And Taliesin was there.
He sat frozen in the motion of setting aside his harp, his face pale as though he looked on an apparition. At his feet was old Hoyw, as tousled as ever, brown eyes peering through the hair that fell across them as he lifted his head. Sitting across from the bard was an Indian woman whose features were vaguely familiar. Her hair was jet black, braided with beads like the yellow-haired man’s, and she wore a dress of white doeskin, decorated with shells and more beadwork. Over her shoulders was a brightly colored blanket worn like a shawl. On her knee was a small drum.
The room itself, undivided by walls, felt spacious. Along one wall was a wooden table, with clayware stacked on it, and cloak pegs at one-foot intervals, most of which had blankets or furs dangling from them. A large window overlooked the clifftop and the sea. The wall behind Taliesin and the woman was taken up by a large hearth. They sat on piles of bearskins scattered in front of it.
Sara felt a touch on her arm, started, then allowed the bearded giant by the door to help her rise. Taliesin finished laying aside his harp and stood, hands open at his side. The woman looked from him to Sara with an enigmatic smile.
“Are you a ghost, then, Sara?” Taliesin asked finally.
“No ghost,” the man beside her said. “There’s flesh on her limbs, brother, though something’s put the fear of Wodan into her.”
“A . . . ghost?” Sara mumbled. “What do you mean?”
“I’d not thought to see you again,” the bard said. “I’d thought you gone—never to return.”
The woman across from him laughed in a teasing manner at that. Taliesin frowned at her, then looked back at Sara. “It has been a year since last we met.”
“A year?” Sara was stunned. “But I just left you yesterday.”
“Time is a strange thing in the Otherworld,” Taliesin said.
That seemed to be the consensus, Sara thought. She looked from him to the woman, feeling awkward. What had she expected, though. To be greeted like a long-lost friend?
“Enough,” the woman said suddenly. Laying aside her drum, she stood up and opened her arms in welcome. “They have lived too long like wolves, these two, to know anything of manners. My name is May’is’hyr—Summer-Heart. The man beside you is my husband Hagan Hrolf-get. I bid you welcome to our lodge. Though its walls be earth-bone more than wood, and no totem hangs above its door, it still belongs to Mother Bear, and in her lodge, no guest is unwelcome . . . do they come as friend or foe, in early morn or on the Night of Hunting Spirits.”
Sara knew who the woman reminded her of now. Ha’kan’ta—the Moose Girl of the Wild Woods, she thought light-headedly. The man at the door looked like a Viking. Join them with a Welsh bard and herself and what did you end up with? A very weird mixture, that was what.
“Come,” Hagan said. “The night’s left you shivering. It’s warm by the fire. There’s food and drink enough, so don’t be shy.”
They were both being friendly—May’is’hyr and the Viking. But it was the distance she sensed in Taliesin that put her on edge.
“If I’m intruding . . .” she began in a small voice.
“Drum-brother,” May’is’hyr said to Taliesin, “if you do not speak her kindly now you will be forever lessened in my eyes.”
Taliesin shook his head as though coming out of a trance.
“I’d not thought it would work. . . .” he began, paused, then only looked at Sara who was standing just a few feet from him now; and suddenly the strangeness ran from him like water from an otter’s fur. He smiled and his whole face lit up. “I missed you,” he said simply, enfolding her in his arms.
Sara stiffened at his touch. The initial distance, coupled with this sudden warmth left her confused. But as the long fingers of his left hand tousled her curls and he bent his face close to hers, the tension ebbed and she returned the embrace, understanding that, for all that they knew so little of each other, there was something deep inside each of them that recognized a kindred spirit in the other.
“So like a singer,” Sara heard May’is’hyr say softly. “They meet like shadows on a ghostly shore—meet and part and he yearns for her like a lovestruck youth in one of his own songs. But when they meet. . . . Where now are the golden words and heart truths he sang to us for a year and a day?”
Sara felt Taliesin smile against her cheek.
“It’s true,” he said. “I am a bard and should know by now how to fit words to my feelings, but when I saw you at the door tonight, when you answered the call we sent out and truly came, my tongue went numb. I looked for you for a year, luckless as a ’prentice without a master, and shaped our meeting in my mind. It would go so. I would say this and you would do that. But now . . .”
His arms tightened and then he stepped back to look her in the eye. “Do you understand?”
“It was a year for you,” she said slowly, “but only a day or so for me. I thought of you a lot, but . . . not like this.”
He started to take his hands from her shoulders, but she covered them with her own.
“I’m not saying I don’t like it,” she said.
And then she had a terrible thought. Both times she’d been with him before, she’d been drawn back, drawn away. Something of what she was feeling must have showed in her features, for Taliesin asked:
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to go back,” she said. “At least not right away. But I never seem to have any choice.”
“This time you have a choice,” he said quickly. “Before you were like a phantom—in a time not your own. I remember thinking you were one of Gwyn ap Nudd’s people; you were like gossamer, for all that I could touch you then and gift you with this.” He lifted the collar of her cloak with a finger. “But this time your presence feels strong—though how or why that might be, I can’t explain. Perhaps it is because we called you to us, with drum and harp, on this night. I only know that if you went back now, you would be a ghost in your own time.”
The relief she’d started to feel washed away and a strange feeling arose from his words. If she went back? To stay here forever? What about Jamie and the House, Blue and Julie . . . ? She pressed her face against his shoulder, not really knowing what she wanted, except to be held for a while. There’d be time enough to try to understand it all later.
“Where went the music, then?” Hagan asked gruffly. “Outside the spirits run wild. Will we let them in, or will we play them away?”
My’is’hyr stared daggers at him, then understood that his sudden brusqueness was not without purpose. These two might break their bond before it was woven by the intensity of what they were experiencing. Better to eat and drink and talk of ordinary things awhile. Better to drum a sense of normalcy before the wild of the night settled too deeply in all their souls.
“Kha,” she said softly, finding a seat in the furs. She picked up her drum and tapped out a rhythm. Sara and Taliesin stepped apart, stood awkwardly a moment, then sat down together, not touching, but close enough if the need to touch arose.
“Are you hungry?” Hagan boomed. “Do you thirst?”
“A little,” Sara said, then realized she was famished.
“Good, good! There’s stew left, and ale—though it’s strong, mind you, so sip it before you gulp it!”
He grinned at her through his beard. His good humor was contagious and Sara found herself grinning back.
Then, while Sara ate and took small sips of the home-brewed ale, Taliesin and May’is’hyr began to play once more. The harp and drum complemented one another. May’is’hyr’s rhythms were complicated and didn’t so much support the melodies as add harmonies to them. Hagan played Taliesin’s small six-holed whistle. The small instrument looked incongruous in his hands and reminded Sara of Blue with his watercolors.
When Sara finished her stew, she took her guitar from its case. She couldn’t play along with every piece, but she played when she could and felt very much at home and amongst friends.
She’d catch Taliesin’s eye in the midst of a tune and feel again that tingle of recognition leap between them, but it came easily and didn’t need to be thought about. All thoughts of danger, all confusion, dissolved away. For now, it was for now, only for the moment. She knew there were people worrying about her, but hoped that they’d understand. How could they not? Jamie and Blue and Julie . . . If they could be here . . .
By the time the music stilled, she was happily content, drowsy from the ale and the excitement and ready for sleep. The strangeness of the night outside the tower was a far and distant thing. If terrors had been lurking out there, the music and its magic had long since soothed or driven them away.
They made their way upstairs in a laughing party. There was one moment of panic when Sara wasn’t sure where she was going to sleep but May’is’hyr showed her to her own bundle of furs and Taliesin, after tucking her in and kissing her goodnight, made his way to his own bed. Sara fell asleep almost before her head touched the rolled-up blanket that served for her pillow.
While the others drifted into sleep, Taliesin sat by a window and stared out into the night. On such a night she had returned to him, he thought, wondering at the omen of its timing. A day or so for her, a year for him. But on tonight of all nights. Tonight spirits hunted, the wild awoke and roamed the land, thin-limbed quin’on’a and mischievous honochen’o’keh, the manitous, and beings grimmer still—devils and tragg’a, marshcreepers and cedar gaunts. All the denizens of the Middle Kingdom, light and dark and grey. And ghosts.
Sara came from a land as strange as any manitous’. So what did that make her? Where the drum-magic and harpspells had kept the other spirits at bay, it had drawn Sara to them. As Mayis had said it would.
In the sky over the sea he saw a quarter moon lifting her horns from the grey waters, though the moon had set hours ago. He knew then that the sleep the others had found would not be his tonight. Not until he walked the night himself.
He cast a last glance around the chamber where the others were sleeping, looked on their slumbering faces with envy, then sighed and arose to go downstairs. He paused for neither harp nor cloak, went out to meet the night, his heart drumming to the tempo of the dark air, walking through stands of spruce and cedar until he came to the tall pointed stone that marked Mayis’s Glade of Study. Rathe’feyn, she called this place. The Moon’s-Stone-Bear. Here she woke her magics, here they’d exchanged knowledges, and here one night he’d met his own horned grandsire, as easily as though no ocean had separated them from their homeland of the Green Isles.
Tonight he stood alone, his back to the Bearstone and his gaze searching the shadows that lay in amongst the pines, waiting for the one he knew would come. A trembling touched the air, soft as a breath across the strings of his harp. The scent of pine resin and sea were swallowed by the heady odor of apple blossoms, rich and pungent as they are in the spring. Sometimes his grandsire came in the shape of Taliesin’s own craftfather—old Myrddin, black hair greying, but still tied back at the nape of his neck, golden eyes deep with dreaming. And sometimes he was the Green Man in a cloak of oak leaves and mistletoe, face like a fox, narrow and brown. Tonight he came as a stag, brow heavy with twelve-pointed antlers, his reddish-brown coat gleaming in the starlight, his eyes heavy with riddles.
Are you content? he asked the bard.
Taliesin inclined his head respectfully. Content indeed.
You asked for even an hour in her company. I will give you a handful of days. Are you still content?
Still content.
The stag’s riddling eyes smiled, but held a shade of sorrow in their depths. Will it be enough? he asked.
Taliesin shook his head. How can it be enough? It will not be enough until we walk the fields of the Summer Country together with nothing to sunder us.
She has far and very far to go until that day, the stag replied. Will you wait all those years for her?
If I must.
So be it. I chased the moon’s shadow for a hundred hundred years before I learned my wisdom. Can I deny you your right at playing the fool for your own moonheart?
Taliesin said nothing.
So be it, the stag repeated. Cherish your time together, for sundered you must be again. You must send her into danger, son of my son. You must be her Ceridwen’s Cauldron and fill her with all the world’s knowledge. You must let her earn her place, show her worth. Are you strong enough to watch her strive and suffer and not lend a hand?
If I must.
The stag sighed and the forest stirred with his breath.
You must, he said softly, or all will be for naught and she will need to begin her journey again. But what of you? Will you come with me, or will you bide and wait for her?
I will wait.
Again the stag sighed. You will die in this land, son of my son. What will keep the moon in your taw when you are shimmering in an Afterworld of Drumming Thunder? What if she loses her path on the Way and leaves you stranded there, forever and always? What if she fails? What will sustain you then?
My love.
Aye. Your love. So did your father bide in stone for a woman’s love; so did I in my own time. Do we tread an endless circle? Must the son always do as the father, as the father’s father did?
I will wait for her, Taliesin said simply. What else can I do?
Aye. And I will wait for you. So be it. Share your Cauldron with her then, son of my son, that we need wait no longer than we must. But speak not to her of what must be done. Leave that for her to riddle on her own or all the worth of her striving will be undone.
Will you go to her? Taliesin asked.
No need. Her journey is already begun.
As subtly as he had appeared, the stag was gone, and Taliesin stood alone once more. The crag of Mayis’s Bearstone pointed skyward behind his back and all around he sensed the spirits of the night, loosed in the sound of wind and creak of tree, brush of leaf against leaf, wing against air, soft padding in the needled carpet.
He thought of Sara, of how he’d first met her that night on the shore when she’d come to him like a fey ghost, how she’d filled his heart. He had been old when he’d left Gwynedd’s shores, grown young again as he journeyed by sea to these other shores that his drum-kin named Where-the-Land-Ends. Oh, yes. But through all those years, he’d never experienced the thing that filled him now.
Whether this love was to be returned or not, it did not change what must be done. For that love, for what she’d woken in him, he would give her the Summer Country. She could accept it or not, as she wished. With or without him. The only dowry she must bring to those old hallowed hills was herself. And that dowry was not due to him or his summer kin, but to that Region of Summer Stars itself.
Already she sought it. Long before he’d met her, she’d sought it. It was in her blood, the blood of her forefathers. He sensed that, sensed as well that like them she had reached, without understanding what it was she sought, without being able to put a name to that for which she yearned. But now, because of the gift she had given him, the wonder she’d woken all unknowing in him, he would gift her with that very thing she yearned for: the Summer Country.
The journey was hard, but she had strength enough. And the reward. . . . Was there anything more precious than to be whole? To know the whole of the tune that only echoed faintly in one’s heart until one reached the Summer Country?
The stag’s first query returned to him as he retraced his steps back to the round tower. Content? Yes, he was content. For had she not returned to him?
Sara was standing in the doorway when he reached the tower, her slender frame and head of tousled curls outlined by the firelight that spilled from within. Taliesin paused a half dozen feet from her, confusion stealing across the calmness that filled him only moments before.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I kept dreaming you were a stag. Not a real one—a man with an antlered brow.” She shivered. “I’ve dreamed that before—about you and the shaman. H
e was a bear and you were a stag. In that dream something horrible came and tried to take me away then—Kieran’s demon, I suppose.”
“There are no demons here,” Taliesin said.
“I know. The night’s alive with . . . spirits, I guess. But they don’t come near here. Something keeps them away. But I can sense them just beyond the clearing. Are they always there?”
“Yes. But only tonight do they hunt.”
Sara shivered again. “That’s what I was dreaming about tonight. Hunting. You were a stag-man and you were hunting the moon. You weren’t going to hurt it. . . . How could anyone hurt the moon?” She smiled awkwardly. “But you kept chasing it.”
Taliesin was astounded at her intuition. “And then?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Then nothing. I woke up. I looked around and saw that you weren’t there. I thought maybe you’d gone downstairs, so I came down to talk to you, but you weren’t there either. Where did you go?”
“To meet a stag who caught his moon.”
Sara laughed. “That’s the way a bard would answer me. Or a wizard. Always in riddles. I suppose I should’ve expected it. Am I supposed to guess what that means?” Before he could answer, she shook her head. “Never mind. I want to ask you something else. What do you see in me, Taliesin? I mean, I’m nobody special. So what do you see in me?”
She’d been thinking about it ever since she’d woken up and she had to know, even though it was a difficult question for her to ask. The words came out in a rush, fed by her own confused emotions.
Taliesin stepped close to her and took her by the hand. “I see the moon,” he said, “soft stepping this clifftop and smiling at me. I see the Huntress cast off her war cloak of black feathers and welcome me instead with a maiden’s eyes. I see the fairest flower that ever graced the Summer Country, escaped from its borders and blooming in your heart. I see you, Sara, and with you I feel like the gangly country boy I was before Myrddin took me in.”