Half Sick of Shadows

by Laura Sebastian

  She said the words with conviction, like she believed every word she spoke, but they still rang false to my ears. Morgana must have heard it too.

  “Then you’ll stop it? Hurt him now to save him later?” she pressed.

  Gwen didn’t speak for a moment, but then she nodded.

  “Of course,” she said. “You’re right. It’s kinder in the long run.”

  * * *

  IN GWEN’S DEFENSE, I do believe she tried. In the weeks that followed, she put more distance between herself and Arthur. She didn’t tease him, or touch him, or even speak directly to him most days, but as much as that seemed to hurt Arthur, it hurt Gwen just as much. As the moon waxed and waned overhead, Gwen seemed to fade before our eyes.

  I don’t think the casual observer would have noticed it. She didn’t mope or sigh mournfully or hide away in her rooms to sulk. But to me, and to Morgana, Arthur, and Lance, the difference in her was marked and frightening.

  It started with her laugh. Where it was once a full-throated force of nature, it became quiet. Tight-lipped. Half-hearted.

  She slept even less than usual, and where she had always found herself at the center of conversations, she slipped to the outskirts of them. She was still witty, still clever, still able to utterly disarm a person with a single word or even a look. The main difference, I suppose, is that it began to feel like she was merely going through the motions. Saying what she felt she ought to say, smiling when she thought she ought to smile.

  She became a player in the farce of her life.

  And that, more than her coolness toward him, was what truly seemed to break Arthur.

  “Something is wrong with her,” he told me while we roamed the shelves of the library one afternoon. He pulled a fat, leather-bound book from a high shelf, bringing a thick cloud of dust with it.

  I coughed, waving my hand in front of my face. “It’s Gwen,” I told him, though I knew even as I said it that the words were anything but convincing. “You know how she is, Arthur. She’s moody, but she always bounces back.”

  Arthur snorted, his eyes scanning the page. “Moody? I would give my right arm for Gwen at her moodiest just now. My lungs for her to snap peevishly at me and glower. My heart itself for a withering stare—a cutting remark even. This isn’t moodiness. You know that. What’s wrong with her, El?”

  Guilt swam through me, but I forced myself to shake my head. “What makes you think I have any idea?”

  He looked up from the book and raised a single eyebrow. “Because you know everything about everyone. Isn’t that your gift?”

  “You know it’s not,” I said, taking the book from him and flipping through it myself. I can’t remember now what we were looking for, but I remember we were trying to settle some sort of debate between us. It happened often enough—one of us would recall some fact, the other would call it a falsehood, and we would debate it back and forth until we resolved to find proof, one way or another. “I know the future, Arthur, at least parts of it.”

  “I wasn’t talking about your oracle gift,” he replied. “It isn’t a magical gift. It’s just you. You understand people. And you understand Gwen. So what is it? Did I do something?”

  “Of course not,” I said quickly. Too quickly.

  “Elaine,” he said, his voice softening.

  I sighed. “She’s trying to figure some things out, Arthur,” I said.

  “About me?” he pressed. “She barely looks at me anymore. I was so lost in my thoughts yesterday that I tripped over my own feet in front of everyone in the dining hall and she didn’t even make fun of me for it.”

  I didn’t answer, but that seemed to be all the confirmation he needed.

  “I didn’t ask anything of her,” he continued. “I know she doesn’t feel the same way about me as I do about her. I’ve never held that against her. I just . . . I just miss my friend, El. I know you miss her too.”

  “I think she doesn’t want to give you false hope,” I told him, my voice quiet. “But, Arthur, I don’t think it would hurt her so much if it was false hope. I think, in doing what she believes is best for you, she’s breaking her own heart.”

  Arthur frowned, trying to make sense of my words. “You think she loves me?”

  I considered my next words carefully. “I think she knows she could, and that scares her.”

  “But . . . why? She must know I feel the same way. I’ve never been good at hiding it.”

  I bit my lip, trying to figure out how to put it into words. “I think that she’s afraid it will change her.”

  “But it won’t—”

  “It will,” I corrected, because that, at least, I’d Seen. All the ways loving Arthur would change her, all the ways it might destroy her in the process. “It will change you too. That’s the very nature of love. Gwen likes her life as it is, she likes the future ahead of her, she’s content with her path. Loving you would throw everything into chaos.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Funny, I always thought Gwen thrived on chaos,” he said, though there was no humor in his voice.

  “Controlled chaos. Chaos of her own making. But this? This means trusting someone else enough to give them some measure of influence over her life. You must know how much that terrifies her.”

  Arthur nodded slowly, but his eyes were far away, already formulating a plan, I knew, already solving the problem he’d been presented with.

  “I concede defeat,” he told me. “You were right.”

  “About what?” I asked him.

  He thumped his knuckles against the cover of the book in my hands. “Whatever we were arguing about. You were right. I’ll see you at dinner.”

  And then he was gone, leaving me alone in the library. At least, I thought I’d been alone, but then Nimue appeared beside me like a summer breeze. First there was only still air, then she arrived.

  “Was that wise?” she asked, her voice idle enough, but I heard the undercurrent.

  “I don’t know,” I told her, shrugging my shoulders. “But my friends were hurting and it hurt me.”

  She clicked her tongue. “If you cannot tolerate your friends’ pain, there is a difficult road ahead of you.”

  My stomach clenched. “If you’d hoped to keep Arthur and Gwen apart, you would never have brought her here. You would have done everything in your power to keep them as far away from each other as possible. But if they truly love each other, if they come to terms with that now, if I can find a way to bind them together irreversibly . . .” I trailed off.

  “Then you think you can save them.”

  “I think I can make it harder for them to hurt each other,” I said.

  Nimue’s hand grazed my arm, a comfort and a warning.

  “You know nothing about love, Elaine,” she told me. “But you will.”

  * * *

  I’D WORRIED ARTHUR might do something foolish after our conversation, that he might take the sliver of hope I’d thrown his way and let it overwhelm him into making some sort of grand romantic proclamation, that he might end up pushing her too hard too soon and scaring her even more. Though I’m sure she would have protested the comparison, it was easy to think of Gwen as a skittish horse, and I thought if Arthur tried to do something quintessentially stupid and Arthur-like such as telling her he loved her, she would bolt off into the sunset, never to be seen again.

  But he didn’t.

  If I didn’t know better, I’d forget we’d had that conversation in the library at all. He let Gwen retreat from him and all of us, he didn’t push her or try to goad her. He didn’t even stare at her when she wasn’t paying attention like he usually did, like she was some kind of puzzle he couldn’t figure out. He simply gave her the space she needed.

  And then one day, about a month or so later, when Arthur, Morgana, Lance, and I were eating stolen lemon cakes together in a forest clearing, Gwen
appeared seemingly from nowhere, brows drawn and eyes focused.

  “Gwen,” Arthur said as she approached, her gaze trained solely on him with such intensity the rest of us might as well not have been there at all. “Are you al—”

  She didn’t let him finish. She dropped down to her knees beside him in one fluid motion, took hold of his face, and pressed her lips to his.

  It happened so suddenly that for a moment, no one moved; no one even breathed. And then, just as suddenly, Arthur was kissing her back, his own hand coming to rest on the back of her neck, tangling in her red-gold hair and anchoring her there.

  Perhaps it should have been embarrassing for me—and for Morgana and Lance too—to witness that kiss, to see the relief and wariness and desire mingling together in two of our closest friends. But it wasn’t embarrassing. It wasn’t awkward. I didn’t feel the burning need to avert my gaze and pretend I didn’t notice it happening right before me. Instead it just felt right, like something that was always meant to happen that way.

  After a moment, Gwen pulled away and sat back on her heels, her eyes searching Arthur’s dazed face and her swollen mouth slightly open. She looked at him like he was a problem she was on the cusp of solving but hadn’t quite figured out yet. Then she rolled to her feet and held her hand out to him.

  “We’re going to go talk,” she told him. It wasn’t a request, but it wasn’t a command either. Instead it was simply an acknowledgment of fact. Arthur nodded and took her hand, letting her pull him to his feet and lead him out of the clearing and away from the rest of us without so much as a goodbye.

  22

  SLEEP DOESN’T FIND me, even though we leave for Lyonesse in the morning and I know I’ll need all the rest I can get. When the moon is high and full in the sky, I throw off the coverlet and climb out of bed. In the pitch dark of my room, I have to fumble around before I find a candle, and it takes longer still for me to light it. With trembling hands, I carry the candle across the room to where my loom has been set up, a basket of skeins of pearlescent white thread beside the seat. I set the candle in the window and sit down, tracing my fingers over the threads already warped on the loom, watching them glimmer in the candlelight.

  I know that we will succeed, one way or another, in Lyonesse. I know it.

  But I don’t—not really. I haven’t had time to scry since coming to the castle. I haven’t been able to See how the strings of fate have adjusted in the space of a week. Maybe, if I had, I would have Seen Gwen’s letter before she sent it, I would have Seen Arthur’s failure to procure more than a handful of second-rate knights. If I could have Seen them, maybe I could have done something to circumvent them before the possibilities became facts.

  But I won’t make that mistake again.

  Though sleep pulls at tired limbs and my mind is a fog of wine and exhaustion, I reach into the basket and draw out a skein, feeling the soft thread between my fingers.

  In a few hours we will be leaving for a land feral and unknown. In a couple of days I will be seeing my father for the first time in more than a decade. In a week, my friends and I will step into a land of monsters where Gwen is the crown princess.

  None of that is in my control. But, in some ways, this is.

  * * *

  GWEN WILL STAND at her window, her red hair unbound and wild, her feet bare, her dress several sizes too big. The hem of it will be caked in mud, the same mud that will clump in the ends of her hair and streak her ruddy cheeks. She will peer past a velvet curtain with wide, impassive eyes.

  Below her window, a battle will unfold, if it can truly be called that. There will be a handful of scrawny boys in shining armor, swords in hand. Even with their helmets on, I know a few on sight—Gawain, Lancelot, and Arthur. A ways back from the action, Morgana stands in a black lace gown, her hands raised as she summons magic, but even that will not be enough.

  Fifty men will fight against them—though men does not seem to be an accurate term. Though they will walk on two legs, they will be disproportionate, their arms and legs strangely bent so that they look almost broken. They will wear no armor, no helmets, and their bare faces will be sharp and tufted with fur. Not hair—fur. They will have ears like wolves, snouts like wolves, teeth like something altogether other. I have never seen teeth so sharp in nature; each one will be filed to a rose thorn’s point.

  The swords of the knights will be useless against the monsters. Even when they draw blood and red runs thick over the silver blades, mats itself in the monsters’ fur, it will seem to have no effect. The monsters will not feel the blow, will not even feel it when an arm is cut clean off, or a leg. They will keep fighting, keep striking, keep sinking their unnatural teeth through the metal of the knights’ armor and into the skin below.

  The screams that pierce the air will be so loud that even through time, they rattle my bones. But Gwen will not flinch from them. She will have the power to end the fighting with a word, but she will not say it. She will stand in the window and she will watch the bloodshed unfold, her eyes locked on one knight in particular, on Arthur.

  When one of the monsters pins him to the ground and rips off his helmet, when he lowers those teeth to Arthur’s bared throat, Gwen will not look away. She will not regret what must happen. But she will mourn him all the same.

  * * *

  ARTHUR WILL KNEEL before the king of Lyonesse—though I cannot see his face, I see that he has the same wild red hair as Gwen—and he will propose a treaty. He will promise trade agreements that will make the king richer than his wildest imaginings, he will offer an army to drive back the monsters that overrun the country, he will swear to make Gwen his queen so that their offspring will one day rule the whole continent.

  The king of Lyonesse will smile and lean forward in his throne, and then he will order Arthur executed on the spot, his head returned to Camelot to send a message that Lyonesse answers to no ruler but him.

  * * *

  ARTHUR AND GWEN will make up, but they will have had enough of crowns and politics and quests. They will run away together to live in the woods, all alone, and they will live to old age, happy and fulfilled and at peace, blissfully unaware of Mordred bringing Albion to ruin a hundred miles away.

  * * *

  ARTHUR WILL BE so distraught after speaking to Gwen that he will go for a walk in the woods and fall off a cliff.

  * * *

  GWEN WILL HAVE already eloped with a man I don’t know, and Arthur, brokenhearted, will fall ill and die.

  * * *

  ARTHUR WILL HAVE his sword drawn, facing Gwen, who will wear a torn silk gown, her hands slick with blood, hair matted with dirt. She will snarl under the light of the moon, and her eyes will be hungry. She will have no weapon, no shield, no armor, but he will be the one to look at her with fear while she looks at him with only hunger.

  Lightning will streak through the air, echoed by a rumble of thunder, and just like that they will spring toward each other and Arthur will raise his sword to strike.

  * * *

  WE WON’T EVEN make it to Lyonesse. We will get lost in the wild woods between Shalott and the border. Only Gawain will make it back to Camelot to tell the story.

  * * *

  ARTHUR WILL SPEAK to Gwen. She will tell him about her fears, about her father, about all the reasons she became afraid to leave home, to make a new life in Camelot. She will tell him that she loves him. He will tell her they can figure things out, together. She will take his ring back and slide it onto her finger.

  We will return to Camelot, with Gwen and a signed treaty. The people will cheer. Mordred will glower. Morgause will turn puce.

  * * *

  ARTHUR WILL CHALLENGE one of the monster men to a duel for Gwen’s hand, though Gwen will roll her eyes at the prospect. They will fight. The monster man will win by decapitating Arthur with a single blow.

  * * *

  ARTHUR WILL CHALLENGE one of
the monster men to a duel for Gwen’s hand, though Gwen will roll her eyes at the prospect. They will fight. Arthur will win, but Gwen will refuse to marry him all the same because she would never marry a man who treats her as a prize. Arthur will be executed on the spot for disrespecting the princess so.

  * * *

  THE VISIONS GO on and on, a blur of maybes and could bes and mights until I can’t quite tell where one vision ends and the next begins. I try to hold on to the one outcome, the one future where we return to Camelot triumphant, but in the shadow of all the other futures, it shrinks. It almost disappears altogether.

  But as pale, dusky light begins to seep through my window and I hear Morgana awaken in the next room, I clutch that vision so tightly, clinging to it like a life raft in a storm. The only thing keeping me afloat. The only hope we have.

  It isn’t likely. But it is possible. And that has to be enough.

  23

  MY BAG IS already packed when Morgana knocks on my door, poking her head in to ask if I’m ready. She’s still in her nightgown, and her ink-black hair is a wild mess with pieces that almost seem to stand on end, so I assume it will be at least another twenty minutes before she’s ready to go.

  “I’ll be ready long before you are,” I tell her with a laugh. “I’m sure Arthur assumed we would be late anyway.”