The pup thought it was the best game, that her person was suddenly so much closer to her size. While he was different from her, she determined that he was still much the same, mostly because his scent had not changed. He assumed this to be the case, because after nosing him experimentally a couple of times, she held him down between her big paws and sniffed him from head to tail, licking his head with great enthusiasm.
Exhausted, he fell asleep with the pup, realizing that she was far bigger than he remembered. I do not know how to cat, he thought as he drifted off, twitching an ear towards the sounds of the fireplace and a mouse beneath the floorboards.
You need not know how to cat, another voice replied, for I know how to hound, and that will be better.
Pup? He tried to speak, but only a mangled yowl came out. She lifted her head and shook her ears at him, sneezing slightly.
Avril. She lay back down, throwing a leg over his body.
Bemused, he slept soundly that night, waking in the early morning to stalk the mouse that had been scratching at the floor and wall all night. After a brief scramble, he found that the mouse was struggling in his teeth. Trying to get a better hold, he shook his head and gripped harder. He felt the neck-bones snap, and tasted a bit of blood. In his cat mind he was delighted by the development, though a distant part of him quietly vomited when he settled down to eat the kill.
He was so excited by the development that he went outside afterwards and found other small things, easy hunting with his excellent ears and soft paws with lethal claws. He brought a fat field mouse back for Myrddin, and a baby rabbit for the pup Avril. Myrddin praised his catch as Weyland heard the sound of hoofbeats on the soft dirt trail leading to the ruined tower. He went and sat in the doorway, thinking about another moment when he was concerned about blocking off the entrance with slabs of wood, and needing to cut them. He decided for the moment that it was better that there was nothing to block the view.
The horse was a rich bay color, almost the same shade as blood, and her stockings and mane and tail were all black. Her rider was a slender man with a dark complexion, who carried a harp with him. Upon his head, he wore a twisted hat of fabric. Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān was no longer accompanying the Geat on his adventures, but that didn’t ease Weyland’s thoughts at all.
The foreign skald stopped his bay half way between the forest and the tower, looking around with open curiosity. The sky was clear, and there was no sign of Myrddin at all. Weyland the cat crouched down near the bottom of the doorframe, and was struck with how nice it felt to sit in the sun. Lazily, he watched Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān get off of his horse and walk around, stretching his back and swinging his arms broadly. The man did not call out, which Weyland approved of heartily.
Finally, the man simply sat on the large stone that Weyland had sat upon when he’d arrived. He was better at waiting, though, than Weyland had ever been. Myrddin finally appeared at midday, and the men talked quietly while Weyland stalked Avril the pup through the weedy garden where she was digging for rodents herself. Weyland found that while he had a passing curiosity about what was said, it really didn’t bother him enough to move closer or actually pay direct attention to them. The foreign skald finally stood from where they sat in the shade, bowed at the waist to Myrddin, and got back on his bay horse. She looked longingly towards the cat and pup who had played so rigorously around her.
Myrddin watched the man ride away, making his way further to the west and picking up the trail on the other side of the meadow and disappearing back into the wooods. He waited until the man was out of sight, and then waited further until the hoofbeats of the bay mare also faded into nothing. Bowing his head for a long moment, he reached around towards his left side, an absent gesture that a man who carried a sword might make when unarmed, and the thing he reached for was not a sword.
Weyland the cat stretched in the late afternoon light. He caught the eye of the skald, and the man reached down and picked him up. Indignant, Weyland kicked his legs, trying to twist away. He was unceremoniously tucked under Myrddin's arm, his ears rubbed gently. Weyland relaxed, legs hanging down limp. The skald stepped into the tower and tossed Weyland the cat onto the bedroll that Weyland the youth slept on each night.
"Now, boy," Myrddin said, rubbing his hands together. "Since you've been nattering about and chasing skirts, tomorrow you shall craft a woven food hamper and make a drinking cup from sheep's horn. The hamper should be bound up by twine you make with your own hands, and the cup must be from a horn you have harvested yourself." He looked positively gleeful. Weyland complained a little, a whining mewl that embarassed him even in his cat-ness.
"Oh, come, boy. If you don't stop wasting time dithering on as a cat, you'll never be finished."
Weyland was outraged. He let out a yowl of fury and frustration, thinking about what he could do to pay the man back for changing him into a cat, and not allowing Weyland to deliver the instrument, or even being present consistently.
Chortling, the strange man set about making his supper, heating up a stew that Weyland had made earlier that day, from mutton and vegetables that had volunteered in the overgrown garden. When Myrddin was asleep finally, Weyland the cat went about his task of vengeance.
He went first to the desk at the corner of the hearth opposite his bedroll, the bedroll where Myrddin had curled up and gone to sleep. Weyland looked at the scrolls neatly stacked on the shelf above, and the single bound book on the stand, open to a page that was only half covered with script. A pile of feathers waited to be trimmed into quills, and behind the stand was a collection of bits of bone and rocks, the skulls of small animals and of cats and foxes. Some of the rocks were cut into shapes, but they did not interest Weyland the cat.
Finally, he found his opportunity. The stopper of the ink-well was only loosely placed on the mouth of the bottle. Delicately, Weyland reached out a paw and hooked the stopper with a single claw, pulling it off of the bottle and dropping it onto the desk, where it rolled for a moment, smearing dark ink across the desk.
Inspired, Weyland pressed a foot into the damp ink and left his own mark next to the inkwell. The ink tingled on his paw, and he growled a warning at it, bringing his paw to his mouth to wash the ink off.
When the ink touched his tongue, Weyland shuddered mightily as his vision cleared and came back into full color - he'd not even been aware that his cat's eyes didn't see color the way they did when he was a youth. The ink was a vivid blue, all of the words written on the page were vivid blue. Deeply fascinated, Weyland set his paw on the corner of the page, and a pawprint remained behind. Suddenly seized with an ecstatic glee, he whipped around and knocked the inkwell over, getting ink on his flank and legs and tail, skipping through the ink and leaving pawprints everywhere he walked. The desk, the hearth, across the floor in circles.
The ink on his fur itched mightily, and when he stopped to groom it away, his body stretched and changed, and he found himself Weyland the Hawk, who had flown for Hervor forever ago. The ink transformed with him, becoming blue bars across his wings and tail feathers. He chirped once, disgruntled at being inside the strange nest and not outside where he might fly free and hunt. Hopping awkwardly, he smelled fresh air as the night changed to morning, and he flapped his wings a bit, keening softly.
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A great Hound carefully approached him, sniffing at his back and tail, staying away from the hooked beak. Weyland the Hawk lept into the air and launched himself at the door to escape. He flew into the wall beside the door and lay on the floor for a moment, stunned. Shaking his feathers and head, he hopped the last few steps to the door.
The sky was lightening in the east, a pre-dawn glow that he had never been aware of before. With delight, smelling the grass and trees and small animals waiting for him to feast upon them, he launched himself into the air as the first beams of sunlight crossed the meadow and touched the yard, touched him -
And Weyland the Youth tumbled down, falling from a man's height in the air, landing hard on his shoulder, managing to twist his arms up to protect his head in time. A single feather fell with him and landed before his face, slate grey and barred with blue. He reached out and picked it up gingerly. It tingled with power, and was familiar, like a lock of hair cut from his head might be familiar. He tucked it through the weave of the collar on his shirt.
"Food hamper and a horn cup, my ass," he grumbled, going about his morning business, eating a bowl of cold and congealed soup from the shallow pot on the fire before going finally to the smithy. He ignored the legion of paw prints in the interior of the tower, he ignored the pup Avril's soft whine of comfort, and most of all, he ignored the skald snoring on his bedroll. Which is to say, he was vividly aware of all of it, in a way he'd never been aware before.
Cursing softly, he went to the well and took a deep drink. The water was cold, with a faint bitter tang and a tingle as it went down.
Passing the hide stretched to dry, he considered the wool he'd left attached to the skin. He pulled his knife from its sheath at his hip, and shaved a long strip of mostly black wool from the edge of the sheepskin, bundling it into a large ball and carrying it to the bench in the smithy.
As he rolled and twisted the fibers between his fingers, he noted that his skin was still stained with blue ink, giving the rough yarn he was twisting a blue-black sheen in the early morning light. For hours he sat and twisted, his fingers growing sore and then blistering from the friction. Finally, he rolled the tight yarn into a ball and turned to take the right-curled ram's horn down from where he'd hung it. Feeling eyes on him, he looked around and startled.
Loch sat on the ground outside the door of the smithy, watching him intently. "Keep on, the steel is blooming and doesn't need the likes of you yet." He rolled his eyes and considered the horn. Finally, he cut a length from the base of the horn, as wide as his palm. He hung the rest back up, still an impressive thick curl of horn.
Cutting the outside smooth, and then hollowing out the center made for a rough cup, not fit yet for drinking. He got up and left the smithy, stepping around Loch from where she still sat watching him, and hunted in the pile of stones and shards where he'd found his whetstone. He found one that was as long as his hand, but narrow and rounded on one side, and another that was flat but too short to use for sharpening edges.
Taking his two stones back to the cup, he used the rounded one to wear down the grooves on the inside, smoothing them. The flat stone he used to smooth the ridges on the outside, and finally he rubbed the whole thing with sand and a piece of hide until it gleamed black and blue and cream in the nooning light.
"Noon," he mused, looking at the sun high in the sky. "Time is strange, here." He set the cup on the shelf with the thimble and needles and whetstone, setting aside the finishing stones with the sandy hide. Taking up the ball of yarn that he'd made that morning, he looked around the smithy for reeds or anything else that might be used in making the hamper.
"Reeds, Loch, are there reeds or rushes nearby?" He turned to her, looking at her directly for the first time since she'd spoken to him that morning. She lifted a hand and pointed to the stream that cut across the southern edge of the meadow. Weyland called the pup Avril to come with him, noticing that she had grown again and could hardly be called a pup any longer. Her chest had deepened, the ribs curled up into an elegant waist, though her legs were still a bit short in proportion.
They followed the stream, and eventually it widened into a deep pond, the waters dark with tannins and faintly ruddy in the sunlight. He gathered an armfull of cattails and rushes, and returned to the meadow with its tower and smithy. Looking at the tower from afar, it didn't look as bad as he remembered it. He silently promised it a door and a mended roof.
Dumping his materials on the bench, he started the hamper as he would have a fish cage. Thinking of fish, and the stream, he set aside the reeds left over from the frame of the hamper to make a trap later. A part of him thought that fish would be very good for a supper, and he fought the urge to clean his fingers with his tongue.
The rushes twisted well and lay tight against one another as he pressed them down.
He twisted and pressed in the frame until the sides of the hamper were light-proof, and then hung the unfinished piece to dry, setting aside the rushes and reeds with it.
Finally, he turned back to Loch, who was still sitting and watching him, as if he were a peculiar animal or puzzle to solve.
"What shall we do today? Perhaps pour the hatchet and seat the head of the blacksmith's hammer?" He felt peevish and thwarted.
"Yes, I think both those things would be good," she said demurely.
Together, they poured the steel into the mold for the hatchet. She watched closely as he fitted the handle to the hammer, only speaking a sentence or two to help him with the fit of the hardwood into the socket. When it was done, Weyland raised it up and swung it, feeling its weight and the way the head and handle worked together. With a flash, he saw the hammer head coming down on a blade, a hatchet, and then working to fold out the steel of a sword. Another flash showed his hammer coming down on the face of an enemy, and he felt sickened by it.
Setting the hammer aside, he darted outside, staggering towards the garden to vomit what little he had in him.
"What did you see, young Weyland?" Loch asked, offering him water in a plain cup.
"Is it always that way, that there is potential for creation, and also destruction? If I could know I would never have to raise my hammer in violence against another man, I would be grateful." He sat down, hard.
Myrddin came out of the tower, and sat down next to the youth Weyland. "There is no knowing like the one you seek, boy. I wish there were, and I wish I could make tools that could never be used to harm another."
"I've started the hamper, finished the cup. Next, we will finish forging the hatchet, and I can work more on the door and then the roof." Weyland was careful not to mention the word tomorrow. He returned to the smithy and took the cup down off the shelf, handing it to the skald.
"Good, boy, this is good. A princely thing, perhaps, though it has no gold or gems." He rolled it between his hands. "Or for a sweetheart," Myrddin glanced towards the western path speculatively.
Weyland looked around for Loch, but she had disappeared when Myrddin emerged from the tower. "I will make a pruning knife also, I think, and a hoe for the garden."
"Don't get too wrapped up in making everything so perfect. Another one will finish much of this. Just finish this and the cauldron. Forging the final piece will take much of you, so be sure you eat breakfast." Weyland stared at the skald, trying to determine what the man was trying to communicate. Myrddin saw his confusion, and started to stammer, his face going red.
In the light of the afternoon, the youth saw the pain rising in his host, saw memory rise up to overwhelm him. Raising his blue stained fingers, Weyland held his right hand in front of the skald's face, and as the eyes focussed on Weyland again, he snapped his fingers sharply, bringing the skald back from the brink of memory. Myrddin's eyes filled with tears, and he sat on the bench, face buried in his hands. Cautiously, Weyland put a hand on the man's shoulder, and the pup Avril came to snuffle at Myrddin's hands and what she could reach of his face. The moment felt eternal in the endless summertime afternoon.