Marion Bradley - The Mists of Avalon

"Lady, I cannot."

Viviane rose from the seat and her face was terrible; the young priestess backed away so swiftly that she almost fell over her skirt. "What has" happened to the lady Morgaine?"

"Lady-" the young woman said stammering, "she-she was not in her room, and I asked everywhere. I found-I found this in her room," she said, holding out the veil and deerskin tunic, the silver crescent and the little sickle knife which Morgaine had been given at her initiation. "And they told me on the shore that she had summoned the barge and gone away to the mainland. They thought she went by your orders."

Viviane drew a long breath, reached out and took the dagger and crescent from the priestess. She looked at the food on the table and a terrible sense of weakness assailed her; she sat down and quickly ate some bread and drank a cup of water from the Holy Well. Then she said, "It is not your fault, I am sorry I spoke harshly to you." She stood with her hand on Morgaine's little knife and for the first time in her life, as she looked down at her hand, she saw the pulsing of the vein there and thought how easily she could draw the knife across it and watch her life spurt forth. Then would the Death-crone have come for me, and not for Morgaine. If she must have blood, let her have mine. But Morgaine had left the knife; she would not hang herself or cut her wrists. She had, no doubt, gone to her mother for comfort and counsel. She would come back one day, and if not, it was in the hands of the Goddess.

When she was alone again, she went out of her house and, by the pale shimmer of the newborn moon, climbed along the path to her mirror.

Arthur is crowned and a king, she thought; all that I have wrought for in the last twenty years has come to pass. Yet I am here alone and bereft. Let it be as the Goddess wills with me, but let me see once again the face of my daughter, my only child, before I die; let me know that it will be well with her. Mother, in your name.

But the face of the mirror showed only silence, and shadows, and behind and through it all, a sword in the hands of her own son, Balan.

MORGAINE SPEAKS ...

The little dark oarsmen had not looked twice at me; they were used to Viviane's comings and goings in such garb as she chose, and whatever a priestess chose to do was good in their eyes. None of them presumed to speak to me, and as for me, I kept my face resolutely turned to the outside world.

I could have stolen from Avalon by the hidden path. This way, taking the boat, Viviane was sure to hear that I had gone forth ... but even to myself I was afraid to admit the fear that kept me from the hidden path, that my steps would take me not to the mainland, but to that unknown country where strange flowers and trees grew untouched by mankind, and the sun shone never, and the mocking eyes of the fairy woman saw clearly into my very soul. I still bore the herbs, tied in a little pouch at my waist, but as the boat moved on silent oars into the mists of the Lake, I untied the bag and let it fall into the water. It seemed that something gleamed there under the surface of the Lake, like a shadow ... a glimmer of gold, perhaps jewels; but I looked away, knowing that the oarsmen were waiting for me to raise the mists.

Avalon lay behind me, renounced; the Island lay fair in the rising sun, but I did not turn to look my last on the Tor or the ring stones.

I would not be a pawn for Viviane, giving a son to my brother for some secret purpose of the Lady of the Lake. Somehow I never doubted that it would be a son. Had I believed I would bear a daughter, I would have stayed in Avalon, giving the Goddess the daughter I owed to her shrine. Never, in all the years since, have I ceased to regret that the Goddess sent me a son, rather than a daughter to serve her in temple and grove.

And so I spoke the magical words for the last time, as I believed then, and the mists drew back, and we came to the shores of the Lake. I felt as if I were waking from a long dream. I had asked, looking for the first time upon Avalon, "Is it real?" and I remembered what Viviane had answered me: "It is more real than any other place." But it was real no more. I looked on the dismal reeds and thought, this only is real, and the years in Avalon no more than a dream which will fade and be gone as I wake.

Rain was falling; the drops splashed coldly into the Lake. I put my heavy cloak over my head and stepped onto the real shore, watching for a moment as the boat faded again into the mists, then resolutely turning away.

I never doubted where I should go. Not to Cornwall, though my whole soul longed for the country of my childhood, the long arms of rock stretching into the dark sea, the deep and shadowed valleys lying between slate cliffs, the beloved and half-forgotten shoreline of Tintagel. Igraine would have welcomed me there. But she was content within convent walls, and it seemed good to me that she should stay there untroubled. Nor did I ever think of going to Arthur, although I have no doubt he would have pitied and sheltered me.

The Goddess had had her way with us. I felt some of the shared regret for what had happened that morning-what we had done as Goddess and God had been ordained by ritual, but what had happened at sunrise, that had been for ourselves. But that, too, was as the Goddess would have it. It is only humankind who make these distinctions of blood times and kindred; the beast-kind know nothing of such things, and after all, man and woman are of the beast-kind. But in kindness to Arthur, who had been reared as a Christian, he should never know that he had fathered a son in what he would call grievous sin.

As for me, I was not priest-bred or priest-ridden. The child now in my womb -I resolved this firmly-had not been gotten by any mortal man. He had been sent to me by the King Stag, the Horned One, as was lawful for the first child of a sworn priestess.

So I turned my steps toward the North, without fear of the long journey over moorland and fell which would bring me at last to the kingdom of Orkney, and to my kinswoman Morgause.

1

Far to the north, where Lot was king, the snow lay deep on the fells, and 'even at midday there was often no more than a twilit fog. On the rare days when the sun shone, the men could get out for some hunting, but the women were imprisoned in the castle. Morgause, idly twirling her spindle-she hated spinning as much as ever, but the room was too dark for any finer work-felt an icy draft from the opened door and looked up. She said in mild reproof, "It is too cold for that, Morgaine, and you have been complaining of the cold all day; now would you turn us all into icicles?"

"I was not complaining," said Morgaine. "Did I say a word? The room is as stuffy as a privy, and the smoke stinks. I want to breathe-no more!" She pushed the door shut and went back to the fire, rubbing her hands and shivering. "I have not once been warm since Midsummer."

"I doubt that not at all," said Morgause. "Your little passenger in there steals all the heat from your bones-he is warm and snug, and his mother shivers. It is always so."

"At least Midwinter is now past, the light comes earlier and stays later," said one of Morgause's women. "And perhaps in another fortnight, you will have your babe with you ... ."

Morgaine did not answer but stood shivering near the fire, chafing her hands as if they ached. Morgause thought that the girl looked like her own ghost, her face sharpened and fined to deathly thinness, her hands bony as skeleton sticks contrasted with the huge bulging of her pregnant belly. There were great dark circles under her eyes, and the lids were red as if sore with long weeping; but in all the moons Morgaine had been in this house, Morgause had not seen the younger woman shed a single tear.