Free Merlin by Jane Yolen Page A

from his first family, Master Robin's family.
    Thinking about them made him think as well of the man Fowler and his dog who might at any moment be on his trail. Fowler was not the kind of man who slept late or gave up easily.
    It should have made the boy afraid, but for some reason it did not. He began singing again as he struck off even more deeply into the woods.

2. FISHING
    THE DEEPER HE WENT INTO THE WOODS , the more there were shadows. Overhead, the interlaced branches made a kind of roof that the sun only occasionally broke through. Ahead of him a red butterfly flitted over fallen leaves, settling at last on a patch of ivy. By the side of the path, bittersweet berries were already half changed from green to scarlet and the flooring of bracken was an autumnal copper brown. He liked the sound his feet made as he walked, a soft crunching.
    Turning his face toward the yellowing tree roof, he drew in a deep breath. He should have been worried about where his next meal would come from or that Fowler would find him. He should have worried about the dream bear. But somehow here, in the heart of the woods, he felt secure.
    Just then he heard the nearby sound of water over stone. Following the sound he came to a small river winding between willows. There was a large grey rock half in and half out of the water and he sat upon it to rest. It was smooth and cool; he liked the feel of it. When he leaned over to look into the water, he was startled by a silvery flash.
    Fish,
his conscious mind told him. But as he continued staring at its sinuous movement, he became mesmerized, and suddenly he found himself
in
the water, swimming by the fish's side. Overhead, light filtered through the river's ceiling in a shower of golden shards.
    The boy swam nose to tail with the trout, following it into deeper and deeper waters where the sunlight could not penetrate. Yet, oddly, he could still see clearly in the blue-green of the river morning.
    He did not question that he could breathe under the water; indeed it seemed as natural to him as breathing air.
    Little tendrils of plants, like the touch of soft fingers, brushed by him. Smaller fish darted at the edges of his sight. Then nose to tail, he and the trout traveled even further down into the depths of the darkening pool.
    The trout was thick along its back and covered with a shimmer of silver marked with black spots and crosses, like a shield. As it swam, it browsed on tiny shrimp, a moveable feast. Then, suddenly, it turned and stared at him with one bold eye.
    "Do not rise to the lure, lad," it said in a voice surprisingly chesty and deep. Bubbles fizzed from its mouth like punctuation. Then it was gone in a flurry of waves, so fast the boy could not follow. He blinked, and once more found himself sitting upon the rock, completely dry.
    "That was not exactly a dream," he whispered to himself. But he knew it was not exactly real either. Still, the shards of filtered light through water, the silver back of the trout, its resonant voice had seemed all too true.
    "Do not rise to the lure," he repeated quietly, glancing around at the forest. But seeing nothing that looked the least like a lure, he stood, brushed himself off, and headed deeper into the woods.

3. THE PACK
    HE PUZZLED OVER HIS ADVENTURE WITH the trout for hours as he walked, but could come to no understanding of it. And while he was puzzling, he paid slight attention to where he was going. Soon he left the small deer trail he had been following and somehow found himself pushing through briars and clambering over fallen logs.
    It was midway through the day when he realized that he was not only hungry, he was terribly lost.
    Now the woods were dark and filled, unaccountably, with large gullies lined with ash and spindletree and the spikey gorse leaves. Nettles seemed to fence in every new path he chose, as if the woods itself wanted him to go in one direction and one direction only.
    By the time he emerged on the other side of one