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.'
TARAN 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.'
Chapter 19
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
