Gone With The Harp's Echo by Narya

Chapter 4

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.”