He still seemed dubious, but he said in a very businesslike way, “What way do you want me to help you?”
I explained or tried to. None of it seemed to mean very much to him, and we hit a snag almost at once, because he thought that the Merlin was a man with a long white beard from the days of some mythical king. I’d never heard of this King Arthur of his, but I said, “Well, a lot of the Merlins do have long white beards. The one who just died did.” I tried to go on to explain how the Merlins kept the magical powers and worked with the Kings, who kept the political powers.
He didn’t seem to understand at all. I got a feeling he didn’t want to. I went on explaining, quite desperately, that the whole country was being threatened, along with the rest of the world, and probably other worlds with it. I see now that this was a foretaste of what happened every other time I tried to get help from someone, but at the time it seemed that it was because we were totally separate, me on a hill in Wales and he goodness knows where in the dark. I felt helpless and hopeless.
And he couldn’t walk through from his dark place to me. He tried. He put out his hand, and it was as if he had planted it against a glass wall. I could see his palm all flattened and white, with red lines in it.
“Okay,” he said. He seemed a great deal more cheerful about it than I was. He said he’d go and ask someone what to do. “Then I’ll come back and try to help you and Grundoon sort it out,” he said.
“Grundo,” I said.
“Him, too,” he said cheerfully. “Where are you anyway?”
That made me feel as if the spell had let me down, because surely it ought to have let him know basic things like that. “I’m in Blest, of course,” I said.
“Then I’ll see you soon,” he said, and went walking away past me, looming up blue and dark and then vanishing out of sight just beside me. The darkness stayed there for a moment, going denser and denser, and then faded back into the sky.
“That was a fat lot of good!” I said angrily to Grundo.
Grundo jumped a little and said, “Have you finished already?”
“Yes!” I said. I hurled my mashed bunch of herbs to the ground. “Powers preserve me from thickheaded, self-centered, cocky teenage wizards!”
“Wasn’t it any good?” Grundo asked.
“Not a lot,” I said. “Now what shall we do?”
Grundo gave a surprised look at the low sun and then at his watch. “We go in for tea, I think. That’s the trouble with having tea instead of supper. The afternoon’s so short. Anyway, your grandfather’s back. I can see the gray mare in the field from here.”
As we went sliding and crawling down the hill, Grundo seemed quite cheerful. I couldn’t understand it. I was in a great state of gloom. All that hunting for flowers had been a total waste of time. The wizard boy was not capable of helping anyone. He was stupid. I wanted to blame the Little Person for suggesting the idea—but it was not his fault. He had no way of knowing I was going to get an ignorant idiot when I called. But that seemed to show there was no way to get help from outside. The only thing I could do now was to rejoin the King’s Progress and find out as soon as possible what it meant to raise the land and how to do it. It was not something that was in my flower files, I was sure of that. In the hurt woman’s day it was not a thing anyone needed to do. They had little Kings and small countries. Probably the magic of Blest had not even begun to be important for other places then.
In the manse Grandfather Gwyn was waiting by the tea table to say grace. At first glance he seemed as somber and expressionless as ever, and maybe a little tired. One black eyebrow twitched impatiently as Grundo uttered cries of joy at the plate heaped with griddle cakes. But after he had thundered forth a longer grace than usual, my grandfather looked at me briefly. There was just a flick of a smile for me, private between the two of us. Now, the smile seemed to say, you know some of my secret.
Yes, I thought, and some of that secret is that Sybil owns you for the moment. I can’t tell you anything now. But I couldn’t resist smiling back.
“That’s better,” my grandfather said as we sat down. “Arianrhod, you are too solemn. You should learn not to take things so hard. Your cause will be much better served if people perceive you as less tense and emotional.”
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! I thought. “Grandfather Gwyn,” I said, “I have reason to be like this. I think Grundo and I should get back to the Progress as soon as possible.”
“I agree,” he said. “I have ordered the car for you. Be ready to start first thing tomorrow.”
Grundo looked truly miserable. He had been enjoying himself thoroughly almost for the first time in his life. “In that case,” he said, “could we have another plate of griddle cakes? I need to stock up.”
My grandfather did his almost-smile again. “Certainly. And a packet to take with you when you go.”
He was as good as his word. I think he always is. When Grundo and I stumbled downstairs with our bags in the very early morning, my grandfather was waiting in the hall like a tall black pillar, with a slightly greasy bag in his long white hands. The hall was unusually sunny. The front door was open into the low sunlight and a melting green and gold distance beyond. The hearse-like car cut some of the light off as it came slowly crunching to a stop on the grass outside.
My grandfather passed Grundo the bag. “Olwen has put a packed breakfast for you in the car. Go in peace with my blessing.”
He saw us to the car, but he didn’t, to my secret relief, insist on a kiss or even try to shake hands. He just lifted one hand as the car started. The last we saw of him, he was turning, black and upright, to go back into the manse. The road tipped us down and round a corner almost at once, and all we saw was the green shoulders of mountains. I found I was sighing with regret as strong as Grundo’s.
Olwen had provided the usual huge packets of sandwiches and cakes. We were eating for a good part of the long drive back and didn’t pay much attention to the scenery, though I got the feeling we went a different way that was rather shorter. I certainly didn’t recall the wide, sunny gorge we went through or the full gray river hurrying in the midst of it. But then, as Grundo said, until we spent these few strange days at the manse, neither of us had made a habit of watching the country as we traveled.
“You get trained out of it,” Grundo said. “Scenery just goes past, and that’s it.”
We were both in a muddling mixture of regret at leaving and nervousness about what would happen when we were back with the Progress.
“I wonder what my mother will say,” Grundo remarked. “I forgot to tell her I was going with you.”