Taran Wanderer (14 page)

The size of the task ahead of him made Taran despair of ever finishing, but he and Gurgi
started the painstaking work, with Dwyvach herself lending a hand. The aged weaver-woman,
Taran soon learned, had not only a tart tongue but a keen eye. Nothing escaped her; she
spied the smallest knot, speck, or flaw, and brought Taran's attention to it with a sharp
rap from her distaff to his knuckles. But what smarted Taran more than the distaff was to
learn that Dwyvach, despite her years, could work faster, longer, and harder than he
himself. At the end of each day Taran's eyes were bleary, his fingers raw, and his head
nodded wearily; yet the old weaver-woman was bright and spry as if the day had scarce
begun.

Nevertheless, the work at last was finished. But now Dwyvach set him in front of a huge
spinning wheel. “The finest wool is useless until it's spun to thread,” the weaver woman
told him. “So you'd best begin learning that, as well.”

“But spinnings are woman's toilings!” Gurgi protested. “No, no, spinnings are not fitting
for bold and clever weaver-men!”

“Indeed!” snorted Dwyvach. “Then sit you down and learn otherwise. I've heard men complain
of doing woman's work, and women complain of doing man's work,” she added, fastening her
bony thumb and forefinger on Gurgi's ear and marching him to a stool beside Taran, “but
I've never heard the
work
complain of who did it, so long as it got done!”

And so, under Dwyvach's watchful eye, Taran and Gurgi spun thread and filled bobbins
during the next few days. Chastened by Dwyvach's words, Gurgi did his best to help, though
all too often the hapless creature managed only to tangle himself in the long strands.
Next, Dwyvach took the companions to a shed where pots of dye bubbled over a fire. Here,
Taran fared no better than Gurgi, for when the yarn was at last dyed, he was bespattered
from head to toe with colors, and Gurgi himself looked like a rainbow suddenly sprouting
hair.

Not until all these other tasks were done to Dwyvach's satisfaction did she take Taran to
a weaving room; and there his heart sank, for the loom stood bare and stark as a leafless
tree.

“How then?” clucked the weaver-woman as Taran gave her a rueful glance. “The loom must be
threaded. Did I not tell you: All things are done step by step and strand by strand?”

“Hevydd the Smith told me life was a forge,” Taran sighed, as he laboriously tried to
reckon the countless threads needed, “and I think I'll be well-tempered before my cloak is
finished.”

“Life a forge?” said the weaver-woman. “A loom, rather, where lives and days intertwine;
and wise he is who can learn to see the pattern. But if you mean to have a new cloak,
you'd do better to work more and chatter less. Or did you hope for a host of spiders to
come and labor for you?”

Even after deciding on the pattern, and threading the loom, Taran still saw only a
hopeless, confusing tangle of threads. The cloth was painfully slow in forming and at the
end of a long day he had little more than a hand's breadth of fabric to show for all his
toil.

“Did I ever think a weaver's shuttle a light burden?” Taran sighed. “It feels heavier than
hammer, tongs, and anvil all together!”

“It's not the shuttle that burdens you,” answered Dwyvach, “but lack of skill, a heavy
burden, Wanderer, that only one thing can lift.”

“What secret is that?” Taran cried. “Teach it to me now or my cloak will never be done.”

But Dwyvach only smiled. “It is patience, Wanderer. As for teaching it, that I cannot do.
It is both the first thing and the last thing you must learn for yourself.”

Taran gloomily went back to work, sure he would be as ancient as Dwyvach before finishing
the garment. Nevertheless, as his hands became used to the task the shuttle darted back
and forth like a fish among reeds, and the cloth grew steadily on the loom; though Dwyvach
was satisfied with his progress; Taran, to his own surprise, was not.

“The pattern,” he murmured, frowning. “It--- I don't know, somehow it doesn't please me.”

“Now then, Wanderer,” replied Dwyvach, “no man put a sword to your throat; the choice of
pattern was your own.”

“That it was,” Taran admitted. “But now I see it closely, I would rather have chosen
another.”

“Ah , ah,” said Dwyvach, with her dry chuckle, “in that case you have but one of two
things to do. Either finish a cloak you'll be ill-content to wear, or unravel it and start
anew. For the loom weaves only the pattern set upon it.”

Taran stared a long while at his handiwork. At last he took a deep breath, sighed, and
shook his head. “So be it. I'll start anew.”

Over the next few days he ruefully unthreaded and rethreaded the loom. But after it was
ready and he began weaving once again, he was delighted to find the cloth grow faster than
ever it had done before, and his spirits rose with his new-found skill. When the cloak at
last was done, he held it up proudly.

“This is far better than what I had,” he cried. “But I doubt I'll ever be able to wear a
cloak again without thinking of every thread!”

Gurgi shouted triumphantly and Dwyvach bobbed her head in approval.

“Well-woven,” she said. Her expression had lost much of its tartness and she looked fondly
at Taran, seeming to smile within herself. “You have skill in your fingers, Wanderer,” she
said, with unaccustomed gentleness. “Enough to make you one of the finest weavers in
Prydain. And if my distaff and your knuckles met more often than you liked, it was because
I deemed you worth reproving. Dwell in my house, if you choose, work at my loom, and what
I know I will teach you.”

Taran did not answer immediately, and as he hesitated, the weaver-woman smiled and spoke
again.

“I know what is in your heart, Wanderer,” she said. “A young man's way is restless; yes,
and a young girl's too--- I'm not so gone in years that I've forgotten. Your face tells me
it is not your wish to stay in Commot Gwenith.”

Taran nodded. “As much as I hoped to be a swordsmith, so I hoped to be a weaver. But you
speak truth. This is not the way I would follow.”

“Then must we say farewell,” answered the weaver woman. “But mind you,” she added, in her
usual sharp tone, “if life is a loom, the pattern you weave is not so easily unraveled.”

T
ARAN AND GURGI SET OFF
again, still journeying northward, and soon Commot Gwenith was far behind them. Though
Taran wore his new cloak on his shoulders and his new blade at his side, his pleasure in
them shortly gave way to disquiet. The words of Dwyvach lingered in his mind, and his
thoughts turned to another loom in the distant Marshes of Morva.

“And what of Orddu?” he said. “Does she weave with more than threads? The robin has truly
been scratching for his worms. But have I indeed chosen my own pattern, or am I no more
than a thread on her loom? If that be so, then I fear it's a thread serving little
purpose. At any rate,” he added, with a rueful laugh, “it's a long and tangled one.”

But these gloomy thoughts flew from his mind when, some days later, Melynlas bore him to
the top of a rise and he looked down on the fairest Commot he had ever seen. A tall stand
of firs and hemlocks circled broad, well-tended fields, green and abundant. White,
thatch-roofed cottages sparkled in shafts of sunlight. The air itself seemed different to
him, cool and touched with the sharp scent of evergreens. His heart quickened as he
watched, and a strange excitement filled him.

Gurgi had ridden up beside him. “Kindly master, can we not stop here?”

“Yes,” Taran murmured, his eyes never leaving the fields and cottages. “Yes. Here shall we
rest.”

He urged Melynlas down the slope, with Gurgi cantering eagerly behind him. Crossing a
shallow stream, Taran reined up at the sight of a hale old man digging busily near the
water's edge. Beside him stood a pair of wooden buckets on a yoke, and into these he
carefully poured spadefuls of pale brown earth. His iron-gray hair and beard were cropped
short; despite his age, his arms seemed as brawny as those of Hevydd the Smith.

“A good greeting to you, master delver,” Taran called. “What place is this?”

The man turned, wiped his deeply lined brow with a forearm, and looked at Taran with keen
blue eyes. “The water your horse is standing in--- and churning to mud, by the way--- is
Fernbrake Stream. The Commot? This is Commot Merin.”

The Potter's Wheel

“I
'VE TOLD YOU WHERE
you are,” the man went on good-naturedly, as Taran dismounted at the bank of the stream.
“Now might you be willing to tell me who you are, and what brings you to a place whose
name you must ask? Have you lost your way and found Merin when you sought another Commot?”

“I am called Wanderer,” Taran replied. “As for losing my way,” he added with a laugh, “I
can't say that I have, for I'm not sure myself where my path lies.”

“Then Merin is as fair a place as any to break your journey,” the man said. “Come along,
if you'd see what hospitality I can offer the two of you.”

As the man dropped a last spadeful of clay into the wooden buckets, Taran stepped forward
and offered to carry them; and, since the man did not refuse, set his shoulders under the
yoke. But the buckets were heavier than Taran reckoned. His brow soon burst out in sweat;
he could barely stagger along under the load he felt doubling at every pace; and the hut
to which the man pointed seemed to grow farther instead of closer.

“If you seek daub to mend your chimney,” Taran gasped, “you've come a long way to find it!”

“You've not caught the trick of that yoke,” said the man, grinning broadly at Taran's
effort. He shouldered the buckets, which Taran gladly gave back, and strode along so
briskly, despite the weight of his burden, that he nearly outdistanced the companions.
Arriving at a long shed, he poured the clay into a great wooden vat, then beckoned the
wayfarers to enter his hut.

Inside Taran saw racks and shelves holding earthenware of all kinds, vessels of plain
baked clay, graceful jars, and among these, at random, pieces whose craftsmanship and
beauty made him catch his breath. Only once, in the treasure house of Lord Gast, had he
set eyes on handiwork such as this. He turned, astonished, to the old man who had begun
laying dishes and bowls on an oaken table.

“When I asked if you sought daub to mend your chimney I spoke foolishly,” Taran said,
humbly bowing. “If this is your work, I have seen some of it before, and I know you:
Annlaw Clay-Shaper.”'

The potter nodded. “My work it is. If you've seen it, it may be that indeed you do know
me. For I am old at my craft, Wanderer, and no longer sure where the clay ends and Annlaw
begins--- or, in truth, if they're not one and the same.”

Taran looked closer at the vessels crowding the hut, at the newly finished wine bowl
shaped even more skillfully than the one in Lord Gast's trove, at the long, clay-spattered
tables covered with jars of paints, pigments, and glazes. Now he saw in wonder that what
he had first taken for common scullery-ware was as beautiful, in its own way, as the wine
bowl. All had come from a master's hand. He turned to Annlaw.

“It was told me,” Taran said, “that one piece of your making is worth more than all of a
cantrev lord's treasure house, and I well believe it. And here,” he shook his head in
amazement, “this is a treasure house in itself.”

“Yes, yes!” Gurgi cried. “Oh, skillful potter gains riches and fortunes from clever
shapings!”

“Riches and fortune?” replied Annlaw smiling. “Food for my table, rather. Most of these
pots and bowls I send to the small Commots where the folk have no potter of their own. As
I give what they need, they give what I need; and treasure is what I need the least. My
joy is in the craft, not the gain. Would all the fortunes in Prydain help my fingers shape
a better bowl?”

“There are those,” Taran said, half in earnest as he glanced at the potter's wheel, “who
claim work such as yours comes by enchantment.”

At this Annlaw threw back his head and laughed heartily. “I wish it did, for it would
spare much toil. No, no, Wanderer, my wheel, alas, is like any other. True it is,” he
added, "that Govannion the Lame, master craftsman of Prydain, long ago fashioned all
manner of enchanted implements. He gave them to whom he deemed would use them wisely and
well, but one by one they fell into the clutches of Arawn Death-Lord. Now all are gone.

“But Govannion, too, discovered and set down the high secrets of all crafts,” Annlaw went
on. “These, as well, Arawn stole, to hoard in Annuvin where none may ever profit from
them.” The potter's face turned grave. "A lifetime have I striven to discover them again,
to guess what might have been their nature. Much have I learned--- learned by doing, as a
child learns to walk. But my steps falter. The deepest lore yet lies beyond my grasp. I
fear it ever shall.

“Let me gain this lore,” Annlaw said, “and I'll yearn for no magical tools. Let me find
the knowledge. And these,” he added, holding up his claycrusted hands, “these will be
enough to serve me.”

“But you know what you seek,” Taran answered. “I, alas, seek without knowing even where to
look.” He then told Annlaw of Hevydd the Smith and Dwyvach the Weaver-Woman, of the sword
and cloak he had made. “I was proud of my work,” Taran went on. “Yet, at the end neither
anvil nor loom satisfied me.”

“What of the potter's wheel?” asked Annlaw. When Taran admitted he knew nothing of this
craft and prayed Annlaw to let him see the shaping of clay, the old potter willingly
agreed.

Annlaw drew up his coarse robe and seated himself at the wheel, which he quickly set
spinning, and on it flung a lump of clay. The potter bent almost humbly to his work, and
reached out his hands as tenderly as if he were lifting an unfledged bird. Before Taran's
eyes Annlaw began shaping a tall, slender vessel. As Taran stared in awe, the clay seemed
to shimmer on the swiftly turning wheel and to change from moment to moment. Now Taran
understood Annlaw's words, for indeed between the potter's deft fingers and the clay he
saw no separation, as though Annlacv's hands flowed into the clay and gave it life. Annlaw
was silent and intent; his lined face had brightened; the years had fallen away from it.
Taran felt his heart fill with a joy that seemed to reach from the potter to himself, and
in that moment understood that he was in the presence of a true master craftsman, greater
than any he had ever known.

“Fflewddur was wrong,” Taran murmured. “If there is enchantment, it lies not in the
potter's wheel but in the potter.”

“Enchantment there is none,” answered Annlaw, never turning from his work. “A gift,
perhaps, but a gift that bears with it much toil.”

“If I could make a thing of such beauty, it is toil I would welcome,” Taran said.

“Sit you down then,” said Annlaw, making room for Taran at the wheel. “Shape the clay for
yourself.” When Taran protested he would spoil Annlaw's half-formed vessel, the potter
only laughed. “Spoil it you will, surely. I'll toss it back into the kneading trough, mix
it with the other clay, and sooner or later it will serve again. It will not be lost.
Indeed, nothing ever is, but comes back in one shape or another.”

“But for yourself,” Taran said. “The skill you have already put in it will be wasted.”

The potter shook his head. “Not so. Craftsmanship isn't like water in an earthen pot, to
be taken out by the dipperful until it's empty. No, the more drawn out the more remains.
The heart renews itself, Wanderer, and skill grows all the better for it. Here, then. Your
hands--- thus. Your thumbs--- thus.”

From the first moment Taran felt the clay whirling beneath his fingers, his heart leaped
with the same joy he had seen on the potter's face. The pride of forging his own sword and
weaving his own cloak dwindled before this new discovery that made him cry out in sudden
delight. But his hands faltered and the clay went awry. Annlaw stopped the wheel. Taran's
first vessel was so lopsided and misshapen that, despite his disappointment, he threw back
his head and laughed.

Annlaw clapped him on the shoulder. “Well-tried, Wanderer. The first bowl I turned was as
ill-favored--- and worse. You have the touch for it. But before you learn the craft, you
must first learn the clay. Dig, sift, and knead it, know its nature better than that of
your closest companion. Then grind pigments for your glazes, understand how the fire of
the kiln works upon them.”

“Annlaw Clay-Shaper,” Taran said in a low voice that hid nothing of his yearning, “will
you teach me your craft? This more than all else I long to do.”

Annlaw hesitated several moments and looked deeply at Taran. “I can teach you only what
you can learn,” said the potter. “How much that may be, time will tell. Stay, if that is
your wish. Tomorrow we shall begin.”

The two wayfarers made themselves comfortable that night in a snug corner of the pottery
shed. Gurgi curled on the straw pallet, but Taran sat with knees drawn up and arms clasped
about them. “It's strange,” he murmured. “The more of the Commot folk I've known, the
fonder have I grown of them. Yet Commot Merin drew me at first sight, closer than all the
others.” The night was soft and still. Taran smiled wistfully in the darkness. "The moment
I saw it, I thought it the one place I'd be content to dwell. And that--- that even
Eilonwy might have been happy here.

“And at Annlaw's wheel,” he went on, “when my hands touched the clay, I knew I would count
myself happy to be a potter. More than smithing, more than weaving--- it's as though I
could speak through my fingers, as though I could give shape to what was in my heart. I
understand what Annlaw meant. There is no difference between him and his work. Indeed,
Annlaw puts himself into the clay and makes it live with his own life. If I, too, might
learn to do this...”

Gurgi did not answer. The weary creature was fast asleep. Taran smiled and drew the cloak
over Gurgi's shoulders. “Sleep well,” he said. “We may have come to the end of our
journey.”

A
NNLAW WAS AS GOOD
as his word. In the days that followed, the potter showed Taran skills no less important
than the working of the clay itself: the finding of proper earths, judging their texture
and quality, sifting, mixing, tempering. Gurgi joined Taran in all the tasks, and soon his
shaggy hair grew so crusted with dust, mud, and gritty glaze that he looked like an
unbaked clay pot set on a pair of skinny legs.

The summer sped quickly and happily, and the more Taran saw the potter at his craft the
more he marveled. At the kneading trough, Annlaw pounded the clay with greater vigor than
Hevydd the Smith at his anvil; and at the wheel did the most intricate work with a
deftness surpassing even that of Dwyvach the Weaver-Woman. As early as he rose in the
mornings, Taran always found the potter already up and about his tasks. Annlaw was
tireless, often spending nights without sleep and days without food, absorbed in labor at
his wheel. Seldom was the potter content to repeat a pattern, but strove to better even
what he himself had originated.

“Stale water is a poor drink,” said Annlaw. “Stale skill is worse. And the man who walks
in his own footsteps only ends where he began.”

Not until autumn did Annlaw let Taran try his hand at the wheel again. This time, the bowl
Taran shaped was not as ill-formed as the other.

Annlaw, studying it carefully, nodded his head and told him, “You have learned a little,
Wanderer.” Nevertheless, to Taran's dismay, Annlaw cast the bowl into the kneading trough.
“Never fear,” said the potter. “When you shape one worth the keeping, it will be fired in
the kiln.”

Though Taran feared such a time might never come, it was not long before Annlaw judged a
vessel, a shallow bowl simple in design yet well-proportioned, to be ready for firing. He
set it, along with other pots and bowls he had crafted for the folk of Commot Isav, into a
kiln taller and deeper than Hevydd's furnace. While Annlaw calmly turned to finishing
other vessels for the Commot folk, Taran's anxiety grew until he felt that he himself was
baking in the flames. But at last, when the firing was done and the pieces had cooled, the
potter drew out the bowl, turned it around in his hands as Taran waited breathlessly, and
tapped it with a clay-rimmed finger.

He grinned at Taran. “It rings true. Beginner's work, Wanderer, but not to be ashamed of.”

Taran's heart lifted as if he had fashioned a wine bowl handsomer than ever Lord Gast has
seen.

But his joy changed soon to despair. Through autumn Taran shaped other vessels; yet, to
his growing dismay, none satisfied him, none matched his hopes, despite the painful toil
he poured into the work.

“What lacks?” he cried to Annlaw. “I could forge a sword well enough and weave a cloak
well enough. But now, what I truly long to grasp is beyond my reach. Must the one skill I
sought above all be denied me?” he burst out in an anguished voice. “Is the gift forbidden
me?” He bowed his head, and his heart froze even as he spoke the words, for he knew,
within himself, he had touched the truth.

Annlaw did not gainsay him, but only looked at him for a long while with deep sadness.

“Why?” Taran whispered. “Why is this so?”

“It is a heavy question,” Annlaw replied at last. He put a hand on Taran's shoulder.
"Indeed, no man can answer it. There are those who have labored all their lives to gain
the gift, striving until the end only to find themselves mistaken; and those who had it
born in them yet never knew; those who lost heart too soon; and those who should never
have begun at all.

“Count yourself lucky,” the potter went on, “that you have understood this now and not
spent your years in vain hope. This much have you learned, and no learning is wasted.”

“What then shall I do?” Taran asked. Grief and bitterness such as he had known in
Craddoc's valley flooded over him.

“There are more ways to happiness than in the shaping of a pot,” replied Annlaw. “You have
been happy in Merin. You still can be. There is work for you to do. Your help is welcome
and valuable to me, as a friend as much as an apprentice. Why, look you now,” he went on
in a cheerful tone, “tomorrow I would send my ware to Commot Isav. But a day's journey is
long for one of my years. As a friend, will you bear the burden for me?”