Young Merlin in the Cave

Far away, where the hills were green and the mist settled slowly over the valleys, there lived a boy named Merlin. He was not very big and not very small, but his eyes shone a little brighter than other people's when the moon came out. The villagers said he heard things that no one else heard, and that he sometimes smiled at the rain as if it were telling him a secret.

Merlin loved one place more than any other. It was a small cave at the foot of a hill, hidden behind a curtain of ivy. Inside the cave it was cool and still, and in the middle lay a pool of water so calm that the sky reflected in it. He called it the Quiet Mirror, and he went there whenever he wanted to think.

That evening the village was quiet. The cows had gone home, the bread was on the tables, and the stars were beginning to peek out one by one. Merlin pulled his green cloak over his shoulders and slipped out through the kitchen door. His mother smiled at him through the window, for she knew where he was going, and she also knew that the cave was a good place.

The path up to the cave was narrow and familiar. Merlin could walk it with his eyes closed: three stones past the rowan bush, then a mossy hillock, and then the bend where a fox usually sat washing its ears. The fox was there again this evening. It blinked at Merlin with slow eyes and went on washing itself, as if they had a quiet understanding.

When Merlin stepped into the cave, a cool scent of stone and water met him. He sat down in his usual place at the Quiet Mirror and pulled his cloak tighter. He said nothing. He just waited, because that was how it worked. The water tended to tell things, but only if you were as quiet as it was.

Slowly something began to stir in the water. It was not waves, for there was no wind, and it was not a fish, for the pool was too small for fish. It was pictures. Small, bright pictures rising from the deep. Merlin leaned forward and held his breath, because the pictures were entirely his own.