Across the Spectrum (64 page)

∞

And that is how I became Uncle Merlin’s apprentice.

For ten years we lived in the depths of the forest, in a
sorry little hut. Our single room was filthy with dust and mouse droppings.
Books were stacked on every surface—strange volumes filled with stranger words,
written in languages I could not understand. Nooks and crannies were crowded
with my uncle’s odd toys and mechanicals.

For ten years, I lived in that hut, hovering in a strange
eddy of time. I learned all my uncle’s knowledge, all his tales and spells and
workings. As he grew younger with every passing day, I grew older, forsaking
the Ladies of the Lake and the formal grace that was my birthright. I lived
like a boy, clad in rough leggings and jerkins, even when my body insisted on
becoming the woman-flesh my birth destined me to be.

I was not able to avoid those unwelcome curves, but I found
it easy to ignore the perfumes and oils and paints for my face that other girls
treasure. In fact, it was easy to forget that I was anything other than my
uncle’s apprentice. He never even looked at me, never spared me a glance,
except to complain that I was holding a lantern too far away from an ancient
text, or that I was stirring some concoction too vigorously.

One night, we crouched before the hearth as a winter storm
blew outside. We had been confined within our four walls for nearly a week, and
Uncle Merlin roamed the room restlessly, his fingers caressing first one
treasure, then another.

I finally broke the silence. “You should be able to ride to
him tomorrow.”

“To whom?”

“To King Arthur, of course.” Throughout our ten years
together, Uncle Merlin had disappeared for months at a time, journeying to
Camelot to serve as the king’s councilor.

“What good will it do?” He ran a hand through his short,
well-trimmed beard. “I’m already too young to help him. The knights don’t
listen to me. If only I lived like you, like everyone else. If only I could
grow older. . .”

“Why don’t you change the course of your magic?”

“What?”

“Take what you know, and change your passage. Move forward
in time.” I settled a hand on his arm, as if that would help him understand.
“Move forward with me.”

“Child, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I am not a child!” I answered hotly. This was an old
argument. Now only ten years separated us physically, and it irked me that he
continued to speak as if I were an infant.

“No, Nimue. You’re not a child.” He brushed a kiss across my
cheek, and I caught my breath at the unusual attention. I folded my arms across
my chest in a futile attempt to mask my confusion, but before I could speak, he
leaned back in his chair. “Fetch your aged uncle some supper, Nimue, and then
we’ll practice your Water Formations.”

The seed that I planted during that winter storm took months
to grow. I’d awaken at odd times during the night to find my uncle pacing in
front of the hearth, muttering to himself. He spent days poring through his
books. He began to gather strange ingredients, going out for long journeys that
left me alone in the cottage for weeks on end.

Another year passed, and a few more months; it was spring
when he came to me with a proposal. We had carried our luncheon to the brook
that rippled through our little clearing, and he had just wolfed down a loaf of
my bread. He leaned back in the new grass, lacing his fingers behind his head
and gazing up at the clear blue sky through the tangle of withes from a giant
weeping willow.

“Do you remember what we spoke of, Nimue, about changing my
flow of time?”

“I may grow older every day, Uncle, but I’m not senile yet!”

He smiled and refused to take the bait. “Are you willing to
help me?”

A cloud passed over the sun, and our little clearing grew
cold. When I looked into his eyes, he was grimly serious, and I realized how
much I did not know about the man who had stolen me away from the Ladies of the
Lake, the man who pulled all the strings on the Camelot marionettes.

“What would I need to do?”

“Nothing more than I’ve asked of you in the past. Gather
some herbs. Learn some words of power. Guide me through the spell.”

“
Me,
guide
you?”

“That’s the nature of this type of working. I will absorb
the energies, reverse the pull, but you must stand as my guidepost, so that I can
determine where the flows of time commingle, where the present is.”

I stared into the brook at my feet. He was making light of
what he proposed, but I knew enough magic to understand that he spoke of the
most powerful spell either of us had ever contemplated. Time was the weft of
the universe. It could not easily be snipped and rewoven into a sturdy fabric.
Cutting that flow was likely to unravel a substantial section of the world
around it. A section that would include me.

He waited for my response, ignoring the clouds that scudded
across the sky, the breeze that whipped the willow into a frenzy. When I still
failed to answer, he took my hand from my lap and smoothed my fingers, which
had grown as cold as crystal. “Nimue, you know that I wouldn’t ask, if I didn’t
think it could be done. I’m asking you to save me. What have I got left, thirty
years? Twenty? I’ll end up as a mewling babe, and then. . . Don’t let me lose a
lifetime of learning. Don’t let all of us lose that.”

I stared out at the brook, trying not to think of the young
man who sat beside me. The old man that I remembered. My uncle. “Very well,” I
said at last. “I’ll help you.”

He kissed my palm as freezing rain fell through the willow
branches.

∞

We chose the Feast of Samhain to perform the working.
Uncle Merlin thought that would be best—the Dark Feast, when the year turned
from old to new, when the long, winter nights began to yield to days.

In the months between spring and winter, I gathered herbs
and brewed tinctures. I read all the references I could find in my uncle’s
library. Often, I stayed awake until the grainy dawn broke through our
fly-specked windows. I stopped baking and did not bother to put in a garden. We
lived off what we could forage in the forest.

Uncle Merlin did not ride to Camelot.

At last, we came to the week before the working. My uncle
had stressed the importance of purity. Seven days before Samhain, I stopped
eating all food. I drank a strong purgative tea. After my belly finally gave up
its cramping, I sipped only cold, clear water from the brook.

Pursuant to my uncle’s instructions, I performed ritual
baths four times a day, submerging my body in the freezing stream. I combed out
my long hair from its confining braid. I trimmed my fingernails and toenails,
burning the parings so that demons could not eat them and learn my name. I
became pure.

All that time, Uncle Merlin stayed away from our cottage. I
did not know precisely what he was doing, only that he too was striving to
cleanse his body and spirit. He needed to empty himself so that he could become
a crystal ewer, a flawless container for time to flow into. Flow out of.

I think I had an easier time those last few days. I had so
few ties to the outside world. There was no woman who depended on me; my mother
and the other Ladies were nothing more than a distant dream. And, of course, I
had never known a man. It was easy to snip the ties that bound me to the world.

My only ties were to my uncle, to the man I served as
apprentice and as ward.

The morning of our working dawned late and cold, and a chill
mist blanketed our clearing. I spent all day in prayer, calling on the four Old
Ones, the powerful forces of Air and Water, Earth and Fire. I prayed to the new
God, and His Son, and His Holy Spirit, to the Three whom Arthur was spreading
throughout the kingdom. And, when the sun had completed its short arc above our
clearing, I prayed to Time itself.

In the chill twilight, I stripped off my boyish clothes,
tugging off my leather boots, setting aside the leggings and jerkin that had
become as comfortable as a second skin. Uncle Merlin had laid out my new
clothes before he disappeared. There was a flowing gossamer undergown, covered
by a heavier robe. I cinched the cloth about my waist with a wide sash. The
flaring sleeves covered my wrists, and cascades of extra fabric fell to the
ground. All the garments were white.

I had forgotten how awkward it was to wear women’s clothes.
I had forgotten how confining it felt to have a sash about my waist, how
unnerving to have to watch my feet so that I did not trip over yards of fabric.
I looked for a mirror, but Uncle Merlin had none, so I settled for smoothing my
hands down the front of my costume before I left our cottage.

It was bitterly cold in the dark night, and my trousseau did
not include shoes. My toes curled against the frost, but I forbade myself to
dwell on the discomfort of my physical body. I made my way to the willow tree.

Uncle Merlin had not yet arrived. I wrapped my fingers into
fists to better preserve my warmth, and I looked out at the brook. When an owl
hooted in the darkness, my heart jumped into my throat.

“Ah, fair Nimue.” I bit back a scream as I recognized my
uncle’s voice. He sounded older than I had ever heard him, even when he still
had grey hair, even when his arms were knotted by age. “Well met.”

He wore his Druid robes of snowy white. His face was
clean-shaven, like the boy he was destined to become, but his hair played
tricks in the moonlight. Even though it had been nearly a decade since grey
streaks painted his locks, his jet black hair glinted silver under the moon.

“Are you ready, my Nimue?”

“Yes.” My voice sounded strange in my ears, stranger even
than his had.

Even now, I remember the words we spoke. I remember invoking
the holy protection of the willow tree, begging it to be our guardian against
evil and impurity. I remember reaching out to the cardinal points of the
compass. I remember grasping an iron blade, iron forged from earth in the fire,
hardened by water and air.

Uncle Merlin knelt before me, letting the wind take his
snow-white cloak and blow it into the grasping fingers of our willow tree. I
raised the iron blade, proclaiming the sacred words of power as I offered up
the holy relic. The forces of the universe surged to attention.

The earth had warmed beneath my feet, and I no longer feared
that my bare flesh would freeze. The wind tore through the willow branches,
grasping at my gown, my hair, my body. The brook swelled from its banks as if
it were giving birth, lapping up to flow around us, to envelop us in its watery
grasp. Out of the still, still night, lightning cracked, leaping from darkness
to burn on the cross-hilt of my dagger.

Holding the flaming blade, I called upon the four Old Ones
to sanctify us, the three New Gods to join the two of us, to make us one, to
make Uncle Merlin’s past and present and future all one. For one endless
heartbeat, the lightning leaped from my iron dagger, seared from my hands to my
uncle’s chest. I saw the power hit him; I knew the instant he received the elements
into his body, into his soul.

He reached for the dagger, as if he would sheathe it in his
body. Suddenly afraid for him, for us, I took a step backward, and I dropped
the blade behind me.

Ravening, desperate for the knife, for the power, my uncle
fell upon me. His hands grasped at my skirts, my waist. His fingers fumbled at
my white sash, and he buried his face against my thighs. I struggled, and he
ripped at the gossamer cloth. I felt his lips, felt his clinging mouth on my
flesh.

He was young and strong and holy, and he pinned me to the
earth. No man had ever touched me like that before; no man had even seen me
clothed as a woman. Terror rose in me, leaping up like a living animal, like a
beast I’d never seen, even in my dreams. In my nightmares. My uncle rose to
meet that beast, thrusting himself against me, into me.

I screamed.

The willow tree could not have known what frightened me,
could not have known what evil force interrupted our magical working. Before I
could tug my clothes back to a semblance of modesty, before I could speak a
calming spell, before I could understand, explain, the tree had taken Merlin.
Its trunk opened wide, and its branches fed the writhing, bellowing man into
its great cavity. Before I could reach out to save my uncle, he was gone.

∞

And now, I sit beside the fire in the cottage that Merlin
and I shared for more than a decade. I sit in a chair, and I watch my son sleep
on his pallet by the fire.

Seven years ago, Merlin and I worked our magic. Seven years
ago, he ripped me from our protected world of magic, thrust me into the
terrifying world of men. He failed to meet his own strictest requirement of
purity, his own demand for perfection. Seven years ago, the willow took my
uncle, the father of my child.

At first, I tried to get the willow tree to open. I begged.
I cried. I threatened. I harnessed all the magic that Merlin had taught me. The
willow’s protection was too strong, though. It was bound to save me, to save
our holy working, from whatever threat it sensed. It was bound to take my
uncle.

Sometimes at night, I cannot sleep, for all the questions
running through my mind. Could our spell have worked? Is Merlin even now
growing older every day, inside the willow tree? Or will he continue his
strange backward living, until he becomes a boy, a babe, then nothing? Did he
cease to exist the moment the trunk snapped shut around him, the moment I cried
out in terror and in pain?

Maybe all that is left of Merlin is his son. My son.

And despite all that happened, I catch myself loving the
child that grew out of that midnight terror, loving him more than any Lady of
the Lake should ever love a boy-child. I love the way he watches me as I work
the spells his father taught me. I love the line of his jaw, which he sets
stubbornly when I forbid him to try some new magic. I love the way he lives
each day in the normal way of man, growing older from sunrise to sunset, as his
father never did.