“This is some sort of pan place,” muttered Dagg. “Let’s wait at the glade’s edge.”
Jan nodded over one shoulder toward the edge of the clearing. “You go,” he murmured. “I’ll keep watch.”
So they waited, Jan within the Circle of stones, Dagg amid the darkness at the verge of the wood. And while the two of them kept watch, another watched them, unseen, from across the glade—one who had led them there, though they did not know it, for private ends: that the prince’s son might see a thing no unicorn within the Ring had ever seen before.
The sky darkened through deep blue to black, then turned a dark silver. The moon rose, huge and brilliant, throwing black shadows through the trees. By its light, Jan saw countless pan tracks crisscrossing the soft earth of the glade—but his and Dagg’s were the only hoof prints within the Circle of stones.
Just then, very faintly, Jan caught sound of something, a little run of sliding notes. He started, straining his eyes against the shadows beyond the glade. His heart had gone tight. He could make out nothing through the trees. Stepping from between the stones, he backed toward the wood’s edge.
“Dagg,” he breathed. “List.”
Dagg lifted his head. “What is it?” he said lowly. “It isn’t unicorns.”
Jan and Dagg melted out of the moon’s light into the Woods. Among the shadows now, Jan craned his neck; but still nothing met his gaze across the glade but moonlit trees. The notes came again then, just a snatch. They fluted through the dark.
“It’s singing,” murmured Jan, suddenly sure, “but no words to it. Like bird’s song.”
The sound grew clear now, continuous, one clear voice piping wordlessly up and down. Jan and Dagg stood perfectly still. As they listened, it was joined by another voice, and then a third. Three soft, sweet strains trilled in the stillness, drawing near.
Dagg sidled. “It’s a night bird. It must be.”
Jan shook his head. He felt no fear, only fascination now. “No bird”, he breathed. “Hist, I want to listen. I want to know what creature sings so sweet.”
Beside him, Dagg went rigid, his nostrils wide. “It’s pans,” he whispered, strangled. “I can smell them. Fly!”
Jan felt the muscles of his friend beside him bunch. “Stand still,” he hissed, “or they’ll see you.”
Dagg hesitated. But Jan felt strangely, perfectly at ease. He wanted to see—he had to see—what would happen next, and he would not have Dagg bolting and spoiling it. The pans were coming into the glade.
They moved in a long file, a whole band of them, and made themselves into a Circle. Crouching and lounging, they faced inward. Jan saw small ones, weanlings the size of hares, and old ones, gaunt and gray-flanked among the rest, not just the slim, strong half-growns and warriors that had attacked them earlier. And then, within the Circle under the moon, three pans began to dance. Goat-footed, high-stepping, they moved and swayed.
“They dance,” Jan murmured, with a little start of surprise.
Dagg shook his head. “Only the unicorns dance.”
But it was so. The goatlings were dancing there, each dancer holding a flat bundle of marshreeds bound with grass. The reeds were bitten off in uneven lengths and, held to the pursed lips of the dancers, they produced the high, sweet singing. Those watching from the Circle nodded as the dancers passed, glancing at one another, snuffling and making small gestures. Jan felt a tremor down his spine.
“They’re talking to each other,” he breathed.
Dagg, pressing against him, muttered doggedly, “Pans can’t talk.”
Jan shook his head. “With the pipes,” he whispered. “With their forelimbs.” A flash of insight went through him then, hot and sharp. “And they were talking to each other earlier, with their rams’ horns in the Woods.”
Dagg stood silent a moment, watching the glade. The dancers piped and turned. The watchers murmured, nodding. Dagg shrugged. “Not talking—they can’t be. It’s just chatter.”
Jan shook his head again, but kept his tongue. It was speech, he was sure of it. Then that legend of the pans in the old lays must be false. The goatlings were not speechless, had not turned away the Mother’s gift. The discovery astonished him. He strained his ears to the pipes, his eyes to the intricate movements of those strangely jointed forelimbs, and felt the uncanny certainty that if only he could watch long enough, listen deeply enough, he could come to understand.
Dagg beside him shifted suddenly. “What’s happening?”
Jan came back to himself. He realized the snuffling murmur was dying now. A hush followed. One by one the dancers handed their pipes to members of the Ring, and for three moments in turn one strain of the music paused, and then resumed.
The dancers caught up blackened stakes, the male brandishing one in each forelimb like long, straight hooves. Each female held one stake to her forehead like a horn. They snorted, tossing their heads, and pawed at the earth. Jan felt a rush of recognition.
“It’s a singer’s tale,” he hissed. “They’re telling it—but without words.”
The two females circled lazily within the goatlings’ Ring, seemingly unaware of the male stalking them. The music of the flutes grew soft and secretive. Suddenly, the male caught up a branch and threw it down before his quarry. The females whirled, leaping back as if surprised as the other sprang up, brandishing his stakes. The panpipes shrilled.
The mock unicorns lowered their heads and charged, the pointed stakes at their foreheads aimed—but the male batted them lightly away. Once more the females charged and again were put to flight. This time the male pursued them, round the inside of the Ring, until his quarry at last outdistanced him.
The male pan halted, raising his forelimbs, his head thrown back in triumph. The fluting of the panpipes swelled. The mock unicorns straggled away in defeat. The dancers left the inside of the Ring, rejoining their fellows at the rim.
“The ambuscade,” murmured Jan. He was shaking, but from astonishment, not fear. “They were telling the others how they put us to flight.”
“But,” Dagg hissed through clamped teeth, “that isn’t how it happened at all!” The interior of the pans’ Ring lay empty now. The fluting continued, very soft. “They didn’t rout us,” Dagg insisted. “We didn’t deign to fight….”
He had no time to finish, for Jan beside him had caught in his breath.
“Oh,” the prince-son breathed, brushing his shoulder against his companion to still him. “Oh, Dagg. What’s that?”
A pan had risen from the Ring and now was kneeling beside the Circle of stones. With a sheaf of reeds, she brushed aside the gray powder. A second pan came to the stones and threw down a heap of dead branches. Small lights, like red stars, leapt upward through the twigs.
Then something flickered upon the branches, something bright. Jan stared, overtaken with wonder. The stuff upon the twigs—it moved, it danced. It was the color of his mother’s coat, of a setting sun. It flowed like a unicorn’s mane, like grass in the wind, like…like…. He could not say. The branches beneath it blackened and curled. And some began to glow, orange red, then broke at last and fell into a fine, gray dust.
It cast a fleeting light upon the bodies of the pans. They crowded closer, holding their forelimbs to it. Jan saw their bluish hides trickling sweat, even in the chill night air. Mist rose from the flaring stuff, tendrils that to Jan seemed black against the hoary moon, and pale against the sky.
“Prince-son,” a voice behind him breathed, “and Dagg. Stand still and do not speak. It is I.”
Jan started and wheeled, then felt sudden relief flooding through him as he recognized the healer’s daughter. She had slipped up between them in the dark.
“Come away, softly now,” she said. “I’ll take you to the others. They are not far.”