Merlin's Harp (23 page)

  Then I saw Her in the distance, feet on earth, head above the clouds. She poured water from two jugs together, and the mingled stream ran upon the earth like down-pouring rain, and She thought nothing of it. Less than nothing. In the same way I myself might scoop water from a stream with no thought that tiny beings might live in it; or, if I thought it, I would not mind. The water beings lived their life, and I lived mine.

  So far above us, away from us, the Goddess lives, even as She lives also within us. I shivered, and pulled myself back out of the vision.

  "How?" I asked Merlin. "How will the Grail bless me?"

  "You will bury it with me as a sacrifice. You will bury me as a sacrifice, and my Enchanter. Three of us together. Then you will be blessed and healed."

  "Bury…Bury you?"

  "In Counsel Oak. You know the great lightning rift in his side. In there. Me. Enchanter. The Holy Grail. Silence, Niviene. Mellias comes."

  Turning, I saw the Otter approach like a breath of breeze, his small feet barely pressing grass. Carefully held in both hands, he brought water in a leaf-bottle.

  "Merlin, little is hidden from Mellias. He has his own mysterious power."

  Merlin tried to smile. "Not so mysterious. The greatest power in the world. He stole a spark of it from the Humans."

  But Merlin spoke no more of burial, sacrifice, or forgiveness while Mellias tended him.

* * *

Under Counsel Oak his yellow leaves lay piled. Autumn sun smiled down between bare, massive branches. Mellias and I laid Merlin down at his feet and ourselves sank down to rest.

  When he first glimpsed a smudge on the golden horizon, Mellias had said, "There's home!" Merlin had slumped back against me. Together we swayed to the steady pace of the gray charger; and suddenly Merlin's blood flowed black over us both, soaking tunics and trousers.

  I knew he had held back the bleeding by sheer power till now, when home was in sight; now we must make haste, or Merlin might never come to Counsel Oak alive.

  Mellias galloped ahead to signal the Children's Guard to hold their poisoned darts. The gray charger paced steadily past harvesters and Midsummer Tor and on to East Edge. There, Mellias had gathered children willing to help us. They had a raft waiting for us in the river. I rode into forest shade and the Goddess embraced me.

  Merlin had warned me, "Your mother will not be there." I had answered, "I know." I had known since I dreamed of her entering Counsel Oak. "No matter," Merlin gasped. "The Goddess will greet us." And with the forest air, with the rich smells of mushroom and nut, dead leaf and mold, Her arms came around us.

  The children helped Merlin to the raft and took the charger in payment. We left him in their midst, small brown imps climbing his mane, dancing on his back and sliding down his sides. He was the largest, most docile animal they had ever seen. I hoped they would do him no harm. We turned the ponies loose.

  I steadied Merlin on the raft and Mellias poled upriver, pushing through flocks of ducks and swans that hardly moved to let us pass.

  When the Fey lay down their bones like autumn leaves, they wander alone into deep thickets. Their bones are seldom found. So had my mother wandered away while I busied myself with Arthur's Peace.

  Merlin had a Human plan. Not for him the secret thicket, the lost bones remembered only by the Goddess. No. Merlin had come here to Counsel Oak at great pain and by great power to make the ancient tree his tomb, his memorial, such as Humans love.

  With his last strength he crawled into the black cavern that lightning had carved long ago. He folded himself cross-legged, leaned his head back against the black wood and reached out skeletal hands. At the gesture, his blood leaked again. I had not thought the body contained so much blood as Merlin had shed.

  "Enchanter," he whispered.

  Mellias handed him the old harp. It seemed to leap like a child into his hands. He held it as though ready to play, and groaned, "Now. The Holy Grail."

  I took the tarnished, battered dish from the saddlebag. A moment I held it, feeling the love it had absorbed over Human generations. Only the Goddess could know how many loving hands had heaped feasts upon it—or spread crumbs to look like feasts—and offered it to hungry families. Only She knew all the hands that had dipped into it, crumbled bones now.

  I gave it to Merlin, who placed it to be his breastplate.

  He whispered, "Children. Listen."

  I found it very hard to lean over Merlin, feeling the approach of Death just behind me. Mellias must have found it harder. But we leaned, and listened.

  Merlin mumbled, "Hermit Caleb gave us his nut mast in this Grail…cheerfully…keeping none for himself…Now I take this Holy Grail to the Goddess…for world-healing.

  "Enchanter goes with me to the Goddess.

  "I give my bones to the Goddess, who gave them.

  "Niviene, my daughter. When your heart returns to you, your power will return in full. Go now to Arthur, as I have told you; and when you find Mordred, forgive me."

  I said softly, "Merlin, whatever wrong you have done cannot be changed. It is in the past."

  "Only remember, child, that I was not always wise."

  "I will, Merlin."

  "And remember that I love you."

  Love. Forgiveness. These were hard concepts for me, who had remained steadfastly Fey. Perhaps Mellias understood them better.

  "I loved you best," Merlin said, and closed his weary eyes. "Now… seal the cavern."

  In my dream, when the Lady passed into the cavern it healed and sealed itself behind her. This time, in true daylight, Mellias and I had to seal it. Roughly, quickly, we piled leaves into and over the entrance. In only moments Merlin's bone-white face disappeared under yellow leaves. The Holy Grail still shone through. We covered that. Merlin's even fingers, resting on the harp strings, vanished last.

  We stood back, panting slightly. Then Mellias turned, strode to the lake shore, and came back with an armful of mud caught in reeds. This he slapped over the leaves.

  We finished the sealing with mud, and with earth dug with our hands, and over all we laid stones. (Later, unknown hands leaned one great flat rock across the cavern, such as Humans raise over a chief's grave.)

  Gasping now, trembling from the work, we sank to rest under Counsel Oak. Otter Mellias seemed to sleep instantly. I lay awake, thinking over Merlin's last words.

  Daughter, he had called me.

  Merlin was a poet, and he spoke poetically. But in truth I had always felt for Merlin what I think a Human daughter feels for her father. The accident of our even-lengthed fingers formed a bond between us. Merlin was so often there as I grew up, standing like a shade tree over the Lady and me. I remembered him baking oatcakes on stones while the Lady rocked small me in her lap, the three of us like a family. I remembered him carrying me into the forest after my first ride, when I could not walk.

  I swallowed hard and my eyes blurred. If I thought more along this line I might weep, as I had wept in Arimathea Orchard.

  But we Fey do not weep for the dead. We live in this moment, we sing this note of the Goddess's eternal song.

  Mellias stirred and opened his eyes. "Niviene, we did all that he said."

  "Yes, we did."

  "Now we are free." Mellias's voice lilted. I turned to look at him.

  For a long time now, Mellias had lived an almost Human life, among Humans. Now at last he owed nothing to Lugh, who had abandoned us; nothing to Merlin, who was dead; now he could stay forever in the forest and return to his true, Fey self.

  I shook my head. "One more thing, Mellias. We must go to Arthur's battle."

  "Not I."

  That startled me. "You will not come?" Somehow I had assumed that Mellias would go where I went, like a hound.

  "Not I," he repeated. "When Merlin ordered that, he was fevered. It makes no sense, Niv. What would you do in battle? Have you ever seen battle? By the Gods, I have! I will not go."

  "There is something I must do there…I must forgive. That is what he said. Forgive."

  Mellias made a gesture as of brushing debris off his tunic.

  I thought that when he was a little rested he would change his mind. He would not let me go alone to this awful thing called Battle.

  Counsel Oak rustled his leaves.

  I looked up then into Counsel's bare branches, and I saw them crowded with ghosts. Like pale birds they perched on the branches, or swung from them, or hovered among them. Fey and Human, male and female, some naked, some trailing rich robes, they twittered softly, like birds heard afar.

  And now I saw that some were Godly, towering so huge among the others and intertwined with them, that at first I had not seen them as separate beings at all. And some, small as bees, hovered on shimmering wings. And all of their misty eyes were bent, unwavering, on the mud-sealed cavern below.

At my shoulder, Mellias whispered, "What is it?"

I wet my lips to answer. "They are here. Merlin's friends."

Mellias moved closer to me. I felt him tremble.

  Trembling myself, I searched the cloud of forms for one familiar face. If these great spirits came to greet Merlin, ancient and newdead, would not the Lady be found among them?

  I glimpsed what might be her old crone-face, peering under the wing of a giant form. A maiden that might be she—younger than I ever saw her—perched on a high limb—maybe the limb from which I had first spied Gwen, so long ago.

  But I could not be sure of either phantom, and soon I gave up the search. This vision spread far beyond my private concerns, which lost themselves in it, like water dropped in the lake.

  Now from the sealed cavern wisped a cloud. At first a thin trail of mist like breath on a frosty morning, it gathered strength and form till I thought even Mellias must see it. It drifted and bobbed and staggered, like a man stretching awake. Coldly it reeled through Mellias and me and brightened, turning a faint sunrise orange. It kicked free of earth and drifted slowly upward, curling like smoke among the ghosts and Gods gathered in Counsel's branches; and, as it reached them, they dissolved to mist themselves. And the cloud covered the old tree and hid it entirely; and the cloud rose and rose away, and Counsel Oak came slowly back into sight, trunk and covered cavern and bare, stretched branches; the sun looked down through the cloud, and it was gone.

  I sighed. "They are gone." I told Mellias.

  But we did not move.

  Later we took off our clothes and waded into the lake. Suffering and death are contagious. Like sickness, they leap from one body to another. We had lived with Merlin's suffering for days, and now his death had touched us. We looked to the freezing water to cleanse us of contagion.

  I swam far out and floated, looking back at Avalon Island. From the water I saw the trees bare or golden, and a pale smudge that was my mother's villa, now my den, and ancient Counsel Oak, that easily overtopped all the apple trees of Avalon.

Under the boughs of Counsel Oak, Mellias had said, "When Merlin ordered you to go to Arthur, he was sick. Fevered. What can you do there?"

  Later, by my courtyard fire, he said, "Go, if you insist." And shrugged. Busily bent over, he cleaned the reed of his pipe.

  My own cold desolation surprised me. Had I become—Gods forbid!—dependent on my Otter?

  I said, "You know I am going into danger."

  "I know that better than you do!"

  "But you will not come." I was truly puzzled. All these years Mellias had been a shield at my back.

  He straightened, laid the pipe aside, and faced me across the small fire. "Niviene," he said gravely, "know this. When first I came to live on Apple Island, and you came back here from the Children's Guard, I desired you. You knew it."

  I nodded. Dread prickled my stomach. Never had I heard Mellias's voice so heavy.

  "One Flowering Moon after another, I waited for you. At first you danced with others. Then you did not even dance. So I found other partners."

  "Aefa."

  "True, I found Aefa. But it has never been as it would be with you. For you, Niviene, I traveled out into that terrifying kingdom."