I’ve got to go back.” David stared across the fire at the others. Bear was mending a piece of battle harness. Emrys, with Beauty cradled on his lap, was staring into the flames.
“Back? But you can’t . . .” Bear frowned. “Oh. You mean back to where I found you?”
David nodded. “There’s a chance, just a chance that if I go back there something might happen. Nothing’s going to happen here. Or it would have happened already.”
Emrys shook his head. “I don’t think it will work, lad.”
“But it might,” David said desperately. “What else can I do? You say you can’t help me. And I can’t just go on like this. I’ve got to know one way or the other. I’ve got to. I can’t explain, exactly. But I’ve got to know. Now.”
Emrys studied him for a long moment, then nodded.
“Why this sudden rush to be quit of us?” asked Bear. “I thought you were getting used to us—barbarians,” he added slyly.
David met his gaze briefly before lowering his eyes. “Maybe it’s because I am that I—oh, I don’t know!” he said miserably.
Bear sighed. “So, another stroll in the woods for me, I suppose. You’re not thinking you could make the trip alone?”
David grinned. “I may be dumb, but I’m not that dumb.”
Emrys returned Beauty to its shelf. “Take bread and dried meat from my stores,” he offered. “Enough for a few days. It should take you no longer than that.”
“We won’t need much,” agreed Bear. “I can always catch a coney or two. And if I can’t, Cabal can.”
They left the next morning. As they tramped through the village they saw Meri in the distance. She waved. David raised his hand, but kept on walking. This was no time to think of Meri. If he did, he’d never have the courage to leave!
At the edge of the forest, he glanced back at the village, remembering how he had seen it the first time. It seemed different to him now—almost welcoming. He had found so much there. Meri. Beauty. Would he ever see either of them again?
“Are you coming or not?” asked Bear, shifting his pack impatiently.
“Coming,” said David.
Bear. That’s another thing, he thought, as he followed him into the forest. Bear mattered too. If this hunch worked and he went back to his own time, he’d never see Bear again. It would be back to all that . . . mess. David shivered. Did he really want to go back?
But how could he not try?
They camped the first night in a glade deep in the forest. Bear set snares and caught two rabbits for their supper. “Thanks, little brothers,” he said, stroking their fur. “Your lives for our need.” After a moment, he took out his knife and set about cleaning them.
“I remember your talking to a tree that other time,” said David, who was picking up stones to ring the fire. “I thought you were nuts.”
Bear looked up, grinning. “And now?”
“Sure of it. Ouch!” Bear had bounced a piece of bark off his ear.
“Emrys says it’s well to remember we’re only part of things,” Bear said, returning to his cooking. “Not lords and masters over everything in nature. People used to know that long ago, but now we seem to be forgetting.”
“It’s even worse in my time.”
Dusk fell. The late spring night was damp, and David wrapped his cloak more closely around him. The wood was alive with odd noises and rustlings. A fox barked not far away, and in the distance an owl hooted.
David met Bear’s eyes across the fire. “Do you think . . .?” he began.
Bear shrugged. “If it were the Lady, she’d come closer than that. Anyway, why worry? What more can she do to you than she’s done already?”
“I’m not sure I want to find out,” replied David, with a shiver.
They rolled themselves in their cloaks and lay down by the dying fire, Bear’s head pillowed on Cabal’s shaggy flank.
I’m crazy, David told himself. I should be hoping for the Lady to come. After all, she got me here. How can I get back without her? He lay awake for a long time thinking about it, before drifting off to sleep.
The next day, they reached the glade where David had first met Bear.
“Might as well camp where I did before,” said Bear, slinging down his pack. “If you’re determined to go through with this, we should do everything the same.”
They lit a fire, but somehow neither of them felt much like eating. They fed the last of the cold rabbit to Cabal, then sat in silence as the light drained out of the world and the darkness rose up from the ground.
At last, Bear got up. “It’s getting late,” he warned. “If you want to be where you were when it happened, I’d best take you.”
David nodded.
It took Bear only a few minutes to find the spot where the old track crossed the woods. “This was the place we came to in the morning,” he said, standing on the path and sighting toward the great tree that loomed ahead of them in the dusk.
David took a few steps off the track and looked up into the branches of the tree where the owl had perched. “I must have been about here when I woke up.”
“Then I’ll leave you,” said Bear. “I must, if this scheme is to work.” He put both hands on David’s shoulders. “If it does . . .” His voice trailed off. Then, “Good luck,” he said, gruffly. Whistling to Cabal, he disappeared into the undergrowth.
David almost called him back. He shivered, and tugged his cloak more closely about him. He couldn’t see anything, not even the faintest glow from Bear’s fire. It must be late. How late had it been that night? Eleven? Twelve?
He didn’t notice the wood go still around him, or hear the rustle of wings. But something told him he was being watched. He turned, and there it was. Cloud-white, the owl sat preening itself on a low-hanging branch.
“You did follow us,” David breathed. “Lady, I’m sorry for what I did before. Send me back. I don’t belong here. Please!”
The owl cocked its head, for all the world as though it were listening. It ruffled its feathers and settled them. Then it spread its wings and floated silently away, a white spot growing fainter in the darkness, then gone.
David stared into the gloom, hoping to see the trees melt away and ghost lights spring up along the haunted path. Nothing. At last he threw himself down on the ground, burying his head in his arms. After a long time, he slept.
He awoke when a foot slid under his ribs and flipped him onto his back. Bear grinned down at him. In the east, the rising sun sent shafts of green-gold light through the trees.
“Didn’t work, did it?” crowed Bear. “I needn’t have worried. Emrys said it would be so.”
Cabal pushed past his master’s knees and greeted David with a large, sloppy lick.
“Oof-ugh! Get away, you great horse,” spluttered David, wiping his face on his arm.
Bear stretched a hand to pull him to his feet.
“You . . . worried?” David asked.
The brown-gold eyes held his, quizzically. Then Bear shrugged. “Aye,” he said.
“She did come, you know. The Lady. But she wouldn’t take me,” said David.
Bear’s eyes widened, then he nodded. “Perhaps . . . perhaps she isn’t finished with you yet,” he said.
There was a moment of silence. Then, David said, “Well, I’m kind of glad to see your homely mug again, too.”
Bear clapped him so hard on the shoulder that he reeled. “No need to blather on about it, man,” he said. “Here’s breakfast.” He handed him a hunk of bread. “Then let’s climb above the woods for a look-about before we go back”
They came up out of the trees, Cabal bounding ahead of them, and climbed silently toward the great stone ruin that loomed above them on the bare ridge. They pushed their way through waist-high bracken and golden gorse. Away from the shelter of the trees, the sun was hot, and the air was thick with the scent of heather in bloom. Sweat ran down David’s brow and trickled under the scratchy cloth of his tunic.
Yet in the shadow of the stones it was chilly. David stared at the gaunt shapes rearing against the sky. This was what he had seen in the distance on that moon-bright night. This was the spot toward which the lights had climbed out of the dark valley. Just before his world went crazy.
Bear placed his hands flat on the lichen-covered stone. Closing his eyes, he rested his forehead against it. David watched him for a moment, then did the same, straining to hear an echo of far-off singing. He heard only the whine of wind among the stones and the humming of the bees in the heather. A feeling of emptiness overwhelmed him.
Bear cast himself down on the springy turf where Cabal lay panting, pillowed his head on the hound’s back, and, closing his eyes, turned his face up to the sun. “Are you very disappointed?” he asked.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” David squatted beside him and gazed out over the sweep of the wooded valley below. “I mean, I know I don’t belong here.” He paused.
“But . .?”
“I don’t know how to say it, exactly. It sounds crazy, but being here is like being given a fresh start. With no mistakes counted against me.”
Bear’s mouth quirked at one corner.
“Well,” David added quickly, “not so many, anyway.”
“Your past does seem to be behind you,” Bear agreed. “Or rather, ahead of you.”
“It’s more than that, though,” David went on. “I’ve lived in cities all my life and never given a hoot about nature. But here the woods, the hills, the river—they feed something in me. Something I didn’t know was hungry. Something to do with my music.”
“Spoken like a bard,” said Bear, sitting up and stretching. “It sounds like poetry to me.”
“It’s just . . . your world’s so green, Bear. So . . . so unspoiled.” David gestured toward the valley below. “Like here. It’s so different now from the way it was. I mean, the way it will be,” he said. “In my time all the trees are gone. Only this hasn’t changed.” He jerked his thumb at the stones behind them.
“It’s already as old as time,” said Bear. “I’m glad there’s something I know that doesn’t change. But I can’t imagine living in a world that wasn’t green. Still, your world has all the other things you’ve told me about . . .” His voice trailed away. He shaded his eyes to gaze at the pale wafer of moon floating in the western sky. “Like the men who will walk . . . there.”
David grinned. “That’s your favourite of all my tales, isn’t it? That and the dinosaurs.”
“I like best things that seem impossible. Emrys says it will be my greatest failing in life.” Bear grinned back. “And my greatest gift. Though I believe you when you tell me these impossible things are true,” he added. “I know you wouldn’t lie. And you never tell these tales to anyone but me.”
“Emrys said not to.”
“He’s right,” said Bear soberly. “Our folk love wonder tales. But if the tales are frightening, then the teller might be blamed. Best to stick to your singing.”
“But you’re not frightened. And you believe me.”
“Frightened? Sometimes, when you talk, I’m drunk with the excitement of it!” Bear threw his arms out, gesturing widely. “It’s like, it’s like . . . owning the world,” he went on. “You’ve told me things that even Emrys doesn’t know. I feel as if I can see forever. The future. The past. Not just dinosaurs and moon men, but pyramids and skyscrapers, and knights and castles.”
“And computers and television and jumbo jets.”
“Yes. Yes.” Bear hugged his knees tightly and watched the cloud shadows chase each other across the hills.
“But why do you care so much about it all, Bear?” David asked. “I mean, most people in the village wouldn’t. Oh, they’d ask a few questions. But then they’d forget. Or they’d expect me to tell them how many pigs there’d be in the next litter!”
Bear glanced at David almost shyly. “I’ve this feeling that it’s for something,” he replied.
David was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve never told this to anybody, mind. Not even Emrys, though I daresay he knows all the same. I may be daft, but I’ve always felt there’s something I’m supposed to do. Or try to do. Except I don’t know what it is yet. And this is for that, somehow . . .” His voice trailed off. Then, “Over there! See it?” he said suddenly, pointing.
David shaded his eyes against the glare. At first he could make out nothing. Then, high above the valley, he saw a bird riding the wind. “Is it Blodeuwedd come back?” he asked.
“Of course not, numbskull. Owls hunt by night. It’s an eagle, by its size,” said Bear. “That’s it exactly,” he added, half to himself.
“What?”
Bear turned to look at David, his eyes wide. “How I feel. The eagle’s like you, David. He sees across the high hills the way you see across time. Through you, I see the landscape of time. Once and future time . . .”
David watched the bird until it dropped out of sight beyond a distant ridge. “I can’t see what use it is to you to know all that stuff,” he said at last. “Or what good it is for me to remember it, now I’m stuck here for the rest of my life.” Then he added ruefully, “Maybe it would be better if I forgot!”
“I’m glad you can’t,” said Bear. He stood up, and looked down at David searchingly. “You’ve given me something I’ve never had before. Something that helps me make sense of things. Now I know that there’s more than our enemies, our fears, our little quarrels among ourselves. That things don’t have to stay the same. That terrible wars are fought, but marvellous things happen too. Knowing that . . . helps.”
“I can’t think why,” said David, getting up.
Bear put a hand on his shoulder. “Never mind, bardling,” he said. “Let’s go home.”