Tales of Wonder

by Jane Yolen

Sylva landed gently on the meadow grass, but a moment’s walk from her house. In her hand she still held the knob, shrunk now to the size of a jewel. The river shimmered once before her and was gone, and where it had been was the silver ribbon, lying limp and damp in the morning frost.

  The door to the house stood open. She drew a deep breath and went in.

  “What is that?” cried one of the stepsisters when she saw the crystalline jewel in Sylva’s hand.

  “I want it,” cried the other, grabbing it from her.

  “I will take that,” said the stepmother, snatching it from them all. She held it up to the light and examined it. “It will fetch a good price and repay me for my care of you. Where did you get it?” she asked Sylva. Sylva tried to tell them of the ribbon and the river, the tall woman and the black crevasse. But they laughed at her and did not believe her. Yet they could not explain away the jewel. So they left her then and went off to the city to sell it. When they returned, it was late. They thrust Sylva outside to sleep and went themselves to their comfortable beds to dream of their new riches.

  Sylva sat on the cold ground and thought about what had happened. She reached up and took down the ribbon from her hair. She stroked it, and it felt smooth and soft and yet hard, too. Carefully she placed it on the ground.

  In the moonlight, the ribbon glittered and shone. Sylva recalled the song she had heard, so she sang it to herself:

  Silver ribbon, silver hair,

  Carry Sylva with great care,

  Bring my daughter home.

  Suddenly the ribbon began to grow and change, and there at her feet was a silver highway that glittered and glistened in the moonlight.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Sylva got up and stepped out onto the road and waited for it to bring her to the magical house.

  But the road did not move.

  “Strange,” she said to herself. “Why does it not carry me as the river did?”

  Sylva stood on the road and waited a moment more, then tentatively set one foot in front of the other. As soon as she had set off on her own, the road set off, too, and they moved together past fields and forests, faster and faster, till the scenery seemed to fly by and blur into a moon-bleached rainbow of yellows, grays, and black.

  The road took a great turning and then quite suddenly stopped, but Sylva did not. She scrambled up the bank where the road ended and found herself again in the meadow. At the far rim of the grass, where the forest began, was the house she had seen before.

  Sylva strode purposefully through the grass, and this time the meadow was filled with the song of birds, the meadowlark and the bunting and the sweet jug-jug-jug of the nightingale. She could smell fresh-mown hay and the pungent pine.

  The door of the house stood wide open, so Sylva went right in. The long hall was no longer dark but filled with the strange moonglow. And when she reached the crystal door at the end, and gazed at her reflection twelve times in the glass, she saw her own face set with strange gray eyes and long gray hair. She put her hand up to her mouth to stop herself from crying out. But the sound came through, and the door opened of itself.

  Inside was the tall woman all in white, and the globe above her was as bright as a harvest moon.

  “Welcome, my sister,” the woman said.

  “I have no sister,” said Sylva, “but the two stepsisters I left at home. And you are none of those.”

  “I am if you make me so.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Give me back my heart which you took from me yesterday.”

  “I did not take your heart. I took nothing but a crystal jewel.”

  The woman smiled. “It was my heart.”

  Sylva looked stricken. “But I cannot give it back. My stepmother took it from me.”

  “No one can take unless you give.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “There is always a choice,” the woman said.

  Sylva would have cried then, but a sudden thought struck her. “Then it must have been your choice to give me your heart.”

  The woman smiled again, nodded gently, and held out her hand.

  Sylva placed her hand in the woman’s and there glowed for a moment on the woman’s breast a silvery jewel that melted and disappeared.

  “Now will you give me your heart?”

  “I have done that already,” said Sylva, and as she said it, she knew it to be true.

  The woman reached over and touched Sylva on her breast, and her heart sprang out onto the woman’s hand and turned into two fiery red jewels. “Once given, twice gained,” said the woman. She handed one of the jewels back to Sylva. “Only take care that you give each jewel with love.”

  Sylva felt the jewel warm and glowing in her hand, and at its touch felt such comfort as she had not had in many days. She closed her eyes and a smile came on her face. And when she opened her eyes again, she was standing on the meadow grass not two steps from her own door. It was morning, and by her feet lay the silver ribbon, limp and damp from the frost.

  The door to her house stood open.

  Sylva drew in her breath, picked up the ribbon, and went in.

  “What has happened to your hair?” asked one stepsister.

  “What has happened to your eyes?” asked the other.

  For indeed Sylva’s hair and eyes had turned as silver as the moon.

  But the stepmother saw only the fiery red jewel in Sylva’s hand. “Give it to me,” she said, pointing to the gem.

  At first Sylva held out her hand, but then quickly drew it back. “I cannot,” she said.

  The stepmother’s eyes became hard. “Girl, give it here.”

  “I will not,” said Sylva.

  The stepmother’s eyes narrowed. “Then you shall tell me where you got it.”

  “That I shall, and gladly,” said Sylva. She told them of the silver ribbon and the silver road, of the house with the crystal door. But strange to say, she left out the woman and her words.

  The stepmother closed her eyes and thought. At last she said, “Let me see this wondrous silver ribbon, that I may believe what you say.”

  Sylva handed her the ribbon, but she was not fooled by her stepmother’s tone.

  The moment the silver ribbon lay prickly and limp in the stepmother’s hand, she looked up triumphantly at Sylva. Her face broke into a wolfish grin. “Fool,” she said, “the magic is herein. With this ribbon there are jewels for the taking.” She marched out of the door, and the stepsisters hurried behind her.

  Sylva walked after them, but slowly, stopping in the open door.

  The stepmother flung the ribbon down. In the early morning sun it glowed as if with a cold flame.

  “Say the words, girl,” the stepmother commanded.

  From the doorway Sylva whispered:

  Silver ribbon, silver hair,

  Lead the ladies with great care,

  Lead them to their home.

  The silver ribbon wriggled and writhed in the sunlight, and as they watched, it turned into a silver-red stair that went down into the ground.

  “Wait,” called Sylva. “Do not go.” But it was too late.

  With a great shout, the stepmother gathered up her skirts and ran down the steps, her daughters fast behind her. And before Sylva could move, the ground had closed up after them and the meadow was as before.

  On the grass lay the silver ribbon, limp and dull. Sylva went over and picked it up. As she did so, the jewel melted in her hand and she felt a burning in her breast. She put her hand up to it, and she felt her heart beating strongly beneath. Sylva smiled, put the silver ribbon in her pocket, and went back into her house.

  After a time, Sylva’s hair returned to its own color, except for seven silver strands, but her eyes never changed back. And when she was married and had a child of her own, Sylva plucked the silver strands from her own hair and wove them into the silver ribbon, which she kept in a wooden box. When Sylva’s child was old enough to understand, the box with the ribbon was put into her safe
keeping, and she has kept them for her own daughter to this very day.

  The Gwynhfar

  The gwynhfar—the White One, the pure one, the anointed one—waited. She had waited every day since her birth, it seemed, for this appointed time. Attended by her voiceless women in her underground rooms, the gwynhfar’s limbs had been kept oiled, her bone-white hair had been cleaned and combed. No color was allowed to stain her dead-white cheeks, no maurish black to line her eyes. White as the day she had been born, white as the foam on a troubled sea, white as the lilybell grown in the wood, she waited.

  Most of her life had been spent on her straw bed in that half-sleep nature spent on her. She moved from small dream to small dream, moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day, without any real knowledge of what awaited her. Nor did she care. The gwynhfar did not have even creature sense, nor had she been taught to think. All she had been taught was waiting. It was her duty, it was her life.

  She had been the firstborn of a dour landholder and his wife. Pulled silently from between her mother’s thighs, bleached as bone, her tiny eyes closed tight against the agonizing light, the gwynhfar cried only in the day—a high, thin, mewling call. At night, without the sun to torment her, she seemed content; she waited.

  They say now that the old mage attended her birth, but that is not true. He did not come for weeks, even months, till word of the white one’s birth had traveled mouth to ear, mouth to ear, over and over the intervening miles. He did not come at first, but his messengers came, as they did to every report of a marvel. They had visited two-headed calves, fish-scaled infants, and twins joined at the hip and heart. When they heard of the white one, they came to her, too.

  She waited for them as she waited for everything else.

  And when the messengers saw that the stories were true enough, they reported back to the stone hall. So the Old One himself came, wrapped in his dignity and the sour trappings of state.

  He had to bend down to enter the cottage, for age had not robbed him of the marvelous height that had first brought him to the attention of the Oldest Ones, those who dwell in the shadows of the Circle of Stones. He bent and bent till it seemed he would bend quite in two, and still he broke his head on the lintel.

  “A marvel,” it was said. “The blood anointed the door.” That was no marvel, but a failing of judgment and the blood a mere trickle where the skin broke apart. But that is what was said. What the Old One himself said was in a language far older than he and twice as filled with power. But no one reported it, for who but the followers of the oldest way even know that tongue?

  As the Old One stood there, gazing at the mewling white babe in her half-sleep before the flickering fire, he nodded and stroked his thin beard. This, too, they say, and I have seen him often enough musing in just that way, so it could have been so.

  Then he stretched forth his hand, that parchment-colored, five-fingered magician’s wand that could make balls and cards and silken banners disappear. He stretched forth his hand and touched the child. She shivered and woke fully for the first time, gazing at a point somewhere beyond his hand but not as far as his face with her watery pink eyes.

  “So,” he said in that nasal excuse for a voice. “So.” He was never profligate with words. But it was enough.

  The landholder gladly gave up the child, grateful to have the monster from his hearth. Sons could help till the lands. Only the royals crave girls. They make good counters in the bargaining games played across the castle boundary lines. But this girl was not even human enough to cook and clean and wipe the bottoms of her sisters and brothers to come. The landholder would have killed the moon-misbegotten thing on its emergence from his child-bride’s womb had not the midwife stayed him. He sold the child for a single gold piece and thought himself clever in the bargain.

  And did the Old One clear his throat then and consecrate their trade with words? Did he speak of prophecy or pronounce upon omens? If the landholder’s wife had hoped for such to ease her guilt, she got short shrift of him. He had paid with a coin and a single syllable.

  “So,” he had said. And so it was.

  The Old One carried the gwynhfar back over the miles with his own hands. “With his own hands,” run the wonder tales, as if this were an awesome thing, carrying a tiny, witless babe. But think on it. Would he have trusted her to another, having come so far, across the years and miles, to find her? Would he have given her into clumsier hands when his own could still pull uncooked eggs from his sleeves without a crack or a drop?

  Behind him, they say, came his people: the priests and the seers, a grand processional. But I guess rather he came by himself and at night. She would have been a noisesome burden to carry through the bright, scalding light; squalling and squealing at the sun. The moon always quieted her. Besides, he wanted to surprise them with her, to keep her to himself till the end. For was it not written that the gwynhfar would arise and bind the kingdom:

  Gwynhfar, white as bone,

  Shall make the kingdom one.

  Just as it had been written in the entrails of deer and the bloody leavings of carrion crow that the Tall One, blessed be, would travel the length of the kingdom to find her. Miracles are made by hands such as his, and prophecies can be invented.

  And then, too, he would want to be sure. He would want time to think about what he carried, that small, white-haired marvel, that unnature. For if the Old One was anything, he was a planner. If he had been born better, he would have been a mighty king. So, wrapped in the cloak of night, keeping the babe from her enemy light, which drained even the small strength she had, and scheming—always scheming—the Old One moved through the land.

  By day, of course, there would have been no mistaking him. His height ever proclaimed him. Clothes were no disguise. A mask but pointed the finger. At night, though, he was only a long shadow in a world of long shadows.

  I never saw him then, but I know it all. I can sort through stories as a crow pecks through grain. And though it is said he rode a whirlwind home, it was a time of year for storms. They were no worse than other years. It is just that legend has a poor memory, and hope an even worse.

  The Old One returned with a cough that wracked his long, thin body and an eye scratched out by a tree limb. The black patch he wore thereafter gave rise to new tales. They say he had been blinded in one eye at his first sight of her, the gwynhfar. But I have it from the physician who attended him that there was a great scar on his cheek and splinters still in the flesh around the eye.

  And what did the Old One say of the wound?

  “Clean it,” he said. And then, “So!” There is no story there. That is why words of power have been invented for him.

  The Old One had a great warren built for the child under the ground so the light would not disturb her rest. Room upon room was filled with things for a growing princess, but nothing there to speak to a child. How could he know what would interest a young one? It was said he had never been a babe. This was only partly a lie. He had been raised by the Oldest Ones himself. He had been young but he had never had a youth. So he waited impatiently for her to grow. He wanted to watch the unfolding of this white, alien flower, his only child.

  But the gwynhfar was slow. Slow to sit, slow to crawl, slow to eat. Like a great white slug, she never did learn speech or to hold her bowels. She had to be kept wrapped in swaddling under her dresses to keep her clean, but who could see through the silk to know? She grew bigger but not much older, both a natural and unnatural thing. So she was never left alone.

  It meant that the Old One had to change his plan. And so his plan became this. He had her beaten every day, but never badly. And on a signal, he would enter her underground chambers and put an end to her punishment. Again and again he arrived just as blood was about to be drawn. Then he would send away her tormentors, calling down horrid punishments upon them. It was not long before gwynhfar looked only to him. She would turn that birch-white face toward the door waiting for him to enter, her watery eyes glistening. Th
e over-big head on the weak neck seemed to strain for his words, though it was clear soon enough that she was deaf as well.

  If he could have found another as white as she, he would likely have gotten rid of her. Perhaps. But there have been stranger loves. And only he could speak to her, a language of simple hand signs and finger plays. As she grew into womanhood, the two would converse in a limited fashion. It was some relief from statecraft and magecraft and the tortuous imaginings of history.

  On those days and weeks when he did not come to see her, the gwynhfar often fell into a half-sleep. She ate when fed, roused to go out into the night only when pulled from her couch. The women around her kept her exercised as if she were some exotic, half-wild beast, but they did take good care of her. They guessed what would happen if they did not.

  What they did not guess was that they were doomed anyway. Her raising was to be the Old One’s secret. Only one woman, who escaped with a lover, told what really happened. No one ever believed her, not even her lover, and he was soon dead in a brawl and she with him.

  But I believed. I am bound to believe what cannot be true, to take fact from fancy, fashion fancy from fact.

  The plan was changed, but not the promise.

  Gwynhfar, white as bone,

  Shall make the kingdom one.

  The rhyme was known, sung through the halls of power and along the muddy country lanes. Not a man or woman or child but wished it to be so: for the kingdom to be bound up, its wounds cleansed. Justice is like a round banquet table—it comes full circle, and none should be higher or lower than the next. So the mage waited, for the gwynhfar’s first signs of womanhood. And the white one waited for the dark prince she had been promised, light and dark, two sides of the same coin. She of the old tribes, he of the new. She of the old faith and he of the new. He listened to new advisers, men of action, new gods. She had but one adviser, knew no action, had one god. That was the promise: old and new wedded together. How else can a kingdom be made one?

  How did the mage tell her this, finger upon finger? Did she understand? I only know she waited for the day with the patience of the dreamer, with the solidity of a stone. For that was what she was, a white pebble in a rushing stream, which does not move but changes the direction of the water that passes over it.