But nay. This scratchy wool must be carded, now.
All three of us have changed. Small and slender as ever, perched gracefully on the fountain rim, Lady Nimway has taken on a wealth of wrinkles; and her newly knobbly fingers strain at the spindle. But Victory glints in the sun, swung against her green gown; and I feel her aura (invisible in strong light), wider than the villa.
Alanna has gained weight and calm. Marriage and acceptance of loss have restored the dignity she must have owned in the Human world. (Wandering out there, I saw Alanna-like ladies. Now I know what she must have been, long before Percival was ever born.) Now, like a serene Goddess she balances beside Nimway, spinning with Human ease.
Heavily pregnant, I sit on the ground a little away, pretending to card wool. Bits of wool fly into eyes and nose, and dust my tunic. After this, I will swim!
The Lady asks me again, “Lili? You are sure my son Lugh gave you no sign? No message to bring back to me?”
Inwardly, I sigh. I have told the Lady, and I have told her…On this subject she is as blind, deaf, and wishful as any foolish Human!
“Lady, I thought Lancelot’s squire Mell was your son Lugh.”
Sniff!
“I never looked at Sir Lancelot! If he gave a sign, I did not see it.”
Sadly, she smiled down at her spindle.
“And I never dreamed he could be Fey!”
“He is not.”
Now, here is something new! “Your son Lugh is Human?”
“Born Human, Lili. Human blood. They say it always tells in the end. But now, Lili, try to remember. Did you ever hear Lancelot say, ‘When I was a boy on Apple Island’?”
“Never that I heard.”
“Maybe once he said, ‘When I go home’…?”
“Never, Lady.”
We have been through this before. Annoyed, I glance up at Nimway. And I see beyond her sad face. I see into her torn, wounded heart, that thrashes like a slowly dying animal.
Instinct whispers, Run! Get clear of this grief before it catches you.
My new Human Heart yearns to share it, to lift a good, sour portion of it from Nimway’s bowed shoulders to my own.
Oh, to skip out away from here!
“Lili!” Alanna scolds me lightly. “Do you imagine you are carding wool?”
“Achoo!” (Wool in nose.) “Nay, Alanna. I but play a game, here.”
“Whose babe is this wool for, after all? Your own hands should work it! If only a little.”
“I am not Human. Work bores me.”
“Hah! I’ll tell you a secret!” (Which she has told me before.) “Work bores us all. That’s how we die in the end, from that boredom. But how else will you wrap your little one?” As if her own work could not wrap all the little ones in the Forest!
“Why, in spiderwebs, Alanna! In cocoon silk!”
My Spirit walks under the apple trees of Avalon. My Spirit wades into the lake and beckons a passing duck. If I were on my feet right now—and free of this gently moving mound in my belly—I would vanish away while the ladies watched their threads!
Alanna glances up at the misty, mellow sky. “My dear husband must be poling across to bring me home by now.” So that is the coracle I sensed earlier, making for us. “Dear husband!” That word that so startled Percival is Sir Edik’s joy and glory!
Alanna wraps up her work. “Lili, will you look to see if he is coming?”
Very gladly I rise, tumbling my work in a heap. Delighted, I glide away through the dark entrance into open, unwalled sunlight.
Stretching, dancing slowly about on tiptoe, I look out over the lake. Here swim the ducks, geese, and swans I sensed from inside the villa walls. There drift the fishing coracles, turning and dipping, dragging full nets. And here comes the one I knew was aiming for the island. Dear Husband, coming to collect Dear Wife.
I step back into the dark entry and signal to Alanna.
Turning, I inspect the approaching coracle again. Maybe it’s not Sir Edik after all. Two heads bob in it—one white, one…sunny gold.
Sunny gold? On the Fey lake?
Gasp.
My babe within folds up his tiny knees. He gathers all his little force and kicks me, square and rough, in the side. Aaagh!
When I was young I went questing. That which I sought, I found. Now with new Power I can start fire with bare hands. I can see the secret thoughts of others, and their fates, bright and dark threads woven through their auras. But every day I pay again the high price for this Power. Daily I carry my Human Heart within, heavier than Percival’s babe.
This heavy Human Heart expands now in my throat, so I can hardly breathe.
Steadily the coracle draws near. Is it material? Or is it a vision of the future?
Or is it maybe a deceptive, false daydream born of desire? The Gods know there is enough desire loose here on Apple Island to engender such false seeing!
Alanna comes to stand beside me, bundle on shoulder. She shades her eyes, and gasps.
If she sees the coming coracle, the two heads, they are materially there. Alanna sees only material fact.
She draws in one great breath.
“Hush!” I seize her hand just in time to forestall one of her famous screams. This scream of joy would rend lake and sky, send birds up in rolling wing-thunder, and maybe break the good spell that draws the miraculous coracle close and closer.
Alanna lets out her great breath. She dumps her bundle, catches up her gown, and runs, heavy, stumbling, down to the shore.
Close in the coracle swings around as Sir Edik digs in his pole.
Silent, Alanna wades in.
Silent, Percival heaves himself out into knee-deep water.
Silent, Percy and Alanna wade together and fall, splash! to their knees.
Each meant to kneel to the other and beg forgiveness, in the Human way. But falling together, they simply embrace. Fumbling, clutching, straining together, they embrace in silence; forgiven and forgiving.
***
On his knees in the Fey lake, Percival clasped his giantess. Rough, white hair prickled his face. Strong arms trapped his neck. Breath sobbed warmth into his ear, while the rest of him sopped up lake-chill.
The cold Fey lake washed through Percival. It washed out his empty stomach, stinging wound, swollen heart. It washed out pride, yearning, confusion, the last shreds of anger and never-acknowledged fear.
Cleansed, he strove to rise. But Alanna hung on him, drenched and limp. He had to raise her with him. On the second try he heaved them both halfway up, only to splash back down. His third effort brought them to their feet, dripping and clinging.
Hopefully, he looked over Alanna’s shoulder to the only happy landscape of his childhood—Apple Island.
Here he had played with Lili, his only friend, while Alanna and Ivie visited the Lady. He and Lili had built bowers and dens of twigs, and modeled tiny figures from lake mud to live in them. They had learned Mage Merlin’s songs at his knee, and sung them, and then made up their own. Here they had netted minnows in the shallows, and shot darts at flitting songbirds. Here, Lili had helped him trap his first hare.
Or had all this been a dream?
Real Apple Island still rose gently from the lake. Loaded apple trees bowed down around lofty Counsel Oak. Lady Villa still gleamed, a little less white, through a few more encircling vines. The shore stretched rocky, autumn-brown.
A brown sapling lifted roots from land.
Graceful as a walking willow it came down to the water.
With no splash or gurgle, Lili stepped into the lake.
Percival’s clean-washed heart lurched and beat again.
Coming to him, small feet gliding like fish in the water, Lili shone.
Holy Michael! She always talked about auras. Now I’m seeing one!
Coming
to him, smiling, Lili waded through rosy light. Leaving no ripple she came to him.
“Lo, Lili! You shine so bright!”
Grail Counsel
Gold rings a center pearly white;
Around the gold, a blue ring bright;
Gold and blue, snow-dappled white.
Around the blue, red ruby light,
This too, snow-dappled pearly white.
Around the red ring, infinite white.
White inside and outside white,
Gold, blue, and red, snow-dappled white,
One day will meld, infinite white.
About the Author
Anne Eliot Crompton grew up in a college town in the 1940s, a time when women’s roles in myth were less acknowledged than today. When she married and moved to the country to raise children and animals, she realized how much heavy lifting had been done by women throughout human history. Part of her life’s work has been to shine light on their immense contribution to the human story. Having come full circle, she now lives in a college town in Vermont.
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