on the ground, and peered through the leaves. Irritated at his blindness, he tried instead to focus on the noise creeping closer, a muffled mixture of heavy breathing and scraping steps. It sounded to Merlin like a great beast crawling toward them with scaled claws, sniffing and huffing for their scent.
“What am I seeing?” Merlin asked.
“Can’t tell.”
Legs passed into Merlin’s view, mere blurs among the shadows. Then the legs paused.
“May we rest for a bit, O Father?” The voice reminded Merlin of a slow, scornful weasel. “Surely we have dragged this boon of yours for more than a league, and all uphill since we left the lakeside.”
“Not now. Not now,” a second voice answered, breathless. “We are almost to the gorseth, I say, and I will not stop until I have fulfilled the dictates of my vision.” There was a slight Eirish lilt to both voices that reminded Merlin of his stepmother’s, but this one had a darker timbre. Its richness made Merlin’s ears long to hear more.
“Yes … your vision,” came the first voice, with the slightest hint of a scoff. “But what is this burden? Will you not tell me your secrets?”
Merlin squinted with his better eye. There, between the two men, lay a large object suspended inside a brown cloth, possibly made of leather. He nudged Garth and whispered as quietly as he could, “Who are they? What are they carrying?” His words were hardly more than an exhale, but the two men on the other side of the bush fell silent, listening.
Garth gulped and his stomach growled.
Neither of the strangers moved, yet a blue light began to glow from the object between them.
The scornful man on the left jumped back. “What is happening to it?” he cried, yanking off the covering.
Blue flames leaped from the object’s surface, lighting up the woods and blinding Merlin completely for a moment. His face and hands turned hot, as if a fire raged just beyond the bush. Then he felt cold, as if winter had filled the land with snow and ice. After that the heat rushed back, followed by the cold. Merlin regarded the strange object with awe. What could it be?
“Beware, it tells us! … Beware!” the second voice said, now changing to a whisper. “Enemies are present.”
Both men drew knives, the metal reflecting the strange light.
Garth yelped and darted away.
Merlin chased after him, ignoring the shouts from behind. Ducking his head and covering his face with his free arm to avoid unseen branches, he ran headlong through the forest. Branches scraped and scratched him all the way. Twice he tripped. Once he ran into a tree. And all the time he listened desperately for Garth.
But the boy ran too fast, and each turn Merlin made to avoid a tree found him more turned around. He stopped to orient himself by the sun, but his half blindness and the thick-leafed canopy prevented him.
In the distance, the horses whinnied in fright. He ran toward the sound, which grew louder by the step. Finally, his lip bleeding, his tunic torn, and his arms covered in cuts, he burst out onto the main track not four paces from the wagon.
The horses reared up in terror.
“Get in!” Garth shouted.
Merlin gave the frightened horses a wide berth, grabbed on to the wagon, which rolled back and forth, and pulled himself up to the box.
As Garth yanked on the reins in an attempt to control the horses, Merlin tried to see what was frightening them, though his scarred eyes prevented him. When the wagon jerked backward, Merlin grabbed on to the front rail and accidentally snagged one of the reins. Distant voices called from the woods.
The horses reared up again.
“Give ‘em back!” Garth yelled, disentangling the leather straps from Merlin’s fingers. The boy snapped the reins down as hard as he could, and the wagon shot forward. “Are they followin’ us?”
“You don’t know? Can’t you look?”
“Why’d you talk? Why’d you let ‘em know we were hidin’?”
“It was your stomach that growled.”
They hit a bump, and the wagon rocked sideways. The goat tried to jump up onto the seat, his sharp hooves scraping across Merlin’s leggings. Merlin pushed him down. “I was just asking who they were.”
“I don’t know who they were.”
“Then why are we going so fast? Slow down.”
“ ‘Cause the horses are scared.”
Yet Merlin heard the reins snap every few moments. “You should’ve eaten your roasted eggs.”
“I woulda had a leg o’ lamb if it wasn’t for you.” The wagon picked up speed