by Jane Yolen
There was no answer except the shrieking laughter of the birds as they dove into the sea.
So she took a stick and wrote the same words upon the sand for the merman to see should he ever return. Only, as she watched, the creeping tide erased her words one by one by one. Soon there was nothing left of her cry on that shining strand.
So Borne sat herself down on the rock to weep. And each tear was an ocean.
But the words were not lost. Each syllable washed from the beach was carried below, down, down, down to the deeps of the cool, inviting sea. And there, below on his coral bed, the merman saw her words and came.
He was all day swimming up to her. He was half the night seeking that particular strand. But when he came, cresting the currents, he surfaced with a mighty splash below Borne’s rock.
The moon shone down on the two—she a grave shadow perched upon a stone and he all motion and light.
Borne reached down with her white hands, and he caught them in his. It was the only touch she could remember. She smiled to see the webs stretched taut between his fingers. He laughed to see hers webless, thin, and small. One great pull between them and he was up by her side. Even in the dark, she could see his eyes on her under the phosphorescence of his hair.
He sat all night by her. And Borne loved the man of him as well as the fish, then, for in the silent night it was all one.
Then, before the sun could rise, she dropped her hands on his chest. “Can you love me?” she dared to ask at last.
But the merman had no tongue to tell her above the waves. He could only speak below the water with his hands, a soft murmuration. So, wordlessly, he stared into her eyes and pointed to the sea.
Then, with the sun just rising beyond the rim of the world, he turned, dove arrow-slim into a wave, and was gone.
Gathering her skirts, now heavy with ocean spray and tears, Borne stood up. She cast but one glance at the shore and her father’s house beyond. Then she dove after the merman into the sea.
The sea put bubble jewels in her hair and spread her skirts about her like a scallop shell. Tiny colored fish swam in between her fingers. The water cast her face in silver, and all the sea was reflected in her eyes.
She was beautiful for the first time. And for the last.
Wild Goose and Gander
From The Magic Three of Solatia
Before
When a man comes to be twenty years old, it is time to leave his mother’s house. At least, that is what is said in Solatia, a land of much greenness and harvest gold.
So it happened that Lann, a minstrel untried in his songs except among his neighbors and friends, decided to do more than leave his mother’s house. He decided to leave her land as well.
“And if I find fortune or fame, it is fine,” he said. “But more, I should like to travel to all the lands both near and far, and even to the back of beyond, to seek what I know not. To sing I know not what. And to call many ‘friend’ along the way.”
So his mother, Sianna, blessed him and gave him an amulet to wear on his breast. But when he was but a little way off, he placed the stone in his pack, for sometimes a man wants to try his own magic without his mother’s aid. And Lann had faith in the power of his songs, for there is a kind of magic in music as well.
Besides, if truth be known, Lann had a chain around his neck on which there hung a button. It held magic so powerful that it had never been used. For magic has consequences—this Lann knew. Yet he knew, too, that if sometime a terrible need arose, those consequences, no matter how dear, would have to be borne.
And so Lann traveled, lute on his back, out into the wide, wide world.
I. Wild Goose and Gander
In a forest at the back of the world lived a brother and sister. By day they were wild geese and soared in the sky high above the tops of the tallest trees. But at night they flew back to their forest hut and in human form dined on red berries, green salad, and wine.
They had no one but each other, and it had been so from the first. They had been left in the forest by their frightened nursemaid on the day after they were born. For in the evening they had been babies wrapped in swaddling, but in the daylight they turned into soft-feathered goslings in the folds.
The wizard who had changed them was named Bleakard. He lived in a gray-green stone castle perched high on a mountain crag that rose in the middle of a lake. Each day he summoned the brother and sister to his castle with a magic flute. They were forced to fly away from their forest hut and circle the mountaintop. As day closed, he would let them go, and they winged home with fear-filled speed.
So the brother and sister lived in the forest at the back of beyond with one another as company and no one else in the whole wide world to call a friend.
Late one afternoon, into the forest came the young minstrel Lann. He had been gone from his home a year and a day, and had spent each night under a different roof.
When he saw the forest hut covered with wild goose grasses, he smiled. He was tired, and it seemed a likely place to stop. So he laid his flute against the wall and tapped lightly on the door. When no one answered, he pushed the door open and went in.
Inside he saw two beds neatly made and a table neatly set for two. He saw two wardrobes filled with clothes and two stone basins brimming full. But no one was there to greet him.
“I shall wait for the owners to return,” thought Lann, and settled himself outside on the ground by the door. He was so weary from traveling that he soon was fast asleep.
Scarcely had he dozed off than a great whirring filled the air, the sounds of wings beating. Two shadows fell upon the minstrel’s sleeping form. A wild goose and gander sailed down from the skies and landed at his feet.
At once they changed to human form. The brother, a tall lad, was named Bred, with eyes so black they seemed to have no bottom. The sister was named Bridda. Her hair was soft as feathers, her face as gentle as the wind.
Bridda clung to her brother when she saw the sleeping stranger. But Bred was more courageous and put out his hand.
“Awake, friend, and welcome,” he said, as the minstrel opened his eyes.
“I did not hear you come,” said Lann, jumping up. “I beg your pardon …”
“It is no matter,” Bred replied, and led the way into the house.
Because they had only two dishes and two cups, Bred had to wait until the minstrel finished his meal. And because the minstrel tuned his lute and sang one song after another to the smiling Bridda, Bred finished his dinner alone.
When the dishes were washed and carefully set aside for the morning, Bred joined his sister and the minstrel outside under the trees, and they talked and sang until almost dawn.
Just before the sun rose, the minstrel fell into a dreamless sleep. And when the sun had fully lit the path to the hut, Bred and Bridda returned to the air. They circled once, and the goose cast a sad backward glance at the sleeping man before she joined the gander in their wingtip-to-wingtip journey across the sky.
2. The Enchantment
That evening the goose and gander returned. As before, they touched the earth in front of the sleeping man. He was sunk again in a magical sleep so that he would not see them change.
When he awoke at last, Lann said to Bred, “This is most strange. I was asleep when you left and asleep when you returned. Yet I was not tired. There is some enchantment here that I do not understand.”
“It is no matter,” said Bred, and he led Lann into the house.
That evening the minstrel and Bridda ate in silence, watching each other with love-filled eyes. For Bridda had never seen another human, except her brother and the wizard. And Lann, though he had seen many maidens in his year of traveling, had never met one who so combined silence and singing, wisdom and beauty, shyness and courage.
And Bred was content to eat alone after them.
Then the three friends talked until dawn.
For three nights it was thus. But on the fourth night, before they settled down to talk, the minstrel too
k the stone charm from his saddlebag. He remembered what his mother had said when she had given it to him: “If you are ever in a land of strangers and strangeness, place this amulet upon your breast.”
The minstrel placed the charm over his heart. And after breakfast, though he was not tired at all, he pretended to fall asleep.
Just as the sun came up, Bred and Bridda began to change. First their hair turned to feathers, then feathers soft and white grew on their arms. At last their bodies were covered with down. And as they beat their great wings, they were transformed entirely into giant birds that rose up into the air and set off past the sun.
That evening when the geese returned to their forest home, they found the minstrel awake and waiting.
“Am I dreaming still, or is this enchantment?” Lann asked them when they touched the ground and turned back into humans.
“It is enchantment,” said Bred softly.
Bridda wept silently. She feared that the minstrel could not love a girl who was a bird by day.
“I know about spells as I know about singing, for my mother is Sianna of the Song. Perhaps you have heard of her. There must be a way I can help you,” said the minstrel.
“There is no help for us,” replied Bred. “We were transformed as babies by a wicked wizard. We were left here in the forest by our nursemaid and must return to the wizard’s castle each day.”
Bridda added, “We do not know our mother or our father. We only know what Bleakard, the wizard, has told us: that we fed as goslings and grew as children until we are as you see us now. And each day we must go and fly around the bleak rock castle to his tune.”
Lann looked thoughtful. “And the spell?”
Bred said, “We do not know the spell. And if we do not know the spell, how can we break it? We only know what we must do each day and how we must be each night.”
Lann laughed. “If you can not break the spell, then you must break the spell-maker. So my mother, Sianna, who is the wisest person I know, taught me. And so I believe. I must go to the wizard who made this magic and wrest his secrets from him.”
“Easier said than done,” said Bridda. “The way leads through an enchanted forest and across a perilous lake.”
“Better tried than not,” replied Lann.
So in the morning, after a short nap, Lann started off. Inside his shirt he placed a feather that Bridda had plucked from her breast. It was still warm to the touch. He followed the only path through the wood, while the wild goose and gander circled above as if to point the way.
3. Jared
It had been day by the hut, but was night in the woods. The way through the forest was long and cold and dark. The trees were hung with rags of fog.
As Lann walked along, his lute slung over his shoulder, the cold seemed like daggers of ice piercing his heart. And only where Bridda’s feather touched him did he feel warm.
“Fear feeds on fear,” thought he. So he unslung his lute, thinking to play a strengthening song. As each string was plucked and stretched, a small bit of light sparked the darkness.
“Aha,” thought Lann, “so that is the way of it.” And then, as if to reassure himself, but also to let any forest ears hear that he was not afraid, he repeated it out loud. “So that is the way of it.”
And he began a cheery-sounding song which he made up as he walked along the midnight path. For minstrels are trained to sing a new song as easily as an old one.
The way is dark, the path is long,
And sometimes right begins as wrong.
But I’ve found as I go along
The world is warmed by just a song.
And as I’m getting warmed a bit,
And gathering up my scattered wit,
I see a pattern, I’ll admit,
By just a song the world is lit.
For song is warmth and song is light,
And song can pierce the darkest night.
My lute’s my weapon in this fight,
And what is wrong can be set right.
The way is dark, the path is long,
And sometimes right begins as wrong.
But I’ve found as I go along
The world is warmed by just a song.
And he ended on a single high, clear note.
As the song faded away like fireflies in a dark wood, winking and blinking and sparking and drifting at last into nothing, the forest was again dark. But now the dark seemed heavier and colder than before. Even the feather against his breast was cool.
Lann looked about him. “If this is the way of it,” he thought, “I do not think I like the way.” But he continued on, humming his tune and strumming occasionally on the lute to keep his fingers warm.
As he walked farther, Lann thought he heard another rhythm, a steady one-two, one-two. “Left foot, right foot,” he said to himself. And soon he found his fingers playing that same steady beat on the strings. His own feet followed after, and he marched toward the sound.
As he marched on, Lann saw a small light ahead. Each step brought him nearer the light, and each step seemed to make the light bigger. Finally Lann could make out a large clearing, and the rhythmic pounding of the one-two, one-two was now so loud that it made his ears ring.
Through the ringing in his ears, Lann thought he could hear a difference between the one and the two. The one was loud and crackling, like a fire or the breaking of trees and branches. The two was a softer, almost melodic swish, of wind through flowers.
When at last he came to the clearing—which was only a lighter shade of the forest dark, for the sky overhead was heavy and gray with forbidding clouds—Lann saw what was making the noise. It was a giant of a man in leather pants and a leather jerkin, with leather bands around his wrists. He was stomping left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, around and around the forest clearing.
As the gigantic left foot came down, lightning and fire flashed from the toes. Smoke curled up where the giant stepped. The ground beneath his left foot turned sere and brown, and nothing living grew there again. But where his right foot descended, cooling rains fell from the arch. Flowers dropped from his foot onto the path and took root there.
“Ho there,” called Lann as the giant’s right foot came down once again.
The gigantic man stopped stomping and turned toward the sound. His voice, so rough and grating on the ear, made furrows in the air. “Who speaks?”
Lann played a chord on his lute. “It is I, Lann. A wandering minstrel.”
The giant’s rough face broke into a smile. “And I am Jared,” he said. “It has been many years since I have had company.”
“It is a far way to find your clearing, friend,” said Lann pleasantly. “Perhaps that is why you have so few visitors. I only happened here myself. Why don’t you come and meet the world?”
Jared frowned. He pointed despairingly at his feet. “Wherever the one steps, I destroy. Wherever the other, I create. I can go nowhere without this double curse—flame and flowers, flowers and flame.”
“Cursed,” said Lann. It was a statement, but the giant heard a question and so replied.
“By Bleakard, the wizard. Once I was a king. And a rather foolish, cowardly king, I am afraid. But I loved to sing and dance and be entertained. My people rather enjoyed it, too. And they called me Jared the Good and said that flowers followed where I trod. But I trod once on a wizard’s toes, I think. I thought him but a visiting magician and boasted of my own worth. That blackguard Bleakard laughed and said, ‘So you create flower gardens in your path, do you?’ and brought his magic flute down upon my feet. I suppose I fainted. For when I came to, I was here in the forest as you see me now. And here I have stayed, for I do not think I could face either my people or that wizard again.”
“And what will end the spell?” asked Lann.
“I do not know,” replied Jared. “I have told you all I know—of the spell and of my past. The rest seems to be lost to me, I know not why.”
“If you cannot break the spell,” sai
d Lann, remembering when he had said the same before, “you must break the spell-maker.”
“But I dare not,” said Jared. “The shame of visiting my people. The fear of visiting Bleakard …”
Lann put his hand out and touched the giant’s hand. “I am off to visit Bleakard myself. Why not come along with me? A friend is always a welcome companion in the dark. And your people would not think less of you as you are now.”
“I dare not,” whispered the giant. Yet his whisper was loud enough to bend the trees with its noise. “For I have just now recalled a part of the curse. Bleakard will kill me if I come to the castle.”
“Is that any worse than living the way you are now?” asked Lann softly. “Going around in circles of fire and flowers?”
“I daren’t,” said the giant. “Here at least I am still a king. And I do not want to die.” He looked as if he might weep.
“But I dare,” said Lann. “And I am not afraid to die.” He added, “I think,” under his breath, remembering Bridda.
The minstrel slung his lute over his back and crossed the clearing, over alternate stubbles of burned grass and patches of red and gold flowers. He started down the only path that led away from the clearing. Bridda’s feather was again warm against his skin.
Lann had gone but four steps into the darkened forest when he heard a cry from behind. It sounded like a sigh, like a gulp, like a plea, like a song. It was the giant.
“Wait—oh, wait, and I’ll come too.”
4. Coredderoc
Lann turned and waited. In a minute, trailing fire and flowers, Jared had run to his side.
Carefully Lann stepped around the giant to his right side. Then side by side, Lann taking two steps to the giant’s one, they made their way deeper into the forest. But whereas before the forest had been dark and lit only by the notes that sang from Lann’s lute, now it was blazing-bright from the flames from the giant’s foot.
“You see,” said Lann, “there is good in every bad. Sometimes right begins as wrong.”
Jared shook his head as if trying to clear it. “I do not find your meaning,” he said.