“Then do so, man,” I urged. “Lead on, the rest will follow.”
He scurried back to his tiller and began shouting commands to all within sound of his voice. The big square sail swung up on creaking ropes, ruffled in the wind, puffed out, and the ship swung away from the land. Within moments we were running before a fresh wind. The low-riding sun sent yellow rays glancing off the green waves, setting every crest alight and seeding the watery furrows with gold.
Gradually, the greens and gold of water and light deepened to the blues and grays of night as eventide stole over the wide sea-field. Beneath a clear, star-filled sky, the sea danced and glittered, divided at our passing by the ship’s sharp prow, swirling in pools of molten moonlight in our wake. The air remained warm, occasionally wafting cool crosscurrents that splashed across my face. I remained awake, watching the lively sky and the slow progress of the glowing moon across heaven’s vaulted dome.
To be alive to the wonder of the commonplace, I thought, that is the very gift of a wildly generous Creator, who ever invites his creatures to contemplate the exuberance of his excellent handiwork. There is a deep and abiding joy at work in this worlds-realm, and we who toil through our lives do often forget this, or overlook it. But look: it is all around! Ceaseless, unrelenting, certain as sunrise, and constant as the rhythm of a heartbeat.
I stood, as I say, at the prow through the night, the stars and silent, watchful Barinthus my only companions. Toward morning I saw the rich darkness of the eastern sky begin to fade. I watched the sunrise with eyes beguiled by night’s veiled mysteries.
Dawnlight streaked the sky with the red of blood and banners, staining the deep-hued water. The play of liquid light and sinuous shadow cast me into a melancholy mood. I felt the coming of day as the approach of a predatory presence. My scalp tingled; my stomach tightened. My vision grew keen.
The boat rode the tideflow and the sunrise glinted like molten metal in flux, swirling, bubbling, moving. I lifted my eyes to the opposite shore, now in shadowed silhouette against a burning sky. It seemed to me as if the boat were no longer moving through water, but gliding over endlessly coiling clouds—passing like a phantom through the very essence of this worlds-realm.
Behind me the world of sense and substance, stark and solid, faded from view; before me opened the glimmering, insubstantial Otherworld. The boat, its bull-necked pilot, and my fellow passengers vanished—as if stolen by an all-obscuring mist. I felt the rising upsurge of my spirit as it shook off the dull, unfeeling flesh and soared free. Fresh wind rushed over my body; I tasted sweet air on my tongue. In the space of three heartbeats, my feet touched a far distant shore.
A woman wearing a long gown of gleaming sea blue stood waiting for me. Fair of face and form, she raised a slender hand and beckoned me to follow. I moved as one without thought or will, shielding my dazzled eyes with my hand. I looked for the sun, but could see it no more. The sky itself glowed with the intensity of brilliant white gold, a radiant firmament reflecting a great hidden source of light that was everywhere present, casting no shadows.
The woman led me to the foot of a high hill a short distance from the shore; the estuary had disappeared and a sparkling green sea stretched to the far horizon. We walked up the hill, the broad flank covered with grass so green it glowed in the golden light like sun-struck emerald.
Atop the hill a standing stone pointed like a long finger towards the shining sky. The woman, her long hair black as polished jet, her green eyes shining with wisdom’s undimmed light, lifted her hand to the stone and, in a voice soft as the breeze rippling the grass on the hilltop, asked, “Can you read the stone, little man?”
I stepped to the stone and saw that its rough surface was deeply carved with the spirals, knotwork, and maze-like patterns of old. I gazed at the ancient designs, letting my eye follow the intricate tracery of the cunning lines. Though I had seen it countless times before, I could make no sense of it.
“I cannot read them,” I confessed, and turned away from the stone to see the woman’s face cloud and tears begin to fall from her lovely eyes. She buried her face in her hands and her slender shoulders shook with sobs. “Lady,” I said, agitation making my voice tight, “why do you weep?”
“For sorrow that this confession should fall from your lips,” she said. “For you, above all men, should heed the signs carved in the stone.”
“I read words,” I countered. “Give me words and I will discern their meaning.”
She raised her tearful eyes and gazed upon me with an expression of deepest grief and mourning. “Alas and woe,” she said, “now is our doom come upon us! Once there was a time when you would have beheld these selfsame signs and their meaning would have been clear to you. This is my lament: you then, O Son of Dust, might have read them as men now read their precious books.”
This last was said as she turned and walked away. I started after her, but she held up her hand and bade me stay. “There will come after me another, one who will lead you back the way you came.”
By this I thought that I would return to the world I had left behind. Either I was mistaken, or she meant something else, for I waited and no one appeared. Yet something held me on that high hill through a day and a night.
I slept through the dark period and awoke to see a maiden approach. She came to stand beside the tall stone. “I give you good greeting,” she said, and smiled. Her teeth were even and white, her brow high and smooth; her eyes were bright. She was dressed in a mantle of green and gold, and her feet were bare.
In her hands she held a cloth-wrapped bundle, which she opened to reveal a harp. The harp was none other than my own, for I recognized it.
“What is this?” she asked in a voice to charm small birds from the sky. And before I could answer, she added in a warning tone, “Though you think you know it, surely you know it not at all.”
“I would be ignorant indeed not to know what I myself have held and played a thousand times,” I replied. “It is my harp.”
She shook her head sadly. “Though you say it is a harp and speak the word forthrightly, it is clear you do not know it. For if you had spoken in truth, this instrument would have sung its name aloud. The sound of your voice alone would have called forth music.”
The maiden turned away, and with a world-weary sadness, rested the harp against the rune-carved standing stone. “There will come after me another who will lead you back the way you came,” she said, and disappeared, leaving me alone once more.
Three days and three nights passed, and I awoke on the fourth day to see a tall youth standing beside the stone—so still he might have been a part of it. Like the woman, his hair was dark and his eyes green. His cloak was blue like the sky, and his shirt leaf green, his trousers yellow gold, and his belt white as a cloud. He carried a large cup, or bowl, in his hands.
Upon seeing him, I rose and stood before him. “I have been waiting for you,” I told him, suddenly irritated at the delay.
“Though every heartbeat was a thousand years,” he answered, “you have not tarried half so long as I have waited for you.” Anger leapt in his eyes like lightning seaming black storm clouds with fire. “I have waited all my life for you.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I am the King of Summer,” he replied.
I knelt before him. “I am your servant, lord.”
“Stand on your feet, little man. You were never servant to me,” he sneered. “For how is it that the servant does not recognize his lord?”
“But I have never seen you,” I insisted. “Even so, I stand ready to serve you through all things.”
“Get you away from me, False-hearted One. For if you had been my servant you would have heard my call. And you would know what it is I hold here in my hands.”
“When did you call me, lord?”
“Myrddin,” he replied in a voice aching with sorrow, “I have ever called you. From before the beginning of the world I have sung your name.”
“Plea
se, lord,” I cried, “forgive me. I did not hear…I did not know.”
With a look of mingled sorrow and disgust, he placed the cup he carried beside the stone next to the harp. He then started away. “Lord, I beg you!” I called after him.
He paused and looked back. “After me will come another who will lead you back the way you came.”
The Summer Lord vanished then, and I was alone once more. I contemplated the stone and its carved symbols; I gazed upon the harp, but did not play it; and mused over the meaning of the cup.
Three days passed on my lonely hilltop, and three dark nights. A sound came to me as I slept, and I awakened. I rose and stood, listening for the sound that had roused me. Almost at once, I heard someone singing in a clear, strong voice. My heart beat more quickly. I knew the voice…though I had heard it only once before—for there is none like it in all the world or any other. I heard it, and, oh! I knew it.
Taliesin!
4
I GAZED ACROSS THE HILLTOP TO see a man striding towards me: a fine and handsome man. His hair gleamed like shimmering flax, his cloak was blue as the night sky and full of stars; his tunic was white, and his trousers soft leather. He carried a stout rowan staff in his right hand and a harp slung over his shoulder on a strap. In all he looked a mighty bard—Penderwydd, champion among bards. My heart ached to see him, for I realized there were no more of his kind in the world.
Great Light, where are the men of power and vision, whose words bring life from death and kindle goodness in the coldest hearts? Where are the men who dare great things, whose deeds are legend?
“Hail, Taliesin!” I called, casting aside my grief and running to meet him.
He seemed not to hear me, for he strode on as if to pass by. “Taliesin, wait!” I shouted. He halted and turned aside, but did not greet me.
“Do I know you, little man?” he asked, and the question cut through me like the thrust of a sword.
“Know me? But I…Taliesin, I am your son.”
He gazed at me, searching me head to toe. “Is it you, Myrddin?” he asked at last; his mouth bent in a frown of disapproval. “What has become of you, my son?”
“Why?” I asked, my heart breaking. “Have I changed so much?”
“I tell you the truth,” he replied, “if you had not spoken my name just now I would not have known you.”
He pointed to the instrument lying against the standing stone. “That is Hafgan’s harp,” he said. “Why is it sitting there?”
Embarrassed to have left it untended, I retrieved the harp and cradled it to my shoulder. And though I stroked and strummed, I could but conjure a meaningless tangle of noise from the instrument. I opened my mouth to sing, and could produce only a strangled, halfhearted sound.
“Stop!” he cried. “If you can play no better than that, cast the thing aside. It is useless as a rotten stick in your hands.”
He then led me to the crown of the hill and pointed to the blue-green sea stretching below us like some vast swath of billowy silk. He bade me look and tell him what I saw.
“I see Mighty Manawyddan’s realm,” I replied, “deep as it is wide, dividing the island nations one from another.”
“And what see you there?” He indicated the long sweep of the strand along the coast.
“I see the waves, ceaseless in motion, white-crested servants of the Lord of the Wave-Tossed Sea.”
Taliesin’s hand dropped to his side. “They are not waves,” he said. “Look again, Ignorant One, and look closely this time. Tell me what you see.”
Still, I saw the waves, and only the waves, washing back and forth upon the shore. Taliesin was not pleased with this answer. “How is it possible that you look and do not see? Has the light of discernment abandoned you?”
He raised his hand level to the horizon and spread his fingers wide. “They are not waves,” he said again. “They are the boats of the people fleeing their homeland. The Britons are leaving, Myrddin, in such haste and in such numbers as to agitate the ocean.”
As he spoke those words, the waves turned into boats—the white crests became sails and the rolling motion the wake flung back from each and every prow—and there were hundreds upon hundreds, and thousands upon thousands of them, all fleeing the shores of Ynys Prydein in great waves of homeleaving.
“Where are they going?” I asked, aware that I was witnessing a disaster unknown in the Island of the Mighty from the days of its creation.
“They are fleeing to realms much inferior to the land of their birth,” Taliesin answered sadly, “where they will live brutish lives under rulers unworthy of them.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why do they abandon their lands and king?”
“They leave because they are afraid,” Taliesin explained simply. “They are afraid because their hope has failed and the light which sustained it is extinguished.”
“But Arthur is their hope and his life is their light,” I objected. “They are surely wrong to leave, for the High King is yet alive in Britain.”
“Yes,” agreed Taliesin, “Arthur lives, but how are they to know? There is no one to sing his deeds, no one to uphold him in song, no one to extol him with high-sounding praise and so fire the souls of men.” He turned accusing eyes on me. “Where are the bards to sing Arthur’s valor and kindle courage in men’s hearts?”
“I am here, Father,” I said.
“You? You, Myrddin?”
“Since I am Chief Bard of Britain,” I said proudly, “it is my duty and my right. I sing Arthur’s praise.”
“How so?” he demanded. “You cannot read what is written on the stone; you cannot coax music from the heart of the oak; you cannot drink from the exalted cup. Chief Bard of Ants and Insects you may be, but you are no True Bard of Britain.”
His words stung me. I hung my head, cheeks burning with shame. He spoke the truth and I could make no reply.
“Hear me, Son of Mine,” Taliesin said. And, oh, his voice was the wild wind-force trembling the hilltop with its righteous contempt. “Once you might have sung the shape of the world and the elements would have obeyed you. But now your voice has grown weak through speech unworthy of a bard. You have squandered all that has been given you, and you were given much indeed.”
I could not stand under this stern rebuke. “Please, Father,” I cried, falling to my knees, “help me. Tell me, is there nothing I can do to turn back the waves?”
“Who can turn back the tide? Who can recall the arrow in flight?” Taliesin said. “No man can replace the apple on the bough once it has fallen. Even so, though the homeleaving cannot be halted, the Island of the Mighty may yet be saved.”
I took heart at these words. “I pray you, lord, tell me what I am to do, and it shall be done,” I vowed. “Though it take my last breath and all my strength, I will do it.”
“Myrddin, beloved son,” Taliesin said, “that is the least part of what it will cost. Still, if you would know what is to be done, know this: you must go back the way you came.”
Before I could ask what he meant, Taliesin raised his hands in the bardic way—one above his head, the other shoulder high, both palms outward. Facing the standing stone, he opened his mouth and began to sing.
Oh, the sound of his voice filled me with such longing I feared I would swoon. To hear the sound of that bold, enchanted voice was to know the power of the True Word. I heard and inwardly trembled with the knowledge of what I had once held in my grasp, and somehow let slip away.
Taliesin sang. He raised his head and poured forth his song; the cords stood out on his neck, and his hands clenched with the effort. Wonder of wonders, the standing stone, cold lifeless thing, began to change: the slender pillar of stone rounded itself and swelled, stretching, thickening, growing taller. Stubs of limbs appeared at the top—these lengthened and split, becoming many-fingered branches which swept out and up into the handsome crown of a great forest oak. Leaves appeared in glossy profusion, deep green and silver-backed like birch.
This
tree spread its leafy branches wide over the hilltop in response to Taliesin’s glorious song. My heart swelled to bursting at the splendor of the tree and the song that shaped and sustained it—a song matchless in its melody: extravagant, spontaneous, rapturous, yet reckless enough to steal the breath away. Then, as I stood marveling, the tree kindled into bright flame and began to burn. Red tongues of flame sprouted like dancing flowers among the branches. I feared for the destruction of the beautiful tree, and made to cry out in alarm. But even as I stretched my hands toward the blaze, I saw that the shimmering flames halved the tree, dividing it top to bottom: one half stood shimmering, dancing, alive, red-gold against a blue night sky; the other half remained full-leaved and green in the bright light of day.
Behold! In the time-between-times, the tree burned but was not consumed.
Taliesin stopped singing and turned to me. Gazing with the sharp scrutiny of a master challenging his wayward pupil, he asked, “Now tell me. What do you see?”
“I see a living tree where once was a stone,” I replied. “I see this tree half in flames and half green-leaved and alive. The half that burns is not consumed, and the half that resists the flame puts forth leaves of silver.”
My father smiled; I felt his approval and my heart quickened. “Perhaps you are my son after all,” he said proudly.
Lifting his hand to the tree, he spread his fingers and the flames leaped higher, sparks flew up into the night sky and became stars. Birds flocked to the green half of the living tree and took refuge in its branches. Small golden apples appeared among the leaves; the birds ate the apples and were nourished and sustained.
“This,” he said, turning to me, “this is the way by which you must go, son of mine. See and remember.” He gripped my shoulder tightly. “Now, you must leave.”
“Let me stay but a little,” I pleaded. “There is so much I would ask you.”
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