Part 13 (1/2)

Nimue turned her thoughts from failed suitors back to the conundrum presented by Merlin. Her heart's desire was to have the power, yet she would lose her heart's desire to gain the power. How could this be?

She scratched her head and lay down on the rock, letting the heat from the sun fall upon her. Unconsciously, she turned her palms up to catch the rays. The sun was a source of power, one she used in many lesser magics. It was good to take in the sun's power when the sky was clear, and she no longer needed to even think about it. Nimue could draw power from many sources: the sun, the earth, the moving stream, even the spent breath of animals and men.

What had Merlin lost? Nimue wondered. What was his heart's desire? He must have wanted the power as she wanted it. He had gained it, and as far as she could see, he had lost nothing. He was the pre-eminent wizard of the age. The counsellor and maker of kings. There was no knowledge he did not have, no spell he did not know.

Perhaps there was nothing to lose, Nimue thought. Or if there was, it would be something she would never miss. A heart's desire that could come to pa.s.s, but did not, was no loss. To see the future was not the same as to live it. Perhaps she would see her heart's desire in the hearth fire, and would know it could never be. How much of a loss was that?

Nothing, thought Nimue. Nothing compared to the exhilaration of magic.

'Tonight,' she whispered, and she curled up on the black stone like a cat resting up in preparation for extensive wickedness. 'Tonight, for everything.' Merlin was not asleep when she came to his chamber. He lay on his bed, his eyes open, gleaming in the thin shaft of moonlight from the tower window. Nimue hesitated at the door, suddenly shy and afraid. She had chosen to come naked, but with her long dark hair artfully arranged to both cover and suggest. She had taken a long time to get her hair exactly right, and it was held in place with charms as well as pins.

'Merlin,' she whispered.

Merlin did not respond. Nimue drifted into the room. Her skin seemed to glow with an inner light, and her smile promised many pleasures. Any man would rise and take her to his bed in eager haste. But not Merlin.

'Merlin. I shall go to the black rock before the dawn. But I would go as a woman, who has known her man. Your woman.'

'No,' whispered Merlin. He did not move, but lay as still as the chalk carving on the green of the hill. 'There are men aplenty in the village. Two of Arthur's knights are visiting tonight. They are both good men, young and unmarried.'

Nimue shook her head and stepped forward. Her hair fell aside as she knelt by the bed, her magic dissolving and the pins unable to hold on their own.

'It is you I want,' she said fiercely. 'You! No one else. You want me too! I know it, as well as I know the ten thousand names of the beasts and the birds that you have taught me.'

'I do,' whispered Merlin. 'But I am your teacher, and it is not meet that we should lie together now, unequal in years and power. Go back to your own place.'

Nimue frowned. Then she rose and stamped her foot, and whirled away, light and shadows dancing in her wake. At the door she looked back, and her smile shone through the dark room.

'Tomorrow I shall be my own mistress and you will not be master,' said Nimue. 'I will catch my star and we can be as man and wife.'

Merlin did not move or answer. In an instant, Nimue was gone, and the room was silent once more. The shaft of moonlight slowly crawled over Merlin's face, and darkness hid the tears that welled up out of his clear blue eyes. Young man's eyes, unclouded by age or glamour.

'Ah well,' he muttered to himself. 'Ah well.'

They were the words Merlin's father had said upon his deathbed. Simple words, devoid of magic, greeting a fate that could not be turned aside.

Nimue did not go back to her own bed. Instead she put on her best linen dress, that she herself had dyed blue from isatis bark and st.i.tched with silver thread that she had spun out of the deep earth.

The silver thread shone in the moonlight as she slipped out of the house and out onto the headland. There was a pool at the edge of the western cliff, a pool of soft water, fed by spring and rain. It was always placid, mirrorlike, in sharp contrast to the sea that crashed on the rocks only a few paces away, but two hundred feet below. An ancient hawthorn tree leaned over the pool, all shadows and spiky branches. It had often been mistaken in the dark for a giant, or some fell creature. Every midwinter night some hapless stranger would seek to use the power of the pool, only to flee in panic from the hawthorn. Invariably they found the cliff edge and the pounding sea that would grind their bones to dust.

Nimue stood at the edge of the pool and hugged herself against the bite of the wind, cold in this early morning. She whispered to herself, preparing for what must be done: 'To find the secret name of a star, Ask the moon that shares the sky. Fix its place between the branches of the hawthorn tree. Send the name to the sky on the wings of a bird. Burn the name in fire upon the mirrored waters of the lake. Wrap the star with heart's desire Between the darkness and the light. Then you shall a magus be . . .'

Nimue looked up to the heavens and found the great disk of the moon, yellow as ancient cheese. She let its light fall upon her face and open hands, and took in its power. But a yellow moon was not what she sought. She waited, silent, the hawthorn tree softly groaning in the wind, the surf cras.h.i.+ng deep below.

Slowly the moon began to sink and change. The yellow faded and blue-silver began to spill across its face. Nimue felt the change and smiled. Soon she would ask it to name her star. She had already chosen one. A bright star, but not so bright it might overpower her. Not the Evening Star, which served no one and never would. But a star as bright as Merlin's, though not as red. She would be his equal in power, if not in kind.

A bird called, the sleepy cry of something woken before its time. The wind fell and the hawthorn stilled. Nimue felt a tremor rush through her. Dawn was only minutes away. The moon was silver-she must act.

She called to the moon, a call that no human ears could hear. At first there was no answer, but she had expected that. She called again, using the power she'd drawn earlier from the sun. The moon grew a fraction brighter at the call, and through the void her silver voice came down, quiet and imbued with sadness, speaking for Nimue alone.

'Jahaliel.'

As the name formed in her head, Nimue sank to one knee and looked up through the branches of the hawthorn. There, in the fork where two twisted branches met, she saw her star, bright between two strands of darkness.

Nimue splashed her hand in the pool, and the droplets flew into the air to become a white bird, a dove whose wings made a drumroll as it rose straight up toward the sky, the name of the star held in its beak where once it would have carried an olive branch.

The pool was still before Nimue's hand had left it, still and s.h.i.+ning, reflecting the woman, the tree, the moon, and sky. With her forefinger and all that was left of the sun's power within her, Nimue wrote in fire upon the mirrored water the three runes that spelled out the name 'Ja-hal-iel.'

In the heavens, a star fell. The moon sank, and the sun rose.

In the instant between night and day, Nimue caught her star and bound it forever with the promise of her heart's desire.

She felt something leave her, and tears started in her eyes. But she did not know what she had lost, and the exultation of power was upon her.

Nimue ran to the cliff top and threw herself into the air. Like a feather she drifted down, buffeted this way and that by the wind but taking no harm. Before the cold water embraced her, she became a dolphin, plunging into a wave, sliding under the water to spin out the other side, laughing as only a dolphin can.

Nimue had been a dolphin before, but it was Merlin who had made her so. It was his star's power that had given her the shapes of many things, on sea and air and land. Now she could transform herself at will. She jumped again and between two waves became a hawk, shooting up above the spray. A merlin, to be exact, and that was her joke and tribute. On bent-back wings she sped across the headland, past the pool, toward the rising sun and Merlin.

With sharp hawk eyes she saw he had already risen and was waiting for her in the ring of stones. He stood upon the black rock, without a glamour upon him, and Nimue felt love for him rise in her heart as bright and strong as the rising sun.

She flew still higher, until she was directly above him and he had to shade his eyes to look at her. Then she folded her wings and dropped straight down, down into his open arms.

They had one kiss, one brief embrace, before the stars they wore pushed them apart, the air itself wrenching them from each other's grasp. Nimue shouted and directed her will upon her newfound power, but to no avail. She was pushed completely off the black stone, to fall sprawling in the circle.

Merlin did not shout. He had fallen on his back, and was sinking into the black stone as if it were not stone at all but some peaty bog that had trapped an unwary traveler.

He did not shout, but his voice was loud and clear in Nimue's ear as she struggled to her feet.

'You were my heart's desire, Nimue, waiting in the future. You were the price I paid for the art. Love never to be fulfilled. Forgive me.'

His hand stretched up from the stone. Nimue s.n.a.t.c.hed at it, as if even now she might somehow pull him back. But her hand closed on empty air, and his disappeared beneath the surface of the stone.

'Forgive me, Merlin,' whispered Nimue. She made no effort to stem the tears that fell upon the stone. A bright star shone in the hollow of her neck, the promise of power and wisdom beyond anything she had ever dreamed. But she was cold inside, cold with the knowledge that this power was not her heart's desire. Her true heart's desire lay entombed in dark stone, beyond her reach forever.

Or was he? Nimue clutched her star and looked up at the sky, so bright above her. If a star could be plucked from the sky, then surely it could also be made to rise again? To take its place in the firmament once more, unraveling all the threads of time that had been woven in its fall. If she could return her star, then surely Merlin would freely walk the earth, and he in turn could free his star and regain his heart's desire.

There were other powers in the world. Other places to find knowledge. Nimue stretched her slim arms above her head and in a moment was a bird, wide winged and far sailing. She rode a wind west, across the open sea, and was gone from Britain.

With her went all Merlin's wisdom and power, and all hope for the kingdom of Arthur. The kingdom that would sink into ruin as Nimue's heart's desire had sunk into the stone.

HANSEL'S EYES

INTRODUCTION TO HANSEL'S EYES THIS STORY WAS WRITTEN FORA WOLFat the Door, a collection of retold fairy tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. I turned to the Brothers Grimm, as one does, for a story to retell. Despite being attracted to several lesser-known stories, in the end I wrote a variation on the 'Hansel and Gretel' story, probably because I had an idea about what the witch would be like, and what she would do, if transferred to a modern setting.

Because I quite like the author's note I wrote for the original anthology, I'm going to quote some of it here: He first encountered Grimm's fairy tales when they were read to him at the age of five or six. He spent the next two years attempting to spin straw into gold, turn pumpkins into carriages, and find a bearskin to put on-all without success. He chose 'Hansel and Gretel' for retelling as it was always a favorite, probably because his mother made him a fantastic gingerbread house for his eighth birthday, complete with a witch made of lollies. He chose to set the retold story in a city because he has always found being lost in cities much more terrifying than being lost in the woods-or, in his case, the bush of Australia.

All true. For those of you wracked with jealousy because my mother made me a gingerbread house complete with a witch made of lollies, prepare to become even more green-eyed. For my seventh birthday (or perhaps my ninth), she made puppets of all the characters in Tove Jansson's Moominland Midwinter, built a puppet theater, and performed the book as a puppet play. Needless to say, without the influence, example, and encouragement of my mother (and my father, whose collection of fantasy and science fiction books supplied me with reading matter for my most formative years), I would not be the writer I have become, or indeed, a writer at all.