by Maples, Kit
Sudden greed filled my liver but I said, “You’re the god before all gods but your fortune is just a few found coins?”
“There was nothing here when I found this place to plant my tree. The tree made both worlds. I’m a finder. Will you be that in my place? Will you be rich and the god before all gods and condemned to tend this one tree?”
“I will,” I said, “for the pleasure of draining your heart’s blood. Name yourself to the merlin who kills you!”
“I am Death.”
“Liar!”
I stabbed Excalibur into the woodward.
* * *
The woodward died too easily.
I stood over his corpse waiting for anything to happen. Nothing did. His fortune did not appear out of the air.
“So this was a god?” I kicked the dead man with my bare foot. “No doubt the Lord Pluto himself,” I said, a sudden new rage filling me.
I hacked the body with Excalibur, chopping apart the corpse, scattering feet and limbs, stringing entrails, stabbing holes in the Earth for blood to drain away, spattering my nakedness with his blood.
I said to the fig tree, “Are you indeed the World Tree or just another fraud, as every other thing in Annwn?”
I tore off a fig to eat it. Its branch withered with a steaming hiss and died.
I screamed with the voices of all my selves.
What things had I killed before their creation in tearing away the fig? Animal, mineral, vegetable? Men and women of genius or lovingkindness? Monkeys that frolic? Fish that swim? Unicorns, elves, fairies? Dragons? Flowers that glow in an evening? What piece of the whole history of Earth had I exterminated in stealing one bit of fruit?
I spat up the fig to make it alive again. I scrambled to assemble the parts of the corpse I had massacred. I wept and prayed. I with all the merlins before me howled for fig and woodward to come alive.
But the woodward’s bits would not come together. The fig would not reattach to the withered tree branch. Even a horse hair thrown into a puddle of piss creates a snake, but there was nothing I could do to raise this dead man and his fig.
Still, there was no change I could see in the world around me. Birds tittered, mice skittered. Elves and fairies stayed hidden, if they ever were there to be seen. It was as though none of creation had discovered the old woodward was dead and a new one conscripted.
In this short moment I might escape over the boundary line into life.
Trumpets! Hoof beats! Drums!
The shouts of heralds of an approaching cavalcade.
Above the treetops, the jostling spear points and pennants of a great parade of knights.
I, naked, with Excalibur in hand, my jangling armor, glass shield, and Urien slung over my back, climbed into the fig tree and scuttled back into its darker passages.
The Lord Pluto, a brooding immensity on an immense stallion, both in flashing armor and draped silk, paraded into the meadow. His vassals led a string of walking dead kings and queens roped together neck to neck like hostages taken in battle. Behind them, a train of carts filled with rich plunder.
“Woodward!” Pluto roared. “Where’s the new woodward?”
I plunged ahead through the enveloping branches of the tree, careful not to jostle lose any of the fruit, climbing up, across, and down. I dived out of the tree and into the forest out of sight of Pluto’s knights.
I scrambled across the old woodward’s campfire and hut. The self-styled god had lived like a wretch. But, I thought, a merlin’s happy greed filling me, what meager treasure had the woodward in his straw bed that a merlin could steal?
I flung open the hut door. Kicked aside the poor man’s straw. Found in the dirt a single ruby. One of my many selves examined it and found it an honest stone, rich enough to be worth the risk in stopping here to steal it before running on.
The clatter and bang of armor! Knights riding searching through the trees. Pluto roaring, “Woodward! Woodward!”
I kicked aside more straw and found another stone, this one green. Then a yellow, a white. A purple amethyst. A white diamond. Topaz from India. Turquoise from Persia. Emerald tacks on his leather drinking cup. Onyx beads for his sandals’ hobnails. Gold coins from Jerusalem to string around his throat. More from Rome, Carthage, Mali, Athens, Troy.
Jewels and coins enough to fill my battle helmet. To fill my mail cloak until it bagged twice my weight in riches!
My sack of jewels and armor now so heavy I could barely scuttle through the forest away from Pluto’s knights thrashing the undergrowth with their swords in search of the naked woman with the gleaming sword who had killed the woodward.
I ran out of the forest and across open ground through morning sunlight toward the Upper World. I laughed and wept as I ran, so frightening and absurd was life.
After all, I was Brynn, bastard daughter of dead Arthur. Kidnapped by a beggar-knight last survivor of the Round Table. Trained up to win his armor by killing the knight. Forced to eat merlin hearts to become a merlin. Worked the hot forge with Llew the Swordmaker. Loved witch-queen Morgause. Pitied Mordred-murdered Flavia who led me to Arthur’s ghost waiting for a merlin to return him to life.
Now I’d trekked across the Underworld and stolen a fortune beyond the imaginings of princes and thieves. I was hunted by Pluto. I had bits of a fig stolen from the World Tree in my belly. I had created Excalibur.
And I still did not know how to become the perfect Merlin to create the perfect Arthur to make Camelot.
It was all wild enough to make me want to laugh.
As I ran, I felt on my naked flesh unaccustomed sunlight and warmth. After so many epochs in the Underworld, I was startled by life.
I saw the spark of light on spear points as knights rode through the forest. I saw a dozen treasure carts, the tail of Pluto’s caravan, stopped at the forest’s edge, peasant drivers gone away to join the hunt.
So many kings and queens were roped together behind Pluto’s charger that I wondered how much ransom they’d offered Pluto for the chance to live again and breathe Upworld? How much treasure was in those wagons?
I dumped my bundle of gems and coins, a trivial fortune compared to the possibilities in those dozen carts. I dumped Lucan’s rotted armor and the hazed glass shield. Slung Excalibur and Urien over my back. Ran naked to the carts and threw back a tarp.
Riches! Beyond the imaginings of emperors and gods! Coin and plate, jewels, plunder from the Pyramids, turquoise thrones, heaped crowns, ivory elephant tusks, Trojan horses of gold, Venus in silver. Enough to buy a dozen Camelots if I could find a dozen Arthurs!
I put on Chinese silk and Greek armor, eye-blistering with gold inlay, to arm myself against Pluto’s knights. Princely chains wrapped around my arms, gaudy and heavy to wear but too satisfying of greed not to wear. With the old glass shield slung over my back for protection, I drew Excalibur and Urien both and went into the trees to beat the drivers back to their carts.
I hurrahed and whipped them and their oxen to vast speed, churning dust behind the carts, ripping up tree roots, cutting a road – straight as any made by Rome – from Annwn across the boundary line of death onto Mother Earth.
Pluto’s knights charged out of the forest after me. My terror of them was no match for my greed. As my caravan broke through into Earth’s light, I leaped from my cart onto the cloak of riches I had abandoned and scooped it up. I would leave not one coin behind.
“Drive on!” I shouted to the cart drivers.
I swung Excalibur, the sword that would not kill Saxons in my dreams, in one hand and Urien in the other. The stretching blade sang its name and swept across the forest, scarring armor and shattering lances, and the anvil-killer slaughtered the knights under their steel.
Pluto’s minions pulled back, howling to the hostage kings and queens trailing the carts to arm and attack me from behind. They did, driven on by fear of Pluto. But Excalibur that would not kill Saxons in my dreams killed in this awful world. It killed the dead hostage kings and queens,
severing the dead from their dead lives, and each one vanished out of Annwn like blown dust, and reassembled into life across the boundary line.
Pluto’s knights in despair shouted for their lord.
Pluto and his armored horse galloped out of the trees, howling down on me with his couched lance.
I swung the cloak of plunder over my back and over the shield slung there. I abandoned the weight of Lucan’s old armor. I ran for the carts, screaming to the drivers to whip on their beasts to the speed of elves robbing battle-dead.
The carts burst uphill into the light of Mother Earth. There, at the border of light and shadow, I stopped and turned to take Pluto’s charge. I raised Excalibur for my shield and stepped one pace back into the Upworld.
Pluto’s lance tip rang on Excalibur’s steel but could not penetrate a living sword in a living world. I laughed to scorn the Prince of Death. The merlins in me jiddered in fright.
Pluto roared, “Woodward, come to me!”
I stepped one more pace into the Upworld and Annwn was closed to me. Pluto and his knights vanished away.
I heard a shout that was only a whisper this side of the divide between Life and Death. It was Pluto crying, “I wait for you, Woodward!”
* * *
The cart drivers and the hostage kings and queens I had slaughtered into life stood around me dumbfounded. Then they threw themselves at my feet, crying out their gratitude, begging to join my vassalage and service, whining for coin to fetch their wives and husbands, children and cousins from far places, asking directions to my castle to drive on with my treasure – and to share my astonishing power over the Lord of Death.
So easy to rob the robber of the dead, I thought, I should go back and steal more treasure!
The merlins in me howled in fright.
I laughed, a laugh with a sound like a spray of gold dust. A laugh that said at last Brynn-who-is-Merlin is master of whatever portion of life she chooses to claim. If she is to make an Arthur to make a Camelot, she will. There is nothing beyond the power of a woman who can rob Hell.
“Yes, Lady!” cried the frightened servants at my feet.
I looked across the world and saw a richer land of grape vines, streams at the foot of plastered villa walls, monumental gods, and castles. Of preening peacocks, salmon on the common tables, strong horses on the fells. Of rich village fairs and Romanesque government. On the Narrow Sea beyond the land, I saw gleaming ships sailing to and from Europa, Africa, and China, bringing wine and exotic metals, dyes and silks, and carrying away oak, saffron, carved glass, mosaic tiles, swords, and velum.
I marveled at this perfect organization of the world that was meant to be mine.
I looked nearer, at the high road which my treasure train must take, and saw beside the dirt road a massive and dusty stone. Could be the original Brutus stone? It was flanked by Roman and Druid altars and a temple from which vestal virgins ran to scatter flowers before a general in his antique chariot. The clatter of hobnailed sandals. Rattle of oblong shields. A glint of sunlight on the red horse hair plumes of leather helmets.
“What country’s this?” I said.
“Why, Lady Merlin has brought us here and she must know!” cried my new servants.
“Tell me.”
An undead queen looked around but her vision was limited to what she could see with her eyes. “Why, this is Ynys Prydein. The Isle of Britain, Lady Princess. Where else in all the world could we be?”
Had I come back into the world at the right place and time? Was it now I was to plant Excalibur in the world so together we could begin the making of a king?
“What year is this?” I cried.
“How should we know years, some of us having been dead so long?” shouted an undead king.
Another cried, “Look! Uther Pendragon!”
He pointed toward the high road where a red-bearded general in his chariot paraded with his legions that were horse-mounted and nicknamed “Lizards” for their heavy plate armor. Flowers flung in his path! Cheers from his professional cheerleaders! Citizens of a town ran onto the road to greet the High King and to piss on the blue-skinned Scots he had yoked to his chariot in triplets as war prisoners.
The undead queen said, “If Uther lives to kill the Scots, then my husband and babes are still alive!”
She shouted “Long life!” for Uther and Princess Merlin and ran to prostrate herself beside the king’s chariot.
Uther slouched in his Greek armor on his chariot and said to her, “Get up out of the dust, woman, remember your rank. Nice tits!”
He said to me, “Hail, Mother Merlin!”
Uther waved his parade past us into the town.
“Another day, Old Mother,” he said, weary. “Another Triumph. Another rag-tag of prisoners.” He gestured at the blue men. “What’ll you give me for their hearts and livers or do you want ‘em flayed and minced in the customary manner of Druids?”
“I want nothing of them at all,” I said, feeling a burst of merlinic impatience. “Move your damn silly parade out of my way. It blocks the road for my carts.”
“Where are you going that takes precedence over chatting with me the High King?”
“To find a clock, a rock, and a prince.”
“You riddle as much as the damned Saxons. What clock?”
“Any clock. To tell me what year this is.”
“Then I’m your clock, Mother. It’s the twelfth year of my kingship. The only rock you could want is the Brutus stone over there” – he gestured toward the boulder flanked by altars – “but what prince is more valuable than ten minutes spent with me?”
I looked over at the huge, flat-topped sacrificial stone, so much more massive than the little rock Morgause had scavenged for the remnants of the Britons in my days as slave in Carbonek Castle.
Here with this perfect stone must be the point of beginning for my mission and my quest. But what would this violent king do with Arthur if he believed Merlin would groom Arthur as king ahead of all his older son-princes?
I said, “I’ll name the prince when I see him, Uther.”
The king laughed, his oiled red beard clapping stiffly on his breastplate, a sound like the slapping of sword on shield that begins battles.
“How’s it you alone in all humanity don’t fear the chief dragon and slaughterer of the Scots? I could have off your head and tits and nether parts” – Uther clapped his own groin as he laughed again, then scratched it through the fringed leather skirt – “and feed your liver to the ravens, a Promethean end for a withered old fraud like you.”
“Is that what I am, a fraud?”
I looked into the faces of the passing centurions searching for a young man named Arthur.
“What else?” Uther said. “Every time I meet you I see a different Merlin. One day young, another old. Yesterday on the road I met you as fresh and pretty as a girl, your snaky beard scarcely grown. Today you’re the grandmother of yourself. I tell you, Lady, it’s tiresome and confusing. I barely know what world and time I live in and can’t figure yours.”
Which of my former selves had Uther seen on the road yesterday?
“Yet you recognize me. How’s that?” I said.
“I also think I see you in shadows, spiraling hawks, and in my wine puke. A couple of years ago I saw you in a book. That’s when I gave up learning to read.”
Uther shifted the contents of his undergarments.
“Still, when all this jolly killing’s stopped, I might try reading again. I like the pictures.”
“Why not trust your generals to finish the Scots so you can study your picture books, King?”
“Is that Roman sarcasm or British irony? I never know the difference and forget to laugh.”
Uther pissed off the back of his chariot.
“But the Scots?” he said. “What’re they? Naked savages whose hearts’re so obsessed with wood-loneliness they’re driven to attack humans. No, what I fear is our bringing the Saxons into the country.”
&nbs
p; “Then get them out.”
“I bring them in for my son.”
“For Arthur?” I said, surprised.
“The baby of the litter? No, no, he’ll never be king. The oldest one, Gurthrygen. He’s king after me. His power in the land’s to be founded on Saxon mercenaries who’ll die for Britons against the Scots. But after they’ve killed all the Scots, who stands between the Saxons and us?”
“Arthur,” I said.
“Make me laugh! You love the little fool but he’s scarcely better fit for a warlord than to play with his mother’s tits. You did that, transforming him into birds and things so he’d learn the ‘greater lessons’ of life. Wish you’d make me into ten men so I could screw ten princesses at once, that’s what I wish. Can you do that for me, Mother?”
“Did I do it for Arthur?” I said, the Brynn in me astonished to hear that the legends of Arthur’s youth were true.
“Have you forgotten again?” Uther said.
“I’m not sure which way in life I’m headed at the moment.”
“Ah, that dreary nonsense again. ‘Toward womb or tomb, which way, which way?’ moans my merlin.”
Uther dropped with a thud to sit on the edge of his chariot and gazed at me with a fierce, appraising eye. I saw him suddenly startled.
He said, “Hadn’t occurred to me you might not be fully aware of how you live your life, Mother. What a fright you are. What’s the idiot Arthur to do with anything?”
“I measure my life against Arthur’s. Show me the boy and let me see which way he ages. Then I’ll know which way I’m going. Better, introduce me to Mordred.”
“Who?”
“A prince hereafter.”
“More foretelling?” Uther stamped his boots in the dirt, suddenly impatient. “Other people chatter about those who live or have lived. Merlin talks to me about people who haven’t yet lived. Or may never live, for all I know. What a bore. But remember the old times, Old Woman, when we went through the world together in search of dragons and sexy things? What happened to all the dragons? Or the damned elves and fairies, for that? I haven’t seen one in years.”
