At the threat, Kyra went for her knife. Maeniel caught her wrist in his hand and said, “Stop. He will do nothing.” His pronouncement was backed up by growls from both Mother and Black Leg.
“If I ask Dunnel,” Dugald shouted furiously, “he will.”
“Perhaps he will,” Maeniel said quietly. “But you won’t ask.”
I threw my arms around Kyra’s waist. Dunnel was the chief, and he had an extravagant admiration for Dugald. “Don’t let him!” I said to Maeniel.
“Hush!” he said, ruffling my hair. “Kyra, put that knife up. You have a home with me for the rest of your life. Dugald, I will turn you out should you begin any such nonsense.”
“You!” He pointed at Maeniel. “You will turn me out?”
Dugald was in a fine fury.
“I will put a curse of wasting on you. I will put a curse of rotting on you. I will put a curse of softness on you,” Dugald said.
“No, you won’t,” Maeniel said. “It’s been tried and they don’t work.”
“Softness?” I asked. “Wasting and rotting I can understand, but—”
“Never mind!”
I knew it had something to do with sex, but they wouldn’t tell me.
“Dugald, you lead a very soft life. I hunt for you and trade what I get for such supplies as we need. Kyra cultivates flax, combs sheep, dyes, and weaves, and is, moreover, an excellent cook. All you need do is teach …” He gazed at me—and he told me later my hair was a nimbus of light around my face in the glow from the wax lights and the fires, so he gave me my name, Guinevere. “All you need to do is teach the small fair one, because that is what she is—Guinevere, the fair one. And now, as to the black magic, she taught Kyra, not the other way around.”
Dugald was silent then.
You must understand, my name was not written down. Those who say and sometimes write it use what form they care to. So the spellings sometimes differ greatly. So much that it might seem as though I had many different names; but in reality, I still have only one. And, like all true names, it was a word of power. But of this I will say no more, since Dugald, I think, was partly right. There are many things that can’t be written down, but others that should not be written down, and the use of my name is one of them.
So, as said when I began to describe my life, we prospered.
We were not bothered by land or sea. Maybe the fate of Cymry and his crew was famed far and wide, spread by the ever-wagging tongues of those who love such news, the traveling storytellers. Because they are sometimes drawn to a wealthy steading, you must understand these are not the real bards who sit at the tables of kings and powerful chieftains. Their songs and satires are rewarded with gold and silver; and the best of their work becomes immortal, part of what every master poet must learn during his apprenticeship and also what nobles must study as part of their training for rule. The noble need not have them by heart as a bard must, but he or she needs to be acquainted with them, knowledgeable enough to know what songs to ask for when one of the great masters visits his palace.
These things have a darker use, also. The king or chieftain must also know what satire to choose when he wishes to hold his enemy up to ridicule and scorn before his whole court that he may enrage the man or woman so they will succumb to fury and lose control of their tempers and forget good sense. A clever assault on a man’s honor and dignity will draw him into folly. No, these storytellers are much poorer folk. They cannot look to any great patron for maintenance but, fiddle-footed, must wander from place to place, since more than one night’s lodging would strain the resources of the more humble folk who form their audience.
Since Dugald was a man of importance, we were frequent guests at the chief’s hall, and we heard many such itinerants who came to speak of wonders such as gods and dragons, and who spiced their stock of stories with gossip about the doings of the great and powerful kings and queens of other lands and places. And they added to the fund of knowledge any new and notable events that transpired even in out-of-the-way places like ours. One such notable event was the destruction of a notorious pirate like Cymry at the hands of a humble war band of boys and various folk of a small village. So, though I didn’t know it, my fame and that of Bain and Gray began to spread, and a reputation for the place where we dwelt as an abode of mighty magic reached the minds of many we didn’t know and never would know. And far and wide the storytellers sang in praise of our achievements.
When you come to think of it—and I didn’t then—a thing both good and bad. But the upshot of it was that for the next few years while I attained my growth, we weren’t bothered. And I had time to learn to fight from Lord Maeniel; Dugald taught me of real dragons and how to rule. And in between times, I ran wild along the shore with Mother, Black Leg, and Kyra.
Ah, how Kyra loved a story. She used her visits to the chief’s hall to add more and more of them to the library of her mind, until I was sure she had more skill than any of the wanderers who stopped to visit us. And, indeed, some came to sit at our hearth and listen and drink in her fund of glorious tales.
Every winter at the turning of the year, we carried Cymry up into the mountains to ask him if we faced raids this year, and each winter the answer he gave was no. This gave me the most precious gift of all, time to grow. So we lived in bliss and didn’t know it.
In the summer we hunted deer, rabbits, and even bear and big cats. Maeniel would take us out, with Dugald bringing up the rear, grumbling about his joints and bones. Mother and Black Leg took point, and whatever they flushed, we followed, fleeting along with them, javelin in hand. Deer, elk, and even the powerful and dangerous aurochs fell to us.
I ran with the wolves until I could run down a hare, and I can still go for miles even after a life of strife, labor, battle, and childbearing. I thought nothing of accompanying Maeniel, Mother, and Black Leg high into the wilderness of mountains to bring back a massive elk or even a wild bull. At other times we fished, working the stormy waters that ebbed and flowed along our rugged, rocky coast.
The shore here is not some peaceful, sandy refuge, but a cruel bulwark against fierce ocean; and its denizens, the magnificent and deadly dragons, were the most dangerous and most admired and most beautiful inhabitants. Most of the time we fished the rivers, streams, and tide pools; and some nights we went to the high cliffs and rocks of what the northern people call fjords. The coast was fissured with them, and some couldn’t be gotten into on foot. Only a boat launched from nearby would bring us to these most isolated beaches. They offer bountiful fishing by night because the large fish from the ocean often drove small fish—herring and mackerel—into the shallows in order to trap them. We were able to take ling, dogfish, sole, and even sometimes the basking shark, much prized for the oil in its liver.
I loved the sea and tried to persuade the Gray Watcher to sail our light, skin-covered boat out of sight of land, telling him Kyra taught me to read direction in the stars. He always refused. She is too changeable, that sea, he said. Not like the smiling sapphire water that ringed the coasts of Gaul and Italy, where the summer sun warmed both beach and surf and the water was as some clear gem and could be looked through like fine Roman glass.
No, this sea was green, gray, and black; and even at high summer a treacherous fog lay on the water like smoke. Any wind or disturbance raised high waves, seven to ten feet even, in the fjords. More than once our curragh was swamped, and we had to ride it in to shore upside down, paddling with our hands and feet.
One afternoon we were fishing alone, just the two of us; we had come here to collect samphire for Kyra. She liked to pickle it so we could have it with our meat in winter. Maeniel liked it. He liked all vegetable foods. It seemed odd to me. Black Leg followed him in taste, but Mother wouldn’t even look at it.
The fjord angled off into a sheltered cove, where samphire grew in thick mats that rimmed the shore. We collected quite a lot, and then the Gray Watcher and I went fishing.
Bad decision. A squall came up while we w
ere taking mullet with a cast net; and in a few minutes a wall of icy rain hit, accompanied by ten-foot waves. The rain was thick, gray, and blinding. It was the darkest thing I’ve ever seen by day, and for once I understood the Gray Watcher’s fear of the sea. The rain was in our faces, and we fought to turn the curragh around and get to shore. But we found ourselves spinning, because the water falling from the sky was so dense that the beach was turned into a shadow, only half seen through the rain.
I was a thin child, carrying little fat. In a very few moments, I was freezing cold and soaked to the skin by rain and the sea breaking over the sides, and I knew why the ocean takes and keeps so many. I understand I was only short minutes from death, and even the Gray Watcher, strong as he was—more than humanly strong—would not last until sunset in the freezing rain and cold.
Then the waves struck. The curragh was lifted high into the air, and I saw the cliffs above—silver granite spotted with red and orange lichen glowing and shining in the last pale light. Then we went down, and the wave we rode troughed out and another lifted high above us like green glass pitted by the wind-driven rain. Then it crashed down, the flimsy hide boat disintegrated, and we were thrust down into the sudden silence below the surface.
The turbulent water was like thick fog. My dazed mind wondered at it. I might have breathed and drowned, but instinct closed my mouth and nose. Yet, I was sure I would die when I realized where I was. The cold wasn’t chill any longer, but numbness; and I felt life, like water in a broken cup, running out of me into the shadowed underwater silence. Then my head broke the surface and the world was a chaos of screaming wind and roaring surf. I used my second of time to get as much air as I could into my lungs. Then I went down again, my knees banging against the shingle.
I was in the shallows. I began to struggle as hard as I could; and for one horrible, eternal instant, the riptide pulled me back. But then I felt something knot in the back of my leather shirt. The Gray Watcher had me, and seconds later we were both crawling out of reach of the pounding waves as the rain lashed us with whips of raw silver through the rising fog.
Cold. God, it was cold! Never have I felt so cold, before or since. I lay limp, past shivering, beside a boulder, while the Gray Watcher covered me with a cowhide we carried with us on all our journeys. The cows from the mountains are like sheep and have long, thick hair on their bodies. Nowhere else, the Gray Watcher told me, are such cows seen. This time the hide didn’t help much. I was still so cold I was groggy with it, barely able to think.
Maeniel went wolf and, warmed by his pelt, began to collect driftwood as quickly as possible. But I could tell both of us had been soaked, and he was beginning to falter, slowing as he piled the wood next to me.
Make fire. I pulled a branch under the cowhide and scrabbled my fingers through the pebbles at my feet. One sliced my fingers, and I knew I’d found flint. I smacked it against a cobble and sparks flew. But the wood was too wet, and the wind too fierce. The sparks burned my fingers, and one landed on the back of my hand.
My fire, I thought, rage burning in my brain. Oh, God, oh, God, the pain, as flame leaped from the back of my hand and raced down to the tips of my fingers. My fist closed around the wood, and it leaped into flame, and the Gray Watcher stopped and wondered as I thrust the flaming branch into the pile of driftwood and it became a pyre. Then I was screaming, holding my burnt hand in the rain to soothe it, and fire-charred lines ran from the center of the back of my hand, one out to each fingertip. They healed in days, but left scars. Only very faint scars, but I bear them still. Then it was all that the two of us could do to keep the fire going until the squall passed. We drew the cowhide over our heads and sat with the fire between us, not caring about the smoke, until we were both warm and dry.
I went to sleep, my back against the boulder. The Gray Watcher had flung the cowhide over the two boulders and created a sheltered spot between them. As wolf, he was sleeping on the other side of the fire. When I woke, it was at the moment of power between first light and sunrise. The light was bright, and fog filled the fjord. The high cliffs surrounding it were only shadows in the drifting mist. It lay like a thick blanket on the water.
The dragon lifted his head above the fog. I knew it was he at once, though I had never seen one before, because, though his body was gray—gray as polished silver—he had a red comb above his head that ran down between his eyes, rather like a horse’s mane. Now it lay limp to one side of his neck, as a horse’s mane will. There was another loose fold of skin beneath the neck, red, but a darker red than the one on top.
He snorted. I saw his nostrils close, rather like those of a porpoise or whale. He drew in deep breaths of air; and the simple act of breathing the cool, moist air seemed to please him, because his comb lifted slightly and briefly and filled with blood for a second and the throat pouch smoothed. But then, since he was moved by neither fury nor lust, both effects faded quickly.
He was so silent, the Gray Watcher still slept.
I rose and walked toward where the waves slapped quietly at the rocky shore and confronted him. I do not think either one of us was afraid. He was too magical a beast, too beautiful, to frighten me, and I was too small, too harmless, to frighten him.
Even though our boat had sunk, a lot of our catch had washed ashore. The Gray Watcher had piled the mullet on the beach above the tide line. The dragon was a guest, so I bethought me of my duties as a hostess. I went and got one and placed it in the shallows, where it washed back and forth in the gentle, early morning waves. But he didn’t take it, only bent his long neck down, looking like some magnificent swan, and touched it with his nose, pushing it back up on the beach.
“No?” I asked. My voice sounded very loud to me in the early morning stillness.
He made a gentle blowing noise through his nostrils, as if to say, yes, no, I don’t care for these things.
“Well,” I said. “We have some samphire.” We had two big sacks, in fact.
I offered him some. He took it from my hand—very gently, the way a horse takes an apple but careful of the fingers. I brought the sacks down and emptied them at the shore and watched while he ate his fill.
The light grew brighter and brighter. The mist began to burn away. The tall, frowning cliffs that surrounded the fjord began to show wet but clearly seen through the blowing vapor. Then the dragon lowered his head and butted me lightly in the chest. He likes samphire, I thought. He doesn’t care for fish. He would not want to eat me. So I placed my hand on his forehead just at the frill. I touched it, and the world vanished around me, and I spoke to the dragon.
Did I say the sea here was gray, green, and black? No, I was wrong. Yes, those colors were there, but also many others: red, sometimes like blood, sometimes like the fine enamel work of a polished gem or the red-yellows and oranges that dance and dazzle in a fire’s ever-changing hues. Then there is green, the clouded emerald, bearing secrets, light and fair as masses of drifting sea grass on the water, or clear, shading away into blue where the sea meets shore. But blue, blue, what do we know of blue? The pure arch of summer sky over the ocean or the blues as light is lost, first transparent, then translucent, finally shading into shadow as the surrounding beasts reach the deeps.
I was wrong. Sometimes he did eat fish, and he and his companions, speaking in song, pursued them through the vast canyons and drowned mountains beneath the sea.
Oh, the dragon song of love and battle, hunger and grief, loss, desire, and the blazing instant of fulfillment echoed in this everlasting symphony that no human mind has ever comprehended. No human ear has ever heard. They all sing, you know—the porpoise, the whale, even the shrimp click to call for love.
These and many more things he told me in the eternal, unspeaking instant when our minds were joined. Then he pulled away—not I—and turned, swam through the receding fog back into this kingdom, the open ocean. I sat on the shingle, weeping without knowing why.
FOUR
HEN I WAS THIRTEEN, CYMRY’S ANSWER CH
ANGED.
It had been a hard winter. A hard year, now that I think about it. We had a long, dry spring, unusual in this part of the world, and then just as the crops were well stunted by the drought, it rained buckets, drowning them. Making a living from the soil can be hell. How those in Roman territory made it, I cannot think. Maeniel said they often didn’t, selling their children into slavery, starving, and finally having to flee their homes to escape the tax collectors. They were simply overburdened by the cost of legions and a government that did less and less every year, since it was controlled by the large landowners, who paid no taxes at all and cared nothing for farmers who had small freeholds.
He and Dugald argued constantly about this. Maeniel said that the road to Rome was the road to ruin, and Dugald said that they were the culmination of thousands of years of civilization, beginning in the east and spreading westward, carried by Kyra’s folk who built the great chamber tombs in Gaul Armorica and Ireland. When I and Kyra complained and Mother covered her ears with her paws and Black Leg whined and stalked out of the house, they both turned on me and the rest, lecturing me about how I must learn about politics because one day I would be queen.
I said, “Ha! What would I rule over here in this quiet corner of the world?” Besides, I liked things just fine as they were. Dugald would hush me and say wait. Things were more peaceful now to the south. The trade ships were sailing—one had made port close by—and the crews brought news to us when anything made a loud noise in the world. All the talk was about the Pendragon’s son being reared by Merlin. He would, they said, become high king, and even the Saxons supported him.
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