she had been in love with him for so long, but she had given up on his ever realising... so she had finally given in to the odd, sociopathic elder boy who she simply called ‘Ray’, and everyone else called ‘Freak’. She had allowed him to lead her away to a sandy field, almost a mile away from the farmhouse of Ray’s parents, and then she had- first anxiously and then miserably- done what he wanted. That had been two months ago, and the pair of them had returned three times since then, but Meg had silently been mourning her days of happiness and innocence all along. And now... she had been feeling sick, she had been craving odd foods; and she was over a month late.

         I push myself under the water as strongly as I can, weeping waterfalls and praying that Owain doesn’t follow me. I want never to have to speak to him again. I want never to hear anything again. I never want to feel the pain ever again! The water is powerful and strong, and it defeats my feeble human buoyancy easily. The salt water floods down my throat and up my nose, and the pain is exsquisite. It is heavenly, it is celestial, it is perfect. It is not earthly pain, like the sting Ray gives me. It is not human pain, like the ache in my heart when I think of Owain. It is incredible pain, and I love it. I want to drown in it... and I am drowning in it, I realise slowly, deliciously. I don’t care. But then hands grasp my sides, and the soreness in my belly is back, and I cry out in hatred, expelling all the bitter water from my mouth as I am pulled into the air. I feel like a premature baby, not ready to feel the air on my skin, still needing the comfort of my mother’s flesh to survive. Pink and shrivelled. And that’s when I screamed.

         Meg knew what was happening before she could even think. It was coming. Her sides were splitting, but she wasn’t laughing. She cried in pain, and finally she felt it fall out of her. Her bikini bottoms fell away into the surf with it, and the water around her glinted red. She turned her head to her rescuer, and saw Owain’s gentle face carved with worry. A final scream flew from Meg’s lips and her eyeline filled with black dots as the lifeguard finally dragged her and Owain onto his life-raft. Owain saw her discarded swimming costume float away on the waves, blood covering it and clumps of some thicker, brown substances amongst it.

         She never told Owain... but he knew. He knew her dark, tragic secret: Ray had gloated about having Meg, and the doctor had told her mother all whilst Owain hid below the window, eavesdropping. He told her one day. When they were each twenty-one, he told her that he knew, and they made a little memorial garden for it. Meghan Carew, angelic Welsh teenager, had had a child, when she was but fifteen years old, and the tiny life had been lost.