by Nagle, Pati
I closed my eyes. It was Merricat with the cat ears and the black hair, on the front of the book. She said to her sister, after the neighbors attacked them and burned down their house,
“One of our mother’s Dresden figurines is broken, I thought, and I said aloud to Constance, ‘I am going to put death in all their food and watch them die’.”
I held Mavis’s hand and we watched TV as Sashi and Aimee clutched their stomachs and ran to the bathroom and retched and fell to their knees. Helen, Judith, Mavis and I laughed at the old women on the TV show.
“Books are good,” I said to Helen, who looked at me through her thick glasses. “They give people ideas.”
Betrayal
Mindy Klasky
“Betrayal” grows out of my early love of the King Arthur legends, expanding on the often-shadowy character of Nimue, and answering questions about the end of the Arthurian story arc. I loved creating Nimue’s voice, that of an adolescent girl who is just beginning to understand the scope of her powers—both magical and mundane.
∞ ∞ ∞
You think I’m evil, don’t you?
I’ve heard the tales you tell, the angry stories that you whisper in the night. You say I am a temptress, a vixen, a slattern who used my body to seduce a man and steal his richest secrets. You know me as the woman who betrayed my uncle, who enticed him to his death in a tree or a crystal cave or an invisible force field, all so I could have his magic.
My uncle was Merlin. I am Nimue.
∞
The mist swirled over the Lake, obscuring the sacred island, and I stared hard at the orb of fire that kissed my palm.
“That’s right,” Uncle Merlin crooned. “You’ve got it there. Now, very gently, raise your thoughts. Raise your powers up, and over the water. Good. . . Good. . . Let the fire grow. Let it float higher. . . Higher. . .”
A fish jumped from the lake, and I bit back a shriek of surprise. The fire plunged into the water, sinking beneath the dark surface like a stone.
“Earth and Fire!” I exclaimed.
“Now, now, I’ll not listen to you swear.”
“Why not? You swear whenever you want.”
“I am a wizard of the sixteenth order, a Druid and a priest besides. When I swear, I know the forces I’m calling on.”
“And I don’t?” I was whining. It seemed so unfair.
“Nimue, you are twelve years old. When you have lived as long as I, then you may decide how you will swear. Until then, you’ll listen to your elders.”
I scowled, but I knew better than to argue any more. He waited in silence until I managed: “Yes, Uncle.” He wasn’t even really my uncle; he and Mother were not blood relations. But all the Ladies of the Lake claimed him as their own.
“Very well, then.” He reached for the small boat’s oars and began to stroke us in toward shore. His face was handsome in the dying light; he had not bothered to add grey to his hair that morning. There were no ordinary folk around to care.
“You seem well today, Uncle.”
“I feel well. Soon, it won’t be enough just to color my hair. Even this beard will give me away, stop being such a ragged mess. I’m not certain what I’ll do when I grow that young.”
“Why don’t you just tell King Arthur?”
“Ah, little Nimue. You don’t know anything about men, do you?” He smiled as he pulled the oars, and I stuck out my tongue defiantly. “Trust me, little one. My power over Arthur and his knights is based on my grey beard and my wrinkles.”
“But they should recognize you for who you are, for your true power, however old you appear!”
“They expect wisdom to come from age.” He rowed some more. “Besides, is it such a lie? I am old, even if I don’t look it, even if I grow younger every day.”
I leaned forward to play with his straggling beard and teased: “Tell me again how you came into the world, Uncle Merlin.”
“I, Nimue? I was born of lightning, in the middle of a rainstorm, fire that sizzled through the air and cleft a stone.” Fire and Water, Air and Earth, all four elements. Every time I asked my uncle about his birth, his story changed, but he always kept the essentials the same—all four elements had combined to give him life.
The boat ground against our landing on the island. All this talk of age made me uneasy. I could not imagine a world without Uncle Merlin, a world without my teacher on the lake. The Ladies whispered that he had but two score years left before he died. Forty years to retreat through adolescence, to infancy, and then to the unknown.
“Little Nimue. You mustn’t fear the future.” He reached out a hand to cup my chin, and his fingers were warm against my lake-chilled flesh.
My belly flopped beneath my heart, like the fish that had interrupted my lesson. “I’m not afraid.” I glared at him defiantly.
“Good girl.” He smiled. “Now, tie up the boat. I’m going up to your mother’s cottage. These old bones still get chilled on the lake.”
“Old bones!” I snorted, imitating my mother, but I took the rope from him.
After the boat was secured, I meandered up the hill, taking a side trip to the chicken coop to gather the day’s eggs. Mother had made it clear that I could not shirk my duties, even if I was training with the great magician Merlin.
The eggs were still warm from the hens’ protective bodies when I nudged my way into Mother’s cottage. She and Uncle Merlin were seated at the hearth. As usual, they were in the middle of a heated debate.
“I tell you, old woman, you can’t chain her to this cottage!”
“Chain her? Merlin, she’s my child. I won’t let you carry her off into the world of men.”
“It’s not the world of men, Ysobel. It’s the world of magic. I want her to learn my magic.”
“It’s not right, Merlin.”
“Why not? You’d let me take her if she were a boy.”
“Any of us Ladies would let you take our boys. That’s the point, you old fool. We are the Ladies of the Lake. Our sons can go on whatever quests they choose. Our daughters stay here. They learn from us. Become one with us.”
Uncle Merlin knelt beside her, and his body was still old enough that the movement was awkward. “I’m begging you, Ysobel. Let me work with Nimue. You know that she is the strongest among you. Let me teach her all my knowledge now. Before it is too late.”
Mother stared at him for a long minute, and a crystal tear crept into her eye. “Merlin, I love her. She’s my only child.”
“I’ll never ask another thing of you, Ysobel. I wouldn’t ask this if it weren’t important.”
Mother settled a long-fingered hand against his cheek, along the line where his beard met his flesh. “Very well, then. Take her. But I beg you, be careful.”
He caught her hand and kissed her palm. Even across the room, I could see her fingers curl in, like the petals of some rare flower stroked beneath the full moon.
“Take me where?” I crossed the room and settled the eggs in a basket on the scrubbed table.
“You’re going with your Uncle Merlin,” Mother replied, and her voice was matter-of-fact.
“And if I want to stay here?” My natural rebellion sprang up, even as I imagined the adventures the old man would show me.
“You’ll learn to live with disappointment.” Mother rose from her chair, shaking out her skirts as if they were dusty. “Now, reach down those dried mushrooms, and let’s prepare supper.” There was no brooking her tone. I glanced at Uncle Merlin for reassurance, but he was staring deep into the fire, his hands clenched into fists on the arms of his chair.
∞
And that is how I became Uncle Merlin’s apprentice.
For ten years we lived in the depths of the forest, in a sorry little hut. Our single room was filthy with dust and mouse droppings. Books were stacked on every surface—strange volumes filled with stranger words, written in languages I could not understand. Nooks and crannies were crowded with my uncle’s odd toys and mechanicals.
&nb
sp; For ten years, I lived in that hut, hovering in a strange eddy of time. I learned all my uncle’s knowledge, all his tales and spells and workings. As he grew younger with every passing day, I grew older, forsaking the Ladies of the Lake and the formal grace that was my birthright. I lived like a boy, clad in rough leggings and jerkins, even when my body insisted on becoming the woman-flesh my birth destined me to be.
I was not able to avoid those unwelcome curves, but I found it easy to ignore the perfumes and oils and paints for my face that other girls treasure. In fact, it was easy to forget that I was anything other than my uncle’s apprentice. He never even looked at me, never spared me a glance, except to complain that I was holding a lantern too far away from an ancient text, or that I was stirring some concoction too vigorously.
One night, we crouched before the hearth as a winter storm blew outside. We had been confined within our four walls for nearly a week, and Uncle Merlin roamed the room restlessly, his fingers caressing first one treasure, then another.
I finally broke the silence. “You should be able to ride to him tomorrow.”
“To whom?”
“To King Arthur, of course.” Throughout our ten years together, Uncle Merlin had disappeared for months at a time, journeying to Camelot to serve as the king’s councilor.
“What good will it do?” He ran a hand through his short, well-trimmed beard. “I’m already too young to help him. The knights don’t listen to me. If only I lived like you, like everyone else. If only I could grow older. . .”
“Why don’t you change the course of your magic?”
“What?”
“Take what you know, and change your passage. Move forward in time.” I settled a hand on his arm, as if that would help him understand. “Move forward with me.”
“Child, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I am not a child!” I answered hotly. This was an old argument. Now only ten years separated us physically, and it irked me that he continued to speak as if I were an infant.
“No, Nimue. You’re not a child.” He brushed a kiss across my cheek, and I caught my breath at the unusual attention. I folded my arms across my chest in a futile attempt to mask my confusion, but before I could speak, he leaned back in his chair. “Fetch your aged uncle some supper, Nimue, and then we’ll practice your Water Formations.”
The seed that I planted during that winter storm took months to grow. I’d awaken at odd times during the night to find my uncle pacing in front of the hearth, muttering to himself. He spent days poring through his books. He began to gather strange ingredients, going out for long journeys that left me alone in the cottage for weeks on end.
Another year passed, and a few more months; it was spring when he came to me with a proposal. We had carried our luncheon to the brook that rippled through our little clearing, and he had just wolfed down a loaf of my bread. He leaned back in the new grass, lacing his fingers behind his head and gazing up at the clear blue sky through the tangle of withes from a giant weeping willow.
“Do you remember what we spoke of, Nimue, about changing my flow of time?”
“I may grow older every day, Uncle, but I’m not senile yet!”
He smiled and refused to take the bait. “Are you willing to help me?”
A cloud passed over the sun, and our little clearing grew cold. When I looked into his eyes, he was grimly serious, and I realized how much I did not know about the man who had stolen me away from the Ladies of the Lake, the man who pulled all the strings on the Camelot marionettes.
“What would I need to do?”
“Nothing more than I’ve asked of you in the past. Gather some herbs. Learn some words of power. Guide me through the spell.”
“Me, guide you?”
“That’s the nature of this type of working. I will absorb the energies, reverse the pull, but you must stand as my guidepost, so that I can determine where the flows of time commingle, where the present is.”
I stared into the brook at my feet. He was making light of what he proposed, but I knew enough magic to understand that he spoke of the most powerful spell either of us had ever contemplated. Time was the weft of the universe. It could not easily be snipped and rewoven into a sturdy fabric. Cutting that flow was likely to unravel a substantial section of the world around it. A section that would include me.
He waited for my response, ignoring the clouds that scudded across the sky, the breeze that whipped the willow into a frenzy. When I still failed to answer, he took my hand from my lap and smoothed my fingers, which had grown as cold as crystal. “Nimue, you know that I wouldn’t ask, if I didn’t think it could be done. I’m asking you to save me. What have I got left, thirty years? Twenty? I’ll end up as a mewling babe, and then. . . Don’t let me lose a lifetime of learning. Don’t let all of us lose that.”
I stared out at the brook, trying not to think of the young man who sat beside me. The old man that I remembered. My uncle. “Very well,” I said at last. “I’ll help you.”
He kissed my palm as freezing rain fell through the willow branches.
∞
We chose the Feast of Samhain to perform the working. Uncle Merlin thought that would be best—the Dark Feast, when the year turned from old to new, when the long, winter nights began to yield to days.
In the months between spring and winter, I gathered herbs and brewed tinctures. I read all the references I could find in my uncle’s library. Often, I stayed awake until the grainy dawn broke through our fly-specked windows. I stopped baking and did not bother to put in a garden. We lived off what we could forage in the forest.
Uncle Merlin did not ride to Camelot.
At last, we came to the week before the working. My uncle had stressed the importance of purity. Seven days before Samhain, I stopped eating all food. I drank a strong purgative tea. After my belly finally gave up its cramping, I sipped only cold, clear water from the brook.
Pursuant to my uncle’s instructions, I performed ritual baths four times a day, submerging my body in the freezing stream. I combed out my long hair from its confining braid. I trimmed my fingernails and toenails, burning the parings so that demons could not eat them and learn my name. I became pure.
All that time, Uncle Merlin stayed away from our cottage. I did not know precisely what he was doing, only that he too was striving to cleanse his body and spirit. He needed to empty himself so that he could become a crystal ewer, a flawless container for time to flow into. Flow out of.
I think I had an easier time those last few days. I had so few ties to the outside world. There was no woman who depended on me; my mother and the other Ladies were nothing more than a distant dream. And, of course, I had never known a man. It was easy to snip the ties that bound me to the world.
My only ties were to my uncle, to the man I served as apprentice and as ward.
The morning of our working dawned late and cold, and a chill mist blanketed our clearing. I spent all day in prayer, calling on the four Old Ones, the powerful forces of Air and Water, Earth and Fire. I prayed to the new God, and His Son, and His Holy Spirit, to the Three whom Arthur was spreading throughout the kingdom. And, when the sun had completed its short arc above our clearing, I prayed to Time itself.
In the chill twilight, I stripped off my boyish clothes, tugging off my leather boots, setting aside the leggings and jerkin that had become as comfortable as a second skin. Uncle Merlin had laid out my new clothes before he disappeared. There was a flowing gossamer undergown, covered by a heavier robe. I cinched the cloth about my waist with a wide sash. The flaring sleeves covered my wrists, and cascades of extra fabric fell to the ground. All the garments were white.
I had forgotten how awkward it was to wear women’s clothes. I had forgotten how confining it felt to have a sash about my waist, how unnerving to have to watch my feet so that I did not trip over yards of fabric. I looked for a mirror, but Uncle Merlin had none, so I settled for smoothing my hands down the front of my costume
before I left our cottage.
It was bitterly cold in the dark night, and my trousseau did not include shoes. My toes curled against the frost, but I forbade myself to dwell on the discomfort of my physical body. I made my way to the willow tree.
Uncle Merlin had not yet arrived. I wrapped my fingers into fists to better preserve my warmth, and I looked out at the brook. When an owl hooted in the darkness, my heart jumped into my throat.
“Ah, fair Nimue.” I bit back a scream as I recognized my uncle’s voice. He sounded older than I had ever heard him, even when he still had grey hair, even when his arms were knotted by age. “Well met.”
He wore his Druid robes of snowy white. His face was clean-shaven, like the boy he was destined to become, but his hair played tricks in the moonlight. Even though it had been nearly a decade since grey streaks painted his locks, his jet black hair glinted silver under the moon.
“Are you ready, my Nimue?”
“Yes.” My voice sounded strange in my ears, stranger even than his had.
Even now, I remember the words we spoke. I remember invoking the holy protection of the willow tree, begging it to be our guardian against evil and impurity. I remember reaching out to the cardinal points of the compass. I remember grasping an iron blade, iron forged from earth in the fire, hardened by water and air.
Uncle Merlin knelt before me, letting the wind take his snow-white cloak and blow it into the grasping fingers of our willow tree. I raised the iron blade, proclaiming the sacred words of power as I offered up the holy relic. The forces of the universe surged to attention.
The earth had warmed beneath my feet, and I no longer feared that my bare flesh would freeze. The wind tore through the willow branches, grasping at my gown, my hair, my body. The brook swelled from its banks as if it were giving birth, lapping up to flow around us, to envelop us in its watery grasp. Out of the still, still night, lightning cracked, leaping from darkness to burn on the cross-hilt of my dagger.
Holding the flaming blade, I called upon the four Old Ones to sanctify us, the three New Gods to join the two of us, to make us one, to make Uncle Merlin’s past and present and future all one. For one endless heartbeat, the lightning leaped from my iron dagger, seared from my hands to my uncle’s chest. I saw the power hit him; I knew the instant he received the elements into his body, into his soul.