Chapter 53
As it was, I didn’t have to go far.
When I reached the bottom of the path, I saw Ninianne, dismounted from her horse and standing beneath the beech tree, gazing up into a cathedral of branches. Above her, the magpies swooped in and out, drawn to her shine.
“You’re still here,” I said.
She looked at me, her light not as blazing as after the lake, but enough to warm the air around us. Her face, however, was weary, her beauty drawn hollow. She hadn’t been crying, but her unnaturally bright eyes suggested she could begin at any moment.
“Are you all right?” I asked. No response.
I moved closer and caught the flutter of her heartbeat, the battle with panic that I knew so well. Softly, I put my hand on her arm, sending forth just enough golden force to make her pulse slow. She exhaled with some relief.
“It is hopeless” was the first thing she said.
“That’s not true,” I replied. “I know it seems that way, but up at the lake, I realized something. There is an answer to this, if you and I both bring our wisdom to it.”
She looked away, but I put my arm through hers. “Come with me.”
I led her to the top of the turret and into my study, bathed now in soft copper light. Ninianne glided through the room, observing every object, piece of furniture and work area, and it occurred to me that she was seeing me in my entirety for the first time.
“This is where I think,” I offered.
“The perfect place,” she said. “Exactly how I imagined it.”
She continued to explore the chamber, her glow radiating softly, her presence suddenly essential. I felt a strange impulse to keep by her side—perhaps I even wished to embrace her—but we had never been that way, had barely touched even in our closest moments at Merlin’s.
She paused by the worktable, fingers drifting across a spray of my anatomical sketches and accompanying notes. I went and stood with her, shoulder to shoulder, watching her consider my work, the healing and physic where I had found my greatest purpose.
Then, in the most unexpected move she had ever made, Ninianne tilted her head sideways, until it rested against mine. I stayed there, letting her essence soak into me, our heartbeats, our individual thoughts and strengths, coalescing into something shared.
“Give me the answers, Morgan,” she said. “If there is a future, where does it begin?”
“With us, now, in this moment,” I said. “It was true about the magic, how we’ve changed and our place in this world. To advance our wisdom and be free, we must go where the quest for knowledge leads. Our liberty lies exactly where you said it did—in Avalon.”
She recoiled from me as if it hurt, her eyes green fire.
“We cannot go to Avalon,” she said. “When I said that, things were different. I thought I would be going to my own fate after saving Arthur from Merlin’s unspoken prophecy and assuring the kingdom’s future.
Now, Camelot is burning, bonds I thought eternal have been destroyed.
I have failed and must repair what I’ve done. I do not deserve Avalon.”
“Don’t say that,” I said. “This is not your fault. Everything that is happening with Camelot—the betrayals, the desires, the jealousies, the need for war—those are all deeply mortal flaws. None of it could have been prevented, nor has it anything to do with you.”
“It’s not true,” she protested. “The hours I spent staring at the Book of Prophecies, trying to find another way, yet I missed so much. Sir Mordred stood in the court for years, vengeful and plotting, and I did not sense it. Even you and me, I got so wrong. All of that time, I allowed us to be at odds when we should have been working together to solve this.”
“We have all made mistakes,” I replied. “My grief, my rage—they were both keeping me alive and burning me to the ground. If I had sought the truth earlier, listened to you, perhaps Arthur and I would have repaired things. I would have been there to help him. We can never know, but what’s important is acting now. ”
Her eyes were so bright I felt seared, like seeing the sun after swimming underwater. “How can I leave him, Morgan?” she said suddenly. “It’s impossible.”
“Lancelot?” I said. I should have seen it, I suppose, the pull of maternal love she had found far into her life. I thought of Yvain, what we were just beginning to find; it was not part of my plan to lose him either.
“You told me yourself, Avalon is freedom,” I reasoned. “We can still visit the mortal lands. That even beyond death, the spirits of those we love can cross between worlds there and be with us again. Lancelot is fairy-raised—could he not come with you?”
“In theory,” she said. “But I speak not of Lancelot. My son has only ever followed his own heart, and his honour will lead him through what is left of this world. I have done all I can for him, and I am made proud.”
“Then who can’t you leave?”
“King Arthur,” she said. “An innocent soul handed over to this burden from the moment he was conceived. He has given his whole life, every piece of his mind, body and soul, to the impossible task that was thrust upon him. He kept a crown on his head that he did not ask for, carried an entire nation through good and bad and never tried to escape it or say that he could do no more. He has withstood deep personal pain and still put the kingdom first. Now he must watch everything he achieved fall apart because he is a mortal man?”
She leaned back against the table and put her head in her hands. “I helped do that to him. How can I leave now that his predicament hurtles towards disaster?”
“That is what I’m saying,” I told her. “You don’t have to leave him. When Arthur dies, we will take him to Avalon with us.”
Ninianne looked up so sharply it caused sparks in the air. “What?”
“There’s no reason why not,” I continued. “You delivered him, and he has often been under your magical protection. He has carried Excalibur, bestowed by your hands. No one has been more touched by fairy magic than my brother.”
“To what end?” she said. “He is at war with his son. If the hidden prophecy bears out, he will be dead.”
“That doesn’t matter. If we take him to Avalon, we can bring him back to life.”
Her interest dimmed, and she looked away. “No, that is not the answer. The scabbard is gone, the Shroud of Tithonus is gone. We have no way of resurrecting him.”
“Not resurrection—it has never been the solution. But that’s not all there is.”
A frown glittered across her brow. I drew a deep breath.
“I can heal him,” I said. “I’m not saying it will happen quickly. Indeed, it may take years. But it is the right way; I can feel it. I can bring Arthur back from death.”
Rarely had I seen Ninianne unintentionally speechless. She stood up from the table and stared at me, unable to form any words. I reached out and took her hands.
“When I was a child,” I said, “I made my father a promise, just before he died. I swore I would always try to harness my wisdom, to keep learning and moving forwards. For all the other mistakes I have made, the good and the bad I have done, knowledge has been the oath I have kept, and it has all been leading here. When you told me that raising Accolon should not have been within my grasp, when you said that saving Arthur is impossible, I felt it as potential deep in my being. Healing has been my life’s work, and I can use it to change the future. ”
Again, she said nothing, so I took her right hand and held it over my heart so she could hear the truth beating there. “You were right, Ninianne—I am more than I was before. I can do this for my brother.”
She looked pained, unable to ignite her hopes. “I want to believe you, truly I do,” she said. “But one woman alone, against the forces of death… ”
“I’m not alone,” I said. “I have you.”
Her face changed then, her light growing until she regarded me in wonder. Still I held her hand to my heart.
“I can’t do this without you,” I continued.
“I have the skills, but what I need is everything else—the time, the right place to work, access to more knowledge than I possess. You give us the Isle of Avalon and its potential, a place of peace and study with magic still flowing through the elements. Most of all, I need your help, your counsel, your deeper wisdom. Don’t you see? Together, we have already solved this.”
She considered my words for a long moment, then drew her hands away and went out onto the balcony. I followed and stood beside her, hearing as she did the clear music of the rising spring above all else.
“How would you do it?” she said suddenly.
“With time and patience,” I said. “No tricks, no theatrics, no simple solutions. My brother will not rise within a day and charge back off to win this war. But I will heal him, slowly and definitively, until one day, he will be whole again. Then, if Arthur feels that his country needs him, he will be strong enough to return. What matters is that next time, he will have the wisdom, and the choice.”
She gave a slow nod, not quite convinced. “It is all very well, us making plans, but Avalon is a different life—a way of beauty and enlightenment, but utterly different from how King Arthur has lived. What if he does not wish to start anew?”
“My brother has been told what he should do his entire life,” I said.
“This, he must choose. You will ask him, and if his answer is no, we accept his decision and agree to find our own peace. But if I know him at all, then he will want this. It is the future, given into his hands—the greatest quest he has ever faced.”
“After everything, you would do this for him?” she asked.
“It is not just for him, but both of us,” I said.
“I am the sea, and he is the wind that makes the waves. When our connection was at its most severed, we both dreamed of Tintagel until we found one another again. Our future is inevitable and eternal. Arthur will bring me the most formidable challenge for my skills, and I will give him new life. We will be a family restored, able to make up for the time we lost. What greater act of healing could there be?”
She gazed at me, captured by my belief, the hope she thought turned to dust.
“We are the answer, Ninianne,” I said. “All you must say is that you will take us to Avalon.”
Her smile was quiet, but with such a gleam it could have lit any darkness. “Yes,” she said. “Of course I will.”
Hesitantly, she opened her arms, as if she did not quite know how this type of gesture worked. However, I did; I reached out for her, and for the first time, Ninianne of the Lake embraced me, and allowed me to embrace her.
I had always thought she would feel like being held by the sun, but this was something better—swimming in Llyn Glas on a summer’s day, the water both cool and warm, its soothing power bringing me strength and comfort.
In return, I could feel her deep satisfaction radiating through my bones.
The fairy made mortal and the mortal made fairy, meeting halfway.
“What’s next?” she asked, when we parted.
“The start of a new era,” I replied, pointing her to my desk and drawing up a second chair. “We sit side by side and make our plans together.”
*
When many days had passed and Ninianne was ready to leave to put our intentions into motion, I asked if there was anything left to do. She regarded me with unusual shyness and said, “I’d like to see Lancelot’s story one more time.”
We returned to the long bedchamber and faced Lancelot’s paintings, lit by shafts of autumn sun.
I stood in the middle while Ninianne paced along the walls, taking in his work, his confession.
She paused long at the beginning, absorbing her son’s rendering of his upbringing at her lake.
The contentment she had brought him, however brief, was enough for both of them.
From my own vantage point, I looked around the room, at Lancelot’s images still searing bright, then everything that came before, steeped in memory: the birds in flight painted high up on the walls, long faded by sun; the musical trill of the spring always in my ears; the huge oak bed, once hung with blue drapes, where I had awoken every morning to Accolon’s sleeping face.
The thought of this chamber, what it represented, did not break me as it once could.
The room’s power was different now—it had seen enough that its significance had changed with the years alongside me.
The deepest parts of my life would always matter, written as they were into my core, but there were other things, more ways to exist.
“Ninianne?” I asked, and she turned to me in question.
“Before we leave here,” I said, “will you do something for me?”