Half Sick of Shadows

by Laura Sebastian

  A young man will stand beside Morgana, dark-eyed and sullen, his face all hard angles, sharp enough to cut. Though he will look like he would bite someone for looking at him the wrong way, his hands will shake, his eyes anxiously darting around the scene. He won’t reach for the sword, though desire for it will be clearly etched into his expression.

  Accolon. That was what Nimue called him. Just a boy in Lyonesse, a second cousin of Gwen’s, hungry but powerless. Nothing to worry about, she said. But I have seen him with Morgana, I have seen what they are capable of when they stand side by side, determined to kill Arthur.

  “Just this one thing, Accolon,” she will tell him, her voice weaving around him like a spell, though there is no magic in the air. “Then I’ll take you to Avalon, just as I promised, and we can be together always.”

  She will paint a dream he will want so desperately to come true, no matter what he will have to do to get there.

  “Always,” he will repeat, his voice reverent. He will take the sword from her, holding it aloft so the midday sun glints off the blade. It will look wrong in his hands.

  No.

  I don’t realize I’ve said the word out loud until Lancelot looks at me, brow furrowed.

  “Did I do something wrong—”

  “No,” I say, tearing my gaze away from Accolon. I open my mouth, then close it again. I wish I could tell him what I’ve seen. He said himself that it was a heavy burden, and now more than ever I want to share it. But I can’t, so instead all I can do is laugh. The sound erupts past my lips before I know what it is, and once it comes on there is no stopping it, not even when tears begin to stream down my cheeks and the people around us begin to stare.

  Lancelot leads me away from the dance floor and out of the room, his hand on the small of my back, anchoring me. People stare as we pass, and distantly, I know I’m making a scene, but it doesn’t matter. What does matter, truly, in the face of fate?

  When we step into the empty corridor outside the banquet hall, Lancelot leans back against the rough stone wall, leveling his gaze on me and waiting. Waiting for me to stop laughing hysterically, but he’ll be waiting awhile yet. The laughter shows no signs of dying down, and every time I think I’m starting to get hold of myself, the laughter claws its way around me and starts anew.

  “What’s wrong with her?” a voice asks, and I turn to see Morgana slipping through the door, closing it firmly behind her. She’s alone now, with no sign of the sullen boy from earlier. Accolon.

  The sight of her sobers me instantly, and I straighten up, steadying myself against the wall.

  “Nothing,” I say quickly. Too quickly.

  Morgana narrows her eyes and opens her mouth to speak, but before she can, Lancelot interrupts.

  “No more fighting,” he says, looking between us. “It’s been a long day—a long fortnight, in fact. We’ll face what we have to tomorrow, but let’s call a cease-fire tonight.”

  Morgana closes her mouth and glances away, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Who was he?” I ask her after a moment. “The man you were talking to? The one with the dark hair.”

  She blinks at me. Whatever she was expecting me to say, it wasn’t that.

  “Sir Accolon,” she says. “Gwen’s second cousin.”

  It’s no more than Nimue already told me, but the unease in my stomach only grows.

  Stay away from him, I want to tell her, but I hold my tongue. Only trouble would come from that, and Lancelot is right—tonight should not be spent fighting.

  Instead, I nod my head.

  “I am sorry for everything,” I tell her. “I’m sorry it came to this. I’m sorry about binding your powers. But it will be reversible.”

  Morgana looks at me for a moment, her expression inscrutable. She hesitates. “I do understand, you know,” she says finally. “I understand the why of it. It’s a brilliant move to make.”

  “You were brilliant too,” I point out. “What you were capable of . . . the power you possess. You saved us. Arthur knows it, too, but . . .”

  “He’s soft,” Morgana supplies. “It isn’t a bad thing. It’s one of the things I love about him. But that kind of softness can only survive if it’s surrounded by thorns. I was those thorns; now you’ll have to do that.”

  “You will still be thorny, magic or no,” I say, but Morgana doesn’t look so sure.

  “I don’t know who I am without my magic,” she says after a moment. “It’s always been the thing that defined me—first in Camelot as a curse, then on Avalon as a gift. It’s as much a part of me as my heartbeat. The thought of living without it . . . I don’t know how to do that.”

  “We’ll figure it out, then,” I say. “Together. And one day, maybe you won’t be angry anymore.” The words almost sound true, as if I can make them so if I say them enough times.

  “I’m not angry, not really,” Morgana says, shrugging, but I see the truth in her eyes. The anger might be only simmering now, but if we don’t kill it, it will boil over.

  “You are,” I say, before taking a deep breath. “And I’ve Seen what that anger will do to us, to the world.”

  Morgana doesn’t look surprised by the revelation. Maybe a part of her has already felt it take root, felt it begin to fester. I think about what she said to Arthur earlier. I have spent my life in your shadow. I never saw that resentment brewing, but maybe I was so busy looking for the big break on the horizon that I ignored all the minuscule tensions that led up to it, that made it easy.

  She looks at me, pursing her lips, and in her eyes I see some small hope, some part of her not yet lost, some part that can maybe—maybe—find her way back to us. If not now, then someday. Hopefully before it’s too late.

  “Meet us in the courtyard,” I say to Morgana. “Oh, and see if you can steal a bottle of wine. Or three.”

  * * *

  MY FIRST MONTHS on Avalon passed like breaths. I inhaled days scrying in the cave with Nimue and exhaled afternoons and evenings exploring Avalon with Morgana, Arthur, Guinevere, and sometimes Lancelot. The field of thorns between him and me didn’t soften, but for everyone else’s sake, we tried to avoid fighting—and therefore spoke to each other as little as possible. It was easy enough, when it was the five of us.

  I began to grow accustomed to the fey as well, though I still am not sure when or how that happened. One day I was forcing myself not to stare at them, and the next I managed an entire conversation about the weather with a woman before noticing her moth wings or the antennas protruding from her forehead. The fey who dominated the horror stories I heard as a child slowly receded from my memory, replaced with the fey I saw every day, who laughed with their friends and ate the same food I did and had families they loved.

  I thought that if the people back in Albion could understand that the fey were more like them than not, maybe there wouldn’t have had to be so much bloodshed. But perhaps that was naive. Perhaps we would always see differences before similarities. Perhaps we would always look for reasons to fight instead of reasons to coexist.

  I could only measure passing time in the waxing and waning of the moon, in the bonfire that would take place every time the moon hung round and full in the sky.

  At first, we were all too young to attend. We would have to stay up in our rooms, listening to the revelry and imagining what it was like. But after we turned sixteen one by one—first Morgana, then Lancelot, then Guinevere, with Arthur and me coming last only a few months apart.

  I lost count of how many bonfires I attended over the years that followed, but that first was always my favorite because it still felt forbidden, in a way. It shone with a kind of illicit novelty. Attending felt like we were getting away with something.

  Gwen smuggled a bottle of wine out of the cellar below the great hall, but back then even the sight of it made me nervous. I half expected Nimue to sweep out of nowhe
re with disappointed eyes and snatch it away from us, sending us back to our beds with a click of her tongue.

  When Morgana passed me the bottle, I very nearly passed it on to Guinevere without taking a sip, but a daring light had been cast over the evening. Refusing seemed childish, and as one of the youngest, I always felt like too much of a child anyway. So I lifted the bottle to my lips and took a gulp.

  I’d had wine before, but only tiny, ladylike sips from delicate crystal glasses at banquets when toasts were called for. This was not that sort of wine.

  It burned down my throat and made me cough violently until Morgana gave me a none-too-gentle thud on the back. Lancelot roared with laughter that made my cheeks grow warm.

  “It’s strong stuff,” Guinevere told me with a laugh of her own, though hers wasn’t mocking. “You should have seen Lancelot the first time he had it—he actually spit it out all over the girl he was trying so hard to impress,” she added with a sharp but charmingly dimpled grin at him.

  Lancelot glowered at that, but I smiled my thanks, passing her the bottle of wine.

  “It’s stronger than Camelot wine,” I said, shaking my head.

  Morgana nodded, turning her gaze out to the horizon, where the last sliver of the setting sun hovered just over the shimmering sea. “Everything is stronger here,” she said. “It’s like Avalon is the rest of the world, distilled.”

  “More and more, it feels like Camelot was a shadow world, painted all in muted grays. Like I was sleepwalking until I came here, but now I’m awake.”

  Morgana looked at me thoughtfully.

  “Do you ever miss it?” she asked me.

  I didn’t know how to answer that. The truth was a complicated beast, too messy and sticky to begin to give voice to. Of course I don’t miss it, I wanted to say, but the words tasted like ash, like the lie they were.

  “I miss my mother,” I said, another sliver of truth that had shades of lies to it as well, because more and more I didn’t miss her at all. “And the roasted pheasant.”

  “Maiden, Mother, and Crone, I forgot all about the pheasant,” Morgana said with a laugh. “That’s a fair point—I do miss the pheasant, but don’t tell anyone I said so. I heard that when you offend the cooks here, you wind up with food that turns to dirt in your mouth.”

  “What is pheasant?” Lancelot asked, frowning.

  “It’s a bird,” I said, taking pleasure in the fact that for once, I knew something he didn’t. “Have you never had pheasant?”

  “They aren’t native here,” Morgana said. “But they’re like . . .” She trailed off. “Do you know what they look like?” she asked me.

  I frowned. “No, actually. I’ve only had them when they’ve already been plucked and cooked. Like a chicken, maybe?”

  “Well, we have plenty of chickens here,” Guinevere pointed out, taking another swig of wine. “I don’t see what the fuss is about.”

  “It’s different, though,” I said, trying to put it into words. “It tastes different. Better.”

  But I couldn’t say quite how. It had been a little over three years since I came to Avalon, and I realized I’d forgotten not just what pheasant tasted like but other things as well. The way the air smelled in our tower. The sound of an orchestra’s crescendo echoing in the great hall. Even the shape of my mother’s face.

  Before I could think too hard about it, though, Morgana stood. “Come on, the bonfire will be starting soon and it’s a bit of a trek,” she said, offering one hand to me and one to Guinevere. She pulled us both to our feet before starting into the woods at a run, still hand in hand with Gwen and me.

  “It’s not a race, Morgana,” Arthur called after her, but he sounded amused.

  Morgana laughed, the sound echoing through the woods, scaring a flock of birds and sending them flying out from the trees. “You only say that because you’re losing,” she said.

  The thunder of footsteps behind us picked up until Lancelot and Arthur were right beside us.

  Suddenly, the world was only big enough for the five of us. The stars flickering into sight shone only on us, the air was only ours to breathe. There was no Albion lingering on the outskirts of our minds, waiting to draw us back to her, there was no Nimue watching with wary and worried eyes, there was no Cave of Prophecies with our destinies scrawled on its walls.

  There was only us, only laughter, only a hazy world full of nothing but golden possibilities.

  I wish I could have found a way to bottle that night up, to live in it for an eternity. I wish there were a way to get it back now, when it feels like everything is fraying apart in my hands.

  But maybe this will be the next best thing.

  * * *

  MORGANA AND LANCELOT worked quickly while I went to invite Gwen and Arthur. The courtyard has been utterly transformed, a small fire now burning in the center and a large, thick sheet of canvas stretching overhead to block out the light of the moon. A plaid blanket has been spread out over the damp ground, set with two sea-green bottles of wine.

  It isn’t anything like Avalon—there is no rhythmic crashing of waves, no magic making the air heavy and honey-scented, no crowd of fey twirling, no music working its way under your skin. It is, if anything, a pale imitation. But still, it brings a smile to my lips.

  “It’s perfect,” I say.

  “We were lucky with the tarp,” Lancelot says with a wry smile. “Apparently, there are times when even the Lyonessians tire of their moon-selves.”

  That doesn’t surprise me. I’d seen the exhaustion in Gwen’s eyes after her nights in her monstrous form—the others might be more accustomed to it, but it’s difficult to imagine that it didn’t take its toll on them as well.

  “The wine’s good too,” Morgana says, holding a third bottle, uncorked. She takes a swig before wiping the remnant off on the back of her hand. “It’s not Avalon wine, of course, but by mainland standards, it isn’t bad. Better than the swill they serve in Camelot, certainly.”

  After half an hour and one bottle already gone among the three of us, Arthur appears in the archway that frames the entrance to the castle. I’ve seen Arthur draw attention to himself with no effort at all—seen people’s eyes go to him first in a crowd. It’s a kind of human magic I’ve never been able to understand. Now, though, he all but fades into the darkness of the castle hallway behind him. His hands are shoved in his pockets, shoulders stooped. When he meets my gaze, his smile is tense and hard at the edges.

  “Mind if I join?” he asks.

  I look over his shoulder for Gwen, but he’s alone. My stomach tightens, but I can’t bring myself to be surprised. The wounds between Morgana and Gwen are not from principles or morals; they are deep and personal, the kind that may never heal.

  Still, I hoped, and now that hope deflates in my chest.

  “You were invited,” I remind him, pushing my disappointment aside.

  Lancelot uncorks the second bottle with the edge of his sword before holding the bottle out to Arthur.

  Relief falls over Arthur’s expression like a velvet curtain, and he steps toward us, taking the bottle from Lancelot. It’s only then that he looks at Morgana.

  I don’t know what I expect to pass between them—apologies and pleas for forgiveness are not in character for either of them—but all they do is eye each other for a moment. Arthur nods once, taking a swig of wine.

  “What you did was reckless and immoral in more ways than I can name,” he says, each word measured. Morgana flinches, opening her mouth, but before she can argue, Arthur holds his hand up to stop her. “But without your actions, none of us would be here tonight. And even Gwen . . . she would have never forgiven herself for it. None of us could have done what you did, and though I don’t agree with it—though I can never condone it—I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t grateful for it.”

  It’s not an apology, but it’s
as close as he’ll come. Morgana presses her lips together and glances away.

  “I can’t regret it,” she says quietly. “But I hate that it’s ruined us.”

  Arthur takes a step toward her. “It hasn’t ruined us,” he says. “You’re my sister—”

  “And you will never look at me the same way,” she finishes, her voice breaking. “When you were little, even before we went to Avalon, you always looked at me with stars in your eyes, Arthur. Even when you got older, when people started to look to you for reassurance, you always looked to me. And whether you like it or not, that’s ruined now.”

  I wait for Arthur to correct her, but he doesn’t. “You’re my sister,” he says again. “You could burn down the world and I would still love you, whether I wanted to or not.”

  It’s a sweet sentiment, but in it I can’t help but hear my mother’s prophecy—she’ll burn the world to ash and flame. I can’t help but think that someday soon, it won’t be hyperbole.

  Morgana opens her mouth to respond, then closes it again, her eyes traveling over Arthur’s shoulder to the archway, where Guinevere stands in her twilight-blue wedding gown. She looks uncomfortable in it, tugging at the full skirt awkwardly.

  “Late, as always,” Lancelot says.

  I shoot him a glare, but Guinevere surprises us all by laughing. It’s not her full laugh, not as loud, but it’s a laugh all the same. She looks shocked by it as well.

  “You should try getting from one side of the castle to the other in this monstrosity,” she says, shaking her head. “What did I miss?”

  The question is directed at Lancelot and only him. She doesn’t spare so much as a glance at Morgana, but Morgana is the one who responds.

  “Just talking about me burning the world down,” she says, though the words have a wryness to them, a familiarity I haven’t felt among all of us since we left Avalon.