I Am Morgan le Fay

by Nancy Springer

  “That’s what I mean!” I burst out. “Teach me ...” My hand hovered over my chest.

  Ongwynn said softly, “Of that I know nothing.”

  “But—”

  “I am a pedlar, that is all. Not a fay or a sorceress.”

  “Then teach me the power of a pedlar!”

  “I can’t.”

  Something as bleak as the weather in her tone made me catch my breath and blink. I had never before heard that shadow in her voice. Fays live on, Thomas had said, but pedlars ... pedlars dwindle and die. The stark, dark undertone in Ongwynn’s words made me hush and say no more.

  Until that night, I had thought that it was to hide Morgause and me from prying folk that Ongwynn healed no colicky babies, eased no childbirth pangs. I had thought that she did not want the villagers coming to Caer Ongwynn. And perhaps it was so.

  But perhaps ... perhaps her power was weakening as she aged?

  Or she had spent it all on us? Given us everything she had?

  She sat down and said to Morgause, “Finish the story, child.”

  It was a simple enough story, and a sad one. The prince loved his blossom bride so desperately that he began to wonder, even though it should not have mattered to him, her husband and lord and master: Did she love him too? And even though it was a good thing for a woman to be silent, and even though Blossom complied with everything he required of her and fulfilled his every desire, he wanted her to say that she loved him in her heart. He came to yearn for this so wretchedly that he could not eat, he could not sleep, and at length his longing got the better of him. He asked her to bespeak to him her love. And she said yes, yes, my darling, I do love you, I love you utterly. But because he had violated the stricture that held the magic together, Blossom fell to pieces in his arms. Nothing but a few dry, dead petal fragments remained. The prince went sweetly mad. Even though his beloved flower bride had withered to dust in his arms, he thought that he could get her back somehow, somewhere. He spent his life wandering, searching for her and grieving for her until he died.

  Even before my sending I grew restless. By my fifteenth summer, I had finally learned enough to defeat Ongwynn at chess, I knew the mysteries of adding sums upon beads, I understood how the planets and stars and sun and moon circled the earth on their invisible golden wires, I had read every book in Caer Ongwynn and some of them I had also heard read to me, and I knew by heart many of the stanzas of the book of threes:Threefold is the love of a woman for a man:

  The crescent silver love of the maiden,

  The milk-white love of the mother of his child,

  The laughter of the crone in the dark of the moon.

  I knew the threes, and I thought I understood some of them. I was, of course, mistaken.

  But I felt that I had learned all that Ongwynn could teach me and that I should be doing something—although I did not know what. Find Thomas? But how? Did he think of me as often as I thought of him? Did he love me? If I was his true love, I was to wait until he returned to me; all the stories of noble love said so.

  Waiting was hard. I wanted to make something happen. It was a hard thing to be a woman.

  When the wild strawberries were in bloom I started taking long rides on Annie for no reason. I rode on the moor, saw the blue violets with their heart-shaped leaves and thought of Thomas. I rode along the harsh stony beach at low tide and thought of Ongwynn. I rode through the silky white lace of breaking waves and thought of my mother. Igraine. Where was she now?

  Where were my father’s bones, so that I could lay a flower upon them?

  Did my mother lie dead somewhere as well?

  Ongwynn was—had lost her powers, it seemed, and was stiffening in her joints, was getting old. The thought that she would someday die chilled my spine. I had never quite been able to think of her as just a person. Had she been born? I could not imagine Ongwynn with a mother and a father, I could not conceive that she had ever been a child. Even less imaginable, had she ever known the love of a man? Had she ever borne a child?

  How long had she lived?

  I could not ask her. It was not that I was afraid of Ongwynn, but—she was all humble dignity; I would have buried my head in mud before I ventured such questions to her.

  Growing old, would she need me? I ought to stay with her.

  I wanted to leave.

  “Ongwynn,” I asked her as we sat in the sun and mended hose (for the piskies had given me hair ribbons so gossamer they seemed made of moonlight, but had not darned my stockings), “Ongwynn, I wish—I don’t know what I wish. What can I do?”

  She glanced up at me without speaking, her eyes like stones washed round by the sea.

  I said, “How can I give it back to you?”

  “Give me what?”

  “What you’ve lost.”

  “I’ve lost nothing.”

  “What I owe, then.”

  “You owe nothing.”

  “But—”

  “When you are older you will see,” she said, and she went back to her darning with a decided silence. I could say no more.

  The sending began as nothing more than a dream.

  I lay deeply asleep after a day of weeding and spading in the garden. And as with most dreams, I cannot remember it clearly, only shards and shadows. There was something about Annie, sweet round dapple-gray Annie, cantering up the night sky, leaping over the starry Indy blue darkness into the clouds, but then she was the round dappled moon as full as a new mother’s breast and as white and—rose, the moon was a rose and the moon rose, growing so that it filled my sight, growing, blossoming. It was the moon yet it was flowers, many flowers white and damask and apple dapple harvest gold and true violet blue, it was moonflowers yet it was a blossom woman smiling at me through clouds of gossamer hair ribbon, smiling and calling me by name: Morgan.

  And it was she, the gay, green-eyed, half-naked fay gar landed with primroses, laughing and speaking to me just as she had that day in Caer Avalon: “Morgan. Do you know why you are here?” It was she, that maiden innocent of shame—yet it was an ancient gray crone, as hunchbacked as the waning moon, cackling.

  And it was a black vulture circling with a craking cry.

  And it was the moon.

  And it was Mother.

  Igraine. Her lovely face as hollow and gray as a skull.

  And it was a voice as big as the moonlit night calling me: Morgan. Morgan! Come here.

  I awoke sobbing, but it was not just a dream. The faces remained before me in the darkness of my chamber, shimmering like the moons and stars on Merlin’s midnight velvet cloak, but—but I did not understand, the faces were many yet one, a ghostly changing crescent-full-decrescent moon made of flower women hovering close to my face, and their voices—their many voices were one voice, honey sweet but as great as sky, saying, “Morgan, come to Avalon. Come to Avalon, daughter.”

  The face of many faces faded away into the darkness, and the voice whispered away yet echoed like a shout within my mind. I jumped up from my bed, weeping like a child, as hard as I had wept the day they cooked my favorite frock black, and I ran barefoot through the cold, stony darkness to Ongwynn’s chamber. It must have been the dead of night, with not even mice or piskies rustling, although somewhere an owl spoke. I folded to my knees by Ongwynn’s pallet and shook her shoulder, but she was already awake, already struggling to sit up and see what was the matter with me.

  “I’m sent for,” I cried.

  Ongwynn sat on her pallet, and I could feel more than see her quiet gaze upon me. Morgause pattered in, roused by my noise, saying, “Morgan, what in the world—”

  “Her,” I blurted between sobs, “the—the flower fay—and—all, they all said—come to Avalon—”

  “A sending?” Ongwynn asked, her voice as level as ever in my life.

  I could barely speak. “Ye—yes.”

  She lifted her common, heavy hands and placed one on each side of my head just as she had for Thomas, like a blessing. And there was something of
the healer left in her after all, for her touch calmed my tears and my heart.

  “Then go, Morgan,” she said.

  No. No, I couldn’t. I had to stay with Ongwynn. I had to wait for Thomas to come back to me.

  “Go,” Ongwynn said again, soft as dawn.

  It was my fate calling, I sensed. And healing Ongwynn, I had promised to obey my fate. I knew I had to go.

  More: I knew I wanted to.

  BOOK THREE

  Avalon

  8

  I LEFT AT DAWN, ON ANNIE. SHORT OF BEING KNOCKED on the head I could not possibly have gone back to sleep that night, and no one else did either. Ongwynn got up, got dressed, and set about provisioning me. I dithered back to my chamber with a rushlight in hand and tried to get some clothing onto myself and some into a bag; I kept changing my mind about which should go where. Morgause drifted around my chamber like a spirit, great-eyed and silent and annoying. “I can’t think with you hovering,” I complained. “Go back to bed.”

  She did not, but she ghosted out after a while, then slipped back into my chamber and said, “Here,” holding something small toward me.

  “What?”

  She said nothing. I had to take it to see what it was: a ring woven of human hair. Mother’s hair.

  “I don’t need that.” I tried to hand it back to her.

  “Take it with you,” Morgause told me.

  “Why? I’ll be back.”

  Morgause just gave me the look of a big-eyed deer mouse caught in candlelight.

  “Oh, for the love of mercy . . .” I put the ring on a finger of my right hand and turned my back, going about my packing.

  The piskies didn’t care that Morgause was silently saying I might be killed. They chuckled and chittered and rustled everywhere in my chamber, so excited that several times I almost caught sight of them, glimpsing movement from the corner of my eye, shadows scampering. And whenever I lacked for anything, I had only to turn my back and when I turned around again, it would magically be there. When my rushlight burned out, a candle flame without a candle lit my chamber. When I needed string for bundling, silken cord appeared. When I realized I had only a few shabby patched frocks and a crude homemade pair of shoes by way of clothing, I turned around to find fine soft leather boots and a full dozen gowns—not the frocks of a girl or the skirts of a peasant woman, but the flowing silk-and-velvet garb of a lady. I stood there with my mouth open as the piskies laughed at me, the sly little never-seen brats, and to this day I do not know whether the gowns were magicked in a moment or took months in the making, whether they somehow knew beforehand that I would have need of a lady’s clothing.

  “Thank you, brats,” I managed to say at last, and they laughed at me more than ever.

  Morgause stood gazing at the gowns as if they had dropped onto my bed out of the moon.

  “Here,” I told her, “I don’t need all these. You take some of them.” We were the same size, she and I, and we still looked almost as much alike as twins, Ongwynn said, but I was the one who could be counted upon to be making noise or difficulty. “Which would you like? The rose-colored ones?” She could have those. I hated pink.

  She shook her head. “They’re yours.”

  “I want to give you some! Which ones?” I grabbed a satin gown that looked like a frothy sea at sunset, and tried to hand it to her, but all by itself it flew out of my arms and landed on my bed again.

  “They’re yours,” Morgause said.

  “But Annie can’t carry all this!” I wailed.

  Such silliness, fretting over satin and lace when I was setting forth to make my way alone through wilderness or battlefields or both.

  In the end, I wore the fine new boots to ride in, put on a blue velvet gown with my oldest frock over it to protect it, decided I would need a straw bonnet to keep the sun out of my eyes and jammed it on my head so I wouldn’t forget it, brushed Annie by moonlight and braided her mane with gossamer hair ribbons, and I am sure I looked like a madwoman. I packed what I could and left the rest behind. At first dayspring light I saddled Annie and hooked my bags behind the cantle. In one of them, Ongwynn had packed one of her precious parchment charts, though I protested that I did not need it; Morgause and I had studied those charts. I knew the ways of the rivers, the mountains, and the warring lords between me and Avalon.

  I hugged and kissed Morgause, hugged Ongwynn—I think it was the first time I had ever hugged Ongwynn. I had hugged Morgause sometimes in play or mischief, just as I had sometimes pinched her or yanked her hair, but I had seldom touched Ongwynn except that one time when I healed her. Hugging her was like hugging a warm mountain as solid as bedrock. I kissed her timidly on her cheek. It was heathery dry.

  It was not until I had mounted Annie that the enormity of what was happening gripped my heart. Till then I had dithered from chamber to chamber and task to task, but now there stood Ongwynn and Morgause like doorposts outside the portal of Caer Ongwynn, and the air hung thick with rainbow mist, and for some reason I noticed the roaring of the sea as I looked at my sister and Ongwynn, my rock, and already they seemed far, far away. Whether I would ever see them again only the goddess—or whatever fey force had taken charge of my life—only the moon knew.

  “You’re a sight,” Morgause said, trying to make me smile, but I couldn’t.

  “Do you have your stone?” Ongwynn asked, and for a moment I heard in her voice an echo of Nurse—my nurse of so far ago and long away. I felt tears trying to sting their way out of my eyes. I wouldn’t let them.

  “Of course I have my stone,” I grumbled, lifting my hand to make sure even though I could feel it nestling warm between my half-grown breasts—at least I hoped they were only half grown, for they did not amount to much.

  Morgause said, “Come back safely,” and although I am sure she tried to keep her voice as level as Ongwynn‘s, it wavered.

  Come back. And the thought that I had been trying not to think burst from me. I blurted, “If Thomas comes back while I am gone . . .”

  “I’ll marry him,” Morgause said, trying to tease.

  I could have breathed fire at the thought. I scorned her, for a moment I hated her, and the moment freed me to go. “Good-bye,” I whispered, and I raised my hand to wave farewell as I sent Annie cantering away.

  On that journey I discovered that Annie, also, was mine only to lose, like everything else I had ever counted on.

  That was very long ago, and now I fly with the cloud shadows, and one would think I could stop caring. But looking back, I still hate myself for my stupidity. For three years Annie had been ridden seldom and had been feeding on thistles and scant grass, yet I thought only of myself—I expected her to be a swift messenger pony again and carry me like the wind to Avalon. And it pains me still when I remember how loyally she tried to do so.

  The first few days on the springy turf of the upland moors I galloped her until her ribs heaved and sweat foamed on her neck. And I thought all was well. I could see unto the horizon in every direction nothing more dangerous than sheep, and the honeybees suckled at the heather under a vast blue sky, and I felt like a half-fledged young hawk just out of the nest; I wanted to fly.

  I saw no reason to be secret so long as I told no one my true name. It had been three years; I hoped Redburke and others who might want me dead had forgotten about me. Also, if there was fighting between me and Avalon, I wanted to know about it. When I met with cowherds or tinkers or the like, I gave them greeting and asked them, “What news?” Or if there was a village, I would ride in and drink water at the common well and give water to Annie when she had cooled enough so that it would not harm her, and I would ask of folk who stopped to stare what was the name of the place, to guide my course by. Almost always folk stammered when they replied as if they were trying to decide whether they needed to tug their forelocks and bow to me. Some folk were wary, some curious, some friendly. A goodwife gave me scones to eat, a goatherd gave me cheese, and I bartered Annie’s ribbons for oats for her. Few folk
were bold enough to ask whence I came or where I was going, and in answer to the bold few I only smiled and rode on. And three times in as many days I changed my course because of the cautions they gave me. In the distance sometimes I could see the dust of battle rising like the smoke, as if the earth herself were burning, and I shuddered.

  During the nights Annie either grazed or lay down, and I slept under the stars sometimes, in a sheepcote sometimes and once in a cowshed on the outskirts of a village when it was raining. I slept lightly, for I missed the murmur of the sea, and these soft inland hills felt strange to me, too tame with their maple groves, their villages huddled in hollows, their hedged garden plots. Also, the summons of Avalon tugged at me like a golden wire threaded into my heart, and I wanted only to ride on.

  I cantered across the cushiony hills, and my heart sang like a harp of Avalon, Avalon, and I felt blessed, exalted.

  I thought nothing could harm me.

  Then I reached the mountains.

  I saw them rising in the distance out of wilderness that coiled like an ivy green shadow around their feet, and I felt my mouth open like a hollow moon. Now I am ancient or ageless and I have flown over snowpeaks and I know what mountains are, but then I was a maiden like a green willow sprout, only fifteen, and those crags were the most daunting tors I had ever seen.

  Within a day’s journey the land changed from heathery moor to rocky foothills, and Annie went lame.

  At first when I felt the hitch in her gait I thought that she had a stone wedged in her hoof, and I jumped down from her back and lifted her feet one by one. No stone. But one of her little clay-colored hooves, the left fore, had begun to crack.

  “Oh, Annie . . .” I stood there harrowed by the knowledge that I was selfish, thoughtless, stupid. I should have had metal plates put on her hooves the way the knights did before they set out on a long journey. It was not often done for farm ponies and such, but probably in some village I could have traded something, maybe one of those confounded gowns, to have a blacksmith do it. But now the villages lay behind me, and the dust of war rose on that horizon, and it was too late. A mystic force tugged at me the way the moon tugged at the tides, pulling me toward Avalon, Avalon, Avalon.