Unwilling to confront the pain fermenting inside him, Bran pushed down the disagreeable feeling and ignored it. But there, deep in the inner core of his hidden heart, it festered and grew as he worked the wood-shaping it, smoothing it, slowly creating just the right curve along the belly and back so that it would bend uniformly along its length-and he forgot the blight that was spreading in his soul.

When at last he had the stave shaped just right, he brought it to Angharad, passing it to her with an absurdly inordinate sense of achievement. He could not stop grinning as she held the smooth ashwood bow in her rough, square hands and tested the bend with her weight. "Well?" he asked, unable to contain himself any longer. "What do you think?'

I think I was right to call you Master Bran," she replied. "You have a craftsman's aptitude for the tools."

"It is good, is it not?" he said, reaching out to stroke the smooth, tight-grained wood. "The stave was excellent."

"You worked it well," she told him, handing it back. "I cannot say when I've seen a finer bow."

"Ash is good," he allowed, "although yew is better." Glancing up, he caught Angharad's eye and added, "I don't blame you, mind. It is difficult to find a serviceable limb."

"Ah, well, just you finish this," she told him. "I want to see if you can hunt with it."

He caught the challenge in her words. "You think I could not bring down a stag? Or a boar even?"

"Maybe a small one," she allowed, teasing, "if it was also slow of foot and weakhearted."

"I do not hunt anymore," he told her. "But if I did, I'd bring back the biggest, swiftest, strongest stag you've ever seen-a genuine Lord of the Forest."

She regarded him with a curious, bird-bright eye. His use of the term tantalised. Could it be that her pupil was ready for the next step on his journey? "Finish the bow first, Master Bran," she said, "and then we'll see what we shall see."

Completing his work on the bow took longer than he expected. Obtaining the rawhide for the grip, slicing it thin, and braiding it so that it could be wound tightly around the centre of the stave was the work of several days. Making the bowstring proved an even more imposing task. Bran had never made a bowstring; those were always provided by one of the women of the caer.

Faced with this chore, he was not entirely certain which material was best, or where it might be found. He consulted Angharad. "They used hemp," he told her. "Also flax-I think. But I don't know where they got it."

"Hemp is easy enough to find. Given a little time, I could get flax, too. Which would you prefer?"

"Either," he said. "Whichever can be got soonest."

"You shall have it."

Two days later, Angharad presented him with a bound bundle of dried hemp stalks. "You will have to strip it and beat it to get the threads," she told him. "I can show you."

The next sunny day found them outside the cave, cutting off the leaves and small stems and then beating the long, fibrous stalks on a flat stone. Once the stalks began to break down, it was easy work to pull the loosened threads away. The long outer fibres were tough and hairy, but the inner ones were finer, and these Bran carefully collected into a tidy, coiled heap.

"Now they must be twisted," Bran told her. Selecting a few of the better strands, he tied them to a willow branch; while Angharad slowly, steadily turned the branch, Bran patiently wound the long threadlike fibres over one another, carefully adding in new ones as he went along to increase the length. The process was repeated until he had six long strings of twisted strands, which were then tightly and painstakingly braided together to make two bowstrings of three braided strands each.

Determining the length of the bowstring took some time, too. Bran had to string and unstring the bow a dozen times before he was happy with the bend and suppleness of the draw. When he finished, he proclaimed himself satisfied with the result and declared, "Now for the arrows."

Making arrows was not a chore he had ever undertaken either; but, like the other tasks, he had watched it done often enough to know the process. "Willow is easiest to work, but difficult to find in suitable lengths," he mused aloud before the fire while Angharad cooked their supper. "Beech and birch, also. Ash, alder, and hornbeam are sturdier. Oak is the most difficult to shape, but it is strongest of all. It is also heavier, so the arrows do not fly as far-good for hunting bigger animals, though," he added, "and for battle, of course."

"Each of those trees abounds in the forest," Angharad offered. "Tomorrow, we can go out together and find some branches."

"Very well," agreed Bran. It would be the first time he had been allowed to walk into the forest since the winter ramble that had sent him back to his sickbed. Even so, he did not want to appear too excited lest Angharad change her mind. "If you think I'm ready."

"Bran," she said gently, "you are not a prisoner here."

He nodded, adopting a diffident air, but inwardly he was very much a prisoner yearning for release.

The next day they walked a short distance into the wood to select suitable branches from various trees. "The arrow tips will be difficult to make," Bran offered, swinging the axe as they walked along. "If I could get back into the caer, I'd soon have all the arrowheads I needed" arrows, too.

"What about flint?"

The idea of a stone-tipped arrow was so old-fashioned, it made Bran chuckle. "I doubt if anyone alive in all of Britain still knows how to make an arrowhead of flint."

Now it was Angharad's turn to laugh. "There is one in the Island of the Mighty who remembers."

Bran stopped walking and stared after her. "Who are you, Angharad?"

When she did not answer, he hurried to catch her. "I mean it who are you that you know all these things?"

"And I have already told you."

"Tell me again."

Angharad stopped, turned, and faced him. "Will you listen this time? And listening, will you believe?"

"I will try."

She shook her head. "No. You are not ready." She resumed her pace.

"Angharad!" bawled Bran in frustration. "Please! Anyway, what difference does it make whether I believe or not? Just tell me."

Angharad stopped again. "It makes a world of difference," she declared solemnly. "It matters so much that sometimes it takes my breath away. Greater than life or death; greater than this world and the world to come. There is no end to the amount of difference it can make."

She moved on, but Bran did not follow. "You speak in riddles! How am I to understand you when you talk like that?"

Angharad turned on him with a sudden fury that forced him back a step. "What did you do with your life, Master Bran?" she demanded accusingly. "More to the point, what will you do with your life now that you have it back?"

Bran started to protest but shut his mouth even as he drew breath to speak. It was futile to challenge her-better to keep quiet.

"Answer me that," she told him, "and then I will answer you."

Bran glared back at her. What reply could he make that she would not revile?

"Nothing to say?" inquired Angharad with sweet insincerity. "I thought not. Think long before you speak again."

Her words stung him like a slap, and they did more. They ripped open the hole into which he had pushed all the festering blackness in his soul-soon to come welling up with a vengeance.