by Jane Yolen
Having said all this, Stewart reached over and unscrewed the microphone from its stand and walked with it toward the long table at which the Prince of Wales sat. For the first time the reporters noticed a wooden box about the size of a jewel casket on top of the table. The Prince’s hands were cupped around each end. He was so obviously focused on the box that the audience responded in kind.
Dr. Stewart stopped in front of the table and half sat on it, gesturing with one hand toward the prince. “There was one last thing in Merlin’s coffin, lying next to the mummy. It was a box, the box His Royal Highness is holding. As the box is small and hard to see from where you sit, let me describe it to you. It is made of oak and covered with high relief carvings that are a blend of Celtic knotwork, pictures, and runes. The pictures include a number of plants that are known for their magical or healing properties. On the left side, in the front, there is a sprig of mistletoe, on the right a picture of an acorn. On either end of the box is an apple tree—or at least a fruit tree of some sort. We are still trying to identify the other flora. On the back panel, lying down, is the skeleton of a man. As far as can be made out, the runes spell out an old Celtic saying, supposedly given as an answer to Alexander: ‘I fear nothing lest the earth should split under me and the sky above me.’ It is in keeping with the kind of prophetic utterances attributed to Merlin.
“When we X-rayed the box, it seemed to contain a fist-sized mass of soft tissue. The mummy itself had given us little clue to the reason for its death except perhaps the bones which indicated the man might have simply died of extreme old age. There remained, though, the matter of the curious long scar in the upper left quadrant of the chest. So we hypothesized that after death whoever laid out the body cut open the dead man’s chest and removed his heart and that this was the mass we found in the carved box. Such a thing might have been a perfectly ordinary but—to us—unknown and unrecorded part of Celtic or Druidic ritual. Or it may have been that those who buried the man so feared his power that they felt separating his heart from his body was the only way in which they could be sure that he was truly dead. However, this thesis is complicated by the fact that instead of burning the heart or staking it or otherwise destroying it—as might be done to a true creature of the Dark—the sixth century morticians encased the heart in a special oak box carved with powerful runic devices.
“And they buried the casket next to the mummy and around the mummy’s neck was hung a golden chain and a key.
“We do not know what it means.”
As if on cue, the Prince of Wales stood and, holding the box, moved around to the front of the table. He cradled the box against his chest, and Dr. Stewart held the microphone before his mouth.
“It is our intention,” the prince began, “to open the box in front of all of you so that whatever else we find in it will be seen as well by a hundred impartial and trained observers. We want you to report exactly what you see and hear. I suspect—I personally—not Dr. Stewart or any of the other scientists who have worked on this project, that something quite marvelous, quite extraordinary, quite unscientific or rather quite beyond science is about to happen.”
Stevens leaned over and whispered to Pritzkau. “Isn’t it true that he’s the head of the Royal Theosophist Society?”
She nudged him into silence.
Stewart moved the microphone back to his own mouth. “I do not necessarily disagree with the prince. Our definitions of what constitutes scientific have always been somewhat—” he smiled at the prince who smiled back broadly, “—somewhat at odds with one another. But we both agree that what we have discovered about Merlin is already beyond our expectations. Now, before we open the casket containing the heart, are there any questions?”
Looking around, Stewart waited for hands to be raised but no one, it seemed, wished to hold up the show. There would be plenty of time for questions afterward.
“Then,” the prince said and, when Stewart moved the microphone back so that he could be heard throughout the room, “then let us begin.”
Holding the box with his left hand, he slipped a chain from around his neck with his right. Then he took the key attached to the chain and put it into the lock. With a snick amplified till it sounded like a gunshot, the key turned in the lock. As the audience watched in hushed anticipation, the lid of the box slowly creaked open by itself and a strange bone white light filled the room.
“Well, I’m still not sure what it all means beyond a couple of paragraphs. Maybe it belongs in the Arts and Leisure section,” said Stevens moments later as they stood in line to leave the hall.
“What did you see?” asked McNeil carefully, his voice scarcely above a whisper.
“What we all saw,” Stevens said. “A funny light coming from the back of the room and then the prince dropping the box and putting his hands up to his face. Then the lights going off for a second, then coming back on. Comic book stuff. And badly done at that. We are not amused.”
“Well, that’s not what I saw,” Pritzkau said.
“Of course it is.”
“No. It isn’t.”
“What did you see, Patti. Please.” McNeil’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward as if listening was an activity that suddenly took great physical energy.
“Well, the light of course, like Stevie says, only I thought it came from the box. And the prince doing his big act. But there was something more, something strange. I thought I saw a tree, as if it were projected from the box onto the screen. And then I smelled apple blossoms. The screen seemed, for a moment, to open as though it were a door that I could look through. That’s where the tree was, behind the door. A whole orchard of apple trees in blossom. But it was just a momentary thing. A hallucination.”
“Or a slide projected from the back of the screen,” said Stevens. “We should check.”
“You didn’t see it,” McNeil pointed out.
“I was watching the prince.”
McNeil jammed his hands into his jacket pockets and stared at Patti. “Do you think—do you really think—the Prince of Wales would be party to such trickery?”
“What if he didn’t know?” asked Stevens.
Patti shook her head. “What did you see, Mac?”
Stevens laughed. “Here it comes, lights, camera, action.”
McNeil looked at the door ahead where very ordinary daylight was drifting in motes through the opening. From outside came the sound of chanting. The protestors were still at it.
“Come on, Mac. I told. What did you see?”
Could he tell them that at the moment the box had opened, the ceiling and walls of the meeting room had dropped away? That they were all suddenly standing within a circle of Corinthian pillars under a clear night sky. That as he watched, behind the pillars one by one the stars had begun to fall. Could he tell them? Or more to the point—would they believe?
“Light,” he said. “I saw light. And darkness coming on.” He bit his lip. Merlin had been known as a prophet, a soothsayer, equal to or better than Nostradamus. But the words of seers have always admitted to a certain ambiguity. He put his hands on Patti’s shoulders and stared at her. For a moment his eyes were those of a dying man’s. Then he laughed.
“My darlings,” he said, “I have a sudden and overwhelming thirst. I want to make a toast to the earth under me and the sky above me. A toast to the arch-mage and what he has left us. A salute to Merlin: ave magister. Will you come?” If there was desperation in his voice, only he understood it. Desperation—and a last, wild, fierce, joyful grasping for life. He laughed again.
“What’s so funny?” Patti and Steve asked together.
“Irony,” he said. “The kind that only the Celtic mind can truly understand—or love.”
After that he was silent and they had to follow him, still wondering, as he pushed through the door and into the aggressive light and the chantings of the crowd.
Well then, after many years had passed under many kings, Merlin the Briton was held famous in the world
. He was a King and a prophet; to the proud people of the South Welsh he gave laws, and to the chieftains he prophesied the future.”
—Vita Merlini
by Geoffrey of Monmouth
L’Envoi
Let all who trust in hidden power
(The birth is in the stone)
Remember well the mage’s hour:
Find it,
Make it,
Bind it,
Take it,
Touch magic, pass it on.
Acknowledgments
“The Ballad of the Mage’s Birth” copyright © 1986 by Jane Yolen. First publication.
“The Confession of Brother Blaise” copyright © 1986 by Jane Yolen. First publication.
“The Wild Child” copyright © 1986 by Jane Yolen. First publication.
“Dream Reader” copyright © 1986 by Jane Yolen. First publication.
“The Annunciation” copyright © 1985 by Jane Yolen. First published in Star*Line, Science Fiction Poetry Association.
“The Gwynhfar” copyright © 1983 by Jane Yolen. First published in TALES OF WONDER (Shocken Books).
“The Dragon’s Boy” copyright © 1985 by Jane Yolen. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (Mercury Press).
“The Sword and the Stone” copyright © 1985 by Jane Yolen. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (Mercury Press).
“Merlin at Stonehenge” copyright © 1985 by Jane Yolen. First published in Star*Line, Science Fiction Poetry Association.
“Evian Steel” copyright © 1985 by Jane Yolen. First published in IMAGINARY LANDS, edited by Robin McKinley (Ace Fantasy Books).
“In the Whitethorn Wood” copyright © 1984 by Jane Yolen. First published in THE WHITETHORN WOOD AND OTHER TALES (Triskell Press).
“Epitaph” copyright © 1986 by Jane Yolen. First publication.
“L’Envoi” copyright © 1986 by Jane Yolen. First publication.
A Note from the Author
IN THE EIGHTIES and nineties, I began writing a series of short stories and poems about Merlin and King Arthur because I’d been obsessed with the Arthurian mythos since I was a child.
Most of these stories and poems were first published singly in places like the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Asimov’s Science Fiction, or in anthologies. Only after I’d written and published several of them did I realize I had the makings of a collection.
That’s when I really got serious about putting the stories together. Four of the stories became the basis for novels later on: The Dragon’s Boy, Sword of the Rightful King, and two of the three books in the Young Merlin Trilogy all came directly from these stories. Plus, I have wanted to turn the story of the island women swordmakers into a graphic novel for years. Maybe it’s time!
My friends all teased me about the title of this one, calling me “Merlin’s bookie” and placing bets on who gets out of the book alive!
Jane Yolen
A Personal History by Jane Yolen
I was born in New York City on February 11, 1939. Because February 11 is also Thomas Edison’s birthday, my parents used to say I brought light into their world. But my parents were both writers and prone to exaggeration. My father was a journalist; my mother wrote short stories and created crossword puzzles and double acrostics. My younger brother, Steve, eventually became a newspaperman. We were a family of an awful lot of words!
We lived in the city for most of my childhood, with two brief moves: to California for a year while my father worked as a publicity agent for Warner Bros. films, and then to Newport News, Virginia, during the World War II years, when my mother moved my baby brother and me in with her parents while my father was stationed in London running the Army’s secret radio.
When I was thirteen, we moved to Connecticut. After college I worked in book publishing in New York for five years, married, and after a year traveling around Europe and the Middle East with my husband in a Volkswagen camper, returned to the States. We bought a house in Massachusetts, where we lived almost happily ever after, raising three wonderful children.
I say “almost,” because in 2006, my wonderful husband of forty-four years—Professor David Stemple, the original Pa in my Caldecott Award–winning picture book, Owl Moon—died. I still live in the same house in Massachusetts.
And I am still writing.
I have often been called the “Hans Christian Andersen of America,” something first noted in Newsweek close to forty years ago because I was writing a lot of my own fairy tales at the time.
The sum of my books—including some eighty-five fairy tales in a variety of collections and anthologies—is now well over 335. Probably the most famous are Owl Moon, The Devil’s Arithmetic, and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? My work ranges from rhymed picture books and baby board books, through middle grade fiction, poetry collections, and nonfiction, to novels and story collections for young adults and adults. I’ve also written lyrics for folk and rock groups, scripted several animated shorts, and done voiceover work for animated short movies. And I do a monthly radio show called Once Upon a Time.
These days, my work includes writing books with each of my three children, now grown up and with families of their own. With Heidi, I have written mostly picture books, including Not All Princesses Dress in Pink and the nonfiction series Unsolved Mysteries from History. With my son Adam, I have written a series of Rock and Roll Fairy Tales for middle grades, among other fantasy novels. With my son Jason, who is an award-winning nature photographer, I have written poems to accompany his photographs for books like Wild Wings and Color Me a Rhyme.
And I am still writing.
Oh—along the way, I have won a lot of awards: two Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, a Caldecott Medal, the Golden Kite Award, three Mythopoeic Awards, two Christopher Awards, the Jewish Book Award, and a nomination for the National Book Award, among many accolades. I have also won (for my full body of work) the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Grand Master Award, the Catholic Library Association’s Regina Medal, the University of Minnesota’s Kerlan Award, the University of Southern Mississippi and de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection’s Southern Miss Medallion, and the Smith College Medal. Six colleges and universities have given me honorary doctorate degrees. One of my awards, the Skylark, given by the New England Science Fiction Association, set my good coat on fire when the top part of it (a large magnifying glass) caught the sunlight. So I always give this warning: Be careful with awards and put them where the sun don’t shine!
Also of note—in case you find yourself in a children’s book trivia contest—I lost my fencing foil in Grand Central Station during a date, fell overboard while whitewater rafting in the Colorado River, and rode in a dog sled in Alaska one March day.
And yes—I am still writing.
At a Yolen cousins reunion as a child, holding up a photograph of myself. In the photo, I am about one year old, maybe two.
Sitting on the statue of Hans Christian Andersen in Central Park in New York in 1961, when I was twenty-two. (Photo by David Stemple.)
Enjoying Dirleton Castle in Scotland in 2010.
Signing my Caldecott Medal–winning book Owl Moon in 2011.
Reading for an audience at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 2012.
Visiting Andrew Lang’s gravesite at the Cathedral of Saint Andrew in Scotland in 2011.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a wor
k of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1986 by Jane Yolen
Cover design by Gabriel Guma
978-1-4804-2329-9
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