"I wanted to learn the trees, Eilonwy went on. "You must learn them anew every year," she said, "for they are always different. And in the dream I'd gone to the last branch."
"It was no dream," Taran urged, "but the life you know; your own life, not a shadow that vanishes in the sun. Indeed, you went to the highest branch. It snapped, as I feared it would."
"How should anyone know someone else's dream?" said Eilonwy, as though speaking to herself. "Yes, it broke and I was falling. There was someone below who caught me. Could it have been an Assistant Pig-Keeper?"
Coll and Taran had been mending thatch all morning. The whole top layer on the old farmhouse roof had begun to rot, and Taran balanced on the ridge poll with a saw, cutting away the damp layer down to dryer stuff below. The thatch was deep and hard and dense and shed water the way Melynlas' coat did, and Coll bound bundles and handed them up, then the two of them worked side-by-side, driving in twisted hazel spars with mallets.
The technique was not a simple one to master and many times over the past week Coll had made Taran start over because his work was uneven. ("It will leak on my poor bald head if you're not careful," Coll had said with a laugh.) But Taran was a tenacious, if impatient worker and before long, the roof was finished, trimmed and smooth as a calm sea and ready for another twenty years of winters.
Coll found Taran afterwards, staring dismally at his blistered hands. Twisting the hazel spars to make staples to hold the thatch in place wasn't as easy as it looked and he'd broken more than he'd bent. The old warrior laughed and thumped his young protégé with a hand that knew how to twist spars and pin thatch better than his eyes did.
"The only cure for blisters is to do the same thing again and again until your hands are used to it," Coll said.
"It's the getting there that's painful," Taran muttered.
"It's the getting there that counts," Coll replied.
~o*o~
Taran didn't quite know how it happened, but he found himself standing in the kitchen leaning against the doorframe while Eilonwy fluttered around like a butterfly with pots and flour and butter. She was never quite still and somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that if she ever stopped moving he would know something was wrong.
"Don't stand about like a toad that has forgotten how to croak," she said as she flew past him. "Come help me."
It occurred to him that it wasn't for Assistant Pig-Keepers to stir batter, but he found he was already doing it and had even somehow donned an apron (an apron!).
"Have you ever noticed," Eilonwy announced thoughtfully from behind a cookery book, "How like spells recipes are? If you follow the directions exactly right, then all is well, but if you get one ingredient off, everything goes terribly, terribly wrong."
Taran hadn't noticed, but he could see that she was right.
"What did you do to your hands?" she asked but didn't wait for an answer. "This is my favorite time of year. Everything is just coming out green…I noticed while I was out getting water that Melynlas has grass stains from rolling. Don't you ever feel that you die during the winter and then come to life again in the spring? It's starts as a tingling in the fingers and toes and works its way up until it reaches your heart...then the bluebells bloom."
Taran wasn't certain if he had ever felt that.
"You are very silent today," Eilonwy noted. "I've always thought it was interesting that there was far more in Achren's books than just horrid spells…like how to make soup indigestible and how to turn people into grasshoppers…there were other things. There was one book, a very slim little volume with the most wonderful pictures; all diagrams of leaves and branches and simple, useful little spells like how to keep frost away from buds and how to clear up blight from leaves."
"Dalban says that all the secrets of the earth are locked away," Taran replied, finding a chink in her prattling. "I wonder if they were destroyed, or if there is any hope that we might find them again."
"I'm certain Achren had some of them at least," Eilonwy replied. "I learned how (while she wasn't looking) to touch a bud and make it turn into a flower right there in front of me. You can't imagine how beautiful it is to watch a flower pour out like that. It's more wonderful than the most wonderful music. I've tried since, but I think I've forgotten. I've never been able to make it work again."
"It's the ingredients," she commented after contemplation. "Just getting one wrong can be the difference between warts and rainbows."
Taran did not often consider how the girl with the red-gold hair could be, or almost was, an enchantress, or that she was even a princess. They were still young enough, the two of them, that they could be playmates and friends and laugh while currying the grass stains off Melynlas. But it struck him now, as he looked at her, that there was far more to her than he could grasp. It always made him feel as though he was trying to catch a butterfly.
But she looked up with large, laughing eyes, and he forgot again that she was more than a girl in an old dress with tangles in her hair.
"Do you have a stomach ache?" she asked. "You are so silent and serious."
He couldn't help glancing at his hands. Her gaze followed his and she clapped her hand to her mouth. "Of course!"
She grabbed his hand (which made him wince) and dragged him off to the pantry.
"It's the thatching," he explained while she collected salves and bandages. "Ow!"
"If it doesn't hurt, it isn't helping," she said philosophically. "That's what Achren always said."
"You needn't be so cheerful about it…." He replied grumpily.
"I wouldn't generally quote Achren," she clarified. "But sometimes she was astonishingly close to being right."
"Coll said the only cure for blisters is to do the same thing again and again," Taran replied.
"Coll is always right."
Taran had not always thought that…but in trying to rein his impatience in he had realized that what Coll said would come to pass generally did. He remembered with a hint of chagrin that first time he had tried to make a sword out of iron meant for horseshoes. How little he had understood then.
"You won't be much use in the kitchen with your hands bandaged," Eilonwy broke into his thoughts. "You ought to go outside and soak in the spring. Go find bees. Or new leaves. There are all sorts of wonders just waiting to be found. Honestly, there's nothing worse than a glum Assistant Pig-Keeper. It's worse than spiders."
~o*o~
Much to his amazement, Taran did go outside to try to soak in the spring. It was not something he had ever attempted before, but he found that looking for something was almost better than finding it. He came across crocuses hiding next to a log (which was damp) and a spider's web strung between two twigs (sparkling with gems). As he walked, his eyes became suddenly sharp as he looked for new things, and in wonderment he considered that the natural workings of the world were somehow more beautiful and mysterious than magic was.
He hated to think that a girl like Eilonwy could teach him anything…but in sending him out and commanding him to look…somehow, she had.
He came back from his walk with plants and herbs and flowers that he had seen all his life without really noticing how beautiful they were. Coll had taught him of plants and herbs, and instilled in him a rudimentary knowledge of how to use them, but appreciation was something he could only teach himself. It came to him how remarkable it was to not only be able to see, but also observe. He started towards the scattering of outbuildings with half a mind of giving the mismatched bouquet to Eilonwy. As long as she didn't tease him about it.
He reached the orchard and looked up in wonderment at the birds fluttering about the flower-laden branches of the apple trees. But then he stopped in consternation; something considerably larger was moving the branches of a tree. Forgotten, the plants he had gathered dropped from his hand as he ran through the orchard. It was none other than Eilonwy.
"What are you doing?" Taran asked incredulously, staring up at her…it was far too early for apples, too early even for the birds to have started nesting.
"Isn't it obvious?" Eilonwy replied impatiently. "Goodness, sometimes I wonder if Assistant Pig-Keepers have the wits they were born with."
Taran was quite certain that it wasn't obvious. "Trying to break your neck?" he asked.
"How simple you are!" she exclaimed. "I'm learning the trees! They change so much in spring that I have to learn them all over again. We can't be friends unless we know each other!"
"The branches will break!" he exclaimed. "They can't bear your weight!"
She stopped and glared down at him, "Are you saying I'm fat?" she asked with a tone of complete displeasure.
"I didn't…!" Taran spluttered. "I didn't mean…!"
"Really Taran, you can't go around insulting people. You might hurt their feelings."
"Please come down!" he called, considering that there was no point in arguing with her over something he never said. He had half a mind to try climbing the tree himself but knew it would be pointless. He could never hope to climb as high, and even if he did he wouldn't be able to persuade her to come down.
The only thing he could do was stand at the base of the tree and watch her progress. She was quite nimble…but he ached every time he saw a branch dip dangerously low. Apple trees were different…their branches grew long and twisting from the trunk. They were not meant for climbing.
She twisted herself around and reached out a foot. The branch dipped…then exploded. Birds took flight.
With a cry he lunged forward to catch the girl. They both tumbled over in the lush grass at the base of the tree, Taran not even trying to catch himself if it meant lessoning the pain of her fall. The breath was knocked out of him and he lay there choking for air as Eilonwy slowly sat up. Seeing his distress, she did her best to prop him up against the tree, but he had grown over the winter and she had not and she found that he was surprisingly heavy.
"Really," she couldn't help saying. "You looked amazingly like a fish just then."
She patted his shoulder as he finally managed to suck in a breath.
"I am very grateful, you know," she said quietly and seriously. "I'm quite certain you saved me from breaking my head."
Taran shook his own head, too riled for words.
"I know you're about to be angry," Eilonwy said quickly. "You look exactly like an indignant rooster."
"What if a higher branch had broken?" he exclaimed. "What if you'd been hurt? What if I hadn't been here to catch you?"
Eilonwy looked at him with a little sparkle of surprise, "Why?" she said. "But you're always there to catch me."
"How-" Taran began, then stopped and stared at her with a feeling half of mortification, and half…Something Else he didn't quite Understand. She knew his weakness. Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper might not know who he was, but something inside of him, a distant, deep part over which he had no control, knew that no matter how high the tree became, or how old he grew, or how much tempest blew around the walls of Caer Dalban, he would risk anything to be at the base of the tree to catch her.
The puzzling part was that he knew. The mortifying part was that he knew she knew.
The End
Author's Notes: There are certain books that helped shape us before we even knew we were being shaped. The Prydain Chronicles happened to us just at a time when we needed them most. Childhood is often a traumatic affair (just from the act of growing up), and reading books about other people facing struggles (not quite like ours, but similar), was something that helped make the path easier.
I've never posted in this archive before, but I wanted to write something of a tribute, simply because Lloyd Alexander and his beautiful books meant so much to my sister and me when we were growing up.
Thank you for reading,
~Rose and Psyche