Merlin's Booke

by Jane Yolen

  Then he sat down, cross-legged by the tray, and tore off more hunks of bread, smearing it with so much butter that soon his hands and elbows and even his stomach bore testimony to his greed. At last he finished the bread and butter and licked the last crumbs from the tray and the floor around it.

  There was a cup of hot water the color of leaf-mold on the tray as well, and he slurped it up, surprised that it, too, was warm. And sweet. He knew then that it was not water at all, but he could not recall its name.

  “Names,” he whispered to himself, and named again all the things that had been given back to him, starting with the bread: “bread, butter, horse, dog, hens, jerkin, coat.” Then he added but not out loud, Master Robin, Mag, and Nell. He patted his greasy stomach and grunted happily. He could not remember ever being this warm and this full. Not ever.

  He looked around the room slowly. There were two windows and the light shining through them reminded him of the light through the heavy interlacing of the trees in his forest. It fell to the floor in strange dusty patterns. Crawling over to the light, he tried to catch the motes in his hand, but each time he snatched at the dusty light, they disappeared and when he opened his hand, it was empty.

  Standing, he looked at the window and the fields and forest beyond. Then he thrust his head forward and was painfully surprised by the glass. “Hard air,” he said at first before his mind recalled the word to him: window. He had a sudden illumination, a dreamlike memory that assembled like colored glass shards in a pattern that formed bit by bit. Sometimes, he remembered and smiled at it, sometimes windows had many little pieces that made pictures. Of animals and people and grass and trees.

  He tried to push open the glass, but he could not move it, so he left that window and tried the other. He went back and forth between them, pushing and leaving little marks on the glass. Angry then, he went to the door and shoved his shoulder against it. It would not open and he could not lift the latch.

  So then he knew he was a prisoner in the room. The fields he could see through the glass and the tall familiar trees beyond were lost to him. He put his head back and howled. The long rise and fall of sound comforted him.

  Then he went back to the bed and lay down beside it, pulling the covers onto the floor and making a nest of them. He slept.

  When he woke again the room was darker and the light through the windows not so pure but shaded. There was a new loaf and a bowl of milk by the door. He stood and walked warily over to it. Then in a sudden fit of anger, he kicked the bowl over and screamed.

  A few hours later, when the door remained shut against him and he had urinated all around the bed, hunger led him back to the loaf. He ate it savagely and sniffed around the place where the milk had spilled on the floor, but it had all soaked in.

  Bored and angry, he paced back and forth between the window and the door, then he began to trot, and finally run around the room until he was out of breath. Standing in the middle of the room, he threw back his head to howl once again, but this time his howl died away in a series of short gasps and moans. He curled into the covers and wept, something he had not done in almost a year.

  When the sounds of his weeping had stopped and he drifted into sleep the door into the room opened slowly. Master Robin entered and exchanged the empty bowl and tray for another, one with a bit of meat stew and milky porridge. Then he picked the boy up carefully and settled him into the bed. He stroked the boy’s matted hair, brushing it from the wide forehead.

  “There, there, my boy,” he murmured in that soothing low voice. “First we’ll tame you, then we’ll name you. And then you’ll claim your own.”

  The voice, the words, the warmth entered into the boy’s dreams and, dreaming, he smiled and wiped his finger along his cheek. Then the finger found its way into his mouth.

  The next dawn was the repeat of the first, and the next and the next. By the fifth day the room smelled and the floors bore the reminders of his filthy woods habits. But this time when the boy woke, Master Robin was there next to him, lying close and stroking his head.

  “Come my boy, let me help you now, let me show you now.”

  The boy lowered his gaze, unable to quite meet the man’s eyes, his skin quivering under the soft touch, the soft words.

  The man rose from the bed and went over to the door where the tray full of food sat. This food was still warm and the smell seemed to overpower the musky, closed-in odor of the room.

  Involuntarily, the boy licked his upper lip, then as if ashamed, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. When Master Robin sat down on the bed with the tray, the boy reached over to grab the loaf. The man slapped his hand.

  The sting did not hurt as much as the surprise. And then the memory of that other slap, when he was holding a joint of meat, jolted through him. “Forgive …” he said in a whisper, as if trying out a new tongue.

  The man hugged him suddenly, fiercely. “There is nothing to forgive, young one. Just slow down. The bread will not run away. It is manners of the house and not the woods I am about to teach you.”

  The words meant less than the hug, of course. The boy sat back and waited.

  Master Robin broke the bread into two sections. Then he picked up a silver stick with a rounded end and stuck it in the bowl of porridge. “Spoon,” he said.

  The boy whispered back, “Spoon.” He put out his hand and his fingers closed around the handle of the spoon with a memory of their own. He ate the porridge greedily but with a measure of care as well, frequently stopping to check out Master Robin’s reaction through the corners of his eyes.

  “Good boy. Good. So you are no stranger to a spoon. How long were you in that woods, I wonder? Long enough, though. Long enough to go wild. Ah well, we’ll tame you. I’m not a falconer for nought. I have a long patience with wild things. Eat then. Eat and rest. This afternoon, after we dress you, I’ll take you out to the mews to see the hawks.”

  When the man left with the tray, the boy sat on the bed and watched. He made no attempt to follow out the door. There had been a promise. That much he had understood. A promise of a trip outside. It was enough.

  However, he was too excited to nap again and he wandered around the room, not restlessly or angrily this time, but to catalog the room’s contents. It was his room now. He had made it his, first by marking it and then by feeling safe in it. There was the bed and its rumpled covers, the rush-strewn floor, and a large closed wooden wardrobe he could not open. To one side of the bed was a small table that occasionally held a candle. He remembered its light when once he had awakened in the night. There was no candle there now. Instead a large bowl and jug stood there. He peered into both. They were empty.

  He went to the window and looked out. A cow grazed on the open meadow, fastened by a chain to its spot. Near it two large brown dogs ran back and forth in some kind of frantic game for which only they seemed to understand the rules. The boy put his hand to the window and drew a line down the middle several inches long. He looked at it and then, ever so carefully, drew a line across the middle. After a moment of thought he drew a round thing on top. Then he stopped and shook his head. The figure was incomplete. It needed something. He stood back from the window trying to puzzle it out, but the lines blurred together, then faded.

  When he turned around, Master Robin was standing in the room and beside him were the two women.

  “Hallo,” said the man. “We’ve brought you some clothes.”

  The older woman wrinkled her nose as she looked around the room. The younger one gave a tentative smile. Then all three moved toward the boy who waited stone still.

  It took them quite a while to dress him, for he had forgotten what to do and was uncomfortable with so many hands on him. And once he snarled and the women drew back. But Master Robin persevered and, at last, the boy had on short trews, a shirt, and a vest, which were the names Mag gave the clothes. And he wore as well a peculiar harness of plaited rope that went around each shoulder and across his chest and back, with a lead
that Master Robin kept tight in his hand. It reminded the boy of the chain that held the cow but he did not try to pull it away. It made him feel part of the man, and he liked that now.

  Then Master Robin sent the two women from the room, and they scuttled like badgers running back to the sett. The boy laughed as they closed the door behind them, and that made Master Robin laugh, too.

  “So, you can laugh and you can cry and you can speak some, too. You are no idiot, for all that Mag would have you so,” said the soft voice. “Would you like to see the birds?”

  His answer was to stand.

  “Well. And well.” Master Robin stood slowly and patted him, almost carelessly, on the head. “Tomorrow we will do somewhat with that hair.”

  He knocked on the door and there was a series of small sounds as the door was unlocked from the outside. Then they went from the safety of the room, the rope loose between them.

  The birds were housed in a long low building, with horn in the small windows.

  “The mews,” Master Robin said as they entered. And he gave names to many things as they walked through the long room. “Door, perch, bird, lamp, rafters.” And mimicking his tone, the boy repeated each with a kind of greed. In fact, his face looked as it had when he had smelled the first loaf of bread, his eyes squinting, chin up, a kind of feral anticipation.

  They walked slowly through the sawdust on the floor, and the boy took it all as if it were both his very first and also his hundredth time in such a place.

  At last they were before a trio of hooded birds on individual stands where the heavy sacking screens hanging from the perches moved slowly in the bit of wind like castle banners. Master Robin stood for a moment, nodding his head at the birds, hands behind his back. The boy echoed his stance.

  Then, as if he could contain his excitement no longer, the boy turned to the man and whispered, “Bird. Hawk. Yours?” His voice was husky, deeper than most boys’ his age.

  The man was careful not to move but smiled slowly. “Aye,” he said. “They are mine. They are mine because they have given some part of themselves to me. But not all of it. And not forever. I would not want them to give me all. And every day I must earn their trust again. With wild things there is no such word as forever.”

  The boy listened intently.

  “I stood three nights running with the gos—there,” said the man, nodding his head toward the bird furthest to the left. “He was on my fist the whole time.”

  “And tied?” the boy asked.

  “Aye.”

  The boy nodded as if this had been a wise thing to do.

  “When he bated, I put him back on my fist. Again and again. But gently. Firmly. And I sang to him. I spoke words to him all night.”

  “My hinny, my jo,” the boy said in a passable imitation of the man.

  “Aye. And stroked his talons with a feather and gave him meat. And after three days and nights without sleep, he allowed himself to nap on my fist. He gave himself to me in his sleep.”

  “In his sleep.” The boy’s voice was so soft that the man had to strain to hear it.

  “The peregrine there,” Master Robin said, indicating the middle bird, “is my oldest bird. She’s a lovely one. An eyas.”

  “Eyas?”

  “That means I took her from the nest myself. Nearly lost an eye doing it. There was another in the nest, but …” He stopped, aware that the boy was no longer listening.

  The boy had moved forward several short steps until the rope had stretched between them. Standing just under the third bird’s feet, he was staring up at it.

  “Ah, that one, he’s a passager, wild caught but not yet mature.”

  The hawk stirred as if it knew it was being talked about, and the bell on its jess rang out.

  At the sound the boy jumped back. Then he strained forward again against the rope.

  “You like my merlin best, then?” Master Robin asked in his low voice.

  The boy turned sharply and stared at him wide-eyed. His mouth dropped open and he put his hands out as if he had suddenly turned blind.

  Robin gathered the child into his arms. “What is it then? What is it, wild one? What did I say? What have I done?”

  The boy tore from him and stared again at the hooded bird who, unaccountably, began to rock back and forth from one foot to another, its bell jangling madly. “Name,” the boy said and rocked back and forth with the bird. “Name.”

  The man stared at the boy and the bird, first only his eyes moving, then his head. With a final shock of recognition, he turned, plunged his hand into the nearby water barrel, and then reached for the boy. With his finger, he drew a cross on the boy’s forehead, one swift line down, a second across, under the tangle of elfknots in his hair.

  “I see,” he said. “I understand. You are as small and as fierce and as independent as my passager. And for some reason his name is yours. So I baptize you Merlin. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” So saying, he jerked the knife from his belt and cut the harness off the boy.

  For a moment the boy stared up into the man’s eyes directly. Then he smiled and held out his hand for memory, at last, had come flooding through him when he was given back his name.

  “Lord,” said he, “summon to you Myrddin the bard of Gwythheyrn, for he knows how to conceive strange things by his unfailing immortal artistry.”

  —Historia Regum Britanniae

  by Geoffrey of Monmouth

  Dream Reader

  ONCE UPON A TIME—which is how stories about magic and wizardry are supposed to begin—on a fall morning a boy stood longingly in front of a barrow piled high with apples. It was in the town of Gwethern, the day of the market fair.

  The boy was almost a man and he did not complain about his empty stomach. His back still hurt from the flogging he had received just a week past, but he did not complain about that either. He had been beaten and sent away for lying. He was always being sent away from place to place for lying. The problem was, he never lied. He simply saw truth differently from other folk. On the slant.

  His name was Merrillin but he called himself Hawk, another kind of lie because he was nothing at all like a hawk, being cowering and small from his many beatings and lack of steady food. Still he dreamed of becoming a hawk, fiercely independent and no man’s prey, and the naming was his first small step toward what seemed an unobtainable goal.

  But that was the other thing about Merrillin the Hawk. Not only did he see the truth slantwise, but he dreamed. And his dreams, in strange, uncounted ways, seemed to come true.

  So Merrillin stood in front of the barrow on a late fall day and told himself a lie; that the apple would fall into his hand of its own accord as if the barrow were a tree letting loose its fruit. He even reached over and touched the apple he wanted, a rosy round one that promised to be full of sweet juices and crisp meat. And just in case, he touched a second apple as well, one that was slightly wormy and a bit yellow with age.

  “You boy,” came a shout from behind the barrow, and a face as yellow and sunken as the second apple, with veins as large as worm runnels across the nose, popped into view.

  Merrillin stepped back, startled.

  A stick came down on his hand, sharp and painful as a firebrand. “If you do not mean to buy, you cannot touch.”

  “How do you know he does not mean to buy?” asked a voice from behind Merrillin.

  It took all his concentration not to turn. He feared the man behind him might have a stick as well, though his voice seemed devoid of the kind of anger that always preceded a beating.

  “A rag of cloth hung on bones, that’s all he is,” said the cart man, wiping a dirty rag across his mouth. “No one in Gwethern has seen him before. He’s no mother’s son, by the dirt on him. So where would such a one find coins to pay, cheeky beggar?”

  There was a short bark of laughter from the man behind. “Cheeky beggar is it?”

  Merrillin dared a glance at the shadow the man cast at his fe
et. The shadow was cloaked. That was a good sign, for he would be a stranger to Gwethern. No one here affected such dress. Courage flooded through him and he almost turned around when the man’s hand touched his mouth.

  “You are right, he is a cheeky beggar. And that is where he keeps his coin—in his cheek.” The cloaked man laughed again, the same sharp, yipping sound, drawing an appreciative echo from the crowd that was just starting to gather. Entertainment was rare in Gwethern. “Open your mouth, boy, and give the man his coin.”

  Merrillin was so surprised, his mouth dropped open on its own, and a coin fell from his lips into the cloaked man’s hand.

  “Here,” the man said, his hand now on Merrillin’s shoulder. He flipped the coin into the air, it turned twice over before the cart man grabbed it out of the air, bit it, grunted, and shoved it into his purse.

  The cloaked man’s hand left Merrillin’s shoulder and picked up the yellowing apple, dropping it neatly into Merrillin’s hand. Then his voice whispered into the boy’s ear. “If you wish to repay me, look for the green wagon, the castle on wheels.”

  When Merrillin turned to stutter out his thanks, the man had vanished into the crowd. That was just as well, though, since it was hardly thanks Merrillin was thinking of. Rather he wanted to tell the cloaked man that he had done only what was expected and that another lie had come true for Merrillin, on the slant.

  After eating every bit of the apple, his first meal in two days, and setting the little green worm that had been in it on a stone, Merrillin looked for the wagon. It was not hard to find.

  Parked under a chestnut tree whose leaves were spotted with brown and gold, the wagon was as green as Mab’s gown, as green as the first early shoots of spring. It was indeed a castle on wheels, for the top of the wagon was vaulted over. There were three windows, four walls, and a door as well. Two docile drab-colored mules were hitched to it and were nibbling on the few brown blades of grass beneath the tree. Along the wagon’s sides was writing, but as Merrillin could not read, he could only guess at it. There were pictures, too: a tall, amber-eyed mage with a conical hat was dancing across a starry night, a dark-haired princess in rainbow robes played on a harp with thirteen strings. Merrillin could not read—but he could count. He walked toward the wagon.