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by A. A. Attanasio

  anguish, he thinks a demon must float nearby.

  Then—something extraordinary begins to happen.

  After completing a circuit of the lake, the swans return to the far end where they had entered, and as each of them exits, they shiver-shake and molt. Their forms elongate till they emerge, finally, transformed into stately white-robed women wearing black veils.

  The sight of the first two transformations shocks

  him. By the third, he is on his feet, biting his nails into his palms to assure himself he is awake. At the fourth, he shouts, "Who are you?"

  They pay him no heed but proceed into the forest,

  silent and ethereal. As the fourth, fifth, and sixth swan mutate in turn, he lopes around the edge of the lake and shouts again for them to stop. Only the apple trees yell back at him.

  The watery breath of the lake thickens as he runs

  toward the figures. He can see their beautiful changes in a golden mist of morning light. His running slows viscously, as in a dream. After what seem stretched minutes, he

  approaches the transmogrifying swans. He can plainly

  make out their feathers melling in humanly eerie streaks to white flesh and plaited raiment. The air, dense as sea spume and golden with sunbeams, fills with a mood like a thousand-year-wide field of wheat.

  He sends his brails forward to reach through the

  emptiness between his heart and theirs. Finally he touches the last of the swan creatures as she completes her

  change from beast to woman. With a shriek like a gull, the space within his chest opens. He feels the summer inside her slowly changing, dying like a butterfly, to the foggy fathoms and spectacular destructions of autumn.

  "Who are you?" he calls to her. Through the black film of the veil that falls from the silver band in her blond hair, he can see her serene features. They shine with the morning's clarity, as sad and pale as though the moon herself could weep for her.

  "We have waited a long time for you," she says to him, and her sonorous voice comes from above, behind, beyond him, from everywhere and yet not at all. She

  follows her sisters into the forest, where morning light slants in many taut strings into the smallest corners.

  He follows her, breathless from his dreamy run, yet

  unfaltering, drawn by the special loneliness that had first lured him from heaven. He pursues her and her ancient promises of sorcery and mystery, the journey past the edge of the body, the hopeful distance that is woman.

  Love and Its Sun

  Avalon, Isle of Apples, rakes the sky with its needle rocks—menhirs erected on every bluff and promontory,

  many carved with futhorc incantations, like this one: Seven years a fish in the sea. Seven years a bird in a tree. Seven years clanging in a bell. Seven years hard living in hell.

  What magic they hide, Merlinus does not want to

  know. He is intent on following the swan-women, who

  move with graceful, portentous steps in a line several paces ahead. No matter how fast he pursues, they remain just out of reach. His entreaties for them to stop and talk bound emptily into the sun-shot depths of the apple forest.

  Anxiously, he thinks of the proud sword he has left

  stuck to the star stone back at the lake—and he wonders about King Uther alone with the elk-king deep in the

  Otherworld—and he remembers Falon and the fiana

  fending for themselves in the palace shaped like fire—and, most apprehensively of all, he contemplates the fate of Ygrane in the clutches of mad Morgeu and her wolfish

  conjure-warriors.

  No matter any of his concerns, he will not turn away

  from his task, which has led him to the pursuit of the nine strange women. They have summoned him. That was

  enough for the likes of Lailoken, who was called out of heaven to follow Her into the coldest dark. He will not for the world turn away from these nine beautiful shadows of Her.

  Overhead, swift clouds hurry from the south, swirling in sunny tatters as they fly through a blue sky darker than the mountains. Emerald butterflies jostle among the

  season's leavings—ruffled cabbage flowers poking through windfall apples, orange and violet with intoxicants.

  White deer watch them pass from among tall

  bracken and bare frames of renegade elms. Through the forest's leafless branch ends, a turquoise lake glitters, and beside it squats a fat, lopsided stone dome, brown as gingerbread.

  The swan-women lead Merlinus there, down mossy

  rock shelves to this odd round hut beside the green lake.

  Outside the crooked wooden door, red shrubs glisten—

  gooseberry, wild rose, barberry—and he pauses there as the women disappear inside.

  "Myrddin," a gentle voice calls from within.

  "Who are you?" he asks yet again.

  "Myrddin—"

  Slowly, nervously, he enters. He finds himself in an

  interior mysteriously larger than the exterior, with an earth-tamped floor and round walls decorated in spirals and wavy lines of warm yellow, blue, and red ocher. Illuminated by slant-rays of azure light from small, round windows high in the dome, the nine swan-women sit on bulky block-cut thrones all in a line.

  In their presence, even indoors, he feels as though

  he were back in the brown hallways of the forest, in the reek of the dying season.

  Merlinus stops trying to reach inside the apparitions.

  He steps closer, studying their shadowy features through their black veils. "Tell me who you are," he demands.

  "Sit down, Myrddin. You shall know what you seek to know."

  Merlinus does as he is bid and lowers himself to the

  ground. He finds a goblet of mead at his elbow and a rock-steamed salmon wrapped in river-grass on the earth before him. He eats and drinks—and the meal is good.

  "We are the Ancient Queens," the one farthest to his left begins. "I am the eldest. Rna, queen of the Flint Knives."

  She lifts her veil, revealing skin white as buffed

  bone. Her crinkled flesh gleams like minnow scales. Blue dusk has somehow been pressed into her temples, and

  though young of feature, with luxuriant hair the color of a thrush's breast, she seems also very, very old.

  "Why have you led me here?" Merlinus asks.

  Solemnly beautiful, the way a falcon is, she

  measures him. "I shall tell you," she answers, her voice in the tall space sounding sodden. "I lived as a mortal woman, as queen of the clans, one hundred thousand

  summers ago. Upon my death, my soul arrived here at

  Avalon to serve as witness—to behold the ages of

  sacrificed kings that followed me."

  Merlinus bows humbly. "Fair queen, I do not

  understand your mission."

  "You would not, Myrddin, as you came to our world only recently, a few thousand years ago, with the

  flourishing of the first cities."

  "This is so," he confirms. "How do you know this?"

  "What do I not know after a hundred millennia, as soulful witness to the human pageant?" Her heron gray lids flutter sleepily. "I know your demon name—and the womb that made you human—and the plight of your queen

  Ygrane—"

  "Then, you will help me?"

  "No, Myrddin," she replies in her torpid voice. "You are here to help me. Listen. I am the eldest of the queens, and my time as witness is done—very nearly done, after so

  very long—"

  "Who did this to you?"

  "Whose magic is powerful enough to fix a soul to one place for an aeon?" she turns the question back on him.

  "Demons."

  She shakes her delicately poised head. "They have not the poetry or the motive to conceive this fate."

  "Then it must have been—"

  "The Fire Lords," she finishes for him. "The angels chose each one of us and brought us here. We are all

  queens."

&n
bsp; "The angels—" He gnaws at his beard in disbelief.

  "Why?"

  "Because, Myrddin, the soul of each person touches the souls of all others. Our mission given us from the Fire Lords is to witness the human pageant through the ages.

  We praise what is worthy and condemn all that debases and deviates from our human destiny. And what we nine souls feel touches the souls of all others. In this way, slowly and deeply over the ages, we help change

  humanity. We help transform the human soul."

  "You say I can help you?"

  Rna gazes into him with tranceful remoteness.

  "Every ten thousand years, the angels select another queen to join me as witness of our race's defiance of love.

  And together, through the magic sight that the angels have granted us, we have lived entranced, watching people

  thrive, struggle, and die. We have mourned endless

  murders more plausible than love, and we have praised countless unsung heroes and their treason to evil. And slowly, as the stubborn ground of our own hard souls does relent and accept the nascent seeds of peace, charity, and mercy, a greening time begins. Falteringly, in the one joined soul of all women and men, a greening time begins.

  The furrow of our chastened ways cradles new lives. It gives significance to a hundred, a thousand generations, and gradually a spirit of reconciliation and fellowship takes root in the human heart. The plow of love digs deeper.

  Moral understanding—justice—common equality sprouts.

  And then—the time of the queens changes ..."

  "And the time of the kings calls for a man to join your royal ranks as witness," Merlinus speaks up.

  The ancient queen lowers her tired lids in

  acknowledgment. When she looks at him again, her gray eyes appear tarnished, dull as a dead woman's. "The time of the queens ended ten thousand years ago. That is when the kings began their history of conquest. So began the age of war." Her voice splinters, and she sits still and silent

  for so long that the wizard can hear the burning drone of bees outside in the feathery grass.

  He peers down the line at the eight other swan

  queens, and they sit even more still, marmoreal and quiet as death.

  "The angels will summon no more queens here," the old one speaks again. "Soon a king will come to take my place. A king will come as answer to the ten thousand years of kings before him. And my soul shall at last return to the round of living souls that pass from form to breathing form. Soon, the angels will bring to this place the first male observer, the first pledge of man's rule, who will sit in my seat and witness the indignities of man to his own kind and—worse—terrible crimes never committed during the

  long epoch of the queens—the indignities of man to Earth herself."

  Merlinus' spine chills, and he tugs at his beard. "The first king—to sit here among you for a hundred thousand years..."

  "We doubt the rule of kings will endure a fraction of that span," the queen gloomily foretells. "Man possesses too much vehemence. But, yes, the first king will sit here until peace reigns—or until he sees the kings who follow him slay the last of mankind."

  "Uther," Merlinus breathes. "The angels have selected Uther. Is that why you've called me here—to relish the irony of a demon serving the angels?"

  "No, Myrddin," the queen says in a voice ponderous with melancholy. "Irony is a subtle cruelty, and after a hundred thousand years of cruelties, I am too weary of every hatred to want that." She summons him nearer with a slow turn of her wrist. "My succession is not assured until the angels find the right king, a soul with the largeness of heart to carry entire the arrogance of war as well as the mercies of love. Your Uther is not the one. He discredits the sanctity of war by his own reluctance. The angels will not choose him."

  "The great warrior the elk-king promised for Uther's son. A fierce Celtic king of olden times."

  "So we believe," the queen asserts. "His birth is not assured—and, even if Uther does sacrifice the faith of his own soul for this warrior's birth, the child's survival to adulthood must hazard all the malevolence set against him. Every hunger of the heart in this king to come, and every accident in his temporal sphere, will offer purchase for the demons to gain on our wish. Our only hope of

  fulfilling this king's destiny lies in the powers of light and form striving together against the intelligences of darkness and void."

  Merlinus stares boldly into the queen's dull eyes. "I promised my mother I would work with the angels."

  "You shall be sorely tempted away from your

  destiny," the queen predicts.

  He thumps his staff adamantly. "No. I am

  determined."

  "You will be tested," the wan queen warns again.

  "When the time comes, you must decide for the angels—

  for the king yet to be—or the very future of our kind descends to calamity. So very much depends on you,

  Myrddin." She lids her gaze. "Perhaps too much."

  Her ominous tone reminds him of Raglaw's

  frightening admonition. If you fail, not only you will be extinguished but all the future that you have seen.

  "I will not fail," he swears—and wonders if he really knows what he promises.

  "You must keep the unicorn in the service of the Fire Lords," Rna presses. "It has much power. Do not let it steal away into the void. We need the unicorn. Keep it near the Dragon."

  Merlinus blinks, dazed by the challenge. "I shall try."

  "Do not forget that you are a demon, Lailoken."

  Talking has tinged Rna's pallor pink, and a lively, yearnful expression flickers over her stern eagle's frown. "You have strengths far greater even than the unicorn's."

  Fuddled by that thought, Merlinus' mouth opens and

  says nothing. He cannot imagine forcing the unicorn to anything.

  "Remember, too, Myrddin," the swan queen says,

  "that you are growing younger. It is the unique curse of your life as a man. Puerility and all its emotional tribulations await you. You will not be spared."

  "What do you fear? That I will fall in love?" A laugh slips through his beard.

  "Love is salvation," Rna reminds him. "It is lust that you must fear. You should know, Lailoken. As a demon, you used lust often enough to unmake the strivings of angels."

  He waves aside her concern. "I am too old for that. I am as old as the angels, remember?

  "Yes, Myrddin, but not as a man." She turns her head and looks at him with one gray eye, like a crane. "The flesh must keep its own helpless promises that neither angels nor demons can deny."

  She speaks as though this is already a memory.

  And, like a memory, her words will return when he least expects. At this enigmatic moment in the presence of the nine queens, Merlinus does not listen. He is not yet ready to hear what she has told him.

  At that moment, it is the unicorn alone he fears—for the opportunity it presents to escape from the struggle of angels and demons—to leave it all entirely behind like a bad dream that has gone on for thousands of millions of years too long.

  Rna, as if hearing his thoughts, lowers her black

  veil, obscuring her face.

  "Wait—" Merlinus calls. "What is to be done now?"

  She points to a circle of clear light on the packed

  earth. "We need say no more. Look yourself into the light—

  the light from which we have all come—and open your

  strong eye. You will see what you must do."

  Merlinus obeys and sits cross-legged on the ground,

  staff across his lap, his back to the nine queens. The clarity of the sky pours into his uplifted face, and he closes his eyes, letting the warm rays carry the stencil of bloodwork deep into his brain.

  The demon strength in him lifts the muscular earth-

  energy from the joy beneath his belly, past the shuddering of his heart, and through the slippery constriction of his throat. As the power sur
ges into his head, he streams from his body, up the bright pole of sunlight, out the window, and into the windy ether of the day.

  *

  The Earth inclines below Merlinus in its rags of

  cloud. He catches sight of Avalon, whole, steep bluffs smoky with heather and hillsides and valleys red-brown with autumnal apple trees. On the stone crannies, the menhirs look like large, hooded people standing around on sheer hems of rock. Squinting, he can see the green lake and the brown hermitage of the Nine Queens dwindling

  away as he soars among cold updrafts of cloud.

  The sea gleams below, and Avalon swings out of

  view. He knows that if he accelerates, time will widen and the future will sprawl before him. He does not want to see that. At least, not yet. Far more urgently, he needs to know what has become of Uther and Ygrane. He keeps his flight steady.

  Softly, he chants his demon magic. The day sky

  above the ocean gradually purples, and, in time, the

  seacliffs of Cymru drift past. Forest haze rises toward him, opens like a veil, and reveals a shepherd and his herd standing on a mossy bench of land at the elbow of a brook.

  Merlinus dives past the herder and plunges into the

  ground. Darkness claps around him. A moment later, the blind abyss opens into cold light pale as moonglow—

  starshine from a fiery zodiac. He has arrived in the

  Otherworld and drifts over nacre flats outside the elk-king's palace of fire.

  The palace itself shines on the razorous horizon,

  sharp as a barb of the sun. He swerves toward it. He is intent on finding his king, to be certain Uther is all right. As he closes in, the terrain below darkens to a cinereous landscape of scorched sand and drifting ash.

  The ruins of dead civilizations stream past—

  mammoth temple columns of Karnak blown bare of their

  sacred paintings, Nineveh's garden walls toppled and

  awash in sand, and the ziggurats of mighty Ur so much naked, haphazard rock enfolded in river silt.

  He recognizes this place from the elk-king's tour and searches for the shade of Raglaw he has seen wandering here. This time he finds only whispers of sand moving across blighted ranges of lost empires.