Merlin's Harp

by Anne Eliot Crompton

  Merlin the Hawk. Her folk were glad

  To raise a strong and clever lad—

  Until his talents showed. He told

  Dream-messages. He could unfold

  The future written in a palm.

  He could sing ballad, charm or psalm.

  Then said his folk, "There's danger here!

  We've raised a witch, a spirit-seer !

  Though doubtless he can bless the herds

  And read our fate in flights of birds,

  Strong curses he can also give.

  The boy's half Fey. Why let him live?

  Then did his mother grieve and pray

  And hoard each gold or rainy day;

  She held him close, and kissed his face,

  Each hour with him a thankful grace…

  3

  Goddess

  When the Goddess within me announced Her dark power and presence, I pretended I did not understand. I ignored Her, and sought some other, more acceptable explanation for my bodily symptoms and my dreams. I was yet very young, not ready to sacrifice to the Goddess. So I guarded Her secret from myself until it became obvious to the world.

  Then said the Lady, "You pay your life-debt early! Well, that is good. Birthing is easy when you are young." (Birthing, easy? If that birth was easy, I never wish to see a hard one!) Naturally, she thought I had made deliberate sacrifice to the Goddess. After all, I was intelligent and well-taught. I should never have been "caught" pregnant, like an ignorant Human girl.

  But caught I was. In my excitement, at the height of my adventure, I had simply been careless. I never confessed that awful truth to a soul, nor the worse truth, that my child's Human father yet strode the green earth!

  My child! My dark, tiny boy! His skin was so soft, his smell so sweet, I wanted to eat him. His gray eyes, innocent as a fawn's, were his father's. His even-lengthed fingers and toes were mine. I bore him in a low sapling-tent near the lake, half-hoping that he would prove deformed or feeble. If he missed so much as a fingernail, I could drown him. I never expected the world to thrill and shake and reform itself at his first cry! I never expected to carry him home to the villa as the Goddess's finest gift to me, and my finest gift to Her world.

  Proud after pain, delighted after bewilderment, I brought him home and treasured him, and named him Bran. Delighted, the Lady received him.

  We laughed with him at the villa fire when every gesture, every gurgle fed laughter. We conversed brilliantly with him before he could talk. One bright morning, crawling across the Dana mosaic, Bran rose up and stood on soft feet.

  The Lady gasped and crowed. My heart rose and bloomed, a tall flower. And again we laughed.

  Bran learned to walk on the tiled villa floors where I had learned. He named his colors from the Dana mosaic where I had named them. Once walking, he followed me everywhere, reeling, falling, rolling down hillocks, scrambling among rocks. "M-Ma," he yelled constantly, like a lost lamb.

  He trapped me. I despaired of invisibility or speed. With Bran at heel I walked for all the world like a Human woman, obvious as a tree, turtle-slow. Angrily I counted the moons that must pass before he could go free in the forest, and leave me free.

  But then his cry of "M-Ma!" would tear at my heart and I would go back and pick him up, kiss him, smell his sweetness, devour him with love. So have I seen a bear cuff her cub head over heels, then embrace and nurse and kiss him.

  Bran became a fine child, brown and leggy and bright, like a red deer calf. He was never ill. (Because we Fey live alone or in very small groups, illness is rare with us. Merlin taught me later that sickness is not a God's curse, as Humans believe. It is in truth a living being, an unseen child of the Goddess, who hunts his meat as we hunt ours. But we are his meat.)

  Bran ran and learned faster than most Fey children. Earlier than most, he struck out on his own. No more did he struggle after me, calling "M-Ma!" like a lost lamb. He left me free to hunt eggs, braid reeds or invite visions. Little Bran pranced off by himself, eager, competent, nearly invisible as I had taught him to be, under the apple trees of Avalon.

  In the evening he would skip across the Dana mosaic into our courtyard, swinging a duck by the neck or a rabbit by the ears. Still he crept under my cloak, stolen long ago off an aged Human's feet, to sleep with me on a cold night.

  But I knew of the shelters Bran had built for himself around the island. Otter Mellias had shown me. (Since he never had Lugh's passion for the Human world, but only a yen for occasional adventure, the Otter spent as much time in Avalon as he did playing "Squire." He watched my son grow.)

  "He builds well," Mellias declared, proud as though the child were his own. "Back to the wind, feet dry. Look, can you see that hut in the willows?" I shook my head. Mellias had to lead me to it and place my hand on it. It looked exactly like the surrounding thicket.

  I should have rejoiced. In truth, I smiled proudly at Mellias, as though the child were his, but my heart sank. In truth, I felt abandoned. Bran did not really need me or my cloak at night. He came home now only from habit.

  That night he was late coming home, and I watched the door anxiously.

  The Lady said, "Let the child go, Niviene!"

  "He is so small!"

  "He is not a baby." She peered at me sharply. "Have yourself another baby."

  Watching the door, I shook my head.

  "If you do not want to sacrifice again so soon, steal one."

  That brought my eyes back to her. "Steal?"

  "Certainly. Human children often turn out quite well."

  Several nights after that Bran did not come home at all. I could not sleep. Heavy autumn rain dripped through a new hole in the roof. I pictured my little one rain-swamped, maybe sitting in an apple tree soaked through, rain and tears mixed on his small face, waiting for daylight so he could slosh home.

  Then I pictured him curled up squirrel-fashion in the tiny willow shelter Mellias had shown me or in one of several I had found myself. One leaned against a beech like a fallen branch. One humped in the lee of a big rock. Bran was most likely as safe and warm as I was myself, I thought, and I had better sleep, then go seek him in the morning. How far could a small boy go, after all? He was somewhere on the island. I turned over and felt his empty, cold space under our cloak, and wept.

  At first damp light I visited Bran's shelters. Slipping and stumbling toward home I met Mellias returning from a good night's fishing. Bran is gone, I signaled him.

  "Well." Bent under his net Mellias paused beside me. "That was a rough first night away! But that is how boys like it, you know. Niviene," he added kindly, "you are distressed. You have wept."

  "Tell, and I'll turn you into a toad!"

  Mellias laughed. He dumped his net, took my hand, and turned with me toward the villa. He smelled of fish and mud and rain. I leaned against him.

  "Don't take it so hard. Boys go free younger than girls."

  "Not this young!" Bran was barely five.

  "Well, you have a bright one. My first night out it was snowing. Wolf tracks all around me in the morning." Mellias led me along gently, steadying me with an arm around my waist.

  A wet greenness ahead was the villa back wall. He let me go. "I'll wager you'll find your nestling drying his feathers at the fire. Be calm with him, Niviene."

  "Well, naturally!"

  "If he's not there, talk to your mother. She raised two of you. She knows."

  I looked away. "I fear her scorn."

  Mellias said, "Perhaps you misunderstand the Lady." Then he left me.

  My nestling was not by the fire. I found the Lady in our room, searching through his pile of clothes. Many of these she had made herself, taught by a Human woman whose sick child she had healed.

  She looked up almost guiltily as I entered. "I wondered if he took his cloak. He took so little, I think he will come back today. Enjoy your freedom. Remember how you longed for it?"

  "Yes." Well did I remember the foolish girl-mother who ground her teeth at
the hounding cry of "M-Ma!" I tried to enjoy my freedom that day and the next and the next.

  On the fourth morning, a glad golden autumn morning, I crouched by the courtyard fire-stones, warmed my palms, and lit a small scrying fire. Kneeling over it I intoned, Bran! Bran! Bran! Snapping, the fire spoke of sun and rain, wind, snow, cool earth. "Bran!" I cried; and dropped tears into the fire.

  Now the fire spoke briskly of several things. I saw three children in invisible cloaks swing through yew trees. I saw a boar splash into the lake and swim toward Avalon. I saw a winter-wise serpent slither into his hole under a rock.

  The fire faltered.

  Feet came softly about me. I looked up at the Lady, Mellias, and Aefa. Aefa said, "The ravens told me to come."

  I snatched at hope. What one could not see, maybe another could. I cried, "Aefa! Scry for Bran!"

  She sank on her heels beside me. "You know, Niviene, he is at that age when children disappear."

  "Not this suddenly! Not for four days at a time! Scry for Bran!"

  The Lady stood over us, absently combing her hair with her fingers. Her eyes were red from crystal-gazing. "With all our scrying we should have seen him by now," she murmured. "Niviene, calm yourself. Excitement wastes power."

  The little fire died.

  Aefa sat back. "I saw him in the flesh, Niviene, not two days ago."

  "Gods! Where? Why did you not tell me?"

  "I did not know you sought him. He was passing under my tree house, oh so skillfully, almost invisible. I thought, 'There goes a future Mouse Spy!' "

  I stared at Aefa. Her tree house was across the water. Had my little one swum the lake, like the boar scried in the fire? He was too small to pole a coracle.

  She said, "He was headed north when I saw him. Then later, I heard talk about the north edge."

  I leaped to my feet. "What talk?"

  "Some sort of…power…had moved into that part of the forest and cast a shield around itself."

  The Lady and I exchanged appalled glances. "Birds and animals were seen to avoid the shield. Common Fey with no magic felt it and stayed away. It was there a day and night; then it lifted."

  "But…Bran would stay away too!"

  The Lady murmured, "Not if the power called him."

  Mellias shifted uneasily. He was ready to beat the forest bush by bush, but this talk of powers and shields disturbed him. Mellias was young, then, as Aefa and I were young.

  The Lady had not left Avalon for a season, except to visit the Human woman who taught her skills. Now she put on shirt and trousers, braided her hair and came with us. In two coracles we crossed the lake and poled up the north channel.

  Mellias, poling ahead, cried out softly and dropped his pole.

  Beside him, Aefa said, "Here's the shield."

  We all felt it. My hair tried to rise and I shivered. A power struck through my body as lightning once struck Counsel Oak.

  The shield was disintegrating, lifting away like shreds of fog. Poling hard we pushed through and left it behind. Behind us we left ducks and swans feeding; before us, no bird swam or dabbled. No fish rose to the surface. Yet in the shield-misted silence, something moved. Mellias whistled like a blackbird and indicated with his head.

  Among tall brown reeds moved something small and white. A white fallow kid poked his head from the reeds as though to greet us. Behind him a second white kid splashed in the shallows.

  I jammed my pole into mud, stopping the coracle. I said, "I'll follow those twins."

  The Lady nodded. "Take Aefa. Mellias and I will go on by water, search the banks."

  Aefa and I splashed ashore and pulled my coracle in among the reeds. The kids scrambled up the bank and seemed to wait for us. They circled each other, looking at us over their shoulders and switching their tails. As soon as we joined them on the bank they moved away, still looking back; and we followed, almost within touching distance.

  The northern edge of the forest had not been much lived in of late. We passed hidden abandoned huts and tree houses and one dancing ring where young trees were beginning to take root.

  The kids trotted and skipped before us. In the dancing ring they paused to play, bounding about aimlessly, as though forgetting their mission. Aefa called softly, "Pretty children! Guide us now, please.'' And they froze between one bound and the next, looking at us astonished. We walked slowly toward them; and when they were almost within our reach they leaped and trotted away single file, slowly enough for us to follow.

  The north channel swings in a great arc around that edge of forest. The Lady told us later that it is not easy poling, what with shallows and falls and rocks. The twins led us more or less straight overland to rejoin the channel at the tip of its arc; there, in the first mud of the first swamp by the channel, they paused. Small heads high, ears a twitch, they watched us come, skipping back just before we reached them.

  There in the mud a clear footprint had sunk deep and almost solid. A clear, small footprint.

  I sank to my knees beside it. I said, "His boots are wearing very thin." I stared into the footprint as though I could scry it, while Aefa cast about like a hound for more.

  "No more," she said at last. "You'd think he had stepped once in the mud, then been snatched up by an eagle." But Bran was not quite that small. She added, "It may not even be Bran."

  I shook my head. "I was looking for new boots for him. I knew they were thin."

  I stood up, took a great breath and screeched, breaking the forest law for the first time since I was Bran's age. Aefa looked shocked. The kids leaped high and disappeared in a thicket, not to be seen again. "Bran!" I yelled, waking echoes from the old swamp trees. "Bran, come to me! Bran, come here!"

  Somewhere in the dim swamp a disturbed owl hooted.

  Aefa and I camped near the northern edge for several days. We scried and searched and found nothing, not so much as a thread from Bran's tunic.

  Worn-out and heartsick, I went home to the villa. The Lady said, "I do not feel our Bran is dead, Niviene."

  I looked at her wearily.

  She continued, "To make sure, we two will call the dead."

  I went cold. "Call the dead? We do that?"

  "Indeed we do, when there is need. I will show you."

  That night—a cold, windy night—we sat cross-legged in the courtyard holding hands. A small lamp burned between us. The Lady taught me a chant that we chanted softly, endlessly, while leaves and twigs blew out of the dark around us. "Chant," the Lady had told me, "until a ghost comes by. Look and see if it is the ghost you want. If not, do not move, do not speak to it, give it no power. Once you move or speak, the spell is broken."

  We chanted till the maiden moon rose over the wall and the lamp burned low and we froze stiff where we sat. I had forgotten what we were doing; I think I thought I was dreaming when a new, sharper cold pierced my frozen bones and a dim, white shape drifted near.

  I looked up at it almost incuriously, noting that it was not Bran. It was a hefty, Human-sized maiden in a Roman-style gown. I thought, Dana! This was the spirit I myself had created in the villa in my childhood, my imaginary friend. I had not thought a secondary spirit, created by my thought, would endure so long.

  Dana turned toward me then and I noticed flowers caught in her hair, which was drenched, and she seemed to drip water; and I thought again. Elana!

  I stopped chanting and took a breath to speak.

  The Lady gripped my numb hands so hard they hurt, and I quieted. Once you speak, the spell is broken. So Elana drifted past, shifting and changing and disappearing as she went, and we chanted on for a while.

  My throat hurt. I could hardly mumble the chant, when from behind me floated the burdened old woman-ghost I had met in the villa before. She had not changed. Her thin face was still crumpled, her white hair bound back with a rag. On her bent shoulders she carried a load of…wash? I longed to speak to her, to say, "Poor ghost, you do not have to wash clothes here anymore. Your life here was finished long ago. Be of
f, find yourself a new life, a better one! You are free to go." I bit my tongue so as not to speak.

  Then came the child.

  At sight of the small, flying form I would have started up; but the Lady held my hands. He flew slowly past, smiling, waving his plump, small arms like wings. His curls bounced on his shoulders. He rolled around once in the air, flying upside down.

  He was not Bran. I had seen this ghost before, too, in my childhood. He was not Bran.

  He fluttered by and the lamp burned out.

  The Lady mumbled, "Our night is over." The maiden moon stood high in the sky.

  Grabbing each other, leaning on each other, we staggered into the Lady's warm, smoky room, where a brazier burned. We stretched out together under her deerskins, and slowly we came back to life. Warmth crept back into our blood, intelligence into our eyes. We looked at each other. The Lady's face—still beautiful, very little lined—was wet with tears. She said, "You know, children can be lost at this age. It happens almost every year."