by Jasmine Walt
“It was hard to argue with that, but I did. We quarreled before he left.” Gwin took in a shaky breath as she continued to hold onto my healed hand. “His last memory of me was of his wife doubting him.”
“Oh, Gwin.” I squeezed her healing hand in return.
She clasped her hand over mine and pulled me in. Her voice was quiet, just above a whisper, as she spoke. Her eyes were wide with unshed tears when she said, “I don’t think he’s dead.”
It took me a moment to run her words through my head. “But Arthur said he was taken by Templars, that they destroy anything and anyone magical.”
“I can still feel him.”
Gwin took her hands back and waved them in front of her heart. My own heart ached for her. I knew what it was like to be so entwined with another person that their presence could be sensed even from far away.
But something about the way she wrung her hands made me think it was more than just a wife’s intuition. She didn’t look reverent. She looked a touch afraid.
“What do you mean, you can feel him?” I asked gently.
She averted her gaze. “We have a connection.” She blinked a couple of times, and I saw something in her close up. She swallowed before meeting my eyes. A smile was plastered on her face when she did. “I’m his wife, after all.”
I would’ve bought that explanation, but her forced smile told me there was something she wasn’t saying. Still, there was a flaw in her hope. “If he had survived, he wouldn’t have been able to live off a ley line this long. What’s it been? Twenty-five years?”
Merlin was over two hundred years old. Those years spent off a ley line would’ve caught up to him by now, and he would be dead. There was no way around that fact.
Gwin looked away and faced the tapestries on the walls. Before she did, I saw a slight glint in her eye as though a possibility existed, but she didn’t share the answer.
“You’re probably right,” she conceded. “I’m just feeling overtaxed by the day’s events. I’d never come face-to-face with those who would do harm to people who practice things they do not understand or do not agree with.”
Gwin’s eyes clouded over as a storm of memories swept through her mind. I remembered her words with Lance from earlier. He’d asked about her journey, and she’d gotten the same look.
“Gwin? Did you accompany Arthur earlier when he…?” I didn’t know how to complete the sentence, but I didn’t have to.
Gwin nodded, averting her gaze. “I did. I had to open the ley line for the knights to travel. Merlin used to do it for them. I’m called on to do much for the city these days, in addition to healing, since my magic is the strongest.”
She stopped and took another deep breath. I wanted to halt the conversation. She looked so taxed as she spoke.
“I’d known Circe when I was a little girl. She fell in love with a human and moved to Mexico.” Gwin’s lip trembled. Her hands went to her skirts. There was a smudge at the hem, as if the edges had been burnt.
I swallowed a gasp. All the tales of burning a witch to ensure their death had roots in real rituals. Witches and wizards burned their dead instead of burying them. When a magical being’s spirit passed on, the body might die, but the magic never did. It would stay in the magical being’s body, keeping them preserved for decades. But when the body was burned, the energy was transferred back into the ground to rejoin the ley energy from which it originated.
“We hear tales of war and death and the persecution of our kind in all the stories and history books, but to see it firsthand…” Gwin took a shaky breath and let it out slowly as though she could push the image of her dead friend from her mind. “Arthur is pulling all the witches and wizards back into Camelot until things become safe again. Which I hope will be soon.”
She took another deep breath. This time when she blew out, her face transformed. Her hostess smile was back in place.
“I need to go and help with the meal,” she said. All talk of possibly alive husbands and deceased witches was gone. “You two get settled. I’ll see you in the Great Hall in a few hours.”
She rose and headed to the door. It shut behind her, and Loren and I looked at each other.
“Well,” Loren said. “That was…”
“Yeah.”
“She’s over a hundred years old? I need to get the name of her moisturizer.”
Trust Loren to defuse a tense situation. “Time moves differently on the ley lines.”
I rose from the bed, and she shoved off the dresser. We headed out the door. Loren fell in beside me as we made our way back up the narrow stairwell.
“Physically, Arthur looks like he’s in his late twenties,” I said. “But in actual years, he’s closer to two hundred and twenty-five.”
“So Merlin was the older brother?”
I nodded. “Arthur was the second-born son. It’s the sword that chooses who carries the name, not the birth order. Excalibur chose him over Merlin.”
We reached the upper floors and spilled out into another great hall. On the walls of these halls were portraits and paintings of the lords, ladies, and knights of the past.
There were paintings of Uther and Igraine. Paintings of Arthur, the first of his name, a dark-haired beauty who had been his wife Mara, and their children. I had only met the couple once, and Mara only briefly. But the rendition of the queen looked familiar. As someone who’d lived a long time and met countless people, that wasn’t hard to say. But something in her eyes called to me.
Mara looked nothing like the Celtic beauties surrounding her. She had a rich skin tone, as though she’d spent time in a warmer desert clime. There was a tilt to her eyes, as though her ancestral line had passed through Asia. But I didn’t have time to try to figure out what her heritage might be. There was something flying straight for my face.
A ball came streaking overhead and nearly collided with the painting. Loren reached out and grabbed it before it could make impact. The ball slowed and corrected course. Instead of hitting the wall, it landed in her hands.
“Neat trick,” she said, looking up at the children on the stairs. “But hasn’t anyone told you about playing ball inside?”
The kids all looked down, likely awaiting a tongue-lashing from an adult. Luckily for them, Loren barely passed for a grown-up.
“You gotta toss a ball from up high,” Loren said, winking. “That way, it goes faster. It’s physics.”
She bounded up the steps amid the kids. I stared after her. I hadn’t even known Loren liked kids, let alone got along with them. There was so much I didn’t know about the woman.
“Nova? Is that you, my dear?”
I turned and saw a face from one of the paintings smiling at me from across the way. My feet were moving to her and I was in her arms before I could stop myself.
8
“It’s good to see you too, sweet girl.”
I allowed myself to be enfolded into an ample bosom and wrapped in short arms. But it felt as though my whole body was being embraced. The woman was shorter than me, and my head came to rest at the gray bun atop her head.
The painting on the wall of Arthur and Mara surrounded by their children and grandchildren had included a young girl with the raven hair of her grandmother Mara and the light eyes of her great-grandmother Igraine, the first of her name.
I released Igraine, the second of her name, and looked into a wizened face. Those were rare on a ley line where everyone looked young. But this woman was actually old. The first time I’d met her was a thousand years ago. She’d seen wars and peace and births and deaths. Unlike me, she remembered them all.
I allowed myself one more moment of her embrace. Igraine felt like home. Not my secret home out in the middle of the sea where I went to be alone. She felt like all the things I’d never had. All the comforts I’d read about when people had a family. All the families I’d seen but never had for myself.
Except when I was in this woman’s arms. I never forgot her. She was one of the reasons I
always eventually made my way back to this place.
She was also one of the reasons I dreaded coming here. I knew that one day I’d come to this magical land and there would be no warm hugs for me. Witches had long lives, but they weren’t immortal.
“How are you, darling girl?”
She called me “girl” when in relative time, I was far older than she was. I opened my mouth to respond, to tell her about the digs I’d been on, the adventures I’d braved, and all the new artifacts I’d found. But what spilled to the forefront of my mind was the death and destruction I’d left in my wake—memories of my dead friend Vau, of the Lin Kuie, of Greek gods and Spartan warriors, and the look on Zane’s face when he told me he didn’t want to see me anymore. All that came out of me was a choked sob, and my eyes burned.
“Oh, dear.” Igraine brought me back into her bosom. “Let’s get you a cup of tea.”
I looked to the steps where Loren and the children had disappeared and hesitated. But with one tug of Igraine’s gnarled hands, I followed.
She led me into the kitchens. There were so many good smells that it knocked my knees out from under me. My butt sank into a chair. And before I knew it, a steaming mug was pressed into my hands.
Igraine was Arthur’s aunt. Gwin might be the lady of the castle, having married Merlin, but Igraine was its heart and soul.
I told her the highlights of the last fifty years since I’d seen her, sticking mostly to the last year, which had been the doozy. She stirred large cauldrons filled with rich vegetables and fresh meat. Well, she didn’t physically stir them. She waved her hands, and the ladles turned circles in the large pots. Children ran in and out, tugging at her apron strings for this and that as she listened to me. And all the while, I never once felt like I didn’t have her full attention.
I’d sat at this table many times over the years. The table wasn’t always in this location, but it was the same. It had weathered hundreds of years, just like me. There were nicks and scars, but it was tough. Igraine came and sat down across from me.
In another time, Igraine’s family would have sat around this table and laughed and joked. I’d been included a few times, but it always left me with such a heaviness in my heart when I left. There were so few people like me, and we could never manage such a thing. I’m not sure that we would want to even if we could.
“You had a family once,” Igraine said, smiling at me as she stirred the stew on the stovetop. She said she couldn’t read minds, but she could read faces like a gypsy read tea leaves. And sometimes, she saw things. “You had a mother and a father who loved you very much. You had to in order to get here.”
I shrugged. I knew that traveling via birth canal wasn’t the only way to enter this world.
“Did you know the Greek gods and goddesses weren’t born in a human way?” They were brought into the world fully formed after the sacrifice of whole tribes of humans.
“Their birth process may be different, but they were conceived. Even if it was with just a thought.”
“How was I conceived?” I asked, not expecting an answer. I was simply enjoying her voice and her company.
“You were conceived with love.”
Every time we talked, we eventually came around to this topic and this very conversation. It was my favorite story, that I had a birth, a family, a mother who’d held me in her arms, a father who had rubbed his palm roughly on the top of my head before heading out to do…I wasn’t sure. Fight dinosaurs?
“They’ll be ready to forgive you soon.”
I blinked and focused on Igraine. That wasn’t a part of our normal diatribe. It usually ended with another hug and a refill of my tea.
Igraine was standing again. Her squat body was at the stove, holding the teakettle. The hot steam rose around her fingers, but she didn’t put it down. I stood and rushed to her side.
“You will be allowed to return soon,” she said, turning her face to me.
Her gaze was cloudy, her pupils dilated like she was in a Chosen ritual. Magic permeated the air. I felt the change in the room like a thick heat as Igraine slipped deeper into her trance.
“Twelve were exiled,” she said. “Only seven will return.”
I stared at her. My breathing went shallow. My hands shook as though I were the one clutching a steaming kettle.
There were twelve Immortals. Or at least there had been. Only ten of us remained. We had no memory of where we came from, of what we were, or how we got here.
“Return?” I asked. “To where.”
“To the garden.”
“Garden? What garden?”
The teakettle screamed, and Igraine snapped out of the trance. She clutched her hand to her chest. The red marks stained her palm, and the skin blistered.
“I’ll get Gwin,” I said.
But Igraine stayed me with her other hand. She took her uninjured palm and swiped it over her throbbing red skin. The magic healed her instantly. Then her eyes focused on me.
“Did I have a vision?” she asked. Her eyes were full of regret.
Oftentimes what Igraine saw in the trancelike state was death and destruction. When she came out of it, she didn’t always remember what she’d seen or said. If what she’d just said was true, more of my kind would die.
“No,” I lied.
But Igraine was a mother, a grandmother, and an auntie to many. She cocked her head and stared until I came clean.
“You were talking about my family,” I said. This entire city revolved around Igraine. I saw that just sitting at the kitchen table as people moved around her like she was the sun. “You told me that my parents loved me. I just wish I could remember them.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie. It just wasn’t the whole truth.
“I’d like to leave behind a legacy,” I said. “But I’ll never have a family like this.”
“We are all connected,” she said, leading me back to the table. “From those who were here before us until now. Witches, wizards, gods, Immortals. We are the highest expression of humanity.”
“You have such an impact on people’s lives,” I said. “I feel like no one would miss me if I suddenly disappeared.”
“Nonsense. Much of humanity would be wiped out, forgotten, lost, or still hidden if it wasn’t for you. With your endless quests to uncover the lost truths and forgotten tribes, you’ve helped shape this world we all share.”
She had a point. But no one sang my praises. There were no stories or poems written about me. When I left here again, I’d be all alone.
“Nia…” Loren burst through the door. “You won’t believe what they have upstairs.”
That wasn’t true. I’d have Loren. Even if only for a few more years. If I got lucky, maybe a few decades.
Igraine stood and faced Loren. “My dear, if you aren’t the spitting image of…”
Igraine ran her now healed hand down the side of Loren’s face. Her eyes glittered with memory, not a trance. And then she laughed to herself. It was full of sorrow.
“But that’s impossible,” Igraine said.
Loren looked from me to the elderly woman. Her gaze rested on Igraine, studying her in return. “I don’t know. I’ve seen a lot of impossible lately. Who do I remind you of?”
Igraine chewed at her lip another moment before continuing. “Let me show you.”
She took Loren’s hand and walked back out into the great hall. I followed. We moved past the Pendragon paintings. Past Lancelot and his ginger-framed family to a blonde-haired bunch.
“This is the line of Galahad,” Igraine said. “Galahad, the second of his name, had two daughters and no sons.”
There was a family portrait of a woman with blonde hair and a man with dark hair. Between them sat a young Gwin and Morgan. But a closer look told me I was mistaken. Though the two women favored the sisters, their features weren’t an exact match.
“That is Gwenhwyfar, Gwin and Morgan’s mother.” Igraine pointed to the dark-haired little girl. Then she turned her attent
ion and her index finger to the second little girl. “This was his second daughter.”
I heard Loren’s intake of breath when she came face-to-face with the painting. Standing behind her, I would’ve sworn it was her reflection.
“Galahad’s second daughter ran away from home about fifty years ago to be with a human male, an archaeologist. A Flemish man.”
Flemish was an old-world term for Dutch.
“What’s your father’s surname, child?”
Loren didn’t take her eyes off the painting. “Van Alst.”
Igraine nodded.
“What was her name?” Loren asked, pointing to the blonde girl in the painting.
“Her name was Magda.”
9
Loren’s face blossomed like a plant that had been in a cold, shaded corner for a year of winters and now was getting its first taste of sunlight.
Igraine looped her arm around Loren’s trim waist. My strong bestie who’d stood firm in a crowd of ninjas intent on tearing her apart, who’d flicked her hair at an irate Greek goddess bent on enslaving the world—that woman wilted. It was as though her body couldn’t hold up the beautiful bloom that had suddenly sprouted from her person.
Igraine rubbed Loren’s lower back as she began a tale of a precocious Magda who dreamed of traveling the world and ran off with a dashing young man who dug holes in remote, forgotten places for a living. As Igraine talked and rubbed, Loren’s body unfurled and grew tall again.
They walked down the hall toward the setting sun. But I stayed rooted.
Both Loren and I had received unexpected news about our families today. Hers was welcomed, and she soaked up Igraine’s words. I turned away and slunk into the shadows of the castle walls.
Had Igraine’s vision been real? Twelve were exiled. Only seven will return. Who had exiled us? Were there more people like us? And if so, where? I’d been in every inhabitable place on this earth, and I’d never met any Immortal other than the twelve.
