Buzzing noises woke her up.
Waking up wasn't the easiest thing to do. Not when she was so comfortable; more comfortable than she ever remembered being. Every inch of her seemed wrapped in warmth and softness - at least, until she shifted position, whereupon something prickled sharply in a hundred places and she opened her eyes with an irritated frown, and looked around to find the source of the buzzing noise.
Of course! She was lying in hay...hay that smelled like a hundred summers, like sunshine and rain and faint, dusty flowers; hay that crackled when she moved and whose cut edges poked through her thin linen robe. And there was the door of the byre, with golden light pouring in, and hundreds of bees at work in the wildflowers marching in gay procession into the meadow beyond. That explained the buzzing.
Eilonwy took a deep, appreciative breath, and closed her eyes to better feel the energy pulsing all around. Thousands of points of light danced across her mind's eye, moving in a measured, unhurried rhythm, flooding her with golden warmth, until her fingertips tingled. This strange, hidden valley was even more rich than the woods. It fairly glowed with life. For a moment she fancied she could hear the grass growing...but no, you couldn't hear anything over the busy hum of so many bees.
She sat up and stretched, and noticed Fflewddur, snoring nearby in the same heap, his long limbs sprawling like a pile of sticks. Opposite them was another large mound of hay, with a black, furry ear sticking out of the top. She giggled, remembering the bard's reaction to finding a bear sleeping in the byre. The color of the light outside suggested it was nearly sunset, and it had been late in the afternoon when Medwyn had shown them into their shelter, after they had enjoyed his generous hospitality.
Medwyn. She plucked a stalk of hay and chewed on it, thinking. She had never heard of Medwyn in any of her books, nor had Achren ever mentioned such a person, or his enchanted valley - if it was enchanted. There was something here that felt...well, full, somehow, and powerful, but it had none of the acrid taste or smell she associated with magic. If it was enchantment, it was of an entirely different kind than she had ever experienced, and nowhere did she sense it more strongly than about Medwyn himself. It hung around him like a mist, some force that felt tingly and breath-quickening one moment, and the next made you so drowsy and content you wanted to curl up and go to sleep where you stood.
Eilonwy rose and stretched, grateful for the absence of the gnawing hunger that had stalked them for days. When she stepped from the byre she caught her breath. The valley, under the westering sun, shone like a golden bowl, every grass blade and stone edge gilded and glowing. Beyond its edge, humps of land curved ever upwards until they reached the mountains – real mountains, like nothing she had ever seen, impossibly massive, their snow-streaked sides glowing crimson in the fiery light. The buzzing of the bees was fading, giving way to a vast silence broken only by the whisper of the hemlock leaves clustered around the cottages. The air was crisp now, as cool and fresh as though she were the first to breathe it; she shut her eyes and sucked it deep into her lungs, letting it out in a long sigh of contentment. The fawn she had befriended earlier danced delicately up to her and snuffled into her out stretched hand.
At the far end of the lake Taran sat at its edge; she waved at him and he raised a hand, but she could not read his expression at this distance. Between them, the large hale figure of Medwyn was strolling along the waterline, heading in her direction. His eyes were cast down toward his slow-moving feet, which gripped the grass as though they would grow roots at every step, and again she was struck with a sense of strange power that hung about him. Her inner perceptions could not find its way through it; he was too unfamiliar, barely human; his presence closer to what she'd felt from his wolves, or from Melyngar, but much, much older – as ancient and careless of time as the mountains that ringed his valley.
When he was a few paces away he looked up at her with the sharp keen gaze of a wild thing, and she realized at once that he had known she was there, and had felt her probing thoughts upon him long before his eyes had risen. She flushed, as though she'd been caught spying, but he surveyed her without ire, clasping his huge hands behind his back. "You have sight that the others do not," he observed. "Tell me your name again."
She dug a toe into the turf, feeling uncharacteristically shy. "Eilonwy. Daughter of Angharad of the House of Llyr."
"Llyr," he murmured. "Llyr...oh, yes, the people of the sea." His eyes fastened on her crescent pendant. "And you are of the royal line...a direct descendant, no? That explains much. But," he added, "Llyr is no more. The gulls carried word of it...many years ago, it was; more than you can have seen. "
She blinked. "Word of what?"
His eyes were settled on her, clear and bright; but they were distant and unfocused, and she had an impression that he did not see her at all but gazed into some other reality. Just when she thought he'd forgotten about her, he continued as though he had never paused. "Of a great battle between powers, and the fall of the stronghold. An evil thing. Few survivors, and the sea claimed its own back."
"Oh." The word sighed out small and forlorn, as something shrank inside her.
"Yet here you are." Medwyn squinted at her, rocking back on his heels. "That is interesting. It is a heavy legacy you bear."
"I suppose," Eilonwy murmured. "I don't know much about it. Only what Achren told me, and I don't think she told me much that was true." She stared at the lake, willing back the tears springing to her eyes, irritated at them. Hang it all. Nothing had changed. She'd known her parents were dead; she'd never seen her ancestral home; what did it matter if it were destroyed? You couldn't lose what you'd never had, could you?
Medwyn frowned. "Achren?" He grunted with distaste. "That name I know as well. Is that with whom you have lived? For how long?"
"All my life," she sighed, "at least, I think. Until a few days ago. I escaped along with Taran and Fflewddur." The fawn had shoved its head beneath her arm and she scratched the nobbly bumps between its ears.
"That also explains much," said the old man cryptically, and she looked up, sensing a cautious reaching out, the touch of his mind and spirit upon hers. Peace wrapped around her; something seemed to speak soothing sounds without words directly to her spirit. She had a vision of a frightened, skittish horse, calming beneath the gentle hands of its master, the fire of anger and distrust burning away to quietness and comfort. Muted colors melted and hazed behind her eyelids; a taste like wild honey and rosewater filled her mouth and she drifted as on a warm tide, content to know nothing, to be nothing but present.
When she came to herself she was sitting on the turf at the water's edge, the fawn curled next to her with its head in her lap. Medwyn was sitting nearby on a stone. He smiled and asked, "Do you feel better?"
Joy bubbled up; she wanted to laugh, but it seemed too intrusive, in this beautiful, shimmering stillness. "Yes. What did you do? That was magic, but not like any I've known."
"No, I imagine not," he remarked dryly. "I do not know if your own gifting can be unraveled from what Achren has knit into it. I smell her mark on you everywhere. Yet you have kept most of yourself, and that speaks of great strength of will – which, if you use it well, will serve you better than any magic."
She sighed and stretched her arms out, enjoying the healing tingle in her fingertips. "Maybe. But I wish I could do anything half so lovely as that. Come to think of it, I don't know any magic that does any good for anyone. Can you teach me?"
"You do not need magic to do good, child," he answered. "But even if yours were untainted, I cannot teach you. You are Sun and Sea, fire and water; I am of the Earth. We cannot speak one another's languages, as it were."
Eilonwy frowned. "Is my magic good for anything, then? Achren only taught me things that...that hurt. I feel as though I'm carrying a boulder, always waiting to drop it and crush someone."
"Ah, but a boulder can also be used to build a wall," Medwyn said, "or, placed well, divert a stream into a more useful course. The forces within you are powerful, for good or ill, and every tool does as its master wills. Achren would have sullied your will, yet you resisted. Now you must seek proper mastery - if, indeed, you wish to use magic at all."
This took her aback. "Why wouldn't I?" She asked. "I was born to be an enchantress. It's family tradition - and all I have of them, if what you say is true."
"There are those," Medwyn remarked, "who would be thankful for the freedom to make their own way." His clear eyes twinkled at her. "You, I suspect, might be one of them. Few wild birds enjoy a cage. You have escaped one of iron. Take care that you do not fly into another, though it be golden."
He spoke in riddles. Eilonwy wrinkled her nose and stared at the ground, digesting them. Why should magic be a cage? Then again, she had just called it a boulder. Bother! You couldn't be an enchantress without magic, and if she wasn't an enchantress, then who was she?
A blank future stretched before her, as wide as the ocean - too wide, directionless and terrifying. Was that what he meant by freedom? She shook her head. "I don't want a cage. But I don't want empty wilderness either."
He laughed, a deep, rumbling sound like the growl of a bear. "The wilderness empty? Nonsense. This, my valley, is wilderness. Would you call it empty?"
"No," she admitted, shutting her eyes to feel again the breath all around. "It's full...the fullest place I've ever been. It's the first thing I noticed."
"Because you are in its midst. Now look at the mountains, yonder," Medwyn ordered, sweeping his hand toward the peaks. "From here, they look empty - barren and cold. Yet I tell you that even on the highest rock and beneath the deepest snow, life breathes and moves and grows." He lowered his arm. "Do not fear what you cannot yet see. Observe the beasts - they know that today's trail is the one that matters, not the one ten years hence."
The fawn in her lap sighed contentedly as though it had understood him, and Eilonwy smiled and stroked the velvet muzzle. "But," she pointed out, "even the animals prepare for the winter, don't they?"
Medwyn nodded. "Yes. But they do not wonder whether it will be harsh or mild, or try to guess when the first snows will fall."
She felt a bit as though she were treading water, with a new wave coming to dunk her every time he spoke, and fell silent to concentrate on keeping her head up. The sun was disappearing over the edge of the valley; beams of light threw themselves across a violet sky, and a star appeared low on the eastern horizon. Breathing slow, she gave up trying to unravel Medwyn's riddles, and let her mind slide into the silence that lay on the valley like a quilt. Never mind the future and mountains and cages and beast trails. The present was too peaceful to think about anything else.
Wait, that was exactly what he…
Oh, never mind. She laughed aloud, and lay back on the grass to watch the moon rise.