“Find him, O mighty magician.”
Zabulun looked and saw the ten men who looked exactly alike, and the
two women whom one could not tell one from the other. He turned to
Merlin then and he said, “What a simple trick you would play upon me!
Nine bards you have, and there are ten before us. One of them is Eean,
the boy apprenticed to me.”
“Then you will take him, Zabulun.”
It is certain that Merlin did not think that Zabulun would do what he
did now. He changed himself into a hound. Running amongst the ten that
were there he snuffed at them. By the smell of the horse he had ridden
he would find Eean.
But as he ran amongst them Merlin touched each of the ten bards and
Eean with them with his staff. They all became pigeons and flew up into
the air. One had a feather awry. This was Eean on whom Zabulun had laid
a paw just as he was being transformed.
Instantly Zabulun changed himself into a hawk and strove to rise above
the flock of pigeons. As he did he saw the one that had a feather awry.
Over him he came.
Then Eean, seeing the hawk above him, dropped instantly to the earth.
The others flew down with him, crowding around to hide the ruffled
feather. They came before the door of Merlin’s house. They flew in
and lighted down on the floor while the hawk came sweeping up to the
doorway.
Merlin touched the pigeons with his staff and again transformed them.
They became ten rings of gold that lay upon the floor. As the hawk
flew in and perched on a chair to fix his eyes upon them, the rings of
gold rolled into the fire.
Then Zabulun transformed himself into a tongs, and went hunting through
the fire for the rings. He picked up one ring and flung it out on the
floor, he picked up another ring and flung it out on the floor, and so
on, until the ten rings were out of the fire. Merlin touched the rings
with his staff, and they were transformed into ten grains of corn. Upon
these ten grains Vivien and Bird-of-Gold threw handful after handful of
grains of corn.
But now Zabulun changed himself into a cock with strong legs and
wide claws and a hungry beak. With his claws he scratched through
the heap of grain. With his beak he picked the grains up. Vivien and
Bird-of-Gold kept throwing on the floor handful after handful of corn
to cover the ten grains.
But the beak of the cock went so fiercely and so hungrily amongst them
that only a few grains more than the ten were left upon the floor when
Vivien and Bird-of-Gold found out they had no more handfuls to fling.
Then it seemed as if the cock with his sharp eye would soon pick out
the grain that was Eean.
Then with his staff Merlin touched nine of the grains, leaving one
untouched. The one he left untouched was Eean. The nine were changed
into weasels, and they faced the cock fiercely. Then was Zabulun
startled. Instead of picking at the grain that was Eean he fluttered up
from the ground, and went out of the door of the house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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