Merlin's Harp (25 page)
Authors: Anne Eliot Crompton
But Caliburn was truly an ancient weapon, magicked long ago with lasting, binding spells. Who the magician was—Fey, Human, maybe one of those ancients who raised Morgan's Hill—I could not guess; but I took the force of his—or her—magic in my hands, and almost dropped the sword.
To handle Caliburn I needed the sheath.
Arthur would be dead now without that sheath. But he lay close to death in any case. I pointed, mutely demanding. And Arthur struggled to speak. Bedevere hesitated, then took the sheath and handed it up to me. Quickly I slid Caliburn within.
Now the magic was muffled. The sheath had its own power, but it did not compare to that of the sword. I thrust the sheathed weapon through my belt and knelt with Bedevere.
Arthur's wounds burst open all together. With knife and teeth I ripped strips from my tunic to staunch the flood. Bedevere signed himself with the Cross and prayed aloud. Arthur's breath rattled.
Behind us the river slapped the bank. I looked over my shoulder. A boat came gliding through the reeds to bump the bank. A barge, carpeted, cushioned, poled by a small Fey woman, robed like a queen. Aefa. Beside her stood a proud Human woman, richly gowned. Her face and hair were veiled, but I knew her at once.
I said, "Bedevere, your prayers are answered."
Bedevere turned and stared. He crossed himself again and muttered, "The Witch!"
"She is your Lord's sister. If anyone in the world can heal him, she can. Lift him, Bedevere. Carry him to the barge."
Thank all Gods, Arthur had fainted. He never felt Bedevere gather him up in huge mailed arms, crushing and mangling his wounds, to stagger with him down the bank and deposit him on cushions that Aefa had spread ready.
I followed. Standing in the reeds, I asked Morgan, "Lady, where will you take him?"
She stared down at me through her veil. How did this ragged, blood-spattered boy dare speak to her, the royal witch? But after a thoughtful moment she chose to answer. "Tell his companions he goes to Avalon, the Isle of Apples, where the Lady of the Lake may heal him."
I said, "Morgan, I am the Lady of the Lake."
Aefa had bent over Arthur, staunching his wounds. Now she glanced up at me and cried, "Niviene!"
Morgan drew her veil away and looked at me again. "Why, yes," she said, bemused. "You are in truth Mage Niviene! Will you be host to us at Avalon and try to save my brother?"
I said, "Lady, I will." Though I knew that venture was hopeless.
"Then come with us."
I hesitated. Dark shadow-wings swept over the barge. Death might swoop to land there at any moment. Could I, true-born Fey, ride that narrow barge with Death?
I made to climb aboard but found myself grasped from behind by big, gauntleted hands and lifted onto the barge. Thus the giant Bedevere rendered his last, loving service to Arthur.
I thought of telling Morgan that her foster-son, my son, lay dead on the bank a few feet away. I thought of telling Aefa that. I immediately decided for silence. Even the most vicious Humans love. Morgan might leap overboard, splash ashore and keen over dead Mordred. Meantime, men were gathering along the bank, looking down at us. Arthur's life ebbed, moment by moment. We had no time to lose.
Clear of the reeds, Aefa paused in her poling to pluck a silken cape off the carpet and hand it to me. Gratefully I closed it over my drenched trousers and shirt. It held off some wind and lent me some dignity. Enough so that I heard a bard's voice call from the hillock where he had watched the battle, "Three Queens bear the King away!"
Now as we moved upstream into clear water I saw men all along the bank. Exhausted, bleeding men of both armies watched us pass, leaning on spears or sitting on earth. If they had come splashing out to stop us, we could hardly have resisted them. But they feared magic. And Arthur seemed to be dead. Quietly, they let us pass.
Over them swept the buzzards, waiting to feed. Among these the Morrigan Crow circled, rising, sinking, rasping her delighted blood-thirst. Two swans sailed over the barge and dropped into the river. One on each side, they swam beside us.
So, and in that manner, we left the Battle of Camlann and came to Avalon, with Arthur the High King near bloodless on Morgan's embroidered cushions.
A Counsel Oak Leaf Song
From under rock let water rise
From root and leaf to wind and skies,
Bring the brew of earth and bone
Blood and beard, sap and stone
From soil to sky to sweet, rich rain,
Run under rock and rise again.
From root and leaf to wind and skies,
Bring the brew of earth and bone
Blood and beard, sap and stone
From soil to sky to sweet, rich rain,
Run under rock and rise again.
14
Dance
Aefa says, "Niviene. I want to dance to the Flowering Moon tonight. Will you stay with Dana?"
Little Dana hears her name spoken and looks up. She sits square on the Dana mosaic in the villa entrance, plump, even-lengthed fingers spread on the colored pebbles. She smiles the flower-soft smile of babyhood, leans forward on her hands and rocks herself up on hands and feet.
Brooding on her, eyes only for her, I murmur, "I mean to dance tonight, myself."
Dana is Aefa's child. Aefa declares my son Bran to be her father. That makes me her grandmother, Arthur her grandfather, the Lady her…holy Earth! Her great-grandmother! This child has a lineage like any proud Human! Now, if I knew my father…but, as Aefa once said, no one knows their father.
Aefa cries, astonished, "You, Niviene? You want to dance?" And turns to me, even as little Dana pushes herself upright.
There she stands, swaying on soft, never-used feet, where her father had first stood up, where I had first stood up. I gasp. Aefa turns to look.
Dana plumps down hard on the pebbles and opens her mouth to wail. The villa rings with our delighted laughter.
Dana pauses, mouth open. She looks from Aefa to me and back to Aefa. Then she crows.
When I can speak again, I say, "Yes, I mean to dance tonight, and every Flowering Moon hereafter. I have missed far too many dances."
"But, Niviene…your power…"
"What power I have will stay with me. What more power do I need?"
For the Saxons have not come. The terrible golden-haired savages have not driven our Angle neighbors into our forest. Now that Merlin cannot bring us word of the Human world, there is no word. I steal among the trees like any simple wild thing; like any Fey who never heard of Arthur, or of King Mark or of chivalry, Romans or Saxons. I think I have forgotten how to ride a horse.
I say to Aefa, "Who knows, I may yet sacrifice once more to the Goddess." My arms know once more the warm weight of a child. "I am not past it, you know."
Now, by the light of the Flowering Moon, I lift my white shift hiphigh, sling my shoes around my neck, and push out the coracle. I climb in and take up the pole as the first drumbeat throbs over the water.
A moon-shimmering path leads me straight across the Fey lake. Dark water slides by under the coracle. Somewhere about here, under me now, lies my young, drowned heart. That heart has been dead for fifteen years; I cannot resurrect it. Yet ever since Dana's birth I have felt a similar, tentative presence about to beat, almost beating, in my breast.
Somewhere about here, under me now, lies King Arthur, whom I loved. He died before we three queens reached the island. Here we drowned his bloodless body. The Angles had lost their defender that day. Humankind lost a great hero, of whom bards will sing forever. And I lost…my dangerous friend, my enemy lover.
Somewhere about here we also drowned Caliburn. I said, 'This Caliburn has shed enough blood!" The sticky liquid coated him completely. My spirit ear still heard the shrieks of the Morrigan Crow. I dropped Caliburn down the lake with his master, sheath and all.
By then, Morgan knew that Mordred was dead. Her country was ruled by some new, unrelated king. She had no home back in the kingdom. She begged me, "Let me stay with you now, here in this blessed quiet."
I shrugged. "Whether you go or stay is not for me to say."
"If not you, who rules the Fey?"
"No one rules the Fey."
As I said those words an invisible, unguessed burden slipped from my shoulders into the lake. I never knew I carried it, but I felt it fall. It lies down there now with Arthur, Caliburn, and my young heart.
My new heart beats now with the soft drum across the water. I feel it pulse. It flowers like a red moon in my breast, under Mellias's crystal.
This resurrection, this resurgence, is not Fey. This springtime spirit is a Human trait, like the courage I have had to learn, like love.
Long I have suspected I might have Human blood. I did not want to believe it. But now, poling under the Flowering Moon, I invite the thought into my mind. Merlin said that life is one, that Human and Fey will be one, some day. Maybe they are one in me, tonight. Maybe those two streams have always flowed in my blood. One of them I rejected, out of…Human?…pride and fantasy. No more. I am Fey enough to accept truth when I see it.
Close now, I hear a familiar pipe trill. Mellias and I have not spoken since he said no to me. I have watched him from hiding, as I did in girlhood. I have listened to his distant pipe and warmed his crystal in my fingers.
The coracle whispers into tall reeds, bumps land. That inward stir, that newborn movement is my heart, beating.
A Human hunter would not call this path a path. If one, sharper-eyed than most, noticed it, he would think it a hare's trail. It leads me indirectly, with much pausing and changing course toward the fireglow.
The drum beats. The pipe lilts and trills around the rhythmic sound. From Mellias's dangling crystal, a soft, eager warmth spreads through my body, the same warmth I last felt with Arthur in a moonlit meadow. The trail leads around a great white beech into the dancing glade.
I lean against the beech, white shift pressed to white bark. "Invisible," I scan the glade.
Silhouettes against the snapping fire, dancers whirl softly past. One startling, tall figure skips like a root-freed sapling, gems winking back firelight from flying hair and waving hands. Morgan still haunts our forest. Aefa is a smaller, slower shadow. Perhaps she left Dana asleep nearby.
A lean, small fellow like a startled white buck comes leaping by, stamping and tossing his antlered head. His eyes gleam darkly, turning this way and that, searching me out where I stand invisible, white against white.
He snorts surprise and leaps out of the circle. Cautiously, he glances toward me ready to spring away at a breath. Black braid swings across swinging white buckskin. Small dark hands reach for mine. Under his warm, swinging crystal my new heart swells warm. He grasps my hands and draws me, dancing, away from my sheltering tree.
My feet remember the steps.
About the Author
Anne Eliot Crompton grew up in a college town in the 1940s, a time when women's roles in myth were less acknowledged than today. When she married and moved to the country to raise children and animals, she realized how much heavy lifting had been done by women throughout human history. Part of her life's work has been to shine light on their immense contribution to the human story. Having come full circle, she now lives in a college town in Vermont.
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