Merlin (3 page)

"I will find something by myself," he murmured. The grass around the camp was all trampled down, and he knew he would prefer something fresh. So he walked to the meadows edge, listening carefully for a minute in case he should hear again the baying of hounds. Then he plunged into the woods.

There was something resembling a trail and he followed it, noting his surroundings carefully so he did not get lost. Light was still plentiful in the meadow, but the trail through the woods was already grey with the coming night. Fifteen minutes from the camp he came upon another patch of high meadow and, near it, a tangle of flowering marjoram. He had no carry-bag, so he stripped off his shirt, bundling the grasses and spicy herb together.

Never minding that his chest and arms were now goosefleshed with the cold, he hoisted the full shirt-bag and followed the path back to the camp. He was sure the women would be pleased with his energy.

No one paid him any mind when he returned. So he found the boys' tent and went in. When he had dumped his precious grasses into an empty hide mattress, the thing was not even a quarter full.

He had to make five trips in all before he had the bed full enough to sleep on. By then it was dark, and he was so exhausted he could have slept on the ground. No other boys were yet in the tent, but he was too tired to care. He lay down and fell into a sleep as soft as the bed. His dreams—whatever they were—were as spicy as the herb.

HAWK-HOBBY WOKE TO A LOUD NOISE OUTSIDE
the tent. For a moment he feared that Fowler had found the camp, then realized the voices were all women's. And they were quarreling.

He sat up, leaning on one elbow, and saw that the other beds in the tent were now occupied by five boys near his age, and on another the child, Cub, was curled around the stick dolly. The boys were all laughing silently, hands across their mouths.

"What does it mean?" Hawk-Hobby asked, pointing toward the sound of the women's argument.

"'Ee..." one boy said, his hand barely moving from his mouth. Then he was convulsed again with silent laughter, and falling back on his bed.

"'Ee..." a second boy added. "They mock 'ee." He, too, collapsed backward with a fit of giggles.

The other boys did not even try to speak, so caught were they by the joke's contagion.

Cub did not laugh. He got off his pallet and came over to Hawk-Hobby, handing him the stick dolly. "Poppet will guard 'ee from the women," he said with great seriousness. Then he went over to the tent flap and lifted it slightly to listen. After a moment, he turned back, "Ooooo, what has 'ee done?"

"I have done nothing," Hawk-Hobby said, suddenly consumed by guilt for all that he actually had done long before he met the wild folk. He stood up and went over to the tent flap to listen. But when he stuck his head out, the women saw him and their indignation rose even louder till the wodewose himself left the cookfire where the men were huddled.

"Na, na," he said, by way of trying to quiet the women. It was only when he held up his hands in mock surrender that they were finally still.

"Come out, boy," he called to Hawk-Hobby.

Hawk-Hobby started out, remembered the stick dolly, and gave it back to the child. "Best keep Poppet from this trouble, whatever it be," he said. He meant it half humorously, but Cub took the dolly and scrambled back onto his bed to store the stick doll there.

"What ails them?" Hawk-Hobby asked, with a lightness he certainly did not feel.

"They be angry with thee," the wodewose said. "It never be wise to anger women."

"But what have I done?" asked Hawk-Hobby. "I have done nothing wrong."

"Wrongness be in the beholder's eye," the wodewose said. "Else we all be innocents indeed." He smiled, but it was not reassuring. "Bring out thy bedding. I cannot go in, for I be a man and that be the boys' tent."

Puzzled, Hawk-Hobby went back and dragged out his bedding, grimly aware that the boys were still laughing at him. But little Cub, at least, tried to help, holding up one end of the hide. That he proved more trouble than help did not matter. Hawk-Hobby gave him a wink by way of thanks and Cub's face immediately lit up.

No sooner was the mattress clear of the tent flap than the women circled it and began pulling the bedding apart, roughly grabbing out handsful of grass and spreading them on the ground.

"Here, I worked..." Hawk-Hobby began, but was silenced when the black-haired woman with the scar held up some sprigs of grey-tinted marjoram leaves, now almost black.

"Organy!" she cried in triumph, and the women with her set up caterwauling anew and tore apart the rest of his bedding.

"Organy," breathed Cub next to him. "Oooo, that be bad indeed."

The wodewose grabbed Hawk-Hobby by the arm and led him around the side of the tent, away from the angry women. Cub trotted at their heels. "Thy bed," the wodewose said wearily, "be stuffed with a particular herb.
Organy
in the old tongue. It has many virtues: it cures bitings and stingings of venom, it be proof against stuffed lungs or the swounding of the heart. But it never be used for bedding as it be too precious for that."

"I ... I did not know," Hawk-Hobby said miserably.

"'Ee did not know," echoed Cub. "'Ee
did
not."

"Hush ye," said the wodewose, "and be about thy own business." He raised his hand and Cub scampered away around the tent, though Hawk-Hobby could see by the child's shadow that he stopped at the corner and was still listening.

"I only wanted it for the sweet smell," Hawk-Hobby explained. Indeed, it was the truth.

"For the sweet smell?" Clearly the wild man was puzzled.

"Sweet herbs for sweet dreams," Hawk-Hobby finished lamely.

"Dreams!" Cub came skipping back around the corner of the tent. "'Ee has dreams. We like dreams."

"I said to be about thy own business, young Cub. Dreams be not the provenance of children." The wodewose's face was dark, as if a shadow had come over it. He turned back to Hawk-Hobby. "Does thee dream?"

"Does not everybody dream?" Hawk-Hobby was reluctant to discuss his magic with the wild man. But—as if a geas, a binding spell, had been laid upon him—he had to answer when asked about it. And answer truthfully. Though he could give those answers aslant.

"There be night dreams ... and others," the wild man said. "And I saw thee dream with the dogs yester morn. Why else would I blaze thee a trail here? Still, I be not certain..."

Hawk-Hobby waited. There was nothing to be answered.

"Be thee ... a dream-reader?" the wodewose asked carefully.

Just as carefully, Hawk-Hobby replied. "I have been called so."

"And be thee called in truth?"

Hawk-Hobby sighed. There was no getting by that question. "I surely know what my dreams mean. Or at least I often do." It had seemed at first such a small magic, but everyone was so interested in it. It
had
to mean more.

"Ahhh," the wodewose said. Then he turned abruptly and walked around the tent, calling out to the women in his rumble of a voice: "He be a dream-reader. And we without since the last old one died."

"'Ee surely needs Poppet now," said Cub. "I will bring it to 'ee." He disappeared into the tent.

No sooner was the child gone than the women rounded the corner, arguing as they came.

"He be too young," said the redhead.

"Let him prove it," said an older woman, her hair greying at the temples.

"But why would he say..." the wodewose began. But the women would not let him finish. They grabbed up Hawk-Hobby by the arm, three on one side, three on the other, two behind him. They dragged him back to the mattress, now nothing but a flattened hide, and thrust him down.

"Dream," the black-haired woman commanded.

"Dream," they all cried as if with one voice.

"What? Here? Now?"

Their stone faces were his only answers, so he closed his eyes and called for a dream. Any dream.

Of course no dream came.

THEY KEPT HIM ON THE HIDE FOR HOURS
, taking turns watching him. It was a warm autumn day and the sun was blazing in an unclouded sky. Whenever he attempted to leave the hide—to get out of the sun or to relieve himself or simply to stand and stretch—the women made menacing noises and threatened him with long sticks. Then he recalled the stories he had heard about the wild women, stories Mag and Nell had told him when he had been a boy in Master Robin's house: how the wild women stole away human children and ate them.

For the first time he was really afraid.

So he tried once again to dream. Closing his eyes, he thought about pleasanter times with Master Robin or the happy days in Ambrosius' cart. But the more he tried to dream, the wider awake he remained.

The women did not speak to him, nor with one another, while they were on guard. Their aptitude for silence was appalling.

Very well,
he thought.
I will match you in this long wait. I will outlast you.
It occurred to him that as long as they waited for him to dream, they would not be eating him.

Opening his eyes, he stared at each woman in turn. Two he was already familiar with: the branded woman and the redhead. They seemed to be the leaders. But soon he found he could distinguish the others as well. In the tales, the wild women were ugly. Mag had said they were covered with bristles and Nell that their black hair was spotted with moss and lichen. But in fact several of the women of this camp were flaxenhaired and none, as far as he could tell, had bristles. As for being ugly, two or three of them were surprisingly good-looking. And the redhead—though she had a tendency to scowl at him, which wrinkled her forehead—was quite beautiful.
Not,
he reminded himself,
as beautiful as Viviane, the lady of the green castle-cart. But close.

Neither his staring nor his silence seemed to bother the women. Theirs was a genius for long patience. So after a while, Hawk-Hobby forced himself to look down at the ground to avoid their accusing eyes.

Organy,
he thought. Even the smell of it would ever after remind him of their stares and the sun beating down on his uncovered head.

On the ground there were hundreds of ants scurrying between the blades of grass. He was startled by their purposefulness in the midst of his own forced idleness.

Ants,
his conscious mind told him. But as he continued staring at the hurrying insects, he became mesmerized by them and suddenly he found himself head to abdomen with them as they threaded their way between towering grasses.

The ants were all yellowish-brown and their elbowed feelers swayed before them to a rhythm he could almost grasp. The sound of the many pairs of marching feet was thunderous. Plodding through the arcade of grass, they marched as if a single thread connected them. They sang as one: "Go the track, don't look back. Go the track. Don't look back." The words repeated over and over. It was hypnotic.

He opened his mouth to sing with them, blinked, and found himself once more sitting on the hide. But the song of the ants was still so compelling, he found himself singing it. "Go the track. Don't look back."

He was interrupted by the women crying out: "The Dreamer. The Dreamer is here."

"But..." he tried to say, "that was no dream." However, he did not know
what
it was, so he forced himself to silence. If the women thought him this Dreamer, and that got him off the hide, allowed him to stretch his legs, or relieve himself, he would agree to anything.

He thought he had been on the hide for hours and hours but when he looked up at the sun, it was not quite noon.

THEY FED HIM THEN, EVEN MORE THAN
they had at dinner, a strange porridge and a stew that left an odd aftertaste. They made him eat every bite.

He ate steadily and then, when he thought he could not eat anything more, they brought him a sweet honey drink which they insisted he finish. He tried to turn it down but they would not let him. To silence them, he drank it all. At last, with aching, taut belly, he tried to stand and found his legs would not hold him up.

"I feel..." he began, not knowing what he was feeling. And turning his head to one side, he was suddenly and quite efficiently sick.

When he was done, the women helped him stand and guided him to a place somewhere on the edge of the camp. Through slotted eyes he tried to make it out, but could not. His head was swimming about and he was afraid he might be sick again.

"This be thy place now," the black-haired woman with the cheek brand was saying, her voice remarkably similar to the bulldog's.

Place.
That was good, he thought drowsily. He needed a place.

The woman gave him a little push in the small of his back and he fell, rather than walked, into it.

The place was small and dark and closely covered. There was some sort of mattress, thin and old smelling. He did not care. He curled up on it and fell instantly to sleep.

This time he dreamed.

He dreamed of the bear again, but now he was in the dream as well, holding a sword in one hand, a large stone in the other. The bear took off its crown and flung it onto the sword. At that, sword and crown dissolved and he woke sweating and ill.

It did not help that his small, closed-in tent seemed to be swaying. It did not help that the air stank of his sickness. He tried to get to his feet and banged his shoulder painfully against something. His head hurt. His belly ached. The slightest noise hammered at his temples like a blacksmith's hammer on an anvil.

Heavily he fell again onto his pallet where he slept, dreamed, woke, slept again. The dream images all blended into one great dream of kings and kingdoms.

Suddenly an enormous light—like the light of heaven itself—flooded into his dream. He opened his eyes and found that he was lying in an open space. The tent had been lifted away and the light was the new day.

Only then did he see what his
place
really was. He was in some sort of large wicker cage hanging from a tree limb some five feet off the ground. When he tried the cage door, it would not open. Not that this was exactly a surprise. It was tied shut with a complicated knot on the outside that he could not reach, no matter how hard he tried.