Keepers of the Western Forest

by Chris Kennedy

  Chapter 5

   

  Stella found her brother in his grove of oak trees, sitting cross-legged on the ground with his hands resting on his knees, a broad-rimmed hat slouched over his eyes. He scarcely seemed to be breathing.

  Stella shrugged and lifted her gaze to the heavens. Meditating again—why does he never have any time for the world we live in? So many of our people are doing the same thing now. Life has become empty for them. Why don’t they realize we must work out our salvation together, here?

  She sat down on the stone bench at the edge of the grove. It was no good trying to get his attention when he was in this state. She looked down the aisle formed by the two straight rows of oaks and smiled. The rest of us went looking for wild places, mountains, streams, that would remind us of the Old World—but Oberon, of course, had to plant his own grove. She settled down to wait.

  Before long, Oberon lifted his head. His eyes under the rim of the soft black hat were as blue as her own, but narrower, more focussed. He stared at her, his face devoid of any expression she could read.

  “Hello, sister. What brings you here?”

  Stella laughed; it was pointless being offended by him. “Yes, it’s good to see you, too. I came to ask your help.”

  “I see. Are you ready to start deep meditation at last?”

  “Can’t you think of anything else? You know how I feel about all that.”

  “Yes,” Oberon said slowly. “You think we still have things to learn from this world and the mortals who live in it—things about ourselves that we have forgotten, isn’t that it?”

  “It is.”

  Oberon jumped to his feet, picked up the long black cloak he had been sitting on and threw it around his shoulders. He grinned suddenly and Stella saw again the old look in his eye, at once both mocking and affectionate, that she remembered from the old days.

  “That’s because you’re still in love with that knight of yours,” he said. He came and sat next to her on the stone bench.

  For a moment, Stella regretted having confided in her brother earlier concerning her feelings towards Morgan’s prisoner. “It’s easy to laugh,” she said. “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “I’m sure it is. But tell me what you want of me.”

  “Bertilak was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?” Oberon nodded. “Well then, have you any idea what became of his axe, the one he carried as the Green Knight?”

  Oberon opened his eyes wide. “What do you want to know about that for?”

  “Oh brother of mine! Do you still do that, always answer a question with another question? Just tell me if you know where it is—I’ll explain later.”

  “No, I don’t know where it ended up, I’m afraid—but I don’t think it’s here in Logres any more. I seem to remember Bertilak worked some sort of magic on the thing, invested it with special powers. The last I heard was that he went off with it somewhere overseas. I’m pretty sure he never came back.”

  “Special powers?” Stella frowned. “Have you any idea why Morgan the Enchantress would want to get hold of it?”

  “Morgan? Well, she was once Bertilak’s pupil, you know. He disowned her when he heard what use she was making of his teachings. It seems she turned to evil ways after the young King Arthur left her to marry Guinevere.”

  “Arthur and Morgan? An unlikely combination, surely?”

  “That’s what I heard. As for the axe—we would have to find out more about its powers to know what Morgan might want with it.”

  “Is there any way we can do that?”

  Oberon turned his head and stared into the forest for a moment. “There is someone I could ask,” he said.

  “I would be grateful. I need to get some sort of hold over Morgan.”

  “I see.”

  Stella got to her feet. “I’ll come back soon to hear if you find out anything.” She took her brother’s hand. “I do care about you, you know. How is your meditation going these days?”

  “It’s rather like an equation. Solve it and the necessity of being is cancelled. I’m nearly there.”

  Stella shrugged, shook her head and sighed. “Farewell, then.”

  “Farewell, sister.”

  Striding through the forest, Stella thought about what she had just learned. An axe with magical powers? That certainly sounded like the kind of cheap sorcery that would appeal to Morgan. Stella felt nothing but distaste for the magic Morgan and a few others dealt in; it was the unwholesome product of the marriage between faerie wisdom, won by thousands of years of close investigation into the workings of the universe, and ignorant mortal greed. There was no denying its power, however—she herself was helpless in face of the spell holding her knight prisoner. She must find the axe and try to understand its significance before approaching Morgan again.

  Now her thoughts turned to the incident by the stream. A day and a night had passed since she had watched the boy ride off into the forest, but the curious conviction that he would play a role in her life had not left her. Was it only the coincidence of his being in the exact same place as she had first seen her knight, declaiming at the sky in the same way? She was sure there was more to it than that. The path he had taken led to Camelot, so she decided to head in that direction.

  The day was bright and warm and she had plenty to occupy her mind, so it did not seem long before she found herself in the part of the forest bordering the plain where King Arthur’s city stood.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a child’s voice. Looking around, she saw a boy of about eleven, hopping up and down on one leg and chanting a repetitive little song. He had the reddest hair she had ever seen, with freckles to match; the hood of his brown tunic flapped up and down on his back in time to the rhyme. He stopped abruptly when he saw Stella.

  “Hello,” Stella said. “That’s a funny song.”

  The boy stared at her in the same way most mortals did when first confronted with her wide-eyed gaze and dazzling curls. “It’s the only bit I can remember of a ballad Sir Broderic sings,” he said.

  “Sir Broderic? Who’s he?”

  “He’s the youngest of King Arthur’s knights, my Lady. He says I can be his squire when I’m old enough. He already lets me look after his horse and the new foal, River!”

  “That’s wonderful! But I’m not ‘your Lady’. My name is Stella—what’s yours?”

  “Brynn.”

  “Well, Brynn, have you seen a rider pass this way on a brown horse with a star on its forehead? Wearing armour and a helmet so you can’t see his face and carrying a plain round shield?”

  “No, my L . . . Stella, but that sounds like the Knight with the Closed Visor. Sir Broderic told me about him.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “The knight beat him with lance and shield in the forest. He won’t tell anyone his name.” Brynn looked down and kicked gently at the roots of the wide tree they were standing under. “I think he just got lucky—Sir Broderic is very good, he won the May Day joust last year.”

  “And did Sir Broderic say where the knight went?”

  “If you want to see him, he will be at the tournament. Come to Camelot tomorrow. Now I must go back and see how River is!”

  “Goodbye Brynn. Thank you.”

  Stella watched the boy run off down the track. She would most certainly go tomorrow—perhaps she would see something to confirm her suspicions as to the identity of the young man who intrigued her so.