Merlin's Harp

Copyright

Copyright © 1995, 2010 by Anne Eliot Crompton

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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Crompton, Anne Eliot. Merlin's harp / Anne Eliot Crompton.

    p. cm. Summary: Niviene, the daughter of the Lady of the Lake, recounts her life as a member of the Fey, sister of the knight who would be known as Lancelot, and student of Merlin as she discovers her destiny at the court of King Arthur. [1. Fairies—Fiction. 2. Merlin (Legendary character)—Fiction. 3. Lancelot (Legendary character)—Fiction. 4. Arthur, King—Fiction. 5. Lady of the Lake (Legendary character)—Fiction. 6. Grail—Fiction. 7. Great Britain—History—To 1066—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.C879Mer 2010 [Fic]—dc22

2009035980

Geoffrey Ashe, in his book
The Discovery of King Arthur
, suggests that the reason the historian Gildas never mentioned King Arthur by name was that Arthur had robbed Christian monasteries for his war chests. (Gildas wrote judgmental history.) This exciting theory became a pillar of
Merlin's Harp.

When I was yet a very young woman I threw my heart away.

  I fashioned a wee coracle of leaf and willow twig and reed, a coracle that sat in the hollow of my two palms. In this I placed my wounded, wretched heart, and I set it adrift on the rain-misted wavelets of the Fey river, and I watched it bob and whirl, sail and sink. Ever since then I have lived heartless, or almost heartless, cold as spring rain, the way Humans think all Fey live. Humans I have known would be astounded to learn that I ever had a heart that leapt, brightened, fainted, quickened, warmed, embraced, froze, or rejected, like their own.

  I grew up in a strangely Human way in a home, with a sort of family. My mother Nimway, my brother Lugh, and I lived in Lady Villa on Apple Island, which Human bards have named Avalon. I say we "lived" there. Most nights we slept within the villa walls. We cooked many a meal over the stone circle fireplace in the villa courtyard. When we sought each others' company we looked in the villa, in certain of the old rooms, a special room for each of us. My mother's room had faded waves painted on its walls, and strange, leaping fish, such as we never caught in the Fey lake. My small room was painted about with vines—unlike those that clung to and camouflaged the villa walls—and clusters of purple fruits. Because of these pictures, Lugh and I always believed that there were worlds beyond the Fey forest, where mysterious creatures lived. Few Fey children grow up knowing that.

  Like other children, I went away to join the Children's Guard as soon as I could care for myself. But unlike other children, I remembered the villa as my home, I remembered the Lady, my mother, and I always knew that Lugh, the big, pale boy who often stood guard with me, was my born brother. We had sucked the same breasts and learned to walk on the same cool, tiled floor. We were special to each other, as no other two children were.

  And though I never said so till our Guard time ended, and then only to my best friend, Elana, I always knew that when I grew up and left the Guard I would go home.

  The villa grew about us and entwined our lives as vines entwined the villa. Apple Island held us apart from mainland Fey forest and our silent Fey neighbors. Living on the mainland we would have glimpsed neighbors from afar, as we glimpse other wild creatures; by slow, easy approaches we would have come to know many of them by name, and some as friends. But the lake trapped us, for the most part, with each other.

  Living like this, as in a Human family, I grew an almost Humanlike heart. This was a deformity. Even on the bright spring morning when I climbed Counsel Oak with my best friend Elana, I knew I could not live much longer with this heart.

  The Lady, who knew so much, must have known I had it.

  Elana knew. She did not mind because she had a heart too. In truth, hers was bigger and warmer than mine, and fast growing desperate. I could have had no notion how desperate, for such intensity had no precursor in our Fey world.

  Counsel Oak towers over all the apple trees of Avalon. At that time his massive trunk yawned half-open where it had been split by a bolt from heaven long ago. A lesser tree would have drooped and dropped and given back its life to the Goddess. But the young oak that we would call Counsel reared on up, seeking the sun.

  Up we climbed, Elana and I, from huge branch to smaller branch, past new leaf and mistletoe, through thrush song and warbler flight. A few days before we had left the Children's Guard at last, still wrapped in the "invisible" cloaks in which Guards spy from treetop and thicket on the Human kingdom beyond our forest. We had lingered a bit, building shelters and scavenging. Then I had said to Elana, "Come home with me." And Elana had come.

  I perched now in the highest crotch that would bear my very slight weight. Elana settled lower, for she was a big girl; she carried real weight. Together we looked out over all of Apple Island, and the Fey lake with its dark, encircling forest, and the small, shimmering streams that fed the lake, and the wide river that flowed away east to the kingdom.

  Uncounted white-blooming apple trees crowded the island below us. The trees hid Avalon's two dwelling dens, but I knew where they were. Otter Mellias's newly built cabin stood on stilts over the water on the east shore. Lady Villa crouched among willows on the west shore. Had we climbed Counsel Oak in times long past we could have seen the villa from here. It would have shone out at us, dazzled us, white stone among bright gardens. We might have seen giant, Human figures like those painted on the villa walls stride across the courtyard, or talk beside the fountain. The fountain spat water back then, so the Lady said.

  Elana whistled like a blackbird. I looked down and saw her raise plump hands in silent sign-talk. She signed,
Listen to the leaves.

  I had told her that Counsel's rustling leaves gave advice. So the Lady said. Now I listened to the leaves, but heard no words. I shrugged.

  Elana looked sadly up at me, her round face white as the apple blossoms below. Her red-brown braid lay against a bough like sunspattered bark. She signed,
Ask! Ask the Oak: will he notice me now?

  I signed down,
Who? Will who notice you?

  Almost frantically,
He! The one I long for!

  I sighed. We had discussed this "one" before now. I believed my friend must be bewitched, like a Human heroine in some bardic song. In all the forest there was only one for her. If he lay with her, then she would bloom like spring. If he scorned her, she feared to wilt clean away. Meantime, she had lain with no one, not ever, not even at the Flowering Moon dances, though we were both now blood-blessed by the Goddess. The same was true of me, but for no such weird reason.

  Again I listened to the wind in Counsel's leaves; and this time I thought I heard a distant whisper.
Down.

  I signed to Elana,
Down. That's all the leaves say. Down.

  
Listen again, Niviene!

  Listening once more, I thought I heard,
Maiden. Down.

  And then soft, far voices sang together,

  It stood tall alone by itself, as no Fey would ever stand. Disdaining shielding shadow, it gleamed in full sunshine, obvious as a tree—or as a Human, who thinks his own kind kings of the world.

  Once I had seen a red stag stand like that, careless and proud; and his summer coat had shone with that same bronze tint. The East Edge Children's Guard had feasted on him for days and days.

  I twirled my "invisible" cloak around me and started down the oak, hand under hand. I passed Elana lifting her fingers to ask
What? Where?
and slipped down the trunk like a shadow. Above me I heard the soft shifting of Elana's weight as she followed. Dropping to earth I slunk, crouching, from one gray-green trunk to the next, snuffling up hints like a vixen. My nose soon told me that was no stag ahead. I smelled smoke, dust, a body washed seldom, and certainly not recently. A body fed on meat. I paused behind an alder thicket and peered through.

  Against an apple trunk leaned a very tall, very pale maiden. Her height was surprising, and so was her skin: milk white, like Elana's, and gold freckled. She raised a thin, empty face to the sky. One of her hip-length bronze braids had fallen loose. The other was still held by a shiny red ribbon, which wound around and down its length.

  I saw only her radiance. Forgetting all sense and the strong testimony of my nose, I thought,
Here is the Goddess herself!
In that unforgettable moment I felt what Humans feel when they glimpse one of us. I shrank together. Mouth dry, hair stiff, I crouched beneath her pale gaze, still as hare beneath circling hawk. Since then, because of that unforgotten moment, I have dealt gently with many an innocent Human.

  Elana's breath blew hot on my neck. At least I did not face the Goddess alone! One of my kind breathed on me and gripped my shoulder with a slightly shaking, heavy hand.

  My friend Elana was bigger, heavier, than I was, but not stronger. Elana had no sliver, no crumb or morsel of magic in all her awkward body or childish mind. I crouched between her and the Goddess. I felt I must protect her from the Goddess. She was my friend. I had to face the Goddess for both of us.

  I collected my mind, snatched back some sense, paid heed to my nose. I noticed that the Goddess's white tunic, which should shine like the sun, was deeply soil-grimed. Her overgown, wondrously blue and richly embroidered, was bramble-shredded, her slender white wrists bramble-blooded. I saw by her wide, vague eyes that she was heavily drugged. Dirt! said my nose, Meat!
Mead! Grand Mushroom!
A great breath of relief filled my lungs. This was no Goddess.

  Then, what was it?

  A female Human, that's what it was. A Human, naturally taller than myself, but not much older; thin, drugged, unarmed. Not so much as a knife poked out of her brightly embroidered girdle. Her freckled hands hung, helpless.

  A female Human stood under the blooming trees of Apple Island, where no Human foot had trod since the Romans went away (so said the Lady). And I, young Niviene, recently a Child Guard, had found her! What would the Lady do if she crouched in my place?