Marion Bradley - The Mists of Avalon

Wherever she might be, she could not simply stay. Either she would wander into a part of the world that was familiar to her again, find some landmark back to where she intended to go, or she would come to a place where the mists began and she could return to her own place that way.

She moved slowly in the thickening forest. There seemed to be a clearing ahead which she moved toward. It was surrounded by hazel trees, none of which, she knew instinctively, had ever been touched, even by the metal of a Druid knife, to cut the divining wands which could find water, hidden treasure, or poisonous things. There was a hazel grove on the island of Avalon, but she knew the trees there; had cut her own divining stick there, years ago when she was first learning such things. This was not the place. At the very edge of the grove she saw a small patch of one of the herbs she wanted. Well, she might as well take it now, she might as well get some good for coming here. She went and knelt, folding her skirts to make a pad under her knees for working, and began digging for the root.

Twice, as she grubbed in the earth, she had the sense that she was being watched, that little prickle in her back which comes to all who have lived t among wild things. But when she raised her eyes, although there was a shadow of movement in the trees, she could see no one watching.

The third time she delayed raising her eyes as long as she could, telling herself that no one would be there. She wrested the herb free from the earth and began stripping the root, murmuring the charm appointed for this use -a prayer to the Goddess to restore life to the bush uprooted, that while she took this one bush, others might grow in its place always. But the sense of being watched grew stronger, and at last Morgaine raised her eyes. Almost invisible at the edge of the trees, standing in shadow, a woman was watching her.

She was not one of the priestesses; she was not anyone Morgaine had ever seen before. She wore a gown of shadowy grey-green, the color of willow leaves when they grow old and dusty in late summer, and some kind of dark cloak. There was a tiny glimmer of gold at her throat. At first glance Morgaine thought she was one of the little dark people with whom she had awaited the killing of the King Stag. But the woman's bearing made her look quite unlike those small hunted people; she carried herself like a priestess or a queen. Morgaine had no idea of her age, but the deep-set eyes and the lines around them told her that the woman was not young.

"What are you doing, Morgaine of the Fairies?"

Ice prickled all along her spine. How did the woman know her name? But, concealing her fear with the skill of a priestess, she said, "If you know my name, lady, surely you can see what I am doing." Firmly she wrenched her eyes away from the dark gaze bent on her own, and returned to peeling the bark. Then she looked up again, half expecting that the strange woman would have disappeared as quickly as she had come, but she was still there, regarding Morgaine's work dispassionately. She said, her eyes now resting on Morgaine's grubby hands, die nail she had broken in her rooting, "Yes, I can see what you are doing, and what you intend to do. Why?"

"What is that to you?"

"Life is precious to my people," the woman said, "though we neither bear nor die as easily as your kind. But it is a marvel to me that you, Morgaine, who bear the royal line of the Old People, and thus are my far kinswoman, would seek to cast away the only child you will ever bear."

Morgaine swallowed hard. She scrambled to her feet, conscious of her grubby earth-covered hands, the half-stripped roots in her hand, her skirt wrinkled with kneeling on the damp muddy earth-like a goose girl before a High Priestess. She said defiantly, "What makes you say that? I am still young. Why do you think that if I cast this child forth I should not bear a dozen others?"

"I had forgotten that where the fairy blood is dilute, the Sight comes down to you maimed and incomplete," the stranger said. "Let it be enough to say: I have seen. Think twice, Morgaine, before you refuse what the Goddess sent you from the King Stag."

Suddenly Morgaine began to weep again. She said, stammering, "I don't want it! I didn't want it! Why did the Goddess do this to me? If you come from her, can you answer that, then?"

The strange woman looked at her sadly. "I am not the Goddess, Morgaine, nor even her emissary. My kind know neither Gods nor Goddesses, but only the breast of our mother who is beneath our feet and above our heads, from whom we come and to whom we go when our time is ended. Therefore we cherish life and weep to see it cast aside." She stepped forward and took the root from Morgaine's hand. She said, "You do not want this," and cast it aside on the ground.

"What is your name?" Morgaine cried. "What is this place?"

"You could not say my name in your language," said the lady, and suddenly Morgaine wondered what language they were speaking. "As for this place, it is the hazel grove, and it is what it is. It leads to my place, and the path yonder-" she pointed-"will lead you to your own place, in Avalon."

Morgaine followed her pointing finger with her eyes. Yes, there was a path there; she would have taken oath it had not been there when she came first into the grove.

The lady was still standing near her. There was a strange smell to her, not the strong smell of an unwashed body as it had been with the old tribal priestess, but a curious indefinable fragrance, as of some unfamiliar herb or leaf, a strange, fresh, almost bitter scent. Like the ritual herbs for the Sight, it made Morgaine feel as if there was some spell on her eyes so that she saw more than she saw at any other time, as if everything was new and clean, not the ordinary things of every day.

The lady said in a low, mesmerizing voice, "You can stay here with me if you will; I will make you sleep so that you will bear your child without pain, and I will take him for the strong life that is in him, and he will live longer than he would with your kind. For I see a destiny for him, in your world-he will try to do good, and like most of your kind, he will do only harm. But if he stays here among my people, he will live long and long-almost, you would say, forever-perhaps a magician or enchanter among us, living with trees and wild things that were never tamed by man. Stay here, little one; give me the babe you do not want to bear, then return to your people, knowing he is happy and will come to no harm."

Morgaine felt a sudden deathly chill. She knew that this woman confronting her was not wholly human; she herself bore some such taint of this ancient elf-blood-Morgaine of the Fairies, the old name with which Lancelet had taunted her. She pulled away from the fairy woman's hand and ran, ran toward the path she had pointed out, ran wildly as if pursued by a demon. Behind her the woman called, "Cast out your child, then, or strangle him at birth, Morgaine of the Fairies, for your people have their own fate, and what befalls the son of the King Stag? The king must die and be cast down in his turn ..." But her voice died away as Morgaine plunged into the mists, racing, stumbling, briars catching at her and pulling her down as she fled in panic flight, until she broke through the mists into glaring sun and silence and knew that she stood again on the familiar shores of Avalon.

THE MOON WAS DARK in the sky again. Avalon was covered in mist and summer fog, but Viviane had been priestess for so many years that she knew the moon's changes as if they ran in the tides of her own blood. She paced the floor of her house silently, and after a time told one of the priestesses, "Bring me my harp." But when she sat with the pale willow-wood harp on her knee, she only touched the strings idly, without the will or the heart to make music.