Comes In Three
Fantasy short. Prince Arthur comes upon a boy in the woods.
It was a sunny morning, and Arthur sat alone in the palace gardens where the meadow stretched out ahead of him, the carpet of wildflowers and free-growing herbs disappearing underneath the shadow of the tree canopy. The forests about Camelot’s edges were dense and thick, and they made it almost impossible to invade from any direction, unless every member of one’s army already knew them, had grown up in them. Like any dense woodland, of course, they had their boundaries, there were temples to spirits and gods no one could sensibly move to cross, and more than that, there were the points where the boundaries were hidden doors, hidden gateways, from one realm into the next. Arthur knew them all, could draw a map from memory, if it struck him and he had a few layers of parchment for the connection between realms, to layer the maps as they needed to be. For now, he had no need of maps. Half-asleep, he dozed under the pleasant heat of the spring sun, and Blaidd, his favourite of the hounds, was dozing too, his chin resting against Arthur’s thigh. His tutor had come over ill, and he had been confined to bedrest by one of the palace physicians – Arthur had brought a bouquet of fragrant flowers and mint up to his room to set in the windowsill, to bring in a little colour and usher out any bad humours, but poor Rhys had barely been able to keep his eyes open, and Arthur hadn’t wanted to linger and try to read to him when he needed to sleep. He had read for a short while alone, studying the maps he knew he needed to take in, and already his father had arranged for him to receive some alternate tutelage in a few days if Rhys was still ill, working alongside Bleddyn or Ieuan – these being the physicians – and learning some more of their art, or learning from someone else. His father had always felt it best Arthur know a little of everything, and there was no shortage of things to learn, but these things did need organising, and his father had been kind enough to dismiss him from attending that day’s court instead of making him stick it out in place of his studies. A few scraps of parchment and some charcoals were spread beside him – he’d done some half-hearted studies of different flowers, the few he didn’t know the names of, that he might ask Bleddyn about them later – but he was tired and lacked direction, so he let himself relax in the grass. When he saw movement in the woods, a good ways ahead of him, he thought at first he might have seen a deer or a boar that had simply come close to where the gardens began, and he glanced at Blaidd, whose half-closed eyes opened fully, his amber eyes looking toward the woods. The dog’s face remained neutral for a moment, and Arthur looked at the thought he could see in his eyes, his nose twitching as he sniffed the air, but then Blaidd sat up straight, his pointed ears twitching from side to side. “You hear something?” Arthur asked, and Blaidd glanced at him, but then stood to his feet. He wasn’t growling or baring his teeth, his lips not even twitching, but it seemed to Arthur that the dog’s brow was furrowing as he looked to the woods, and when Arthur stood to his feet, Blaidd walked at his side, his shoulder in line with Arthur’s hip. He hoped he’d be as tall as his father, someday – some of the boys he trained with in Camelot town were taller than him, and although he wasn’t short for his age, a little above average, he was impatiently awaiting his next spurt of growth. Next to Blaidd, more wolf than hound, he worried he looked quite small indeed. Light dappled the forest floor where it peeked through the tree canopy, and once they passed under the shadows of the trees and Arthur’s eyes were able to adjust, the woods were more than light enough for him to see very well and see very far, and he and Blaidd stood stock still together, watching. Arthur liked to hunt, on foot if not on horseback, and he knew very well how to stand still, how to breathe with the wind and let it go through you as you looked around, took in everything before you, so that you could catch even the tiniest flickers of movement or shifts of— Blaidd stood up straighter, and Arthur automatically put his hand on the dog’s neck, following his gaze. It was a small figure, hugging its belly as it stumbled forward: dressed in loose robes the colour of burnet bloodwort, its hair was ragged and hung in lank black curls around its dangerously pale face, its eyes invisible with the way its hair hung over their shadowed chasms. Like a drunk man, it shifted from one side to the other as it moved, and as Arthur watched it stopped and coughed hard: the blood that dribbled over its pale chin was red, and he could see from the stains that it had coughed up some blood already. It looked up at him, and although he saw it from some thirty or forty yards back, it seemed to him that its eyes were all he could see for a moment, a pale silver-grey that shone very bright in the shadowed light, before it fell. “Come, Blaidd,” Arthur said, rushing forward as it crumpled into the heather, so thin and pale it looked to be little more than a pile of red fabric, and he leaned down, scooping it up by its shoulders and behind its knees, seeing one pale arm fall out of the robes and hang down. Blaidd started to bark as they jogged back through the gardens, up toward the side passage in through the kitchen, and the sound of it echoed off the stone walls. The cooks made noise at him, bade him stop, but they went quiet when Arthur shouted, “Bleddyn! Ieuan!” up the great stairs even as he carried the body in his arms through to one of the small chambers where the squires polished boots, spreading him out on the wood table. “Bethan, get one of them,” he ordered a serving girl a few years older than him as he undid the silver buckle on the boy’s robes, pushing them aside. Underneath the red cloak, he didn’t wear anything substantial – remnants of white fabric clung to wounds in his chest and his side, and a scrap of white fabric wrapped loose around one shoulder hinted that he had been wearing a shirt before; his breeches were cloth, and although they were stained with blood, Arthur could see no wounds cutting through them. He wore no boots and no shoes: his feet, which were even paler than his face, were cut and abused from sole to ankle, and there were burs and stones piercing the flesh, protruding in places like splinters from the skin. “Good God,” said Bleddyn as he came in, and as Arthur washed water over the boy’s chin and the wounds on his chest, clearing away the blood so that the physician could better see to work, Bleddyn’s hands glowed with light, and he set his hands on the boy’s cheeks. The light that shone from the boy’s eyes in response was blinding, and although Bleddyn stayed in place, Arthur swore, stumbling back and putting his forearm over his eyes. “It’s alright,” said Bleddyn. “It’s a sign he’s well – just his magic responding to mine, that’s all. Wet his hair and pull it back from his face, would you?” The blood from the boy’s mouth, mercifully, was mostly from having bitten his tongue, and none of the wounds were extremely deep. As Bleddyn worked on his lungs, channelling his magic to force the pollens he’d inhaled – they were fae pollens, and could cut at his throat and the insides of his chest if he were left to cough for much longer – Arthur pulled the burs and stones free from the boy’s feet, washing them as carefully as he knew how, and although the boy winced at the burn of Arthur’s own magic, clumsier than the physician’s as he ensured every invader had been pulled free, Arthur satisfied himself that his feet were clean. “How old is he?” he asked. “Difficult to tell,” said Bleddyn, squeezing a rag, and Arthur wrinkled his nose at the little blood mixed in with the bright lilac particles that soaked into the bowl beside him, before Bleddyn put the rag back over the boy’s nose and mouth and continued to work. “Not older than you, certainly, but likely younger – eight or nine. Where did you find him?” “He stumbled out of the woods,” said Arthur. “I don’t recognise him, he’s not from Camelot proper. From another village, maybe, but…” “Ieuan will recognise him if he is, but I doubt it,” murmured Bleddyn. “This fabric is a fae weave, and not of any nearby kingdom, either.” “You think he’s a threat?” Arthur asked, and Bleddyn glanced at him. “You think like your father,” he murmured, a hint of disapproval in his voice. “I doubt it. Leave him to me, I’ll look after him.” “I’ll help you,” said Arthur, and Bleddyn hesitated a moment before he nodded his head, and gestured for Arthur to watch his work on the boy’s lungs more closely.
That evening, when his father came into the small bedroom they’d set aside for the strange boy from the woods, Arthur stirred from the sleep he’d drifted into, raising his head and wiping at one eye. “Bleddyn said you found him ahead of the kitchen gardens,” his father said as he reached out, stroking his hand over Blaidd’s head where he lay over the boy’s feet in the bed. In his sleep, his hair washed clean of the filth and leaves that had been stuck through it, the boy was anything but peaceful – he stirred and shifted constantly, his head whipping one way and then the other on his pillow. Now and then, although he didn’t wake, his eyelids would open and his eyes would flash with light. “He’s a man, Bleddyn says. Or a man-to-be, perhaps I should say.” “He’s been through fae lands,” said Arthur. “It clings to him like a shroud, but he’s human. He’s not local – or if he is, he’s not very local. Ieuan doesn’t recognise him.” “And what will you do when he is nursed to health?” asked his father. “You’d rather I let him die?” “I’m glad of your kindness,” he said quietly. “It will serve you well when you are king. But you must take care that you hone other qualities, too.” “I know.” He expected for his father to tell him sternly to go to bed, but he did no such thing: King Uther grasped a blanket from the chest and tossed it into Arthur’s lap, reaching out and curling his hand in Arthur’s hair. “If he dies?” asked his father quietly. “Bleddyn said it was likely he would recover, but—” “If he dies, we bury him,” Arthur said. “Nothing else we can do.” His father nodded. “He’s your responsibility,” he said, and left the room. As Arthur unfolded the blanket, throwing it loosely over his knees and his feet, which he rested on the edge of the boy’s bed, touching Blaidd’s paw, he looked at the boy who stirred in his sleep, and made no sound. Sighing, he closed his eyes again, and tipped back in the chair.
Arthur didn’t linger in the boy’s bedroom, once his tutor was better. He would check in on him a few times a day, the same time Bleddyn or Ieuan did, but the boy laid fitfully asleep for several days, even though both of the physicians tried to stir him awake. Arthur checked in on him late in the afternoon a few days after bringing him in to find that the boy was awake, and looking through the chest at the foot of the bed, where only blankets were stored. The drawers and cupboard doors of the cabinets were all open, too. The boy was dressed in a long shirt from Arthur’s own wardrobe, one that he all but swam in, and now he saw Arthur he looked at him distrustfully, his lips twisted into a small frown, his shining eyes running over Arthur as though examining him for signs of weakness. It was a cold and haughty look, one that looked far older than the child it belonged to, and then suddenly it faded, and the boy looked small, and fragile, and confused. Arthur made a mental note of that. “Can you give me your name?” Arthur asked experimentally, and he watched the way the boy’s lip curled back, the disgust on his face, the offence. “Alright. Just tell me what to call you, then.” “Myrddin,” said the boy. He had a silvery voice, a sort of musical, bell-like quality in it that made the hair on Arthur’s neck stand on end. “Who are you?” “Arthur,” he answered. “Son of Uther.” The boy faltered, and bowed his head immediately. “Your highness,” he said quietly, his pale hands twitching at his sides, although how genuine the genuflection was, Arthur had no way of knowing. “You found me?” “That I did,” said Arthur. “Let me call a physician to have a look at you.” “Please,” said Myrddin, taking a step forward, and Arthur saw the wideness of his grey eyes, the part of his lips, as he said, “please, don’t— don’t go. I was alone, when I woke up. I was afraid.” “Afraid enough to rifle through the drawers instead of going out into the corridor?” asked Arthur. “You would begrudge me a weapon to defend myself?” asked the boy, head still bowed slightly so that he wasn’t looking at Arthur directly. “You, a stranger in my palace? Yes, actually. I would.” The boy faltered at that, bit his lip, but Arthur picked up a heavier robe from one of the open drawers and held it out to him. “I won’t leave you, though,” he said quietly, and watched the boy wrap himself in it, walking after Arthur. His feet must have been cold whenever he stepped between rugs onto the cold stone floor, but he didn’t voice a single complaint as Arthur led him downstairs, and almost all of the little marks and bruises on him were healed. His gait seemed healthy to Arthur, albeit slow. “You’re hungry, I bet,” said Arthur. “Yes,” said Myrddin. “Yes, very.” He ate ravenously once Arthur brought him down to the kitchen, and Arthur lingered as Bleddyn looked Myrddin over, ensuring that his lungs, his heart, and the rest of him all appeared to be healthy and in good working order. He could barely be distracted from his meal as he ate, and Arthur couldn’t fault him for that, when he hadn’t eaten a morsel since before he’d collapsed in the gardens. Myrddin was nervous about allowing himself to be taken aside by Bleddyn to take some sort of medicine, something to ensure his body better took on water again having spent so many days asleep. “He’s awake?” asked Uther when Arthur came into the main hall, looking up from his conversation with a few of the court advisors. “I don’t trust him,” said Arthur. “He’s lying.” “What has he told you?” “Almost nothing.” “What is he lying about, then?” “He’s going to lie,” said Arthur with certainty. “He knew precisely where he was going to end up.” Uther considered this, his lips shifting into a small frown, and then he gave a nod of his head. “He remains your responsibility.” “I didn’t expect otherwise,” said Arthur, and returned to the boy and Bleddyn.
“What happened to you?” asked Arthur. It was another sunny morning, and the two of them were sitting outside: Arthur was reclining in a chair and had offered Myrddin one, but the boy had refused it. He was lying in the flowers with Blaidd’s great head in his lap, and he was gently rolling Blaidd’s cheeks in his hands. The dog, to Myrddin’s credit, was savouring the attention, and whined whenever he stopped. “I don’t quite recall,” said Myrddin softly. “I was taken from my parents, I remember that. And then I… I ran from those who took me, travelled. Walked until my feet bled. I’ve been doing that for a long time.” “And most recently?” asked Arthur. “You had breathed in great swathes of pollen – but you were spelled, too, there was something else wrong with you, some curse or malady. What was that?” “A punishment.” “For?” “Cheek,” said Myrddin. “I think. My memory is hazy.” “How old are you?” “Some decades.” “And without fae lands, how old are you then? How many summers have you seen on God’s green earth?” “Eleven.” “Eleven,” repeated Arthur. “How old are you?” asked the boy. “Fourteen,” he said. “Why have you come here?” “I didn’t know where I was going,” said the boy. “You’re a liar.” “Yes.” “Always a liar?” “Often. It has always been the way of me.” “Even before you joined the faeries?” “Especially then. Dishonesty is a different beast between tylwyth and teulu.” Myrddin, as he said this, looked up from the wolf to meet Arthur’s gaze, and although Arthur could see the grey of the colour in his eyes, glinting in the sun, they did not glow as they had done, did not flare or flash. There was a strange defiance in them, and Myrddin’s thin lips curled up at their edges. “Maybe so,” said Arthur. “Do you lie?” asked the boy. “If needs be,” said Arthur. “But I am honest, by nature. Tell me why you’ve come here.” “I felt that this was where I needed to go,” said Myrddin, “and where I needed to be. And it is where I shall stay, now.” “Is that so?” “I believe it is.” “And if I choose to have you go?” “It’s not my choice one way or the other, highness,” said Myrddin. “It is my belief I shall remain here, or at your side, until the end of my days.” Arthur considered this, curled his hand around the arm of the wooden chair he reclined in, felt the sun warm his cheeks and settle in his hair. The boy looked at him unerring, and in this, Arthur didn’t think he was lying. It made something flip in his stomach, made his hair all stand on end, and he had a feeling like someone was walking over his grave. “You feel it too,” said the boy. “What do you want from me?” asked Arthur. His mouth was dry. “Purpose,” said the boy. “What purpose?” “That isn’t my choice either,” said the boy. “It is yours, and yours alone.” “I have no want of a man in bondage.” “I am not bound,” said Myrddin. “I could go freely if I chose. But I do not choose: you do.” “If you say it is me who chooses for you, I would say you had no liberty at all.” “What use have I of liberty?” asked Myrddin. “I’ve never made use of it before.” Arthur didn’t like soothsayers and prophets – magic he could understand, because in magic there was a truth in it, a solidity, that didn’t fade away based on the angle you looked at it from. Even if you couldn’t predict it yourself, someone else could: it was a real study, a focus of power. Prophecy, that was different – everything in clairvoyance was swathed in mist and fog, and that suited no one better than the clairvoyant themselves. Destiny had never set well with Arthur Pen Draig, least of all when he felt it pull at the ends of his shirt tails himself. Looking at Myrddin, who at once seemed like a tiny child and an impossible ancient, he felt the twist of distant anxiety in his gut, but he couldn’t deny the other feelings churning inside him too, couldn’t deny that he felt some sort of pull to Myrddin. It was curiosity, right enough, and Arthur was curious by nature, but there was something more to this. Looking at Myrddin, he felt like he was looking at a puzzle looking back, a puzzle that would solve him at the same time it was solved. He didn’t like it, but the idea of pushing Myrddin to go was unthinkable. “I feel bound up in you somehow,” Arthur admitted. “Like some part of me has always awaited something like you, and I have never noticed it ‘til now. I dislike that feeling very much, Myrddin. I distrust it.” “You shouldn’t trust me,” advised Myrddin, and laid back in the flowers, let Blaidd crawl closer and lay his head upon his chest instead. “No one else does.” “You knew you would arrive here,” said Arthur. “Sooner or later,” was the boy’s agreement. “How do I know you don’t wish me dead?” “If you were dead,” said Myrddin, frowning at the very thought, “I really would have no liberty.” “You would be imprisoned, you mean,” said Arthur. “No,” said Myrddin, and in his eyes there was a glassy brightness, like some light other than the sun above them was shining into them. “No, I don’t mean that at all. I just mean— I was sort of aimless until I came here, wasting time. Now, I arrive, and I know you’ll choose for me. I’ve been waiting for this. Direction. If you were dead, I’d be directionless once again. Like a lost man who, upon finding his star to travel by, casts out his eyes, that he should not see it. Do you know what I mean?” Myrddin was not looking at Arthur, but at the blue skies passing slowly overhead. “Yes,” said Arthur. “Yes, I think I do.” “Do you dream of me?” asked Myrddin. “Since bringing me inside?” “No,” lied Arthur. “Tut tut,” said Myrddin dreamily, more to Blaidd than Arthur himself. “You said you were an honest man.”
Arthur dreamed of sleep. He always had, and he wondered if he always would – dreams could be mined for prophecy, he was told, had been taught, but had never understood how. When Arthur dreamed, he dreamt of sleeping: he dreamt of lying still in a canopied bed, dreamt of soft sheets, warm blankets, stillness. He dreamt of a distant perfume he could never name, and he dreamt of that strange, half-awakeness a man had at times, knowing someone was in the room with you but not quite able yet to stir. He had dreamt, for the longest time, of strange and distant words floating over him in that bleary not-awakeness, distant voices he couldn’t conceive of, but two most of all: a woman’s voice, strong and rich, disposed to quiet hums and chuckles, and a man’s voice, mellifluous and flowing, ethereal in its quality. Since the first night he had slept after bringing Myrddin inside, this latter had strengthened. The man’s voice was resonant in a way the boy Myrddin’s was not, and held in it the markers of age, not merely of a young man, but a man in his prime, or past it. Arthur could no more make out the words he said to the Arthur who slept, but he knew the voice as he heard it, and its sound, its emotion, was clearer to him now. If this was prophecy, then for what purpose? When Arthur woke from his sleep within sleep, it did not surprise him to find Myrddin sitting beside his bed, cross-legged in a chair with a book in his lap, because it was what he had been dreaming of. “You see the future,” said Arthur. “Not really,” replied Myrddin, turning a page. “It is not seeing, exactly – no more than you see your memories.” “I do see my memories,” said Arthur, sitting up in bed. Myrddin blinked, so that the silver glinted in his eyes. “Oh,” he said, displeased. “Well. I don’t. It’s more like knowing the future than seeing it – and I don’t really understand it, can’t much make sense of it. Much of it isn’t very useful, things that you don’t recognise until it’s happening, and by then, it’s far too late.” “What do you dream about?” asked Arthur. “Loneliness,” said Myrddin, the answer earnest and somehow reserved all at once. “Is that what you dream about?” Arthur considered the question. He considered how it felt, to be peacefully resting, to know that Myrddin and the other, the woman, were close at hand, were always close at hand, one or the other. “No,” said Arthur. “In my dreams, I am never lonely.” “I have come to serve you, you know,” said Myrddin, as though Arthur had said otherwise. “I have always been meant to serve you.” “Does that mean you won’t serve yourself?” asked Arthur. “No,” said Myrddin. “I am selfish by nature, and quite cold, and although I am not quick to temper, and don’t believe I ever will be, my revenge when I deliver it is very severe. I am inflexible and I am often unkind, and I lie almost always.” Arthur wished he could be surprised that a little boy could speak like this, but fae children were never truly little in the way human ones were, and it seemed obvious to him that no matter that he was human, Myrddin was as fae as they came. And as much as Myrddin was small and scrawny, three years younger than Arthur, he wasn’t really – he was thrice or four times Arthur’s age. “Is that your way of asking me to keep you?” asked Arthur. Myrddin hesitated, looking uncertain, and even a little afraid. “How else would you have me ask?” When Bethan brought his breakfast, Myrddin picked from his tray like a bird. He sat on the edge of his seat and, without looking up from his book, picked and took things from Arthur’s plate – little morsels, ones that he picked at, chewed at. It was wholly irritating, particularly because Myrddin neither asked nor even met Arthur’s gaze as he did it, looking at his book the whole time, but when Arthur tried to slap his hands away, Myrddin moved too fast to hit, and remained undeterred. It seemed to Arthur, in the strangest way, that he had always expected this, always wanted this – or, not wanted it, but missedit, as though he had had it before. There was a part missing to the whole, though, and where Myrddin sat on his left, he looked to his right, as though he would see a ghost of a girl there, a girl with a rich laugh who hummed when she thought, a girl… “I miss her too,” said Myrddin. “Who is she?” asked Arthur. Myrddin laughed – bell-like but chattering, a magpie’s jingle, it was a grating sound, and Arthur hated it because it made him smile almost on reflex. “How should I know?” he asked. Arthur looked down at the section of bread in his hands, which he had torn into thirds without even thinking about it. Myrddin took his, and as Arthur ate his own, the third sat on the plate untouched. “You’re my responsibility, you know,” said Arthur. With a nod, Myrddin said in a tone of agreement, “You’re mine too.” Arthur said, “No, I mean…” Myrddin was looking at him curiously, head tilted, and Arthur closed his mouth. “We’ll speak with my father later this morning,” he said. Myrddin swiped a piece of meat from his plate, and Arthur let him. When he dreamed that night, still sleeping, he dreamt he felt compete.
It was a sunny morning, and Arthur sat alone in the palace gardens where the meadow stretched out ahead of him, the carpet of wildflowers and free-growing herbs disappearing underneath the shadow of the tree canopy. The forests about Camelot’s edges were dense and thick, and they made it almost impossible to invade from any direction, unless every member of one’s army already knew them, had grown up in them. Like any dense woodland, of course, they had their boundaries, there were temples to spirits and gods no one could sensibly move to cross, and more than that, there were the points where the boundaries were hidden doors, hidden gateways, from one realm into the next. Arthur knew them all, could draw a map from memory, if it struck him and he had a few layers of parchment for the connection between realms, to layer the maps as they needed to be. For now, he had no need of maps. Half-asleep, he dozed under the pleasant heat of the spring sun, and Blaidd, his favourite of the hounds, was dozing too, his chin resting against Arthur’s thigh. His tutor had come over ill, and he had been confined to bedrest by one of the palace physicians – Arthur had brought a bouquet of fragrant flowers and mint up to his room to set in the windowsill, to bring in a little colour and usher out any bad humours, but poor Rhys had barely been able to keep his eyes open, and Arthur hadn’t wanted to linger and try to read to him when he needed to sleep. He had read for a short while alone, studying the maps he knew he needed to take in, and already his father had arranged for him to receive some alternate tutelage in a few days if Rhys was still ill, working alongside Bleddyn or Ieuan – these being the physicians – and learning some more of their art, or learning from someone else. His father had always felt it best Arthur know a little of everything, and there was no shortage of things to learn, but these things did need organising, and his father had been kind enough to dismiss him from attending that day’s court instead of making him stick it out in place of his studies. A few scraps of parchment and some charcoals were spread beside him – he’d done some half-hearted studies of different flowers, the few he didn’t know the names of, that he might ask Bleddyn about them later – but he was tired and lacked direction, so he let himself relax in the grass. When he saw movement in the woods, a good ways ahead of him, he thought at first he might have seen a deer or a boar that had simply come close to where the gardens began, and he glanced at Blaidd, whose half-closed eyes opened fully, his amber eyes looking toward the woods. The dog’s face remained neutral for a moment, and Arthur looked at the thought he could see in his eyes, his nose twitching as he sniffed the air, but then Blaidd sat up straight, his pointed ears twitching from side to side. “You hear something?” Arthur asked, and Blaidd glanced at him, but then stood to his feet. He wasn’t growling or baring his teeth, his lips not even twitching, but it seemed to Arthur that the dog’s brow was furrowing as he looked to the woods, and when Arthur stood to his feet, Blaidd walked at his side, his shoulder in line with Arthur’s hip. He hoped he’d be as tall as his father, someday – some of the boys he trained with in Camelot town were taller than him, and although he wasn’t short for his age, a little above average, he was impatiently awaiting his next spurt of growth. Next to Blaidd, more wolf than hound, he worried he looked quite small indeed. Light dappled the forest floor where it peeked through the tree canopy, and once they passed under the shadows of the trees and Arthur’s eyes were able to adjust, the woods were more than light enough for him to see very well and see very far, and he and Blaidd stood stock still together, watching. Arthur liked to hunt, on foot if not on horseback, and he knew very well how to stand still, how to breathe with the wind and let it go through you as you looked around, took in everything before you, so that you could catch even the tiniest flickers of movement or shifts of— Blaidd stood up straighter, and Arthur automatically put his hand on the dog’s neck, following his gaze. It was a small figure, hugging its belly as it stumbled forward: dressed in loose robes the colour of burnet bloodwort, its hair was ragged and hung in lank black curls around its dangerously pale face, its eyes invisible with the way its hair hung over their shadowed chasms. Like a drunk man, it shifted from one side to the other as it moved, and as Arthur watched it stopped and coughed hard: the blood that dribbled over its pale chin was red, and he could see from the stains that it had coughed up some blood already. It looked up at him, and although he saw it from some thirty or forty yards back, it seemed to him that its eyes were all he could see for a moment, a pale silver-grey that shone very bright in the shadowed light, before it fell. “Come, Blaidd,” Arthur said, rushing forward as it crumpled into the heather, so thin and pale it looked to be little more than a pile of red fabric, and he leaned down, scooping it up by its shoulders and behind its knees, seeing one pale arm fall out of the robes and hang down. Blaidd started to bark as they jogged back through the gardens, up toward the side passage in through the kitchen, and the sound of it echoed off the stone walls. The cooks made noise at him, bade him stop, but they went quiet when Arthur shouted, “Bleddyn! Ieuan!” up the great stairs even as he carried the body in his arms through to one of the small chambers where the squires polished boots, spreading him out on the wood table. “Bethan, get one of them,” he ordered a serving girl a few years older than him as he undid the silver buckle on the boy’s robes, pushing them aside. Underneath the red cloak, he didn’t wear anything substantial – remnants of white fabric clung to wounds in his chest and his side, and a scrap of white fabric wrapped loose around one shoulder hinted that he had been wearing a shirt before; his breeches were cloth, and although they were stained with blood, Arthur could see no wounds cutting through them. He wore no boots and no shoes: his feet, which were even paler than his face, were cut and abused from sole to ankle, and there were burs and stones piercing the flesh, protruding in places like splinters from the skin. “Good God,” said Bleddyn as he came in, and as Arthur washed water over the boy’s chin and the wounds on his chest, clearing away the blood so that the physician could better see to work, Bleddyn’s hands glowed with light, and he set his hands on the boy’s cheeks. The light that shone from the boy’s eyes in response was blinding, and although Bleddyn stayed in place, Arthur swore, stumbling back and putting his forearm over his eyes. “It’s alright,” said Bleddyn. “It’s a sign he’s well – just his magic responding to mine, that’s all. Wet his hair and pull it back from his face, would you?” The blood from the boy’s mouth, mercifully, was mostly from having bitten his tongue, and none of the wounds were extremely deep. As Bleddyn worked on his lungs, channelling his magic to force the pollens he’d inhaled – they were fae pollens, and could cut at his throat and the insides of his chest if he were left to cough for much longer – Arthur pulled the burs and stones free from the boy’s feet, washing them as carefully as he knew how, and although the boy winced at the burn of Arthur’s own magic, clumsier than the physician’s as he ensured every invader had been pulled free, Arthur satisfied himself that his feet were clean. “How old is he?” he asked. “Difficult to tell,” said Bleddyn, squeezing a rag, and Arthur wrinkled his nose at the little blood mixed in with the bright lilac particles that soaked into the bowl beside him, before Bleddyn put the rag back over the boy’s nose and mouth and continued to work. “Not older than you, certainly, but likely younger – eight or nine. Where did you find him?” “He stumbled out of the woods,” said Arthur. “I don’t recognise him, he’s not from Camelot proper. From another village, maybe, but…” “Ieuan will recognise him if he is, but I doubt it,” murmured Bleddyn. “This fabric is a fae weave, and not of any nearby kingdom, either.” “You think he’s a threat?” Arthur asked, and Bleddyn glanced at him. “You think like your father,” he murmured, a hint of disapproval in his voice. “I doubt it. Leave him to me, I’ll look after him.” “I’ll help you,” said Arthur, and Bleddyn hesitated a moment before he nodded his head, and gestured for Arthur to watch his work on the boy’s lungs more closely.
That evening, when his father came into the small bedroom they’d set aside for the strange boy from the woods, Arthur stirred from the sleep he’d drifted into, raising his head and wiping at one eye. “Bleddyn said you found him ahead of the kitchen gardens,” his father said as he reached out, stroking his hand over Blaidd’s head where he lay over the boy’s feet in the bed. In his sleep, his hair washed clean of the filth and leaves that had been stuck through it, the boy was anything but peaceful – he stirred and shifted constantly, his head whipping one way and then the other on his pillow. Now and then, although he didn’t wake, his eyelids would open and his eyes would flash with light. “He’s a man, Bleddyn says. Or a man-to-be, perhaps I should say.” “He’s been through fae lands,” said Arthur. “It clings to him like a shroud, but he’s human. He’s not local – or if he is, he’s not very local. Ieuan doesn’t recognise him.” “And what will you do when he is nursed to health?” asked his father. “You’d rather I let him die?” “I’m glad of your kindness,” he said quietly. “It will serve you well when you are king. But you must take care that you hone other qualities, too.” “I know.” He expected for his father to tell him sternly to go to bed, but he did no such thing: King Uther grasped a blanket from the chest and tossed it into Arthur’s lap, reaching out and curling his hand in Arthur’s hair. “If he dies?” asked his father quietly. “Bleddyn said it was likely he would recover, but—” “If he dies, we bury him,” Arthur said. “Nothing else we can do.” His father nodded. “He’s your responsibility,” he said, and left the room. As Arthur unfolded the blanket, throwing it loosely over his knees and his feet, which he rested on the edge of the boy’s bed, touching Blaidd’s paw, he looked at the boy who stirred in his sleep, and made no sound. Sighing, he closed his eyes again, and tipped back in the chair.
Arthur didn’t linger in the boy’s bedroom, once his tutor was better. He would check in on him a few times a day, the same time Bleddyn or Ieuan did, but the boy laid fitfully asleep for several days, even though both of the physicians tried to stir him awake. Arthur checked in on him late in the afternoon a few days after bringing him in to find that the boy was awake, and looking through the chest at the foot of the bed, where only blankets were stored. The drawers and cupboard doors of the cabinets were all open, too. The boy was dressed in a long shirt from Arthur’s own wardrobe, one that he all but swam in, and now he saw Arthur he looked at him distrustfully, his lips twisted into a small frown, his shining eyes running over Arthur as though examining him for signs of weakness. It was a cold and haughty look, one that looked far older than the child it belonged to, and then suddenly it faded, and the boy looked small, and fragile, and confused. Arthur made a mental note of that. “Can you give me your name?” Arthur asked experimentally, and he watched the way the boy’s lip curled back, the disgust on his face, the offence. “Alright. Just tell me what to call you, then.” “Myrddin,” said the boy. He had a silvery voice, a sort of musical, bell-like quality in it that made the hair on Arthur’s neck stand on end. “Who are you?” “Arthur,” he answered. “Son of Uther.” The boy faltered, and bowed his head immediately. “Your highness,” he said quietly, his pale hands twitching at his sides, although how genuine the genuflection was, Arthur had no way of knowing. “You found me?” “That I did,” said Arthur. “Let me call a physician to have a look at you.” “Please,” said Myrddin, taking a step forward, and Arthur saw the wideness of his grey eyes, the part of his lips, as he said, “please, don’t— don’t go. I was alone, when I woke up. I was afraid.” “Afraid enough to rifle through the drawers instead of going out into the corridor?” asked Arthur. “You would begrudge me a weapon to defend myself?” asked the boy, head still bowed slightly so that he wasn’t looking at Arthur directly. “You, a stranger in my palace? Yes, actually. I would.” The boy faltered at that, bit his lip, but Arthur picked up a heavier robe from one of the open drawers and held it out to him. “I won’t leave you, though,” he said quietly, and watched the boy wrap himself in it, walking after Arthur. His feet must have been cold whenever he stepped between rugs onto the cold stone floor, but he didn’t voice a single complaint as Arthur led him downstairs, and almost all of the little marks and bruises on him were healed. His gait seemed healthy to Arthur, albeit slow. “You’re hungry, I bet,” said Arthur. “Yes,” said Myrddin. “Yes, very.” He ate ravenously once Arthur brought him down to the kitchen, and Arthur lingered as Bleddyn looked Myrddin over, ensuring that his lungs, his heart, and the rest of him all appeared to be healthy and in good working order. He could barely be distracted from his meal as he ate, and Arthur couldn’t fault him for that, when he hadn’t eaten a morsel since before he’d collapsed in the gardens. Myrddin was nervous about allowing himself to be taken aside by Bleddyn to take some sort of medicine, something to ensure his body better took on water again having spent so many days asleep. “He’s awake?” asked Uther when Arthur came into the main hall, looking up from his conversation with a few of the court advisors. “I don’t trust him,” said Arthur. “He’s lying.” “What has he told you?” “Almost nothing.” “What is he lying about, then?” “He’s going to lie,” said Arthur with certainty. “He knew precisely where he was going to end up.” Uther considered this, his lips shifting into a small frown, and then he gave a nod of his head. “He remains your responsibility.” “I didn’t expect otherwise,” said Arthur, and returned to the boy and Bleddyn.
“What happened to you?” asked Arthur. It was another sunny morning, and the two of them were sitting outside: Arthur was reclining in a chair and had offered Myrddin one, but the boy had refused it. He was lying in the flowers with Blaidd’s great head in his lap, and he was gently rolling Blaidd’s cheeks in his hands. The dog, to Myrddin’s credit, was savouring the attention, and whined whenever he stopped. “I don’t quite recall,” said Myrddin softly. “I was taken from my parents, I remember that. And then I… I ran from those who took me, travelled. Walked until my feet bled. I’ve been doing that for a long time.” “And most recently?” asked Arthur. “You had breathed in great swathes of pollen – but you were spelled, too, there was something else wrong with you, some curse or malady. What was that?” “A punishment.” “For?” “Cheek,” said Myrddin. “I think. My memory is hazy.” “How old are you?” “Some decades.” “And without fae lands, how old are you then? How many summers have you seen on God’s green earth?” “Eleven.” “Eleven,” repeated Arthur. “How old are you?” asked the boy. “Fourteen,” he said. “Why have you come here?” “I didn’t know where I was going,” said the boy. “You’re a liar.” “Yes.” “Always a liar?” “Often. It has always been the way of me.” “Even before you joined the faeries?” “Especially then. Dishonesty is a different beast between tylwyth and teulu.” Myrddin, as he said this, looked up from the wolf to meet Arthur’s gaze, and although Arthur could see the grey of the colour in his eyes, glinting in the sun, they did not glow as they had done, did not flare or flash. There was a strange defiance in them, and Myrddin’s thin lips curled up at their edges. “Maybe so,” said Arthur. “Do you lie?” asked the boy. “If needs be,” said Arthur. “But I am honest, by nature. Tell me why you’ve come here.” “I felt that this was where I needed to go,” said Myrddin, “and where I needed to be. And it is where I shall stay, now.” “Is that so?” “I believe it is.” “And if I choose to have you go?” “It’s not my choice one way or the other, highness,” said Myrddin. “It is my belief I shall remain here, or at your side, until the end of my days.” Arthur considered this, curled his hand around the arm of the wooden chair he reclined in, felt the sun warm his cheeks and settle in his hair. The boy looked at him unerring, and in this, Arthur didn’t think he was lying. It made something flip in his stomach, made his hair all stand on end, and he had a feeling like someone was walking over his grave. “You feel it too,” said the boy. “What do you want from me?” asked Arthur. His mouth was dry. “Purpose,” said the boy. “What purpose?” “That isn’t my choice either,” said the boy. “It is yours, and yours alone.” “I have no want of a man in bondage.” “I am not bound,” said Myrddin. “I could go freely if I chose. But I do not choose: you do.” “If you say it is me who chooses for you, I would say you had no liberty at all.” “What use have I of liberty?” asked Myrddin. “I’ve never made use of it before.” Arthur didn’t like soothsayers and prophets – magic he could understand, because in magic there was a truth in it, a solidity, that didn’t fade away based on the angle you looked at it from. Even if you couldn’t predict it yourself, someone else could: it was a real study, a focus of power. Prophecy, that was different – everything in clairvoyance was swathed in mist and fog, and that suited no one better than the clairvoyant themselves. Destiny had never set well with Arthur Pen Draig, least of all when he felt it pull at the ends of his shirt tails himself. Looking at Myrddin, who at once seemed like a tiny child and an impossible ancient, he felt the twist of distant anxiety in his gut, but he couldn’t deny the other feelings churning inside him too, couldn’t deny that he felt some sort of pull to Myrddin. It was curiosity, right enough, and Arthur was curious by nature, but there was something more to this. Looking at Myrddin, he felt like he was looking at a puzzle looking back, a puzzle that would solve him at the same time it was solved. He didn’t like it, but the idea of pushing Myrddin to go was unthinkable. “I feel bound up in you somehow,” Arthur admitted. “Like some part of me has always awaited something like you, and I have never noticed it ‘til now. I dislike that feeling very much, Myrddin. I distrust it.” “You shouldn’t trust me,” advised Myrddin, and laid back in the flowers, let Blaidd crawl closer and lay his head upon his chest instead. “No one else does.” “You knew you would arrive here,” said Arthur. “Sooner or later,” was the boy’s agreement. “How do I know you don’t wish me dead?” “If you were dead,” said Myrddin, frowning at the very thought, “I really would have no liberty.” “You would be imprisoned, you mean,” said Arthur. “No,” said Myrddin, and in his eyes there was a glassy brightness, like some light other than the sun above them was shining into them. “No, I don’t mean that at all. I just mean— I was sort of aimless until I came here, wasting time. Now, I arrive, and I know you’ll choose for me. I’ve been waiting for this. Direction. If you were dead, I’d be directionless once again. Like a lost man who, upon finding his star to travel by, casts out his eyes, that he should not see it. Do you know what I mean?” Myrddin was not looking at Arthur, but at the blue skies passing slowly overhead. “Yes,” said Arthur. “Yes, I think I do.” “Do you dream of me?” asked Myrddin. “Since bringing me inside?” “No,” lied Arthur. “Tut tut,” said Myrddin dreamily, more to Blaidd than Arthur himself. “You said you were an honest man.”
Arthur dreamed of sleep. He always had, and he wondered if he always would – dreams could be mined for prophecy, he was told, had been taught, but had never understood how. When Arthur dreamed, he dreamt of sleeping: he dreamt of lying still in a canopied bed, dreamt of soft sheets, warm blankets, stillness. He dreamt of a distant perfume he could never name, and he dreamt of that strange, half-awakeness a man had at times, knowing someone was in the room with you but not quite able yet to stir. He had dreamt, for the longest time, of strange and distant words floating over him in that bleary not-awakeness, distant voices he couldn’t conceive of, but two most of all: a woman’s voice, strong and rich, disposed to quiet hums and chuckles, and a man’s voice, mellifluous and flowing, ethereal in its quality. Since the first night he had slept after bringing Myrddin inside, this latter had strengthened. The man’s voice was resonant in a way the boy Myrddin’s was not, and held in it the markers of age, not merely of a young man, but a man in his prime, or past it. Arthur could no more make out the words he said to the Arthur who slept, but he knew the voice as he heard it, and its sound, its emotion, was clearer to him now. If this was prophecy, then for what purpose? When Arthur woke from his sleep within sleep, it did not surprise him to find Myrddin sitting beside his bed, cross-legged in a chair with a book in his lap, because it was what he had been dreaming of. “You see the future,” said Arthur. “Not really,” replied Myrddin, turning a page. “It is not seeing, exactly – no more than you see your memories.” “I do see my memories,” said Arthur, sitting up in bed. Myrddin blinked, so that the silver glinted in his eyes. “Oh,” he said, displeased. “Well. I don’t. It’s more like knowing the future than seeing it – and I don’t really understand it, can’t much make sense of it. Much of it isn’t very useful, things that you don’t recognise until it’s happening, and by then, it’s far too late.” “What do you dream about?” asked Arthur. “Loneliness,” said Myrddin, the answer earnest and somehow reserved all at once. “Is that what you dream about?” Arthur considered the question. He considered how it felt, to be peacefully resting, to know that Myrddin and the other, the woman, were close at hand, were always close at hand, one or the other. “No,” said Arthur. “In my dreams, I am never lonely.” “I have come to serve you, you know,” said Myrddin, as though Arthur had said otherwise. “I have always been meant to serve you.” “Does that mean you won’t serve yourself?” asked Arthur. “No,” said Myrddin. “I am selfish by nature, and quite cold, and although I am not quick to temper, and don’t believe I ever will be, my revenge when I deliver it is very severe. I am inflexible and I am often unkind, and I lie almost always.” Arthur wished he could be surprised that a little boy could speak like this, but fae children were never truly little in the way human ones were, and it seemed obvious to him that no matter that he was human, Myrddin was as fae as they came. And as much as Myrddin was small and scrawny, three years younger than Arthur, he wasn’t really – he was thrice or four times Arthur’s age. “Is that your way of asking me to keep you?” asked Arthur. Myrddin hesitated, looking uncertain, and even a little afraid. “How else would you have me ask?” When Bethan brought his breakfast, Myrddin picked from his tray like a bird. He sat on the edge of his seat and, without looking up from his book, picked and took things from Arthur’s plate – little morsels, ones that he picked at, chewed at. It was wholly irritating, particularly because Myrddin neither asked nor even met Arthur’s gaze as he did it, looking at his book the whole time, but when Arthur tried to slap his hands away, Myrddin moved too fast to hit, and remained undeterred. It seemed to Arthur, in the strangest way, that he had always expected this, always wanted this – or, not wanted it, but missedit, as though he had had it before. There was a part missing to the whole, though, and where Myrddin sat on his left, he looked to his right, as though he would see a ghost of a girl there, a girl with a rich laugh who hummed when she thought, a girl… “I miss her too,” said Myrddin. “Who is she?” asked Arthur. Myrddin laughed – bell-like but chattering, a magpie’s jingle, it was a grating sound, and Arthur hated it because it made him smile almost on reflex. “How should I know?” he asked. Arthur looked down at the section of bread in his hands, which he had torn into thirds without even thinking about it. Myrddin took his, and as Arthur ate his own, the third sat on the plate untouched. “You’re my responsibility, you know,” said Arthur. With a nod, Myrddin said in a tone of agreement, “You’re mine too.” Arthur said, “No, I mean…” Myrddin was looking at him curiously, head tilted, and Arthur closed his mouth. “We’ll speak with my father later this morning,” he said. Myrddin swiped a piece of meat from his plate, and Arthur let him. When he dreamed that night, still sleeping, he dreamt he felt compete.
Content Tags
Rated T for Teen. Published March 31st 2021. Approximately 4600 words.
Setting: Camelot, Royal Capital of what was not yet Cymru-Loegr.
Characters: Myrddin Wyllt, Arthur Pen Draig, Uther Pen Draig
Genre & Tone: Fantasy. Slice-of-life.
Themes: Power Dynamics, First Meetings, Prophecy & Divination, Destiny
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