I Am Morgan le Fay (12 page)

“Oh, for the love of mercy . . .” I put the ring on a finger of my right hand and turned my back, going about my packing.

The piskies didn't care that Morgause was silently saying I might be killed. They chuckled and chittered and rustled everywhere in my chamber, so excited that several times I almost caught sight of them, glimpsing movement from the corner of my eye, shadows scampering. And whenever I lacked for anything, I had only to turn my back and when I turned around again, it would magically be there. When my rushlight burned out, a candle flame without a candle lit my chamber. When I needed string for bundling, silken cord appeared. When I realized I had only a few shabby patched frocks and a crude homemade pair of shoes by way of clothing, I turned around to find fine soft leather boots and a full dozen gowns—not the frocks of a girl or the skirts of a peasant woman, but the flowing silk-and-velvet garb of a lady. I stood there with my mouth open as the piskies laughed at me, the sly little never-seen brats, and to this day I do not know whether the gowns were magicked in a moment or took months in the making, whether they somehow knew beforehand that I would have need of a lady's clothing.

“Thank you, brats,” I managed to say at last, and they laughed at me more than ever.

Morgause stood gazing at the gowns as if they had dropped onto my bed out of the moon.

“Here,” I told her, “I don't need all these. You take some of them.” We were the same size, she and I, and we still looked almost as much alike as twins, Ongwynn said, but I was the one who could be counted upon to be making noise or difficulty. “Which would you like? The rose-colored ones?” She could have those. I hated pink.

She shook her head. “They're yours.”

“I want to give you some! Which ones?” I grabbed a satin gown that looked like a frothy sea at sunset, and tried to hand it to her, but all by itself it flew out of my arms and landed on my bed again.

“They're yours,” Morgause said.

“But Annie can't carry all this!” I wailed.

Such silliness, fretting over satin and lace when I was setting forth to make my way alone through wilderness or battlefields or both.

In the end, I wore the fine new boots to ride in, put on a blue velvet gown with my oldest frock over it to protect it, decided I would need a straw bonnet to keep the sun out of my eyes and jammed it on my head so I wouldn't forget it, brushed Annie by moonlight and braided her mane with gossamer hair ribbons, and I am sure I looked like a madwoman. I packed what I could and left the rest behind. At first dayspring light I saddled Annie and hooked my bags behind the cantle. In one of them, Ongwynn had packed one of her precious parchment charts, though I protested that I did not need it; Morgause and I had studied those charts. I knew the ways of the rivers, the mountains, and the warring lords between me and Avalon.

I hugged and kissed Morgause, hugged Ongwynn—I think it was the first time I had ever hugged Ongwynn. I had hugged Morgause sometimes in play or mischief, just as I had sometimes pinched her or yanked her hair, but I had seldom touched Ongwynn except that one time when I healed her. Hugging her was like hugging a warm mountain as solid as bedrock. I kissed her timidly on her cheek. It was heathery dry.

It was not until I had mounted Annie that the enormity of what was happening gripped my heart. Till then I had dithered from chamber to chamber and task to task, but now there stood Ongwynn and Morgause like doorposts outside the portal of Caer Ongwynn, and the air hung thick with rainbow mist, and for some reason I noticed the roaring of the sea as I looked at my sister and Ongwynn, my rock, and already they seemed far, far away. Whether I would ever see them again only the goddess—or whatever fey force had taken charge of my life—only the moon knew.

“You're a sight,” Morgause said, trying to make me smile, but I couldn't.

“Do you have your stone?” Ongwynn asked, and for a moment I heard in her voice an echo of Nurse—my nurse of so far ago and long away. I felt tears trying to sting their way out of my eyes. I wouldn't let them.

“Of course I have my stone,” I grumbled, lifting my hand to make sure even though I could feel it nestling warm between my half-grown breasts—at least I hoped they were only half grown, for they did not amount to much.

Morgause said, “Come back safely,” and although I am sure she tried to keep her voice as level as Ongwynn‘s, it wavered.

Come back. And the thought that I had been trying not to think burst from me. I blurted, “If Thomas comes back while I am gone . . .”

“I'll marry him,” Morgause said, trying to tease.

I could have breathed fire at the thought. I scorned her, for a moment I hated her, and the moment freed me to go. “Good-bye,” I whispered, and I raised my hand to wave farewell as I sent Annie cantering away.

 

On that journey I discovered that Annie, also, was mine only to lose, like everything else I had ever counted on.

That was very long ago, and now I fly with the cloud shadows, and one would think I could stop caring. But looking back, I still hate myself for my stupidity. For three years Annie had been ridden seldom and had been feeding on thistles and scant grass, yet I thought only of myself—I expected her to be a swift messenger pony again and carry me like the wind to Avalon. And it pains me still when I remember how loyally she tried to do so.

The first few days on the springy turf of the upland moors I galloped her until her ribs heaved and sweat foamed on her neck. And I thought all was well. I could see unto the horizon in every direction nothing more dangerous than sheep, and the honeybees suckled at the heather under a vast blue sky, and I felt like a half-fledged young hawk just out of the nest; I wanted to fly.

I saw no reason to be secret so long as I told no one my true name. It had been three years; I hoped Redburke and others who might want me dead had forgotten about me. Also, if there was fighting between me and Avalon, I wanted to know about it. When I met with cowherds or tinkers or the like, I gave them greeting and asked them, “What news?” Or if there was a village, I would ride in and drink water at the common well and give water to Annie when she had cooled enough so that it would not harm her, and I would ask of folk who stopped to stare what was the name of the place, to guide my course by. Almost always folk stammered when they replied as if they were trying to decide whether they needed to tug their forelocks and bow to me. Some folk were wary, some curious, some friendly. A goodwife gave me scones to eat, a goatherd gave me cheese, and I bartered Annie's ribbons for oats for her. Few folk were bold enough to ask whence I came or where I was going, and in answer to the bold few I only smiled and rode on. And three times in as many days I changed my course because of the cautions they gave me. In the distance sometimes I could see the dust of battle rising like the smoke, as if the earth herself were burning, and I shuddered.

During the nights Annie either grazed or lay down, and I slept under the stars sometimes, in a sheepcote sometimes and once in a cowshed on the outskirts of a village when it was raining. I slept lightly, for I missed the murmur of the sea, and these soft inland hills felt strange to me, too tame with their maple groves, their villages huddled in hollows, their hedged garden plots. Also, the summons of Avalon tugged at me like a golden wire threaded into my heart, and I wanted only to ride on.

I cantered across the cushiony hills, and my heart sang like a harp of Avalon, Avalon, and I felt blessed, exalted.

I thought nothing could harm me.

Then I reached the mountains.

I saw them rising in the distance out of wilderness that coiled like an ivy green shadow around their feet, and I felt my mouth open like a hollow moon. Now I am ancient or ageless and I have flown over snowpeaks and I know what mountains are, but then I was a maiden like a green willow sprout, only fifteen, and those crags were the most daunting tors I had ever seen.

Within a day's journey the land changed from heathery moor to rocky foothills, and Annie went lame.

At first when I felt the hitch in her gait I thought that she had a stone wedged in her hoof, and I jumped down from her back and lifted her feet one by one. No stone. But one of her little clay-colored hooves, the left fore, had begun to crack.

“Oh, Annie . . .” I stood there harrowed by the knowledge that I was selfish, thoughtless, stupid. I should have had metal plates put on her hooves the way the knights did before they set out on a long journey. It was not often done for farm ponies and such, but probably in some village I could have traded something, maybe one of those confounded gowns, to have a blacksmith do it. But now the villages lay behind me, and the dust of war rose on that horizon, and it was too late. A mystic force tugged at me the way the moon tugged at the tides, pulling me toward Avalon, Avalon, Avalon.

Perhaps I could have pitted the force of my stubborn self-will against that sending, if only for a day, and turned back to see Annie safely pastured. But I did not. I wanted to go on.

I straightened Annie's forelock between her eyes, for all the good that did. “Sweetheart,” I whispered to her, “I'm so sorry.”

I got on her again and rode at the walk, seeking the softest ground. The rocky uplands gave way to copses of willow and rowan, and I rode a twisting course over the loam and leaves beneath the trees, hoping Annie's hoof would get no worse.

But it did. By evening the hoof had begun to split.

By evening also, copses of maple had given way to such wilderness as I had never seen. Huge trees—their ivy-shrouded trunks of greater girth than Annie and I put together, towering so high I could not see the sky—tree giants whose names I did not know shadowed me all around, and the darkness at night in that forest was like the darkness underground. By the last whisper of gray twilight I gazed up, seeking a glimpse of even a single star, and saw only a mesh of branches in which clustered—dark moons? Black posies with no stems? Balls of something that seemed to belong neither to earth nor sky.

“Annie,” I murmured, “is that mistletoe?” It had to be. Then these were oak trees. And this was a druid wood.

I did not sleep much that night.

In the morning I saddled and bridled Annie and loaded my gear, then looked again at her hoof, bit my lip and started walking, holding the reins as she limped along behind me.

“Please let us pass,” I said to the wilderness, for I felt as if it were alive, watching us, and not at all sure it liked us. The air felt thick and shadow gray, as if a cloud had caught and settled there, as if the sun never shone.

I needed to set a course mostly uphill in order to cross the mountains, but the way was blocked by rocks, tangling vines, fallen trees, some of them greater of girth than I was tall. The forest twisted and turned me so that I lost all sense of getting anywhere, and it was full of strange sounds; leaves rustled when there was no wind, trees groaned, and sometimes I seemed to hear something or someone laughing at me. Once I heard a scream that might have been human or not. I listened, listened, and learned nothing, and sweated with fear so that I could not slow down, stop, rest, let Annie rest. Every moment, some snicker or whisper in the forest spurred me on, and at the same time the song of Avalon buzzed in my bones, urging me onward until every muscle ached.

Some slopes were so steep that I needed to hang on to saplings to pull myself up. And I needed the use of my hands to drag deadwood aside or bend branches away, and between that and holding on to the reins to lead Annie, I tripped over my long skirt until, in exhaustion and a kind of muted fury, I sat down on the dirt, took my knife and hacked off a quantity of lovely blue velvet. I threw the cloth aside, but then for a wonder I had an intelligent thought, and I retrieved it and said, “Annie, give me your foot.”

I suppose I was talking to keep myself from looking over my shoulder all the time, to pretend I was not all alone, but Annie just gave me that blank stare horses do so well. I stood up, looped the reins over her neck, lifted her foot and wound the cloth around and under her split hoof, then tied it in place as sturdily as I could. This solved nothing, I knew, but I hoped it would make her more comfortable. “Poor Annie,” I told her, then I sighed and struggled on, and Annie hobbled behind me so closely that sometimes she nuzzled the back of my neck. It took me a while to realize that I had left the reins looped over her neck. She was following me on her own.

By evening, in my fine boots and fine hose, I was limping almost as badly as she. And I was still hearing the laughing voices in the forest. And it was raining. I did not sleep much that night either.

I have always been stubbornly slow to deal with anything that fails to take heed of my plans. When gray morning came I padded my blistered feet with kerchiefs inside the boots, and I replaced the wrapping on Annie's hoof with a new one just as thick, but I put the saddle and bridle on her again. Then we limped on as before, uphill through the shadows under towering trees whose names I did not know, winding our way between crags and deadfalls, tripping over roots and vines and fallen limbs and into hollows hidden under drifts of leaves even though it was the height of summer. I hated that forest by then, but feared it so much I did not dare to show my hatred. When for perhaps the fortieth time a branch knocked the straw bonnet off my head, I said, “Keep it,” and walked on. Around midday something in my mind snapped to attention and saw both sense and hopelessness. I stopped, pulled the saddle off Annie and tossed it aside, and took off the bridle and did the same. After I had rigged the packs so that they would stay in place on her back, we went on.

Again, this solved nothing except that Annie limped on with a free head and a lighter load. But I smiled when I felt her warm breath stirring the hair over my ear.