Chapter Two: The Devil and the Bard in Mirkwood forest.

Imagine, if you will, a land that is not of green hills and grass but a country covered in oaks and birch as old as time. A forest, like any forest, has something primordial in its boughs. Here the stags are Cernunnous. Here they are chased by wild hunters who imagine themselves as wolves and bears, and gain teeth and tails. The floor is thick with underbrush and briars scrape them. There are no paths cut through the vegetation. Tomorrow, when they wake, they will make a way others can follow as they trudge back to their village mending scratches and bruises. They cut a path out into lucidity, and others will use it to go in and find the woods.

The woods are littered with such routes.

The woods are where we go mad.

I had, as a young man, met a lady who lived in a lake. Things like that do not happen in villages of any sort. She had rescued me from a wild boar which was trying to gouge me. And years later, I found myself in that part of the woods again. By the Lady's Lake, in the rushes was a basket that held under the scraps of clothing, an infant. And with wonder, I pulled the basket to the shore, amazed to find the child still alive.

The make of the basket was foreign to me. Not crafted in the ways of the woman who were native to these lands. Immediately, when I touched him I could see what had happened. The boy's mother was from a town that was inhabited by strangers from the south. The leader was a religious man who worshipped a sky god from the far ends of the world, and the woman (who was barely out of childhood herself) had been converted. Her priests claimed the child was demon-spawn (and perhaps he was) and she had put it in a basket because demon's, she thought, were evil things and maybe one of the heathen villages would find him. If he drowned, well did the Bible not condemn demons?

A merlin had landed on a tree branch and that is what I called him. Merlin. That is what the woods decided.

I had seen the boy's future as well as his past. In an instant I saw meddling and Kings. The madness that would sweep over him. The lover who would betray him. I saw a man changing his skin, and a boy who would pull a sword out of a stone that he himself has placed there. I saw a stone circle being lifted from a veldt, the last of a giant's monument, to over the sea onto my land. I had seen a future; as to whether these event were real or just one of many possibilities, I could not tell. And there should have been signs. The stars themselves should have revealed to us that such a force. Nature should have manifested itself, and I could not believe at that time that anyone could be stronger than Hengwr, my teacher, in anyway.

Before we came to my village, we saw in the distance a small hut made of bones. It was the house of a witch, who was not quite a hag, but closer to the moon than beauty. The bones were taken from all sorts of things, and the eave was covered in skulls. (Later, a Christian hermit will live in that spot in a hut mad a mud and moss.) The witch, a fat thing, not necessarily an old thing, was outside waiting for me. With a skeletal finger she gestured for me and the babe to come with her inside.

That would have been a foolish thing to do. More foolish than coming to a witch's house unprepared and without gifts. But perhaps the witch knew of destiny for that day (to which I am in her debt) she answered my question with out riddles.

"You have seen his future, yes bard. No accident either. Memories," she said as she eyed the babe. Her green eyes feasted -- yes, feasted! -- upon the child, tasting his flesh and toying with the marrow of his bones. But she saw something else there and did not ask me to give the child up. "He grew young."

"Pardon me, Goodwife?" I asked.

"The boy, he is living both ways in time. He will be important in England's history," she said, and then she leaned over the child and told me directly in a voice that was gravel rough. "Others will try and claim him. And then what you have seen will not be." Then she shuffled her body inside and, since I was loathed to follow her, I brought the boy back to my village. There he grew up under the tutorage of my master, Hengwr and myself. We taught him about the woods, and he learned their secrets. The woods have many secrets after all, just as they have a language which we use as our letters. He grew in ways we did not expect. Merlin was gifted with second sight, but could not tell his own future or that of anyone who's thread was entangled with his. And that would be his downfall.

The witch had warned me that others may come for him. And she was there one May Day's Eve, when we lit bon fires to welcome back the goddess and her consort. Her green eyes noticed the strange man who was talking to the young boy. At first I thought he was of the gentle kin but I could not recall his face among Titania's court. He had a face that was sublime, what once might have been angelic but with earthly experience. Merlin regarded him with curiosity and awe.

"Well met," I said to him.

"Well met indeed, bard. I was wondering if you might notice to meddle." He said. His smile was only surpassed by a sunrise after the longest night of the year. He was beautiful, not handsome, not strong. A young person's face without a trace of manhood scratching its surface. Into that beauty was a need for trust: I wanted to believe in him and what he said.

When he offered to teach my protégé his words unraveled into their fragile lies. I knew of many spirits but had only heard of one who was a such a combination of innocence and pride. Morningstar he had called himself, and that was true. Adversary, the Bright One, Scratch, the Devil. The first to fall. The Tempter.

"No, absolutely not," I responded.

"I have a claim," he said. "You can not dispute that."

"I can challenge it," I told him. The Devil laughed. He always laughs. He is prideful, and just as this is the first among sins, it is his downfall.

We agreed to fight in the oldest way and we ran through the forest slipping into one skin and out of it again. I changed into a fox and he become a wolf. Bear, snake. Bobcat, tick. Anteater, lion. We chased and ran and fought through dwarf evergreens to great redwoods. He had become a bull, a rampaging creature with hoof's like knifes being thrown down with thousand pounds of force. I turned into a hare, small yes, but fast and able to hop through the roots and bushes of the forest.

This forest was a maze! What luck I found, I could lose him and recover a bit of strength. He at least was more injured than I, but the Devil is determined. I would run until I was lost. Then I would rest. The forest was criss-crossed a dozen times over by myself until I had become confused in the tress and not paying attention to where I was going I fell into a snare. The ropes grasped around my foot and my little hare chin came into a brilliant contact with the ground.

SMACK!

And try as I might, I couldn't break free. I struggled and struggled and exhausted collapsed. Doomed to die as a rodent, I Taliesin, wizard and bard, was vainly trying to reach the accursed rope to chew my way through when I smelled something rank coming up from behind me. A creature I had never seen before, it looked like a man only blacker -- not like the earth-kissed men from the south where the sun in closer and there is no winter --, black as a raven's wing. His eyes were small and they were cruel. The foul smelling thing leaned over me, his mouth opened into a plethora of uneven, ragged and sharp teeth. And he laughed as a I tried to run despite being tied and my leg being sprained.

But the forest was not only inhabited by such vile creatures that despised the sun. Fortune still smile, and Fate was interested in keeping her scant promises. An arrow flew from the trees, and from my height it might have come from the sky. But it was a valiant shot, a firm shot and truly found its mark better than Robin Hood might have. Then into the clearing came a forest god, a Greenman if I ever did see one myself. He was the golden light of a summer's afternoon. And after killing the thing that was most certainly going to kill me, he noticed the small hare in his midst and undid the snare.

(Ah, sweet liberty, is this what they sing about in your country, Ashling?)

And then he raised me up, gently as a breeze will make the leaves dance on the ground in autumn, with the intention of setting me free (I'm sure of it, people like that do not eat hares for dinner) but he paused. Perhaps he saw my leg, perhaps he noticed my eyes which held some human intelligence still, perhaps he sensed that the Devil was searching and almost upon me. For whatever reason, he did not leave me to fend for myself, but put me into a journey sack and lightly ran to his village where another came and gave me food and looked at my leg.

The elves, they say are great healers. And the elf had helped me, within a few hours, I could run again. And run I did, out of the elven town in the trees faster than almost anything else. With magpie wings I flew and planned my next action. Their kindness had given me an idea about how to win the oldest game. I flew and flew until I found another trap, and there I waited, as small as a dormouse until he came in whatever guise he wanted. And thus it was that I saw a monkey, and when he noticed me, transformed into a white kitten.

There is nothing more pathetic is the world that seeing a fluffy kitten trapped. And he struggled, and he fought, but he couldn't make free. And I leaned over him, as a man, I leaned over him and untied the snare, and picked up the small form and petted it softly before putting him down.

As beautiful as dawn, the devil stood in front of me. The golden curls of his head hid his bowed face.

"Why? You could have left me there," he said.

"Yes, I could have," I said.

"And you would have won."

"Yes, I would have."

"Why? Why not let the Devil suffer?"

"Because I have," I said. And I do not know which he found more vexing: that I had saved him, or that I had left him at that moment alone and in my debt. The Morningstar is prideful, and he will remember. And I went back to a more familiar wood because it was almost dawn and tomorrow was another day.

*

"So," said Ashling, "Did you ever pay back the person who helped you?" She glanced sideways at the elf who sat beside her. He looked a bit like the kind of light right before sunset in summer, she thought. The others around the campfire looked at him.

"And perhaps it was because elves do not eat meat," the dwarf said smugly. "Or anything else at all." During the story, Gimli had braved one of Ashling's s'mores and had decided that while it was not red meat off the bone, it was edible. Kind of tasty, in a superficial way.

"I thought elves ate," said Ashling.

Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,

Swart-headed mulberries,

Wild free-born cranberries,

Crab-apples, dewberries,

Pine-apples, blackberries,

Apricots, strawberries; --

All ripe together…

"That would be goblins," Taliesin said. The four Middle-Earthers, who had never heard of Christina Rossetti, frowned at the reference to such unpleasant creatures.

"The creature would have been an orc," Legolas said. "And he would not add any side of berries." The elf's high voice rang out with displeasure, he did not like to talk about such perversions of nature as orcs and goblins. Not even the colorful fictions of Victorian writers.

"But it was you," said Ashling.

"Clearly, you have not met many elves," Aragorn said as he indulged in his pipe. "There are many elves who fit that description."

"And among all the races, it is elves who can not abide cruelty the most," said Gandalf. "But I do believe that Legolas might know more than he would be willing to say." And Ashling, who was now more interested in burning marshmallows than eating them jerked her head up as if to respond, but blew out the flaming object instead before it melted onto the grass.

"Or perhaps he should be the next to tell or sing," Taliesin said.

"I could tell you a story of my people, one of the legends of long ago," he said quietly into the fire.

"No!" the girl protested. "It should be a true story, about yourself. Or as true as you can tell it."

Gimli smiled. "I have been traveling with this pansy elven princeling awhile, it would be good to hear a tale about him. And then I will find a fine story for you all."

The fire continued to burn without needing additional wood although every now and then the wind would pick up and push the flames in a dance to one side of another. And without bravado, Legolas simply began his tale.

Random stuff: Ashling quotes from Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" lines 9-15.