No thing is nearer hand.
Then send a ray that I may own
The fortune that is mine:
O Betelguise, my star of stars,
My forehead’s for your sign!
And after all the countries he had wandered through, Eean was now back on the ground of his own country. He heard the cry of the curlews overhead. He saw the lakes that looked as if even the birds had forgotten them, so lonely they were, lonely, but with deep memories. He saw the cairns of stones above the long dead heroes. Once he saw a fox upon a cairn, and it seemed to him that this was the very fox he had chased away from his mother’s coop the day before the Enchanter had taken him away from the Western Island.
With strong hearts King Manus’s horses galloped on. But the heart of Eean was strained with the thought of the distance that was still before them. First, a great mountain that had to be crossed. Then a wide plain. Then that other mountain from the top of which one could see the Western Ocean in the daylight. And Zabulun the Enchanter might come upon them in the hills or on the plain and say a word that might stop their horses’ gallop.
But they came to the last mountain top, and they saw the waters of the Western Ocean with gleams of gold coming upon them. Adown the heather-covered hillside their horses hurried. And as the broad sun rose over the broad ocean the feet of the white and the red horse were scattering the foam along the shore.
And as they watched they saw Merlin’s island grow out of the dimness of the sea. Then the sun became fuller and it lighted up the White Tower, and Eean and Bird-of-Gold knew they had come to their journey’s end indeed. They sprang off their horses, and they dipped their hands in the sea, and they kissed each other.