Chapter 34 #2
Dawn had broken a few hours since. My sleep had been profound, with dreams of him intense and unceasing, but my mind felt rested and alert. I shifted up and saw the refilled hole had fully regrown with grass, as though I had never dug it up at all.
I rose to my feet, looking around.
“Accolon?” I called. “Are you there?”
No answer. I tried again, three times, and nothing.
My first thought was that it had all been a fantasy.
Perhaps I never went into the lake, and was only now waking from my collapse.
Worse still, maybe Accolon had been there but our embraces—my bathing in his warm, ethereal touch and our memories—had used up whatever magic had fuelled his presence and scattered him back into nothingness.
The idea left me hollow. I stared at the lake, still as a polished jewel under the morning. What have I done?
“Morgan?”
He appeared from behind the sheet of willow branches that curtained our view of the water. Morning sun shone through him, his figure casting no shadow.
“Accolon,” I gasped. “I thought I’d lost you again—that I’d fallen asleep and you were gone. I—”
Unspent fear folded me at the waist. How could I even say that I’d only lost him now, when in truth I had done so sixteen years before when I didn’t stop him from riding to Camelot. I put a hand to my chest, gripping the Gaulish coin.
He came to me at once. “No, mon coeur, I wouldn’t leave you. I haven’t been far, just to the lake edge and around the willow. Your falling to sleep while touching me, conjuring our memories—it…drained me after a while. I felt myself fading, so I moved away for a few hours and now I am restored.”
He didn’t reach for me, though I yearned for him to do so, if only to feel the phantom brush of his warmth. Whatever his capabilities, he had become used to them more quickly than I had.
“I didn’t know being close to you could do such a thing,” I said. “It has a certain logic, now you say it, but… ” I put my free hand up and scrubbed at my face. “I should have been more careful. I’m sorry.”
“Do not apologize,” he said softly. “You are learning of this. We both are.”
His low, melodic voice calmed me as it always did. I stood upright and let go of the coin, watching his face soften at the sight of his childhood treasure.
“Yesterday, I got so carried away with seeing you again that I didn’t afford us a chance to discuss anything,” I said. “You must have as many questions as I do.”
Accolon paced over to the willow trunk and leaned beside me, his shoulder resting there as if he were solid. “I don’t think if I could ever want to know as much as you,” he said lightly. “But I would like to hear of my cousin Manassen, if you can get word of him.”
It was a relief to have the answer to something. “There I already have plenty of news. Sir Manassen is happily married and living back in Gaul, but I receive letters from him and his wife often. At last count, they have five children—three sons and two daughters. The oldest boy is named after you.”
I thought it would please him, but as I spoke, his eyes widened, expression shifting from disbelief to an alarm that was almost horror.
“Five children?” he said tremulously. “Morgan—how long have I been gone?”
It had never occurred to me that he might not know. “Sixteen years,” I said. “This July just past.”
I felt his shock as a shiver through my body. Accolon slid down to the foot of the tree, ground undisturbed by any impact. I sat beside him, and he stared at me, the trio of lines between his brows tugging at my heart.
“But…you do not look any different,” he said. “I thought it had been weeks, maybe months. I remember every part of you, Morgan. I remember how Belle Garde’s protective charms have some effect, but you have not aged a day in all this time.”
I sighed. “I know. I look this way for you.”
“For me?” he echoed. “How? Why?”
“When I brought you back, I didn’t want anything to have changed,” I said. “I wanted your death, and our separation, to feel like it never happened. But it took so long I… ”
I could not finish the thought, or think of the failures I had yet to face. “There is a great deal to talk about,” I concluded. “So much, I don’t know if there are enough words.”
Beside me, I felt him calm. “We will find our way, mon coeur,” he said. “There have never been enough words to contain us.”
He smiled, still slightly shocked, but extremes never daunted him for long, and I loved him for it more intensely than I thought possible.
“I’ve missed you,” I said.
He raised a hand, his warmth trailing my face. “I’ve missed you too, somehow. Suddenly, I can feel every one of those days we’ve been apart.”
“We will make up for it,” I assured him.
“I’ll tell you everything, without delay.
Some is unexpected—I know so much of Manassen because I saved his life and he swore his loyalty to me.
At first, it was just an alliance against Camelot, but we became good friends. You would hardly believe it to see us.”
His frown returned. “Against Camelot?” he said. “I know you had your troubles with King Arthur, but… ”
Accolon’s confusion struck the words from my tongue, another angle I had not considered.
Though he knew he had died, I could not be sure he was aware of how it happened, or who was responsible, or how distressing it would be for him to learn.
Equally, in the midst of this wonder of ours, I did not want to concede a single moment’s joy to the suffering Camelot had forced upon us.
“We should not speak of it,” I said decisively. “All you need to know is Arthur and I are not mended, and Camelot has no part of this, of us. Now you are here, I don’t want to give that world any space in our minds.”
He took it in slowly, then inclined his head. “If that is what you need, then there is plenty more for us to speak on. What of the household—I would very much like to hear how they will take this.”
I only stared at him with wide, guilty eyes, which Accolon read at once.
“They don’t know you were trying to raise me,” he said.
“Alys and Tressa knew I intended to, years ago, but they don’t know I’m here now.” I put a hand to my forehead. “My God, how do I even start explaining to them what I’ve done when I hardly know myself?”
“Don’t tell them yet,” he suggested. “I’ll stay here, and no one will see me.”
“Keep you a secret?” I said. “I can’t do that to you. It’s not fair.”
“In truth, for now I’d rather no one else knew. While we try to understand.”
It made sense, if creating more lies. Our new necessities settled heavily in my chest.
“All I wanted was for you to simply return home, and now it’s a mess,” I said. “I will try to fix it, but what we need is time, to discover what happened and why. How you can sit on the grass or seem to lean against the tree, why the sun shines through you, and—”
He held up his hands against my stream of anxious talk. “Mon coeur, listen,” he said softly. “Perhaps for the moment, none of it matters.”
I regarded him in disbelief, and he gestured to our view of the lake, then to himself and me both.
“This time yesterday, we were separated by death, yet now look at what we have. The moments we had in life were never enough, and you have afforded us more. We should savour it, just be together for a while. We deserve that much.”
I gazed up at his remarkable face, which I had long lost hope of seeing again. In my years of failure, if a wish-granting demon had offered me Accolon as he was now, I would have taken the deal no matter the cost.
“You’re right,” I said. “Us together is what I want—all I have kept existing for. There’ll be time to fix my mistakes.”
“This is not a mistake,” he insisted. “It is a miracle, Morgan—your miracle—and you should believe in it.”