A Cathedral of Myth and Bone

by Kat Howard

  “The Fisher King,” I said quietly. The guardian of a sacred object, with an unhealing wound, ruler of a dying land. “She’s not Guinevere, not anymore. She’s the Fisher King.”

  “I emailed her,” Nora said.

  “What?” I yanked myself from my thoughts.

  “She’s still alive, and in the area. She’ll talk to us. If we come to her. I want to go today, Morgan. I don’t think we have a lot of time.”

  There were only two more class meetings left in the semester. I didn’t think we had a lot of time either. “Okay,” I said.

  “Great. I’ll drive.”

  “Drive” in this case meant a motorcycle. “Are you kidding me?” I asked.

  Nora tossed me a helmet. “Get on.”

  I muttered a spell for protection as I climbed on behind her.

  “Are you praying?” she asked.

  “Something like that.”

  The drive was beautiful, though. Deep into the woods, which were casting off their fall colors and stretching their branches toward the starkness of the November sky. Everything was crisp and sharp.

  Nora turned off onto a winding drive, beneath an arcade of trees. She stopped in front of a building that looked like a sixteenth-century abbey, all soaring arches and stained glass. From the distance of the road, it had looked splendid, intimidating. But now, up close, the truth revealed itself.

  The trees were dying. Twisted, full of dead limbs, some completely rotten and bare. Not the temporary dormancy of fall and winter, but true death. There were sere patches on the ground. The stones of the building itself were moss-covered and ivy-vined, beginning to crumble in places. The doorbell chimed like a mourning carillon.

  A woman in scrubs opened the door. “I’m Molly. I take care of Eliza. She said to bring you right up.

  “Just stay close. The house can be a little odd.”

  Nora and I looked at each other and stepped inside.

  It was like walking into an abandoned cathedral—the same sense that a place once vital, even perhaps sacred, had been left alone to time and colonized by the transient.

  Molly led us into a large, open room, full of long tables. Seated at them were what had once been guests and had turned into something altogether other. “Don’t talk to or touch them,” she said. “Just keep walking.”

  The tables were set for a feast—all crystal and silver and heavy candelabra, lit with unflickering flames. Sleeping Beauty’s castle after the spindle pricked her finger. Everything caught in stasis, except for the guests at the feast. Even without Molly’s warning, I wouldn’t have touched them. Six dead knights sat around the table. Formerly rich clothing hung in tatters from their bones. In front of each of them, a goblet. All but one filled with what I was very certain was blood. That empty goblet stood in front of an empty chair.

  “You walk through this every day,” Nora said, low and flat.

  “Yes.”

  “What happens when the last one fills?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t,” Molly said.

  “Do you actually like working here?” Nora asked.

  “You get used to the house,” Molly said. “This way.”

  Stained-glass windows lined a cobweb-strewn hallway, weeping spills of color to the floor where the light came through. Not the expected saints, but kings and queens and knights, some wearing faces I knew. The final panes, an entire flock of ravens.

  Crack-snap-shatter behind us as glass fell to the floor.

  Molly knocked on the frame of an open door, then gestured us in. The room was like a jewel-box museum. Unicorns raced across tapestries hung on the walls. Two suits of armor stood sentry. Display cases held chalices, chatelaine keys, rings and bracelets in rows. In a bed, made as much as possible not to look like a hospital bed, the woman we had come to see.

  She looked exactly as she had in the newspaper picture, taken over fifty years before.

  “Holy shit,” Nora said as she exhaled.

  “Trust me,” Eliza said, her voice barely above a whisper, almost more breath than sound, “it has its drawbacks.”

  The shadow of an antiseptic scent burned at the back of my throat. There were stacks of gauze, scissors, medical tape, next to the bed; a stainless stand to hold an IV bag, pushed just off to the side.

  “Like the dead guys down the hall?” Nora asked.

  “Among other things.” Eliza spoke slowly, pausing for breath between words. Remnants of the never-quite-healed stabbing.

  “Are you stuck with them forever?” I asked.

  “Until the story ends.”

  “Except it’s started over,” I said.

  “It never ended.” She coughed then, put a hand to her side, and her hand came up bloody. Red leaked across her shirt. A spasm of blood-flacked coughing, and the stain on her shirt like a pool.

  Instead of being calm or smart, calling for Molly, I ran forward, grabbed a stack of towels, and started the words of the binding spell I’d used to heal Sabra.

  When I touched Eliza, it felt like lightning exploded inside me.

  I woke up on the floor, Molly shining a penlight into my eyes. “Welcome back,” she said.

  “What.” My chest ached as if I had been kicked dead-on by a draft horse.

  “Apparently, you did some magical matter-antimatter deal, and the blowback knocked you ass over tit,” Nora said. She was standing in the far corner of the room, eyes narrowed. “Which, maybe next time mention the whole being a fucking wizard thing.”

  “Sure. Okay. Next time.

  “Eliza!” I sat up and the room tilted.

  “Is fine,” Molly said.

  “I don’t heal. Or die. Until the story ends,” Eliza said. “It’s her idea of an apology.”

  “Apology?” I echoed.

  “Elaine’s. Because I wasn’t supposed to get hurt.”

  “But the ones who died, that was fine. No apology for them, and they’re still dead,” Nora said.

  Pain across Eliza’s face, and I remembered that she had loved at least one of the dead men. “Yes. They are. But I can help you make sure no one from your story dies. Molly, the cauldron.”

  It looked like something from a witch’s stash. Small enough to be carried, the outside tarnished and dinged, the lip ringed with smearily iridescent black pearls. The inside, silver and immaculate.

  “Great. A goth fantasy movie prop,” Nora said. “I’m sure it will help.”

  “It resurrects the dead,” Eliza said.

  “Of course it does,” Nora said, stepping back again.

  “Blood. You need the blood of a willing sacrifice. One life for another.”

  “How do you have this?” I asked.

  “The knights downstairs. They traveled with Arthur, in search of the great treasures of Britain. To Annwn, the land of the dead. This is one of the things they brought back.”

  “ ‘Except seven, none returned,’ ” I said, quoting a poem that was likely one thousand years old. “That’s why the chair hasn’t filled,” I said. “It’s his.”

  Eliza nodded.

  “And you’re just giving this to us,” Nora said.

  “Your friend is, as you said, a fucking wizard. She’ll know what to do.”

  I didn’t, beyond taking it. But I felt the weight of eternity in my hands, the echo of miracles in my bones. It was a possibility, where before there had been none.

  “Thank you,” I said. I thought I heard a whispered “good luck” as Nora and I followed Molly out of the house, but it could have just been a breath.

  • • •

  “Are you coming back to class?” I asked Nora as I climbed off the motorcycle.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t think so.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “I don’t trust Link. Or any of this, really. Because whether or not the names would have done a damn thing on their own, it’s clear that something else is going on. Link hasn’t aged in over fifty years. That poor woman in that house is immortal, for all the
fucking good it does her. I felt you do magic today. So it’s not just names, and the story is still a tragedy.”

  “Maybe it’s not if you’re there,” I offered, tucking the cauldron more securely in my bag.

  “Morgan, I’m Mordred. So no. My being there helps exactly nothing. This? Today? This was my best guess at something, anything, I could do to make sure that Sabra doesn’t die. And now maybe she won’t, if that thing really is what Eliza says it is.

  “Take the cauldron and save Sabra’s life with it, and call me when it’s over.” Nora started her bike and drove off.

  • • •

  I sit on the ground, cauldron in my lap. It should be heavier.

  A noise, half laugh, half sob, breaks from my mouth. If I’m going to get all metaphorical, it could never be heavy enough. Not for what it will hold.

  “Are you ready?” I ask.

  • • •

  I spent the last days of the semester trying to wake Arthur. I rowed my hands raw going back to that strange island in the middle of Lake Severn, cast spell after spell over and around his sleeping body, all to no apparent effect. I put myself into the body of a raven and tried to fly after the part of his soul that was somewhere on the border of life and death, of waking and sleep. Before I got to that border, I was cast from the sky like Icarus, to fall, broken and dazzled, in a field of apples.

  I had to wait, cold and lonely, on that island, until I was strong enough to call magic to bring myself back to the other side of the lake, and it wasn’t until the next day that I could set the break in my arm. I don’t think I got it quite right.

  I tried to go to the island in a dream and wake Arthur that way. A dream had been the first place I had seen him, after all, when he told me to find him. But all I dreamt were nightmares of past Arthurs, past failures. And, over and over, Sabra dead, my hands red with her blood.

  The night before our last class meeting, I dragged myself across campus to Sabra’s apartment. Niv opened the door, Cabal wagging his tail behind her.

  “I’m sorry it’s so late. But I need to talk to Sabra,” I said.

  “You look like you’re about to fall over. Come in, and let me get you something. We’ve got pizza I can reheat.”

  “You don’t need to go to any trouble,” I said.

  “You’re trying to save my fiancée’s life,” she said. “I think I can put some pizza on a cookie sheet.”

  “Wait, you guys are getting married?”

  Niv smiled. “She proposed the day after that sculpture came to life. Which is not how I started the story when I called my parents.”

  “Congratulations. That’s wonderful.”

  “You’ll come to the wedding?” She put pizza in the oven, poured me a glass of wine. My face must have shown more than I wanted it to when she handed it to me.

  “Don’t even,” she said, her hand shaking. “Don’t even say it. I know. And I know you wouldn’t look like you do if you were here with good news. But Sabra and I are getting married, and you are going to be there to dance.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Glad that’s settled.” Sabra sat down.

  Niv set my plate on the table and kissed Sabra. “I’ve got papers to grade, so I’ll leave you two. Morgan, thank you.”

  I nodded. Cabal woofed hopefully at my pizza. I passed him a pepperoni, and he settled in at our feet. “Sabra, I can’t wake Arthur.”

  “You didn’t look like you were here with good news. But maybe he doesn’t wake up until, you know, tomorrow. At the end.”

  “You should maybe think about not coming to class.” I couldn’t look at her as I said it.

  “I’m going,” she said. “Niv said the same thing, but seriously, if something is going to happen, it doesn’t care where I am. Trying to fuck around with fate is what got us here. I’ll be there, and it will be fine.”

  “I think you should bring Excalibur, then,” I said.

  I could see the question flash through her eyes, and was glad when she didn’t ask it.

  “I will,” she said.

  • • •

  I didn’t sleep. I lit candles and thought about pieces of stories.

  • • •

  The last day of class was bright and clear, the chill November sky ice-blue as we wandered in, leaving our journals in a pile next to Professor Link’s chair. There were no flocks of angry ravens, no Green Knights, no anything to suggest that this room was something other than what it appeared—a room full of graduate students.

  Nora wasn’t there. I hadn’t expected her to be.

  Even now, I can’t tell you what it really was. I thought I saw a weapon. I know—staggeringly unspecific. But my brain said “knife” and I heard a voice yell “gun” and I jumped from my seat, flinging myself into Sabra, in some desperate attempt to shield her from whatever it was.

  And then the only thing I heard was the crack as her head hit the floor.

  I will always hear the crack as her head hit the floor.

  “Didn’t you learn anything this semester?” Professor Link, the Lady of the Lake, asked, standing over me as I picked myself up. “Arthur dies at the end.”

  I remembered what I was. I spoke a word that flung her backward, then stood, shielding Sabra with my body, and said a binding spell to keep Link away from us. Bent over, barked out the words for healing. No response from Sabra.

  “Morgan?” Liam said.

  “Can you help me get Sabra to the lake?” I grabbed her bag, glad that the hilt of Excalibur showed through the top.

  His eyes skipped from me to Sabra to Excalibur to the empty space in the room where Professor Link had been. “You’re sure not the hospital?”

  “Yes.”

  A breath.

  “Okay.” He brushed Sabra’s hair away from her face, then picked her up, so carefully.

  “Let me know if she gets heavy,” I said. “I can help.”

  “Not to imply that you didn’t just do actual magic in there, but maybe modern medicine?” Nirali asked.

  “You read the old stories when you were doing your Green Knight research, right? I have the cauldron from the ‘Preiddeu Annwn’ in my bag.”

  She stopped. “Seriously?”

  “What is that?” Liam asked.

  “It’s one of the treasures of Britain. Arthur went into the afterworld and brought them back. There’s a theory that this is the thing that got turned into the Holy Grail when Christianity got ahold of the story. It supposedly resurrects the dead,” Nirali said. “But you need blood. From a willing sacrifice.”

  “There’s an island in the middle of Lake Severn. King Arthur is on it. In the exact condition as Sabra. I’m going to wake him up. And save her life.” I prayed that saying the words would make them true.

  “This is officially the weirdest semester of my life,” Liam said.

  “No shit,” Nirali said. “But I’m coming with you guys.”

  No crew shell this time—a low black barge waited against the shore, Cabal already there. Liam set Sabra in it. He took my hand, held on hard as I stepped in.

  “Do you want us to wait for you?” Nirali asked.

  “Yes.” The sky was growing dark, the temperature dropping. “But be careful. I think there’s about to be a storm.”

  Once

  I CAN FEEL WHEN THIS story’s Arthur falls. It is, as it always is, as a sword piercing my heart. There is no change in my brother, but he is still here, and so am I, and so the story is not yet finished.

  The story will not end here. It never does. This is the place for after the ending.

  There is always an after.

  I can feel a storm coming. I brush the hair away from my brother’s face and follow my flock to Viviane in her tower.

  — 10 —

  And so here we are, on the section of the map that has monsters. Arthur is here, but he’s still not awake. I’ve brought Sabra, and I lay her carefully on the bier next to him, and this is . . .

  This is . . .
>
  This is all that’s left. The sword, the cauldron, and the sleeping king, and I’m the one who needs to turn them into a living Sabra.

  Over the water, the chiming of the bells. The carillon, not ringing an hour, just ringing, over and over. Calling the souls of the dead home.

  I cut Excalibur across my palm and, using blood for ink, say the words of the scrying spell. Once more, looking for Arthur, even though I am standing next to him. I’m looking for the truth at the heart of the sleeping king, looking for the missing piece that made him, that will wake him up, bring him back.

  What I am looking for isn’t the part of the him that’s here, but the part that has paused, all this time, beyond the end of the story. I am calling it home.

  I finish speaking and watch as my blood sinks into his skin. As his breath catches, hitching his chest. As his eyes open.

  As he sits up.

  Once

  VIVIANE DISAPPEARS. APPEARS AGAIN. BY magic, but not by her own. She looks as confused as I am. There is no sound in the room, no color. And then, light, sound again. The story is telling itself around us, trying to decide how we fit.

  “She’s done it,” Viviane says. “Your namesake. She’s woken him. I wonder if soon enough?”

  I can hear the bells ringing, carrying the souls of the dead in their sound.

  I could have been with him, said hello, or perhaps goodbye, had I not come here, but I can feel the ending tightening around me, and I have no choices left, not this time.

  I hope he knows I love him. In every story, I love my brother. In every story, I did what I did for love.

  Viviane’s hand, that has been Elaine’s, and Nyneve’s, and Nimue’s, takes mine. “Let’s wait for the end together,” she says.

  THE END

  There is no change in Sabra. Her breathing is still shallow, her pulse still thready. I pick up the sword and cut myself again, ignoring Arthur’s gasped shock. Hold the blood in my hand as I say the magic, then fling it into the air. It pauses, holds, beading up like rain on thin lines between Arthur and Sabra, marking the pattern that binds them together.