Passager

Jane Yolen's Passager reimagines the childhood of Merlin as a feral boy surviving alone in a medieval English forest who slowly recovers his language, memory, and identity through the patient care of a falconer.

A prologue, set in darkness, presents two women preparing to abandon a small, drugged child in a tree. A daughter protests, calling the boy her "owlet" and "hawkling," but the older woman, addressed as Mother, insists they cannot keep him: "The church forbids it. God's law. And man's" (2). Their dialogue implies they are nuns whose community is endangered by the child's presence. The Mother reassures her daughter that displaced villagers in the woods will find and care for him. The women must return before Matins, the early morning prayers, or risk discovery.

The story shifts to an unnamed eight-year-old boy living alone in the forest. When a pack of wild dogs finds him while foraging, he strikes the lead dun-colored dog with a stick and scrambles up a tree, waiting with practiced patience until the pack loses interest. The boy knows his woodland intimately: He has marked his territory like a wolf, dammed streams to catch fish, and called down owls at night. His speech has been replaced by birdsong and animal sounds. He fears fire and worships the trees that shelter him. His memories surface only in dreams: a smoky hearth, gold-banded hands steadying him on a horse, a face whispering a name too softly to hear. Nightmares bring two screaming dragons, spinning stones, and a sword blade showing visions of knights and ladies. The boy can wake himself by crossing his forefingers and saying his name within the dream, but once awake he can never remember it. He gives himself new names each day, Star Boy or Moon Boy or Hawk-in-stoop Boy, but never speaks them aloud. He does not think in the first person; his thoughts come as images, and time is always the present.

In late fall, the boy watches geese fly south and feels an inexplicable yearning. From his tree he sees a hunting falcon land in a tall beech, and below it a large man with red-brown hair and a tonsure, a shaved patch on the crown of his head marking him as clergy. The man swings a weighted lure and calls softly to the bird. The boy watches through the afternoon and into the night, drawn by the man's steady voice. The next morning, the falcon stoops on a lark, and the man hoods it, places it on his gloved wrist, and walks into the forest. Unable to resist, the boy drops from his tree and follows. As he tracks the man, human words begin returning; he speaks "coat" and "jerkin" aloud, savoring the sounds. The trail opens onto a clearing with a farmhouse. The boy whispers "House," both afraid and not afraid.

Chimney smoke stirs a near-memory of roasting meat, but when dogs howl, the boy flees. He returns the next morning, drawn by the idea of real food. He mouths "Hens" at the sound of clucking and speaks "Horse!" when he hears a whinny. When dogs bark, he turns to run, but the man appears and lifts him off the ground. The boy screams and claws at the man's face. The man, later identified as Master Robin, pins the boy's hands and speaks in a soft, steady voice, calling him "weanling" and "wild one." The boy cowers but stops fighting, and Robin marches him into the house.

Inside, Robin orders his two servants, the older Mag and the younger Nell, to prepare a bath. Nell asks if the boy is a bogle or a wodewose, a wild man of the woods. Robin explains he is simply an abandoned child. Mag observes the boy looks fierce, "like one of your poor birds" (34), and Robin compares the task ahead to taming a hawk. Exhausted, the boy falls asleep in the bath and wakes alone in a locked room.

Language returns through encounters with familiar objects. A hazelnut pops from the fire; after his fright, the boy eats it. He finds a food tray and identifies "Bread" and "Butter," speaking both words with delight. He recites his growing vocabulary like a litany: "Bread. Butter. Horse. House. Hens. Jerkin. Coat." When he discovers the door is locked and recognizes the word "Cell," he howls in despair.

Over several days the boy cycles between wild behavior and gradual domestication, eventually dissolving into weeping for the first time in a year. During a half-sleep, Robin strokes the boy's hair and whispers, "First we'll tame you, then we'll name you. And then you'll claim your own" (45). By the fifth day, when the boy grabs at a loaf, Robin slaps his hand, triggering a buried memory. The boy croaks "Forgive." Robin hugs him and promises to take him to the mews to see the hawks.

Robin and the women dress the boy and fit him with a rope harness and lead. In the mews, a long building housing the birds, Robin names things as they walk: "Door. Perch. Bird. Lamp. Rafters." The boy repeats each word. Before three hooded birds on perches, the boy strains forward in fascination, but two brown house dogs, a larger mother and her smaller companion, bound in and he screams in terror. Robin calms the dogs. The smaller one rolls onto its back, and the boy touches it, laughs, and says "Dog." The small dog follows him home and sleeps in his bed that night, its warmth triggering the gentlest dreams the boy has had in a year.

Woken by the dog's movements, the boy slips outside to visit the birds, but at the mews door the dun-colored dog from the wild pack leaps on him, biting his wrist. The small dog defends him, and the rest of the pack closes in, including grey brachets, a type of hound, and the yellow mastiff. The larger house dog charges out, kills a terrier, and fights the pack. The boy's fear turns to anger; he flings himself onto the dun dog and throttles it with his leadline. Robin arrives with a whip and drives off the remaining dogs. He carries the sobbing boy and injured small dog inside.

At dawn Robin takes the boy to the mews. He explains his bond with each bird: He spent three nights with the goshawk on his fist until it gave itself to him in sleep. He identifies the middle bird as a peregrine, an eyas taken from the nest, and the third as a passager, a wild-caught hawk not yet mature. Its bell rings.

Robin asks, "You like my merlin best, then?" At the word "merlin," the boy reacts with overwhelming recognition. His eyes go wide, and he throws out his hands as if struck blind. He tears free from Robin and faces the bird, which rocks on its perch, its bell jangling. The boy rocks in unison, crying "Name. Name." Robin understands. He draws water from a barrel and traces a cross on the boy's forehead: "I baptize thee Merlin, my child. Somehow your name is the bird's" (71). The boy says "Amen" and then, speaking in the first person for the first time, declares, "I . . . am . . . Merlin" (71). Memory and language flood back as he reclaims his true name.

An epilogue returns to the two nuns. The daughter says she thinks often of her child, calling him "my Merlin." The Mother warns her not to say his name. The daughter insists the child is not just past but future, as all children are. The Mother suggests that perhaps exile has made her son greater and directs the daughter back to prayer. The bells ring for Matins, sounding "like the voices of angels making the long and perilous passage between heaven and earth" (74), echoing the falconry imagery woven throughout the novel.