Merlin Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  1. FLIGHT

  2. FISHING

  3. THE PACK

  4. CREATURE

  5. WILD FOLK

  6. BEDDING

  7. QUARRELS

  8. THE LONG WAIT

  9. DREAMER

  10. DREAM CAGE

  11. MAGIC

  12. FREEDOM

  13. HIDING PLACE

  14. BATTLEGROUND

  15. FAMILY

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Copyright © 1997 by Jane Yolen

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and

  retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should

  be mailed to: Permissions Department, Harcourt Brace & Company,

  6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Yolen, Jane.

  Merlin: the young Merlin trilogy, book three/Jane Yolen.

  p. cm.

  Companion book to: "Passager" and "Hobby"

  Summary: Merlin, now twelve years old, begins to come into

  his magic, while being held captive by a band of wild folk.

  ISBN 0-15-200814-4

  1. Merlin (Legendary character)—Juvenile fiction.

  [1. Merlin (Legendary character)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.6UIMdf 1997

  [Fic]—dc20 96-11683

  Text set in Fairfield Medium

  Designed by Kate Chappell

  Printed in the United States of America

  G I K M O N L J H F

  For Karen Weller-Watson, who has her own magic

  Merlin:

  The smallest British falcon or hawk, its wingbeats are powerful and, despite its size, it seldom fails of its prey.

  Dark.

  Night.

  "It is your turn, Green Man. Set down your cards."

  "I have you beaten, little hear. I hold a ten and a face."

  "You have cheated."

  "I never cheat."

  "Except when it pleases you. "

  "You do not believe me, child?"

  "I believe you have a ten and a face. But of what suit? Flowers? Game hirds? Or the wild men of the woods? If they do not match, Green Man, I will heat you yet."

  "You think too much on winning. On losing. Child, this is a game."

  "I like games, Green Man. I am good at them."

  "Being good at games should not be your only goal. You must think on other things. There is more to becoming an adult than games."

  "Then I do not wish to become an adult. I wish to remain a child and play games. I am good at them."

  "Such cannot be. The world grows old, and we with it. All life turns on the great wheel: dark to light to dark again. "

  "Can you not change that, magic maker?"

  "Even I cannot."

  "Then what will be left of childhood when we are grown old and gone?"

  "Dreams are left, child. Dreams."

  "I do not want to be someone else's dream, Green Man. I mean to stay awake."

  Light.

  Day.

  1. FLIGHT

  PURSUED BY DREAMS, THE BOY FLED FROM the town. They were not his dreams; they were the town's dreams, rough and hot and angry and full of blood.

  He squirmed through a bolt-hole in the stone walls, a hole big enough for a badger or fox. Though twelve years old, he was a small boy and he just managed to fit. Sliding down the grassy embankment, he kept an eye out for the green wagon in which his family—or at least all the family he could claim—had left the town hours earlier.

  But as it was night, he somehow got on the wrong path, and he did not come upon any sign of them. Not the wagon which—even in the dark—would have been unmistakable as it was painted and shaped to look like a castle on wheels. Nor the man who claimed to be his father but was not. Nor the woman who made no such claims. Nor the mules who pulled, nor the horse and cow.

  He was on his own. He was alone.

  Everything, he thought wildly, everything conspires to keep me on my lone. By this he meant he could not go back into the town because of the dreams and because the lord of the town, Duke Vortigern, had told him to go. And because the Duke's own spy, a man named Fowler, hated him and would make him a prisoner if he could. And Fowler's even fouler dog knew his scent and would savage him on command.

  And by this the boy also meant that the man in the wagon, Ambrosius, feared the boy's powers, and his woman agreed. They had run not from the Duke's anger but from their own fear.

  "I shall have to go into the woods," the boy told himself.

  The woods did not frighten him. The entire year he was eight, he had lived abandoned in the forest by himself. He had lived as a wild boy, a wodewose, without clothing, without warm food, or bedding, or the comfort of story or song. Without words. Without memory. But he had survived it till tamed by Master Robin, a falconer, and in Master Robin's house given a name and a history.

  Surely, he thought, I can do at twelve what I did at eight.

  But it was the middle of the night, and a forest—even one you know—can be a fearsome place. So he picked out a tree not too deep into the woods, an oak with a tall, ragged crown which he could just make out against the starry sky. It was a sturdy tree, its trunk wider than he could comfortably span with his arms, with a ridged bark that made it easy to climb.

  He settled into the V-shaped crotch of the tree, some ten feet off the ground, certain he would be safe there from fox and wolf. Then, pulling his knees up to his chest, he slept.

  And dreamed.

  He dreamed about a bear in the forest. A bear with a gold coronet on its head. A bear that walked upright, like a man.

  A bear!

  In his dream he crossed his fingers, an old trick of his that forced him to wake. Shivering in the dark, he drew his legs up even closer. He had found over the years that his dreams had an uncanny way of coming true, but on the slant. A bear—even slantwise—was a danger. It had teeth and claws. It could climb a tree.

  But the bear in his dream had not seemed particularly menacing. It had not even been more than a cub. Besides, the dream was an old one he had had before, and he had yet to see a bear when he was awake, except for one old ratty creature leashed to a traveler that danced to the sad pipings of a flute at the fair. So settling deeper into the curve of the trunk, he slept again.

  This time he did not dream.

  Birdsong woke him, a blend of thrush and willow tit and the harsh kraah kraah of the hoodie crow. His legs were cramped, his shoulders aching, but he was alive. And it was day.

  He put his head back and sang:

  In the woods, in the woods,

  My dear-i-o,

  Where the hirds, the hirds sing

  Cheer-i-o...

  It was all he could remember of a song that Viviane, the woman in the green wagon, had sung once. But even so it gave him heart. He jumped down from the tree, found a stream, and washed his hands and face in the cold water. It was a habit left over from his first family, Master Robin's family.

  Thinking about them made him think as well of the man Fowler and his dog who might at any moment be on his trail. Fowler was not the kind of man who slept late or gave up easily.

  It should have made the boy afraid, but for some reason it did not. He began singing again as he struck o
ff even more deeply into the woods.

  2. FISHING

  THE DEEPER HE WENT INTO THE WOODS, the more there were shadows. Overhead, the interlaced branches made a kind of roof that the sun only occasionally broke through. Ahead of him a red butterfly flitted over fallen leaves, settling at last on a patch of ivy. By the side of the path, bittersweet berries were already half changed from green to scarlet and the flooring of bracken was an autumnal copper brown. He liked the sound his feet made as he walked, a soft crunching.

  Turning his face toward the yellowing tree roof, he drew in a deep breath. He should have been worried about where his next meal would come from or that Fowler would find him. He should have worried about the dream bear. But somehow here, in the heart of the woods, he felt secure.

  Just then he heard the nearby sound of water over stone. Following the sound he came to a small river winding between willows. There was a large grey rock half in and half out of the water and he sat upon it to rest. It was smooth and cool; he liked the feel of it. When he leaned over to look into the water, he was startled by a silvery flash.

  Fish, his conscious mind told him. But as he continued staring at its sinuous movement, he became mesmerized, and suddenly he found himself in the water, swimming by the fish's side. Overhead, light filtered through the river's ceiling in a shower of golden shards.

  The boy swam nose to tail with the trout, following it into deeper and deeper waters where the sunlight could not penetrate. Yet, oddly, he could still see clearly in the blue-green of the river morning.

  He did not question that he could breathe under the water; indeed it seemed as natural to him as breathing air.

  Little tendrils of plants, like the touch of soft fingers, brushed by him. Smaller fish darted at the edges of his sight. Then nose to tail, he and the trout traveled even further down into the depths of the darkening pool.

  The trout was thick along its back and covered with a shimmer of silver marked with black spots and crosses, like a shield. As it swam, it browsed on tiny shrimp, a moveable feast. Then, suddenly, it turned and stared at him with one bold eye.

  "Do not rise to the lure, lad," it said in a voice surprisingly chesty and deep. Bubbles fizzed from its mouth like punctuation. Then it was gone in a flurry of waves, so fast the boy could not follow. He blinked, and once more found himself sitting upon the rock, completely dry.

  "That was not exactly a dream," he whispered to himself. But he knew it was not exactly real either. Still, the shards of filtered light through water, the silver back of the trout, its resonant voice had seemed all too true.

  "Do not rise to the lure," he repeated quietly, glancing around at the forest. But seeing nothing that looked the least like a lure, he stood, brushed himself off, and headed deeper into the woods.

  3. THE PACK

  HE PUZZLED OVER HIS ADVENTURE WITH the trout for hours as he walked, but could come to no understanding of it. And while he was puzzling, he paid slight attention to where he was going. Soon he left the small deer trail he had been following and somehow found himself pushing through briars and clambering over fallen logs.

  It was midway through the day when he realized that he was not only hungry, he was terribly lost.

  Now the woods were dark and filled, unaccountably, with large gullies lined with ash and spindletree and the spikey gorse leaves. Nettles seemed to fence in every new path he chose, as if the woods itself wanted him to go in one direction and one direction only.

  By the time he emerged on the other side of one particular ravine, he was soaking wet, part perspiration, part rain, for a fine mist had formed around the ravine's edge, showering down on anything in it. The mist obscured how far he had to climb, how far he had already come.

  When he finally crested through the mist, he found himself on a flat piece of land in which grass—such a deep green it looked like an ocean—spread out as far as he could see.

  He laughed out loud. If he had been younger, he might have believed he had discovered the land of fairies, for everything seemed jewel-like and perfect. There were blossoms everywhere, as if autumn had been banished from this land and only summer remained. The place was patch-worked with pink stitchwort and rosebay willow herb, yellow spikes of agrimony, and blue and purple thistles. Over all was the buzz of summer insects, broad-bodied dragonflies and the longlegged crane fly. He waded through the grass and flowers, the sweet, soft smell almost making him light-headed. Then the sun broke through and everything shimmered as though touched by a magician's wand.

  "This ... this ... this..." he whispered wildly, intoxicated by it all. A cuckoo called out to him and, in his joy, he answered it back.

  His voice echoed over and over and, with it, came another sound: the baying of a hound.

  Fowler, came his immediate thought, and his awful dog. Could they have tracked him so easily and so far?

  But then a second and a third hound's voice joined in and he knew the truth of it. There was a pack of wild dogs on his trail and here he was, stuck in the middle of a meadow with no idea in which direction safety lay. Even at eight, he would not have become so beguiled as to forget all danger and stray from the safety of the trees.

  He forced himself to remain calm. "Do not," he whispered, "rise to the lure." Turning carefully about, he noted that the closest line of trees lay ahead of him rather than behind. Without another thought, he began to plunge through the high grass toward them.

  What had seemed so beautiful and jewel-like moments before now proved stubborn and treacherous. He could make little time through the grass, and the sound of the dogs' bellings seemed closer and closer with each difficult step. But the cries only forced him into greater effort; he swam agonizingly, through the pinks and yellows and purples and blues that topped the green waves.

  He was about twenty steps away from the safety of the trees when he heard the dogs close at his heels, no longer baying but snarling. Not being the kind of lad to give up, he kept on running, his breath coming in shorter and shorter gasps, an awful red-hot ache in his chest.

  And then something burst through the grass in front of him, something shaggy and hairy and big as a bear. It reached out and grabbed him up, and though he had not the breath to scream, he screamed.

  4. CREATURE

  THE CREATURE TOOK FIVE STEPS, NO more, and leaped up into an old oak, the boy now snugged under its arm. Behind it, the dogs were snarling and yelping in equal measure, but they were too late. The creature was already into the tree, scrambling upward with such quickness, it reached the third branching of the tree trunk before the pack had ringed the oak below.

  All the while the boy kept screaming, a high, horrible sound that he had not known he could make. At each scream, the dogs set up an echoing wail.

  The creature set the boy down next to its side and put a shaggy finger over his mouth.

  "Hush ye," it said.

  And the boy realized all at once that it was not in fact a creature that had rescued him, but a man. An enormous, ugly, hairy, one-eyed man. A wild man, a wodewose.

  The boy stopped screaming.

  The two sat across from one another on the thick branch in silence while below, the dogs—now equally silenced—circled and circled. The boy was still hot and cold with fright; the wild man's ugly, ridged, scarred face with its bulbous nose and one blind eye did nothing to reassure him. But as the wild man made no move to harm him, the boy finally understood that the wodewose had, for whatever reasons, risked his own life to rescue him. So at last the boy relaxed. He even tried to smile at the wild man. However, the gapped grin he got in return did not help his sense of dis-ease.

  The boy stared down at the circling pack and the dogs returned his stare. There were seven dogs in all, the largest a brindled mastiff, the smallest a stubby-legged rathound. None looked particularly well fed, and the ones with the heavy coats were matted with burrs. He could not tell which one was the leader of the pack, though he guessed it to be the mastiff by its size. He was startled by the liq
uid shine of their eyes.

  Dogs, his conscious mind told him. But as he continued to gaze down, he became mesmerized by them, and suddenly he found himself shoulder to shoulder, nose to nose with the dogs under the shadowy canopy of leaves.

  Now he understood it was not the mastiff who led the pack, for while it had the mass, it was not particularly intelligent. The leader was a smaller, broad-chested bulldog with large, yellowing teeth.

  The dogs looked at him quizzically and sniffed him over: nose, neck, legs, rear. He sniffed them back; their familiar rank smell spoke of hunger and fear/not fear. He found to his surprise that he could read each dog by its stink.

  The bulldog lifted its leg against the oak, marking the tree, then turned to speak in a high tenor voice. "Take your place."

  The others answered in short, sharp agreement. "Place ... place ... place."

  The boy sang along with them, as if he had no ideas of his own, only the single mind of the pack. "Place!" he cried out.

  As if pleased with this response, the bulldog turned its back and started off across the green meadow, the others trailing behind. Soon all the boy could see of them was the swath they had cut through the grass. He took one step after them, then another, blinked, and found himself sitting once more in the oak tree, the wild man across from him.

  "Place," the boy whispered.

  The wodewose shook his head. "Packs got no reason, lad," he said. "Thee must not run with them. Place be what is wrong with the world." Then he leaped from the tree and headed into the deeper woods.

  "Wait!" the boy cried out.

  But the wild man was gone.

  5. WILD FOLK

  HE FOLLOWED THE WODEWOSE FOR SEVERAL hours, stopping only to gather late brambleberries to quiet the rumbling of his stomach. It was not until nearly the very end of his journey that he understood that the wild man had left him a readable trail on purpose: a broken branch here, a bit of fur caught on briar there, a scuffed footprint. As long as he looked carefully, there were signs.