VII. How Eean and Bird-of-Gold Were Pursued by Zabulun the Enchanter and how They Went to the Cave of Chiron the Centaur

O King of the Western Island, our wanderings began on the day when the ferryman left us on the farther side of the river. We went to the country where my father dwelt. We found the old man still gathering brambles and thorns for his livelihood, and out of the treasure that had been given me I gave him riches, and he had not to go thorn-and-bramble gathering any more.

We had only been a little time in the hut that my father built when a new color came upon the ring I had taken off the Magic Mirror. Its color had been sea green, but now a red line came across it. By that we knew that Zabulun the Enchanter had left the cave that was under the sea. And the red line began to grow over the sea green of the ring, and we knew by this sign that he had begun to follow on our traces. Then said Eean to me, “I will go from this place and seek a hiding,[Pg 111] and it may be that I shall baffle Zabulun who follows me.” I said to Eean, “I shall go with you where you go.” “Nay,” said Eean, “it is not on your account that Zabulun pursues us. He has no rage nor hatred against you, O Bird-of-Gold, and if I should go from this place by myself you would not be troubled by him.”

Then I said to him, “O Eean, I had no playmate nor companion until I met you in the King’s gardens. Now I could not bear to see you go from me, and where you go I shall go too.”

Afterward I asked him if there were in the world any Enchanters who were as powerful as Zabulun. He told me of Chiron the Centaur, and of Hermes Trismegistus, the wise Egyptian, and of Merlin whose home is on an island that is west of your Western Island. I thought that only from one of these Enchanters might we get aid against Zabulun.

The red grew over the sea green of the ring, and we knew that the farther the red grew the nearer did Zabulun approach us. I wondered how we might get to one of the great Enchanters. Hermes[Pg 112] Trismegistus, being in Egypt, was far, and Merlin, on the island beyond the Western Island, was farther still. I thought of Chiron the Centaur, and it seemed to me that him we might be able to find.

Now my father had lived a long time in the world, and he had heard many things, and he had thought over the things he had heard in the years when he had gathered brambles and thorns in the wilderness. I went to my father for word of Chiron the Centaur.

“Chiron the Centaur dwells all alone in a cave that is in the side of a mountain. The mountain is covered all over with a deep and an ancient forest,” my father told me. And again he said, “Once I knew the direction in which that mountain is, and to-morrow I shall go into the wilderness, and as I walk about it may be that the memory of it will come back to me.”

He came back from the wilderness in the evening and he said, “Away toward where the morning star shines there is a great waste. If one skirts this waste one comes to a river the waters of which[Pg 113] are as cold as snow. The river flows down from the mountain on the side of which is the cave of Chiron the Centaur. All this I heard in the days of my youth.”

Over more and more of the sea green of the ring the red had grown. By this sign we knew that Zabulun was coming close to us. I spoke to Eean and I said that we both should make ready to go to the cave of Chiron the Centaur. Then when the morning star shone very brightly we took leave of my father and we went toward where it shon............