Poison (32 page)

Where will I go?
The question hit me like a hammer, unexpected, startling. I needed more time to be awake before handling thoughts like that. I felt sick. My heart was beating like a drum in my chest. I wanted to run away. I would have, right then, if I’d had anywhere to run to.

But that was the problem. It was something I had to think about, whether I liked the subject or not. I needed to make some kind of plan about where I’d live after my father came back. But where would I go? Where does someone like me belong?

I answered myself:
In hell.

“Oh, Gram,” I whispered. “What am I going to do?” I buried my head in my hands. I hadn’t asked to be poison. I hadn’t made a deal with the devil.

Had Morgan?

I didn’t know. Where was the line between innocence and guilt? If a bear in a zoo kills a child who squeezes between the bars, is the bear evil? Is it innocent? Is it the fault of the
child’s parents? The zookeeper? Does the bear deserve to die for its crime? Does the child, for its ignorance?

Why am I even thinking about this stuff?

Angrily I turned on the radio. It was tuned to an eighties station. A loud, funky man’s voice was singing “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” and for a moment I could almost pretend that life was normal. Or something.

But of course it wasn’t. I was here like death, waiting to kill again.

With trembling fingers I picked up the amber pieces once more.
Take me away,
I thought.
Anywhere. Anywhere but here. And anyone but
me.

•

Even though I know where the ring came from and what it stands for, I cannot help but love it, in a way. There is such promise in that faintly glowing blue stone, such a feeling of good times to come. That is how evil works, I’ve learned. It is not some dark, spectral thing that sets your teeth on edge. Sometimes it’s lovely, compelling, a mermaid on the rocks, something sweet and laughing, with a knife between its perfect teeth.

When I give King Arthur the ring, I make sure that the Merlin is absent at the time. I am one of many supplicants, sycophants, and court ladies seeking some special recognition from the king. Arthur is not a handsome man. He is slight and pale, attesting to a sickly childhood, and his ginger-colored hair is already thinning. But he is still the king, and everyone knows that his wife, Guinevere, is barren. All of his advisers have urged him to put her away in a convent and marry someone younger.

So there is never a shortage of women, young and old, the
reckless married ones and the innocent maidens prompted by their mothers, who try to catch Arthur’s eye. Thinking I am one of these, he nods politely as he accepts my gift with a discreet questioning glance at his clerk, who murmurs that I am the Merlin’s daughter. I notice the play of emotions that flit across his face:
Oh, the Merlin! He has a daughter? But he’s never mentioned her. Rather pretty. But of common blood, nothing special. Unless she’s a witch, of course, like her father. Better to leave her alone.
“Thank you,” he says.
And who is that behind her?

Then he places the ring on his finger, and the world lights up.

Oh, good heavens, my dear!
He thinks the woman behind me has caused the sudden lift of his mood. I am forgotten.

My sigh of relief fills the room.

•  •  •

The stone takes time to do its work. Days pass, weeks. The Merlin is riding the countryside, conferring with the witch women of outlying provinces about the weather. There has been no rain since April, and that was scant. The first harvest, on Lammas, failed almost completely, and the second harvest at Mabon, soon approaching in mid-September, looks to be no better. Soon there will no longer be any deer or even songbirds in the forests; they will have all been eaten. Everyone on the entire island of Britain is in danger of starving over the winter.

The peasants blame the king, of course. In their minds they have invested him with powers even greater than the Merlin’s. They believe that Arthur is the land, and the land is Arthur. If the land suffers, then it is because the king has broken some covenant with God.

And who knows? Perhaps they are right. The ring Arthur
wears is certainly nothing holy. God would not have approved of it.

To appease the people, the king sends Guinevere to a convent and strips her of her titles. The courtiers gossip that the queen is being punished for her infidelity with one of the Round Table knights, Lancelot, who has left Camelot under mysterious circumstances, but I have no interest in these court intrigues. As far as I can see, the king was only following the demands of his advisers to rid himself of a barren wife and find a new one in order to secure an heir for the kingdom.

But Arthur does not look for another queen. Instead he spends long hours alone in his chapel, praying to whatever gods will listen to save his people from famine. This, say the courtiers, is what is making Arthur sick. Worry, grief, guilt over discarding the woman he still loves, fear that his new nation—actually, still a loose bunch of tribes—will fall once more into anarchy and civil war. These are the things that are causing Arthur’s hands to tremble and the flesh to fall from his body so that now he resembles an aging child. After a time he can no longer eat, and takes to his bed.

The advisers are in a panic now. If Arthur dies without an heir, Britain will revert to chaos, and an age of darkness will ensue for a thousand years.

And now I understand why the blue stone was given to me. This is what the Darkness wants.

The Knights of the Round Table decide, in the simpleminded way of soldiers, that what the king needs to cure his melancholy is some rare and expensive gewgaw. Personally I believe they just wanted a chance to go adventuring and looting again, but they swear that they are embarking on a quest to find, of all
things, the Holy Grail. So there is a lot of handkerchief waving and brave smiles as the knights go off, leaving the sick Arthur in the hands of a bunch of freeloading, parasitical aristocrats who spend their days consulting with astrologers and drinking the last of the king’s wine.

That is fine with me. I keep to myself and watch, telling myself that perhaps Arthur’s decline is not due to the ring at all. The courtiers may be right. Worry can wear a person down. And the peasants may be right. Who’s to say that the land is not somehow mystically tied to its ruler?

But I know it’s the ring. Every day the thought passes through my mind that I should take it back. But then, what would I do with it? Give it back to the Darkness? Or does the Darkness even exist? I may have imagined it all, found a lost trinket in the woods after a dream encounter with a ghost from my childhood.

That’s the thing about magic. You never know if it’s real or not. It has to be believed to be seen.

But the king is sick, that much I know, and he may die. Is it my doing? Can I stop it? Am I evil? Do I belong to the Darkness? I don’t feel any different from how I did when I was good. Is my evil in my own mind? Do my thoughts make me evil, or just guilty? And if I do belong to the Darkness now, what price will it exact from me?

I just don’t know anything anymore. And I’m so scared.

•

I must have fallen asleep again, because the next thing I knew, the apartment was completely dark and there was an incessant pounding on the door.

I got up to answer it, smacking my sleepy lips and practicing what I would say if whoever was knocking was an irate student that my dad had flunked. “I’m sorry, but . . . ” The words dried up in my mouth.

It was Morgan.

“Hiding out?” she asked, strolling past me. “Nice crib.”

“Get out,” I said.

“Hey.” She spread her hands. “Who else is going to hang with you?” She switched on the overhead light. “Jeez, it’s pitch-dark in here. You a vampire these days, or what?”

I leaned against the wall. What was I going to do, call the police? As if they could get here even if there were a real crime in progress.

Morgan rubbed her arms. “Think you could rustle up a cup
of tea or something? It’s wicked cold out there.” She was right. Outside, the cars parked on the street had become fat snow-covered shapes flanking a trackless river of white. “Please?”

I looked at her levelly. Okay, it was cold outside. I supposed I could spare a cup of tea, even if it was for her. “Why are you here?” I asked coldly as I tramped into the kitchen and put on the kettle.

“Just passing through,” she said airily.

I held up my hand. “Forget it,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood for witty lies.

“Okay, okay. I looked for you. Feel better? I mean, it’s not like you didn’t want to be found.”

“How do you know what I wanted?”

“Duh, you left a note.”

“Oh.” Right. That was for Gram, so she’d know where to find her car. “So you broke into my great-grandmother’s house.”

She shrugged. “No one saw me.”

“I guess in your universe that makes it all right.”

She made a face. “What’s with you, prissy face?”

“What’s with me?” I narrowed my eyes. “I’m poison, Morgan. I’ve killed people, including the person I loved most in the world. You want to know what’s with me?” I shouted, almost screeching.

She stepped aside. “Relax, Wonder Girl,” she said.

“Why don’t you leave me alone?” I sobbed. My knees buckled, and I sank to the floor. “For God’s sake, when will you stop?”

Her whole face changed then. It was as if she’d been wearing a mask that she’d suddenly dropped, revealing a face she’d never wanted anyone to see.

“Yeah, okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll go. I’m sorry about—”

“Don’t,” I said. I didn’t want her to even try some phony declaration of remorse.

“Right.” She put on her scarf and glanced out the window. It was the smallest moment, less than a second, but when she did that, looked out at the long expanse of snow that had put the whole city to sleep, I sensed how terribly lonely she was.

Or maybe I was just feeling my own loneliness. I didn’t want to think that I had anything in common with Morgan le Fay, but in the eyes of anyone with a brain, we were both evil. Plus, there was no doubt that neither of us had anywhere to go or anyone to turn to. In that respect Morgan was my sister.

“Wait,” I said.

She looked over at me and blinked once, slowly. “Why?”

“I want you to tell me the rest of your story. What happened after you gave the ring to King Arthur and he got sick?”

She smiled. “You’ve been spying on me?”

“Something like that.”

“Okay.” She laughed mirthlessly. “He recovered.”

I didn’t say anything as I fixed her tea. I just waited for her to go on.

“How do you know I won’t lie?”

I shrugged. “Lie if you want to.”

She looked at me oddly. I took the muffler from around her neck. She sat down and picked up her teacup, warming her hands on it. “I think the king would have died then if the Merlin hadn’t come back.”

“Could he sense the ring?”

“Oh, yes. And he knew how it had ended up on the king’s finger too. The first thing he did was order me out of his sight.” She smiled.

“That’s not funny,” I said.

“Of course it is. I’d sold my soul to get my father to love me, and he hated me for it. You of all people ought to find that extremely amusing.”

“Why me ‘of all people’?”

“Because it makes a fool out of me,” Morgan said.

“It doesn’t make me feel better that your dad didn’t love you.” I picked up the pieces of amber. “You’ve left memories in here.”

She took them from my hand. “Ah, home,” she said lightly, although I could hear a trembling in her voice. “Do you know how long I was imprisoned in here?”

“Yes,” I said. “It must have been very hard for you.”

Her eyes flickered toward me for an instant, but she didn’t say anything. I put my hand over hers so that we could both feel the vibrations of the stone. She tried to pull away, but I held on to her. In the end I think she stayed only because of the novelty—and maybe the comfort—of being touched, even if it was by me. I sort of felt the same way.