The Last Bard
(Prologue)

            He sat down beneath an ancient oak tree, one of the fathers of the oaks.  His clothes were ragged and torn, barely hanging on to a body much thinner than the one they were made to cover.  Even the pack that he pulled into his lap was patched in many places, so that it seemed to be made of many different pieces of fabric.  He searched inside the pack for the last bit of stale bread, bread that he had begged from a kindly midwife over a week before.  In his search, his fingers brushed against something long and slender.  It was a wooden flute, a gift from a young girl that he had met at a Beltane festival in a tiny, out of the way village.  It was one of the few places that still held to the old ways, one of the few places in which he was not an outlaw simply because of his birth.  It would not last, and so he left before he could be banished from yet another home.

            He inspected the flute, running his fingers over the smooth carving down its side.  His father had taught him to play it, just as he had taught him to play most instruments.  The bodhran was his chosen specialty, but he had always admired the sound that his father had coaxed from even simple reeds. 

            Forgetting his hunger for the moment, he placed the flute against his lips and began to play.  The melody that emerged was an ancient one, known only to those of his calling, known only to himself, for he was the last.  It very nearly took visible form, for the wild recognized it, and returned it.  A lonely owl watched and joined him, its soft voice adding a melancholy note to the song.  The oak that he sat against awoke, its branches swaying gently.

            The song died, and the man closed his eyes, seeing only the violet eyes of the woman-child who had placed the flute into his hand.  The tree wrapped its arms around him, knowing that he would never awake.

             On the doorsteps of the midwife’s cottage an infant cried.  A soft black down covered her head, and her eyes sparkled like amethysts.  Wrapped in the blanket with her was a wooden flute.