I have a song to sing-o!
Sing me your song-o.
~ Gilbert & Sullivan

XVI.
Telmar
The Thirty-Fourth Year of Chief Belisan

"Drake of Narnia?" said Peter.

"I do not know," said Lady Gree. "I know the tale from my mother as she heard it from her father."

"What tale have you?" said Lucy.

The woman smiled. "I know a tale. Shall any listen? That was how my grandfather began his stories. It is the tale of my family."

"We listen," said Lucy. "Tell us your tale."

"A hundred summers and winters ago, Glen son of Drake came over the mountains from Archenland with Lark his bride and Bram her elder brother. Glen was a man of brawn and bravery, Lark a girl of youth and beauty. Her brother Bram was a silent man with thoughts of his own. Together they built this cabin and bought a cow from the Chief, who was then a great-grandfather of Uvilas and called by the same name. Not long after, Lark gave birth to a son, and they named him Olvin, for a great hero in their land."

"Olvin of Archenland," said Peter.

"Do you know the story?" said the lady. "We have forgotten it, and remember only that he was a hero."

"Should say he was. He was an Archenlander. He killed the Giant Pire, who had carried off King Clive's daughter Liln, Princess of Narnia, and won her hand in marriage."

"Ah," said Gree. "Someday you must tell me of it. Have you enough salt?"

"Yes, thank you," said Lucy. "Please go on."

"In those days, Telmar was prosperous, for much snow fell in the winter and watered the land. Glen bred his cow, and she calved, and he began to build a herd. Young Olvin was weaned, and his mother yearned for a second son, as was the custom of her land. Her belly swelled with the ripening wheat, and she reaped a son in the dead of winter, but he did not live through the night.

"Five children did she bear, and only Olvin and his girl-sibling Olive lived more than a day, but the herd of cattle grew, and Glen got good harvest from his fields of wheat and alfalfa. So Lark grew marrow-sick with grief. In her sadness she quarreled with her brother Bram, and he dressed for the mountains, took his bow, and went west to hunt, but he did not return.

"Olvin grew tall and strong like his father, and he preferred to wander in the mountains and seek the legendary buffalo with his bow and quiver than to sit at home and watch the buckwheat grow. His sister Olive glided behind him like a shadow, learning the wood-signs; soon she grew to be a greater tracker than he and nearly as good with a bow. Long they searched for the buffalo, the great beast said to live in the mountains and to be as great as a mountain himself. But at home, Lark their mother, pined, and she chose a wife for Olvin from among the people of Telmar—a slender, fair-haired girl like herself, whose name was Arla.

"Olvin loved the mountains and his bow, and he spent little time in the company of women besides his sister, but he married the girl to please his mother, for his father insisted. Arla bore a son, and Olvin fled again to the mountains with Olive gliding silently behind him. After some months, he returned for a brief time, but soon departed again. Three sons did his wife bear in four years, and perhaps a year in all was he at home.

"Olvin's father, Glen, fed Arla and her and sons out of his own plenty, but whenever Olvin returned to the mountains his father would reproach and his mother would rail. Silently, his sister at his shoulder, he would listen. And then he would take up his bow and go away again. The third time, he did not come back for two summers and winters. His youngest son, born some months after he left, began to walk, and Olvin's wife and parents thought him dead.

"Then at last, when the buckwheat was ripe, Olvin and Olive walked down out of the mountains, carrying packs of dried meat and between them, a horned and shaggy head. They had found the buffalo, in the plains on the far side of the mountain, and they had killed it. 'There are more,' they said. 'Hundreds of buffalo, rolling away like a black cloud on the plains.' But the people of Telmar had no interest in hunting buffalo. 'We have cattle,' they said. 'Why should we climb the mountains to hunt buffalo?'

"Olvin's father Glen took him out in the fields, and showed him the cattle and the wheat. 'I grow old, and all this will soon be yours,' said he. 'You have killed your buffalo. Now let the marrow of your bones be at peace and learn to farm.' So Olvin went with his father, and studied the cattle and the wheat, and when his father died he lived as a farmer. His sons grew. His mother grew old, and cantankerous. And his wife gave birth to a daughter, whom he named Arla after her mother. Often he looked at the horns of the buffalo which hung on his wall, and he sighed for the free life of the mountains, but no more did he go hunting with his sister, and he lived out his days in quietness."

XVII.
England
The Fifth Year of King Edward VII

In the parsonage of Little Sunbury that Saturday morning, the vicar's wife went into her guest room and looked at the little boy curled in the covers at the foot of the bed. Colin usually appeared in the spring with lost or wounded baby animals, but this year's assortment of squirrel, raccoon, kittens, and puppies had all grown, recovered, and gone on, either back to the wild or to homes among her husband's parishioners. Recently, they had taken in a half-grown, injured tom cat—Stripetail. As a middle-aged vicar's wife, Susie wasn't fazed by overnight guests or homeless wanderers, but this boy—the three-year-old who named the cat, crawled under the tablecloth, didn't know how to say his prayers, and slept burrowed into the bedclothes—she didn't know quite what to make of him.

"Good morning, dear. Did you sleep well?"

A little freckled face poked out of the covers, topped with longish, tangled brown hair. "G'mornin', Aunt Thuthie."

"Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, thankee." He crawled out of the tangle of blankets, clutching his frayed stuffed lion, and padded after her into the kitchen, where he happily consumed scrambled eggs and muffins with milk, again sharing the milk with the cat. Unsanitary, probably, but she ignored it and contented herself with periodic questions about the boy's family, home, life—anything she could think of. While she did the washing-up, he told her at length about a lion with some foreign name who had made "ever'fing and Fwank" and who lived across the sea with his father. The lion's father, not the boy's father.

He was obviously an imaginative boy, but she couldn't decide whether he had an entire clan of imaginary playmates or whether the relatives who cared for him had constructed an elaborate game like something out of the Jungle Book. It was his entirely-neglected Christian education—what kind of pagan taught that God was a giant lion?—that disturbed her. She resolved to begin him that afternoon on the most basic catechism, after she cut his hair. There were some serviceable clothes in the poor box (he'd been wearing some kind of outlandish Red Indian skins), but further alterations could wait, and she took him with her to work in the garden while it was still cool.

Telling him to go on and play, she turned to see what was to be done, but he tugged her skirt.

"Aunt Thuthie?"

"Yes?"

"Are yo' twees safe?"

He was entirely in earnest, standing there with his hair in his eyes, dragging his stuffed lion by one paw.

"Certainly," she said. "As long as you don't fall out of one and break your leg."

He nodded seriously, and with a "Thankee," ran off.

She went to work bedding down the garden for the winter and thinking. She and Colin had wanted children of their own for years. Susie's younger brother Bill had four children, now all in their teens. Her school friend Mabel's son was nineteen years old, a quiet, studious young man. The good Lord had not so blessed Colin and Susie, and she had contented herself with mothering kittens, puppies, birds, wandering tradesmen, and parishioners. Except for the parishioners, none stayed for long.

She glanced over at Frank, who was several yards away, holding a whispered conference with a rabbit. His hand was on the animal's head in the same oddly formal gesture he had used with Stripetail—who now was stalking the two of them, his belly low in the grass. The cat came too near; the rabbit sprang away; the boy went after the cat and scolded it sternly.

Susie shook her head and went back to work. This carrot was particularly stubborn and didn't want to leave the ground. Frank certainly belonged to somebody—someone was certainly looking for him—three-year-old boys certainly don't appear on church doorsteps without an explanation.

"Good morning!"

Susie looked around. "Oh, good morning, Mrs. Finch. Come right in. Would you like some tea?"

Mrs. Finch, about sixty years of age and Little Sunbury's leading busybody, unlatched the gate and came right in. "Oh, no, I couldn't trouble you. So this is the boy. Vicar called and mentioned you'd picked up a boy you didn't know what to do with and I thought I'd better come and see for myself."

"It's not that we don't know what to do with him, Mrs. Finch, but that we don't know where he belongs."

"I daresay." Mrs. Finch peered at Frank over her spectacles. "Looks healthy enough, though his hair is girlish. What's wrong with him?"

"Nothing's the matter with him, except that his religious education has been neglected and he has quite the imagination."

"Hm! Likely he hasn't been spanked enough. You never know with these foundlings, but the rod certainly will drive the foolishness out of a child."

"It seems quite harmless, really, Mrs. Finch—his imagination, I mean. Do come in and have a spot of tea."

"Don't mind if I do," said the old lady, and they moved toward the house. "I hope, Susan, that you aren't intending to keep the child. Orphans are so unreliable, you know. One can never tell what sort of parents they had."

XVIII.
Telmar

Listening to the story of Peridan's family, Lucy forgot to think about what she was eating, and it gave her a jolt when Gree asked if she wanted more.

"Ye—yes, thank you," said Lucy. "It's lovely. But what happened to Olvin's sister?"

"Oh, she lived with the deer and the elk and the bears more than with people. I believe it was shortly after Arla—the younger Arla—was born that Olive went into the snowy eastern mountains to search for something her Uncle Bram had once told her of, a pure-white stag. She never returned."

Lucy and Peter exchanged a glance.

"That winter, Lark grew sick, and when the snow was deep she died. Glen had loved her fiercely, and by spring he, too, lay still in his bed and his herds and fields were Olvin's to manage."

Lucy made a crooning little sound in her throat.

"They were old, and had lived many winters," said Gree. "Those next years were peaceful ones, and Olvin grew to love his wife Arla as he should. The herds and fields prospered, and all was well. Their sons married girls of their own choosing, and their daughter married a man named Erimon, who had curly black hair, twinkling eyes, and laughter like a spring brook rippling over stones. Soon her belly swelled like ripening wheat, and she reaped a daughter, a tiny little thing, whom she named Gree.

"Sometimes there is peace in Telmar for many summers and winters. Sometimes there is war, and the dry land runs with a cloudburst of blood. There had been peace for several generations, and when I, Gree was nearly fifteen winters old, the war came. Dark men from the south—Calormenes—came bringing gifts, and Chief Uvilas the son of Uvilas welcomed them. But one of his men, Belisan son of Nothor, looked upon the Calormenes with suspicion. Before long, Belisan and Uvilas fought for the Cutlass, and the whole valley was divided with them. Olvin and his sons were on the side of Chief Uvilas, and neighbors whose cows were pastured with Olvin's fought for Belisan. It was a long and bloody struggle, for the Calormenes from the south came to the aid of Chief Uvilas."

"Probably hoped to add Telmar to their Empire," said Peter.

Peridan nodded, and his mother went on.

"At last, Chief Belisan was victorious. He drove the Calormenes back beyond the mountains to the south, and with the edge of the Cutlass he slew Chief Uvilas, King of the Mountains, Captain of the Telmarines and many who had supported him, including Olvin, all Olvin's sons, and Erimon. Arla and Gree he spared, lest his friends call him bloodthirsty, but without their men they could not care for the great herd and the fields, so they sold most of their property and kept only the few cows they could milk themselves.

"Gree wished to marry, but many young men had died in the battles, and the maidens outnumbered the youths. It was ten years before she received an offer of marriage from an old widower named Zardin, and she accepted. Zardin had supported Uvilas, but had been too old and lazy to fight and so had not been killed. Nevertheless, I married him. When I reaped a son I named him Peridan, and when I reaped another I called him Casp."