To Queen Morgana
Last year, on my birthday, I was sitting at a café in the South of France
by myself, eating blackberry cake I hadn’t ordered and fielding
frantic phone calls from my mother.
A year ago today, I was running for my life from the Fey trying to
murder me. I got kidnapped by my ex-boyfriend, Raphael, and taken across
the English Channel to Avalon Tower. I spent the journey terrified,
bewildered, and totally unprepared for what came next. With no idea I’d
survive training at Avalon Tower, let alone that I’d become the Lady of the
Lake.
A year ago today, I discovered I had hidden magic, that I was half Fey.
And this year?
This year, I’m not alone. This year, I have friends who would bleed for
me, and I’d do the same for them. A family carved out of chaos. A mom
I’ve left behind in Camelot to finally learn how to look after herself.
Today, my birthday takes place on a mossy island of rambling ruins and
ancient Fey magic.
As I polish the crystal glasses, my gaze roams over the castle’s carvings
—the triple spirals above each arched doorway that hum with magic
whenever I pass beneath them. Already, musicians are setting up in the
banquet hall, a drummer, a lyre player with shimmering silver hair, and a
lutist.
Aisling bustles in over the sun-dappled floor of cowslips, violets, and
rue. She sets out a crystal tray of buttered chanterelles with apple slices.
“So, Brados said to me, like he was serious, ‘We control the kingdom now.’
A republic. Can you imagine such a thing? He ran a bloody tavern, pulling
pints of goat piss for mead, now he’s overseeing a bloody kingdom with
some backward farmers? Not that I’m judging the country types, but in my
experience, they don’t know their arses from their elbows. Of course, most
of the Fey who stayed in Brocéliande seem to be happy. My
First Sparks
What happened to your family?” I ask, deflecting.
He winces nearly imperceptibly. “My mother raised me. My father was
never in the picture. Auberon considered my human mother an enemy of the
crown, even though she hardly had any money. I don’t understand what he
had against her, except that he blamed all his failures on humans. And she
was human.” He leans back against the wall and stares out at the river.
Sensing he needs a drink, I hand him the flask.
He takes a sip. “We didn’t realize how far he was going to go. This was
before the invasion of France, when our world was still secret. And we
never imagined…my mom thought if she just kept quiet, he’d leave her
alone. So, we kept to ourselves. But one day, Auberon’s soldiers raided our
home. There was no trial, no jury, no chance to repent. Dawn broke, and
they slaughtered my mom in the garden.”
His jaw clenches, but he keeps talking, as if he’s forgotten I’m there.
“We’d all been in bed, then someone knocked on the door.” He takes
another sip. “They wanted to kill everyone in the house. My sister screamed
at me to run to the forest, that Mom was gone, and they were after us. I ran.
I thought she was behind me.” A line forms between his eyebrows. “She
wasn’t, and I ran back to find her, but I couldn’t find her anywhere.”
My chest aches. “How old were you?”
“Nine. My sister was sixteen.”
I swallow hard. “And you never found her?”
He hands me the mead. “I kept searching the forest, living off berries
and water from the stream. She never came. I think I was half-dead when a
demi-Fey family found me and took me with them to France. It was really
amazing luck, I suppose. I was heartbroken, but they brought me to the
château with them, and I started working, picking grapes.” He glances at
me. “You know the rest. And now this
Reklam
The Prophecy
Raphael pulls a torch off one of the stone walls and leads me to a
large painting. I frown at the image—another one of Mordred
Kingslayer, wearing his spiked crown over dark curls and a long
black cape. In this image, he’s beheading a blonde woman who kneels at his
feet. It’s about ten feet tall and gilt framed.
“Is it true that he had diametric magic, and that’s why he murdered
everyone?” I ask.
He sighs. “Maybe, but I don’t think that’s why the massacre happened.
It’s the prophecy. The one about the House of Morgan.”
A chill skitters up my spine. “Auberon is descended from Queen
Morgan. And the Dream Stalker, too.”
“And that’s why they need to die. They were born with the same
violence running through their veins. The moment they get the chance,
they’ll break in here and slaughter everyone.”
He reaches for a book on the shelf to the left of the portrait. As he pulls
it out, the portrait pops open like a door, creaking. He turns back to me with
an arched eyebrow. “You’re not going to tell your friends about this
passageway, are you?”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
Holding the torch, he leads me into a dark corridor. Light and shadow
dance over the stone walls, and the narrow hall stretches on.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask.
“To the Tower of Nimuë.”
I breathe in sharply. Tana had mentioned her name. The Lady of the
Lake, like me, apparently. Tana had seen me in her tower. “Where is it?”
“It stands in the lake, with a bridge leading out to it. Nimuë was a
powerful water Fey, back in the days of primal magic. As Lady of the Lake,
she was an envoy between the Fey and humans. From her tower, Nimuë
gave Arthur his sword, forged from Avalon Steel. And she gave Merlin and
Arthur their torcs, too, from the same sacred metal.”
“So, her tower was a meeting point at one time?”
Tale as old as time
A
frown creases my brow and worry starts to wrap around me. My
body tenses, muscles poised to bolt. I’m unsteady. Unsure. Not
certain whether I can trust these people at all.
“Why can’t I go to the field?” I ask warily.
“She doesn’t understand,” Thursil murmurs, darting a glance to Nenet.
“She doesn’t know anything…”
My back stiffens. “Know what?”
“You can’t go out,” Estelia tells me. “It’s not safe.”
Can’t go out.
Not safe.
A jarring echo of Midas’s words that rings in my head and instantly has
my hackles raising. Has me reaching back to grasp my ribbons and pull
them into my lap. Reminding me of who I am now. Of who I am not.
My eyes go hard. “I spent years being told that very same thing. Kept in a
cage for my supposed safety, when really, it was about control. So know
this—I’ll never allow anyone to keep me trapped again, no matter the
reason.”
Estelia’s amber eyes widen with surprise and immediately fill with
apology. “I’m sorry, Lady Auren. I didn’t mean…I only want you to be
careful. If they find out who you are, they’ll take you.”
My hackles rise. “What are you talking about?”
“Geisel is Saira Turley’s city. This is where she first came and where she
lived before becoming a princess. That’s why most of us who live here are
still loyalists, why you can trust us—because having you here truly is an
answer to our prayers.”
“Okay…”
She tucks a thick black curl behind her pointed ear, looking at me with
worry. “But when you fell from the sky, it flared. It sort of…tore open. It
looked strange. The truth of your arrival will be protected by most of us,
Jim not that way Jim. That's no way to treat a garage door, bending stiffly down at the waist and yanking at the handle so the door jerks up and out jerky and hard and you crack your shins and my ruined knees, son. Let's see you bend at the healthy knees. Let's see you hook a soft hand lightly over the handle feeling its subtle grain and pull just as exactly gently as will make it come to you. Experiment, Jim. See just how much force you need to start the door easy, let it roll up out open on its hidden greasy rollers and pulleys in the ceiling's set of spiderwebbed beams. Think of all garage doors as the well-oiled open-out door of a broiler with hot meat in, heat roiling out, hot. Needless and dangerous ever to yank, pull, shove, thrust. Your mother is a shover and a thruster, son. She treats bodies outside herself without respect or due care. She's never learned that treating things in the gentlest most relaxed way is also treating them and your own body in the most efficient way. It's Marlon Brando's fault, Jim. Your mother back in California before you were born, before she became a devoted mother and long-suffering wife and breadwinner, son, your mother had a bit part in a Marlon Brando movie. Her big moment. Had to stand there in saddle shoes and bobby sox and ponytail and put her hands over her ears as really loud motorbikes roared by. A major thespian moment, believe you me. She was in love from afar with this fellow Marlon Brando, son. Who? Who. Jim, Marlon Brando was the archetypal new-type actor who ruined it looks like two whole generations' relations with their own bodies and the everyday objects and bodies around them. No? Well it was because of Brando you were opening that garage door like that, Jimbo. The disrespect gets learned and passed on. Passed
Carthage: Reflections of a Martian
Thy expected alien
Am I.
Weird of shade
And doomfire face:
All thy senses
Cry to my
Mourning mysteries
Which yesterday
Were commonplace.
We sit at Sunday breakfast
And I smell the dust of Carthage.
It drowns the spang
Of our automatic toaster.
That strange woman across from me
Smiles, butters two slices.
Her smiles arouses a multitude in me!
Her smile...
Frightens us.
I must look away!
Out the window beside my arm,
Sunglow warms a brick walk.
Grass, a tree, a planting of forsythia.
It is spring.
In the spring...
The earth is covered with dust.
Reklam
Reklam