Hobby by Jane Yolen

princes."
    The Duke laughed explosively as if he got the joke. "A hawk. Ah yes, I remember your name now, Hobby. Fly away, little hawk, before I change my mind."
    "Hawk," said Fowler, remembering the other name, and reaching for the boy.
    "Merlin," the boy whispered, but
sotto voce,
without sound. Then, as the Duke had ordered, he flew back down the stairs and out into the night, where armies were, truly, massing on the far side of the woods.
    He flew unerringly into those woods, and freedom.

Light.
    Morn.
    "
What is that hawk, Viviane? The one circling above us. Is it a hobby?
"
    "
There is no hawk above us, old man. There is only cloud and, beyond it, sky.
"
    "
I heard the hawk. I heard his voice.
"
    "
It was a dream.
"
    "
I never dream. Only he dreams.
"
    "
You will dream a long dream soon. About the times when your fingers were swift and sure with magic. When you could pluck asters and asphodels from a child's ear.
"
    "
I never could do magic. Not like the boy.
"
    "
Hush. There was no hoy. That was only a dream. Drink this and the dream will come again. For good.
"
    The bells in her earrings ring like the sound of a tamed hawk's jesses, like the sound of a freed soul as it makes its long and perilous passage between earth and heaven.

Author's Note
    The story of Merlin, King Arthur's great court wizard, is not one story but many. In some of the tales he is a Druid priest, in others a seer, in still others a shape-shifter, a dream-reader, a wild man in the woods.
    The only story told of Merlin's childhood handed down from the Middle Ages is that he is a fatherless Welsh princeling who has prophetic dreams about red and white dragons. In the story he tells this dream—under threat of execution—to the usurping King Vortigern. He explains that the dream is about Vortigern's battle tower, which has been collapsing. Under the boy's instructions, the tower is made to stand, but it is in that very tower that Vortigern is then burned to death by soldiers loyal to the true king.
    I have borrowed bits and pieces of that old story, reworking it to include research about traveling players and market day fairs. I have put in Viviane, who in the old tales of Merlin first seduces and then kills the old man after he has taught her all his magic, by casking him up in a tree. (Or putting him to sleep in a cave.) I have also put in Ambrosius, who, in the histories, is sometimes mentioned as the father of Arthur, sometimes as a general who began the fight to unite all Britain, sometimes as Vortigern's rival and the cause of his death. In other words, I have played around with elements of the stories as writers of "Arthuriana" have always done.
    The stories and histories from that time—fifth century through the fifteenth—are like Merlin's dream, always told on the slant. The tales of Merlin are so entwined, truth and fiction, that they are tangled and impenetrable as the forests of old Britain.
    â€”J. Y.