The Golden Swan

by Nancy Springer

  Now you ask me, who is this one who will come? A hero of greatest stature, you are thinking, perhaps one of the Sun Kings who have been promised to you. For the final age is drawing near, and you can feel that. But I tell you, Fair Folk, my first children, this passing will not take place as you expect. He who plucks the fire flower shall not be the strongest one, but the one who needs it the most. And a scion of the Sun Kings shall aid him.

  book two

  MAEVE

  Chapter One

  I am Maeve, mortal woman, soul now, speaking to you from the stardark realm. I was Moon Mother when I lived; she lived in me, as she has in many others. She, an aspect of Alys All-Mother who is at one with the ineffable One.… Fertility was my function. Trevyn was Very King, even though he was hardly more than a boy when I knew him, so I went to him and conceived Dair—I went to him the seven nights of the swelling moon. Then when he brought the magic back to Isle I was there, I was a wolf that worships the moon, and I bore him a lupine son.

  I was rather expecting that Dair would come to me, but I was not at all expecting Frain.

  Old Dorcas, my servant, brought the news to me that strangers were standing in the meadow. She came running into the room where I was at work packing some things for my journey—more about that later. She was very excited and rather afraid, for strangers came seldom. So I went on out and there was Dair, buck naked and beautiful. I suppose I ought to say that I was a matronly sort, my body thick, my clothing drab, my hair pulled back in a bun and streaked with gray; I am sure I surprised Trevyn very much by giving him his son. But I have always known beauty when I see it, and my son was supremely beautiful. I knew him not only by that but by his amethyst eyes. I hurried to him and embraced him.

  Mother! he exclaimed, returning the embrace. It was only a growl, but I understood him well enough.

  “What makes you think I am your mother?” I teased.

  Your eyes—they are the color of violets in shadow.

  “Yes.” I hugged him and let him go. “Who is this other one?” I asked.

  Frain. The tone said “Friend.” The fellow stood by Dair’s side, pale and plainly shaken. He was a winsome youth with auburn hair and an earnest, searching look; it was not until later that I noticed the crippled arm. I extended my hand to him, speaking to him in Traderstongue, for I could see he was a foreigner. There were no redheads in Tokar except slaves.

  “You are very welcome here,” I told him, pressing his damp and trembling palm. “Let us go in and have some tea.”

  Dorcas had the kettle on, for a wonder. It was mint tea, quite strong; it brought tears to the eyes. Dair and I talked all in a warm rush, remembering each other, remembering Trevyn; how was he, his wife, his child? And Isle—Frain sat and sipped his tea and listened to us. Gradually his tight shoulders relaxed and the color came back into his face.

  “I wish I could talk to Dair like that,” he said to me.

  We had been speaking the Old Language, of course, and Frain was not one of the special few who remember it. I shook my head regretfully.

  “The Elder Tongue was born in me and in Trevyn,” I told him. “It is not a language that can be learned or taught. Unless …” I let the thought drift away. It was not yet time to speak of quests and journeys. At that moment the plain, close kitchen, the low dusty rafters and wooden table that I had been so willing to leave seemed to me the dearest things in my life. Home. For thirty years this squat little house had been my home.

  “He is so much wiser than I am,” Frain said. “He senses danger and runs boldly in the dark, while I blunder into peril and shy from mere phantoms.… What was it that frightened me so? I had to be led in here like a child by the wild man.” He gave Dair an affectionate glance.

  “Shadows,” I said. “Shades of the dead. Not a hero in ten thousand could have come in here. You are a rare one, Frain.”

  “But I had not thought I was afraid of the dead,” he protested. “I have met them before. In Vale, souls fly up as birds. The Luoni harry them to deprive them of their afterlife. Then they must dive and swim—”

  “So what is there to be frightened of?” I asked.

  “A lot! People in my country are afraid of anything that flies, of the night, the screams of the Luoni, and they are afraid of flowing water. They say the rivers have boneless hands that will pull a person down. But I never saw them, and I was never afraid of noises in the night or birds or water until—until that last time.” He stopped, suddenly pallid.

  “Go on,” I said. Fear has to be met.

  “I looked into Shamarra’s lake and I saw that face,” he whispered.

  Then he saw it again today! Dair put in excitedly. I waited, wanting Frain to say that for himself.

  “Well, the shades are like the water, in a way,” I remarked when he said nothing more. “They are fluid, formless, colorless. They themselves are practically nothing. Anything they cause you to see is a reflection.”

  Reflection of what? Frain should have asked. Perhaps he did ask himself and could not sit still for the answer. He got up, looking bleak, and I knew better than to pursue.

  “Let me find you something to eat,” I said.

  “There’s a little food in my pack yet,” Frain muttered, “wherever I left it—oh, Eala, it’s down beyond the trees.”

  “I’ll get it,” Dair offered, and he ambled out. Old Dorcas hid her face in modesty at the sight of him and fled to a secluded portion of the house.

  We ate lunch when he returned. It was mostly green beans from the garden; Dair chewed them with much sour grimacing. Already I knew that he would be out on the hunt for meat after dark. I smiled and turned my attention to Frain.

  “Tell me why you are here.”

  We talked through the afternoon. It took that long to get much sense out of him. I think that he himself did not really know what he wanted of me, so he had to tell me his whole story before I could understand the joke fate or his own foolhardiness had played on him. He had thought Isle to be Ogygia—well, he might have been not too far wrong. Isle was a magical place. He had spoken with Alys there. He had to find Shamarra, he told me, and the goddess had sent him to me for help.

  I knew nothing of Shamarra, night birds or Vale either. “What exactly did she say?” I asked. I knew the riddling ways of the goddess.

  “To go east.”

  “Did she say you would find Shamarra in the east?”

  “No,” he admitted. “She did not say where Shamarra was at all. She said you would help me.”

  “But did she say what I was to help you to do?”

  He sighed. “Some nonsense about fern flower,” he said, “and fire meeting flood.”

  I sat thinking of my own quest. The Source lay east, if I could judge by the remembered lore of the elves and the yearning that sang to me from the rising sun. I tried not to let my judgment be skewed by the tug that was on me. No—the truth was plain, tug or no tug.

  “Shamarra is not your true quest,” I said.

  I saw his eyebrows leap up. He did not feel well enough acquainted with me to argue, but I knew he did not agree. And I knew just as surely that I would be taking him with me to the Source.

  Dair meandered in. He had been out foraging, and he looked pleased with himself and with the world at large. He carried a basket full of mushrooms and blackberries, and he wore a sort of breechclout in deference to Dorcas’s squeamishness. I remembered the days when Trevyn used to go about like that, and my heart swelled.

  “Come here,” I said to him. “I was just about to tell Frain that I am to go on a journey.”

  I noticed your bags. He came over and sat at the table with us. When will you leave?

  “Not for several days. Not until you two have had a chance to rest. Frain does not look well.”

  He has been very ill.

  “I wish I could understand you two,” Frain sighed.

  I switched to Traderstongue. It would be difficult to explain myself to him in such a clumsy tongue. It would
have been difficult to explain my reasons in any language of man. I knew what I was doing or to do in one sense, a nighttime sense, a dream sense, but in the daytime sense I did not know in the least what I was about. I had a vague notion what Dair was for, and that was all.

  “I have been seeing flowers made of red flame in the sunrise,” I said tentatively, “and in the hearth, and I have been hearing voices in the night when I am half asleep, voices telling me it is time the old woman came out of her wood. I have sometimes thought that the One has been talking to me. I wish I were foolish enough to feel sure. At any rate, I have made up my mind. I must leave this place and set out to find the Source.”

  Frain merely nodded. It was nothing to him what I did. He was not seeing the safe haven of thirty years left behind.

  “And I feel quite certain, Frain, that you are to come with me.”

  He sat up at attention then. “Only if Shamarra might be there,” he said.

  Little did I know of Shamarra and her vengeful ways. “She might be there or anywhere,” I declared, resorting to sophistry, certain that he would not respond to better truth. This birdwoman was the least pressing of his needs, I knew that by then, but she gave the only hold I had on him. I would bribe him into obedience by means of Shamarra.

  “And if she is there how are you to recognize her?” I demanded. “And even if she were to sit on your hand in bird form, how would you speak to her? If you cannot understand Dair, you will not be able to understand a night bird.”

  His shoulders sagged. “The goddess said I would not be able to—well, help her,” he mumbled. “But I have to keep on trying, don’t you see? Because of—the way I am.”

  I stifled a sigh of exasperation.

  “There is a song the elves used to sing—” I began.

  “Elves?” he interrupted.

  “The old folk, a fair, tall race. Those who went before.” Did he know nothing? “They sailed to Elwestrand. None have set foot on the mainland for tens of thousands of years, but some of us still remember them and the Source whence they came, they and their bright stones.” I stared down his doubt. “There is a song they used to sing, and it is in Dol Solden, too, I believe, the mystic Book of Suns. A song about the Source and the magical fern that grows there.

  Fern flower, fire flower,

  Burn, burn when the great tide turns.

  Fern flower, show your power.

  The Swan Lord will be there to see,

  To grasp the stem that burns

  And speak with thee,

  learn melody,

  and sing with wind and tree.”

  Dair sat looking at me in suppressed excitement, and Frain quite blankly.

  “But it is nonsense,” he protested. “Ferns don’t have flowers.”

  “That is why this one is so singular,” I said. “The legend is that the flower of this fern, if plucked at the proper time, will give the bearer power to understand almost anything—the speech of water and trees and wind and even stars.” I took significant pause. “And, of course, birds.”

  “You mean Shamarra?” Frain jumped as if he had been jabbed. “But when is the proper time?”

  “Midnight on Midsummer’s Eve.”

  “But—is it far?” Midsummer was nearly upon us.

  “Very far, I imagine. We might get there by this time next year.”

  “Another year!” he groaned.

  “You have nearly infinite years before you,” I reminded him gently. “And so has Shamarra.”

  That settled him. “What is this Source?” he inquired, with the first real, sensible interest he had shown. “The Source of what?”

  “Of everything! All that is.” I looked at him in surprise. “Does no one tell tales of the Source in your land, of the Beginning?”

  “Of Adalis, of how she lay upon the flood and mothered forth all that is in Vale—”

  “Well,” I said rather too sharply, “you have seen that there is more to the world than Vale.”

  “Adalis is true goddess,” he returned just as sharply. “I have seen that as well.”

  “She is in Aene.” I smoothed the edge off my voice. Ignorant he might be, but he was courageous, and he was there, in my house, in the flesh—an exceptional event. There had to be some reason for it. And he was arching his brows again.

  “The nameless One,” I explained. I had used the elfin word; my mistake. “Aene is sun, moon, empty sky and all that is on earth. Aene is dawn and dusk. Aene sang the world into being. The Source is the place of that singing. Strong magic is there.”

  What else is there? Dair asked.

  There was a quality about Dair that was too goodnatured to be called irreverence or flippancy; it was only that he was so very blunt. Frain sensed the tone of the question even though he could not apprehend the content, and he laughed out loud. I had to smile.

  “Truly, I don’t know,” I said. “We shall have to see.”

  I think I have already seen that flower, Dair said, and I nodded at him.

  “I have not yet said that I am coming,” Frain put in.

  “Ah, but you are,” I told him. “What else could be intended for you?” I felt a comforting certainty grow in me. His presence, like Dair’s, was a proof, a sign.

  “I suppose I am,” he admitted. “That is, if Dair—Dair?” He turned to his companion in sudden anxiety. “Dair, are you coming on this—errand?”

  Of course.

  Dair followed the reassurance with a nod, and Frain smiled and relaxed. I felt compunction take hold of me. Such children they were, really, and what was I leading them into?

  “It will not be easy,” I warned. “None of it will be easy, and the fern flower least of all. It is said to exact a fearsome price.”

  “Nothing in my life has been easy,” Frain said.

  Chapter Two

  Five days later we set out with as little ado as possible, though there were some tears. I left the house in the care of old Dorcas and Jare, her husband, they who had been my servants for many years. When they died the place would go to ruin, but not before. It gave me some comfort that they would tend it awhile. For their part, they felt comforted that I went with companions at my side.

  So off we trudged, toting heavy packs of bread, dried meat and the like. We walked eastward. We walked, for the most part, for the next several months, following nothing more than sunrise and my instinct and the gentle, insistent tug of the unseen Source. We walked out of sycamore forest and into oak and beech and beyond that into ilex and scrub pine. Our packs soon lightened as we ate up our provisions, and Dair took to keeping us supplied with meat, slipping in and out of his wolf form with ever increasing ease and skill. Frain watched him in wonder and in love.

  “How do you do it, the shape changing?” he asked Dair as we sat by the fire one night. He had taken to talking to Dair with the aid of a translator—me. The conversations were awkward, especially since Dair was not by nature the talkative sort. But Frain persevered. There was a dogged quality about Frain.

  I don’t know, said Dair. True enough; he never spoke less than truth. He was an instinctive being, a child of the wilderness.

  “You must know something,” said Frain. “How did it happen to you the first time?”

  I—it was you. I wanted to befriend you. I wanted it so badly I howled.

  Frain looked both startled and pensive, remembering something. “I believe it was the same the second time, and the third,” he mused. “Desire—”

  “More is needed than mere desire,” I told both of them. I was a shape changer too; just let them wait and see! “It is a matter of being with whatever is. Of being no longer separate. Being at one.”

  “What?” said Frain, for he was so human, so set apart that he was not even aware of it. And Dair growled in equal puzzlement, for he was so much a part of whatever he sensed.… I stared at him.

  “There is a risk, too,” I said slowly, “of losing self to instinct, the fate of the form. But there can be no changing withou
t risk of loss.”

  Frain sat folded in upon himself, looking lonesome. I felt sure that Dair had never comprehended that peculiar human quality of being at odds with the world, that cosmic loneliness. But he was soon to learn the meaning of it.

  I will never forget the night we first heard the cry of the wild wolves.

  There must have been famine in the north that had driven them to the southern woods. Mournful hunger was in their voices. We heard them at dusk as we ate our cold meat, and I for one felt a sudden urge to make a campfire, though we needed none for cooking. Frain glanced at me askance, his face taut.

  “Will they bother us, do you think?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

  Game was not scarce, so I judged that men—robbers—would be the greater danger. We made no fire. We sat in the gathering darkness, listening to the voices of the wolves, silvery voices that summoned their fellows to the hunt, harmonious and very beautiful.

  They ring through me like harp song, said Dair suddenly. I glanced at him sharply. His eyes were glimmering, shining greenly, not with joy but with yearning and a sort of lust.

  “What is it?” Frain asked me, alerted by something in the tone of Dair’s utterance.

  “I think he would like to join the hunt.”

  Wolf notes were reaching a wild chorus. Like! Dair exclaimed, panting with feeling. It is hardly the word. I could die with longing. The musky creature smells, and that green darkness—there are no words for what I feel.

  It was true, there were none, not even in the Old Language that cannot tell false. But I knew the pang, for I had felt it myself. Wilderness call—one might as well be in thrall. I tried to hide my sympathy, watching him narrowly. He sat trembling, his hands twitching like restless paws, his nostrils pulsating, temples pulsating with the force of the blood that raced through the veins of his bare neck.

  Frain watched him as well, his brown eyes troubled. “Did you never run with the wolves in Isle, Dair?” he asked, quite gently.