The Mists of Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  She laughed and told him that she had climbed it often. “And as for the skirts, I am used to them,” she said, “but if they get into my way I will not hesitate to tuck them up above my knees.”

  His smile was slow and delightful. “Most women I know would think themselves too modest to show their bare legs.”

  Morgaine flushed. “I have never thought modesty had much to do with bared legs for climbing—surely men know that women have legs like their own. It cannot be so much of an offense of modesty to see what they must be able to imagine. I know some of the Christian priests speak so, but they seem to think the human body is the work of some devil, not of God, and that no one could possibly see a woman’s body without going all into a rage to possess it.”

  He looked away from her, and she realized that beneath the outward assurance he was still shy, and that pleased her. Together they set off upward, Morgaine, who was strong and hardy from much running and walking, setting a pace which astonished him and which, after the first few moments, he found it difficult to match. About halfway up the slope Morgaine paused, and it was a definite satisfaction to her to hear him breathing hard when her own breath still came easily, unforced. She wound the loose folds of her skirt up around her waist, letting only a single drape hang to her knees, and went on along the steeper, rockier part of the slope. She had never before had the slightest hesitation in baring her legs, but now, when she knew he was looking at them, she could not keep from remembering that they were shapely and strong, and she wondered if he really thought her immodest after all. At the top, she climbed up over the rim of the hill and sat down in the shadow of the ring stones. A minute or two later he came over the edge behind her and flung himself down, panting.

  When he could speak again, he said, “I suppose I have been riding too much and not walking and climbing enough! You, you are not even short of breath.”

  “Well, but I am accustomed to coming up here, and I do not always stop to go round by the processional way,” she said.

  “And on the priests’ Isle there is not even a shadow of the ring stones,” he said, and pointed.

  “No,” she said. “In their world there is only their church and its tower. If we wanted to listen with the ears of the spirit we could hear the church bells . . . they are shadows here, and in their world, we should be shadows. I sometimes wonder if that is why they avoid the church and keep great fasts and vigils on our holy days—because it would be too uncanny to feel all around them the shadow of the ring stones and perhaps even, for those who still had some shadow of the Sight, to feel and sense all around them the comings and goings of the Druids and hear the whisper of their hymns.”

  Lancelet shivered and it seemed that a cloud covered the sun for a moment. “And you, you have the Sight? You can see beyond the veil that separates the worlds?”

  “Everyone has it,” Morgaine said, “but I am trained to it beyond most women. Would you see, Galahad?”

  He shivered again and said, “I beg you, do not call me by that name, cousin.”

  She laughed. “So even though you live among Christians, you have that old belief of the fairy folk, that one who knows your true name can command your spirit if he will? You know my name, cousin. What would you have me call you? Lance, then?”

  “What you will, save for the name my mother gave me. I still fear her voice when she speaks that name in a certain tone. I seem to have drunk in that fear from her breasts. . . .”

  She reached over to him and laid her fingertips over the spot between his brows which was sensitive to the Sight. She breathed softly on it, and heard his gasp of astonishment, for the ring stones above them seemed to melt away into shadows. Before them now the whole top of the Tor stretched, with a little wattle-and-daub church rising beneath a low stone tower which bore a crude painting of an angel.

  Lancelet crossed himself swiftly as a line of grey-clad forms came toward them, as it seemed.

  “Can they see us, Morgaine?” His voice was a rough whisper.

  “Some of them, perhaps, can see us as shadows. A few may think we are some of their own people, or that their eyes are dazzled with the sun and they see what is not there,” she said, with a catch of breath, for what she told him was a Mystery which she really should not have spoken to an uninitiated person. But she had never in her life felt so close to anyone; she felt she could not bear it, to keep secrets from him, and made him this gift, telling herself that the Lady wanted him for Avalon. What a Merlin he would make!

  She could hear the soft sound of singing: O thou lamb of God, who drawest away from us all evil of this world, Lord Christ, show us thy mercy. . . .

  He was singing it softly under his breath, as the church vanished and the ring stones towered again above them.

  She said quietly, “Please. It is an offense to the Great Goddess to sing that here; the world she has made is not evil, and no priestess of hers will allow man to call it so.”

  “As you will.” He was silent, and again the shadow of cloud passed over his face. His voice was musical, so sweet that when he ceased singing she longed to hear it again.

  “Do you play the harp, Lance? Your voice is beautiful enough for a bard.”

  “As a child, I was taught. After, I had only the usual training befitting a nobleman’s son,” said Lancelet. “I learned only so great a love of music as to be discontented with my own sounds.”

  “Is it so? A Druid in training must be a bard before he is a priest, for music is one of the keys to the laws of the universe.”

  Lancelet sighed. “A temptation, that; one of the few reasons I can see for embracing that vocation. But my mother would have me sit in Avalon and play the harp while the world falls apart around us and the Saxons and the wild Northmen burn and ravage and pillage—have you ever seen a village sacked by the Saxons, Morgaine?” Quickly, he answered his own question. “No, you have not, you are sheltered here in Avalon, outside of the world where these things are happening, but I must think of them. I am a soldier, and it seems to me that in these times, defending this beautiful land against their burning and looting is the only work befitting a man.” His face was indrawn, looking on dreadful things.

  “If war is so evil,” Morgaine said, “why not shelter from it here? So many of the old Druids died in that last of great magics which removed this holy place from profanation, and we have not enough sons to train in their place.”

  He sighed. “Avalon is beautiful, and if I could make all kingdoms as peaceful as Avalon, then I would gladly stay here forever, and spend my days in harping and making music and speaking with the spirits of the great trees . . . but it seems to me no work for a man, to skulk here in safety when others outside must suffer. Morgaine, let us not speak of it now. For today, I beg you, let me forget. The world outside is filled with strife, and I came here for a day or two of peace; will you not give it to me?” His voice, musical and deep, trembled a little, and the pain in it hurt her so profoundly she thought for a moment that she would weep. She reached for his hand and pressed it.

  “Come,” she said. “You wanted to see if the view was as you remembered. . . .”

  She led him from the ring stones and they looked out over the Lake. Bright water, rippling softly in the sunlight, stretched all around the Island; far below, a little boat, no larger at this height than a fish leaping, streaked the surface. Other islands, indistinct in the mist, rose as dim shapes, blurred by distance and by the magical veil which removed Avalon from the world.

  “Not very far from here,” he said, “there is an old fairy fort at the top of a hill, and the view from the wall is such that standing there, a man can see the Tor, and the Lake, and there is an island which is like the shape of a coiled dragon—” He gestured with his shapely hand.

  “I know the place,” Morgaine said. “It is on one of the old magical lines of power which crisscross the earth; I was brought there once to feel the earth powers there. The fairy people knew those things—I can sense them a little, feel the
earth and the air tingling. Can you feel it? You too are of that blood, being Viviane’s son.”

  He said in a low voice, “It is easy to feel the earth and air tingling with power, here in this magical isle.”

  He turned away from the view, saying as he yawned and stretched, “That climb must have taxed me more than I thought; and I rode much of the night. I am ready to sit in the sun and eat some of that bread you carried here for us!”

  Morgaine led him into the very center of the ring stones. If he was sensitive at all, she thought, he would be aware of the immense power here.

  “Lie back on the earth and she will fill you with her strength,” she said, and handed him a piece of the bread, which she had spread thickly with butter and comb honey before wrapping it in a bit of deerskin. They ate slowly, licking their fingers free of the honey, and he reached for her hand, taking it up playfully and sucking a bit of honey off her finger.

  “How sweet you are, cousin,” he said, laughing, and she felt her whole body alive with the touch. She picked up his hand to return the gesture, and suddenly dropped it as if it had burned her; to him it was only a game, perhaps, but it could never be so to her. She turned away, hiding her burning face in the grass. Power from the earth seemed to flow up through her, filling her with the strength of the very Goddess herself.

  “You are a child of the Goddess,” she said at last. “Do you know nothing of her Mysteries?”

  “Very little, though my father once told me how I was begotten—a child of the Great Marriage between the king and the land. And so, I suppose, he thought I should be loyal to the very land of Brittany which is mother and father to me. . . . I have been at the great center of the old Mysteries, the great Avenue of Stones at Karnak, where once was the ancient Temple; that is a place of power, like to this one. I can feel the power here,” he said. He turned over and looked up into her face. “You are like the Goddess of this place,” he said wonderingly. “In the old worship, I know, men and women come together under her power, though the priests would like to forbid it, as they would like to tear down all the ancient stones like these above us, and the great ones of Karnak. . . . They have already torn down a part of them, but the task is too great.”

  “The Goddess will prevent them,” said Morgaine simply.

  “Maybe so,” Lancelet said, and reached up to touch the blue crescent on her forehead. “It is here that you touched me when you made me see into the other world. Has this to do with the Sight, Morgaine, or is that another of your Mysteries of which you may not speak? Well, I’ll not ask you, then. But I feel as if I had been ravished into one of the old fairy forts where, they say, a hundred years can pass in a night.”

  “Not so long as that,” Morgaine said, laughing, “though it is true that time runs differently there. But some of the bards, I have heard, can still come and go from the elf country . . . it has moved further than Avalon into the mists, that is all.” And as she spoke, she shivered.

  Lancelet said, “Maybe when I go back to the real world, the Saxons will all have been vanquished . . . and gone.”

  “And will you weep because there is no longer any reason for your life?”

  He laughed and shook his head, holding her hand in his. After a minute he said in a low voice, “Have you, then, gone to the Beltane fires to serve the Goddess?”

  “No,” said Morgaine quietly. “I am virgin while the Goddess wills; most likely I am to be kept for the Great Marriage . . . Viviane has not made her will or the will of the Goddess known to me.” She bent her head and let her hair fall across her face, feeling shy before him, as if he could read her thoughts and know the desire which swept through her like a sudden flame. Would she indeed lay down that guarded virginity if he should ask it of her? Never before had the prohibition seemed a hardship; now it seemed that a sword of fire was laid between them. There was a long silence, while the shadows passed across the sun, and there was no sound except the chirping of small insects in the grass. At last Lancelet reached up and drew her down, laying a soft kiss, which burned like fire, on the crescent on her brow. His voice was soft and intense.

  “All the Gods together forbid I should trespass where the Goddess has marked you for her own, my dear cousin. I hold you sacred as the Goddess herself.” He held her close; she could feel that he was shaking, and a happiness so intense that it was pain flooded through her.

  She had never known what it was to be happy, not since she was a small and heedless child; happiness was something she dimly remembered before her mother had burdened her with the weight of her little brother. And here in the Island, life had soared into the free spaces of the spirit and she had known exaltation and the delights of power as well as the suffering and struggle of the pain and the ordeals; but never the pure happiness she knew now. The sun seemed to burn more brightly, the clouds to move through the sky like great wings against the dazzling, sparkling air, every bud of clover in the grass shimmered with its own interior light, a light that seemed to shine out from her as well. She saw herself mirrored in Lancelet’s eyes and knew that she was beautiful, and that he desired her, and that his love and respect for her were so great that he would even hold his own desire within bounds. She felt she would burst with her joy.

  Time stopped. She swam in delight. He did no more than stroke her cheek with the gentlest of feather-light caresses, and neither of them wanted more. She played softly with his fingers, feeling the calluses on his palms.

  After a long time, he drew her against him and spread the edges of his cloak over her. They lay side by side, barely touching, letting the power of the sun and the earth and the air move through them in harmony, and she dropped into a dreamless sleep through which she was still conscious of their intertwined hands. It seemed that some time, a very long time ago, they had lain like this, content, timeless, in an endless joyful peace, as if they were part of the standing stones which had stood here forever; as if she both experienced and remembered being with him here. Later she woke and saw him sleeping, and sat memorizing every line of his face with a fierce tenderness.

  The sun had declined from noon when he woke, smiling into her eyes, and stretched like a cat. Still enclosed in the bubble of her joy, she heard him say, “We were going down to hunt waterfowl. I would like to make peace with my mother—I am so happy I cannot bear to think of being at odds with any living thing today, but perhaps the spirits of nature will send us some waterfowl whose given destiny is to make us a happy meal. . . .”

  She laughed, clasping his hand. “I will take you where the water birds hunt and fish, and if it is the will of the Goddess, we will catch nothing, so we need not feel guilt about disturbing their destiny. But it is very muddy, so you must take off those boots you have for riding, and I will have to tuck up my dress again. Do you use a throwing stick like the Picts, or their little arrows with poison, or do you snare them and wring their necks?”

  “I think they suffer less when they are quickly netted and their necks broken at once,” Lancelet said thoughtfully, and she nodded.

  “I will bring a net and snare—”

  They saw no one as they climbed down the Tor, sliding in a few minutes down what had taken them more than an hour to climb. Morgaine slipped into the building where nets and snares were kept and brought out two; they went quietly along the shore and found the reeds at the far side of the Island. Barefoot, they waded into the water, hiding in the reeds and spreading the nets. They were in the great shadow of the Tor, and the air felt chill; the water birds were already beginning to descend in numbers to feed. After a moment a bird began to struggle and flap, its feet caught in Morgaine’s snare; she moved swiftly, seized it and, within seconds, broke its neck. Soon Lancelet caught one, then another; he tied their necks together with a band of reeds.

  “That is enough,” he said. “It is good sport, but on such a day as this I would rather not kill anything needlessly, and there is one for my mother and two for the Merlin. Do you want one for yourself?”

&nbs
p; She shook her head. “I eat no flesh,” she said.

  “You are so tiny,” he said, “I suppose you need little food. I am big and I hunger quickly.”

  “Are you hungry now? It is too early for most berries, but we might find some haws from the winter—”

  “No,” he said, “not now, not really; my supper will be all the more welcome for a little hunger.” They came up on the shore, soaked. Morgaine pulled off her deerskin overtunic to dry it on a bush, for it would stiffen, and pulled off her skirt too, wringing out the water, standing unselfconsciously in her undershift of unbleached linen. They found where they had left their shoes, but they did not put them on, only sitting on the grass, holding hands quietly and watching the waterfowl swimming, suddenly upending their tails and diving for small fish.

  “How still it is,” Lancelet said. “It is as if we were the only people alive in all the world today, outside time and space and all cares and troubles, or thoughts of war or battle or kingdoms or strife. . . .”