Authors: Jane Yolen
Merlin
 
Copyright © 1997 by Jane Yolen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
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Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should
be mailed to: Permissions Department, Harcourt Brace & Company,
6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yolen, Jane.
Merlin: the young Merlin trilogy, book three/Jane Yolen.
p. cm.
Companion book to: "Passager" and "Hobby"
Summary: Merlin, now twelve years old, begins to come into
his magic, while being held captive by a band of wild folk.
ISBN 0-15-200814-4
1. Merlin (Legendary character)âJuvenile fiction.
[1. Merlin (Legendary character)âFiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.6UIMdf 1997
[Fic]âdc20 96-11683
Text set in Fairfield Medium
Designed by Kate Chappell
Printed in the United States of America
G I K M O N L J H F
For Karen Weller-Watson, who has her own magic
Merlin:
The smallest British falcon or hawk, its wingbeats are powerful and, despite its size, it seldom fails of its prey.
Dark.
Night.
"It is your turn, Green Man. Set down your cards."
"I have you beaten, little hear. I hold a ten and a face."
"You have cheated."
"I never cheat."
"Except when it pleases you. "
"You do not believe me, child?"
"I believe you have a ten and a face. But of what suit? Flowers? Game hirds? Or the wild men of the woods? If they do not match, Green Man, I will heat you yet."
"You think too much on winning. On losing. Child, this is a game."
"I like games, Green Man. I am good at them."
"Being good at games should not be your only goal. You must think on other things. There is more to becoming an adult than games."
"Then I do not wish to become an adult. I wish to remain a child and play games. I am good at them.
"
"Such cannot be. The world grows old, and we with it. All life turns on the great wheel: dark to light to dark again. "
"Can you not change that, magic maker?"
"Even I cannot."
"Then what will be left of childhood when we are grown old and gone?"
"Dreams are left, child. Dreams.
"
"I do not want to be someone else's dream, Green Man.
I
mean to stay awake."
Light.
Day.
PURSUED BY DREAMS, THE BOY FLED FROM
the town. They were not his dreams; they were the town's dreams, rough and hot and angry and full of blood.
He squirmed through a bolt-hole in the stone walls, a hole big enough for a badger or fox. Though twelve years old, he was a small boy and he just managed to fit. Sliding down the grassy embankment, he kept an eye out for the green wagon in which his familyâor at least all the family he could claimâhad left the town hours earlier.
But as it was night, he somehow got on the wrong path, and he did not come upon any sign of them. Not the wagon whichâeven in the darkâwould have been unmistakable as it was painted and shaped to look like a castle on wheels. Nor the man who claimed to be his father but was not. Nor the woman who made no such claims. Nor the mules who pulled, nor the horse and cow.
He was on his own. He was alone.
Everything,
he thought wildly,
everything conspires to keep me on my lone.
By this he meant he could not go back into the town because of the dreams and because the lord of the town, Duke Vortigern, had told him to go. And because the Duke's own spy, a man named Fowler, hated him and would make him a prisoner if he could. And Fowler's even fouler dog knew his scent and would savage him on command.
And by this the boy also meant that the man in the wagon, Ambrosius, feared the boy's powers, and his woman agreed. They had run not from the Duke's anger but from their own fear.
"I shall have to go into the woods," the boy told himself.
The woods did not frighten him. The entire year he was eight, he had lived abandoned in the forest by himself. He had lived as a wild boy, a
wodewose,
without clothing, without warm food, or bedding, or the comfort of story or song. Without words. Without memory. But he had survived it till tamed by Master Robin, a falconer, and in Master Robin's house given a name and a history.
Surely,
he thought,
I can do at twelve what I did at eight.
But it was the middle of the night, and a forestâeven one you knowâcan be a fearsome place. So he picked out a tree not too deep into the woods, an oak with a tall, ragged crown which he could just make out against the starry sky. It was a sturdy tree, its trunk wider than he could comfortably span with his arms, with a ridged bark that made it easy to climb.
He settled into the V-shaped crotch of the tree, some ten feet off the ground, certain he would be safe there from fox and wolf. Then, pulling his knees up to his chest, he slept.
And dreamed.
He dreamed about a bear in the forest. A bear with a gold coronet on its head. A bear that walked upright, like a man.
A bear!
In his dream he crossed his fingers, an old trick of his that forced him to wake. Shivering in the dark, he drew his legs up even closer. He had found over the years that his dreams had an uncanny way of coming true, but on the slant. A bearâeven slantwiseâwas a danger. It had teeth and claws. It could climb a tree.
But the bear in his dream had not seemed particularly menacing. It had not even been more than a cub. Besides, the dream was an old one he had had before, and he had yet to see a bear when he was awake, except for one old ratty creature leashed to a traveler that danced to the sad pipings of a flute at the fair. So settling deeper into the curve of the trunk, he slept again.
This time he did not dream.
Â
Birdsong woke him, a blend of thrush and willow tit and the harsh
kraah kraah
of the hoodie crow. His legs were cramped, his shoulders aching, but he was alive. And it was day.
He put his head back and sang:
In the woods, in the woods
,
My dear-i-o,
Where the hirds, the hirds sing
Cheer-i-o
...
Â
It was all he could remember of a song that Viviane, the woman in the green wagon, had sung once. But even so it gave him heart. He jumped down from the tree, found a stream, and washed his hands and face in the cold water. It was a habit left over from his first family, Master Robin's family.
Thinking about them made him think as well of the man Fowler and his dog who might at any moment be on his trail. Fowler was not the kind of man who slept late or gave up easily.
It should have made the boy afraid, but for some reason it did not. He began singing again as he struck off even more deeply into the woods.
THE DEEPER HE WENT INTO THE WOODS
, the more there were shadows. Overhead, the interlaced branches made a kind of roof that the sun only occasionally broke through. Ahead of him a red butterfly flitted over fallen leaves, settling at last on a patch of ivy. By the side of the path, bittersweet berries were already half changed from green to scarlet and the flooring of bracken was an autumnal copper brown. He liked the sound his feet made as he walked, a soft crunching.
Turning his face toward the yellowing tree roof, he drew in a deep breath. He should have been worried about where his next meal would come from or that Fowler would find him. He should have worried about the dream bear. But somehow here, in the heart of the woods, he felt secure.
Just then he heard the nearby sound of water over stone. Following the sound he came to a small river winding between willows. There was a large grey rock half in and half out of the water and he sat upon it to rest. It was smooth and cool; he liked the feel of it. When he leaned over to look into the water, he was startled by a silvery flash.
Fish,
his conscious mind told him. But as he continued staring at its sinuous movement, he became mesmerized, and suddenly he found himself
in
the water, swimming by the fish's side. Overhead, light filtered through the river's ceiling in a shower of golden shards.
The boy swam nose to tail with the trout, following it into deeper and deeper waters where the sunlight could not penetrate. Yet, oddly, he could still see clearly in the blue-green of the river morning.
He did not question that he could breathe under the water; indeed it seemed as natural to him as breathing air.
Little tendrils of plants, like the touch of soft fingers, brushed by him. Smaller fish darted at the edges of his sight. Then nose to tail, he and the trout traveled even further down into the depths of the darkening pool.
The trout was thick along its back and covered with a shimmer of silver marked with black spots and crosses, like a shield. As it swam, it browsed on tiny shrimp, a moveable feast. Then, suddenly, it turned and stared at him with one bold eye.
"Do not rise to the lure, lad," it said in a voice surprisingly chesty and deep. Bubbles fizzed from its mouth like punctuation. Then it was gone in a flurry of waves, so fast the boy could not follow. He blinked, and once more found himself sitting upon the rock, completely dry.
"That was not exactly a dream," he whispered to himself. But he knew it was not exactly real either. Still, the shards of filtered light through water, the silver back of the trout, its resonant voice had seemed all too true.
"Do not rise to the lure," he repeated quietly, glancing around at the forest. But seeing nothing that looked the least like a lure, he stood, brushed himself off, and headed deeper into the woods.
HE PUZZLED OVER HIS ADVENTURE WITH
the trout for hours as he walked, but could come to no understanding of it. And while he was puzzling, he paid slight attention to where he was going. Soon he left the small deer trail he had been following and somehow found himself pushing through briars and clambering over fallen logs.
It was midway through the day when he realized that he was not only hungry, he was terribly lost.
Now the woods were dark and filled, unaccountably, with large gullies lined with ash and spindletree and the spikey gorse leaves. Nettles seemed to fence in every new path he chose, as if the woods itself wanted him to go in one direction and one direction only.
By the time he emerged on the other side of one particular ravine, he was soaking wet, part perspiration, part rain, for a fine mist had formed around the ravine's edge, showering down on anything in it. The mist obscured how far he had to climb, how far he had already come.
When he finally crested through the mist, he found himself on a flat piece of land in which grassâsuch a deep green it looked like an oceanâspread out as far as he could see.
He laughed out loud. If he had been younger, he might have believed he had discovered the land of fairies, for everything seemed jewel-like and perfect. There were blossoms everywhere, as if autumn had been banished from this land and only summer remained. The place was patch-worked with pink stitchwort and rosebay willow herb, yellow spikes of agrimony, and blue and purple thistles. Over all was the buzz of summer insects, broad-bodied dragonflies and the longlegged crane fly. He waded through the grass and flowers, the sweet, soft smell almost making him light-headed. Then the sun broke through and everything shimmered as though touched by a magician's wand.
"This ... this ... this..." he whispered wildly, intoxicated by it all. A cuckoo called out to him and, in his joy, he answered it back.
His voice echoed over and over and, with it, came another sound: the baying of a hound.
Fowler,
came his immediate thought,
and his awful dog.
Could they have tracked him so easily and so far?
But then a second and a third hound's voice joined in and he knew the truth of it. There was a pack of wild dogs on his trail and here he was, stuck in the middle of a meadow with no idea in which direction safety lay. Even at eight, he would not have become so beguiled as to forget all danger and stray from the safety of the trees.