by Garth Nix
Nimue shook her head and stepped forward. Her hair fell aside as she knelt by the bed, her magic dissolving and the pins unable to hold on their own.
“It is you I want,” she said fiercely. “You! No one else. You want me too! I know it, as well as I know the ten thousand names of the beasts and the birds that you have taught me.”
“I do,” whispered Merlin. “But I am your teacher, and it is not meet that we should lie together now, unequal in years and power. Go back to your own place.”
Nimue frowned. Then she rose and stamped her foot, and whirled away, light and shadows dancing in her wake. At the door she looked back, and her smile shone through the dark room.
“Tomorrow I shall be my own mistress and you will not be master,” said Nimue. “I will catch my star and we can be as man and wife.”
Merlin did not move or answer. In an instant, Nimue was gone, and the room was silent once more. The shaft of moonlight slowly crawled over Merlin’s face, and darkness hid the tears that welled up out of his clear blue eyes. Young man’s eyes, unclouded by age or glamour.
“Ah well,” he muttered to himself. “Ah well.”
They were the words Merlin’s father had said upon his deathbed. Simple words, devoid of magic, greeting a fate that could not be turned aside.
Nimue did not go back to her own bed. Instead she put on her best linen dress, that she herself had dyed blue from isatis bark and stitched with silver thread that she had spun out of the deep earth.
The silver thread shone in the moonlight as she slipped out of the house and out onto the headland. There was a pool at the edge of the western cliff, a pool of soft water, fed by spring and rain. It was always placid, mirrorlike, in sharp contrast to the sea that crashed on the rocks only a few paces away, but two hundred feet below. An ancient hawthorn tree leaned over the pool, all shadows and spiky branches. It had often been mistaken in the dark for a giant, or some fell creature. Every midwinter night some hapless stranger would seek to use the power of the pool, only to flee in panic from the hawthorn. Invariably they found the cliff edge and the pounding sea that would grind their bones to dust.
Nimue stood at the edge of the pool and hugged herself against the bite of the wind, cold in this early morning. She whispered to herself, preparing for what must be done:
“To find the secret name of a star,
Ask the moon that shares the sky.
Fix its place between the branches of the hawthorn tree.
Send the name to the sky on the wings of a bird.
Burn the name in fire upon the mirrored waters of the lake.
Wrap the star with heart’s desire
Between the darkness and the light.
Then you shall a magus be….”
Nimue looked up to the heavens and found the great disk of the moon, yellow as ancient cheese. She let its light fall upon her face and open hands, and took in its power. But a yellow moon was not what she sought. She waited, silent, the hawthorn tree softly groaning in the wind, the surf crashing deep below.
Slowly the moon began to sink and change. The yellow faded and blue-silver began to spill across its face. Nimue felt the change and smiled. Soon she would ask it to name her star. She had already chosen one. A bright star, but not so bright it might overpower her. Not the Evening Star, which served no one and never would. But a star as bright as Merlin’s, though not as red. She would be his equal in power, if not in kind.
A bird called, the sleepy cry of something woken before its time. The wind fell and the hawthorn stilled. Nimue felt a tremor rush through her. Dawn was only minutes away. The moon was silver—she must act.
She called to the moon, a call that no human ears could hear. At first there was no answer, but she had expected that. She called again, using the power she’d drawn earlier from the sun. The moon grew a fraction brighter at the call, and through the void her silver voice came down, quiet and imbued with sadness, speaking for Nimue alone.
“Jahaliel.”
As the name formed in her head, Nimue sank to one knee and looked up through the branches of the hawthorn. There, in the fork where two twisted branches met, she saw her star, bright between two strands of darkness.
Nimue splashed her hand in the pool, and the droplets flew into the air to become a white bird, a dove whose wings made a drumroll as it rose straight up toward the sky, the name of the star held in its beak where once it would have carried an olive branch.
The pool was still before Nimue’s hand had left it, still and shining, reflecting the woman, the tree, the moon, and sky. With her forefinger and all that was left of the sun’s power within her, Nimue wrote in fire upon the mirrored water the three runes that spelled out the name “Ja-hal-iel.”
In the heavens, a star fell. The moon sank, and the sun rose.
In the instant between night and day, Nimue caught her star and bound it forever with the promise of her heart’s desire.
She felt something leave her, and tears started in her eyes. But she did not know what she had lost, and the exultation of power was upon her.
Nimue ran to the cliff top and threw herself into the air. Like a feather she drifted down, buffeted this way and that by the wind but taking no harm. Before the cold water embraced her, she became a dolphin, plunging into a wave, sliding under the water to spin out the other side, laughing as only a dolphin can.
Nimue had been a dolphin before, but it was Merlin who had made her so. It was his star’s power that had given her the shapes of many things, on sea and air and land. Now she could transform herself at will. She jumped again and between two waves became a hawk, shooting up above the spray. A merlin, to be exact, and that was her joke and tribute. On bent-back wings she sped across the headland, past the pool, toward the rising sun and Merlin.
With sharp hawk eyes she saw he had already risen and was waiting for her in the ring of stones. He stood upon the black rock, without a glamour upon him, and Nimue felt love for him rise in her heart as bright and strong as the rising sun.
She flew still higher, until she was directly above him and he had to shade his eyes to look at her. Then she folded her wings and dropped straight down, down into his open arms.
They had one kiss, one brief embrace, before the stars they wore pushed them apart, the air itself wrenching them from each other’s grasp. Nimue shouted and directed her will upon her newfound power, but to no avail. She was pushed completely off the black stone, to fall sprawling in the circle.
Merlin did not shout. He had fallen on his back, and was sinking into the black stone as if it were not stone at all but some peaty bog that had trapped an unwary traveler.
He did not shout, but his voice was loud and clear in Nimue’s ear as she struggled to her feet.
“You were my heart’s desire, Nimue, waiting in the future. You were the price I paid for the art. Love never to be fulfilled. Forgive me.”
His hand stretched up from the stone. Nimue snatched at it, as if even now she might somehow pull him back. But her hand closed on empty air, and his disappeared beneath the surface of the stone.
“Forgive me, Merlin,” whispered Nimue. She made no effort to stem the tears that fell upon the stone. A bright star shone in the hollow of her neck, the promise of power and wisdom beyond anything she had ever dreamed. But she was cold inside, cold with the knowledge that this power was not her heart’s desire. Her true heart’s desire lay entombed in dark stone, beyond her reach forever.
Or was he? Nimue clutched her star and looked up at the sky, so bright above her. If a star could be plucked from the sky, then surely it could also be made to rise again? To take its place in the firmament once more, unraveling all the threads of time that had been woven in its fall. If she could return her star, then surely Merlin would freely walk the earth, and he in turn could free his star and regain his heart’s desire.
There were other powers in the world. Other places to find knowledge. Nimue stretched her slim arms above her head and in a moment was a
bird, wide winged and far sailing. She rode a wind west, across the open sea, and was gone from Britain.
With her went all Merlin’s wisdom and power, and all hope for the kingdom of Arthur. The kingdom that would sink into ruin as Nimue’s heart’s desire had sunk into the stone.
INTRODUCTION TO HANSEL’S EYES
This story was written for A Wolf at the Door, a collection of retold fairy tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. I turned to the Brothers Grimm, as one does, for a story to retell. Despite being attracted to several lesser-known stories, in the end I wrote a variation on the “Hansel and Gretel” story, probably because I had an idea about what the witch would be like, and what she would do, if transferred to a modern setting.
Because I quite like the author’s note I wrote for the original anthology, I’m going to quote some of it here:
He first encountered Grimm’s fairy tales when they were read to him at the age of five or six. He spent the next two years attempting to spin straw into gold, turn pumpkins into carriages, and find a bearskin to put on—all without success. He chose “Hansel and Gretel” for retelling as it was always a favorite, probably because his mother made him a fantastic ginger-bread house for his eighth birthday, complete with a witch made of sweets. He chose to set the retold story in a city because he has always found being lost in cities much more terrifying than being lost in the woods—or, in his case, the bush of Australia.
All true. For those of you wracked with jealousy because my mother made me a gingerbread house complete with a witch made of sweets, prepare to become even more green-eyed. For my seventh birthday (or perhaps my ninth), she made puppets of all the characters in Tove Jansson’s Moominland Midwinter, built a puppet theater, and performed the book as a puppet play. Needless to say, without the influence, example, and encouragement of my mother (and my father, whose collection of fantasy and science fiction books supplied me with reading matter for my most formative years), I would not be the writer I have become, or indeed, a writer at all.
HANSEL’s EYES
hansel was ten and his sister, Gretel, was eleven when their stepmother decided to get rid of them. They didn’t catch on at first, because the Hagmom (their secret name for her) had always hated them. So leaving them behind at the supermarket or forgetting to pick them up after school was no big deal.
It was only when their father got in on the “disappearing the kids” act that they realized it was serious. Although he was a weak man, they thought he might still love them enough to stand up to the Hagmom.
They realized he didn’t the day he took them out into the woods. Hansel wanted to do the whole Boy Scout thing and take a water bottle and a pile of other stuff, but their dad said they wouldn’t need it. It’d only be a short walk.
Then he dumped them. They’d just gotten out of the car when he took off. They didn’t try to chase him. They knew the signs. The Hagmom had hypnotized him again or whatever she did to make him do things.
“Guess she’s going to get a nasty surprise when we get back,” said Hansel, taking out the map he’d stuffed down the front of his shirt. Gretel silently handed him the compass she’d tucked into her sock.
It took them three hours to get home, first walking, then in a highway patrol cruiser, and finally in their dad’s car. They were almost back when the Hagmom called on the cell phone. Hansel and Gretel could hear her screaming. But when they finally got home, she smiled and kissed the air near their cheeks.
“She’s planning something,” said Gretel. “Something bad.”
Hansel agreed, and they both slept in their clothes, with some maps, the compass, and candy bars stuffed down their shirts.
Gretel dreamed a terrible dream. She saw the Hagmom creep into their room, quiet as a cat in her velvet slippers. She had a big yellow sponge in her hand, a sponge that smelled sweet, but too sweet to be anything but awful. She went to Hansel’s bunk and pushed the sponge against his nose and face. His arms and legs thrashed for a second, then he fell back like he was dead.
Gretel tried and tried to wake from the dream, but when she finally opened her eyes, there was the yellow sponge and the Hagmom’s smiling face and then the dream was gone and there was nothing but total, absolute darkness.
When Gretel did wake up, she wasn’t at home. She was lying in an alley. Her head hurt, and she could hardly open her eyes because the sun seemed too bright.
“Chloroform,” whispered Hansel. “The Hagmom drugged us and got Dad to dump us.”
“I feel sick,” said Gretel. She forced herself to stand and noticed that there was nothing tucked into her shirt, or Hansel’s, either. The maps, candy bars, and compass were gone.
“This looks bad,” said Hansel, shielding his eyes with his hand and taking in the piles of trash, the broken windows, and the lingering charcoal smell of past fires. “We’re in the old part of the city that got fenced off after the riots.”
“She must hope someone will kill us,” said Gretel. She scowled and picked up a jagged piece of glass, winding an old rag around it so she could use it like a knife.
“Probably,” agreed Hansel, who wasn’t fooled. He knew Gretel was scared, and so was he.
“Let’s look around,” Gretel said. Doing something would be better than just standing still, letting the fear grow inside them.
They walked in silence, much closer together than usual, their elbows almost bumping. The alley opened into a wide street that wasn’t any better. The only sign of life was a flock of pigeons.
But around the next corner, Hansel backed up so suddenly that Gretel’s glass knife almost went into his side. She was so upset, she threw it away. The sound of shattering glass echoed through the empty streets and sent the pigeons flying.
“I almost stabbed you, you moron!” exclaimed Gretel. “Why did you stop?”
“There’s a shop,” said Hansel. “A brand-new one.”
“Let me see,” said Gretel. She looked around the corner for a long time, till Hansel got impatient and tugged at her collar, cutting off her breath.
“It is a shop,” she said. “A Sony PlayStation shop. That’s what’s in the windows. Lots of games.”
“Weird,” said Hansel. “I mean, there’s nothing here. No one to buy anything.”
Gretel frowned. Somehow the shop frightened her, but the more she tried not to think of that, the more scared she got.
“Maybe it got left by accident,” added Hansel. “You know, when they just fenced the whole area off after the fires. ”
“Maybe…” said Gretel.
“Let’s check it out,” said Hansel. He could sense Gretel’s uneasiness, but to him the shop seemed like a good sign.
“I don’t want to,” said Gretel, shaking her head.
“Well, I’m going,” said Hansel. After he’d gone six or seven steps, Gretel caught up with him. Hansel smiled to himself. Gretel could never stay behind.
The shop was strange. The windows were so clear that you could see all the way inside to the rows of PlayStations all set up ready to go, connected to really big television screens. There was even a Coke machine and a snack machine at the back.
Hansel touched the door with one finger, a bit hesitantly. Half of him wanted it to be locked, and half of him wanted it to give a little under his hand. But it did more than that. It slid open automatically, and a cool breeze of air-conditioned air blew across his face.
He stepped inside. Gretel reluctantly followed. The door shut behind them, and instantly all the screens came on and were running games. Then the Coke machine clunked out a couple of cans of Coke, and the snack machine whirred and hummed and a whole bunch of candy bars and chocolate piled up outside the slot.
“Excellent!” exclaimed Hansel happily, and he went over and picked up a Coke. Gretel put out her hand to stop him, but it was too late.
“Hansel, I don’t like this,” said Gretel, moving back to the door. There was something strange about all this—the flicker of the television screens reachi
ng out to her, beckoning her to play, trying to draw them both in….
Hansel ignored her, as if she had ceased to exist. He swigged from the can and started playing a game. Gretel ran over and tugged at his arm, but his eyes never left the screen.
“Hansel!” Gretel screamed. “We have to get out of here!”
“Why?” asked a soft voice.
Gretel shivered. The voice sounded human enough, but it instantly gave her the mental picture of a spider, welcoming flies. Flies it meant to suck dry and hang like trophies in its web.
She turned around slowly, telling herself it couldn’t really be a spider, trying to blank out the image of a hideous eight-legged, fat-bellied, fanged monstrosity.
When she saw it was only a woman, she didn’t feel any better. A woman in her mid-forties, maybe, in a plain black dress, showing her bare arms. Long, sinewy arms that ended in narrow hands and long, grasping fingers. Gretel couldn’t look directly at her face, just glimpsing bright-red lipstick, a hungry mouth, and the darkest of sunglasses.
“So you don’t want to play the games like your brother, Hansel,” said the woman. “But you can feel their power, can’t you, Gretel?”
Gretel couldn’t move. Her whole body was filled up with fear, because this woman was a spider, Gretel thought, a hunting spider in human shape, and she and Hansel were well and truly caught. Without thinking, she blurted out, “Spider!”
“A spider?” laughed the woman, her red mouth spreading wide, lips peeling back to reveal nicotine-stained teeth. “I’m not a spider, Gretel. I’m a shadow against the moon, a dark shape in the night doorway, a catch-as-catch-can…witch!”
“A witch,” whispered Gretel. “What are you going to do with us?”
“I’m going to give you a choice that I have never given before,” whispered the witch. “You have some smattering of power, Gretel. You dream true, and strong enough that my machines cannot catch you in their dreaming. The seed of a witch lies in your heart, and I will tend it and make it grow. You will be my apprentice and learn the secrets of my power, the secrets of the night and the moon, of the twilight and the dawn. Magic, Gretel, magic! Power and freedom and dominion over beasts and men!
