Children of Avalon

by Meredith Bond

  “My man had them. Well, he had the girls and was certain the young man would come to rescue them, but he did not. We’re still not certain how the girls managed to escape. They were thrown into the river to drown, tied to a stake, but somehow...well, he tells me he is certain that they are not at the bottom of the river as they should be.”

  Nimuë felt another stab of exasperation pierce her side. “How does he know this?”

  Lord Lefevre shrugged and held out his hands. “I believe he has a young man who is a strong swimmer. He searched for the bodies but found none. He thought perhaps the water carried them downstream, and he searched there as well, but they were nowhere to be found.”

  At this, Nimuë had to forcibly keep herself from uttering the scathing remarks that were desperate to leap out of her mouth.

  “Could they...could they have disappeared? Magically, I mean?” the man asked hesitantly.

  Nimuë wondered about that for a moment. It was possible Scai could move with the wind if she were powerful enough, but not the other one. She was tied to the element of fire. Deep in the water, she would have been powerless to do anything. No, there must have been...

  “The young man! He must have saved them,” Father du Lac said.

  “But how?”

  “I do not know. But that is the only explanation. These witches are wily creatures.” She finished her wine and then began to pace back and forth, trying to think of what could be done.

  Clearly the trio was too powerful and too clever for ordinary men to handle. The animals she had set on them had been able to hurt them, but it was entirely possible that they would have found some way to defeat them if she had given them more time. No, there was only one choice left.

  She had hoped to keep herself, or rather, Father du Lac, out of this fight, but now there was no other choice.

  Father du Lac stopped his pacing and turned toward Lord Lefevre, who was still sitting, watching him in silent expectation. “Well, it looks like I am just going to have to see to this myself.”

  Yes, the more she thought about it, the more logical it sounded. It was inevitable that she would have to become involved. She should have known she could not trust others to take care of something as important as this.

  “How, Father? If my men can’t capture them or kill them once they have been captured, what do you think you can do?”

  Nimuë forced a smile onto du Lac’s face. “Show them the way to God. What else can an old priest such as myself do?”

  Lord Lefevre opened his mouth. Nimuë didn’t know if it was in shock or to tell her what a ridiculous idea that was, but whichever it was, he clearly thought the better of it. He snapped his mouth shut again and stood up. “What can I say, Father? I’m not entirely certain that good luck would cover it.”

  Father du Lac laughed. “I do not need luck, my son. I have God.” And more power than you could possibly imagine, Nimuë added silently to herself.

  “So that is it. As soon as you figure out where they are, you are just going to go and kill our children,” Morgan’s voice said soon after Lord Lefevre left the room.

  Nimuë walked over to her silver bowl. Her sister’s reflection was shimmering in the water, not looking happy at all.

  “I do not see that I have much of a choice, do you?” Nimuë admitted with more honesty than she probably should have.

  “Of course you have a choice.”

  “Morgan, they are destined to kill me if I do not kill them first,” Nimuë pointed out to her sister—surely, this was not the first time she had done so?

  “But you are forgetting something,” Morgan said.

  Nimuë frowned at her sister and began to think. “What? The prophecy clearly states...”

  “It clearly states the Children of Avalon will find Merlin’s chalice and ‘then one, with the power of three, the greatest earthly force will be’,” her sister quoted. “That is what you are after, is it not? To be the greatest earthly force?”

  Her sister knew her entirely too well. “Yes, of course, that is what I want,” Nimuë sighed.

  “Then what you want is not the children, but the chalice,” Morgan pointed out.

  That stopped Nimuë for a moment.

  “The prophecy states that it is the one who holds the chalice who will be powerful. It is that magic, Merlin’s magic, that will make our children truly powerful, unless you kill them first. But if you get the chalice first...”

  “Then I will become the most powerful. Why did I not think of that?” Nimuë shook her head. How could she have missed this most important piece? She did not need the children at all—except to find the chalice. “But where is the chalice?”

  “That I do not know,” Morgan said with a shrug of her shoulders.

  “Wait, Dagonet knows. He is taking them there.” A smile began to spread onto Nimuë’s face. “I suppose I will just have to ask him.”

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  I just don’t understand,” Sir Dagonet said, scratching his head. “Should have turned north by now, don’t you think?”

  “I think we’re on the wrong road,” Bridget said.

  “It’s looking ever more likely, sir,” Dylan agreed.

  Sir Dagonet turned and looked at them. “Did we take the wrong fork?”

  I turned and looked toward Dylan so that Sir Dagonet couldn’t see the utter, bewildering sadness in my eyes. Dylan gave me the smallest of reassuring smiles, but clearly he was just as upset as I was, if not more.

  Sir Dagonet had no idea where we were going. We were completely lost and had been for two days now, four if I counted since the day Dylan had saved Bridget and me.

  “We went the wrong way at the last fork? You said that you were certain it was this road. I thought you knew where we were going and how to get there! I thought...” Bridget’s voice escalated, as did her fury.

  I put my hand on my sister’s shoulder to stop her. “I suggest we turn back and—”

  “Turn back! But we’ve been going in this direction for two days! It’s too late to turn back,” Bridget cried.

  “All right. Then let’s just begin to head north. Leave the road and just head straight north,” I offered.

  Sir Dagonet looked utterly dejected, but he nodded his head and turned his horse off of the road. “Can’t tell you how sorry I am about this, wot? Things seem to have changed,” he said, looking around.

  “It’s been a long time, sir. It’s all right,” I said.

  “It would have been all right if he had just admitted from the beginning that he didn’t know where he was going,” Bridget said under her breath. Her chest was still heaving with anger, but she was clearly working on controlling it.

  I turned around a little to frown at my sister. “It’s all right, Bridget.”

  “We’ve come this far. We will certainly make it,” Dylan put in.

  Bridget, wisely, didn’t say anything.

  We continued north, edging a little toward the west for most of that day. By late afternoon we discovered another road.

  “Ha! Look at this! This road is heading in the right direction, wot?” Sir Dagonet exclaimed with a lot more joy than he had shown for a while.

  “This must be the right road. The road to Avalon,” I said. I paused to take a deep, thankful breath of air and nearly laughed out loud as a light wind whipped my hair into my face. It was as if the wind itself was telling me that we were now going in the right direction.

  Dylan, too, perked up as the road began to follow a stream a little farther on.

  <><><>

  “Bridget,” I cooed softly. My sister had never slept late before. How funny. It was usually Bridget who woke me up. “Bridget, time to wake up,” I sang softly in her ear.

  My sister just turned over, presenting me with her back. “No. Go away,” she mumbled.

  “Come along now, Bridget. Got to get going, don’t you know?” Sir Dagonet said in cheerful, hearty voice.

  Bridget sat up. “What? Get going? Where...o
h, right.” She rubbed her eyes and stretched.

  I just sat back and laughed before getting up to tie our bags back onto the horses.

  “Oh, I was having the most lovely dream,” she said.

  “Really? You’ll have to tell us about it on our way,” Dylan said from behind her.

  She jumped a little then scowled at him. “And so I will,” she said, before sauntering off behind some trees to refresh herself.

  We were on the road quickly after that.

  “So, Bridget, going to tell us about this wonderful dream of yours, wot?” Sir Dagonet asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, around a mouthful of bread. “Well, let’s see, I only remember snatches of it. There were some trees. I remember that. Oddly shaped trees. They bent and twisted around themselves like a knot and...” She stopped speaking and gasped.

  Gripping my shoulder, she said, “It was the chalice! That’s what the tree was wrapped around.”

  I turned halfway to face her. “What?”

  “The chalice? You saw it?” Dylan asked, almost stopping his horse in his excitement.

  “Yes! That’s what was at the center of the knot of branches. It was a stone cup.” She closed her eyes and tried to remember. “What little I could see of it was white—sort of a creamy white stone. But I couldn’t see very much because of all of the branches wrapped around it.”

  “But where were they, these branches? How do we get there?” Dylan asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing anything else but these trees and following the branches inward to find the chalice.”

  “Don’t believe I’ve ever seen trees like that on Avalon,” Sir Dagonet put in.

  The three of them turned to him, but he just looked back at them, wide–eyed, with a bit of a smile on his face. “Sorry?”

  “What do you mean you’ve never seen trees like that? Does that mean you’ve never seen them, or that they aren’t there?” Dylan asked.

  Sir Dagonet gave a shrug. “Be pretty surprised if something like that grew there. Now, I’m not saying that they don’t. Haven’t been all over the island, mind you. But it just doesn’t sound like something that would grow on Avalon, don’t you know?”

  “So, is it possible these trees are not on Avalon? That...” I just couldn’t say it out loud. I shared a desperate look with Dylan.

  “That we’ve been heading in the wrong direction all this time?” Bridget finished for me. She had no qualms about stating that most uncomfortable thought.

  “Er, well, I don’t know. I mean, well, the Lady Morgan did call you to the isle, so we couldn’t be traveling in completely the wrong direction, wot?”

  “But we don’t know that we are heading in the right one,” Dylan clarified.

  “Well, no, not precisely.”

  Dylan turned to Bridget. “You’ve got to remember more of your dream. What else was there besides these trees? Where were they? Were they in a forest? On a plain? In the mountains? Where?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t remember any more than what I’ve told you,” she said, beginning to get angry and defensive.

  “It’s all right, Bridget,” I said, trying to calm her down. I gave Dylan a look telling him to stop his questioning. “Maybe tonight you’ll dream of it again, and then you can try to remember more.”

  “Or I can go into your dreams and see for myself,” Dylan offered. “That would be a lot faster.”

  “Go into my dream? No! Absolutely not.”

  “But why not?” he asked. “I can do that.”

  “Yes, I know you can do that. Scai told me all about how you went into her dreams to try and convince her not to come meet our family.” Bridget glared at him for a moment. “Thank you very much, but I will not allow you to get into my head. Ever!”

  Dylan looked nonplussed for a moment, and perhaps a little guilty as well. “I promise you, I wouldn’t do anything but look around and try to figure out where those trees are.”

  “No.”

  “But Bridget, if that’s the only way we’re going to find out where the chalice is...” I wouldn’t particularly relish the idea of Dylan entering my dreams either, even after all that had happened between us—unless it was really important. But this was, most definitely, truly important.

  “No! And I’m not going to talk about it anymore. It’s out of the question.”

  “But, Bridget,” Sir Dagonet tried.

  Bridget just kept her gaze steadily in front of her and refused to even acknowledge anyone.

  Dylan sighed heavily. I felt the same way, although I didn’t vocalize it. There was nothing we could do but continue on in the direction we were heading—until Bridget allowed Dylan into her dream, or she could figure it out for herself.

  That night, as we were settling down to sleep, Dylan called over to Bridget from next to me where he’d been sleeping since he’d rescued us from the river. “Bridget, are you certain...”

  “Completely. You stay out of my dreams, Dylan!” Bridget called back. “And I will know if you even try.”

  I didn’t know how she would, but I figured that since she grew up in a Vallen family, she knew how to protect herself from unwanted magical invasions into her mind.

  Dylan sighed but settled down to sleep. It hadn’t always been easy just sleeping next to him, we both wanted to do so much more, but we didn’t have the privacy to do so. Instead, we’d had to settle for stolen kisses and “accidental” brushing up against each other.

  The following morning, we all looked to Bridget with the hope that she’d be able to tell us more. She, however, kept her eyes on the ground. “All I saw were the trees,” she mumbled before going off to refresh herself.

  We continued heading west, sometimes bearing northwest, but still generally staying in the one direction. Each day brought us closer to the seashore. The cool sky above became clearer and bluer, if that was even possible. The forest thinned out as we continued to follow the river that would eventually lead us straight to the sea. Each day the wind grew stronger, and we could all feel the heart of autumn descending upon us.

  If only we knew where we were going. If we even had an inkling where these trees were. But Bridget was absolutely dead set against Dylan entering her dream and nothing I, Sir Dagonet, or Dylan could do would change her mind.

  “I just don’t trust him, Scai,” Bridget said, without me even asking. She spoke so quietly so that neither Dylan nor Sir Dagonet, who were both riding a little ahead, could hear her. “I know you two are involved, but I just don’t trust him.”

  “I understand that, Bridget, really I do.”

  “No, you don’t,” Bridget said. “I know you like him—a lot, but I just...well, I just can’t.”

  “You don’t even like him at all?” I asked, a little astounded at this admission.

  “No. I mean, I do like him a little. But I can’t trust him. He hasn’t earned it.”

  I was silent. I knew Dylan had done quite a few things that warranted suspicion, but somehow, I knew deep inside of me that he was a trustworthy person—a good man. I tried to convey this to Bridget, but to no avail. Nothing I said could convince her otherwise.

  “But Bridget,” I said, finally after much debate back and forth, “if you don’t trust him, we may never find the chalice.”

  “No. We’ll find it. I’m absolutely certain of that.”

  As we traveled, I had the oddest feeling we were going in circles. Oh, I knew we were heading west, but every so often something would look familiar, like I’d seen it once before. I just couldn’t place where.

  There still had to be something I could do to convince my sister to open up to Dylan and allow him into her dream.

  I called him over to help me clean up after the evening meal one night. “Dylan, I wanted...”

  “I know,” he said, interrupting me. He reached out and took my hand. “I’ve been wanting to be with you, too. It’s just awkward with Sir Dagonet and Bridget with us every moment.” He gave me a knowing sm
ile and then turned to see if the others were watching us.

  I turned, too, but Bridget and Sir Dagonet were involved in their own pursuits and not even looking toward where Dylan and I sat. As I began to turn my head back, Dylan’s lips caught my own, startling me. I pulled back, but only for a moment. It was so wonderful to kiss him. To be close to him, but I had more important things to discuss with him.

  “Dylan,” I started again, continuing before I could be put off or distracted. “You’ve got to do something about Bridget. You’ve got to make her trust you.”

  He stopped trying to kiss me, and instead, just looked at me. “And how do you propose I do that?”

  I, too, sat back. “I don’t know. But it’s because she doesn’t trust you that she won’t allow you to enter her dream.”

  He scowled at the knives we were supposed to be cleaning. “Well, I’m sorry about that, but there isn’t anything that I can do.”

  “Please.” I put my hand onto his arm. “Can you try talking with her, at least?”

  He took my hand and lifted it to his lips. Ever so gently, he pressed a kiss onto my knuckles. “I’ll see what I can do, but honestly, I don’t have great hopes that it will change anything.”

  I made sure to leave Dylan and Bridget some space the following day so that they could have a private talk. Bridget wasn’t very helpful, though. Each time Dylan tried to get her apart, she moved away from him. Finally, with a strong look from me, she stopped avoiding him.

  I didn’t know what they said to each other, but neither one looked particularly happy after their conversation. Once again that night, as he did each night, Dylan offered to go into her dreams, and Bridget flatly refused.

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  What...?” Dagonet jumped, turning around. A startled “Oh!” popped out of his mouth when he caught sight of her.

  Nimuë just stood there for a moment, watching all the color drain from his face. Within moments his rosy cheeks had turned a sour shade of white, not too different from the color of the old man’s beard.

  “Good evening, Dagonet,” she said pleasantly.