Merlin's Booke by Jane Yolen

dark-haired princess in rainbow robes played on a harp with thirteen strings. Merrillin could not read—but he could count. He walked toward the wagon.
    â€œSo, boy, have you come to pay what you owe?” asked a soft voice, followed by the trill of a mistle thrush.
    At first Merrillin could not see who was speaking, but then something moved at one of the windows, a pale moon of a face. It was right where the face of the painted princess should have been. Until it moved, Merrillin had thought it part of the painting. With a bang, the window was slammed shut and then he saw the painted face on the glass. It resembled the other face only slightly.
    A woman stepped through the door and stared at him. He thought her the most beautiful person he had ever seen. Her long dark hair was unbound and fell to her waist. She wore a dress of scarlet wool and jewels in her ears. A yellow purse hung from a braided belt and jangled as she moved, as if it were covered with tiny bells. As he watched, she bound up her hair with a single swift motion into a net of scarlet linen.
    She smiled. “Ding-dang-dong, cat’s got your tongue, then?”
    When he didn’t answer, she laughed and sat down on the top step of the wagon. Then she reached back behind her and pulled out a harp exactly like the one painted on the wagon’s side. Strumming, she began to sing:
    â€œA boy with eyes a somber blue
    Will never ever come to rue,
    A boy with …”
    â€œAre you singing about me?” asked Merrillin.
    â€œDo you think I am singing about you?” the woman asked and then hummed another line.
    â€œIf not now, you will some day,” Merrillin said.
    â€œI believe you,” said the woman, but she was busy tuning her harp at the same time. It was as if Merrillin did not really exist for her except as an audience.
    â€œMost people do not,” Merrillin said, walking over. He put his hand on the top step, next to her bare foot. “Believe me, I mean. But I never tell lies.”
    She looked up at that and stared at him as if really seeing him for the first time. “People who never tell lies are a wonder. All people lie sometime.” She strummed a discordant chord.
    Merrillin looked at the ground. “I am not all people.”
    She began picking a quick, bright tune, singing:
    â€œIf you never ever lie
    You are a better soul than I …”
    Then she stood and held up the harp behind her. It disappeared into the wagon. “But you did not answer my question, boy.”
    â€œWhat question?”
    â€œHave you come to pay what you owe?”
    Puzzled Merrillin said: “I did not answer because I did not know you were talking to me. I owe nothing to you.”
    â€œAh, but you owe it me,” came a lower voice from inside the wagon where it was dark. A man emerged and even though he was not wearing the cloak, Merrillin knew him at once. The voice was the same, gentle and ironic. He was the mage on the wagon’s side; the slate gray hair was the same—and the amber eyes.
    â€œI do not owe you either, sir.”
    â€œWhat of the apple, boy?”
    Merrillin started to cringe, thought better of it, and looked straightaway into the man’s eyes. “The apple was meant to come to me, sir.”
    â€œThen why came you to the wagon?” asked the woman, smoothing her hands across the red dress. “If not to pay.”
    â€œAs the apple was meant to come into my hands, so I was meant to come into yours.”
    The woman laughed. “Only you hoped the mage would not eat you up and put your little green worm on a rock for some passing scavenger.”
    Merrillin’s mouth dropped open. “How did you know?”
    â€œBards know everything,” she said.
    â€œAnd tell everything as well,” said the mage. He clapped her on the shoulder and she went, laughing, through the door.
    Merrillin nodded to himself. “It was the window,” he