by Jane Yolen
—Vita Merlini
by Geoffrey of Monmouth
The Wild Child
HE HAD BEEN A long time in the wood, and what speech he still had was interspersed with bird song and the grunting warning of the wild boar. He knew his patch of woodland, every bush of it, and had marked it as his own by letting go short streams on the jumbled, over-ground roots of the tallest trees. Oaks were his favorites, though he had his own name for them.
He caught fish by damming up the little stream, bright silvery fish with spotted backs, scarce a hand’s span long. And he spied on rabbits and baby squirrels when he could find their hidey-holes, and badgers in their setts. At night he could call down owls. Once he had scared a fox off its kill by growling fiercely but he could not eat the remains. And several times a pack of wild dogs forced him off his own dinner to the safety of a tree. They scattered his cache but did not eat it.
Mostly he existed on mushrooms and sweet roots and grasses and wild berries and raw fish which, by some miracle, never made him sick. He was very thin with knobs for knees and elbows like arrow points and scratches all over his body, which was brown everywhere from the sun. His thatch of straight dark hair fell across his face, often obscuring his woods-green eyes.
He had never made a fire and was even a little afraid to, for he thought fire a poor relation to the lightning that felled trees and left glowing embers over which he had several times roasted his fish. He feared fire, but he did not worship it. If he worshipped anything, it was the trees that sheltered him, fed him, gave him a high resting from the fiercest beasts.
He was eight years old.
The whole time he had lived alone in the woods came to one easy winter, one very wet spring, one mild summer, and one brilliant fall, but for an eight year old that is a good portion of a lifetime. It is certainly a long part of memory. What he could recall of his past life and how he had come to the forest made him uneasy, and he remembered it mostly at night in dreams.
He remembered a smoky hearth and a hand slapping his because he was holding a large joint of meat. However hard he tried, he could not recall who had slapped him. That was not a bad dream though. He remembered the taste of the meat before the slap and it was good.
He remembered sitting atop a great beast, so broad his legs stuck out straight to either side. And he could still feel three or four hands holding him up, steadying him on the animal’s back. Each hand had a gold band on the next-to-last finger. And that was a good dream, too. He could still recall the animal’s musty smell, especially if the tree he slept in held the memory of its previous occupant strongly.
But the other dreams were bad.
There was the dream of the two dragons, one red and one white, sleeping in hollow stones, who woke when he looked at them. That dream ended horribly in fire, and he could hear the screams of someone being slowly burned to death. The smell was not so different from the smell of the small hare he had found charred under the roots of a lightning-struck tree.
There was the dream of lying within a circle of great stones that danced around him, faster and faster, until they made a blurry gray wall that held him in. Awake, he avoided rocky outcroppings, preferring to sleep in trees rather than in caves. The hollow of an oak was safer than the great, dark, hollow mouths that opened into the hills.
And there was the dream of a man and a sword. Sometimes the man pointed the sword at him, sometimes he held it away. But the sword’s blade was like a silvery river in which many wonderful and fearful things swam: dragons, knights on horseback, ladies lying in barges, and the most awful of all, a beautiful woman with long, dark hair and bare arms, who beckoned and sang to him with a mouth that was black and tongueless.
He could not stop the dreams from coming, but he had learned how to force himself to wake before he was caught forever. In the dream, he pushed his hands together, crossed his forefingers, and said his name out loud. Then his eyes would open—his real eyes not his dream eyes—and he would slowly rise up out of the dream and see the leaves of the trees outlined in the light of a pale moon or the stars flickering in their ancient patterns. Only once he was awake he no longer could recall his name.
So he thought of himself as Star Boy or Moon Boy or Boy of the Falling Leaves, whatever caught his fancy or his eye. He did not think of himself in the intimate voice, did not think I am or I want or I will. It was always Star Boy is hungry or Moon Boy wants to sleep or Boy of the Falling Leaves drinks. Time for him was always now. As more and more of his words fell away, so did his need for past or future and his only memory was in dreams.
It was the tag-end of fall, and the squirrels had been storing up acorn mast, hiding things in holes, burying and unburying in a frenzied manner. A double V of late geese, noisy and aggravated, flew across the gray and lowering sky. The boy had watched them for a long time, yearning for something he could not quite recall. He shaded his eyes, following their progress until the last one disappeared, a speck behind the mountain. He sighed. Then he squatted and urinated right there in the path, something he never did, his fastidious nature usually forcing him to do such things in the brush. But the geese had awakened in him such a longing that he had forgotten everything for the moment and became as an infant again. Then, suddenly aware of what he had done, he scrabbled around the path, digging with his nails and a stick, loosening enough dirt to cover the wet patch.
Pleased with his concealment, he noticed that his hands were filthy. He checked the sky once more and then turned abruptly, running down the deer track to the river. He plunged in and paddled awkwardly near the edges until he felt clean again. Then he stood a moment more, for the cold water made his skin tingle pleasantly. When he climbed out, he shook himself like a dog and pushed the hair from his eyes.
The geese were gone and yet the memory of that squawking line stayed with him. He wandered off the path to uncover a squirrel’s cache of nuts—one of the many he had memorized—and ate each nut slowly, savoring the slightly bitter taste. He hummed as he walked on, a formless little melody that had no words. When he yawned, his hand went to his mouth as if it had a memory of its own. He climbed into a tree, nestled in its crotch, and napped.
A strange noise woke him, but he did not move except to open his eyes. The calling, not yippy like the foxes’ or long like the howling fall of the wolves’, teased into his dream, and that changed the dream so abruptly, he woke. The calling came closer.
Carefully he unwound himself from the tree crotch and crawled out along a thick branch that overlooked the clearing. Something flapped overhead and he craned his neck. It was a hunting bird; he could see the creamy breast. Her tail was banded with white and brown alternating. Her fierce beak and talons flashed by. She caught an updraft and landed near the top of a tall beech tree.
No sooner had the falcon settled than the calling began again, seeming to invade the clearing.
The boy looked down. On the edge of the wood stood a man, rather like the one with the sword in his dream. He was large, with wide shoulders and hair that covered his face. There was a thin halo of hair around his head. When he walked beneath the branch where the boy lay, the boy could see a round pink area on the top of the man’s head that looked like a moon, a spotty pink moon. The boy put a hand to his mouth to keep from laughing aloud.
The man did not notice the boy. His eyes were on the beech and the bird near its crown. He stood respectfully away from the tree and swung a weighted string over his head. But the bird, though it watched him carefully, did not move.
The boy wondered at them both.
The man and the bird eyed one another for the rest of the short afternoon. Occasionally the bird would flutter her wings, as if testing them. Occasionally her head swiveled one way, then the other. But she made no move to leave the beech. The man seemed likewise content to stay. Except for making more circles around his head with the string, he remained motionless, though every now and again he made a chucking sound with his tongue. He talked continuously to the bird, call
ing her names like “Hinny” and “Love” and “Sweet Nell” and “Bitch,” all in that same soft voice.
The boy wondered if the man would attempt to climb the tree after the bird, but he hoped that would not happen. The bird might leave; the tree, quite thin at the top, might break. The boy rather liked the look of the bird: her fierce, sharp independence, the way she stared at the man and then away. And the man’s voice was comforting. He hoped they would both stay. At least for a while.
When night came, they each slept where they were: the man right out in the clearing, his hands around his knees; the hawk high up in her tree. The boy edged back down the branch so quietly none of the few remaining leaves slipped off, and nestled into the snug crotch again. He kept his hands warm between his thighs and when he moved just a little, a pleasant feeling went through him. He smiled as he slept though he did not dream.
In the morning the boy woke first, even before the bird, because he willed himself to. He watched as first the falcon shook herself into awareness, then the man below stretched and stood. The man was about to swing the lure above his head again when the falcon pumped her wings and took off from the tree at a small brown lark, chasing it until they were both almost out of sight.
The boy made slits of his eyes so he could watch, as first one then the other took advantage of the currents of air. It almost seemed, he thought, as if the lark were sometimes chasing the hawk. Seesawing back and forth, the birds flew on, circled suddenly, and headed back toward the clearing. The boy’s hands in fists were hard against his chest as he watched, cheering first for the little bird, then for the larger.
Suddenly the lark swooped downward and the falcon hovered for a moment. Only a moment. Then with one long, perilous, vertical stoop, it fell upon the lark and knocked it so hard the little bird tumbled over and over and over till it hit the ground not fifty feet from the man. The falcon, never looking away from the dying bird, followed it to earth. Then it sank its talons into its prey and looked about fiercely.
The man walked quickly but without excess motion to the hawk. He nodded almost imperceptibly at her, knelt, and put one hand on her back and wings while with the other hooded her so swiftly the boy did not even see it till it was done. Then the man stood, placed the bird on his gloved wrist, gathered up the dead lark and the lure with his free hand, and walked smoothly toward the part of the forest where he had come from.
Only when the man had disappeared into the underbrush did the boy unwind himself from the tree. The man, the falcon, the dead bird were all so fascinating, he could not help himself. He had to see more. So he ran over to the clearing’s edge and, after no more man a moment’s hesitation like the falcon hovering, plunged in after them.
The day being mild but somewhat blowy, the clouds ripping across the sky, the boy did not hear as clearly as usual. But the man’s path through the underbrush was well marked by broken boughs and the deep impression of his boot heels. He was not hard to follow.
Cautiously at first, then with a kind of eager anticipation, the boy went on. In his eagerness he neglected to note anything about the place, though that in itself was not dangerous as it would be simple enough to find the way back along the same wide, careless swath. The thorny berry bushes scratched his legs, leaving a thin red map from hip to ankle. Once he trod on a nettle. But nothing could dampen his excitement, not even the small prickle of fear he felt. If anything that sharpened it.
Several hours passed like moments, and still the boy remained eagerly on the track. Only twice he had actually glimpsed the man. Once he saw his back, broad and covered with a leathern coat of some sort. Coat. That was a word suddenly returned to him. Then he thought, jerkin. And the two words, so dissimilar yet peculiarly so much the same, distressed him. He stopped for a minute and said each of them aloud.
“Coat.” The word was short, sharp, like a bark.
“Jerkin.” He liked that word better and said it over again several more times. “Jerkin, jerkin, jerkin.” Then he smiled and looked up. The man was gone.
The boy found the easy trail and followed, running at first to make up the lost time, then settling into a steady walk.
The second time the man turned and looked right at him. The boy froze and willed himself to disappear into the brush the way a new fawn and badgers and even the bright foxes could. It must have worked. The man looked at him but did not seem to see him, stroked the falcon’s shoulder once, whispered something the boy could not hear to the bird, then turned away and walked on.
The boy followed but a little more carefully this time, stopping frequently to hide behind a tree or bushes or blend into the dense brush.
He was watching the path so carefully, its having changed from a trail of broken undergrowth to a worn away trail packed down by a succession of feet. He could read the man’s faint boot marks, the sharp impressions of deer feet, the softer scrapings of badger, and even the scratchings of grouse. The path and his slow reading of it occupied him and he did not pay attention to what lay ahead. So he was surprised by the turning in the road that opened into a new clearing and by the farmhouse near the center of it.
The farmhouse explained the new scents that he had been ignoring.
As he crept into the clearing and hesitated by the trees, a sudden clamor greeted the man ahead of him. Sharp, excited yips and the chipping and clucking of birds. Dogs and hens. Those familiar words burst through the boy. “Dogs” and “hens.” He mouthed them.
There was a high whinnying from one of the two outbuildings, the one on the left side of the house.
“Horse!” the boy cried out, his own voice reminding him of the size of horses, enormous beasts with soft, broad backs and the smell of home.
He edged closer to the house, sniffing a little as he went, almost drinking in the odors, his chin raised and quivering.
The dogs began barking again and, without meaning to, he shivered and turned to run away.
“Not so fast, youngling,” said the man who loomed suddenly by him and grabbed him in two enormous arms, holding him off the ground by the shoulders.
The boy kicked and screamed and tried to slice at the man’s face with his nails, but the man dropped him and grabbed both of his hands with almost one motion, prisoning him as deftly as he had the falcon. Then he marched the boy toward the farm, talking all the while in a soft, steady voice.
“Now hush, son, weanling, my young one, my wild one. Hush, you damned little eelkin. I’ll wash your face and hair and see what hides under all that mop. Hush, my johnny, my jo.” The soft murmuration continued all the way to the house.
“Mag, fetch me a great towel. Nell, my girl, put hot water in the bath. I’ve caught me a wild thing that followed me all through the wood.” The soft voice never got hard, only louder, and two women with kerchiefs binding their heads seemed to spring into being from the fireplace to do the man’s bidding.
“Oh, sir,” said the girl with the water, her eyes round as pools, “is it a bogle, all nekkid and brown like that?”
“It is a boy,” said the man. “A sharp-eyed, underfed boy not that much older than your own brother Rob. As for naked, he’d not been able to make clothes for himself after his own wore out, there in the middle of Five Mile Wood, poor frightened thing.”
Mag, coming in with a towel, shook her head. “He looks nae frightened ta me, Master Robin. Just fierce. Like one of your birds.”
The man smiled and held on to the boy while the two women clucked and clacked around the great tub. When at last they had emptied enough water and were satisfied with its temperature, Mag nodded and Master Robin dropped the boy in.
The boy had no fear of water, but it was not what he expected. It was hot. Hot! River water was always cold, and even in the lower pools—the ones he had dammed up for fishing—the water below the sun-warmed surface was always cold enough to make his ankles ache if he stayed in too long. He wanted to howl, but he would not give his captors the satisfaction. He wanted to leap out of the bath, but the R
obin-man’s great hand was still on him. Soon the fear and the warmth together quite paralyzed him. He had missed his afternoon nap tracking the man and he had missed his day’s meager meals as well. Robin kept talking in that soft, steady voice.
The boy closed his eyes and surrendered to the warmth and to sleep and to a new dream.
In the new dream he was warm and safe and his stomach was altogether full. He was cradled in the wet and the warm. There was a humming sound, a rhythm that, he realized finally, was his own heart beating. The water and the warmth seemed to pulse with that same beat. And then from far away, there was a small pinprick of light, like the eyes of animals at night. The light came closer. And opened wider. He was forced to look at it—and it was the sun.
He was no longer in the water when he woke but in some kind of closed, warm room with a soft and wonderful smell. Untangling himself from the coverings, he looked around. The first part of the smell was like dry grass and he realized that was under him. But there was another smell coming from the floor. He peered over the edge of the mattress and saw that there was food.
He climbed off the bed and walked over to the food cautiously, checking first that neither the Robin-man nor Mag or Nell were around. But he was alone in the closed-in room.
Bending down, he breathed in the smell of the warm loaf. Bread. He spoke it. “Bread.” He had loved it once, he remembered. Covered with something. A golden slab sat next to the loaf, and it had little smell but the color was as bright as a spring bird’s feather. Butter, that was it. “Butter.” He said it aloud and loved the sound of it. “But-ter.” He put his face close to the butter and stuck out his tongue, licking across the surface. Then he took the bread and tore off a piece and dragged it across the butter leaving a strange, deep gouge in the yellow slab. As he stuffed the piece in his mouth, he spoke aloud, “Bread and butter.” The words were mangled in his full mouth, but he understood them with such a sharp insight that he was forced to shout them. The words along with the pieces of bread spat from his mouth. He laughed and scrambled to pick up the pieces and pushed them back in again.