Hobby

by Jane Yolen

  "Not now, perhaps," the man said. "But anon." He began to eat greedily, smacking his lips as he did so. His manners, the boy thought, would have earned him a great clap on the head from Mag.

  The boy lay still, ribs aching, and fell into a kind of reverie. In it he saw the man felled by a thrown stone, crumpling to the ground, where he lay haloed in blood. A dog licked the blood till it was gone, then put its reddened muzzle into the air and howled. But when the boy woke, the man was very much alive and the dog had not moved from its guard position. Then the boy knew that it had just been a dream. His eyes began to tear up and he willed himself not to cry.

  4. FOR SALE

  THEY STAYED IN THE RUINS FOR THE REST OF that day and night. Much of the time the boy was bound, loosely when the dog was nearby, tightly when it was gone hunting with the man. No amount of twisting and rubbing the rope against stone seemed to help.

  The boy fell to dreaming more and more, and his dreams were of blood and fire, fire and blood. They exhausted him. They confused him. He wondered if they had any meaning beyond disturbing his sleep.

  At dawn the man seemed to make up his mind about something. "Not coming then," he mused aloud. "Well, it was worth the try."

  "What was?" the boy asked, thinking the man was speaking to him, and receiving a cuff on the ear for asking. It was hard enough to make him fall over, hard enough to set his ear ringing, like the bells of a captive hawk.

  The man picked him up, setting him against a fallen pillar. "Now, boy, don't ask me questions. I do not like it. Give me answers. That will sweeten my hand."

  The boy nodded, not chancing another blow. "What is your name then, little thief?"

  The boy thought for a moment. His name was Merlin, like the hawk in Master Robin's mews. But that was his name with the family. And the family was no more, buried under earth and gone to worms. Names could have power, he knew that instinctively. His own name had given him back his power of speech, had given him a past. And even though this man's power was great, it was a black, evil thing. He would give the man no more power than he already had.

  "Hawk," the boy said. "My name is Hawk." It was close enough.

  The man laughed. "A lie of course. You hesitated too long for the truth. And who would have named such a small, darkling boy such a strong, powerful name? But no matter. I will call you Hawk. It is conveniently short. And as for me, you can call me ... Fowler ... for I have mastered you as a falconer does a bird."

  The boy almost spoke back then, for if he knew anything well from his years with Master Robin it was falconry. This man was no fowler. And he was no master either. But the boy bit his lip and said nothing.

  "We are but a day out of Gwethern, a busy little market town, where I will sell your labor to a farmer and collect the wages. And you will not run, little bird, else I will have the sheriff on you. As will the farmer." He smiled. It did not improve his looks. "Do you understand me?"

  The boy glared.

  Fowler raised his hand for a slap.

  "Yes," Hawk said, begrudging the syllable.

  "Yes what?"

  "Yes ... sir." The second syllable was even more grudging.

  "I will unbind you, hawkling," Fowler said. "But my dog will be your leading strings. Mind him, now. He has a foul temper. Fowler and Fouler."

  He laughed at his own joke, the sound coming out jerkily.

  Hawk did not smile. He stood slowly and held out his hands. Fowler undid the ropes on the boy's wrists.

  "Watch!" he said to the dog, and Ranger took up a position at Hawk's heels. He did not leave that place for the rest of the long day.

  They walked for a while before Fowler mounted Goodie. The big horse trembled under his weight, not because the man was heavy but because he was unfamiliar and kept at her with his rough boot heels.

  They made a strange company, but not so unusual for a market town road: a half-grown boy, nervously in front of a menace of a dog; a massive, black-clad man on a plowhorse, leading an old cow by a rope.

  No one will wonder about us, Hawk realized. No one will question the man's right to sell us all: horse, cow, boy. Even dog.

  Just as he came to that awful conclusion, a large tan hare started across the road.

  "Ranger, stay!" Fowler called out, though the dog had made no move toward the hare. But Fowler should have paid more mind to the horse. Unused to the road, upset with the man on her back, startled by the hare, the normally placid Goodie suddenly shied. She took one quick step to the left and then rose up onto her back legs.

  Fowler was flung off, landing with a horrifying thud! His head whacked against a marker stone and, as he lay there, unmoving, blood flowed out of his nose, staining his mustache.

  The dog left the boy's heels and went over to its master. It sniffed the man's head uncertainly, then sat down, threw back its head, and howled.

  For a moment Hawk did not know what to do. He was stunned by the scene, which was—and was not—the very dream he had had: stone, blood, howl. He remembered, bleakly, the other dreams he had had that had come true. The dream of the flame-breasted bird. The dream of the whistling black-coated man. And now, most horribly specific, this.

  He did not know if his dreams were wishes so powerful they came true, though he had certainly never wanted the fire that had destroyed his life. He did not know if he had the ability to see slantwise into the future. Either—or both. He did not know and was afraid to know.

  The dog kept on howling, an eerie sound, awful and final.

  And tears, unwanted, uncalled-for, fell from Hawk's eyes. He could not seem to stop crying.

  5. THE TOWN

  "WHY?" HAWK ASKED ALOUD. BY THAT HE MEANT: Why was he crying at the death of the awful Fowler, a man who had beaten him and tied him up and would have sold him? Why was he crying now when he had not cried—not really—at the death of those he loved? Master Robin, Mag, Nell, the dogs, the hawks. "Why?"

  Still crying, he got up onto Goodie's back, for she was once again the stolid plowhorse, and they started down the road, with Chum right after.

  Hawk wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve, thinking that he had not been able to touch the man nor bring himself to bury him. He only wanted to be gone away, from the man, the stone, the blood, the howls. He was almost a mile along before he could no longer hear the dog.

  Without wanting to, Hawk fell into a reverie on Goodie's back and began to daydream. It was a very odd dream this time—of a wizard and a green castle. There was a bird in the dream as well, eating an apple, then spitting out a green worm. When the worm touched the ground, it grew to dragon size, then took to the air, its great wings whipping up a wind. Hawk woke sweating, though the day was cool. Was it another dream of the future? And what future, he wondered, could include all those things?

  As suddenly as the dream ended, so did the path. It opened instead onto a real road that was rutted with use. For the first time there were other travelers: farmers with carts piled high with vegetables—carrots and neeps and green onions. Whole families in wagons, the children packed in with the caged fowl. Here and there single riders trotted on fine horses, not plowmares like Goodie. Hawk felt entirely awkward and dirty, ragged and alone. But at least he saw nothing like a wizard, a castle, an apple, or a worm.

  He was hungry, but there was little he could do about it until they came upon a town. Besides, hunger was not new to him. Before he had found his family, he lived alone in the woods for a year, foraging for berries and nuts. He had not starved. One or two days without a proper meal would not kill him. Fire killed. Men killed. His own belly would not do him in.

  He guessed he should have turned out Fowler's pockets. A dead man spends no coins. But that would have made him a thief indeed, and despite what Fowler had called him, he was none of that.

  The road quite suddenly widened and ahead was the town. He recognized its gate. It seemed even grander than he remembered, made grander perhaps by his hunger and his fears. He let Goodie go her own pace, following a
fter the wagons and carts, in through the stone gate marked with the town's seal. Gwethern.

  Clearly it was a market day. Stalls lined the high street. There was more food—and more people—than Hawk had seen in a year. His stomach proclaimed his hunger loudly. But it proclaimed something else as well, a kind of ache that food would not take away. To buy food, he had to sell either Churn or Goodie, and they were his last ties to the farm. He got off the horse's back and led both horse and cow carefully through the crowded street.

  Noise surrounded him: sellers calling out their wares, children whining for a sweet, women arguing over the price of a bit of cloth, a tinker bargaining with a man for a wild-eyed mare, a troubadour tuning his lute, two farmers arguing over stall space, and a general low hubbub.

  For a boy used to living on a small quiet farm near a wood, it was suddenly too much, and Hawk backed up as if to escape it all, bumping into a barrow full of yellow apples.

  "You! Boy!" came a shout from behind the barrow.

  Hawk turned. There was a man with a face as yellow and sunken as any old apple; veins large as worm runnels crossed his nose.

  Startled, Hawk stepped back against Goodie's shoulder and the man slammed a stick down across the barrow. If it had landed on Hawk, it would have been a sharp and painful blow.

  "If you do not mean to buy, boy, you cannot touch."

  "I ... I..." Hawk began, suddenly remembering his strange dream about the apple.

  "How do you know he does not mean to buy?" asked a voice behind him. Hawk was afraid to turn around in case the apple man struck out again, this time landing a blow.

  "This rag of cloth hung on bones?" The apple cart man laughed. "He's no mother's son, by the dirt on him. A devil's spawn rather. Where would he get any coins?"

  "You think he's a beggar? With that horse and cow?"

  This time Hawk dared to look at his rescuer. The man was dressed in an outlandish blue cloak and feathered hat, like a mountebank.

  "And as for that horse and cow..." the applefaced man was saying, "where do you suppose he got them, the cheeky beggar."

  "Right," the cloaked man said. "Cheeky indeed. And that's where he keeps his coin. In his cheek!" He laughed a sharp, yipping sound, which drew an appreciative chuckle from the crowd just starting to gather around them. Entertainment in any town being a rare commodity, even on market fair day, the folk of Gwethern were more than willing to egg on a fight.

  "Open your mouth, boy, and give the man his coin."

  Hawk was so surprised, his mouth dropped open on its own and a coin seemed to fall from his lips into the cloaked man's hand.

  "Here," the man said, flipping the coin into the air. It turned twice over before the apple cart man grabbed it up, bit it, grunted, and shoved it into his purse.

  The cloaked man picked out two yellow apples and placed one in each of Hawk's hands. As he did so, he whispered, "If you wish to repay me, boy, look for the green wagon, the castle on wheels."

  Then he vanished into the crowd.

  6. THE CASTLE ON WHEELS

  HAWK ATE THE TWO APPLES SLOWLY, SAVORING them. When he found a little green worm in the second one, he set the worm down carefully on a stone. It inched away, looking nothing at all like a dragon.

  "Apples, worms ... what does all this dreaming mean?" he asked himself aloud. Then he set out to look for the wagon.

  It was not hard to find.

  Parked under a chestnut tree, the wagon was as green as a fairy's gown. And it was indeed a castle on wheels, for the top of the wagon was vaulted over and an entire outline of a tower and keep was painted on the side. Hawk shivered. The dream, it seemed, was coming true.

  Two docile, drab-colored mules were hitched to the wagon. They seemed oblivious to the sounds of the busy market day around them, contentedly nibbling on the few blades of brown grass that had managed to grow beneath the widespread tree.

  Above the castle tower, on either side, were two painted figures. One was a tall, amber-eyed mage with a conical hat. The other was a dark-haired princess playing a harp.

  Hawk walked quickly toward the wagon, pulling Goodie and Churn with him.

  "So, boy, have you come to pay us back?" asked a soft voice. It was followed immediately by the trill of a mistle thrush.

  At first he could not see who was speaking. Then something moved at one of the painted castle windows, a pale moon of a face. In a moment it had disappeared, and right after, a woman stepped through the castle door.

  Hawk stared at her. She was possibly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was not at all like Mag, who had been motherly and stout. Or Nell, who had been all angles and elbows. Nor like any of the women dressed like crows in his dreams. There was not a woman he had seen at the market fair to compare with her. Her long dark hair, unbound, fell to her waist. She wore a dress of scarlet wool, and jewels in her ears that made a pleasant jangling, like a hawk's jesses. A yellow purse hung from a braided belt and it, too, jangled whenever she moved. As he watched, she bound up her hair with a single, swift motion into a net of scarlet linen.

  She smiled. "Ding-dang-dong, cat's got your tongue, then?"

  When he didn't answer, she laughed. But it wasn't a nasty laugh, at his expense. It was a laugh at the entire world, a laugh that invited him in. Before he could laugh back, though, she had reached back behind her and pulled out a harp, exactly like the one painted on the wagon's side. Strumming the harp with her long nails, she began to sing:

  "A boy with shirt a somber blue

  Will never ever come to rue,

  A boy with ..."

  "Are you singing about me?" asked Hawk, hoping she was.

  "Do you think I am singing about you?" the woman asked, then pursed her lips and made the mistle thrush trill.

  "If not now, you will someday," Hawk said. He did not know why he said it, but it seemed suddenly right, almost as if he had dreamed it.

  "I believe you," said the woman, but she was busy tuning her harp at the same time. It was as if Hawk did not really exist for her except as an audience to be cozened. He was not sure he liked that.

  Suddenly she stood. "You did not answer my question, boy."

  "What question?"

  "Have you come to pay what you owe?"

  Puzzled, Hawk replied, "I did not answer because I did not know you were talking to me. I owe you nothing."

  "Ah—but you owe it me," came a lower voice from inside the wagon, where it was dark. "And Viviane and I share all."

  A man emerged from the wagon and, even though he was not wearing the cloak, Hawk knew him. He was the mountebank, but he was also the mage on the wagon's side: the slate grey hair was the same. And the amber eyes.

  "I do not owe you either, sir," Hawk said.

  "What of the apples, boy? And the coin that fell from your mouth?"

  Hawk looked straightaway into the man's eyes. "The coin was a trick. And the apples were meant to come to me, sir. I dreamed them."

  The woman laughed. "Clever boy. And why did you come here to the green castle, if not to pay?" All the while she spoke, she smoothed her dress with her long slim fingers.

  "As the apples were meant to come into my hands, so I believe I am to come into yours," Hawk said.

  The woman laughed again, throwing her head back. The earrings and the purse jingled and jangled, as if they were laughing, too. "Only you hope," she said, suddenly quite serious, "that the mage will not eat you up and put your little green worm on a rock for some passing scavenger."

  Hawk's mouth dropped open. "How did you know about the worm? About the dream?"

  "Bards know everything," she said. "Everything about magic."

  "And tell everything as well," said the mage. He clapped her lightly on the shoulder and she went, laughing and jangling, back through the wagon door.

  7. THE MAGE

  HAWK NODDED TO HIMSELF. "IT WAS THE WINdow," he whispered at last, though the answer did not entirely satisfy him.

  "Of course it was the wi
ndow," said the mage. "And if you wish to speak to yourself so no one else is the wiser, make it sotto voce, under the breath thus." And while his lips moved, no sound came out. "Still, a whisper is no guarantee of secrets," he laughed, "if there is one like my Viviane who can read lips."

  "Sotto voce," Hawk said aloud. And then repeated, this time soundlessly.

  "The soldiers first brought the phrase from far Rome," the mage said. "But it rides the market roads, now. Much that is knowledge came from there. Little grows in our land but oak and thorn." "Sotto voce," Hawk repeated, punctuating his memory.

  "I like you, boy," said the mage. "But then, I collect oddities."

  "Did you collect the bard, sir?"

  Looking quickly over his shoulder at the door into the wagon, the mage said, "Her?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I did."

  "How is—she—an oddity?" asked Hawk. "I think she is"—he took a gulp—"wonderful."

  The mage smiled, as if he shared a joke with himself. "That she is. Quite wonderful, my Viviane. And well she knows it. She has a range of four octaves and can mimic any bird or beast I name." He paused. "And a few I cannot."

  Hawk nodded solemnly. So solemnly, in fact, the mage laughed out loud. "You are an oddity, too, boy. I thought so when first I saw you riding through Gwethern gates, all raggedy and underfed, yet like a prince on that plowhorse. Like a hero from one of the tales. ‘There's one to watch!' I told myself."

  "Sotto voce?" Hawk asked.

  "Indeed. It is never good to let others in on one's secrets. So I followed you, asking about you in case there was someone who knew. But you were a mystery to everyone I asked. And then, when the apple man had at you, I saw my opportunity. You protested at neither the stick nor the coin dropping from your lips. I could feel your anger, your surprise. That calm, poised center—quite something in a boy your age. You are an oddity. I sniffed it out with my nose from the first. And my nose..." He tapped it with his forefinger, which made him look both wise and ominous at once. "My nose never lies. Do you think yourself odd?"