Hands -huge, planed at angles, with tendons corded across the joints-moved in the earth, as though part of the earth, molded the rich loam into miniature hills and valleys. Eilonwy watched, fascinated, as Medwyn explained the route they should take through them, barely hearing his words as her eyes were drawn to the shifting forms beneath his hands.
She found herself restless, unwilling to leave the peace of the valley; yet there was something missing, somehow; like a lock with no key, a feeling with no name. There was something else she wanted and it was out there somewhere, or maybe it didn't exist at all, but she was driven to search for it all the same.
At any rate, they couldn't stay; their quest awaited. Medwyn hadn't said so, but she knew; they all knew: they'd never find this place again. She did not even try to count the steps or find landmarks along the rocky trail as they left the valley; even her inner perception of its richness and life stopped, as suddenly as if they'd walked through a barrier, though they'd merely moved around a stony outcropping. She was startled by the suddenness of it, and glanced up at Medwyn, who had accompanied them thus far. He nodded at her almost imperceptibly before addressing them all.
"Your path now lies to the north, and here we shall part." He turned to Taran. "And you, Taran of Caer Dallben...whether you have chosen wisely, you will learn from your own heart. Perhaps we shall meet again, and you will tell me. Until then, farewell."
Light moved, there was a pulse of something massive rolling over them, and Medwyn was gone; not only from her sight but her mind, the very weight of his presence engulfed by the same force that blocked her sense of his valley. A fully recovered Gurgi, who had been fawning at his feet, yelped in surprise and put his nose to the ground where the old man had stood, turning in circles. Next to her, Taran gasped. "He's gone. How? It's like the hills swallowed him up."
She glanced at him, mildly impressed. "They did. Sort of. He's part of them. He is the hills."
Taran sniffed. "That doesn't make any sense."
She shrugged. "Not to you, I suppose. What did he mean, whether you have chosen wisely?"
A strange, fleeting grief passed over his face. "Just...well, nothing. I'd rather not talk about it. Only I shall miss that place. Very much. I think...I think anytime I'm afraid or sad or angry, I could think of Medwyn's valley, and feel peaceful again." He spoke dreamily, caught her eye, and flushed a little. "Sounds a bit mad, doesn't it."
His voice was gruff, embarrassed, and she looked away, smiling to herself. "It doesn't at all. It's lovely."
"Yes, yes!" Gurgi leaped back over to them and grabbed her hand, gazing up with adoring amber eyes. "The great lord speaks truth! It is a joyful place, full of good things. Gurgi feels them in his leg, oh yes, it is strong, and ready for pouncings and leapings; but they are inside him, too, warm feelings and healings, to bring out when he needs them in the dark places."
Fflewddur slung his harp around to his back and took a deep, refreshed breath. "Well," he remarked, "I'll say it, too. I feel years younger and a stone lighter after a day in that valley."
"I don't see how you could be any lighter," said Eilonwy, "after what you ate."
"What a disrespectful baggage you are," he retorted, with a grin, and patted his lean middle. "It all goes to muscle, you know; a Fflam knows moderation." He bent backward to gaze up at the jagged cliffs. "Look at those rocks. Not even a hint of what's behind them. It's rather like a dream, isn't it? I could almost believe we were never there at all. But at least, I somehow feel that if we meet any more wolves, they'll know we're friends of Medwyn."
They set out once more, hope and strength renewed, and found nothing to hinder them. The path was steep but clear, and the views spectacular. Indeed it was difficult to hurry past the scenery; every turn of the path around some new cliff face or outcropping brought fresh new prospects. Yawning open spaces opened up at their feet, across which saw-toothed peaks cut jagged white edges against a sky as deeply blue as the sea. Sparkling cataracts of snow-borne springs sang their way down the slick-shining faces of mica-flecked stone. Feathery treetops waved beneath them as the path gripped the side of a mountain, dizzyingly high. And oh, the smells...the spice of pine and fir; the earthiness of wet stone; the fresh, bracing breath of cool, dry air.
The height and exertion made them too breathless to exclaim over each new vision, but when they halted at sunset in the shelter of a cleft, Eilonwy sank onto a boulder with a rapturous sigh, and waved toward the crimson sky. The snowy peaks blazed, bathed magenta in the fiery last light.
"It's so beautiful," she breathed aloud. "I didn't know there were places like this anywhere in the world. Or at least what they were really like. You read about mountains and all, but books don't tell you how the air smells, or the way your head goes all queer and light when you look over the edge of a cliff. I wish I were a bird, to just jump off and soar. Think of how much more space you've got to move in if you could go up and down as well as left or right."
"I've often wished I could fly," Taran agreed, as he doled out dried fruit and flat bread from Medwyn's packed provisions. "But you get a better idea of what 'high' really means out here. Did you never come this way, Fflewddur, in all your wandering?"
The bard, busy repairing several harp strings, shook his head. "There are easier ways to get to Caer Dathyl if you aren't in a hurry," he explained. "And mountains, though they are indeed beautiful, are perilous all. Falling rocks, steep climbs, terrible cold." He motioned to the darkening sky. "The weather can get very nasty in the blink of an eye. If you get hurt, there's no help for days, more likely weeks, or never at all. Not the wisest choice for a bard on his own." He gazed upon their surroundings appreciatively. "Still, it's a sight to be seen if you can manage it. A Fflam is always open to inspiration! Perhaps I shall compose my next tune all about the majesty of the mountains."
Shadows were pooling like purple velvet in the hollows of the rocks. Taran, laying wood for a small fire, muttered that he couldn't see to start it. Eilonwy pulled out her bauble and cupped it in her hands; it warmed and glowed, filling their shelter with light. "There you are."
He glanced up with a half-smile, murmured thanks. She watched him strike flint upon the edge of his sword, bend to breathe upon the spark. Another skill she ought to learn, really; Achren could snap her fingers to light a candle and had promised to teach her the same but had never gotten around to it. Occasionally she'd followed instinct, obeyed the prickings in her fingertips and played with the flames in torches or in her own grate in her room, but these experiments tended not to end well. Once she had set her bed curtains on fire. She had never even wondered how anyone made fire without magic...but of course it must be done, all the time.
"How do you do that?" she demanded abruptly, sliding off her boulder and kneeling across from him, the infant flame between them.
His nose was nearly to the ground as he crumbled bits of dried moss over the flickering light. "I was going to ask you the same thing."
She cocked her head at him, not understanding, and he motioned toward her bauble. "That light of yours. What makes it happen?"
"Oh." She gazed at it, glowing from the narrow crevice where she'd set it. "I don't know. It's magic. When I want it to light, it does."
He was blowing steadily on the flame, interrupting his own statements with every breath. "I realize it's magic. I just wondered...if you talked to it in your head...or if it just happened."
She frowned. "I never thought about it. Do you talk to your arm when you want to reach for something? Or tell your foot to take a step? Because it's just like that."
He laughed, and fed twigs to the fire, now a small thing crackling to life. The red light gleamed over the planes of his face. "It must be a handy thing. An extra bit of you that glows whenever you want. Where did it come from?"
"I've always had it," Eilonwy said, handing him larger twigs within her reach. "I don't know where it came from. Achren says my mother gave it to her to give to me. But I don't think that can be true."
"I can't imagine Achren giving you something so lovely or useful," Taran observed, and motioned toward the pile of sticks he'd gathered. "Here, no, not that one, the little papery ones next, with the bark curling off. Too much wood will choke it. Look, see? Put that one there, as though you're building a house." His hands moved deftly, balancing the twigs in a miniature structure, tiny as a pixie-dwelling within the flickering tongues of light. "It's not just the sticks that matter; it's the spaces between them. Fire has to breathe. You can't rush it." He blew on the flames again, poked at them with a longer twig. "Do you think she was telling the truth, that it was your mother's?"
"Maybe," Eilonwy murmured. "I like to think so. I often thought she wanted to take it from me, and wondered why she didn't, and the only thing I can think is that she wouldn't have been able to use it."
"Best not to question it too much," Fflewddur put in, in an uncomfortable, hesitant tone. "Magical objects are what they are. No meddling with them, that's my rule."
"Fflewddur." Eilonwy sat up and gazed at him levelly. "You have a magical harp."
He blinked at her over the curve of the instrument, and paused in the tightening of a string. "Well...but that's different. It's not magic so much as it's..." The very string he was winding twanged as it popped; he sputtered under his breath and retrieved the loose end with a sigh. "I mean, yes, it is magical, but it's a plain everyday sort. And you notice I don't poke about asking why it's magic or who enchanted it or where it's been. Taliesin gave it to me, and that's enough."
"Speaking of that harp," Eilonwy went on, "you've been carrying it around ever since we met you and you've never once played it. That's like telling someone you want to talk to them, and when they get ready to listen, you don't say anything."
"You'd hardly expect me to go strumming out airs while the Cauldron warriors were following us," Fflewddur protested. "Somehow I didn't think it would be appropriate. But a Fflam is always obliging, so if you really care to hear me play..." He plunked a few strings experimentally, then settled himself with the instrument cradled fondly in one arm.
A melody rippled up, gentle as summer wind; it wound its way among them like a waft of perfume. Eilonwy leaned against the boulder and shut her eyes; the music seemed to swirl through her and around her, now enveloping, now lifting her up, as engulfing as the swell of a wave before it broke onshore. A wave...there was something...something familiar...
Ocean waves, emerald green, tipped with white lace, curled further and further out until sea met sky at the edge of the world; waves whose movement and sound were the rise and fall of the breath of earth as they rushed upon the land and sank back again, clear glassy planes that intersected and swallowed one another and rippled the sand into wrinkles; waves that crashed in exhilarating fury upon unyielding black stone, exultant in their power. Bare feet splashed, running, in white-powdered sand that glistened in sunlight and glowed in moonlight and squeaked underfoot. There was a tang of salt and seaweed in the air, on her hair and tongue; the lonely, wild cry of gulls quickened blood that wanted to soar with them, away, away, out over the endless water...water that pulled and curled under and around her hands, that responded to her thoughts instantly and effortlessly, shirring and whirling into liquid shapes of dolphins and swans, seals and seadragons. There were other hands alongside, white hands and slender, directing, guiding; a lilting voice singing of moonlight and dark depths and glittering treasures far beneath the surface, the words it's ours, my love, all of it, you are the sea and it is you.
She came to herself with a gasp when the music stopped, and found that the salt in her mouth was no dream but the taste of her own tears. Her heart throbbed with longing; but already the pictures were fading. She grasped at them desperately, trying to put them into words to remember - oh, if only she'd something to write on!
Fflewddur was sitting with his head bowed over his harp. "Well," he murmured, "that was a surprise. I had planned something a little more lively, the sort of thing my war leader always enjoys - to put us in a bold frame of mind, you understand. The truth of the matter is, I don't really know what's going to come out of it next. My fingers go along, but sometimes I think this harp plays of itself."
He slid it back into its case reverently. "Perhaps that's why Taliesin thought he was doing me a favor when he gave it to me. Because when I went up to the Council of Bards for my examination, I had an old pot one of the minstrels had left behind and I couldn't do more than plunk out a few chants. However, a Fflam never looks a gift horse in the mouth, or, in this case, I should say harp."
He looked at them expectantly, and though she didn't want to speak yet, it seemed too mean to say nothing after asking him to play.
"It was a sad tune," she faltered, sniffling, and dabbed at her eyes with her cloak. Fflewddur looked a bit dismayed, but she waved him off hastily. "No, it's all right. The odd thing about it is, you don't mind the sadness. Or I didn't. It's like feeling better after you've had a good cry. It..." she took a breath, feeling that, for once, words were inadequate. "It made me think of the sea again, though I haven't been there since I was a little girl."
Dimly she thought Taran snorted, but she was too intent on recapturing the memory to be irritated with him. "The waves break against the cliffs and churn into foam, and father out, as far as you can see, there are the white crests, the White Horses of Llyr, they call them; but they're really only waves waiting their turn to roll in. I'd...I'd forgotten." She rubbed her forehead in confusion. "I don't know how I forgot. But the music made me remember. It was like finding something you didn't know you'd lost."
"Strange," said Fflewddur slowly. "Personally, I was thinking of my own castle. It's small and drafty, but I would like to see it again; a fellow can have enough wandering, you know. It made me think I might even settle down again and try to be a respectable sort of king." He smiled at her, a wavering sad smile, and she felt, all of a sudden, a sense of shared loneliness that cut her to the heart, and scrambled across the gravel to sit next to him. He tucked a long arm around her and she nestled her head against his shoulder. He smelled like hay and mint.
Darkness had now closed about them like a heavy cloak, warded off by the combined golden glow from her bauble and Taran's fire. The boy stirred as though waking from a dream, his eyes gleaming from the dark shadows under his brows, and spoke wistfully. "Caer Dallben is closer to my heart. When I left, I never gave it too much thought. Now I think of it a great deal."
Gurgi, curled nearby, lifted his nose to the sky and whined. "Yes, yes, soon great warriors will all be back in their halls, telling their tales with laughings and chaffings." He shook his head, his amber eyes rolling until the whites showed. "Then it will be the fearful forest again for poor Gurgi, to put down his tender had in snoozings and snorings."
Taran reached out and laid a hand on the creature's hairy neck. "Gurgi," he said, "I promise to bring you to Caer Dallben, if I ever get there myself. And if you like it and Dallben agrees, you can stay there as long as you want."
Eilonwy gazed at him in surprise as Gurgi avowed his gratitude with characteristic enthusiasm. Was this really the same boy who had angrily ordered the creature away only days ago? It hardly seemed possible...but then, she herself had admitted how he had improved only this morning, and she'd only been half-teasing.
Gurgi's happiness pricked at her. Yes, indeed, the great warriors would go back to their halls...or farms, as the case may be...and what of her? Caer Dathyl, of course; that's what she'd decided, at least after they'd found Hen Wen and set everything to rights. But somehow the thought failed to thrill her quite as much as it had before. Almost she envied Gurgi - not so much for the possibility of a home at Caer Dallben, perhaps, but...simply for the sake of an invitation. It was one thing to decide where you would stay, and quite another for someone to offer you a home, a place where you were actually wanted.
She tried to imagine that sort of a place, and grew drowsy over visions of a king welcoming her with open arms into the gates of a gleaming castle...but somehow just before she drifted off, the castle turned to cottages and green fields, and the king's face was young and dirt-smudged and green-eyed with a crooked smile...