by J. M. Briggs
“Calm down Nicki,” Aiden said, reaching out to grab her hands. “You’re making a mess. You can ask later.”
The large dark wood table of Morgana’s formal dining room had been covered with a thick layer of newspaper and a plastic tablecloth. To Aiden’s left, the curtains were pulled back on both the tall windows and allowing sunlight to stream into the room. He suspected based on the table’s position that it had been moved further away from the tall china cabinet than it normally was.
The smell of pumpkin pie was already wafting out of Morgana’s kitchen, making Aiden’s mouth water. He had to admit that it was pretty impressive that Morgana was using the pumpkins to bake pies. His eyes moved over to the plate of treats that Morgana had put out on the buffet for them to snack on along with a stacked pile of their favorite sodas. She had something for all of them. It was actually kind of funny how well she took care of them whenever they were over. She intimidated him in class and at magic lessons, but at the same time, there was a very caring side to her that she showed in little ways. Aiden frowned and stopped scraping the inside of his pumpkin as a strange thought occurred to him.
“What is it Aiden?” Bran asked from next to him. “You have a weird look.”
“I was just wondering if Morgana ever had kids,” Aiden answered in a low voice, glancing towards the kitchen doorway. “Sometimes… I don’t know, she just seems like she’d make a good mother.”
“I don’t know,” Alex said slowly, a slight frown on her face. “I mean she’s immortal so if she ever did have kids then she outlived them.”
“That would be very hard,” Nicki added sadly. “But it doesn’t mean that she hasn’t. Merlin too; maybe they’ve both had a few families over the centuries.”
“Do you want to ask her?” Arthur asked, glancing almost fearfully towards the doorway.
“I can say no in five languages and that still wouldn’t tell you just how much I am not going to ask her that,” Aiden replied quickly his back straightening.
“You speak five languages?” Alex asked him, looking rather impressed.
“I can speak three languages: English, Spanish and some Gaelic,” Aiden told her with a small smile. “And I know how to say no in German and Arabic.”
“Arabic and Gaelic?” Arthur repeated, raising an eyebrow.
“Gaelic from my grandfather, he’s not fluent, but he likes to use the language and taught Aisling and me what he knows. And I learned some Arabic a few years ago from an Egyptian exchange student that my family hosted for a semester.”
“Oh I remember him, Hamid was his name!” Nicki added with a smile. “Nice guy, I wonder how he’s doing?”
“Don’t know, we fell out of contact,” Aiden answered with a shrug, mostly for the benefit of the others since Nicki already knew that.
Picking up one of the smaller knives he began making a few guiding cuts on the surface of the pumpkin, just deep enough to see as he marked out the face he was going to make. Next to him, Nicki had a marker and was carefully outlining a much more elaborate face. She had the whole thing planned out on a sheet of paper and was looking back at it every few seconds. Alex wasn’t as diligent as Nicki, but she was also drawing the face she wanted on the pumpkin’s surface. Arthur glanced over towards him with a smile and shrugged at the antics of the girls. Bran shifted his pumpkin around and scrapped another large scoop of innards out of it with a small grunt.
“I wonder if Morgana gets trick or treaters up here?” Alex asked, breaking the silence. “It’s a bit out of town.”
“Probably not,” Nicki answered, turning her pumpkin from side to side and studying her work. “There aren’t many people up here when trick or treating you have to keep to the high-density areas to get a good candy-time ratio.”
“Do I even want to ask how long you trick or treated?” Bran remarked to Nicki with a smirk.
“I trick or treated until I was ten,” Nicki informed him, raising her chin and trying to look put out.
“And then she volunteered to take younger kids around and got candy that way,” Aiden informed them with a grin.
“You did the same thing Aiden: when we finished with the kids today don’t think that I didn’t see your bag of candy.”
“I only take candy when the people insist,” Aiden countered seriously.
“I’m not sure if watching and listening to the two of you makes me sad I never had siblings or happy that I didn’t,” Bran cut in, shaking his head and chuckling.
“How is it going?” Merlin asked as he strolled into the room.
Professor Yates was dressed casually in jeans with a black t-shirt with a white skull on it and was carrying an iced tea in one hand. The combination looked off on an older man with curly graying hair, but somehow Merlin made it work. Perhaps, Aiden thought, simply due to the fact that at this point nothing about the three-thousand-year-old mage surprised him.
“So far so good,” Nicki replied, pausing in her work and wiping off her hands before securing a stray strand of red hair into her ponytail. “None are done yet.”
“Well with these five and the three that Morgana and I made earlier we should be safe,” Merlin told them. “Oh, I pulled out sleeping bags for all of you and Morgana has put extra blankets in the living room.”
“Why did you have so many sleeping bags?” Bran asked curiously.
“When you’re as old as we are, you tend to collect all sorts of things,” Merlin answered with a laugh. “But these are actually a fairly recent acquisition; I got them at some fundraiser a few years ago. I forget which department it was for, but one of the auction items was a rather large camping set with tents, sleeping bags, and cookware. I’ve actually never used most of it.”
“Really?” Arthur said, sounding interested. “Maybe we’ll have to borrow it at some point.”
“Oh, do you like camping?” Merlin asked Arthur with a glint in his eye.
“Actually I’ve never gone,” Arthur admitted with a laugh. “Well other than summer camp, but that’s not the same as pitching a tent and cooking over a fire.”
“No, it isn’t,” Merlin agreed with a nod. “Honestly I haven’t been camping in years, I confess that I rather like the age of modern plumbing. It was so sad when the Roman system fell into disrepair. But electricity is nice too and the internet is wonderful. I often wonder how I got any research done before it came along.”
Aiden glanced towards Nicki who was working very hard at not laughing and then he looked back at Merlin who was watching him with a sly smile.
“Are you teasing them again?” Morgana called from the kitchen before appearing out of it a moment later. “Honestly, you keep this up and they’re not going to know what to believe from you.”
“Ah, but it is so much fun, my dear Morgana.”
“Sometimes I think you don’t remember what is real and what isn’t anymore,” Morgana said, giving Merlin an appraising look. “Now go and finish chopping up the vegetables. They need to finish at least one jack-o-lantern a piece.”
“Oh wait!” Nicki called, shaking some pumpkin guts off her fingers. “Do jack-o-lanterns work on other seasonal days? Why do they work in the first place on Halloween?”
“I believe that the real power of the jack-o-lantern comes from the freshly harvested nature of the vessel it is carved into,” Merlin explained calmly with a smile as he studied the bowl full of pumpkin guts. “Add to that a source of light that radiates out… well, it all comes together with a strange magic. The truth is children that what Morgana and I understand and know about magic is dwarfed by what we do not understand.”
“So the faces may not be necessary?” Nicki asked with a considering look on her face as she looked at her pumpkin. Morgana shook her head fondly and vanished back into the kitchen, giving Merlin another look. Merlin nodded to her quickly before looking back at Nicki.
“I’m not sure, but then again I doubt that we’ll ever have a good chance to test it with a real Sídhe,” Merlin reminded her. “Th
is trick wasn’t even well known during the first war. We stumbled across it in a small Irish village, but they didn’t use pumpkins.”
“So how did you discover that pumpkins worked?” Bran asked. “If the Sídhe have been gone for so long.”
“The Sídhe are gone, but during the final days of the war many of their slaves escaped into our world and they share most of the same weaknesses. While most of them aren’t usually interested in causing trouble for humans, the seasonal days are too much to resist for some of them. Thus humans have been protecting themselves from them for centuries.”
“Morgana mentioned that,” Alex added thoughtfully. “I guess I haven’t thought about it much, that things like brownies are real.”
“Brownies? You mean those helpful household spirits?” Aiden asked with a grin. “It would be awesome to have one of those around.”
“Potentially, but keep in mind that our magic reacts very strongly towards them.”
“If they live in our world then why do magic levels go down?” Nicki questioned Merlin as she drew a face on her pumpkin.
“They are not a threat,” Merlin explained calmly. “Simply put, the Earth can’t seem to sustain magical levels all the time and thus activates the protective measure of magic only when really needed. Otherwise, we’d have a constant battle with visitors and it would be exhausting.”
“Is it really that simple?” Alex asked, picking up her finished pumpkin carefully in her arms. “Aren’t there short invasions from time to time?”
“Occasionally on the Indian subcontinent. They have an odd, almost permanent connection to a particularly troublesome world, but the Old Ones who live there are very fast to deal with these problems. So fast in fact that Morgana and I usually don’t even find out about them until later.”
“Old Ones in India… wait, do you mean the Hindu gods?” Nicki asked, her voice going higher in her excitement.
“Indeed: Shiva was a good friend of Lokpal, a previous incarnation of the Iron Soul,” Merlin told them, looking to Arthur fondly. “Lokpal created the Trishula just as Arto created Cathanáil - forgive me Excalibur and entrusted it to Shiva. In fact, I believe that one of Shiva’s names to his followers is Lokpal, no doubt a way of honoring that incarnation of the Iron Soul.”
“Seriously,” Arthur asked with wide eyes. “One of my previous forms was friends with an honest to goodness god?”
“Well depending on your definition of god then yes,” Merlin told him kindly with a smile. “Of course one of your other incarnations was married to an Old One.”
“I thought he and Jenny-” Bran started to ask.
“Gwenyvar and Luegáed are only reincarnated some of the time,” Morgana said as she stalked into the room, a pensive expression on her face. “They are not a problem in every life. But enough about that, the sun will be going down soon so focus on finishing those pumpkins and let’s get them outside.”
Aiden glanced at Alex who had a strange little frown on her face as she looked at Morgana. She caught his eye and shrugged quickly. Warm beams of sunlight illuminated the room through the window as the sun dipped lower in the sky and Aiden forced himself to focus on cutting out the eyes that he’d drawn on the pumpkin. The room lapsed into calm silence and Merlin headed back into the kitchen, no doubt to finish the vegetables for Morgana.
Alex finished her pumpkin first; a relieved sigh escaped her as she flexed her fingers. Aiden grimaced, feeling the strain in his own fingers. He just wasn’t used to carving pumpkins. With a burst of determination, he sliced into the thick orange skin to create a couple of jagged teeth. He put the knife aside and picked up the pumpkin while Alex did the same and went off towards the front door.
Twenty minutes later, the porch was an odd sight; anyone looking at it would have thought that a whole slew of kids lived at the house. Some were wonderfully precise with mouthfuls of sharp teeth and fierce jagged eyes like Nicki’s while his own pumpkin was much more on par with a kid’s. Its three squarish teeth looked more humorous than frightening. But Arthur’s was the most frightening with narrow long eyes that curled down slightly at the edge and a long narrow mouth with teeth that looked more like tears in fabric. It gave him the distinct impression of an evil scarecrow for some reason. In the corner of his eye, he saw Alex shiver slightly at her boyfriend’s jack-o-lantern as the candle flickered for a moment.
“I hate to say it, but Arthur’s is the best,” Nicki admitted next to him. “Seriously creepy.”
“I’m kind of sad that we changed out of our costumes,” Bran remarked as he glanced over at the setting sun. “Feels a bit odd to be surrounded by jack-o-lanterns and not be dressed up.”
“Well after last night’s party and trick or treating with hordes of kids today, my costume was getting a bit smelly,” Arthur replied with a laugh and shrug. “I don’t know about you.”
“Yeah, but it was fun to volunteer with the kids and nothing weird happened,” Aiden pointed out as he followed the others up the porch steps.
“Even if getting out of bed was a pain,” Nicki sighed dramatically, gently moving a pumpkin to the side so that the porch steps were flanked by two jack-o-lanterns.
“Nicki, trick or treating wasn’t until two in the afternoon,” Aiden reminded her, chuckling at the scowl on her face.
“Yeah, but after last night I was tired and my head was killing me.”
“You were the life of the party,” Arthur teased with a laugh and a smirk at her expense.
“You kids really shouldn’t drink,” Morgana chided them, gesturing them into the house with a frown. “If you lose control of your magic it could be very dangerous.”
Nicki turned bright red, wilting under Morgana’s gaze and she nodded her understanding quickly before darting inside. Morgana’s expression softened and she exhaled softly.
“In her defense, the punch got seriously spiked,” Alex explained quickly. “We were trying to be responsible.”
“I know, and I am pleased with all of you,” Morgana replied with a nod. “But caution is necessary for our kind. There are still places in this world where those accused of magic are killed and all the magic in the world can’t hold back a mob of frightened and enraged mortals.”
The jack-o-lanterns placed around the house cast an eerie light into it through the windows. None of the curtains were drawn and strange shadows flickered on the walls. A tray of food had been set out on the coffee table along with a tea service. Alex lingered by the doorway until Arthur took her hand and pulled her into the room. He sat down in the large armchair and tugged Alex down next to him, squeezing them both into it. Morgana sat down on one side of the loveseat and pulled a round object that Aiden thought was a mirror for a moment. It caught the light from the jack-o-lanterns and gleamed. In Morgana’s hand, it began to shimmer and he was struck silent and still.
Aiden leaned against the wall, watching as Morgana held the small polished bronze disk in her hands. It had been a year since he’d seen the disk last, having only vague memories of seeing it on her desk last Halloween after being rescued from Sídhe hounds. The surface of it shimmered in the light but did not provide a clear reflection like a mirror would have. Bran was leaning towards Morgana, a look of intense curiosity on his face. Then Morgana smiled slightly and shifted her position to give Bran a better view. The disk began to glow more brightly and Aiden realized that Morgana was pushing some of her magic into the bronze disk.
“It is a subtle thing,” Morgana said in a low voice, speaking mostly to Bran. “All it takes is a small spark of magic that you sustain. You allow your magic to reach out and connect back to the Earth itself, the source of your magic. Sometimes you’ll see nothing and sometimes you’ll see something very important.”
Stepping forward, Aiden looked at the bronze disk around Nicki’s head as she crept forward as well. Bran reached out and carefully touched the edge of the bronze disk, his breath catching for a moment. Aiden wondered what it felt like or if he was seeing something strange.
There was an energy in the room, an undercurrent of nervousness and excitement beneath the silence. In the armchair, Arthur was watching Bran with wide and nervous eyes while Alex nibbled at her bottom lip. Nearby, Nicki was almost vibrating. No one said anything, but Aiden knew that everyone was thinking about Bran’s last vision.
“I see…” Bran frowned deeply, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the bronze disk. “I’m not sure what it is.”
“What is your first impression?” Morgana asked in a low voice, her tone calm and even. “Trust your instincts.”
“Blood,” Bran whispered, swallowing thickly. “It’s blood…”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Merlin told him gently, his voice soft, but cutting in the silence. “Anything else?”
“No- wait,” Bran said, twisting and gripping the bronze disk in both of his hands. “There’s a sword!”