Merlin's Harp (10 page)

  Turning home, I hummed a morning song.

  After that my life was easy. Following Merlin's counsel I lay alone and reaped great power. Heartless, one does not suffer.

  But neither does one enjoy. Life can become almost a burden. But Merlin cured that.

Merlin said kindly, "Child. Out in the kingdom, Arthur's Peace is endangered. I need an assistant mage to help me assure the common good, and you are among the best I know. Come out there with me."

  The busy distaff paused in the Lady's hand. (She was learning the clothing arts from a Human witch whose sick child she had saved.) We huddled together in her villa room where snow did not leak in. By low lamplight we stared up at Merlin like owl nestlings, discovered.

  I said, "Merlin, I would not care if your Arthur were crucified like his God." (Merlin had sung us that story.) "Why, in the name of all Gods, would I leave my hearth in winter and travel into the Human kingdom for Arthur?"

  Merlin wriggled his brows. He said, "You will care if his Peace is broken. The Saxons will turn your forest into a sheep pasture."

  The Lady murmured anxiously. She had long feared this very thing, and so had I. What if the Angles out there learned that our forest was guarded, not by enchantment, but by children with poisoned darts? And they would learn, if the Saxons drove them into our arms.

  I gazed into the lamp-flame and saw vast distances, alarming bare vistas under snow clouds. I asked, "How would I go out there and return? For I would not be crucified myself."

  "Hah!" Merlin cried, victorious. "That I will show you!"

  That very twilight, Merlin and I stood in falling snow at East Edge and held out our hands to a herd of winter-coated ponies.

  They watched us cautiously. A brown mare shook her rough mane and pushed between us and her foal. The stallion pawed snow and snorted.

  I thought of Mellias and his first dance with horses. I had no wish so to entertain the Guard children who must be watching. Mellias had danced with subdued slave-horses. These ponies were wary and free, not a halter among them, and no way to get or stay astride.

  I signaled Merlin,
That stallion is angry.

  
Not angry. Anxious. We will calm him.
And Merlin began to sing.

  At first he hummed under his breath. The ponies twitched their ears toward him. He sang softly, then clearly, then confidently. He signaled me,
Sing.

  I sang insincerely. I had no real wish to attract these heavy-hoofed creatures. Longingly I thought of the dry, warm room back in Lady Villa, with lamp and blankets and stolen bread laid by. The comforts of sorrow. My voice quavered; I drew back even as I sang.

  Merlin signaled,
Stand here by me. Think of one horse—the brown
mare. She is like you. Imagine she comes to you, like drawn to like.

  The ponies stretched ears and noses toward us. Snow built up on their coats as they faced us, and on our heads and shoulders as we sang. We must have looked like the snow creatures children make in hard winters.

Slow step by cautious step, the ponies moved toward us.

  When they began to move it was dusk, and they were brown and gray, speckled and black. When they came snuffling around us, stamping and whisking their tails in our faces, it was night and they were all black.

  They smelled greasy and warm. One pushed against me and breathed warmth down my back. Merlin whispered, "Catch her mane." And I, hardly believing, reached and laid hold of her bristly, mangled mane. Merlin whispered, "Mount." I hugged her strong neck and scrambled onto her back—assisted with a shove from Merlin.

  Merlin whispered, "Sing!"

  Singing, I settled down on the mare's back. Her strong, earthy aura, invisible in the darkness, tingled through me. Suddenly I was warm and large; coarse food gurgled in my belly. My thick coat held off snow and cold. I hardly felt the small weight on my back. I farted, shook my mane, smelled my foal and my companions around me. The wind from behind us brought smells of pig, dog, man, smoke, shit. These safe, known smells came from behind; before me, the windless darkness told me nothing. I turned and moved into the wind.

  I, Niviene, clung to the mare's mane and swayed to her motion. Another mare moved close beside us. Perched on her back, Merlin said to me, "Sing, Niviene, and wrap the mare's spirit in your Fey peace."

  Hah, that was the trick! I had let the mare's spirit wrap mine. Now I enlarged my own aura and threw it over and around her like a huge cloak. Her innocent mind yielded at once.

  Singing, we rode through the night. I learned to turn the mare, to stop or start her with a touch and a thought. Singing, we left the herd and crossed dark fields, now into the wind, now cross-wind, the five of us our own herd: Merlin and his pony, I and my pony, and the foal trotting around us. The dim winter first light found us a long way from any place I knew of. In a valley meadow between wooded hills, Merlin said, "Hush now." And we stopped singing.

  My throat, hips, and legs ached ferociously. To my surprise the ponies did not throw us off. They were used to us now. Released from enchantment, they pawed the snow in search of grass. The foal pressed to my mare, trying to nurse. When she found a patch of grass and stood still, he succeeded.

  Fearful now, I looked around this vast open space in which we were plainly visible. "Merlin," I croaked, "where are we?"

  Merlin mumbled and twisted. "Don't know," he admitted. "Lost track. But the ponies will take us back."

  In the new light I saw his mare's aura, a deep brown glow close around her; and I saw that she missed the herd, and would gladly return to the Fey forest's edge.

  "Merlin, we'll be seen. There's not so much as a bush to hide behind!"

  "Do like this." Merlin flopped down flat on his pony's neck. From any distance he would be invisible. Aching in every muscle, I lay down flat.

  "Now," he said, spitting out horse hair, "think of the herd."

  I thought of the small herd we had left behind. I thought of the stallion, who must want us by now.

  My mare stepped away from the nursing foal. She blew, swished her tail and started walking. Lying low, we rode back as the light strengthened. We passed thin woods, snowy meadows and several villages, where Humans stirred fires and trudged through the snow with milk pails. All these things we saw from a strange height, as though we were Guard children, perched in walking sentinel trees.

  Outside the last village we paused at a hayrack set out for cattle. An angry man pointed us out to a band of idle boys who rushed screeching toward us, waving sticks. My mare started, shied, and plunged into a headlong gallop.

  Now did I learn to ride.

  Flat-pressed to her straining neck I held on like a ferret. Earth and snow flew past beneath us.
Thunk-thunk,
we rushed toward East Edge. I heard the foal's small hooves drumming behind us, and farther back the thudding gallop of Merlin's mare. Wind sang around us, sun broke through snow-clouds. Had I breath I would have laughed for joy.

  Danger left behind, my mare slowed to a canter, and a trot, and a walk. At last she stopped and looked around for the foal. He trotted up, fluffy tail whisking, one thought milky in his mind. Merlin came right behind him.

  "Merlin!" I gasped. "There is the forest!" It loomed ahead, a darkness of close, bare trees and thickets. Home! In my relief I sat up stiffly, careless of pain and of who might see me.

  Merlin caught his breath and said, "Now you know why Humans use bridles. And saddles."

  "In truth! I have never moved that fast in my life."

  "But you will move faster next time."

  "I will?"

  "You have forgotten why you are here."

  "I must have. Quick, let us get into the trees." While the foal nursed, I slid down from the mare and collapsed.

  Merlin dismounted and pulled me to my feet. "Can you stand, Niviene?"

  "I…no."

  He heaved me up in his arms and plodded toward the trees. I lay in his arms like a baby, looking over his shoulder.

  Puzzled, the three ponies watched us leave. They stood together, furry-brown against white fields. As we left them behind a cord broke between us, and I lost touch with my mare. She became again an animal, alien, closed into her world as I was closed into mine. For now, we had nothing more to say to each other. She swished her tail and turned her back.

  Merlin staggered in among the trees and let me down.

  He made us a camp just within East Edge. We could look out through pine boughs at the kingdom. For a day and a night I could barely move, and Merlin cared for me as if he were a Human father.

  I sent out a silent call to Aefa, and she found us at noon. She had the right herbs ready in her pouch. "What in the name of all Gods were you doing?" she asked in wonderment, massaging my hips.

  "Riding. All night. Ah, that's better!"

  "Riding?"

  "Ponies."

  "Ponies!" Aefa squeaked.

  Outside the shelter, Merlin laughed. "You can join us next time, Aefa. You and Mellias."

  "I? I am young yet, Merlin. I still have the use of my wits."

  "Niviene and I are going out into the kingdom. To do that you have to ride."

  "Hah!" Till that moment I had forgotten the reason for last night's adventure.

  Like a bear testing a new den, Merlin pushed his head and shoulders into the shelter. "It will be good for you, Niviene. Consider. What thought never crossed your mind last night?"

  "Last night. Keep doing that, Aefa! Last night I thought of nothing but horses."

  And then I saw it. All night I had not once thought of my dead heart. Merlin raised a brow and nodded. "You see. The kingdom is the place for you now. And for you, Aefa. Mellias would delight in your company."

  We rode together many nights that winter. Mellias was at home, and he gladly taught Aefa to ride using bits and reins, for he could not guide a horse with magic. Sometimes we rode two and two, sometimes four together like a charging army. On those nights hoofbeats rang over the frozen country, and Human folk turned on their pallets and muttered, "The Good Folk ride tonight."

  At first we rode the half-wild ponies we could sing to. Later, we took to borrowing well-trained, well-combed horses from farm stalls.

  One night I crept into a stable at dusk to find a farmer and his small son busily hanging rowan branches and stick crosses from the beams and from the gray gelding's halter. I melted into the wall. The boy asked, "Why would the Good Folk steal our Dobbin?"

  "They been stealing horses out of barns. Horses limp home come morning with elf-locks in their manes, all wore out. But they won't get our Dobbin."

  "Why not?"

  " 'Cause of these here rowan and crosses."

  "Why?"

  " 'Cause the Good Folk are scared out of their skins at rowan and crosses. Ask me another 'Why' and I'll show you."

  (The next morning, Dobbin ambled home all worn out, his mane a nest of elf-locks. After all, I had to hold on to something.)

Counsel Oak towers over all the apple trees of Avalon; and from his topmost branches you see all of Avalon, and the bright islandcircling water, and the dark-forested, lake-encircling shores. You see our world.

  But as I once reminded Elana, there is another world beyond ours, encircling ours; and it circles outward forever.

  At first it is villages, manor farms, woods framing fields, with here and there a finger of heavy forest. (And a very few of these forests are guarded, like ours, by brown children agile as squirrels, shooting poisoned darts from treetops.) But always you find an open track through woods and between forests, leading to other fields, manors, villages; with here and there a chief's dun, guarded by earthworks; and here and there a cross-crowned monastery, thatched huts circling a thatched chapel.

  In the chapels stand Christian Gods and Goddesses and their winged servants, ready to step from their pedestals and waylay you—except that they are carved from wood. Like the Dana mosaic back in Lady Villa, they are the astonishing works of Human hands.

  In the fields dig leather-tough men and women. In my childhood I knew such folk; I watched them from the shadows of East Edge; I robbed them by night, slipping easily through their yards, barns and huts. One night I danced with them, my hands clasped in theirs, breathing in their breath and odor.

  Now I know who they are. Like rocks, bones of the Goddess, they uphold their world. These are the folk who fell great trees to build chiefs' halls, who raise earthworks around duns, who plant and harvest grain for Humans and Fey. These are the folk who beat out swords in fire, who herd and train knights' chargers and farmers' donkeys. The Human world rides on their stooped shoulders. (And we Fey ride, feather-light, atop the Human world.) For fifteen years I have traveled through the Human kingdom, ahorse and afoot, usually disguised as a twelve-year-old boy (always with Mellias's crystal dangling inside my shirt). I have lived at times in the King's dun, behind and under his earthworks, disguised (less successfully) as a Human lady. But out there in the kingdom my spirit is still a deer, a white doe, frightened and far from cover. I pause continually, mid-stride, to glance in all directions. My nostrils distend, seeking distant smells; my ears practically twitch. In truth, the Human capacity for hate and anger, for reasoned and unreasoned violence, still appalls me.