Roger Taylor - Valderen

‘That’s not what you feel, is it though?’ his wife asked, her eyes fixed on his face.

‘No,’ Derwyn replied. ‘All I feel is that an injured sparrow has fallen into our care, but…’

Angwen smiled and her manner became mocking. ‘First a cuckoo, now a sparrow,’ she said. ‘What next, Derwyn? An eagle messenger from one of the cloud lands? A white swan from the snow mountains? Or perhaps the raven from the Great Castle of Light?’

‘Stop that,’ Derwyn demanded, impotently, with a jabbing finger. ‘This is serious.’ But his scowl had become a reluctant smile.

‘Of course, my dear,’ Angwen replied, agreeing completely and conceding nothing, as was her usual way. ‘But of the many things he might be, I can’t see him being a criminal, can you?’

‘He might be,’ Derwyn insisted. ‘How can we tell? Just because he’s hurt and fragile looking?’ His eyes widened. ‘He’s got a temper, and he’s shown it already.’

‘And you haven’t, I suppose?’ Angwen retorted.

‘That’s different,’ Derwyn replied defensively.

Angwen raised her eyebrows, mocking again.

‘You’re not helping, Gwen,’ Derwyn spluttered in exasperation.

‘Yes, I am,’ his wife replied simply. ‘You’ve been fretting about this boy ever since you found him, instead of thinking. You’re trying to do too much, too quickly, and you’re not stopping to look at the obvious.’

Derwyn’s eyes widened in feigned surprise. ‘And what obvious is that, my dear?’ he inquired, sitting back and affecting an expression of rapt expectation.

Angwen leaned forward towards him. ‘They’d never have let him in if there’d been any great evil in him, or if any such evil would have been drawn after him,’ she said, quietly and seriously.

Derwyn sighed noisily and nodded. ‘Marken said more or less the same thing,’ he conceded. ‘I suppose you’re right.’ His face relaxed somewhat. ‘Perhaps I have been a little too… agitated… about this business so far.’ He paused, and his eyes became distant. ‘But, seeing the lad lying there, with his strange clothes and his black hair,’ he grimaced slightly. ‘He really did look like something out of an old tale. And now this business with Marken.’ He shook his head. ‘Gone to find a quiet place, for mercy’s sake. Where does that leave us? I’ve heard of that kind of thing happening to Hearers but I scarcely gave it credence. I certainly never thought it’d happen to us, to Marken. This is his root lodge.’

This time it was Angwen who sighed. She rested her chin on her hand pensively. ‘Well, we’ll have to see what he has to say when he comes back,’ she said after a moment.

‘ If he comes back,’ Derwyn said significantly. ‘That’s the problem, isn’t it?’

‘He’ll be back,’ Angwen said.

‘You seem quite confident about that,’ Derwyn said, looking at her earnestly. ‘Most of the stories I’ve ever heard about Hearers wandering off to find a quiet place have involved them never coming back.’

Angwen did not reply. Instead she began slowly twisting and turning her hands, bending and straighten-ing her long fingers, and apparently studying them in great detail. Derwyn watched her in silence. Angwen moved now as she had when they had first fallen in love, and through the years he had never tired of watching her subtle, elusive grace. He had never seen the like in any other woman. Still it touched the young man housed inside him. And too, he knew, that there was no pointless vanity in her present examination; she was not looking at her hands, she was ordering her thoughts. Angwen had many kinds of grace.

‘Marken’s well rooted,’ she said eventually. ‘But that’s not what will bring him back. He’ll come back because they want him to. They protected the boy in some way, they drew Marken and thus you to him in a quite unprecedented manner. And there are other lodges round here that could have served the same end, aren’t there?’

Derwyn pursed his lips. That thought had not oc-curred to him.

‘But when the boy’s safe, Marken suddenly senses confusion all around him. Their confusion, as much as his own. Confusion that he thinks might have been rumbling on perhaps even for years. And he’s got an inquiring mind, Derwyn. His every fibre would have wanted to stay here and learn about that boy. I don’t think he simply walked away. I think he was drawn away.’

‘They want to tell him something,’ Derwyn said, on an impulse.

Angwen nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, simply. ‘I think so. Marken, the boy, us, we’re all at the centre of this. They wouldn’t have let the boy in on some whim, would they? Nor chosen Marken to search him out, nor had him brought here. And, from what both Marken and the boy said, I think they may well have turned away his pursuers.’

She paused and continued looking at her hands. When she spoke again she was almost whispering. ‘Think, Derwyn. We live in harmony with them, but it’s they who are the stronger and the older, and we who are really the outsiders. They’ve little or no need of us. They respect us, perhaps, or they fulfil some ancient obliga-tion, who can say? But they aren’t as we are, and generally they leave us to our own destinies.’

Derwyn’s brow furrowed a little.

‘You know it’s so,’ Angwen replied. ‘Many’s a child wandered off to perish, and many’s an injured hunter bled to death, where a whisper from them would have found them.’

Derwyn grimaced. Angwen’s clarity of vision was sometimes difficult to deal with. ‘A cold respect,’ he could not help saying.

Angwen looked at him sadly. ‘But it is so,’ she said. ‘And how could it be otherwise? Either they interfere with our lives or they don’t. And if they did, what would we be then? Clinging parasites, useless and draining? Noisy pets? Either way, as captive as if we were bound in cages. Yet this time they did interfere. More than we’ve ever known.’ She nodded her head conclusively. ‘They have some need of this boy. This boy who isn’t even Valderen. And he in his turn needs us if he’s to survive here.’

‘And you think Marken will be told what’s to be done with him?’ Derwyn asked.

‘It’s logical, if nothing else,’ Angwen declared.

‘But if that were the case, they could’ve told him what he needed to know in the first place,’ Derwyn said, although he was reluctant to challenge the optimism in his wife’s words.

Angwen nodded again. ‘I doubt it’s that simple,’ she said, reflectively. ‘They aren’t as we are. Marken spoke of great confusion. Perhaps they don’t know what they want. Perhaps what they want is beyond our under-standing.’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps it’s difficult for them to make themselves Heard, or perhaps Marken, or any Hearer for that matter, simply can’t understand fully what he’s Hearing…’ She stopped abruptly. ‘But that’s all conjecture and vagueness,’ she concluded, smiling and holding her hands out, palms upwards, with a small shrug of defeat. She raised an eyebrow. ‘What does the bold hunter’s intuition tell him?’

Derwyn smiled and raised his head in mock imita-tion of an animal testing the air. ‘My hunter’s instinct tells me that I’ve been dithering where I should’ve been thinking, and that, as usual, you’re probably right,’ he said. ‘There’s obviously something special about the boy. And, without a doubt, he’ll need us while he’s here. And who else but Marken could be the link to tell us what’s happening? I’ll be patient and await events.’ Then his smile faded abruptly and his expression became almost fearful. It was as if a black cloud had suddenly appeared in a bright summer sky, to obscure the sun and throw the land below into cold shadow.