Merlin's Harp (2 page)

  I rose up and walked around the alders. Behind me, Elana gasped. Calmly I approached the prey till my nose nearly touched her breast. Calmly I looked up into her rain gray eyes. I said, "Woman, what are you doing here?"

  Her eyes widened. The pupils nearly covered the iris. She had feasted richly on Grand Mushroom—or, more likely, someone had feasted her. Slowly she drew herself up to her full, impressive height and spoke strange words. They rustled past me like the wind in Counsel's leaves. I said, "What?" And then my ears repeated the words, and I knew they were Latin. Because of the Lady's friend Merlin, his harp, and his songs, I knew a little Latin.

  She said again in Latin, "Rude boy! Tell me where I am."

  She did not know! It was not her doing that she stood on Apple Island, magic-guarded home of the Lady, home of me, Niviene.

  I flashed a grin up at her, openmouthed. This gesture displayed my sharp-filed canine teeth to full advantage. This gesture should show her beyond all doubt where she stood, and in what danger.

  With sudden, sure knowledge I said, "Otter Mellias brought you here!"

  At my shoulder, Elana murmured, "The Otter! Of course! Who else?"

  Only he could have done this. Only Mellias, who dared live on Apple Island near the dangerous Lady, would have dared seize and drug this Human, roll her into a coracle (with the help of merry friends, no doubt), and pole her over here where no Human had set foot since the Romans. He would have done it for spiteful fun— more fun than spite. Anyone else who snatched a Human girl at dusk from a Fey forest edge would have played with her, then left her body in a thicket. Only the Otter would imagine this escapade.

  Mellias was young, like my brother; not long out of the Guard; brown and cheerful as an otter. Over on the mainland I used to spy on him as he entertained his many friends with song and story, or invented new steps for the Flowering Moon dance, or worked up new tunes on his pipe.

  When Mellias came over to the island and built his heron-nest cabin, I swam over one evening from the Guard and sneaked in. Mellias was fishing off his deck, back turned to the inner cabin. I fluttered like a moth from neat bedroll to neatly hung bow, sling, javelin, ax, to neatly folded shirts, trousers, cloak. I marveled at the ordered space in that cabin, the respectful care of things. Under the folded trousers I found a small crystal. Most Fey keep some such protective device, even if they know no magic. My hand closed on this and lifted it away, even as I drifted like a breeze out the curtained door. Even now, Mellias's crystal swung on a thong from my neck.

  I grinned up at my Human. Her head lolled back against the apple trunk. She murmured, ''Arthur will come."

  I shook my head till my black braid swung. No one would come.

  "Mark me. Arthur will come."

  Her knees gave way. She sank down the trunk with a slow ripping sound as the blue overgown tore on the bark, and she landed in a half-conscious heap. Down there on the cool earth in the shade her aura showed up: a narrow, pale green flicker, strongest in the areas of the heart and genitals. Grand Mushroom had dimmed and dulled it, but I suspected it had never been strong or bright.

  I knelt down and took the large, pale Human hand in my small, dark one. I had touched Human hands before, and was not surprised to find it warmly alive like my own.

  Elana squatted and touched the loose ribbon-bound braid. She touched lightly at first, then her fist closed on the braid as she worked to bring the red ribbon free. It came hard, and the woman whimpered, "What are you doing?"

  Elana bit her plump lip and pulled. Out came the knife from her belt and sliced the ribbon in three places. It slid off the braid.

  The helpless woman muttered, "Arthur will drown you."

  I said, "The blue gown is nice. Enough for two shirts."

  "Torn," Elana remarked. "Dirty."

  "The girdle."

  "Aha!" Elana sliced the girdle in half without harming the white body—or even the tunic—under it, and we pulled it from under the woman's weight.

  "Enough," said Elana. I looked at the stained white tunic. "No," said Elana, "it's filthy." She was right. Also, there were little rips running through it. It had not been woven or sewn for forest wear.

  The woman said in clear Latin, "Arthur will drown both you witches."

  "What are those words she says?" Elana asked me.

  "Latin. She talks Latin." Elana had never heard Merlin's Human songs or ancient stories.

  "Does she understand what we say?"

  "I doubt it."

  "Ah." Elana looked down at the now unconscious form with a new sort of interest. If the woman could not talk to us or under stand us, she was not even of Human value; she was a wounded wild creature we had found. Elana suggested, "We could eat her."

  I said, "Leave her to Mellias." He was the hunter.

  But I laid hold of her loose braid and pulled from it three bronze strands, each finer than the finest wool thread ever seen. These I braided together and thrust into my pouch. Elana asked me why I did this. I could only shrug. Sometimes my spirit told me to do things, and I did them, not knowing why.

  I rose. Elana crouched a moment more, looking up at me, and I noticed how like she looked to our victim: the same pale skin (though not as pale), light hair, tall build. It was not the first time I had thought Elana might have Human blood.

  She stood up, holding the cut pieces of ribbon and girdle. We wrapped our invisible cloaks carefully about us and stepped away, moving from shadow to shadow, breaking no twig.

  Behind us, the tall white woman in the white tunic lay heaped under the apple tree, breathing as though asleep. She was no threat to us or Apple Island or the Fey forest. When Mellias finished with her he would make sure of that.

  Flitting past Counsel Oak I heard his leaves murmur a name: Arthur.

  I had heard that name before, long ago. I had heard it whispered in the night when Merlin and the Lady thought I slept. I had heard it muttered in the courtyard as I braided reeds on the doorstone. And once, coming swiftly into the courtyard, I had heard the Lady say it clear as a cuckoo. "Arthur! A good thing it was we gave the sword to your Arthur."

  I paused on the trail, grasping at memories like dreams. This name Arthur…Bear Man?…conjured up a Human hero, an armed giant astride a huge horse, one of whom Merlin might sing a Latin lay.

  
Arthur will drown both you witches.

  Most likely Arthur was a common kingdom name?

  Under my shirt, Otter Mellias's crystal warmed my breast.

  Smiling, Otter Mellias stepped into my path.

  Mellias was smaller than I, thinner, sprightlier. He wore quiet dun deerskin, invisible as our cloaks, but sunlight woke new winking lights in his braid, at his neck, wrists, and ankles. I had never seen gems before, but I knew that these were gems, and I knew whose they had been.

  I said coldly, "Mellias, that Human back there. What will you do with her?"

  He smiled at me close-mouthed, shielding his fierce canines. Well I knew that Mellias liked me. I thought I might like him, too, at the next Flowering Moon dance. I was feeling ready, maybe…almost… for my first lover.

  "Niviene!" He murmured, "You are jealous of my bronze girl."

  I shrugged this off. "She is the first Human to set foot here since the Romans. The Lady will not be pleased."

  "The Lady is like an Old One, from before the Humans came. I respect her magic endlessly. But she is my friend. Almost like you, Niviene. So do not fear for me."

  I recoiled as though from a rearing adder. "Fear! I fear for none, Mellias—least of all for you!"

  "Good. You have no heart, Niviene. One of these days your power will rival the Lady's." Mellias looked past me to Elana. "What do you think, will Niviene dance with me when the moon flowers?"

  Elana, behind me, must have answered him with her fingers. He laughed. "One of you girls, think of me! I think of you all the time. When you see the moon rise in flower, when you hear drum and pipe, remember me. Either one of you. Both of you." But Mellias's brown eyes clung to mine.

  For the space of a haughty sigh I looked away and Mellias vanished.

  I said to Elana, "Let's go home."

  Lady Villa is built of earth's bones; rock. Yet not rock as it lies in earth, but what the Lady called "dressed rock." As a child I thought it must certainly have been formed by magic. I could not believe that Humans had raised it, stone by stone. But so the Lady said.

  I cried, "Humans have no magic !"

  "Be not so sure, Niviene. Remember, Merlin is half Human. Human druids and witches work magic. Then too, the strongest power in the world is a Human mystery of which we Fey are ignorant."

  I stared up at her.

  "Well. Every creature has its own mystery. But as for this villa, Humans built it as they usually build, with hands and iron tools."

  Disbelieving, I looked around at the thick stone walls, the flagged floors on which I had learned to walk. "Those villagers out there in the kingdom did this with their hands?"

  "Their great grandfathers did. But it was not their idea. They built it for the Romans who lived here then."

  "Where are these Romans now?"

  "They went away. Then the forest moved in, and the boar and the bear and the Fey. Nothing remains here now of the Romans but this villa and the apple trees."

  For many years no one had sheltered in the villa. It stood out, stark white stone against the green or dun island. Looking across the lake, neither friend nor foe could fail to see it. So the villa housed bats, owls, and adders till slowly, gently, it sank back into the forest. Kind vines crawled over it. Lichens greened the harsh white stone. Apple saplings and alders crowded against its walls. And one day the Lady, heavy with child—with me!—looked across the lake and saw the villa only because she knew it was there.

  Hah! The perfect birthing den! Sheltered, defensible, and nearly invisible now. She heaved herself into the nearest coracle, poled across, and bore me just within the entrance.

  There at the entrance a pebble picture is embedded in the floor. A graceful girl carries a basket among tall, foreign flowers. Her back is turned to us. Her light brown hair—like Elana's—flows down her green gown. Her feet are bare. Thoughtfully she touches a flower as she would touch a friend.

  I was born on this picture. I learned to walk on it, and named my colors from it. I think my brother Lugh and I must be the only Fey children in the world who ever saw a picture—and such a strange picture, at that—of a foreign girl with foreign flowers. I think this picture prepared both of us for our unusual destinies.

  I named the girl in the picture Dana. After "Mama," "Dana" was the first word I said. Later I asked the Lady why Dana and her flowers had no auras.

  We stood together in the shadowed entry, looking down at Dana by our feet. The Lady said, "The artist who created her was Human."

  "Human!" My childish ideas about Humans danced in confusion.

  "Most Humans do not see auras. Many Fey do not."

  I stared up at the Lady. At that time—now long, long ago—she looked very much as I look now. Though she seemed tall to my young eyes, in truth she was smaller than Mellias; her grave, quiet features were delicately molded as if from brown river-clay. Her black braid swung below her hip. At home in the villa she wore graceful linen gowns that Merlin brought from afar.

  Her aura swirled slowly around her, a gently sparkling silver mist like sunny, windless water. It filled the dim entry where we stood; we were as though drowned in it, as if we stood at the bottom of a deep pool. I had no idea then that my mother's aura was extraordinary. I had not yet seen the usual narrow, muddy auras that herald small minds, or minds domineered by bodies—except, of course, for wild creatures. I knew the slow, green pulse of plant auras; the flashing, vanishing brilliance of bird or fish auras; and I had glimpsed from afar the wider, steadier auras of bear and deer. But I thought then that every thinking creature—Fey or Human— would naturally walk in a broad, bright mist like the Lady, like Merlin. If Lugh's aura was orange and narrow and sometimes muddy, well, that was because he was just a young boy. He, and his aura, would surely grow.

  Not to see auras would be half blindness. How would you know what to expect of a living being? How could you walk past it, or turn your back on it? You could not know what it felt, what it might do.

  The Lady laughed softly down into my upturned face. "Niviene, your aura leaps like a flame! You love to learn."

  I still love to learn.

  As the lone, and often lonely, girl-child of Apple Island I imagined the girl in the floor picture, Dana, and chattered to her, till she rose up off the floor, turned and showed me her homely, gentle face. She drifted with me through the villa, a secondary ghost, a thought-form I myself projected. There were other spirits there.

  At dusk I might meet a bent old woman straining under burdens. If I met her at the north end of the villa her burdens would be piles of clothes: laundry or sewing. At the south end she would struggle with a heavy sack of peas or beans.

  In the courtyard I sometimes glimpsed a merry little boy about my own age. He pulled a little wheeled cart over the paving stones, or lined up dim carved figures on the rim of the dead fountain. Once I saw him jump about in the fountain, splashing invisible water.