0x07 - Lullaby to the Son of Magic

Shavings of wood fell to the ground before him, peppering the green with flecks of light brown. They trailed behind him as he paced outside the door to the cottage. Towards the side of the house was a large pile where he had been sitting, before he could no longer remain stationary.

A loud cry from within made his latest cut jerk unexpectedly, shaving off more than he intended. Balinor determinedly set about smoothing it out, trying not to think about what was happening inside, or the exasperated matronly women who ordered out of his own home until it was over.

Hunith cried again, and surely that was not a normal noise, he thought, wood and knife frozen in his hands. Surely something was going wrong. He stood there, unmoving with his head turned towards the door, and the cries from inside continued only broken during moments where he assumed she must be drawing air into her lungs before screaming again. He was seriously contemplating whether it would be worth it to go back inside even though there was nothing he could do, and then they stopped altogether.

In their place was a hoarse wail that rose and fell in waves. It sounded like a cat in distress.

The door opened a crack, and the eye of one of Hunith's friends was visible through it. "You can go in now. It's a boy."

He felt like his brain had fled his body. Numbly, Balinor deposited the half-finished carving and knife beside a stack of wooden teethers and simple toys he'd whittled in the tense nine hours of waiting as a distraction. He flung the door wide open, flooding the inside with light. The women who came to help with the labour brought their hands to their eyes, startled by the harsh glare of the afternoon sun after so many hours in the dark.

Only two didn't flinch at the light, both of whom had their backs to the door. One was Old Ann, and the other was a red-headed friend of Hunith's named Catrin. Old Ann was peering nosily over Catrin's shoulder as the red-headed mother of six rubbed a damp towel against a tiny blotchy expanse of flesh.

The baby's screams intensified at the introduction of the bright light, and out of nowhere as though pushed by a sudden gust of wind the door slammed, nearly sending Balinor careening forwards when it struck the back of his ankles. The room was bathed in darkness again, and the child's shrieks abated.

Catrin's hand jerked away from the tiny body as though scalded, and Old Ann took a step back, clutching a wizened hand to her heart. Hastily, Catrin grabbed a bundle of swaddling cloths and wrapped the baby, hurrying over to where Hunith lay on their bedding.

Hunith took her son with a beautiful smile on her shiny sweat-coated face, tenderly stroking his cheeks with one finger. Catrin backed away with a slight tremble in her step, just as Old Ann recovered enough to exclaim,

"The child's possessed!"

Immediately every eye was focused on her, but for once she did not seem to drink in the attention like a flagon of her favourite brew. Her finger shook as she pointed it accusingly at babe and mother, Hunith looking as Balinor felt; too shocked to be properly angered by the words. "His eyes, they were gold, just now! I saw them!"

Fear burned like icy fire through his veins. This couldn't be happening. It was impossible; even the great sorcerers of legend displayed no sign of magic until after living to see at least three Samhains.

Met with a sea of skeptic female faces, Old Ann rounded on Catrin, "Tell them! You saw it too!"

The red-haired mother's eyes flickered to Hunith's uncertainly. Hunith clutched the baby closer, as though fearing he would otherwise be snatched straight out of her arms. "I… I saw…" she stuttered, still looking at Hunith, "His eyes were opening, and then… it was when the door opened, I'm sure it was just the light's reflection."

She didn't sound sure.

Balinor ordered his frozen limbs to move, crossing the room in long strides. He peered into the scrunched up face of his son, where bleary eyes were gazed up in a daze. "His eyes are blue," he said, the ice in his veins warming just a bit in pure relief.

As though he had pronounced a solemn judgement on a grave matter, the tension in the room relaxed. Quite a few reproachful looks were aimed at Old Ann, and the various women clustered around to see the baby, giving loud insistent exclamations of what a lovely boy he was as if to erase their moment of doubt.

Hunith and Balinor didn't look or speak to each other until the others left. Only then did he look down, where his son was still protectively clutched to Hunith's chest. Her eyes wavered in uncertainty when they met his. "You said your people's gifts don't manifest until puberty."

It was more question than statement, begging for reassurance he wasn't sure he could give. "There have been cases where an extremely gifted child develops a particular skill before then. But never this young. I've never seen anything like this, I've never even heard of anything like this!"

"We don't know that his eyes did turn," she argued with a determination that would have been more comforting if it didn't sound like she was insisting on what she wanted to think. "It could have been a trick of the light, like Catrin said."

The baby's eyes were widening now, adjusting to the dim lighting of their shuttered cottage. It was closer to the darkness of the womb than the sun's glare had been. Balinor's ankles twinged where the door hit him, and he could still see Catrin and Old Ann's simultaneous fearful reaction.

He felt like a shard of ice was lodged in his heart. He was torn between what a fantastic coincidence it would be for two people to see eyes glow gold when a mysterious event occurred and how unbelievable it was that a newborn not ten minutes old was capable of magic. He wanted to believe the first explanation.

Because if the baby's eyes did gleam gold, it would be his fault, his cursed blood that condemned his son to a lifetime of knowing nothing but fear and hiding.

Hunith took his hand, guiding it to lie on the baby's head. It felt soft and damp, and it was so tiny he could wrap his entire hand around it. She said in her healer's voice, the one she used when she gently but firmly insisted on nothing less than complete obedience. "We'll watch him, and if we see any signs ourselves then we'll cross that bridge then."

She held out her arms, carefully transferring their son to his. He felt so fragile, and all Balinor could think was that he needed to be protected, from the entire world if necessary. "For now, I think it's time you meet your son."

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Hours became days, which became weeks, and when Merlin's eyes remained blue the ice in his heart began to thaw. Life continued as though Old Ann's awful declaration never happened.

Though he knew it was something every parent said, he truly felt Merlin was the best baby they could have asked for. He hardly ever cried, and even when he did he quickly quieted with a feeding time or nappy change. When those didn't work, a lullaby soothed him into a deep restful sleep in one of his parents arms.

Hunith always sang the same one to him, a low soothing tune that lulled like the sea it described. It was a song her mother sang to her, and being only eight when she lost her she guarded this memory preciously.

Hush, the waves are rolling in
White with foam, white with foam.
Father toils amid the din
But baby sleeps at home.

The song was nostalgia itself; sweet and loving, but also a touch sad. Nothing was eternal, and just as her mother had been taken from her so one day the veil of death would come between her and her son, leaving only memories. This thought made Balinor strain to think of songs from his mother to pass on, but unsurprisingly there were none that wouldn't raise the suspicions of the villagers over why he was singing in the Old Tongue.

For the first decade of Balinor's life his mother only spoke to him in the Old Tongue, and his father only in the Common Tongue, until Balinor could switch fluidly between both. It was a system he had always taken for granted he would use with his own children, but like all his fondest childhood memories – legends and prophecies, watching his parents do magic solely for his own amusement and slowly learning to do it himself, being ten feet off the ground atop the back of a majestic creature of magic – it was not something he could carelessly share with his own child.

Someday, he thought while listening to Hunith sing her mother's song to their son, someday, when he's old enough to know how to keep secrets, I'll share everything I can with him.

But it would never be the same. Merlin would never know dragons as anything more than stories from his father and the dozens of different dragon-themed wooden toys that Balinor had begun carving as soon as they returned home from that debacle with the bounty hunter. No matter how enthralled he was with them, he'd never meet a dragon in real life. Likewise, there would be no trove of oral knowledge gleamed from various relative's lifetimes of experience, only his father and what he knew from his short score-and-a-quarter years.

Hush, the rain sweeps o'er the knowes
Where they roam, where they roam.
Sister goes to seek the cows
But baby sleeps at home.

There would be no clans of dragons and dragonlords for Merlin; his only kin were his mother and father. But when Hunith's voice sang beside him in their bedroll, the baby sleeping between them, he thought that just the three of them could be enough.

Merlin seemed happy enough, from the little Balinor could tell of interpreting newborn moods. He grasped his parents' fingers when offered them, and brought his closed fist to his body, drifting off to sleep in the arms of one while holding the finger of the other. He spent most of his day in peaceful sleep, and even when his parents were too tired or occupied to sing him his lullaby he fell asleep just to the sound of the wooden wind chime Balinor made shortly before his birth. While he dreamed a reflex smile flittered across his face, even though he was still too young to smile when awake. Quite a few of Hunith's friends told them how envious they were of his good temper when they came to see how she was doing with her firstborn.

During the intermittent period between naps, Merlin was as curious as anyone who could barely move his limbs could be.

One evening, after a day working in the fields, Balinor was idly pushing the mobile of wooden flying dragons above his cradle so that it went in circles. Merlin followed the movement in fascination, his eyes tracking one particular dragon, his whole head bobbing in circles. Then he changed his gaze to another, still following the movement as though spell bound.

He raised his skinny little arms with his fingers curled in a fist and tried to bat at them. Unfortunately for him, it was out of reach of his short arms. Balinor smiled as he flicked it for him again.

There came a knock at the door just then, and he went to answer it. It was Old Ann, being just as pushy and annoying as she always was. Balinor had disliked her from the moment he arrived in Ealdor and she acted like she was entitled to know everything about him, from the status of his love life to what foods he liked to where he was from. He hadn't thought the bored old gossipy busybody could do more to make him dislike her after spilling everything she knew about him to a bounty hunter, but pronouncing his son as hell spawn was just about the worst sin she could have committed.

Ever since that incident she had been trying the patience he barely had for her. She would slow down near the cottage window, peering through with her beedy eyes as though hoping to catch the baby mid-transformation into a terrifying monster. Or else she would knock on the door with some paltry excuse and try to crane her neck around him to see inside. He had no idea how Hunith still dealt with her as though she was mildly amusing if irritating in her intrusive tendencies.

Today she as she gave some made up medical complaint her eyes darted beyond Balinor as she asked in an overly casual manner whether Hunith was in. He moved to block the doorway, and told her Hunith wasn't as if the old crone didn't already know that. When she tried to invite herself inside to wait, he shot the idea down pointblank, saying he'd send Hunith over to her place when she got home. Old Ann argued until his head ached from the sound of her wheezy high voice, but in the end she was a decrepit old woman and there was nothing to she could do to force her way inside if he chose to block the door, so begrudgingly she left.

Balinor shut the door and massaged his temples, trying not to think that he'd just added another black mark to his page in the books of the most irritating yet mysteriously most heeded person in the village. Maybe he should be trying to get on her good side to make her less inclined to spread malicious gossip about him, but it took all his willpower just to resist the urge to slam the door in her face.

Looking up, his brow creased as he saw the mobile was still spinning above Merlin, when with no one to push it it should have slowed to a stop. Was it actually going faster? Ice ran in his veins once again, and he crossed the room in long strides, looking into the cradle with trepidation.

Two innocent golden eyes blinked up at him, still tracking the movements of the still spinning mobile.

The sound of the door opening came from behind him. He snatched Merlin up, holding him protectively with his head pressed against his chest to hide the condemning glow.

"I'm home!" Hunith called cheerfully. His posture relaxed; it wasn't Old Ann come back at the worst possible moment.

He strode over to shut the shutters, and beckoned her to the centre of the cottage where their voices wouldn't carry through the walls. Hunith instantly looked wary; doubtlessly remembering the previous occasions they needed their conversation to go unheard.

She came immediately, depositing the full pitcher of water on the table on her way, and glanced anxiously over him and Merlin, whose eyes were blue once again as though they'd never glinted an impossible colour at all. But he knew what he'd seen, and tersely told her of it.

Even in the darkened room, he could see how she paled. "What are we going to do?"

And that was just the question, wasn't it? What could they do? Merlin was far too young to understand what words were, never mind listen to them. How could they keep him from revealing that force which flowed so strongly through him it manifested so young?

Rage filled him, clouding his eyes so that he could barely see Hunith's horrified face. In any other era such prodigious talent would be cause of celebration, not panic. Even when Balinor was young and his people were mistrusted, at least no one would have looked at an infant and proclaimed his death sentence. At least there would have been clans to value such a promising young addition and eagerly watch his growth, aiding in any way possible. Merlin would have been revered, but all because of Uther Pendragon he would instead be shunned, hunted, made to live in fear and hiding…

Hunith's face, still patiently waiting for his answer, snapped him away from his dark thoughts. Her eyes swam with fear; she didn't know what to do and was looking to him for answers. Guilt stabbed at him; it was unfair that she should have to go through this, when she would have nothing to do with sorcery if not for him.

How could he tell her that he was as lost as she was? That he had no magic solution to their unprecedented problem? Everything he knew about controlling magic he'd been taught, and he had no idea how to teach those teachings to one so young.

"I don't know," he said heavily, shifting Merlin when he began to fidget. "I have no idea. This is only the beginning; magical ability grows stronger with age. But I can't teach him control until he's old enough to follow instructions. And there's nothing I know of that can suppress his magic without harming him."

Hunith bit a piece of hair as she thought, chewing on it without noticing. Merlin whimpered in his arms, perhaps sensing the distress of the two people he looked to to give him comfort and security. Balinor rubbed his back and muttered soothing nonsense, trying to be comforting when the world was falling apart around them.

"We'll just have to keep him out of sight until he's old enough to learn control," Hunith said at last, in the firm voice she used to reassure others and herself at the same time. "We'll keep him inside and if anyone comes by, we'll keep them away from him."

He didn't say That's easier said than done because she already knew it. Anyone could knock on their door at any time of day, asking Hunith for help with some complaint. What if one of them saw something so obviously magical it could not be explained away?

Balinor was not a good liar; it was a fact he acknowledged about himself and generally saw as a good trait, but in recent years it caused him trouble. If he practiced in advance he could deceive well enough, but making up falsehoods on the spot was not his strong point. How would he explain shapes in the fire, or floating objects, or toys changing colour? How many times could they pass off the glow in Merlin's eyes as the reflection of the sun?

He nodded, because it was all they could do. She held out her arms and he passed her the baby, his arms feeling empty and useless without Merlin's light weight. She held him like Uther's men were waiting outside their door and she would have to fight to keep him. Softly, she began his lullaby.

Neither of them made any move to open the shutters, so their home stayed dark.

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The most noticeable change in their day-to-day life beyond the permanent semi-darkness of their home came a few nights afterwards, when Merlin was fussing and Hunith began his lullaby to calm him. The first bar startled Balinor's drowsing brain into full consciousness. She was using the same hauntingly sweet melody, but the words changed from the innocuous lyrics of various family members at work by the sea. Instead, she sang,

Hush! the flames are closing in,
Ashes blown, ashes blown
Little one flee away from them
So baby stay at home.

"Those aren't the same words," he said, wondering why he couldn't be more articulate. The previous song had an innocence to it, and the lull brought to mind a safe place of peaceful simplicity. This version used the lull of the melody to draw him in, like the flames were licking at his feet while he ran to safety.

She didn't answer the question he didn't ask, just kept singing her modified lyrics. It was more frightening than if she'd sat Merlin down and ordered him to stay inside, because she knew he was too young to understand but took the time to fit new words to the existing song framework anyways, hoping that in some way it would reach him. A woman as gentle as Hunith had defiled one of the few treasured memories she had of her mother in order to better protect her son, by teaching him fear from the cradle.

Hush! the winds roar hoarse and deep
On they come, on they come!
Kingdoms seek the helpless sheep,
So baby stay at home.

Balinor shivered, even though it wasn't cool yet at this time of the year and he was under a warm blanket. Why did it have to be that when he had something of their people to share with Merlin it brought only the same fear that came over them all when they'd first heard rumours of the Purge? Was history repeating itself? Would he again one day return to unseeing eyes and blood staining the ground around cut down bodies?

No, he swore. This time it would be different. It didn't matter what happened to him, he would not let anyone take his family from him ever again. This time, he would protect them, and the gods help the ones who tried.

Hush! the rain sweeps 'n' searches yet
Where they roam, where they roam.
Stay with me, safe from this threat
My baby sleep at home

And from then on, hidden warnings replaced innocent tales of the sea and family. After the first time the words weren't so shocking, and they calmed Merlin as well as the original lyrics had, but they served as a constant reminder of the lost innocence that had come over their family.

Despite their fears, until harvest season was over the other villagers were too busy to notice the changes in one of the families in their midst. Sequestered away, Merlin grew and learned. After a few pots and pans were found in the cradle, Hunith covered everything dangerous with spare shawls so that Merlin couldn't see them. It worked, and in time they stopped checking every few minutes to see if he was going blue because of something small he'd magicked over and put in his mouth.

Dark circles grew under Hunith's eyes as she tried to balance all her various tasks. Balinor was relieved when the harvest was in that he had more time to spend in the home, taking some of the burden off her shoulders and not having to worry each day that while he was gone someone had seen. His relief was tempered, however, when after overhearing a conversation in the street it became clear that more free time for the other villagers was not necessarily good.

A woman a decade older than Hunith, Eirda, was standing her turn by the well and talking with Hunith's friend Betrys. Betrys was saying she hadn't seen Hunith's baby since just after he was born, and Eirda replied, "Neither have I. It's strange Hunith always leaves him at home when she comes to get water, or hangs out her laundry to dry."

"I've never seen her bring him anywhere," Betrys said with a thoughtful frown. "And even when I went to visit, she told me he was sleeping and wouldn't let me see him. Thing is, I could have sworn I heard him babbling right before I knocked."

Balinor didn't know what to do. They were getting too close to the truth, and he had to stop them from discussing it further, but he didn't know how. If he stepped out from the building he'd ducked behind when he'd heard Merlin's name it would probably fluster them into stopping, but they'd just pick up their conversation again the moment he left, this time with his unprecedented eavesdropping to add to the list of things that were strange with his family.

"I've asked her a few times if she wanted me to come over and help," Eirda said, "but she always refuses even though you can tell she's getting worn out. And then there's what Old Ann is saying…"

"Surely you don't believe that tripe! Glowing eyes, floating toys… I think her mind's going."

Balinor's heart leaped into his throat. When had Old Ann had the opportunity to see inside their house? They were careful these days to have ready-made bottles of potions she needed so she couldn't worm her way inside, and their windows were covered. But then Hunith couldn't be in the cottage all day; there was water to fetch and animals to feed just as much now as before they had a baby, and it wasn't as if Merlin could be taken with her. It shouldn't surprise him that Old Ann had managed to sneak in during the times when no one was there to bar her entrance.

"But you can't deny something strange is going on," Eirda persisted. "Haven't you noticed how Catrin clams up whenever someone mentions Hunith? It's like trying to weasel words from a rock! And she let her little girl languish in bed with pox, "waiting it out" rather than going to Hunith for help. Think about it, when was the last time you saw them together?"

Balinor tried to remember the last time he had seen the only red-haired woman in the village. She was there at Merlin's birth, jerking away and stuttering out it was a trick of the light… and that was the last time he'd seen her. She hadn't been among Hunith's friends who came to coo over Merlin when he was a newborn.

But even if she knew it wasn't the sunlight she saw in Merlin's eyes, and even if that knowledge made her avoid them… she wasn't saying anything. If she'd endorsed Old Ann's proclamation of Merlin's possession it most likely wouldn't have mattered what colour his eyes usually were, but she hadn't. She'd denied it, and she was still holding her tongue. He'd take his blessings where he could find them.

The two women's conversation meandered away from his family, towards Catrin, and he slipped away. Hunith looked up from where she was preparing supper while singing to Merlin, and he put down the firewood he'd been fetching for their cooking fire before telling her what he'd overheard.

Hunith immediately arranged for a visit with Betrys, saying it had been a while and she wanted to show her her baby. It was a daring move to make, but Hunith was a big believer in hiding things in plain sight. People fear what they don't understand, she'd once said to him, and it was a fact that held true throughout his life when all else was inconstant. The rumours about Merlin were due to the mysteries surrounding him, and keeping him as an unknown factor would only feed them. Hopefully, a couple of quiet visits would be enough to quell the harmful gossip. Just before they went, Hunith infused water with essence of valerian and trickled it down Merlin's throat.

The number of women crammed into Betrys' home was alarming in its implications. Were rumours of the strangeness surrounding Merlin really that widespread? He almost thought every parent-aged woman in the village was there, but after scanning the gathered heads he saw blondes and brunettes but no red-heads. Catrin hadn't come. Beside him hurt flittered across Hunith's face, and he knew she'd noticed as well.

Betrys was the first to peer into Merlin's sleepy eyes, smiling brightly and cooing to the four-month-old. He gurgled a reply, seemingly too tired for his usual babbling, but turned his head to look at the crowd of gathered women. When most smiled – tentatively, but attempting nonetheless – he returned the favour with a huge gummy grin at the unprecedented amount of attention he was getting. A wave of aww went through the women, and the smiles became much more genuine.

Merlin yawned, the valerian beginning to take effect, and leaned back against Hunith. She started humming the cautionary lullaby under her breath, and moved to sit in the center of the gathered women.

Balinor stood to the back of the room, ready to intervene if something happened, but the women seemed satisfied there was nothing demonic about the little bundle nuzzling up against Hunith. They chatted about miscellaneous things, and the visit passed without incident.

After they'd gotten home, Hunith in relief summarized it with, "Well, that went well."

And so with the exception of Old Ann and possibly Catrin, all the village women – and by extension, all their husbands – were quite taken with Merlin and unimpressed by Old Ann's continued insistence there was something wrong with him.

The weather become colder, and it seemed less strange that Hunith didn't want to take her baby out of the warm house, especially with Balinor home now to watch him. When someone came to her asking for herbs, he simply held Merlin against him so that no one could see his eyes. He would watch everything in Merlin's line of vision like a hawk, and if anything started to move then he hurriedly picked it up himself. Merlin didn't seem to mind whether things came to him by magic or not, just as along as he could play with them.

Old Ann turned to a grouchy unpopular bachelor named Simmons who was some kind of relative of hers and now the only person left willing to listen to her. He was unsure what they said between themselves, but as long as no one else believed them he wasn't overly concerned.

Merlin learned to sit up on his own, affording himself a better view of their home. He was delighted by what he saw, and everything made him laugh. When he wasn't laughing he was babbling away in baby gibberish, then looking at his father and mother expectantly as though waiting for them to take their turn in the conversation only he could follow. Soon, they had to spell his name whenever they didn't want his head to turn and his arms to stretch out, waiting to be picked up with a big smile on his face, giggling.

With these happy milestones cam less happy ones, though, and the good turn of events went sour midwinter when he started fussing and refusing to take milk. Hunith dipped cloths in water left to chill outside and laid them on his gums, but that only granted temporary relief for the teething infant.

What was truly nerve-wracking wasn't the loudness of Merlin's screams of pain, but their effect on their surroundings. The mid-winter sky deepened from a light overcast to an angry black, and during the worst of it when his face turned purple freezing rain fell in hailstones the size of silver coins.

People came to Hunith for bruise balm for the injuries from the icy pellets so often she took to keeping some ready-made to thrust into the hands of whoever came to the door. The first few times before she did so had been awful; they'd both had to scramble to hide the way nearly every object in their house had been knocked over or else shattered by the force of Merlin's screams at the disturbance of their knocking.

When after two weeks three pearly little milk teeth poked through his gums, the clouds lightened and the glow of the sun could be seen behind them. His relief at the calm was short-lived, however, when Old Ann triumphantly stood by the well and declared to all who came that the storm an unholy work created by the changeling next door. Her barbaric folk remedies to "cure" Merlin made his skin crawl as she shouted her litany of abuse: hold it over the fire, hold it under water, beat it, pierce its skin with an iron blade, and so forth.

After he returned home with the water that day, he sloshed half of it when he slammed the bucket on their kitchen table. Hunith and Merlin looked over to him, wide-eyed, from their game of "Where's Stuffy?" Merlin's three-toothed smile fell, and Balinor struggled to keep his voice level so as not to frighten Merlin further when he told Hunith, "I don't care if she's bleeding to death on our doorstep, we can't let Old Ann in here anymore."

After he rehashed Old Ann's words, Hunith white-facedly agreed. Every day after that she would knock on Old Ann's door in the morning to see if there was anything she needed for the day, and would return looking worn out much later than the time it would take for Ann to answer that question. Whenever Ann came over later anyways, she was firmly sent home and told to wait until the morning from the other side of their closed door.

Old Ann was probably regaling the other villagers with awful explanations for Hunith's sudden coldness towards her, but Balinor hoped that in the recent vein of things such words would be regarded as malcontented gossip.

It all came to a head mid-January when Hunith came back from her daily check-up on Old Ann tear-faced. Balinor's heart jumped to his throat, before Hunith burst out despondently, "She's dead!"

Balinor didn't react for a moment, but his confusion must have shown on his face. Aside from her old age, Old Ann was perfectly healthy. "She was still in bed, and when I went to wake her she wasn't breathing. I'm supposed to be the healer, but I never even noticed there was anything wrong with her! I've been so cold to her recently, when she was only trying to help in her own misguided way. Now I'll never have a chance to make things better between us."

Balinor drew his wife into an embrace, rubbing her back as he muttered soothing reassurances to her about how Old Ann was old and there was nothing she could have done, these things happen eventually, and that she had been a good neighbour for years. All the while he wondered guiltily if it made him a horrible person to feel nothing but relief at the unexpected death of a little old woman.

He didn't attend her funeral, opting to stay home with Merlin instead, and so it was only when Hunith came back pinched faced that he heard what occurred there.

"It was after the service ended," she said bouncing Merlin up and down in her arms while she paced agitatedly. Merlin pulled at the skin of her thin face with spread out fingers, as though trying to bunch up her cheeks in her usual smile. "Everyone was filing away from the grave, and then suddenly Simmons bursts out that it wasn't natural, the way she died all of a sudden. He said Merlin cursed her for speaking out against him."

Balinor wondered why it felt so shocking that their troubles were not over, when he thought he knew that ignorance and fear were not just present in the heart of only one old woman. "Did anyone listen?"

Even though Hunith shook her head, his worry didn't go away. Blurred faces overlapped in his memory, looking at his kind with nothing but suspicion and quick to blame any ills they didn't understand on the people who they also didn't understand. Kind strangers who offered him shelter for the night handing him his bag with faces of stone. Parents drawing away their children and hurling abuse – verbal or physical – at their retreating backs.

And Uther Pendragon, so driven by ignorant hatred he blinded himself to anything that didn't conform to the cleanly divided line between black and white he'd drawn for them all. His willingness to commit the most despicable acts under the banner of vanquishing evil was not such an anomaly as it seemed. In the end, Uther was merely had the power to enforce his will; there were plenty of people within and outside his borders who'd eagerly leaped to their feet at his call to arms without caring a fig about who really killed Queen Ygraine.

There was darkness in every human heart, only waiting for fear to draw it out.

But despite his worries, the situation outside their walls seemed to have stabilized with Old Ann's death. Inside their walls, however, the situation was rapidly deteriorating from the fragile calm they'd reached.

In hindsight, he should have seen what the implication of Merlin's improving aptitude at games like peek-a-book and "Where's Stuffy" meant for his developing mind. Nonetheless, the first things he felt were befuddlement and confusion when one morning before dawn he was woken by blood-curling shrieks from inside the cradle.

Within seconds he was moving. He snatched the baby up, feeling warm liquid seep against his shirt as Merlin thrashed in his arms. Beside him he could hear Hunith fumbling frantically for a candlestick. With a whispered word he lit it, and she jumped forwards to aim the light on their still shrieking baby.

The front of Balinor's off-white nightshirt was flecked with red splotches, and a thin trail of blood trickled from Merlin's right hand. Hunith raced for the bandages and he gently pried open the tense fist, revealing a straight slice down the palm that could only have been made with a sharp edge. He held him still and whispered words of healing while Hunith cleaned the wound and wrapped it. Merlin's screams died down to soft whimpers as both methods took effect. He buried his face against Balinor's chest, fisting his shirt with his uninjured hand, tiny body trembling.

Hunith looked nearly as shaken as Merlin when she asked, "What happened?"

Worldlessly, Balinor shook his head to show he had no idea. Something glinting in the cradle caught his eye, and every muscle in his body stiffened at what he saw there. The meat cleaver lay on the thin bedding, surrounded by red speckles staining the sheet and red drops running down the sharp edge, pooling at the tip.

Beside him Hunith's breath hitched, and the candle light was abruptly taken away as she spun on her heel towards where all the objects deemed dangerous were hidden out of sight under the shawl sacrificed for the duty.

The shawl was pushed back as though it was rumpled bedding someone had wriggled out of.

"Object permanence," Hunith said in horrible realization, a whispered self-reproach. "Merlin's old enough to know now that those things don't stop existing just because he can't see them."

Merlin's fist tightened at his name, recognizing it, and Balinor wondered at their foolish assumption that a cloth would continue deterring him from summoning the dangerous things beneath. They'd gotten careless; the months of living with the shawl as insurance against magical accidents gave them a false sense of security. Just because he wasn't capable of moving on his own or speaking yet didn't mean Merlin wasn't learning more about the world day by day. Of course one day he would realize that the unexplored things that disappeared under the shawl didn't disappear at all, they were still sitting there waiting for him to call over to play with.

"It could have been worse," that was not a relief, but a bleak statement of a terrible truth. It could have been much worse, fatal even.

If Merlin had chosen to summon one of the little objects and choked, they wouldn't have known anything was wrong until they woke after the sun rose to a cold body in the cradle. They were lucky he had taken an interest in the knife, and what did that even say about their lives when they were lucky that their seven-month-old sliced open his palm?

"We'll have to hide them better," Hunith said desperately, eyes open wide but without giving her more understanding of her surroundings.

"Where?" Balinor couldn't hide the bitterness in his voice. If they lived among people they could trust it would be easy enough; they'd keep it at a friend's house. They could even keep it in Old Ann's empty cottage, if they didn't have to worry about their unexplainable frequent trips back and forth rousing the suspicions of the other villagers so soon after Simmon's pronouncement. "Everything we have is kept in one room. Even if we had a locked box, how could we be sure that a couple months from now he won't be able to bypass the lock?"

"Then we'll get rid of it all." Her sleep dishevelled hair and wide eyes made her look a little mad. She was too frantic and sleep-deprived to think her words through. "Bury it in the woods."

"We can't live without knives to cut our food."

The truth of those words silenced her for a minute. An idea formed in his mind. "What about the animal shelter?"

Whereas most villagers took their animals into their homes at night, Hunith kept hers in a separate smaller building leaning against the main cottage. She'd explained to him that living in such close proximity to animals caused some of the most dangerous diseases, so after she'd returned to Ealdor one of the first things she did was make a permanent year-round structure to house them in. It was generally regarded as a tolerated quirk of Hunith's by the villagers, brought on by too much education and not enough time spent with good sensible farming folk during her impressionable years. No one would think anything of it if Hunith and Balinor entered and left the building several times a day; they did it anyways to feed and clean out the animals.

So they gathered up everything that was no longer safe in the same building as Merlin and deposited them in there, atop a barrel of feed. Balinor went to fetch wood for a proper shelf and worked on it outside, not wanting to draw Merlin's attention to his tools which were definitely not for summoning. Inside he could hear the soft sound of Hunith singing her lullaby, distracting Merlin from both his pain and thoughts of things no longer hidden under her shawl. The sooner he forgot they ever existed, the better.

The unspoken fear of the day when Merlin discovered the world outside the walls of their house and even doors wouldn't protect him weighed on their minds. They could only hope that when that day came, he'd be old enough to understand what would be fun to play with and what would hurt him.

Outside, the seasons progressed until Balinor was taken away from them by planting season. The weather warmed, and already it must seem strange again that their shutters were constantly shut, but how could they open them when toys danced through the air in front of Merlin's glowing eyes?

Less and less people were coming to Hunith for help, perhaps deterred by the unavoidable unwelcoming air they carried towards everyone. Even Hunith shoved them out the door as quickly as she could, before Merlin lost interest in whatever distraction she'd given him. Their reduced number of visitors meant less chance of exposure, but he felt in his bones that the growing gulf between them and the rest of the village would bring troubles of its own in the future.

The weight of trying to protect his new family from people his wife counted as friends was crushing. But whenever it felt like he was slowly being suffocated, something would lift him out of the dirt where he was sinking to his knees.

As happened one typical morning when Hunith was holding Merlin while he was saying goodbye before heading to the fields. He gave her a peck on the lips then planted a kiss on Merlin's brow. She raised one of Merlin's hands, waving back and forth, as she cooed,

"It's bye-bye time. Time to say bye-bye to Daddy. Can Merlin say, 'bye-bye'?"

"Bye-bye," Merlin repeated, big blue eyes focused on his father. He echoed again, "Bye-bye."

The two parents exchanged a shocked look; Merlin hadn't responded to any of their promptings before. At his age, even a distinctive mumma or dada that wasn't part of a longer string of baby gibberish would be impressive.

Hunith laughed, tickling Merlin's sides and getting him to let out peels of giggling baby laughter. "Yeah! Who's a smart little man? Can you can it again? Say 'bye-bye Daddy'?"

"Bye-bye," Merlin repeated, smiling as though it was all a great game, looking up expectantly at his mother to now do her part.

By the time he came home in the evening Hunith had gotten Merlin to point to her and say triumphantly Mumma! then wait to be lavished with praise. A few evening sessions later and he was exclaiming Dada! From there the idea of one object meriting one string of sounds seemed to click. In the following weeks he labelled his stuffed toy frog tahtah, his wooden dragon teether was also dada which caused quite a few instances of confusion, the mash of porridge they gave him was pohpoh, his rattle was wahwah, and so forth for the ever increasing assortment of everyday objects in the life of Merlin that were deemed important enough to merit a special name. By the next start of the moon cycle he'd moved on to names for actions as well as concrete objects. If he wanted to be picked up he'd yell up-up, to be put down he'd demanded dow-dow, and for both eating and drinking he used mm-mm.

One day Balinor opened the door to see Hunith crouched a few feet from Merlin, determinedly holding onto his toy frog which was straining to leap out of her fingers and towards Merlin. She was saying in frustration badly hidden in an attempt at encouragement, "No, Stuffy doesn't want to go there, he wants you to come here, Merlin."

"Tahtah!" Merlin screamed tearfully. He was just as frustrated as his mother and made no attempt to hide it. His teary eyes fixed on Balinor's, as though imploring him to explain why his mother was being so inexplicably mean.

Loose strands of hair escaping from her headscarf fell limply across her face. She explained exhaustedly, "He's been doing so well at speech, I thought it was time he learned to crawl. I tried leaving a few toys just out of his reach, but, well…"

But Merlin didn't need to strain forwards to get his toys when it was easier to make them come to him instead.

The frog cleared Hunith's pinky, straining at the tips of her other fingers. With a triumphant noise from Merlin, it broke free and sailed straight into his skinny little arms. He hugged it to his chest, looking suspiciously at his mother as if she would sweep in and steal it from him.

Hunith fell back, wiping the hair out of her face and groaning with frustration. Both of them were a pitiable sight. "Maybe we should leave it for now," Balinor said cautiously, looking between the two red-faced members of his family collapsed on the floor. "He'll pick it up when he's ready."

"Will he?" Hunith asked rhetorically, elaborating in frustrated concern, "Babies crawl to explore their environment, to get at things they can't reach. Merlin doesn't need to move, anything he wants just comes to him!"

Out of everything they had feared, problems in Merlin's normal baby development hadn't been one of them. Now it seemed so obvious they couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to them he had no incentive to develop his motor skills.

In the next months they tried nailing his toys to the floor, placing him in crawling position, getting down on their hands and knees to teach crawling by example, and sitting just out of his reach stealing their hearts against his heartbreaking cries of Mumma! Dada! His speech progressed at a phenomenal rate so that short sentences like Mahwin do up or Dada do bye-bye were normal, but he remained as immobile as ever.

Around the time of his first birthday, when they were beginning to despair of him ever learning to crawl, he proved their concerns right in an unexpected way.

He'd recently developed a habit of copying whatever they did. If Hunith rolled bread, he magicked over the rolling pin and made the same motions. If Balinor lit a candle, Merlin copied the motions as best his limited dexterity allowed. The only thing he didn't try and copy was the crawling.

While they were eating dinner, Hunith realized she had forgotten the salt and stood up to get some. Merlin mimicked her, falling head first from his chair in the uncoordinated motion. Balinor lunged forward, but Merlin froze mid-air half a foot off the ground, lowering slowly onto his stomach. He pushed himself into sitting position, accepting the strange occurrence with the easiness only small children have towards the new.

Hunith returned, raising her eyebrow at Merlin's position on the ground, apparently not having seen what happened. She set the salt on the table and turned to Balinor, probably intending to ask about it.

The salt shaker flew into Merlin's hands, distracting both Hunith and Balinor. Merlin reached towards the table and waved his arms impotently in the air when he could not reach it, spilling salt everywhere. Frowning, he looked around in intense contemplation, before his eyes settled on the chair he'd fallen off.

He grabbed the chair leg, and Balinor quickly put a hand on the seat to stop it from tipping. Merlin's face was screwed with effort as he pulled himself upright, teetering unsteadily on his feet as he looked over the top of the chair. He slammed the salt shaker on the seat, looking on proudly as it overbalanced and fell, sprinkling little white grains everywhere. Grinning his gap-toothed grin in pleasure, he let go of the chair leg and fell to his bottom.

Balinor grinned like a madman as he dusted the grains into his hand, and Hunith scooped Merlin up, rubbing their noses together while she showered him with praise. "Good boy, Merlin, good boy. Who's my smart baby? Who can stand up now?"

Merlin looked back and forth between them, obviously not expecting such as enthusiastic reaction. "Down! Mahwin do down!"

Hunith placed him back on the floor, and once again the salt shaker sailed into his hand. His gaze fixed on his parents, Merlin pulled himself up again, slamming the salt shaker onto his chair. His face shone as he bathed in their compliments, and he pulled himself up again, and again. Dinner lay forgotten on the table as they played the fun new game.

After settling in for the night, Hunith and Balinor spoke while Merlin lay sleeping between them. "It doesn't matter so much if he doesn't crawl, right?" she was saying, still excited by the day's milestone. "Pulling himself up is the first step towards walking, which is what he's really going to need to be able to do all his life."

Balinor murmured an agreement, and their conversation meandered, reflecting on all they'd been through in the past year.

It had been full of ups and downs, joy and anxiety, but Balinor wouldn't trade it for anything. It reminded him of climbing mountains. The trials of the journey up made standing on the peak so much more rewarding. He'd look back to where he'd come from which was smaller from afar and fading into the distance, and say to himself, that's where I was then, and here I am now.

But the best part about standing at the summit wasn't the journey to get there, or the feeling of exhilaration at being there at last. It was seeing places he hadn't been before on the horizon and knowing that though there were more mountains to climb ahead just as he got through this one, so he could get through those still to come.

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* If you want to hear Hunith's lullaby, google "Judy Collins - Gaelic Lullaby".

* This chapter should be called "12 months in 9000 words or less!" Ugh.

* To clarify, Merlin wasn't some angelic saint newborn who hardly cried because of the pureness of his heart. He didn't need to cry for everything because he could influence his environment in other ways.

* This chapter took a lot of outside inspiration because I know nothing about parenthood. So I'd like to acknowledge: babycentre dot co .uk, a visit from my cousin, and the songs He's My Son by Mark Schultz and Cinderella by Steven Curtis Chapman.

**/