Merlin's Harp (3 page)

  Unlike the exhausted old woman, the boy seemed to notice me. He would pause in his play to stare in my direction. I tried to talk to him, but the Lady warned me.

  "Do not encourage ghosts, Niviene. Give them no power."

  "I want to play with him!"

  "You are lonely. One of these days you will go free in the forest and meet living friends."

  Doubtfully, I stared up into the Lady's calm, brown face. I knew a little about this "going free in the forest." My brother had told me somewhat on his rare, secret visits.

  "Why secret?" I asked him once in sunshine, beside the fountain.

  "Gods, Niv, the others mustn't know! They'd get sick, laughing at me." Graphically, Lugh acted out how sick "they" would get.

  "Why?"

  "Look, I'm not…I'm supposed to…I'm practically grown up, Niv."

  "You are not." Lugh stood a head taller than me. I had to look up to him. But I had to look up to everyone, even my ghostfriend Dana.

  "You know, I guard you. I keep dragons and Humans out of the forest. And I take care of myself. I hunt and steal for me. I find my night shelter, for me. I'm grown up, Niv."

  
I find my night shelter, for me.
I thought of the Lady's bearskin cloak, wrapped around us both, of her warmth along my back, her arm over me, me curled into her warm body all the way.

  I decided and declared, "I won't go free in the forest! Not ever."

  "You'll have to," Lugh assured me.

  "Not me."

  "Everyone does. Even you."

  But I decided there and then that I would always stay in Lady Villa. And in a sense, I always have.

  After my birth the Lady stayed. The villa made a fine den. Sunshine poured into the protected courtyard. Not all the roofs leaked rain. You could sleep dry on a stormy night, warm in winter. And we were left entirely alone.

  The Fey always keep a respectful distance, one from another. But with the Lady they kept also a fearful distance.

  Humans fear us Fey and leave us very much alone. They call us "the Good Folk," though we are not good to them; and "the Fair Folk," though we are dark. They never speak our name aloud: "Fey."

  In much the same way, the mainland Fey feared my mother. They called her "the Lady," never by her name, Nimway. Their fishing coracles stayed well out from the island. Only those in great need sought her healings and prophecies. Till slippery Otter Mellias raised his neighboring cabin, Apple Island belonged strictly to her, Lugh, and me. Apple Island and Lady Villa trapped us and transformed us into a unit resembling a Human family, in which a growing child would grow a feeling heart.

  The Lady's friend Merlin, a half-Human mage, was almost a part of this "family." He would come and stay, sometimes for a season, and then return to the outside kingdom.

  Because he was half Human, Merlin had once had a family. He had even known his Fey father. I thought this stranger than his magic. From birth I had watched the Lady raise wind and call wild creatures, but I knew nothing of my father, or any other relative.

  Merlin once whittled me a small whistle shaped like a thrush. Whittling, he told me, "My mother was Human. My father was Fey."

  I stared from the wooden thrush to his intent face. The Human mother I could imagine: shared bed-cloak, warm breasts—a giant version of my own mother. But the Fey father…

  So Merlin had been a child, like me?

  At that time his hair and Human-style beard were brown, his thin shoulders straight. The slim white fingers that whittled my thrush were not of different lengths, like the Lady's, or Lugh's. Four of them were of one length, like mine. And they were all equally dexterous. All my young life I had watched those fingers shape oak cakes, scale fish, or sweep across harp strings. I loved Merlin's pale hands, and sometimes I flexed my own brown, even-lengthed fingers and tried tricks with them; but mine were less talented, stiffer, than Merlin's.

  I asked him, "Were you like me, Merlin?"

  He glanced a smile at me across the thrush-shaped whistle. "Yes, and no. I was small. I lived with my mother, and people left us alone. But…" He paused to study the whistle, over, around, and under.

  "But what, Merlin?"

  "I was Human, and I had power."

  I understood. Small Merlin had magical talent. He dreamed true and talked with ghosts, as I could not talk with the merry little boy in the courtyard.

  I said, "I see ghosts."

  "You have power too. Very certainly, you have power, and will have more."

  "Will I grow up magic?"

  "I see you growing up powerful. You are Nimway's daughter, after all."

  "I wish I knew my father."

  "You Fey do not need fathers, Niv."

  "How did you know your father?"

  "We used to run off to the woods to see him. Always near midsummer time, when the Goddess smiles and Humans forget to scowl." Merlin handed me the finished whistle. "What does this wood tell your hands?"

  My small hands cradled the thrush-whistle. "It says, Rain…" I pressed it to my cheek. "It loves rain, Merlin, and sun…but something's been eating it. It doesn't feel good."

  "That's why I cut that branch out."

  "But it's still alive."

  "Not for long. See, you can watch the aura fade."

  In truth, the faint green aura faded a bit farther as I watched.

  A shadow moved over my head. I felt the Lady's vibrant presence behind me. Merlin said to her, "Small Niviene has power."

She murmured, "Naturally. She, at least, is mine."

  After this, Merlin and the Lady trained me daily. Mage children learn the warts-off spell first of all, because it works so easily. I didn't know what warts were, but I learned the spell; and when Lugh next paddled home across the lake, amazingly, he had warts, and I cured them myself.

  I learned to scry, first in water, then in fire. Soon I could scry all of Apple Island in a bowl of water: where basket reeds were thickest; how ripe were the beechnuts; in what bramble thicket a rabbit hid. I learned to cast a veil of silver mist around myself to keep wolf or bear at a distance. I learned to rub and warm my palms and set kindling on fire. ("You set a fire only in a fireplace," the Lady reminded me often. Even Fey children often play with fire.)

  I learned, also, that Lugh could do none of these things. "Not even warts?"

  "Not even warts, Niv. I've just got no magic."

  Lugh had other gifts, Human-type gifts of body, heart, and energy. When he found me playing idly with an adder friend, he hurled a stone and killed it. No talk. No questions. Just action.

  I looked up, surprised, slowly angering. "Why?"

  "Don't you know these are poisonous?" He held the still-writhing corpse by its tail-tip. "Gods, he's as long as my arm! You don't play with these fellows, Niv."

  "I do." I knew how to get along with them.

  "Not any more. I'll tell."

  "Hah! Go ahead. Tell. The Lady doesn't mind."

  But Merlin did. "That's called tempting the Gods. A good thing it is that you can deal with adders and do not fear them. But there is no need to court them."

  Merlin leaned and took my small face in gentle hands. "You are here in the world for some reason, Niviene. Use your power and knowledge to protect yourself, not to take foolish risks."

  I growled, "I'll give Lugh warts for telling on me!"

  Merlin's smile smoothed my threat away. "Be glad that you, alone among the Fey, have a brother who loves you."

* * *

Humans think all Fey are small folk. That used to be true, back before Fey and Human blood mixed—so said the Lady. Now, we Fey are still small by Human standards, but not as small as Humans think. I believe it is the Children's Guard that keeps this myth alive.

  A Human daring an edge of forest at dusk or dawn may glimpse a small, charcoal-painted face; a small hand may threaten with a poisoned dart. Before the Human's startled eyes, face and hand vanish in the swirl of an invisible cloak. The Human stands staring, hair stiff on head, neck, arms, and legs.

  If he continues to stare, he may get a poisoned dart in the throat. That ends that story. If he retreats swiftly, he may tell the story at his home fire, or in the village tavern. "Little, it was," he may whisper, glancing about him, still fearful. "No bigger than my young Tommy, mark me." And some wiser man informs him, "That's but natural. Don't you know, all of them Good Folk are little."

  (My own height is quite usual among the Fey. For years now I have traveled the Human kingdom disguised as a Human boy, maybe twelve years old. Only here and there, now and then, an innkeeper or shepherd has crossed cautious fingers behind his back.)

  I met Elana in the Children's Guard. She drew me from the first, maybe because she reminded me of Dana with her coarse, redbrown hair and surprisingly solid build. Maybe it was simply fear that drew us together. We were "free in the forest" for the first time together, and quite frightened, though Lugh showed and taught us much. By then, he was a Guard Leader, the only sort of leader most Fey ever acknowledge in their lives.

  Elana asked me, "Why is Lugh so kind to you, Niviene?"

  Easily, carelessly, I told her, "He is my brother."

  "What? He is your what?"

  "We have the same mother."

  "Oh? How do you know?"

  "We all live together. We are…we are…"

  "Very good friends?"

  "That, and more." I could not explain it in words.

  But Elana understood. Something in her nature understood and responded, though she had never heard Merlin's stories, and knew nothing of Human-type relationships.

  "Listen," Elana said later. "I want to be your brother too."

  "You can't be that."

  "I know I don't have the same mother. But we could pretend."

  "Oh, yes!" The idea brightened my heart. "But you still can't be my brother. You have to be my…" I remembered Merlin's word. "Sister. That's what you'll be. You be my sister, and I'll be yours."

  Under cover of night, the Guard raided nearby villages. Humans see poorly at night, and we slipped among granaries and byres like shadows. Elana and I went together, each toting a sack as big as herself.

  When we found bread, cheese, or cloth on a doorstone we left that hut alone, then and for a while after. Lurking in dusk I have heard a woman tell her child, "Go put this oatcake out for the Good Folk." Her man, gobbling soup within, knew nothing of it. He would have called it waste of a good oatcake. But the wife knew that a bare doorstone meant real waste.

  Finding no offerings, we Good Folk laughed openmouthed, showing off our dagger teeth, and robbed the hut.

  We snaked our ways into dark, fetid hut or sweet-smelling granary and filled our sacks. We stole into the byre and milked the goat. Close by many a sleeping family we tiptoed, watching them toss and turn together, kick and push and yank at their bedclothes. We watched infants nurse at sleeping mothers' breasts.

  Rarely, a Fey might steal a sleeping infant from his mother's bed. It was almost as easy as stealing a loaf of bread, so said the Lady. Elana and I never did that, for we never had a customer waiting back in the forest. Fey mothers whose babies had died bartered for these babies; or Fey women unblessed by the Goddess, who wished to sacrifice to Her nonetheless by raising a child, though they could bear none.

  At times I sensed a presence that hovered in the close heavy air of these Human dens. But I would live long and travel far before I understood that presence, the Human mystery of which the Lady had told me, of which we Fey are ignorant.

  Once an ancient man sat up and looked at me. As he moved his aura flared, a low dull flame in the dark. Among us Fey such a decrepit oldster would by now have wandered away to give his bones back to the Goddess. But Human families keep their old ones close, and their sick ones, and sometimes even deformed children.

  I stood still as a cornshock, leaning forward, one hand outstretched to snatch the spread cloak off his feet. I slowed my breathing. Across the hut, Elana stuffed bread and cheese into her sack. She did not know the old one was awake, and I could not signal her.

  The ancient swung stringy legs off the pallet. I guessed he was making for the piss pot, and we would collide. I could not tell whether he saw me. Human eyes are weak in the dark, and many oldsters cannot see well even by daylight.

  He gathered himself to rise, and looked up into my face. A long moment he sat, eyes meeting mine. Then he folded his hands, bowed his head, and watched me from under lowered brows.

  He saw me. He saw me, but he would do nothing. He would not yell and wake the sleepers, or scramble up and grab me, or even hold on to his cloak. He thought I could point at him, intone a word, and turn him into a toad.

  Joyous power surged through me. I drew the dark cloak up, away, and over me. For him, I vanished into darkness. Then I touched Elana's shoulder. We tiptoed out the door.

  We ran lightly away. That is, I ran lightly. Elana bounded like a fat hare, heels thumping earth. Safe in the shadow of the Fey forest, we burst out laughing.

  Later we murmured together under the old man's smelly bedcloak about boys, men, and sex. We had to murmur. We could not sign in the dark. I said, "I don't want to."

  "You mean, you aren't ready."

  "What about you?"