The Dreamstone

The Gruagach perched on the roof, and let fall a double armful and laughed and ran.

“Ha,” it cried, going over the rooftree. “Ha! Wicked!”

“Wither it!” cried Caoimhin, but the ambush was sprung and the battle lost in pelting snowballs.

A moment Niall watched, and turned away, hearing still the squeals and hearing something else. He turned and looked back to prove to his ears and eyes what it was he heard, and succeeded, and went his way.

THREE

The Harper

The harvest had come again. The scythes went back and forth and left stubble in their wake. By morning the sheaves appeared all in rows, neatly tied; so the Gruagach slept a mighty sleep by day, and ate and ate. A pair of fawns had come this year, a fledgling falcon, a bittern, a trio of fox kits and a starved and arrow-shot piebald mare: such were the fugitives the Steading gathered. Now the falcon was flown, and the bittern too; the fox kits instead of tumbling about the porch were begi

So here is another fled from the madness, Niall thought to himself, and loved the mare for her courage in living. He rode at times bareback and reinless when he had leisure, letting her go where she would through the pastures and the hills. He loved the feeling of riding again, and the mare swished her tail and cantered at times for the joy of it, going where she pleased, from rich pasture to cool brook to hillsides in the sunlight, or home again to stable and grain. Banain, he called her, his fair darling. She would bear him of her own will; or any of the children, or the Gruagach who whispered to her in a way that horses understood. Sometimes she was willing to be bridled and Caoimhin rode when the mood came on him, and others did, but rarely and not so well and not so far, for, as Caoimhin said, she has one love and none of us can win her.

So this year had been even kinder than the first to him. But the year was not done with arrivals.

This last one came singing, blithe as brazen, down the dusty margin of the fields, along the track the cattle took to pasture, a youth, a vagabond with a sack on his back and a staff in his hand and no weapon but a dagger. His hair was blond to whiteness, and blew about his shoulders to the time of his walking and the whim of the breeze.

Hey,he sang, the winds do blow,

And ho, the leaves are dying,

And season doth to season go

The summer swiftly flying.

Niall was one that saw this apparition. He was mending fences, and Beorc was near him, with Caoimhin and Lo

“Here’s one come walking where he knows not,” Niall said. In a furtive smallness of his heart it disturbed him that anyone could come less desperate than himself, than Caoimhin wounded, than half-starved Banain or the grounded falcon. It upset all his world that this place could be gained so casually, by simple accident. And then he thought again on the mea

“It be one of the fair folk,” said Lo

“No,” said Beorc. “That he is not. He has a harp on his shoulder, and his singing is uncommon fine but he is none of the fair folk.”

“Do you know him then?” Niall asked, wishing some surety in this meeting.

“No,” Beorc said. “Not I.” There was no man living had sharper eyes or ears than Beorc. He spoke while the boy was well off in the distance and the voice was still unclear. But the song came clearer as they listened, bright and fair, and the boy came walking up to them in no great hurry: there was indeed a harp on his shoulder. It rang as he walked and as he stopped.

“Is there welcome here?” the boy asked.

“Always,” said Beorc. “For all that find the way. Have you walked far?”

For a moment there seemed a confusion in the boy’s eyes. He half turned as if seeking the way that he had come. “I came on the path. It seemed a short way through the hills.”

“Well,” said Beorc. “Well, shorter and longer than some. The hills are not safe these days.”

“There were riders,” said the harper vaguely, pointing at the hills. “But they went off their way and I went mine, and I sing as I walk so they will not mistake me—there is still some respect for a harper, is there not, in the lands about Caer Do

“Ah, if you were seeking Caer Do

Now the boy looked afraid—not greatly so, but uneasy all the same. “I had come from Do

“Freeheld, this is,” said Beorc and laughed, waving an arm at all the steading, the house set on the side of the great hill, the golden-stubbled fields, the orchards, the whole wide valley. “And Aelfraeda, my wife, will give a harper a cup of ale and a place by the fire for the asking. If you’ve a taste for cakes and honey, that we always have. Scaga, show the lad the way.”

“Sir,” said the harper, quite courteous in his recovery, and made a bow as respectful as for a lord. He shouldered the strap of his harpcase and went off up the hill with Scaga’s leading, not without a troubled glance or two the way he had come, but after a few paces his step was light again and quick.

“You have misgivings,” Niall said to Beorc at the harper’s back, when he was out of hearing. “You never wondered at me or at Caoimhin. Who is he? Or what?”

Beorc continued to stare after the boy a moment, leaning on the rail, and his face had no laughter in it, none. “Something strayed. Caer Do

“Does he lie?” asked Caoimhin.

“No,” said Beorc. “Do you think a harper could?”

“A harper is a man,” said Caoimhin. “And men have been known to lie upon a time.”

Beorc turned on Caoimhin one of his searching looks, his beard like so much fire in the wind and his hair blowing likewise. “The world has gotten to be an ill place if that is so. But this one does not. I do not fear that.”

“And what when he goes singing songs of us in An Beag?” asked Caoimhin.

“They may search as they will,” said Beorc, and shrugged and took up the rail again, “But we shall have songs for it. Perhaps a whole winter’s songs, perhaps not.”

And Beorc fell to singing himself, which he would when he wished not to discuss a thing.

“Master Beorc,” said Caoimhin, a

That evening there were indeed songs at the table in the yard, beneath the stars. The harper played for them on his plain and battered harp, delighting the children with merry songs made just for them. But there were great songs too. He had made one of the great battle at Aescli