Silver on the Tree

by Susan Cooper

  “It is for you to choose,” the Lady said. She moved to the boat and paused beside it, looking back.

  John Rowlands stood facing them all, still without visible emotion; then he turned his dark eyes to the Lady and a warmth came into them. “I cannot choose, this time,” he said with a wry smile. “Not such a choice as that. Will you by your grace do it for me?”

  “Very well,” the Lady said. She raised her arm, pointing. “Walk away from me, John Rowlands, and when you turn you will find a path at your feet. Follow it. In the moment that you pass the one tree, you will be gone from here and instead be on another path in your own valley, that you know far better than this. And whatever is in your mind then will be whatever choice I have made for you. And—we wish you well.”

  John Rowlands bent his head for an instant; then looked from one to another of them with a half-smile that held no happiness, but great affection. He looked last at Bran. “Mi wela’t ti’n hwyrach, bachgen,” he said. Then he turned and walked away towards the immense spreading oak, on a path that no one else could see, and as he drew level with the tree he was no longer there.

  The Lady sighed. “He shall forget,” she said. “It is better so.”

  Arthur put out a hand to her, and she stepped down into the boat. A rising wind blew, rocking Pridwen on the river of the sky, and suddenly Will had the sense once more of a huge throng, and knew that all the Old Ones of the Circle were making their way aboard, to sail with the Lady and the king. At the ship’s mainmast now the vast sail rose, square, billowing, marked with the cross within a circle, the Sign of the Light. He heard the cries of sailors; timbers creaked, halyards clattered against spars.

  Will glanced at the three Drews beside him, and saw on their faces the beginning anguish of loss, and a long emptiness. But he could not keep his eyes for more than a moment from the great ship. He looked back, and in the ghostly throng of beings on her decks he saw in one quick flash after another the faces of those he had known, on this journey and on other journeys, in this time and other times. A tall burly figure in a smith’s apron raised a long hammer in salute; he saw a bright-eyed small man in a green coat wave to him, and an imperious grey-haired lady, leaning on a stick, make him a formal little bow. He had the flash of a smile from a stout brown-faced man with a tonsure of white hair; he saw Glyndwr, and the frail form of the King of the Lost Land; and then with a jerk of his heart he saw Gwion, looking at him, smiling his brilliant smile. Then the wind began to grow stronger out of the clouds, and the sail billowed and flapped as if impatient, and the faces merged into the misty crowd.

  Arthur stood in the prow, his bearded head outlined against the sky, and held out his hand to Bran. His warm voice rang out, triumphant and welcoming. “Come, my son!”

  Bran came quickly towards him; then paused. He was close to Merriman, his white hair and pale face almost luminous against Merriman’s deep-blue cloak. Will looked on sadly, knowing it would be for the last time, seeing in Bran’s face a mixture of longing, and determination, and regret.

  “Come, my son,” said the warm deep voice again. “The long task of the Light is over, and the world is freed of the peril of dominion by the Dark. Now it is all a matter for men. The Six have performed their great mission, and we have fulfilled our heritage, you and I. And now we may have rest, in the quiet silver-circled castle at the back of the North Wind, among the apple trees. And those we leave behind may think of us in greeting each night, when the crown of the North Wind, the Corona Borealis, rises above the horizon in its circlet of stars.”

  He reached out an arm again. “Come. There is a tide in this matter which is almost at the full, and I do not sail on the ebb.”

  Bran looked at him in yearning, but he said clearly, “I cannot come, my lord.”

  There was a silence, into which only the wind softly sang. Arthur let his arm come slowly down to his side.

  Bran said, stumbling, “It is what Gwion said, when the Lost Land was to be drowned and he would not leave it. I belong here. If it is a matter for men now, as you say, then the men are going to have a hard time of it and perhaps there are things, later, that I might be able to do to help. Even if there are not, still I… belong. Loving bonds, Merriman said. That is what I have, here. And he said”—he was looking up at Merriman, beside him—“that those bonds are outside the High Magic, even, because they are the strongest thing on the earth.”

  Merriman stirred; from his mind Will could feel something like awe.

  “That is true,” Merriman said. “But consider well, Bran. If you give up your place in the High Magic, your identity in the time that is outside Time, then you will be no more than mortal, like Jane and Simon and Barney here. You will be the Pendragon no longer, ever. You will remember nothing that has happened, you will live and die as all men do. You must give up all chance of going out of Time with those of the Light—as I shall go before long, and as one day long hence Will will go too. And… you will never see your high father again.”

  Bran turned sharply toward Arthur, and as he watched the two stare at one another, Will saw again the tawny eyes of Herne the Hunter in Bran’s face, and yet a look of Arthur too, as if all three were one and the same. He blinked, wondering.

  All at once Arthur smiled, proud and loving, and he said softly, “Go where you feel you should go, my son Bran Davies of Clwyd, and my blessing go with you.” He stepped down over the side of the boat again to the grassy bank, and held his arms open, and Bran ran to him and for a moment they stood close.

  Then Arthur stepped back, smiling, and Bran, looking up at him all the while, drew Eirias white and gleaming from the scabbard at his side, slipped the swordbelt over his head, and held out both sword and scabbard to his father. Will heard Merriman sigh gently, as if in release, and found his own fists unwittingly clenched. And Arthur took Eirias in one hand and the scabbard in the other, and sheathed the sword. He looked for a moment past Bran to Merriman, and his eyes smiled, though his mouth was serious now. “I will see you in a little while, my lion,” he said, and Merriman nodded his head.

  Then the king stepped back into his ship Pridwen, and the broad sail filled and bellied out, and with all the host of shades of Light looking back, without sign of farewell or any ending, the ship sailed across the sky. Small sunlit clouds lay scattered there, so that the blue sky was like a sea scattered with small islands, and there was no telling whether the ship was in sea or sky when it disappeared.

  Bran stood watching until there was no ship to watch, but Will could see no regret on his face.

  “That must have been what John Rowlands meant,” Bran said quietly.

  “John Rowlands?” said Will.

  “In Welsh. When he left. He said to me, See you later, boyo.”

  Jane said slowly, “But—he didn’t know you would come back.”

  “No,” Bran said.

  Merriman said, “But he knows Bran.”

  Bran looked up at him, very young and vulnerable suddenly, with his pale eyes unprotected, and the astonishing burden of the sword Eirias taken from his side. “Was it the right thing to do?”

  Merriman threw back his awesome white-maned head as impulsively as a schoolboy, and let out a hoot of breath that was the most unguarded sound they had ever heard him utter. “Yes,” he said, sobering suddenly. “Yes, Bran. It was the right thing, for you and for the world.”

  Barney moved at last, from the place on the grassy slope where he and Simon and Jane had been standing close for a long time, watching in a wondering silence. He said anxiously, “Gumerry? Are you really going away, or will you stay too?”

  “Oh Barnabas,” Merriman said, and Jane found herself turning to him in swift motherly concern, there was such weariness in his tone. “Barnabas, Barnabas, time passes, for the Old Ones even as for you, and though the seasons turn in every year much as in the one before, yet the pattern of the world is different in every year that goes by. My time is done, here, my time and the time of the Light, and there will be o
ther work for us to do elsewhere.”

  He paused, and smiled at them, the weariness fading a little from his bony deep-lined face, with the fierce hawklike nose and the shadowed eyes. “Here now are the Six,” he said, “together for the first and last time in the place that was destined for us, on a chalk hill in the Chiltern Hundred of Buckinghamshire, where centuries ago men fleeing from the Dark tried vainly to hide their treasures, and gave prayers to the sky for safety. Look at it now. Look well. Keep a little of it alive.”

  So, wondering what he might mean, they looked hard and long, at the slope of smooth green grass with tiny orange-yellow toadflax growing here and there, and small blue butterflies fluttering. They looked at the copse of beech trees capping the hill, and the broad mysterious oak tree standing just below the wood; at the clear blue sky scattered with puffy white clouds.

  And then, although Merriman made no move, each of them blinked suddenly as their vision seemed to blur; and they staggered a little, with a singing in their ears and a giddiness taking away their balance. They saw everything about them shiver strangely, as if the air were dancing in the heat of a fire. The outlines of the giant oak wavered, grew dim, and disappeared; the green of the hill darkened, and the shape of its slope was no longer a smooth arc. Though the sun still shone, there were darker patches on the hill now, of yellow-flecked green and brown and purple, where gorse and bracken and heather grew. Other shapes rose in the distance, faraway mountains misted grey and blue on a hazy horizon; and when they turned to look over their shoulders they saw spread below them a broad valley golden with sand, and the winding silver thread of a river making its way out to the immense blue sea. They could hear the erratic aimless calling of sheep, now and then in the silence, basso profundo answered by tenor; somewhere far below them a dog barked. And over their heads, gliding down from the Welsh hillside to the river and the sea, came a single seagull, keening its one repeated melancholy cry.

  Merriman took a long gentle breath, and let it out again. He said once more, softly, “Look well.”

  Jane said in a very small voice, looking out at the bar of golden sand that the river had set as guard against the sea, “Shall we never see you again?”

  “No,” Merriman said. “None of you, except my Will the watchman there. That is the only right way.”

  There was a command and a clear strength in his voice that caught each of them into stillness, gazing at him, held by the bright dark eyes and the bleak face.

  “For remember,” he said, “that it is altogether your world now. You and all the rest. We have delivered you from evil, but the evil that is inside men is at the last a matter for men to control. The responsibility and the hope and the promise are in your hands—your hands and the hands of the children of all men on this earth. The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past. The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.”

  His voice rang out over the mountain, more impassioned than any of them had ever heard a voice before, and they stood quiet as standing stones, listening.

  “For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you. Now especially since man has the strength to destroy this world, it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive, in all its beauty and marvellous joy.”

  His voice grew softer, and he looked at them with the faraway dark eyes that seemed to be looking out into Time. “And the world will still be imperfect, because men are imperfect. Good men will still be killed by bad, or sometimes by other good men, and there will still be pain and disease and famine, anger and hate. But if you work and care and are watchful, as we have tried to be for you, then in the long run the worse will never, ever, triumph over the better. And the gifts put into some men, that shine as bright as Eirias the sword, shall light the dark corners of life for all the rest, in so brave a world.”

  There was a silence, and the small sounds of the mountain drifted back into it: the faint calls of sheep, the humming of a distant car, and far above, the cheerful trilling of a lark.

  “We’ll try,” Simon said. “We’ll try our best.”

  Merriman gave him a quick startling grin. “Nobody can promise more than that,” he said.

  They looked at him mournfully, unable to grin in return, weighed by the melancholy of parting. Merriman sighed, and swept his midnight-blue cloak around him and back across a shoulder.

  “Come now,” he said. “The oldest words have it the best—be of good cheer. I go to join our friends, because I am very tired. And none of you will remember more than the things that I have been saying now, because you are mortal and must live in present time, and it is not possible to think in the old ways there. So the last magic will be this—that when you see me for the last time in this place, all that you know of the Old Ones, and of this great task that has been accomplished, will retreat into the hidden places of your minds, and you will never again know any hint of it except in dreams. Only Will, because he is of my calling, must remember—but the rest of you will forget even that. Good-bye now, my five companions. Be proud of yourselves, as I am proud of you.”

  He embraced each one of them in turn, a brief hug of farewell. They were grim-faced, and their eyes were wet. Then Merriman went up the mountain, over the springy grass and the outcrops of slate, through the browning bracken and the yellow-starred gorse, and paused only when he was at the very top, outlined against the blue sky. They saw the familiar tall figure, standing very erect, with the fierce-nosed profile and the springing shock of white hair, blowing a little now in the wind that had risen out of nowhere. It was an image that would flicker in and out of their dreams for the rest of their lives, even when they had forgotten all else. Merriman raised his arm, in a salute which none of them could bear to answer, and then in a subtle inflection of movement the arm stiffened, the five fingers spread wide and pointed at them—

  And the wind whirled on the hill, and the slope against the sky was empty, and five children stood on the roof of Wales looking out over a golden valley and the blue sea.

  “It’s a terrific view,” Jane said. “Worth the climb. But the wind’s made my eyes water.”

  “It must blow like anything up here,” said Simon. “Look at the way those trees are all bent inland.”

  Bran was gazing puzzled at a small blue-green stone in the palm of his hand. “Found this in my pocket,” he said to Jane. “You want it, Jenny-oh?”

  Barney said, gazing up over the hill, “I heard music! Listen—no, it’s gone. Must have been the wind in the trees.”

  “I think it’s time we were starting out,” Will said. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

  When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;

  Three from the circle, three from the track;

  Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;

  Five will return, and one go alone.

  Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long;

  Wood from the burning, stone out of song;

  Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw;

  Six Signs the circle, and the grail gone before.

  Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold

  Played to wake the Sleepers, oldest of the old;

  Power from the green witch, lost beneath the sea;

  All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree.

  Here ends Silver on the Tree. This is the last book in The Dark Is Rising Sequence.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Susan Cooper is one of our most distinguished children’s book writers. She won a Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor for books in her fantasy sequence, The Dark Is Rising, and she is also the author of King of Shadows, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book; Green Boy, which was called “an intriguing and truly lovely book” by the New York Times Book Review, and her acclaimed new novel Victory. Susan Co
oper lives on an island in a salt marsh in Massachusetts, and her website is www.thelostland.com.