HOUGH the sun was warm on the golden-gray meadow slope, it was not there that the little shepherdess loved to lead her flock. The crests of the hills were swimming in soft light, and breaths from flowered orchards yielded their way over the hills, but it was not there either that she lay in the long mornings. For it is the great green lowlands of Wales that are richest with early Spring magic, and it was in a magic lowland, hill-cradled, that Llorien fed her white flock in Spring.
Llorien was of woman's years, but her face was like the very early flowers. When flowers have not yet seen the sun-bow of a whole day from white east to red west, their little faces are not really alive; it is only after they have borne light, and have been with dew and stars, and have endured a night, that they understand the human eyes that look upon them. And little Llorien's face was like the very early flowers.
For years she had lived alone with old Glaunt, her father. Glaunt was a shepherd, and his image remained always in the hearts of those who had once looked upon him. He was a great, black-browed, black-bearded man with falling black hair. He spoke but little, perhaps because he was an old man, and it had all been said. He went among the gray hills, and stood black among his flocks, his shepherd's cloak blowing about his shoulders. All the country-side knew him, and responded gladly to his silent greeting. Many of the wool-combers and sheep-shearers feared him, as children fear the silence. But old Gervyl, who lived near the fens, and who brewed strange distillations for the ailing sheep, knew that he loved the little four-petaled “silverskins” that grew in the marsh, and she would send her boy to him across the early fields with a night's birth of them, or, it might be, with but a single silver stem to be drawn in his wide hat. Old Gervyl and her boy and little Llorien were the only ones who did not fear Glaunt, and they, too, loved to wear the strange little silver flowers.
Down in the lowland where Llorien fed her flock, the meadow was like a great green hall. On three sides, pleasant hills budded from the earth, and bore sweet odors which were neither of bloom nor of wind. Sometimes idle, white clouds rested on the curved summits of the hills like airy altars; and, when the evening star first burned above them—a silver priest come among his vessels—little Llorien led home her flock. This she was always unwilling to do, for the long, warm hours in the field were her delight. All day, she lay deep in the scented grass, facing the south where gloomed a purple wood—the Wood of Ydren. And it was because she feared and loved the Wood of Ydren that she spent her days upon its threshold.
A great violet cave of trees it was, miles deep, and, for aught Llorien knew, pathless. It was true that Cynan, son of a tradesman of Glastonbury, had told her that he had come through the wood with his father, carrying a load of leather to Caer, but Cynan was not to be believed. She remembered scornfully how he had assured her that no flowers bloomed in the wood. No flowers in the Wood of Ydren! Liorien would as soon have believed that there were no fairies with harps making the music of the wind.
What it was that drew her to the wood's edge day by day, she could not have told. Near her father's cot was a little wood where trim, familiar flowers grew, pretending to be wild, but these could not deceive Llorien. She knew them every one—thistle-wort, witch-wort, glove-buds and little nodding spirilis. Beyond this domestic little wood was a meadow, and in this meadow grew sweet-smelling grasses, and, on clear mornings, one might see, through a blue cleft in the hills, the spires of Glastonbury; but here Llorien never spent an hour. Past her father's flock she went, and straight to the lowland at the edge of the Wood of Ydren. Perhaps something wonderful would happen there that day. Only yesterday she had fancied that she heard the faint fluting of a horn; and once she had been sure that she caught the flutter of a silver sleeve.