by Donna Hosie
“Where is Jalaya?” calls Joseph. “We need to leave if we are to reach the Vale of Avalon by nightfall.”
“She went over there,” says Melehan, pointing to a pair of trees that have partially uprooted, forming the letter X amongst their upright brothers.
“I’ll find her,” says Rustin.
“Why don’t you just talk to the trees and find out where she is,” I reply. The petulance in my voice sickens me, but I want to hurt him like he’s hurting me.
Then a piercing scream interrupts all childish thoughts.
“JALAYA,” cry a number of voices, mine included.
Melehan and I are the first out of the blocks, running and jumping over fallen tree trunks as she screams again.
Suddenly there are a lot more figures running in the wood.
Two bodies collide with Melehan, knocking him to the ground. One was meant for me, but I see the bearded stranger out of the corner of my eye before he hits. I throw myself forward, rolling on the ground. He misses me and lands on top of Melehan. Another scream shatters over us like glass.
“JALAYA,” I cry again, as another bearded man, with a stomach like a barrel, tries to hit me with a club made from a thick piece of wood.
“Navimore,” cries an old voice behind me. Blue sparks hit the man’s enormous gut, causing it to ripple as he flies through the air. He hits a tree, at least three metres off the ground, and slumps to the forest floor with blood streaming from his nose and head.
“Find Jalaya,” calls Freya; she’s panting and her skin is now mottled with a yellow marbled rash. Her eyes are white.
I can hear Jalaya screaming, but there are strangers coming out of every gap in the trees. There are only six of us. We are hopelessly outnumbered by the bandits.
My arms feel like a thousand pins and needles are pricking them. The sensation behind my eyes is heavy. I can’t fight it, I don’t want to fight it.
The green of the forest goes white as I give in to the flame. We are under attack from all sides, but I instinctively know where to aim. Those that are attacking us appear as black shadows in my line of sight. I can see one of us too, although I don’t know who it is. This person is framed by a swirling blue haze.
“Navimore,” I cry. The voice reminds me of someone, but I can’t remember who. It doesn’t matter. I have a single purpose. To destroy those who have descended upon us.
A black shadow flies backwards. I cry the spell again, drinking in the power from my entire body. I could bring down this entire forest. I am invincible.
Stars and an excruciating pain across the back of my head come next. My white shadow world goes black for a moment, and then I see the outline of a tall creature, like a bear on hind legs rearing towards me.
“Morsusetium.”
The second the word leaves my mouth I see the outline double over. His screams writhe over me, bringing me out of the magical state I’m falling deeper and deeper into.
Black and white is replaced by green once more. The pain of colour and flame hurts my eyes as they readjust to normality – a medieval normal. The bear-like man that smashed me across the head is flailing on the forest floor. His cragged clothes are ripped and torn from his body, which is covered in bleeding bite marks from an attacking invisible entity. Something I just summoned to fight him off.
Blue flames are criss-crossing the forest like thick laser beams. Freya and Melehan are back to back, their eyes white, as they shoot flames at the attacking bandits. I’ve never heard the words they’re summoning before, and yet I understand every one.
Fly. Bite. Blind.
Joseph is a Gorian, but he’s using brute strength. He has a club in each hand and is swinging with abandon, bringing down anyone that comes near him.
I can’t see Rustin. Jalaya is no longer my concern as panic for my friend overtakes everything. I kneel on the ground, ducking below the criss-crossing beams of blue light. Placing the palms of my hands flat on the forest floor, I listen. My senses are so acute I can tell the weight of a person by the vibrations through the ground. I can hear the distribution of girth through my fingertips. Acid rises in my throat, burning as it moves. I spit, and my saliva hisses as it lands on dirt.
And then I hear two voices that are familiar to me. Not words, they’re too far away for that, but my inner ear recognises the pitch of both: one low, one high. My fingers spread out through the dirt. It feels cool and moist against the heat of anger that’s rising through me.
The world is moving in slow motion and I smell the thug before I see him. He’s coming at me from behind; I can even tell what kind of weapon he has from the distortion in the air as he swings the club around his head. My own skull is throbbing from the first attack, and I can feel a warm stream of blood pooling around my neck.
I can end this. I can end all of this.
The heat starts in my stomach. It hurts and stabs as it mixes with the blood in my veins, bubbling through me like acid. I look down at my fingers, expecting to see purple fire. Instead, I see swollen veins rising through my pale skin like engorged worms. The heat reaches my neck; it’s in my mouth. If I open it I will breathe fire. Pressure pushes against my eyeballs. Even the blood running from my head wound is burning.
Before the world goes white once more, I see Rustin carrying a limp Jalaya in his arms. He sees me and his face becomes a screaming mask.
“MILA, NO.”
But I can end this. I can end all of this.
“PERDERIUS.”
Fire and pain and death. I experience the agony of it all as I’m ripped from my body.
I’m dreaming. I know because I can’t feel any pain. I must be back in Avalon Cottage in my own bed. Soft fleecy blankets cover me. This must be my bedroom because I can’t breathe properly. Too many people. Faces swim across my blurred vision. I can hear my mother, and my father. Auntie Titch is there too. Uncle Bed is shouting at someone. He never shouts. Even when he’s threatening to decapitate people at a fun fair, he does it quietly.
And then the pain hits and I know it’s not a dream. Stabbing, tearing, biting pain. My skin feels like it’s being flayed from my body. I can taste blood.
“Pain…”
Thick liquid is poured down my throat. I fall back into a fitful sleep.
I wake once more. The pain isn’t as bad now, but I feel hot. So very hot. I’m burning up. Strange smells push their way into my nose. I try to block them out, but they’re too strong. Pungent and gross, like horse manure. I start to choke. Something is in my throat. I can’t breathe properly. I can’t breathe.
“I’ve told you, there are too many people in here,” says Rustin. “She’s going to have a panic attack the second she wakes up properly, and it’s usually me she throws up over.”
Just the sound of his voice is like a cool glass of water to my overheated body. I can’t see him, but it doesn’t matter. He’s here and he’s worried.
“Mila.” A cold hand with ragged fingernails strokes my hair. The voice is my mother’s, but that can’t be her hand. What’s happened to her beautiful long nails?
“Mum?”
“She’s awake, Arthur. She’s awake.”
“Sire, do not get too close to the conduit. She is unstable,” says an old deep voice. A voice I had thought – hoped – I would never hear again.
I guess I’m not back in Avalon Cottage, but I have no idea where I am because I still can’t see properly.
“Mila is my daughter, Merlin,” snaps my father. “And your future ruler. Remember that.”
“Daddy.”
The voice is young. Scared. It’s Lilly’s voice. The frightened voice of a child.
But the word came from me. I felt my swollen tongue scrape across my burnt gums.
“I’m here, Mila,” replies my father, and I feel him stroke my fingernails, the only part of me not burning.
“She will need more healing milk of the poppy,” says a woman’s voice I don’t recognise. “The pain will return very soon. The princess ha
s much suffering to endure.”
“What…happened?”
“We don’t know,” sobs my mother. “Oh Mila, why did you try and do this by yourself?”
“You exploded, Mila,” says Rustin. His voice is nearer now. I wait for him to touch me, but he doesn’t. “I tried to stop you, but the heat and fire - I thought you had died.”
“Purple flame,” says Merlin. “I have lived through many ages, past and future, and have never seen such a sight as was witnessed in the woods of Avalon today.”
I wince as the sound of a hard slap reverberates around the enclosed space. I don’t see the fight that follows, my eyesight is still too blurred to make anything out, but I can hear the scuffles and screams and accusations as my mother attacks Merlin.
“You knew, old man,” cries my mother. She’s panting, as if she’s struggling against someone. “You knew my daughter had this within her, and you encouraged her to come here.”
“Lady Mila unlocked the power of the Ring of Morgana,” replies Merlin. “Her power transferred into the ring and gave corporeal form to my beloved Nimue. You believe you are the only one suffering now, Lady Samantha? I have watched the vanquishing of the Lady of the Lake once. I brought you and Lady Lilly to this world knowing that I would have to stand back and watch Nimue’s vanquishment once more. You are not the only person here who is suffering torment over a loved one, Lady Samantha. Everything I do, I do for the king. Even when it involves great personal cost. You would better serve your husband and lord by remembering that it was you that started this chain of events in the first place, seventeen years ago on the shores of this very vale.”
“Fighting is not going to help Mila, or Lilly,” cries my aunt. “Sam, you have to calm down.”
“And you can go to hell, freak.”
“That’s enough, Sam,” says my father, and his voice is distorted by exertion. I think he’s trying to get my mother away. “Go and sit with Lilly. I’ll stay with Mila.”
“I hate you all,” screams my mother.
“Where’s…Lilly?” I ask. My voice is cracking and starting to fail me. Why can’t I see properly? I’ve been awake for minutes now. I can feel wet stuff trailing down my face, but when I try and raise my arms, I can’t. Everything feels wooden and so heavy. My joints aren’t working. And the pain is now throbbing through me, intensifying with every passing second.
“Rustin. Help…me.”
“Does it hurt?” he says urgently. “Oh shit, it’s all bleeding again. The bandages are soaking through already. Give her the drugs. Now.”
A hard rim is pressed to my mouth. I scream out as my lips split apart. Metallic blood and thick aniseed flavoured liquid mix together in my mouth as I feel myself on fire. The blurred faces become one blanket of black.
I fall asleep.
It’s the middle of the night and the stars are sprinkles across the heavens, blinking down at me as I stand at the edge of the shore. Water laps at my bare feet. It’s freezing cold, but I don’t move. I’m not burning anymore. I know she’s there. I can’t see her, but I can hear her. She’s singing to my father. Her voice carries on the cool breeze.
A hand rises from the water; it’s holding a sword. It twists around, showing me the weapon, and I see the ring, glinting under the stars, like one of their own.
I look down at my own fingers and see purple flames caressing my hands, twisting and coiling like snakes. I crouch down and extinguish the fire in the water. I can’t control it, but it’s starting to control me. It fills me with anger and hate and lust and I can never use it again.
I smile to myself. My lips don’t hurt. Nothing hurts anymore.
I am healed.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Loss and Love
Rustin refuses to leave my side. If I want water, he’s the one to bring it to me. Rustin cuts up my food into tiny pieces so it passes down my cindered throat more easily. He won’t even leave when the healers arrive to change my dressings. He just says he’s closing his eyes and he waits.
I wish he wouldn’t close his eyes. It’s not that I want him to see me like this, but when he opens his eyelids, I can tell from his cracked voice that he’s blinking away tears.
I want to talk to my mother, but after her first contact, she left me again. I know Lilly is being kept in another tent somewhere, but I’m still too ill to move, and they won’t let me see her. My father is holding councils of war, but no one will tell me what’s going on. They seem to think my incapacity to move is somehow going to protect me - and them - but I know they’re wrong. I know what I have to do.
We’re near the shores of the Vale of Avalon, that much Rustin has been able to find out. The adults are keeping things from him too. My father wanted Rustin locked up in chains, but Auntie Titch put a stop to that, saying that was a father talking, not a king.
My dad didn’t seem to think it mattered, but Rustin stood up to him. I heard it all, as if the conversation had taken place in the tent where I’m under constant guard.
It could have taken place in the tent for all I know. I still can’t see properly. Everything is twisted and blurred and it hurts. Oh dear god it hurts. My eyes feel as if shards of glass are scraping along my irises. One of the healers keeps putting drops in them, which burn even more, but I’m a captive patient. An experiment for medieval medicine, bound by my own useless body.
“You’re looking better, Mila,” says my aunt. I feel the breeze on my blistered face as the tent flap is pulled open. I can hear heavier footsteps, close behind her.
“Is Uncle Bed with you?” I ask.
“I am Mila,” replies my uncle, and I hear the hope in his voice. “Is your sight returning already?”
“Sorry, I just heard someone with my aunt,” I say in a voice that sounds like I’ve swallowed a bee hive. “I guessed it would be you.”
“It won’t be long, Mila,” says my aunt, but she doesn’t know my hearing is still so acute I can hear the sigh of disappointment that leaves her first. “The healers say you’re recovering incredibly well.”
“Are you going to tell us what’s going on?” asks Rustin. He sits on my left. I know he’s been carving wood because the smell of the shavings is competing with the burning herbs that the healers insist on choking me with.
“You know we can’t, Rustin,” replies Auntie Titch.
“Then at least tell us where Jalaya and Freya are?” he responds.
“The king has forbidden us to tell you anything,” replies my uncle.
“Screw the king,” snaps Rustin. “Where are they?”
“You cannot speak of the king with such words,” says my uncle. “Many would regard it as treasonous.”
“I don’t give a…”
But my uncle cuts across Rustin. Shame really. Rustin Hall is showing his balls by mouthing off, I think to myself. Then I laugh. Then I start coughing. Then my mouth fills with blood and I make a vow to start refusing the drugs that are addling my brain as I lie here, recovering from my own spontaneous human combustion, which apparently took out every bandit attacking us. I took out half of the wood as well. The flames were seen for miles. It was how my father and the knights found us. They just followed the purple fire that was burning the Vale of Avalon.
“Rustin, listen to me,” says my uncle in his deep gruff voice. Some of the soccer mums thought he was sexy when he used to turn up to practice with dad and Uncle Talan. That made my aunt very unhappy. I don’t know why I’m thinking of this random shit as I lie here. I didn’t just burn my brain, I lost it completely.
“No, I won’t listen to you,” snaps Rustin. “Tell me where Jalaya and Freya are. We were attacked. They’re innocent.”
“They are suspected of kidnapping the king’s daughter, Rustin,” replies Uncle Bed. “They are to be tried, and Freya is already a convicted prisoner of Camelot.”
“But we went with them willingly,” I croak. “And what about Melehan and Joseph?”
“We know you went with them, Mila,”
interrupts my aunt. “But this is your father and mother we’re talking about. Sensibility has flown away with the Ddraig. They want someone to pay.”
“And you’re okay with that?” cries Rustin. “Bloody hell, I thought you two would be the good guys.”
The breeze from outside caresses my face again. A voice I don’t recognise enters the tent.
“You must keep your voices down,” says a man. “Especially the young squire. He can be heard by all.”
“Is the king still holding council, Sir Tristram?” asks my uncle.
“He is,” replies the man, a knight I presume as my uncle called him sir. “You do not have much time, Sir Bedivere.”
“Time for what?” I ask.
“You have not told the princess?” asks Sir Tristram.
“If Rustin would shut up for a second,” says my aunt, her exasperation clear, “then we would have done by now.”
“I will have to return before my absence is noted,” says Sir Tristram. “There are two horses waiting at the watch tower. Sir Lucan has left provisions and Sir Gareth is waiting to assist.” He pauses, and I sense the air is heavy around him. The knight wants to say more.
“We understand your fear, Tristram,” says my aunt.
“I fear nothing, Lady Natasha,” replies Sir Tristram quickly. “It is not fear, it is…I am not sure. A foreboding. Sir Bedivere, I implore you, as a brother knight and a friend, you have risked the ire of Merlin before. Do not help the druids again.”
“Auntie Titch.” I groan and then yelp as I try to move. I’m blind and in agony. The skin around my arms and legs is so tight I have no movement that doesn’t involve a world of pain.
“Don’t move, Mila,” she calls. I feel calloused hands to my left. It’s Rustin.
“I’ll find out what’s going on,” he whispers. “Now lie back down and trust me.”
Lie back down and let everyone else deal with the mess I’ve caused, I think bitterly, but I have no choice. I can’t see, I can’t walk.
“Natasha, my love,” says my uncle. “Stay here and watch over Mila. I have placed the king’s sword in a stone by the edge of the lake for safe-keeping. The sorcerer will be the first to notice the druids have gone. Your counsel will be needed to stop the king acting…rashly.”