Gone With The Harp's Echo by Narya

Foreword

Written for Lferion as part of TRSB21.

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Here is the gorgeous artwork that inspired this fic:

 

 

I had put in a plea for abstract art way back in April when the suggestions spreadsheet opened, and I fell in love with this piece when I saw it. It made me think of British summer sunsets after a cool, clear-ish day, with pinks and golds and blues and lilacs bleeding together over a shadowed landscape. And the prompts that went with it were incredible! But I wasn't sure I could do it justice in the time I had. Still, I wasn't worried; I thought it would be snapped up by some other author who would do a much better job than me.

And yet, when it wasn't claimed in the first rush, I couldn't resist. And oh my, has this story taken me on a rollercoaster this summer.

These were the suggestions that came with the art:

The border between sea and sky, dream and waking, mist and sunlight, the Round World and the Flat. The place where Avalon and Avallone meet, a pool in Faery, the dragonheaded doors to the shadowy Isles; Manwe's breath made visible.... What world is this, what veil or pool or mirror? What do you see? What tale does this tell?

Where Avalon and Avallónë meet...besides the wonderful image, that was what grabbed me first.

Throughout the summer I have written drafts of many, many snippets inspired by worlds touching, exploring the possibilities of lands slipping together, but finding my story took a while; I don't think I've ended up using half of the stuff I played around with in the research/testing/messing about phase. Some of it didn't fit. Some of it just wasn't very good.

When Maglor first showed up I tried to ignore him. This isn't your tale, I told him – and it wasn't. But he had some helpful suggestions all the same.

Lferion, I really hope this story hits at least some of your likes and wants for this piece.

(Title taken from the Mary Stewart poem 'Rest You Here, Enchanter.')

Chapter 1

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There was once a young man who could move between worlds, and he fell in love with a fairy.

His name was Robin Lewis. He was the sort of boy who never quite seemed to fit in – a daydreamer, as one teacher wrote on his school report. Other children liked him well enough; he wasn't bullied or pushed out, and yet somehow he always seemed to be left on his own.

“It's common with adopted children,” his teachers assured his mother. “He'll settle down soon enough.”

In truth Robin remembered very little about his life before he moved to the house on Greenberry Crescent. He knew that his mother had not given birth to him, and accepted it, in the way one accepts that the sky is up and the grass is green. It was not something he gave much thought to.

He discovered his gift at the age of nine, quite by accident. He crawled through a hedgerow one lunchtime at school, knowing he was breaking the rules, but with every intention of being back in the playground before a teacher spotted him. He didn't mind going after Harry Martin's ball, although how the silly clot had managed to kick it from one end of the football pitch to the other and into the churchyard on the other side, he hadn't the faintest idea.

“I should leave it, if I were you,” sniffed May Jones, a skinny girl in Class Four with freckles and pigtails. “Serves him right.”

But Robin didn't believe in “serves him right” - or, come to that, in perfectly good footballs being left in the graveyard for ghosts to kick around after dark. And so into the hedgerow he went.

When he emerged on the other side, he blinked.

He was most certainly not in the churchyard of Holy Trinity, Clifton.

There were no headstones, for one thing. Around him the air was wholesome and sweet, yet he'd left on a muggy July lunchtime, with the smell of hot tarmac and dust in his nostrils, and not a whisper of wind. Out here the breeze sang through the grass, and everything felt strange and wonderful, as though the land around him was alive – and ahead, gleaming in the sun's white-gold light, the sea stretched out to the edge of the world.

When he crawled back through to tell the others what he'd seen, the playground was deserted and the sky was a deep, dusky pink. Puzzled, he crossed the playground and tried to get back into the school, but the door was locked, and inside he heard the thin blip...blip...blip of the burglar alarm. The road that ran past the gates was quiet, and the usual afternoon hubbub from the streets was absent.

He eventually walked home; he knew the way well enough, turning right by the church hall and going past the Black Horse, then taking a left down to the Crescent. He couldn't understand why the police were at his house, or why his mother was so angry when he explained where he'd been.

“But I'm telling the truth,” he protested when she sent him to bed, her face still streaked with anxious tears.

And so, despite being an honest boy at heart, he learned through the years to lie carefully each time it happened – to spin stories to his teachers about doctor's appointments and family emergencies, and invent birthday sleepovers and after school clubs for the benefit of his mother. It didn't always work; it never felt like he was gone for long, but sometimes he'd come home to find that in his world it had been days. Sometimes the police were called; once or twice social services came too, and he would be referred to a counsellor, who would talk about empathy and trust and communication, and he would nod and smile and continue to lie.

“I wish you'd tell me where you go,” his mother said once, when he was fifteen.

Robin refrained from pointing out that he had told her, once, and had not been believed.

He wished he could tell her. He wanted to speak of the places he'd seen – great mountain ranges with winds that screamed to the starlit night; haunted marshes with strange lights and whispering air; frozen seas where whales sang under the icy floes. He wanted to tell her how he'd walked through the woods at dusk with a troop of mead-drunk Dwarves, and argued ethics with centaurs as a pair of twin suns sank through the sky. He longed to describe the great feast-tables at the University of Myrrmyki, or the colours of a mermaid's tail – or to sing her the songs of lost Revontulet, gone from all mortal realms.

“I love you,” he would say to her instead.

She would squeeze his hand, and smile through a shadow, and Robin wished that his love was enough.

Chapter 2

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It happened less as he got older. Once he turned eighteen, he found that the doors between worlds were harder to come by – not that he ever really went looking for them. In the past they had always come to him by accident. He knew in his heart that if he tried to discover them on purpose, they would only grow harder to find.

He was a clever boy, and hard-working. To his mother's pride he won a place at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, reading Classical Archaeology and Ancient History – “a course eminently suited to his curious, dreaming nature”, his head teacher wrote on his final school report – and he buried himself in libraries, in college life, and in the the wending streets and warm, watchful buildings of Oxford herself. If his newfound friends thought his disappearances odd, they did not comment; perhaps there were stranger things in Oxford than a student vanishing for a day or two, and then turning up somewhere unexpected (he had to do some swift talking on one occasion, when he found himself locked inside Codrington Library in the dead of night after stumbling out of a strange, snow-covered land). Or perhaps it was simply that his wanderings between worlds were less frequent now. It was easy enough to explain them away as visits to his mother at home, or bouts of unexpected illness, if anyone ever asked – which they rarely did.

He spent the night of his twenty-first birthday in a Victorian terrace on Museum Road, with his friend May Jones – the same May Jones who had sniffed disapprovingly at his retrieval of Harry Martin's football all those years ago. She had sought him out when she came to St John's College as an undergraduate when Robin was in his second year, and the two of them had quickly grown close. Sometimes Robin wondered if she knew or guessed something about his vanishings, having been present for the very first one, but she never said a word. Instead she became his confidante about all manner of university woes – the tutor who never gave his essays more than a lower second class (“I'm afraid they just don't speak to me”); the tourists appearing in college quads mere hours after students had gone to bed, on one occasion taking photographs of him in his pyjamas; the beautiful Melody Jackson, frighteningly intelligent and utterly unattainable.

“Move on,” May told him frankly, pouring him more wine. “You're too good for her – and besides, you're twenty-one now. You're graduating soon. Time for a new start.”

“The start of what?” he laughed.

“Don't know.” She flashed him a mischievous smile. “Figuring out what you want.”

Perhaps it was musing on those words that triggered it. After Museum Road his feet took him down the Lamb and Flag Passage, and not onto Parks Road, which was his usual route back to Corpus Christi. He wasn't watching where he was going; his mind was far away, on the past and the future at once, and when the air lifted and the night time soundscape of Oxford subsided, he wasn't entirely surprised. The Lamb and Flag passage was gone; instead he walked down an avenue of trees in the green gloom of evening. When he breathed in he tasted deep, still water and the end of the summer. Ahead, somewhere, a kingfisher called.

He was not alone. As was sometimes the way when he left his own world and strayed into others, he gradually became aware of a companion, walking beside him – in this case a tall man with a limp and a crutch.

“It's some time since we've seen you,” the strange man said.

Robin looked at him in surprise. The man was dressed in a cloak of dark green, and a hood overshadowed his face – but from under the hood, grey eyes gleamed, as though reflecting a distant light. This was not a man he would forget. “Forgive me, sir -”

“Alf. Please.”

“Alf,” Robin acknowledged – and a cool weight sat under the word, like an old, smooth jewel from a once-known tale.

“You have not seen me before,” the man smiled, “but I know you. I have watched your wanderings in this land and others.”

This did not worry Robin as it would from a stranger in his own world. “I'm sorry we have not met.”

They had reached the end of the avenue; ahead of them gleamed a great, flat lake. Insects skimmed its surface; lily pads stirred in the scant summer breeze. Alf limped to a boulder at the lake's edge, beside which lay a woollen blanket, and a basket full of bread, wine, cheese and fruit. He drew back his hood, revealing a handsome face that, in Oxford, Robin would have assumed belonged to a man in his late twenties or early thirties. Here, he knew better.

“Will you join me for supper?” his companion asked.

Robin knew the old tales about fairy food, but he had never taken any harm from it before. He sat on the blanket while Alf eased himself onto the boulder, and then poured them each a cup of red wine.

“I probably shouldn't,” Robin smiled wryly. “I've been with my friend May all night. Back in my world, I mean.” It was not dangerous to refer to where he came from; this much he had learned. Creatures from other worlds could almost always tell that he came from elsewhere. “We were drinking there.”

“Yes. It is your birthday, is it not?”

“As far as we know.”

Alf tilted his head. Clear as dawn, Robin felt the words in his soul. Tell me.

“I'm adopted,” Robin explained. “I was very literally left on somebody's doorstep. My birthday is just a best guess.”

His companion nodded. “Have you been unhappy?”

“No!” Startled, Robin looked up. “No, not at all. I have friends, and Oxford is beautiful – and my mother...she's so kind, and so proud of me...”

“Does she know of your gift?”

“No.” He lowered his eyes. “No. At least, I tried to tell her once, but she didn't believe me. And I suppose there's no reason why she should.”

Alf nodded again. “Tell me about her.”

And so as they shared bread and sat beneath the setting sun, Robin told Alf of the long summer days walking in the Dales, the visits to London, the long nights she had sat with him as a child when his nightmares seemed to real, the cups of tea and the quiet support as he prepared to apply for his place at Oxford. He spoke, too, of the aching guilt he felt, knowing that she knew he hid something, and unable to make her understand.

“A difficult thing, love,” Alf said. “A burden, at times.”

“I'm not sure I'd say that.”

Alf smiled, a little sadly this time, and turned his face away.

At dawn he walked back with Robin down the avenue of trees – birches, Robin realised now – and as the way narrowed and the woodland growth thickened, he stopped.

“Go now, young wanderer.” He pressed something cool and metallic into Robin's hands. “A gift for you, should it ever be needed.”

Robin frowned. He had never been given anything to take back to his own world before. Puzzled, he held up the small, footed cup and turned it so it caught the sunlight that peeped through the leaves. It was made of silver, and simply carved, and when he ran his thumb across the rim a high note sounded like the call of a lark far away.

Alf kissed Robin's brow. Warmth bloomed from the place his lips touched. “Farewell.”

Robin closed his eyes, his heart suddenly full of grief for something he only half-knew. When he opened them again Alf was gone, and he, Robin, no longer stood in the strange fairy woods – nor was he in the Lamb and Flag Passage. The day was stirring; the air was cool and fragrant; he was alone in Christ Church Meadow, and the spires of Oxford rose out of the mist.

Chapter 3

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After graduating, Robin travelled for a while in his own world. He spent a summer drifting around Greece, exploring Olympia and Kameiros; he wandered the streets of Rome, and ate oranges above the Phoenician tombs of Tangiers, but found no more doorways and portals into other realms.

Eventually he settled in Taunton, and took a job with a firm of chartered accountants. It was not the high flying career he suspected his mother had wanted for him when he obtained his place at Oxford, but the work was undemanding and the people were kind, and he had time in the evenings and weekends for reading, and exploring, and spending time with his friends. May found work at a nearby mental health trust, and soon their routine felt much as it had at Oxford, though the days had lost the magical cast lent by the old-gold stone and the ancient soul of their university city, and worries such as bills and deadlines peppered their peace more often than they would like.

As time wore on, Robin found more and more that the memories of his travels grew faint. He knew they had happened, but could no longer recall with precision the feeling of the glass-hard lake under his hands, where fire-creatures shone in the dark, reedy depths, nor remember the taste of Myrrmyki feasts, or what the centaurs had argued under the pair of twin suns. Sometimes, when the wind blew the right way or a particular light broke through the clouds, something would come to him sharp as a blade – a sense of clarity and intoxication at once, and a memory of peace and belonging – and then it would pass, and he'd wonder what it was he had glimpsed or recalled.

“Do you ever feel like you might have gone wrong somewhere, and not realised it?” he asked his flatmate, Laurie, one evening.

Laurie looked up from the sofa by the window, where he was elegantly sprawled with his guitar. “What do you mean?”

“Only that...perhaps somewhere, long ago, I made a choice, and at the time I didn't know I was making it. And now I'm afraid that it wasn't the right one.”

His flatmate smiled – a beautiful thing, Robin thought. When it caught him unawares it had the same effect as a cool western wind, or a thin beam of sunlight striking the sea; deep in his soul something would stir, and for a moment the world would stand still. “I've gone wrong plenty of times in my life,” Laurie replied. “Usually I've known it, but not always. Sometimes we choose what we think is best, and it's only years later that we realise we were wrong.”

“Mm.” Robin sighed and closed his eyes, listening to the gentle twang of the music. “What do you do about it?”

Laurie paused halfway through a chord. “Walk on. There is usually nothing else that I can do.”

It seemed strange to ask Laurie for life advice in this way; Robin suspected that only a few years separated them in age, though he wasn't entirely sure. They had known each other in a vague sort of way at Oxford, but they hadn't been friends, not then. Robin had been surprised when Laurie – enchanting, beautiful, enigmatic – had answered his advertisement for a flatmate. He had assumed that, as an All Souls fellow, Laurie would go on to make academic history. The idea that he might want to settle down as a freelance musician in Somerset seemed somewhat unlikely, though there was no question that he was talented. When he played the guitar – or the piano, or hand-harp – Robin felt the same yearning sweetness he knew when he tried to recall what it had been like to walk between worlds.

Now he stared at the scars on Laurie's right hand, as he sometimes did when his friend wasn't looking.

What is it that you can't or won't say?

Laurie looked up, and his smile widened. “What's brought this on?”

“I wish I knew.” Robin got to his feet and stretched. “I'm going out for a while. Don't wait up for me.”

“Take care.”

Robin paused. Was that a warning, he wondered? It seemed somehow heavier than that phrase often did – but perhaps that was simply the music that ran beneath Laurie's voice.

As he unlocked the front door, his friend began to sing.

“The Gulls of Balar
They fly very far
From Tol Ciriyar
To glad Brithombar...”

It was cheerful enough, but Robin felt the familiar pull under his ribs as the syllables rolled and rang through the hall – a sense of stories untold, and a long-vanished past.

---

Chapter End Notes

'The Gulls of Balar' is a fictional piece of Hobbit-poetry written by Lferion, and borrowed with permission.

Chapter 4

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He thought about walking round to May's, or suggesting they meet in a pub – but, without thought or conscious design, he found himself in his car, heading east along small country roads. Chocolate box cottages and wide, golden fields blinked under the setting sun. The honeyed light grew sleepy and thick, and after an hour or so, he drove past St Thomas a Becket's church in South Cadbury. Ahead and to his right, the old hillfort rose, its top wreathed in wisps of a warm evening haze.

Why not.

He'd come this far, following his strange, dream-like mood. He might as well walk up to the top. His mother had always insisted there was nothing like a good hill climb to clear the head.

It was still light, though it was getting late – but, this close to midsummer, there were nights when darkness barely fell at all. He knew all the tales that drew tourists to this place – that the ramparts were raised in the Stone Age; that it had withstood the Viking hordes; that it was the site of Camelot itself – and so he rarely came here in summer, when its peace and otherness were disturbed by the screams of children and the booming radios of student picnics. At this time, though, he expected he would have the place to himself.

He was wrong.

At the top of the hill, a woman with long black hair was dancing, and her white dress billowed and swirled in the mist.

There was no music, or at least nothing that Robin could hear. He could not say how long he stood there, gazing, astounded – for suddenly, like the waves of the great seas he had once seen on his travels, he recalled the taste and soul-feel of the worlds he had walked. He remembered the centaurs, and mead-drunk Dwarves. He recalled the long birch avenue, and Alf, who had broken bread with him, and kissed his brow, and gifted him the chalice that stood tucked in a cupboard at home, away from prying eyes. He had wept, he remembered, when he first saw the singing mountains; he had fled in terror when a hand holding a lamp had reached upwards out of a marsh. He had gazed up in wonder as lights appeared in the sky, and a city emerged from the shifting colours, glimpsed and then gone, like a breath of fey wind or note on a harp...

The woman's dancing slowed, and she met his eyes, and smiled. “Well met, Robin-Wanderer.”

It was dark now – but her figure gleamed, and her grey eyes shone like Alf's.

Robin found his tongue. “Are you here, or am I there?”

She laughed - a wild and atonal thing that rang through the night like a spell. “A little of both, perhaps.” Lightly she stepped towards him, and took his hands in hers. “Come home, wandering child.”

Where her skin touched his, warmth tingled, and longing curled through his bones. “Where is home?”

“Where land and sky touch. Between salted water and sandy shore. Where worlds lean together, and Song and Magic bleed through.” Mischief touched her lovely smile. “Where Avalon and Avallónë meet.”

“Avallónë?” It tasted strange and familiar at once – old wine in a cut-crystal cup.

“Tell him. He will know.”

“Tell who?”

She pressed her body against him, and stood on tiptoe and kissed his lips. A dizzying warmth spread through him; his breath quickened, and he moaned as she brushed back his hair with light fingers – then she touched his brow, where Alf had kissed him long ago, and heat seared through his head and he staggered and cried out.

“Come home, Robin.” Another kiss as he sank to his knees and the world swam darkly around him. “We need you.”

Chapter 5

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He did not remember driving back to Taunton, or climbing the steps to his front door. He came back to himself as he stood in the kitchen, blinking, while Laurie and May sat at the table and stared.

“Robin...” May's voice shook. “Robin, your head...”

Laurie laid a hand on her arm. “It's alright, May.”

“Can't you see it? The star...and it's shining...”

“I know. I see it.”

Gingerly, Robin lifted a hand to his forehead. He felt nothing, and it no longer burned. “What day is it?”

“Saturday the twenty-first of June,” Laurie replied, utterly calm. “You've been gone for two days.”

“Oh.” Robin took a step forward, but his legs folded under him like wet straw. In an instant Laurie was at his side, one arm around his waist, helping him to a chair.

“I hope you didn't drive in that state,” he said sharply.

“I don't know what I did.” Robin blinked again. He felt as though he had got stuck while waking up from a dream. “I suppose I must have done.”

Laurie uttered an exasperated exclamation. “You're bloody lucky you made it back here.”

“I know. But it's never been like that before, it's never hurt...” He paused, realising that neither Laurie nor May knew about what Alf had called his gift.

Neither of them, though, seemed entirely surprised – though May's eyes were red, and she kept looking at his forehead.

Laurie squeezed his shoulder. “Tell me what happened.”

“There was a woman. A fairy, I think. She was dancing...and she had a message...”

May pushed a glass of water into his hands.

“She called me Robin-Wanderer, and she told me to come home.”

Laurie's lips parted. “Did she tell you how?”

“No...” He touched his forehead again. “What did she do to me?”

“In a moment.”

A ringing rose in his ears and mind, like he'd had too much wine and forgotten the way back from the pub. “I have to get back to her...”

“What did she say?”

Robin looked up. He had never heard Laurie sound quite like that before. “She told me to go where the worlds lean together, where Avalon and Avallónë meet.” Laurie paled. “She said “tell him, he will know” - but I don't know who she meant.”

“Me.” Laurie exhaled, and rubbed his temples. “She meant me.”

For a moment there was silence, and then May drew a shuddering breath. “You?” Her voice was still tearful. “Why?”

“Because I am not quite what I seem. And neither is Robin.”

“Oh, I've known that for a long time. He used to vanish from school sometimes; nobody ever knew where he went.” May smiled shakily. “But I was watching the first time it happened. He crawled through a hedge, and he just disappeared.”

Robin gaped. “So you did know.”

“Oh, yes.”

“You never said!”

She shrugged. “If you'd wanted me to know, you'd have told me.”

“May...”

“It's alright.” She laughed, a little self-consciously. “Actually I tried to follow you once, but I just ended up in the churchyard.”

Robin smiled and squeezed her hand, and looked up at Laurie, and tried hard to put the ringing call from his mind. “I think I knew about you too, at least a little. Mostly when you sang, or played. What are you?”

“An Elf. My name – my true name – is Makalaurë Kanafinwë Fëanárion.”

“I see.” It was no stranger, he supposed, than anything else he had seen or heard in his lifetime. Even May did not seem shocked. “And...is that what you'd like us to call you now?”

He laughed. “No. Laurie will do nicely. In a way I've grown quite fond of it.” He got to his feet and went to the bathroom, and when he came back he was carrying the small shaving mirror from the windowsill. “Now – take a look.”

Robin lifted the mirror up to his face. Where the fairy had touched between his brows, a star-shaped light shone from his skin. “Oh.”

“I'm going to tell you what I think I know of you, Robin, and from there we can decide what to do.” Laurie leaned back in his chair. “You've been able to move between worlds since you were a boy, is that right?”

“Yes, although not by choice. It just...seemed to sort of happen. Less and less as I got older, though.”

“But it was still happening when we were at Oxford?”

“Yes. The last time was on my twenty-first birthday. I met...” He closed his eyes, and the cool, fragrant air of the birch avenue seemed to curl through the kitchen as he remembered. “A man who said his name was Alf, although I'm not sure that's who he really was, or at least not all of it. We talked by a lake, and we ate together, and he asked me if I was unhappy. I said no – which was true.” He curled his fingers around the glass May had given him. “And then he walked me back through the woods, and kissed my forehead, and told me farewell. And I never went back.”

Laurie nodded. “Robin, I've known since I met you that you were not born in this world.”

Robin swallowed, and dropped his gaze. “No. I think I knew that too.”

“To fall through worlds by accident is rare, these days. I suspect that you were sent, perhaps for your own safety, and I suspect that you were meant to go back.” Gently, Laurie's fingers brushed his forehead. “This might have only begun to show when you met your fairy-woman at the hillfort, but it has been there for a long time – certainly as long as I've known you, and probably well before that. I think it was meant to lead you home.”

“Then why have I never got there? I've moved between worlds so many times...”

“I know.” Laurie gripped his shoulder, and looked at May. “But, Robin...home isn't always the place you were born.”

Robin raised his head. A river of old grief ran through his friend's voice. “Where's your home?”

“Never mind me.” Laurie leaned back. “We're talking about you.”

Outside a mournful cry echoed – a seagull, a long way from home. The gulls of Balar, they fly very far...

Robin thought again of the strange dancing woman. Heat flooded his face as a yearning ache rose through his body, and his head felt giddy and light at the memory of the kiss. “Should I go back to the hillfort?”

“No. No, I don't think that would do any good.”

“Where, then?”

“If you wish to find her, then you must do as she says.”

“And go where Avalon and Avallónë meet?”

“Precisely.”

“I don't know where that is.”

“I do.” Laurie sat up straight. “Robin, this is very important – when you last saw Alf, did he give you anything to bring back to this world?”

Chapter 6

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Stepping into Chalice Well gardens was like crossing a threshold all by itself – as though they had left most of the world behind.

“In a way it feels almost like cheating,” Robin murmured. “To come here for such a specific purpose...it feels like we're taking advantage, somehow.”

Laurie shrugged. “The power in these old places isn't something that you take, or harness, or steal. It simply is. And there is always more of it, the same way that more water always springs from the well underground.”

May turned slowly on her heel, admiring the stretch of green meadow, the flowered shrines, the reach of the sun through the trees. “I wish now I'd come here before. I always thought it would feel trite, or fake, somehow. But it doesn't. It's like breathing different air.”

They were approaching the pool, where the reddish spring water plashed lightly into two perfect circles.

“How are we going to manage this?” Robin whispered, eyeing the small knots of people at the water's edge. Some were praying; some where chattering softly; others simply stood, reflecting.

Laurie smiled and winked. “Oh, leave it to me.”

And he hummed a quiet tune like a summer breeze stirring the air. Those standing nearby caught it, and sighed; their faces relaxed, and their eyes gazed at something far, far away.

Now. Robin heard his friend's voice in his mind. Go.

He knelt by the pool and dipped in the chalice, and drank.

The taste of it was ferrous – bloodied, as though he was rinsing his mouth after a rough game of rugby. He coughed, and swallowed, and backed away.

I don't feel any different.

You won't. Laurie's mind-voice was tinged with amusement. Not yet.

Next they crossed the road to the temple at the White Spring. The old Victorian well house loomed above them, and inside, candles lit its cavernous vaults.

Listen to the water.

Robin closed his eyes, imagining he could hear the voice of the hills in the running of the springs, and wondered what or who had lived there, long ago.

He slipped on a patch of damp stone. May caught his elbow and hissed in his ear, “Watch where you're going!”

“Sorry.”

She pressed her lips together, and pointed at a sign.

CAUTION: NAKED FLAMES, DEEP WATER, AND FAERIE PORTALS. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Robin gave her a nervous smile.

It was easier, here, to dip the chalice into the waters and drink; around them, visitors were touching the surface of the pools and even wading into them. Robin tried not to think about that as he swallowed the cool, clear waters, and tasted stone and sunlight and fresh summer earth.

On their way out, he heard one of the keepers telling a group of visitors about the shrine to the King of the World of Faerie.

“They tend to keep away from people,” he assured them. “Especially Elves. They're mischievous, and can be quite unpleasant...”

Robin thought of his dancing fay-woman. Laurie raised an eyebrow, but did not deign to respond.

“What now?” May asked as they emerged into the light.

Laurie pointed north-east. “Now we climb the Tor, and wait for the sun to set.”

Chapter 7

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It was quieter than Robin had thought it might be, despite being the Solstice – but he supposed that most of the celebrations had taken place at dawn. Still, they were by no means alone as they climbed up Glastonbury Tor.

“Do you really think we can do...whatever it is we're going to do, without being seen?” he asked Laurie.

His friend snorted. “Has anyone noticed that star on your forehead, besides May and myself?”

“Well. No.”

“Then you have your answer. People see what they expect to see.”

“I'd imagine quite a few people up here on Midsummer's Day will be expecting to see strange things.”

“Hoping, perhaps. That is not at all the same thing.”

Robin tilted his head. “Like you hope the waters from the two holy springs will do the trick and get me through?”

Laurie laughed – a rolling, melodic sound like a sea-wave's curl. “You've more than hope in your favour, believe me.”

“So this is going to work.”

“I think so, yes. There's power in that chalice, and in the waters you drank – healing waters, don't forget. Then there's the star in your head, and the fairy's kiss, and the land itself. Why do you think she told you to come here?”

“Is it true, then?” May asked. “Everything they say about this place?”

“Not everything, no. And as for true...that depends on your definition of the word.” He smiled, a little mischief in the curve of his lips. “But it has a magic of its own.”

“Where worlds lean together, and Song and Magic bleed through,” Robin murmured.

Laurie nodded, slowly. “Yes.”

They had reached the top now. The sky was clouding over, and some of the other visitors were packing up, muttering about rain. Others, though, stayed, sitting around on blankets and nibbling at evening picnics. Behind them, St Michael's Tower reached up to the heavens, and below, the Summerland Meadows tumbled away, bathed in the glow of the softening light.

May, apparently nervous, started pulling up grass stalks. Laurie gently took hold of her hands.

“It will be alright,” he told her.

She swallowed. “Sure?”

“Fairly sure, yes.”

Robin gave her a smile and held out his arm; she leaned against him, and he squeezed her shoulders gratefully. In truth, he was nervous too – though whenever he thought of the fairy's kiss, intoxication crept through him again, and he knew that he had to go on.

“This was all sea and salt-marsh, once,” Laurie said. His voice dropped into a soft, gentle cadence as though he was telling a story. Wind blew through the grasses, and the dying sun gleamed on the network of ditches and rhynes. “Where we sit now was truly an island, until the sea-rise slowed and the reed-beds grew. But the land remembers, and sometimes, even now, it tries to return to the sea.”

May sighed softly. “You make it sound alive.”

“It is alive. It is a place of constant change and strange power, and it only grows stronger as it feeds on belief.”

Robin shivered, and Laurie caught his eye, and now his smile held a hint of challenge.

“I would not have thought it would come as a surprise to you, with your history. There are plenty of thin places in this world, where time twists and the realms push close together, but few are as potent as this. Can you not sense them? Can you not feel the echoes?”

The air had grown colder, and the sun was setting – though surely, Robin thought, it could not be that time yet. The chatter from the other visitors to the Tor had faded away to a whisper, and when he turned to look at them, he was startled to see that they were grey and shadowed, like ghosts.

A quiet scream from May brought his head around. Against a sky of deep orange swirled with lilac and grey, a murmuration of starlings soared through the air, banking tightly over the fields, their wings chattering and rustling in the deepening gloom.

“That's...not normal for this time of year, is it?” Robin asked, rubbing May's shoulders with a soothing thumb.

“No.” Laurie nodded to something behind them. “Turn and look, lost Robin-Wanderer. The way has opened to you again.”

Robin turned, and his stomach fell away.

St Michael's Tower was no longer there. In its place was an archway, past which lay a land both familiar and strange, like the ways he had walked as a child – a reaching plain draped in mist, and a hill of shadow, and a great white tree like a tower, shining like the sun's noon light.

The King's Tree.

He had never seen it, and yet somehow he knew its name.

But even more lay beyond this. There was another archway, beyond the tree – a doorway in the air, above the mists, and through this Robin saw a gleaming white tower rising out of the sea, its lustre soft and warm like an oyster's delicate shell.

“The Tower of Pearl in the Enchanted Isles,” Laurie said. “Where Arthur sleeps and heals.”

“Our Arthur?”

“'Even he,
That was King once, and yet again shall be.'”

Robin exhaled.

“For now he rests there, and the Tower and the Isles guard the way to Tol Eressëa, and the port city of Avallónë.”

The ground suddenly seemed lighter under his feet. “Where Avalon and Avallónë meet...”

“Precisely.”

Robin looked up. “How did she know that you'd know where to come?”

“Because I have stood here many times as the year turns, hoping to catch a glimpse of the road I can no longer travel. It can only be seen in the midsummer's dusk, when the walls of the world grow thin.” Laurie's eyes were fixed on the archway, and Robin had the sudden idea that he could see something even beyond the Tower of Pearl.

“Is that your home?” Robin asked tentatively. “Avallónë?”

“I have kin there.” Laurie turned away. In the distance a kingfisher called. “I would not say that it is my home.”

Robin looked between the two of them. “Will you go with me?”

May shook her head. “I can't see anything. Only the tower – the one in this world. I don't think I'm supposed to go.”

Robin hugged her tightly, and looked at Laurie.

“No.” The Elf's voice was full of sorrow, but it was firm. “Not yet. Perhaps never.”

“But what will you do?”

“Walk on, as I have always done. Perhaps that is my fate – to wander forever on the edge of history and song.”

“That's terrible.”

“Depending on who you ask, I may well deserve it.”

A fierce rush of anger cut through the insistent hum of the fairy-call. “Nobody deserves that.”

Laurie looked surprised, and touched. “You do not know what I have done.”

“I know you. I've lived with you.” He grinned, attempting humour, though he was startled to find tears in his eyes. “I've seen you drunk.”

Another musical laugh. “I contest that allegation.”

“You climbed onto the roof and started singing that song about seagulls.”

Mischief sparked again in the grey eyes. “The gulls they are loud
They flock in a crowd
A feathery cloud
They never are cowed...”

“Yes, that one. What is it even about? Really about, I mean.”

“I'll tell you one day, if we meet again. Though you might not believe me.”

“There isn't much I won't believe. Not these days.” He drew the taller man into his arms, and felt an ache like the ocean falling away beneath him. “Look after May, please,” he said quietly. “And tell my mother...something. Give her my love.”

“Of course.”

He gave May a last kiss on the cheek. As he stepped through the archway, he heard Laurie's voice on the evening air.

“The gulls they do fly
Up, up, up, very high
They wheel in the sky
And longing they cry...”

Robin laughed – and then a welcoming wind rushed over his skin, and the song was gone, and he knew that the doorway had closed.

---

Chapter End Notes

“...Even he,
That was King once, and yet again shall be.” - from the poem 'Glastonbury', by Tolkien's friend Geoffrey Bache Smith.

The Enchanted Isles don't seem to exist in canon past the War of Wrath, but for the purposes of this story, I have them guarding the way through the realms, since Valinor is gone from the circles of the world.

Chapter 8

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He did not find himself on the mist-filled plain.

The ground was stony, and the trees to each side of him were bare. Their knotted roots reached out from the shadows to trip him, and the deep red light filtering through their bare branches had a malevolent gleam. Robin clutched the chalice in his fist like a talisman.

“Welcome home, Robin-Wanderer.”

He knew her voice straight away. The star on his forehead warmed, and his soul leapt up as though called by a sorcerer's spell.

She stepped out of the trees, clad this time in moss-green, her dark hair loose to her waist.

“Am I home?” he asked her.

“Look around you. Judge for yourself.”

There was something stagnant in the air, he thought as he lifted his head. No breeze stirred the branches – birch branches, he realised, and knew where he was.

“Yes. You walk the King's Avenue, as you did once before, though you did not know its name then.”

“What happened to the place I saw through the archway? The great tree?”

“The road through the worlds is deceptive. It does not show things as they are; rather, it shows what those who would walk it wish to see. It is a rare soul who can look past that.”

Robin thought of Laurie's longing, grey gaze, and shivered. He took a step towards the fairy woman, though he did not recall telling his feet to move. “What happened here?”

“Choices were made. Time passed.” She glided towards him, took his hand, and kissed his lips again. They prickled, and his vision swam. “Walk on; you'll soon see.”

Once more he felt as though he'd drunk too much wine – but he took a breath of the dry, warm air, and kept going.

At the avenue's end, he was unsurprised to find Alf. He sat on the same boulder as before, his bad leg stretched out, though this time there was no supper of wine and cheese and bread, and the basket beside him was full of holes. The lake had darkened, and shrunk, and smelled faintly of decay. Even Alf himself looked older; his face was lined, and silver touched his hair.

Robin went to one knee. “Your Majesty.”

Alf raised his brows, and smiled. “You have guessed the truth, then.”

“Some of it. With help.”

Alf reached for his crutch, and pulled himself to his feet. “And you have come for the rest?”

“I think I had to come.” Robin watched as the fairy-witch glided out of the avenue, smiled at him, and went to dance on the edge of the lake. “She has made me fall in love with her, I believe.” He smiled faintly as the ringing rose in his ears, and his mind lightened again. “It is hard to resist the call.”

Alf gave Robin his hand and drew him up. “Are you sure that is what calls to you? She set desire in your heart, yes – though I did not ask her to do that. I simply asked her to lead you home.”

That word again. “Who is she?”

“Oh, she has many names. Nielikki. Korrigan. Lamia. Moura.”

Robin watched her dancing, and his heart filled with longing again.

“Perhaps I was wrong to ask her. She is not to be trifled with – but there are so few of us now, who can enter the world you were in.” Alf laid his hand on Robin's shoulder. “If I have caused you pain, then I beg your forgiveness.”

The gleam behind Alf's grey eyes made him think of the same light in Laurie's – Makalaurë's – and memory cut through the longing like a sunbeam shining through mist. “I forgive you.”

Alf smiled sadly. “I had intended to be truthful with you when you were last here. You are my son, Robin-Wanderer, though we have long been parted.”

Robin looked at their shadows, stretching ahead of them over the lake. “I think I knew that. Somehow.”

“Yes, I expect you did.”

“Why did you leave me in my – in the other world?” There was no accusation there, he realised, and no anger at all. It was curiosity only – a simple need to know.

“We did not mean to. You have seen for yourself, many times, how the worlds can bleed together – how they reflect one another, and refract. We were under attack by creatures from a shadowed realm.” His face darkened. “Your mother the Queen was fighting elsewhere; I was wounded, and I had to make a choice. I gave you this...” He touched the star on Robin's forehead. “And I sent you between worlds, knowing that the star would one day lead you back home.”

“But I never stayed here.”

Across the lake, Nielikki began to hum as she twirled.

“No. I should have foreseen it; it has happened to others, before you. The woman who adopted you – your mother – she loved you, and you loved her. Your heart had more than one place to call home, and so you continued to move between worlds. Many worlds.”

Dust rose under Nielikki's feet.

“It happened less as I grew up,” Robin said slowly.

“Yes.”

“Because I had roots in my – in the other world?”

“Call it your world, my son, if that is what you feel it to be. And yes. I had intended to tell you the truth and offer you the choice, when I brought you here on your twenty-first birthday.”

“So it was my birthday?”

“It was.” The Faery King touched his cheek. “I would make no mistake about that.”

“But you decided not to tell me.”

“You loved your mother. That much was plain. I could not bear to ask you to choose.” Again his fingers brushed the star. “When I said goodbye to you in the avenue, I tried to take some of the power from this star. Most of its power. I did not want you to keep falling into your birth world, forever torn between the two, but nor did I wish to bar you from Faery to the end of your days. I had to leave you the choice to come back.” Regret flared in his eyes. “Once, unwounded, I might have worked such a spell with success.”

Robin looked around at the dying land. From the side of the lake, Nielikki stopped her dancing, and smiled.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I put too much of myself into the spell. The power of my land bled away - and I still failed to protect you from your memories.” He gestured to the lake, and the stony scrub. “You see how things are now.”

The words rose to Robin's tongue as naturally as water rose from a spring. “How can I help you?”

Alf's eyes were shadowed. “I called you back to offer you the choice I should have given you five years ago. If you choose to stay, and step into your birthright, the land will be reborn.”

“And if I do not?”

“If you leave, and nothing else changes, then the waste land will remain.”

“Will you die?”

“I do not die so easily.”

Robin nodded. He thought of his mother, making him tea and stroking his hair. He thought of May, hugging him hard on the hillside. He thought of Laurie, drunk on the rooftops, singing songs about seagulls, and then retreating into memory as the wine and whisky wore off. “What do you know about Makalaurë?”

Alf smiled, and shook his head. “His secrets are not mine to tell you. I knew that you were together, and that he could help. I had an idea that he'd know what to do.”

Healing waters... Robin turned the chalice in his fingertips. “You gave me this when I last left this place.”

“I had no hidden motive, beyond wishing you to have something to remember your birth-world by, and a way back in if the star should fail.”

Again, Robin nodded. The red waters of Chalice Well still stained the base of the cup. A gift freely given. “I wonder...” He knelt by the lake, dipped the goblet into its waters, and held it out to the Faery King. “Will you drink, sire?”

Alf took the chalice from his hands, and rested his brow against the shining star. “Gladly, wandering child.”

Chapter 9

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Robin did not know how long it took for the green shoots to rise out of the earth. He felt starlight burn on his brow, and his father's arms around him, and he heard Nielikki's song. When he opened his eyes the world was green, and the sky was silver with cloud, and rain fell onto the waking land. In the distance, it seemed to him, a harp's echo sang.

“It worked,” he breathed. “It worked...”

The Faery King's lips brushed his cheek. “Yes.”

Robin looked up at his father. He still held his crutch, but no silver threaded his hair, and the light in his eyes was fiery and young.

“The trace of the Avalon spring," Alf smiled.  "The healing waters that run through the gateway between worlds.”

The air was cool and fragrant. Nielikki wore white again, and her song was sweet. She came to Robin's side and took his hand, and his heart rose in yearning and grief. “You could simply have asked,” he told her. “There was no need to...”

She shrugged, pressed his palm to her cheek, and danced away. “Something had to be taken from you. It may not have worked, otherwise. The way might not have opened.”

Robin swallowed and looked away, watching the lake as it rose.

"There might be a way to make it easier," Alf said gently.  

"The star."

"Yes."  The grey eyes grew troubled.  "Although I cannot promise that it will bring you more than a measure of peace."

"I'm not sure anyone ever really gets more than that."  Robin reached up to his forehead, and was unsurprised when a small silver star fell into his palm.  The giddy feeling that he'd fought since South Cadbury dissipated like a summer mist - though when Nielikki smiled at him again, a faint yearning stirred inside him like an echo, or a dark note struck low on the harp.

He gave the star back to the King, who bowed his head.  “What will you do now?” he asked.

“What I have longed to do for so many years, but have lacked the power to do. I will leave this place, and go in search of the Queen.”

“My...” Robin could not quite form the word.

“Yes.” Alf tilted his head. Do you wish me to take her a message?

“She's alive?”

“Oh, certainly.” He gripped Robin's shoulder. “I told you. We do not die so easily.”

“Then tell her...” Robin thought, and in the end settled for the message he had sent his own mother, back in the world he had left. “Give her my love.”

 

***

 

When he walked back through the archway onto Glastonbury Tor, day was breaking. May was asleep, tucked against Laurie's side; the Elf stared over the Summerland Meadows, and birdsong danced through the fields below.

Robin smiled, and began to sing. “The gulls of Balar
They follow the star
The distance no bar
To fair Eldamar...”

May stirred. Without turning round, Laurie's mouth curved upwards. “You came back, then.”

“You knew I would.”

“I was fairly sure, yes.” He did turn then, and an ancient light shone in his silvery eyes. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

Robin laughed. “I think so. Assuming that I ever knew.”

Epilogue

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“You seem happier, my darling.”

Robin smiled at his mother as Laurie passed her a cup of tea. “What makes you say so?”

“I don't know. You seem...settled, somehow.” She half-lifted her hand, as though to touch his forehead, and then drew it back. “Though for a while I was worried. You were quiet all summer; I thought, perhaps...”

Robin thought of Nielikki, dancing in the rain. He felt a kind of dark, hollow aching under his ribs, and then he pushed the memory away and looked at Laurie. His flatmate gave May a gentle nudge, and the two of them withdrew to the living room.

“That it was like when I was younger?” Robin asked when they'd gone.

“Well. Yes.” His mother stirred her tea.

“You see, Mother, the thing is...” Robin took a deep breath. “I've decided to quit my job.”

“Oh?” She did not sound surprised – or entirely displeased.

“I'm going to be a writer. At least, I'm going to try. I have enough saved to keep me going for a year, so I'm going to make my living telling stories.” He pulled a notebook from his pocket. “And I'd like you to listen to my first one.”

She smiled. “Not Laurie?”

“What?" To his astonishment, heat rose in his cheeks. "No; why should I ask Laurie instead of you?”

“He seems like a nice boy, that's all.”

“Mother.”

“And not May?”

“Mother.”

“I'm sorry. I'll listen; I promise.”

Robin shook his head and cleared his throat. “There was once a young man who could move between worlds, and he fell in love with a fairy...”