Free Merlin's Harp by Anne Eliot Crompton Page B

house was across the water. Had my little one swum the lake, like the boar scried in the fire? He was too small to pole a coracle.
      She said, "He was headed north when I saw him. Then later, I heard talk about the north edge."
      I leaped to my feet. "What talk?"
      "Some sort of…power…had moved into that part of the forest and cast a shield around itself."
      The Lady and I exchanged appalled glances. "Birds and animals were seen to avoid the shield. Common Fey with no magic felt it and stayed away. It was there a day and night; then it lifted."
      "But…Bran would stay away too!"
      The Lady murmured, "Not if the power called him."
      Mellias shifted uneasily. He was ready to beat the forest bush by bush, but this talk of powers and shields disturbed him. Mellias was young, then, as Aefa and I were young.
      The Lady had not left Avalon for a season, except to visit the Human woman who taught her skills. Now she put on shirt and trousers, braided her hair and came with us. In two coracles we crossed the lake and poled up the north channel.
      Mellias, poling ahead, cried out softly and dropped his pole.
      Beside him, Aefa said, "Here's the shield."
      We all felt it. My hair tried to rise and I shivered. A power struck through my body as lightning once struck Counsel Oak.
      The shield was disintegrating, lifting away like shreds of fog. Poling hard we pushed through and left it behind. Behind us we left ducks and swans feeding; before us, no bird swam or dabbled. No fish rose to the surface. Yet in the shield-misted silence, something moved. Mellias whistled like a blackbird and indicated with his head.
      Among tall brown reeds moved something small and white. A white fallow kid poked his head from the reeds as though to greet us. Behind him a second white kid splashed in the shallows.
      I jammed my pole into mud, stopping the coracle. I said, "I'll follow those twins."
      The Lady nodded. "Take Aefa. Mellias and I will go on by water, search the banks."
      Aefa and I splashed ashore and pulled my coracle in among the reeds. The kids scrambled up the bank and seemed to wait for us. They circled each other, looking at us over their shoulders and switching their tails. As soon as we joined them on the bank they moved away, still looking back; and we followed, almost within touching distance.
      The northern edge of the forest had not been much lived in of late. We passed hidden abandoned huts and tree houses and one dancing ring where young trees were beginning to take root.
      The kids trotted and skipped before us. In the dancing ring they paused to play, bounding about aimlessly, as though forgetting their mission. Aefa called softly, "Pretty children! Guide us now, please.'' And they froze between one bound and the next, looking at us astonished. We walked slowly toward them; and when they were almost within our reach they leaped and trotted away single file, slowly enough for us to follow.
      The north channel swings in a great arc around that edge of forest. The Lady told us later that it is not easy poling, what with shallows and falls and rocks. The twins led us more or less straight overland to rejoin the channel at the tip of its arc; there, in the first mud of the first swamp by the channel, they paused. Small heads high, ears a twitch, they watched us come, skipping back just before we reached them.
      There in the mud a clear footprint had sunk deep and almost solid. A clear, small footprint.
      I sank to my knees beside it. I said, "His boots are wearing very thin." I stared into the footprint as though I could scry it, while Aefa cast about like a hound for more.
      "No more," she said at last. "You'd think he had stepped once in the mud, then been snatched up by an eagle." But Bran was not quite that small. She added, "It may not even be Bran."
      I shook my head. "I was looking for new boots for him. I knew they were thin."
      I stood up, took a great