The Dreamstone

And this Brown Man had a way about him of being there one moment and elsewhere in the next, so that when Niall cast him a second look round the corner of the shed he was gone.

On that same instant something prickled his bare back and he spun about with an oath and almost a sweep of the hammer. As quickly as he spun a shadow dived in the corner of his eye and he kept spi

Once he had followed it: he knew better now. It had led him over fences and stones and over the brook and back again. Now he dived back again around the corner and caught it coming round behind him. He flung the mallet, not to hit it, but to scare it.

It screamed and tucked down instead of ru

“Here now,” Niall said. “Here.” He was suddenly in the wrong and hoping no one had seen.

It ventured another eye above its hands, then spat and scampered off on its short legs.

“Perish it,” Niall muttered to himself, and then wished he had not said that either. Nothing went well this day. He left his pegs and his mallet and followed it to the barn and inside.

Straw showered down his neck. “Plague on you,” he cried, but it went scampering through the rafters disturbing the owls in a flapping of wings. “Come back!”

But it was gone and out the door.

“Do not try.”

It was Beorc who had come in behind him, and shame flooded Niall’s face. He was not accustomed to be made sport of or to be caught in the wrong either. “I would not have hit him.”

“No, but you hurt his pride.”

A moment Niall was silent. “What will mend it?”

“Be kind,” said Beorc. “Only be kind.”

“Call him back,” said Niall in sudden despair.

“That I ca

Niall shivered then, for his luck seemed to have left him. It will end now, he thought, for frightening one of the fair folk: he remembered how he had come to the Steading, and how it needed luck to find the place and needed luck to stay.

That night he had no appetite, and set his di

Yet there was no certain turning in his luck, except that now and again he had straw dumped on his head when he went into the barn and now and again his tools vanished when his back was turned, to appear on their pegs in the barn when he came hunting others.

All this he bore with patience unlike himself, even setting an especially fine apple out where the theft was returned—which gift vanished: but so, daily, did his tools. All the same he taught himself to smile about it, concealing his misfortune and making little of it, no matter how long the walk.

So great a patience did he achieve that it even extended to the boy Scaga’s thefts, so that one day that he came on the boy pilfering his lunch in the field he only stood there, and Scaga looked up with his eyes all round with startlement

Niall had a mallet in his hand this day too, but he kept it in his hand. “Will you not leave a morsel?” he asked. “I’ve been hard at my work.”

The boy looked at him, down on his haunches as he was and ill-set for ru

“Will you have half?” Niall asked the boy. “I’d like the company.”

“There’s not much,” the red-baked rascal said, looking doubtfully under the napkin.

“There’s always enough to give half of,” Niall said, and did.

It was a silent lunch. Scaga stole from others after, but never from him. And sometimes his tools came back on Scaga’s quick legs before he missed them.

One day about that time the Gruagach came and sat and watched him, and he spied it looking round the corner of the barn at him.

“Here,” he said, his heart lifting at this approach. He offered a handful from the bin, “here’s grain. I’ve a bit of bread about me if you like. Good cheese.” The head vanished before the words had left his mouth. But it lurked about and looked at him and stole his tools only now and again, just to remind him.

His luck lasted, and the days rolled on, from summer heat to harvest: the fawn grew gangling and the wolf cub yelped at the moon of nights; and the sickles turned up sharpened on their own each harvest morning.

But one nooning a man came stumbling up the valley from the south, off the shoulder of Raven’s Hill, startling the geese.

Niall came as all the house came ru

“Lord,” Caoimhin said, and his hand trembled in its grip on his, Caoimhin, best of bowmen they had had. “O my lord, we heard that you were dead.”

“No,” said Niall, “hush, be still, lean on me: I’ll help you walk”

Caoimhin let him lift him up, trusting only him, clinging most to him and leaning on him, so with Beorc and Lo

It was broth that day and bread and butter, but Caoimhin limped as far as the porch in the evening, and then to the yard where the table groaned with food beneath the oak, and the harvesters came singing home. Having gotten that far he only stared with that far lost look of a man too hard for tears, but Niall came to rescue him and Beorc clapped him heartily on the shoulder and called for a cup of ale for him, and another plate at table.

“Here,” Niall bade Caoimhin quickly, and gave up his own seat until everyone rearranged themselves and Siolta brought a dish and cup for him. “He is Caoimhin,” Beorc said, lifting his cup to him. So they all did, and fell to one of Aelfraeda’s grand good meals.

Caoimhin tried, a bit of this and that, but his hands shook and at last he sat there with the tears ru

“Refuge,” said Niall. “And safety. A place where ill has never been. And never shall.”

“Are we dead then?”

“No,” Niall laughed. “Never dead.”

But a niggling fear was on him. He even wished Caoimhin had never come, because this man reminded him what he had been, and brought the stink of death about him. More, he was afraid for the peace of all this place, as if it had taken some great danger to its heart.

Caoimhin lay about the house the next few days, or rested on the porch in the sunlight and the breeze, and slept much and drank and ate wholesome food when he waked, so that his face looked less haggard and less desperate.

In those first days he wanted at least his sword by him and kept it by him even napping in the sun. And ever and again his hand would stray to find it in his sleep, and his fingers curl about the sheath or hilt, so his face would lose its moment’s trouble and he would rest again. But on the third day he let it go; and the fourth he walked out of the house and left it behind, beside the hearth with his bow and his empty quiver. So he sat with old Sgeulaiche on the porch and finally strolled about the yard and out to the threshing.