ask? Have you lost your way and found Merin when you sought another Commot?'
'I am called Wanderer,' Taran replied. 'As for losing my way,' he added with a laugh, 'I can't say that I have, for I'm not sure myself where my path lies.'
'Then Merin is as fair a place as any to break your journey,' the man said. 'Come along, if you'd see what hospitality I can offer the two of you.'
As the man dropped a last spadeful of clay into the wooden buckets, Taran stepped forward and offered to carry them; and, since the man did not refuse, set his shoulders under the yoke. But the buckets were heavier than Taran reckoned. His brow soon burst out in sweat; he could barely stagger along under the load he felt doubling at every pace; and the hut to which the man pointed seemed to grow farther instead of closer.
'If you seek daub to mend your chimney,' Taran gasped, 'you've come a long way to find it!'
'You've not caught the trick of that yoke,' said the man, grinning broadly at Taran's effort. He shouldered the buckets, which Taran gladly gave back, and strode along so briskly, despite the weight of his burden, that he nearly outdistanced the companions. Arriving at a long shed, he poured the clay into a great wooden vat, then beckoned the wayfarers to enter his hut.
Inside Taran saw racks and shelves holding earthenware of all kinds, vessels of plain baked clay, graceful jars, and among these, at random, pieces whose craftsmanship and beauty made him catch his breath. Only once, in the treasure house of Lord Gast, had he set eyes on handiwork such as this. He turned, astonished, to the old man who had begun laying dishes and bowls on an oaken table.
'When I asked if you sought daub to mend your chimney I spoke foolishly,' Taran said, humbly bowing. 'If this is your work, I have seen some of it before, and I know you: Annlaw Clay-Shaper.''
The potter nodded. 'My work it is. If you've seen it, it may be that indeed you do know me. For I am old at my craft, Wanderer, and no longer sure where the clay ends and Annlaw begins? or, in truth, if they're not one and the same.'
Taran looked closer at the vessels crowding the hut, at the newly finished wine bowl shaped even more skillfully than the one in Lord Gast's trove, at the long, clay-spattered tables covered with jars of paints, pigments, and glazes. Now he saw in wonder that what he had first taken for common scullery-ware was as beautiful, in its own way, as the wine bowl. All had come from a master's hand. He turned to Annlaw.
'It was told me,' Taran said, 'that one piece of your making is worth more than all of a cantrev lord's treasure house, and I well believe it. And here,' he shook his head in amazement, 'this is a treasure house in itself.'
'Yes, yes!' Gurgi cried. 'Oh, skillful potter gains riches and fortunes from clever shapings!'
'Riches and fortune?' replied Annlaw smiling. 'Food for my table, rather. Most of these pots and bowls I send to the small Commots where the folk have no potter of their own. As I give what they need, they give what I need; and treasure is what I need the least. My joy is in the craft, not the gain. Would all the fortunes in Prydain help my fingers shape a better bowl?'
'There are those,' Taran said, half in earnest as he glanced at the potter's wheel, 'who claim work such as yours comes by enchantment.'
At this Annlaw threw back his head and laughed heartily. 'I wish it did, for it would spare much toil. No, no, Wanderer, my wheel, alas, is like any other. True it is,' he added, 'that Govannion the Lame, master craftsman of Prydain, long ago fashioned all manner of enchanted implements. He gave them to whom he deemed would use them wisely and well, but one by one they fell into the clutches of Arawn Death-Lord. Now all are gone.
'But Govannion, too, discovered and set down the high secrets of all crafts,' Annlaw went on. 'These, as well, Arawn stole, to hoard in Annuvin where none may ever profit from them.' The potter's face turned grave. 'A lifetime have I striven to discover them again, to guess what might have been their nature. Much have I learned? learned by doing, as a child learns to walk. But my steps falter. The deepest lore yet lies beyond my grasp. I fear it ever shall.
'Let me gain this lore,' Annlaw said, 'and I'll yearn for no magical tools. Let me find the knowledge. And these,' he added, holding up his claycrusted hands, 'these will be enough to serve me.'
'But you know what you seek,' Taran answered. 'I, alas, seek without knowing even where to look.' He then told Annlaw of Hevydd the Smith and Dwyvach the Weaver-Woman, of the sword and cloak he had made. 'I was proud of my work,' Taran went on. 'Yet, at the end neither anvil nor loom satisfied me.'
'What of the potter's wheel?' asked Annlaw. When Taran admitted he knew nothing of this craft and prayed Annlaw to let him see the shaping of clay, the old potter willingly agreed.
Annlaw drew up his coarse robe and seated himself at the wheel, which he quickly set spinning, and on it flung a lump of clay. The potter bent almost humbly to his work, and reached out his hands as tenderly as if he were lifting an unfledged bird. Before Taran's eyes Annlaw began shaping a tall, slender vessel. As Taran stared in awe, the clay seemed to shimmer on the swiftly turning wheel and to change from moment to moment. Now Taran understood Annlaw's words, for indeed between the potter's deft fingers and the clay he saw no separation, as though Annlacv's hands flowed into the clay and gave it life. Annlaw was silent and intent; his lined face had brightened; the years had fallen away from it. Taran felt his heart fill with a joy that seemed to reach from the potter to himself, and in that moment understood that he was in the presence of a true master craftsman, greater than any he had ever known.
'Fflewddur was wrong,' Taran murmured. 'If there is enchantment, it lies not in the potter's wheel but in the potter.'
'Enchantment there is none,' answered Annlaw, never turning from his work. 'A gift, perhaps, but a gift that bears with it much toil.'
'If I could make a thing of such beauty, it is toil I would welcome,' Taran said.
'Sit you down then,' said Annlaw, making room for Taran at the wheel. 'Shape the clay for yourself.' When Taran protested he would spoil Annlaw's half-formed vessel, the potter only laughed. 'Spoil it you will, surely. I'll toss it back into the kneading trough, mix it with the other clay, and sooner or later it will serve again. It will not be lost. Indeed, nothing ever is, but comes back in one shape or another.'
'But for yourself,' Taran said. 'The skill you have already put in it will be wasted.'
The potter shook his head. 'Not so. Craftsmanship isn't like water in an earthen pot, to be taken out by the dipperful until it's empty. No, the more drawn out the more remains. The heart renews itself, Wanderer, and skill grows all the better for it. Here, then. Your hands? thus. Your thumbs? thus.'
From the first moment Taran felt the clay whirling beneath his fingers, his heart leaped with the same joy he had seen on the potter's face. The pride of forging his own sword and weaving his own cloak dwindled before this new discovery that made him cry out in sudden delight. But his hands faltered and the clay went awry. Annlaw stopped the wheel. Taran's first vessel was so lopsided and misshapen that, despite his disappointment, he threw back his head and laughed.
Annlaw clapped him on the shoulder. 'Well-tried, Wanderer. The first bowl I turned was as ill-favored? and worse. You have the touch for it. But before you learn the craft, you must first learn the clay. Dig, sift, and knead it, know its nature better than that of your closest companion. Then grind pigments for your glazes, understand how the fire of the kiln works upon them.'
'Annlaw Clay-Shaper,' Taran said in a low voice that hid nothing of his yearning, 'will you teach me your craft? This more than all else I long to do.'
Annlaw hesitated several moments and looked deeply at Taran. 'I can teach you only what you can learn,' said the potter. 'How much that may be, time will tell. Stay, if that is your wish. Tomorrow we shall begin.'
The two wayfarers made themselves comfortable that night in a snug corner of the pottery shed. Gurgi curled on the straw pallet, but Taran sat with knees drawn up and arms clasped about them. 'It's strange,' he murmured. 'The more of the Commot folk I've known, the fonder have I grown of them. Yet Commot Merin drew me at first sight, closer than all the others.' The night was soft and still. Taran smiled wistfully in the darkness. 'The moment I saw it, I thought it the one place I'd be content to dwell. And that? that even Eilonwy might have been happy here.
'And at Annlaw's wheel,' he went on, 'when my hands touched the clay, I knew I would count myself happy to be a potter. More than smithing, more than weaving? it's as though I could speak through my fingers, as though I could give shape to what was in my heart. I understand what Annlaw meant. There is no difference between him and his work. Indeed, Annlaw puts himself into the clay and makes it live with his own life. If I, too, might learn to do this…'
Gurgi did not answer. The weary creature was fast asleep. Taran smiled and drew the cloak over Gurgi's
