Poison

by Molly Cochran

  Dark already! I must have slept all day. And my dream . . . how awful . . .

  I shook myself like a dog to wake myself up fully. It had been a sickening dream, although I didn’t remember much of it. All I knew was that I felt dirty in my own skin. Then I looked around, thinking about reading, about watching TV. Outside, the snow fell again like fat feathers, coating Gram’s car in a thick white blanket under the strange blue of twilight.

  Where will I go? The question hit me like a hammer, unexpected, startling. I needed more time to be awake before handling thoughts like that. I felt sick. My heart was beating like a drum in my chest. I wanted to run away. I would have, right then, if I’d had anywhere to run to.

  But that was the problem. It was something I had to think about, whether I liked the subject or not. I needed to make some kind of plan about where I’d live after my father came back. But where would I go? Where does someone like me belong?

  I answered myself: In hell.

  “Oh, Gram,” I whispered. “What am I going to do?” I buried my head in my hands. I hadn’t asked to be poison. I hadn’t made a deal with the devil.

  Had Morgan?

  I didn’t know. Where was the line between innocence and guilt? If a bear in a zoo kills a child who squeezes between the bars, is the bear evil? Is it innocent? Is it the fault of the child’s parents? The zookeeper? Does the bear deserve to die for its crime? Does the child, for its ignorance?

  Why am I even thinking about this stuff?

  Angrily I turned on the radio. It was tuned to an eighties station. A loud, funky man’s voice was singing “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” and for a moment I could almost pretend that life was normal. Or something.

  But of course it wasn’t. I was here like death, waiting to kill again.

  With trembling fingers I picked up the amber pieces once more. Take me away, I thought. Anywhere. Anywhere but here. And anyone but me.

  CHAPTER

  •

  FORTY-SIX

  Even though I know where the ring came from and what it stands for, I cannot help but love it, in a way. There is such promise in that faintly glowing blue stone, such a feeling of good times to come. That is how evil works, I’ve learned. It is not some dark, spectral thing that sets your teeth on edge. Sometimes it’s lovely, compelling, a mermaid on the rocks, something sweet and laughing, with a knife between its perfect teeth.

  When I give King Arthur the ring, I make sure that the Merlin is absent at the time. I am one of many supplicants, sycophants, and court ladies seeking some special recognition from the king. Arthur is not a handsome man. He is slight and pale, attesting to a sickly childhood, and his ginger-colored hair is already thinning. But he is still the king, and everyone knows that his wife, Guinevere, is barren. All of his advisers have urged him to put her away in a convent and marry someone younger.

  So there is never a shortage of women, young and old, the reckless married ones and the innocent maidens prompted by their mothers, who try to catch Arthur’s eye. Thinking I am one of these, he nods politely as he accepts my gift with a discreet questioning glance at his clerk, who murmurs that I am the Merlin’s daughter. I notice the play of emotions that flit across his face: Oh, the Merlin! He has a daughter? But he’s never mentioned her. Rather pretty. But of common blood, nothing special. Unless she’s a witch, of course, like her father. Better to leave her alone. “Thank you,” he says. And who is that behind her?

  Then he places the ring on his finger, and the world lights up.

  Oh, good heavens, my dear! He thinks the woman behind me has caused the sudden lift of his mood. I am forgotten.

  My sigh of relief fills the room.

  • • •

  The stone takes time to do its work. Days pass, weeks. The Merlin is riding the countryside, conferring with the witch women of outlying provinces about the weather. There has been no rain since April, and that was scant. The first harvest, on Lammas, failed almost completely, and the second harvest at Mabon, soon approaching in mid-September, looks to be no better. Soon there will no longer be any deer or even songbirds in the forests; they will have all been eaten. Everyone on the entire island of Britain is in danger of starving over the winter.

  The peasants blame the king, of course. In their minds they have invested him with powers even greater than the Merlin’s. They believe that Arthur is the land, and the land is Arthur. If the land suffers, then it is because the king has broken some covenant with God.

  And who knows? Perhaps they are right. The ring Arthur wears is certainly nothing holy. God would not have approved of it.

  To appease the people, the king sends Guinevere to a convent and strips her of her titles. The courtiers gossip that the queen is being punished for her infidelity with one of the Round Table knights, Lancelot, who has left Camelot under mysterious circumstances, but I have no interest in these court intrigues. As far as I can see, the king was only following the demands of his advisers to rid himself of a barren wife and find a new one in order to secure an heir for the kingdom.

  But Arthur does not look for another queen. Instead he spends long hours alone in his chapel, praying to whatever gods will listen to save his people from famine. This, say the courtiers, is what is making Arthur sick. Worry, grief, guilt over discarding the woman he still loves, fear that his new nation—actually, still a loose bunch of tribes—will fall once more into anarchy and civil war. These are the things that are causing Arthur’s hands to tremble and the flesh to fall from his body so that now he resembles an aging child. After a time he can no longer eat, and takes to his bed.

  The advisers are in a panic now. If Arthur dies without an heir, Britain will revert to chaos, and an age of darkness will ensue for a thousand years.

  And now I understand why the blue stone was given to me. This is what the Darkness wants.

  The Knights of the Round Table decide, in the simpleminded way of soldiers, that what the king needs to cure his melancholy is some rare and expensive gewgaw. Personally I believe they just wanted a chance to go adventuring and looting again, but they swear that they are embarking on a quest to find, of all things, the Holy Grail. So there is a lot of handkerchief waving and brave smiles as the knights go off, leaving the sick Arthur in the hands of a bunch of freeloading, parasitical aristocrats who spend their days consulting with astrologers and drinking the last of the king’s wine.

  That is fine with me. I keep to myself and watch, telling myself that perhaps Arthur’s decline is not due to the ring at all. The courtiers may be right. Worry can wear a person down. And the peasants may be right. Who’s to say that the land is not somehow mystically tied to its ruler?

  But I know it’s the ring. Every day the thought passes through my mind that I should take it back. But then, what would I do with it? Give it back to the Darkness? Or does the Darkness even exist? I may have imagined it all, found a lost trinket in the woods after a dream encounter with a ghost from my childhood.

  That’s the thing about magic. You never know if it’s real or not. It has to be believed to be seen.

  But the king is sick, that much I know, and he may die. Is it my doing? Can I stop it? Am I evil? Do I belong to the Darkness? I don’t feel any different from how I did when I was good. Is my evil in my own mind? Do my thoughts make me evil, or just guilty? And if I do belong to the Darkness now, what price will it exact from me?

  I just don’t know anything anymore. And I’m so scared.

  CHAPTER

  •

  FORTY-SEVEN

  I must have fallen asleep again, because the next thing I knew, the apartment was completely dark and there was an incessant pounding on the door.

  I got up to answer it, smacking my sleepy lips and practicing what I would say if whoever was knocking was an irate student that my dad had flunked. “I’m sorry, but . . . ” The words dried up in my mouth.

  It was Morgan.

  “Hiding out?” she asked, strolling past me. “Nice crib.”

&n
bsp; “Get out,” I said.

  “Hey.” She spread her hands. “Who else is going to hang with you?” She switched on the overhead light. “Jeez, it’s pitch-dark in here. You a vampire these days, or what?”

  I leaned against the wall. What was I going to do, call the police? As if they could get here even if there were a real crime in progress.

  Morgan rubbed her arms. “Think you could rustle up a cup of tea or something? It’s wicked cold out there.” She was right. Outside, the cars parked on the street had become fat snow-covered shapes flanking a trackless river of white. “Please?”

  I looked at her levelly. Okay, it was cold outside. I supposed I could spare a cup of tea, even if it was for her. “Why are you here?” I asked coldly as I tramped into the kitchen and put on the kettle.

  “Just passing through,” she said airily.

  I held up my hand. “Forget it,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood for witty lies.

  “Okay, okay. I looked for you. Feel better? I mean, it’s not like you didn’t want to be found.”

  “How do you know what I wanted?”

  “Duh, you left a note.”

  “Oh.” Right. That was for Gram, so she’d know where to find her car. “So you broke into my great-grandmother’s house.”

  She shrugged. “No one saw me.”

  “I guess in your universe that makes it all right.”

  She made a face. “What’s with you, prissy face?”

  “What’s with me?” I narrowed my eyes. “I’m poison, Morgan. I’ve killed people, including the person I loved most in the world. You want to know what’s with me?” I shouted, almost screeching.

  She stepped aside. “Relax, Wonder Girl,” she said.

  “Why don’t you leave me alone?” I sobbed. My knees buckled, and I sank to the floor. “For God’s sake, when will you stop?”

  Her whole face changed then. It was as if she’d been wearing a mask that she’d suddenly dropped, revealing a face she’d never wanted anyone to see.

  “Yeah, okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll go. I’m sorry about—”

  “Don’t,” I said. I didn’t want her to even try some phony declaration of remorse.

  “Right.” She put on her scarf and glanced out the window. It was the smallest moment, less than a second, but when she did that, looked out at the long expanse of snow that had put the whole city to sleep, I sensed how terribly lonely she was.

  Or maybe I was just feeling my own loneliness. I didn’t want to think that I had anything in common with Morgan le Fay, but in the eyes of anyone with a brain, we were both evil. Plus, there was no doubt that neither of us had anywhere to go or anyone to turn to. In that respect Morgan was my sister.

  “Wait,” I said.

  She looked over at me and blinked once, slowly. “Why?”

  “I want you to tell me the rest of your story. What happened after you gave the ring to King Arthur and he got sick?”

  She smiled. “You’ve been spying on me?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Okay.” She laughed mirthlessly. “He recovered.”

  I didn’t say anything as I fixed her tea. I just waited for her to go on.

  “How do you know I won’t lie?”

  I shrugged. “Lie if you want to.”

  She looked at me oddly. I took the muffler from around her neck. She sat down and picked up her teacup, warming her hands on it. “I think the king would have died then if the Merlin hadn’t come back.”

  “Could he sense the ring?”

  “Oh, yes. And he knew how it had ended up on the king’s finger too. The first thing he did was order me out of his sight.” She smiled.

  “That’s not funny,” I said.

  “Of course it is. I’d sold my soul to get my father to love me, and he hated me for it. You of all people ought to find that extremely amusing.”

  “Why me ‘of all people’?”

  “Because it makes a fool out of me,” Morgan said.

  “It doesn’t make me feel better that your dad didn’t love you.” I picked up the pieces of amber. “You’ve left memories in here.”

  She took them from my hand. “Ah, home,” she said lightly, although I could hear a trembling in her voice. “Do you know how long I was imprisoned in here?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It must have been very hard for you.”

  Her eyes flickered toward me for an instant, but she didn’t say anything. I put my hand over hers so that we could both feel the vibrations of the stone. She tried to pull away, but I held on to her. In the end I think she stayed only because of the novelty—and maybe the comfort—of being touched, even if it was by me. I sort of felt the same way.

  • • •

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” The Merlin’s wrath was not often seen, which made it all the more terrifying. Instantly the hall cleared, and the courtiers fled to the corridors or the gardens, where they chattered like hungry birds.

  “It was the girl, his daughter.”

  “Did she sleep with the king?”

  “Much worse. She used witchcraft against him.”

  “She brought on his illness.”

  “With witchcraft!”

  “Has she been arrested yet?”

  A courtier laughed. “And who cares so little for his life that he will arrest the wizard’s daughter under his nose?”

  “Not that a cell could keep her, in any case.”

  The Merlin helped the ailing king to his feet, shouting over his shoulder at the girl, “You are no longer any child of mine!”

  Inside the king’s bedchamber the magician studied the strange and luminous ring on Arthur’s finger. He could feel its power, its cold magic. When he touched it, it felt like a hot poker going down his throat.

  “Can you take this off?” the Merlin asked, although he already knew the answer. The king was powerless against the ring with its glowing blue stone. For a moment the old man hesitated. He knew that what he was about to do would end his life.

  The unification of the petty chiefdoms of Britain into one strong nation had become a reality, but it was still fragile. The king still needed Merlin’s guidance. But the structure would break and fall without a king. That was the only thing that was certain. For Britain to survive, Arthur had to live.

  He is the land, and the land is him. That was truer than even Arthur himself knew.

  The Merlin scanned the room with weary eyes. Had he made a mistake by spending so much time in this temporal realm? He might have stayed in Avalon, increased his magic a thousandfold, lived the life of a king himself. Well, that was of no importance now, he thought as he assembled the tools he would need—a wand, a scrying mirror, a stone knife he kept in his robes.

  He would have to work quickly if the king were to live. The Merlin had never performed this magic before, this last magic, but he knew what he was battling, and he knew what the cost would be.

  “My child,” he said, taking Arthur’s hand. The king’s eyes fluttered open, confused. The lashes were crusted, the whites yellow, the rims red and swollen. I could not have loved you more. Thirty-four years before, the Merlin had saved the infant from certain death at the hands of Arthur’s ignorant father, and had seen him safely reared in the home of a generous-hearted knight. From that moment the wizard had watched over the child as if Arthur were the son he’d never had. The magician had virtually abandoned Avalon, the land of his birth, and had brought its secrets with him into the chaotic, violent, changeable, uncertain world of cowen.

  With the spectacle of pulling the sword Excalibur from the stone—a clever piece of magic, and one that could not have occurred without some magic from Arthur himself—the boy had been assured of becoming high king over the petty chiefs, whose constant quarreling had kept Britain in the sorry state it had been in since the Romans had left a century before. And now it was so close, the prospect of a powerful Celtic nation ruled by a wise king who commanded the respect of all Britons . . . so close. Too c
lose to let die.

  No, my child, my destiny. You must live.

  The Merlin touched the blue stone. With a gasp he felt its pulsating, glowing heart, its incalculable power. A fleeting thought: This may be worth my death, after all. He wasn’t referring to his sacrifice, to the fact that this last-ditch effort was mankind’s last possibility to overcome the Darkness that had cast its shadow over the world. The Merlin was referring to the feeling itself. This was the Darkness in all its overwhelming power, coursing through the old man’s body. And yes, it would kill him, would twist his mind to evil in the last moments before his death, would take all the magic he had and render it useless. Yet still, it was worth it.

  A sound like the satisfied purr of a great cat poured out of his throat. Such a feeling of well-being. Really, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to die.

  And then, with a swift intake of air that signaled the first stopping of the old man’s heart, he looked down to see the ring on his own finger.

  “Yes,” he whispered as the king’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Merlin?” Arthur asked in a small voice. “Merlin, have you come back?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” he answered, even as his knees buckled and he staggered over to the wall, where his hands slapped against the cool stone surface. The ring shot out a ray of white light. “But now I must rest. The journey has been . . . difficult.”

  The king breathed deeply. “Perhaps I will too,” he said, closing his eyes once more. “I’m glad to see you again, old friend.”

  “As am I,” the Merlin said, smiling for the last time at the man he had groomed to be Britain’s greatest king. Then he wove his erratic way through the corridors and stairways of the castle to a subterranean place where the royal boats were kept. Beyond the docking channels, cut deeply into the rock, was a tunnel that led to a cave sparkling with crystal formations.