Free The Lad of the Gad by Alan Garner

night, in the Upland of Grief
    He walks on boundaries, on the wolf’s track,
    He hammers the moon.”
    Lusca said, “How shall I find the Upland of Grief?”
    â€œThere is a cave below here,” said the hag. “The Upland of Grief is by that way.”
    Lusca rested the night with the hag, and no one was earlier on his feet the next day than he. He went down to the cave and found it open, a thin road in it. He followed the road until he came to a smooth plain and a little yellow island and a sea on each side of it. He went up the island, and in the middle of it he chanced upon a fair lake. A beautiful flock of bright-white birds was ever-rising out of the middle of the lake, and never a bird of them was going down again, but always they were rising up.
    Lusca said, “What is the place that bright birdscome from?”
    He lay on the lake and went under it to the bed and the gravel. He looked about to a tower of gold at a distance from him, and he went up and entered.
    There was a girl in a room of the tower, a covering upon her head, with gems and with purple-white shimmerings, and silver jewels in her hair; a cloak of satin around her; a cushion of satin under her; that is how she was.
    She had a white rod in her hand, a knife in the other hand, slicing the rod. Every whittle she took from the rod went up and out, as a bright bird, through the window of the tower.
    The girl looked at him and said, “Which of us does not wonder at the other, for you wonder at me, and I wonder at you? I am Grian Sun-face, and take you this rod to whittle it a while.”
    Lusca took hold of the rod and whittled it for a while. With every whittle, every evil and every feebleness that he had met before did not put upon him its hurt, except for the wound of the Big Mokkalve in his side.
    â€œIt is a rod never to be whittled away,” said Grian Sun-face, “but to be whittled for ever. My father gave it to save me from thinking long.”
    Lusca was filled with a need to be from the place, for the whittle of the rod was great. He said, “My life is not to be for ever making bright birds.” He left the girl in the tower and went back to the shores of the lake, not a hair of his clothing wet onhim.
    It was only a small time from that out when Lusca passed from the island into a country where there was neither day nor night but a dusk without moon or stars. No one did he see there, there were no creatures, but the land lay in a sweat of hideousness and the trees were broken. High on a hill there was a castle, and in it Lusca found no people except a white-haired warrior, a beardless lad, and an ancient bent grey coughing woman. Between them they had a ball of black iron in the fire round which they lay.
    Lusca sat down at the fire, and when he sat down the iron ball turned through blackness to redness in the fire, and the people there rose up and gave Lusca three kisses. Lusca said, “What is that din of dinging I hear?”
    â€œTake you a blessing and a victory for freeing us,” said the white-haired warrior, “and it is Shasval the Smith.”
    â€œI do not free you,” said Lusca. He rose and went from the castle to where the din of dinging was. He found a cave, and before it a dark smith at a red forge, hammering a Sword of Light.
    Lusca said, “The Big Mokkalve opened the gate of my side and I must get healing.”
    The smith answered nothing and hammered the sword.
    Lusca went back to the castle and sat near the fire. The ball of iron there turned through blackness toredness and the warrior, the lad and the woman gave him three kisses. “Take a blessing and a victory for your coming, and free us from fear,” said the warrior.
    â€œI do not free you,” said Lusca. He went out again to the smith. “The Big Mokkalve opened the gate of my side and I must get healing.”
    The smith answered nothing and hammered the sword.
    Lusca went to the castle and sat