Silver on the Tree

by Susan Cooper

  Bran said, gazing bemused at the horses, “Can you ride, Will?”

  “Not really,” Will said. “But I don’t think that will matter.” And he put one foot in the horse’s stirrup and without sound or effort he was up on its back, smiling down, gathering up the reins. The second horse pawed the ground, and nudged gently at Bran’s shoulder with its nose.

  “Come on, Bran,” Will said. “They’ve been waiting for us.” He sat there, self-possessed as a huntsman, a small stocky figure in blue jeans and sweater on the tall golden horse, and Bran shook his head in wonder and reached for the saddlebow. He was up, mounted, before he had a chance to think about it. The horse tossed its head and Bran caught the reins as they fell towards him.

  “All right,” said Will gently to his horse, stroking its white mane. “Take us where we should go. Please?” And the two horses moved off together, unhurried, confident, walking the stone-paved street at the base of the long sweep of rising stone steps.

  The trees of the broad green park towered over them at one side, shading the road, lush and dew-flecked and cool. Sunlight lay on the grass between them in bright pools, but there was no sound. No birds sang. Only the clop-clop of the horses’ hooves rang through the quiet city, changing to a hollower, deeper sound as the two golden horses turned abruptly away from the park and into a narrow side street. Great grey walls loomed up on either side, huge blank expanses of grey stone, without a window anywhere.

  The street grew narrower, darker. Without altering their steady pace the horses went on between the towering walls, while Will and Bran sat loosely holding the reins and glancing nervously about.

  They turned a corner. Still the high blank walls enclosed them, in a narrow alley, with the sky no more than a thin blue strip overhead. But this time they could see a small wooden door set into the wall at their right, and when they drew level with this door both animals stopped, and began tossing their heads and pawing at the ground. Will’s horse shook its head from side to side, so that the silver harness musically rang and the long mane rippled and flowed like white-gold silk.

  “All right,” Will said. He dismounted; so did Bran. As soon as their riders were on the ground, the two horses turned without hurry in a brief confusion of clopping hooves and jingling harness, and together they trotted up the alley, back the way that they had come. Their bright loose tails swung like torches in the shadowy street.

  “Beautiful!” Bran said softly, watching the golden shapes disappear.

  Will was standing before the door, studying its plain wooden surface. It was dark and pitted as if by age. Absently he thrust his thumbs into his leather belt, and one of them met the curve of the small brass horn that he had blown on the mountain, in another life and another world. Unhooking the horn from his belt, he held it towards Bran.

  “We’ve got to stay close together, whatever happens. You keep hold of one side of this and I’ll take the other. That’ll help.”

  Bran nodded his white head and slipped the fingers of his left hand through the single loop of the horn. Will looked again at the door. It had no handle, no bell, no lock or keyhole; no means at all of opening it that he could see.

  He raised one hand and knocked, firmly.

  The door swung outward. There was no one on the other side. Peering, they could see nothing within but darkness. Each gripping one side of the little hunting-horn as if it were a lifebelt, they went in, and behind them the door swung shut.

  A glimmer of light from somewhere, untraceable, showed them they were in a narrow corridor, low-roofed, ending a few yards ahead where a ladder rose upwards out of sight.

  Will said slowly, “I suppose we go up there.”

  “Is that safe?” Bran’s voice was husky with uncertainty.

  “Well, it’s all we can do, isn’t it? And somehow nothing seems to be telling me not to. You know?”

  “That’s true. It doesn’t feel … bad. Mind you it doesn’t feel too good either.”

  Will laughed softly. “That’s going to be the same everywhere here. The Dark has no power in this land, I think—but nor does the Light.”

  “Then who has?”

  “I suppose we shall find that out.” Will took a firm grip on the horn. “Keep hold. Even if it’ll be awkward climbing up there.”

  They went up the broad-runged ladder, one close after the other, still linked by their talisman, and emerged into an area so totally unexpected that for a few moments they both stood there motionless, looking.

  They had come up through an open trapdoor, close to one end of a long gallery. The floor stretched before them in curious sections, one after the other, on differing levels, so that one might be higher than the one before, and the next lower than either. The place seemed to be a kind of library. Heavy square tables and chairs filled it, separated by low stacks of bookshelves, and the wall on their left was covered entirely with books. The ceiling was wood-panelled. The right-hand wall was not there.

  Will stared, but could not understand. At his right, in this long room, a kind of carved wooden balustrade ran all the length of the floor. But no wall was beyond it, nor anything else visible: only blackness. Blank dark. There was no sense of an emptiness, or a perilous void. There was simply nothing.

  Then he saw movement in the room. The first people they had seen in this land were appearing, through a door at the far end of the long gallery; drifting, singly, men and women of all ages, dressed in a variety of simple clothes that seemed to belong to no particular age. There were not many of them. One by one, each figure silently settled, collecting a pile of books from the shelves and sitting down with them at a table, or standing browsing over a single book. Not one of them paid the smallest attention to Will or Bran. One man came up close beside them and stood frowning at the shelves lining the wall at their backs.

  Will said to him, greatly daring, “Can’t you find it?” But the man made no sign of noticing. His face lightened suddenly; he reached out and took a book, and went back with it to sit down at a table nearby. Will peered at the title of the book as he went past, but it was written on the cover in a language he could not understand. And when the man opened the book, its pages were quite blank.

  Bran said slowly, “They can’t see us.”

  “No. Nor hear us. Come on.”

  They walked carefully together up the long gallery, skirting intent seated figures, cautious not to trip or nudge. Nobody gave any flicker of notice as they passed. And whenever they looked down at a book that a man or woman was reading, they found that its pages seemed to bear no writing at all.

  There was no real door at the far end of the gallery, but instead an opening in the panelled wall, from which a strange corridor led. This too was entirely panelled in wood; it was more like a square tunnel than a corridor, slanting down at a steep angle, turning corners in a zig-zag pattern, to and fro. Bran followed Will without question; he said only, once, with sudden helpless force, “This place doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It will, when we arrive,” Will said.

  “Arrive at what?”

  “Well—at the meaning! At the crystal sword….”

  “Look! What’s that?”

  Bran had stopped, head up, wary. Ahead of them as they turned a corner, the last section of the zig-zag slope was white and glaring, filled with strong light blazing in from whatever lay beyond. For an instant Will had a dreadful sense that they were descending into some great pit of fire. But this was a cold light, fierce without brilliance. He turned the last corner, stepping into the full light, and a strong resonant voice said ahead of him out of the brightness, “Welcome!”

  A great empty expanse of floor stretched before them, its walls lost in shadow, its roof too high to be seen. In the middle of the space stood a single figure, dressed all in black. He was a smallish man, not much taller than themselves, with a strong-featured face creased by humour at the eyes and mouth, though with no sign of a smile now. The hair of his head was grey, tight-curled as a mat, and he had
a neat, crisp curling grey beard with a curious dark line down the centre like a stripe. He spread both arms and turned a little, as if offering them the space around him. “Welcome,” he said again. “Welcome to the City.”

  They stood together before him. Bran took a step forward, letting go the horn. He said, “Is there only the City, in the Lost Land?”

  “No,” the man said. “There is the City, and the Country, and the Castle. And you shall see all of them, but first you must tell us why you have come.” His voice was warm and ringing, but there was still wariness in it, and still he did not smile. He was looking at Will. “Why have you come?” he said again. “Tell us.”

  As he spoke he made a small motion with one open hand toward the space before him. Will looked, and gasped. His head sang with shock; all at once he was very cold.

  Out there, in a vast space that had been darkness a second before, stretched a huge crowd of blank upturned faces, row upon row, thousands of people. In tiers, in endless galleries they sat, staring at him. Their awareness pressed down on him like an unbearable weight, paralyzing his mind; it was like facing the whole world.

  Will clenched his fists, and felt the cool metal of the hunting-horn still against his fingers. Taking a deep slow breath, he said in a loud clear voice, “We have come for the crystal sword.”

  And they laughed.

  It was not tolerant, friendly laugher; it was horrible. A deep roar rose from the vast audience there, swelling like long thunder, mocking, jeering, breaking over him in a wave of contempt. He could see individuals, pointing, mouths wide with scornful mirth. The ocean of their loud mockery engulfed him so that he trembled, and knew himself to be small, insignificant, dwindling down….

  Bran’s voice, beside him, shouted furiously into the uproar, “We have come for Eirias!”

  All sound vanished, as totally as if someone had turned a switch. In an instant, all the jeering faces were gone.

  Will drooped suddenly, hearing his tight-held breath go out in a small weak gasp.

  Bran said again, wonderingly, to himself, “We have come for … Eirias.” He seemed to be tasting the name.

  The man with the grey beard said softly, “You have, indeed.” He stepped forward, hands outspread. Taking each of them by the shoulder he turned them to face the black emptiness where the endless rows of faces had been.

  He said, “There is nobody there. No one, nothing. Nothing but space. They were all … an appearance. But look up. Look up, behind you. And there you shall see—”

  Automatically they turned; and stood, staring. Over their heads, like a balcony suspended in the air, was the bright-lit gallery through which they had walked among the unheeding reading people. Everything was there, the books, the shelves, the heavy tables. The readers still moved idly to and fro, or stood gazing at the shelves. And the space through which they were looking into the room was the fourth wall which had seemed not to be there.

  Will said, “This place is a theatre come to life.”

  The man fingered the point of his beard, pushing it forward with one finger. “All life is theatre,” he said. “We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves….” He laughed gently. “Some players would say that is the best kind of theatre there can be.”

  Bran smiled in response, a small rueful smile. But Will was still listening to a single word echoing inside his head. He said to Bran, “Eirias?”

  “I didn’t know,” Bran said. “It just … came. It’s a Welsh word. It means a big fire, a blaze.”

  “And the crystal sword blazes indeed,” said the bearded man. “Or so they tell, for few living have ever seen it, within memory here.”

  “But we must find it,” Will said.

  “Yes,” the man said. “I know why you are here. When you are asked questions in this land, it is not for our want of the answers. I know who you are, Will Stanton, Bran Davies. Perhaps even better”—he looked hard for an instant at Bran—“than you know yourselves. And as for me, you will know me soon. You may call me Gwion. And I shall show you the City.”

  “The Lost Land,” Bran said, half to himself.

  “Yes,” said the man called Gwion. He was a lean, neat figure in his black clothes; his beard glinted in the bright light from overhead. “The Lost Land. And as I said to you, there lie within it the City, and the Country, and the Castle. And the Castle is where you must go, in the end, but you cannot get there except by way of the rest. So here you will begin, within the City, my City which I greatly love. You must take good note of it, for it is one of the wonders of the world that will not come again.”

  He smiled at them, a brilliant sudden smile that lit his face with warmth and affection, and lit their own spirits simply by looking.

  “See!” he said, swinging round, opening his arms to the back of the space that was like a stage. And the bright-lit gallery overhead disappeared, and the light grew diffuse, glowing all around, and suddenly they found they were in a great open city square. It was edged by pillared grey-white buildings gleaming in the sunlight, filled with people and music and the calls of traders at bright-coloured stalls, and the sparkle and splash of water flung high by fountains.

  The sun was warm on their faces. Will felt delight rushing through him as if the blood in his veins were dancing, and he looked at Bran and saw the same joy shining in his face.

  Laughing at them, Gwion drew them across the square, through the crowd, among the people of the Lost Land.

  • The Rose-Garden •

  Faces flashed round them like a kaleidoscope’s shaken images. A child swung a handful of bright streamers before their eyes, laughing, and was gone; a hopeful flurry of green-necked pigeons swooped by. They passed a group of people dancing, where a tall man decked with red ribbons played the flute, a gay, catchy little tune; they stumbled, almost, at a place on the smooth grey paving, over a fragile crumpled-looking old man who was drawing with chalks on the ground. Will had a sudden startled glimpse of the picture, a great green tree on a rounded hill, with a bright light shining out of its branches, before the flute-player led the dancers past him in a flurry of music, and he was whirled away.

  Gwion’s bearded face was still there in the crowd, moving beside him. “Stay close!” he called. But Will noticed now that no other eyes than Gwion’s ever met their own in this crowd. The people all around seemed able to see him now, and glanced as they would glance at any other passerby, instead of turning a blind unwitting face to someone who was, for them, not there. Yet nobody properly looked at him, or at Bran; there was no recognition, no glimmer of the interest they showed in one another. He thought: we have come a little way along—we are here now, but only just. Perhaps they will really see us, later on, if we do well at whatever it is we are expected to do….

  Laughter swelled in the crowded square, from a circle of grinning faces watching a juggler. Marvelous smells wafted past from stalls selling food. A fine spray caressed Will’s face, and he saw the glittering drops of a fountain, tossed in a diamond stream up to the sun and down again. He saw Bran in front of him, pale face alight behind the dark lenses, laughing as he shouted something to Gwion. Then there was a stir in the crowd, heads turning; bodies pressed back against Will. He heard the hooves of horses, the jingling of harness, a creaking and a rambling of wheels; through the heads of the crowd he could glimpse riders bobbing by, bareheaded, dressed in blue. The rumbling grew; he could see a coach now, its roof dark blue and splendidly curlicued in gold, and blue plumes tossing before it from the foreheads of tall midnight-black horses.

  Hoofbeats slowed, wheels squeaked on the stone street; the coach stopped, rocking gently to and fro. Gwion was close again, drawing Will and Bran forward. The crowd parted easily, respectfully, each one making way instantly at the sight of Gwion’s erect grey head. Then the coach was before them, suddenly enormous, like a shining blue ship swaying there on strong leather straps hung from a highwheeled curved frame. A cre
st was engraved in gold on the glossy door, higher than Will’s head. The black horses stamped and blew. There was no coachman to be seen.

  Gwion opened the coach door and, reaching inside, swung down a step for mounting.

  “Come, Will,” he said.

  Will looked up, uncertain. Shadows hid the inside of the coach.

  “No harm,” Gwion said. “Trust your instinct, Old One.”

  Will looked sharply, curiously, at the smile-creased eyes in the strong face. He said, “Do you come too?”

  “Not yet,” Gwion said. “You and Bran, at first.”

  He helped them up, and shut the door. Will sat looking out. Around Gwion the crowd eddied and chattered once more, beginning to resume its own affairs, patchwork-bright in the sunshine. The coach, inside, was cool and dim-lit, with deep padded benches, leather-smelling. A horse whinnied; hooves clattered, and the coach began to move.

  Will sat back, looking at Bran. The white-haired boy pulled off his glasses and grinned at him.

  “First horses, then a coach-and-four. What’ll they offer us next, then? Think they’ll have a Rolls-Royce?” But he was not listening to himself; he blinked at the buildings moving past the windows, and propped the dark glasses back on his nose.

  “A great bird,” Will said softly. “Or a griffon, or a basilisk.” He too looked out again at the brightness, moving with the jolting sway of the leather-slung coach. Few people were to be seen here. They were moving along a broad street lined by curving arcades of houses that seemed to him startlingly beautiful, with their clear lines and arched doors and wide-set, even windows, and walls of warm golden stone. It had never really occurred to him to think of buildings as beautiful before.

  Bran said haltingly, speaking the same thought, “It’s such a … well-made place.”