The Young Merlin Trilogy

by Jane Yolen

  "I will learn, too," the child said to him confidently. "And ee will teach me."

  They went down the path, but in the opposite direction than the soldiers had taken. The dog ranged ahead, then returned, over and over and over again, as if to satisfy himself the two were safe.

  They did not stop until the sun was well overhead.

  In a little glade, where berries grew in profusion, they had a meal. In between one juicy handful and the next, Cub turned to the boy. "Are thee my father now?" he asked.

  Startled, Hawk-Hobby smiled slowly. The idea was new to him. All this while he had been seeking a father for himself. Now, it seemed, he had a son. "If you wish it."

  In answer, the child put his hand in the boy's. "Then perhaps," Hawk-Hobby said, "if we are to be a family, we need to tell one another our true names."

  "But—'ee are Dreamer," the child said. "Robin o' the Wood."

  "No," the boy answered, kneeling before the child. "I am a dreamer, true, but that is not my true name. My name..." He took a deep breath. "My name is Merlin."

  "Like the hawk?" the child asked. "I like hawks."

  "Like the hawk. And someday I shall teach you how to tame them as I was taught," Merlin said. "But now I have many other things to teach you. Such as what your place is in this world. And that you must not rise to the lure. And..."

  "But my name, Merlin. What be ee calling me?"

  "Cub."

  "Can I be bigger than a cub?"

  "You will be in time."

  "As big as ... as big as a bear? Then no one could kill what is mine. If I be big and powerful as a bear."

  Merlin smiled. "As big as a bear, certainly," he said. "But if you are a bear, Cub, then we shall call you Artus, for that means bear-man." As he said it, he suddenly remembered his dream of the bear. Perhaps, perhaps this was meant, after all.

  "Artus. Artus. Artus," the child cried out, twirling around and around until he was quite dizzy with it.

  At the sound of the child's name, the dog burst out of the woods and ran about the two of them, barking.

  "Ranger," commanded Merlin, "do your duty to this King Bear."

  Inexplicably, the dog stopped and bowed its head. Then, when Artus laughed delightedly, and clapped his berry-stained hands, the dog turned and ran back down the path as if to scout the long, perilous way.

  Light.

  Morn.

  "How can I continue, how can I rule now that he is gone?"

  "You are king, my lord. He was just an old mage. And he lacked all humility. "

  "Hush. He was my father. He was my teacher. He was my friend. "

  "A king has no friends, my lord. "

  "Not even you, Gwen?"

  "Not even me, Arthur."

  "You are wrong, you know. He was my friend from the first moment I saw him. Though I did not know then—or ever—what he truly was. Sometimes he seemed to me to he as fierce as a wild dog, sometimes as husy as an ant, ofttimes as slippery as a trout. He was a hawk, a hobby, a merlin. "

  "He was a man, my lord."

  "Not a man like me, Gwen."

  "No one is like you, Arthur."

  "No one?"

  "You are the king."

  "So am I powerful?"

  "Very powerful. "

  "That is good. If I am powerful, then no one can hurt me. Or mine. So why do I hurt so now that he is gone?"

  And he calls his servants to him with a bell that sounds like a tamed hawk's jesses, like the sound of spears clashing on earth, that place perilously juxtaposed between heaven and hell.

  Author's Note

  The story of Merlin, King Arthur's great court magician, is not one story but many. Tales about him have been told in England, in Scotland, in Ireland, in Wales, in Brittany, France, Germany, and beyond. In some of the stories he is a Druid priest, in others a dream-reader, a shape-shifter, a wild man in the woods.

  In Geoffrey of Monmouth's twelfth-century Vita Merlini—The Life of Merlin—the great magician goes insane and runs off into the woods for a while where he lives as a wild man and only music can soothe him.

  Wild men were popular figures in medieval literature and art. Known also as wodewose, they were sung about in French romances, found in sophisticated paintings, woven into enormous tapestries, carved onto ornamented weapons. There was even a famous set of fifteenth-century German playing cards that had a suit called "wild men." But the wold man or wild man was outside of the strictly ordered medieval society, a kind of jester, preternaturally wise. Often he became mixed up in the folk mind with the ancient gods of the woods: Silvanus, the Green Man, Robin o' the Wood, Robin Hood.

  In the old stories of Merlin and Arthur, Merlin's roles were various. In some he was there at Arthur's conception, helping Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon, and Arthur's mother, Ygraine, get together by supernatural means. In other stories he is Arthur's teacher, patient and wise. In others he is the architect of Arthur's Camelot, of Stonehenge, of the round table. In all, he is a figure of magic, of mystery, his own history beguiling, a fatherless (and perhaps even motherless) figure who helps raise Arthur the child.

  I have taken bits and pieces of these stories, reworked them extensively, and added to them information about the wodewose societies where the men were often pictured as one-eyed monsters (like the Greek Cyclops) dressed in bearskins with shaggy, bristly, ugly wives. That there were outlaw groups living in the vast forests of old Britain, we know. Whether Merlin—boy or man—ever encountered any such is the realm of the storyteller.

  —J. Y.