Merlin Read Online Free Page A

came.

8. THE LONG WAIT
    THEY KEPT HIM ON THE HIDE FOR HOURS , taking turns watching him. It was a warm autumn day and the sun was blazing in an unclouded sky. Whenever he attempted to leave the hide—to get out of the sun or to relieve himself or simply to stand and stretch—the women made menacing noises and threatened him with long sticks. Then he recalled the stories he had heard about the wild women, stories Mag and Nell had told him when he had been a boy in Master Robin's house: how the wild women stole away human children and ate them.
    For the first time he was really afraid.
    So he tried once again to dream. Closing his eyes, he thought about pleasanter times with Master Robin or the happy days in Ambrosius' cart. But the more he tried to dream, the wider awake he remained.
    The women did not speak to him, nor with one another, while they were on guard. Their aptitude for silence was appalling.
    Very well,
he thought.
I will match you in this long wait. I will outlast you.
It occurred to him that as long as they waited for him to dream, they would not be eating him.
    Opening his eyes, he stared at each woman in turn. Two he was already familiar with: the branded woman and the redhead. They seemed to be the leaders. But soon he found he could distinguish the others as well. In the tales, the wild women were ugly. Mag had said they were covered with bristles and Nell that their black hair was spotted with moss and lichen. But in fact several of the women of this camp were flaxenhaired and none, as far as he could tell, had bristles. As for being ugly, two or three of them were surprisingly good-looking. And the redhead—though she had a tendency to scowl at him, which wrinkled her forehead—was quite beautiful.
Not,
he reminded himself,
as beautiful as Viviane, the lady of the green castle-cart. But close.
    Neither his staring nor his silence seemed to bother the women. Theirs was a genius for long patience. So after a while, Hawk-Hobby forced himself to look down at the ground to avoid their accusing eyes.
    Organy,
he thought. Even the smell of it would ever after remind him of their stares and the sun beating down on his uncovered head.
    On the ground there were hundreds of ants scurrying between the blades of grass. He was startled by their purposefulness in the midst of his own forced idleness.
    Ants,
his conscious mind told him. But as he continued staring at the hurrying insects, he became mesmerized by them and suddenly he found himself head to abdomen with them as they threaded their way between towering grasses.
    The ants were all yellowish-brown and their elbowed feelers swayed before them to a rhythm he could almost grasp. The sound of the many pairs of marching feet was thunderous. Plodding through the arcade of grass, they marched as if a single thread connected them. They sang as one: "Go the track, don't look back. Go the track. Don't look back." The words repeated over and over. It was hypnotic.
    He opened his mouth to sing with them, blinked, and found himself once more sitting on the hide. But the song of the ants was still so compelling, he found himself singing it. "Go the track. Don't look back."
    He was interrupted by the women crying out: "The Dreamer. The Dreamer is here."
    "But..." he tried to say, "that was no dream." However, he did not know
what
it was, so he forced himself to silence. If the women thought him this Dreamer, and that got him off the hide, allowed him to stretch his legs, or relieve himself, he would agree to anything.
    He thought he had been on the hide for hours and hours but when he looked up at the sun, it was not quite noon.

9. DREAMER
    THEY FED HIM THEN, EVEN MORE THAN they had at dinner, a strange porridge and a stew that left an odd aftertaste. They made him eat every bite.
    He ate steadily and then, when he thought he could not eat anything more, they brought him a sweet honey drink which they insisted he finish. He tried to turn it down but they