‘So, I get it, I get it – I have to remember for myself who I am! But who am I?’
*
Scott waved a hand towards the lily of the valley on the floor, allowing it to gracefully float up towards his fingers.
He caressed the flower’s stem delicately, tenderly touched the hanging blooms with a finger of his other hand.
‘Mary’s tears, which sprouted into flower at her feet.’
The flower quivered, shook itself a little, became instead a snowdrop.
‘Our lady’s bells: a purification.’
Another quiver of stems and blooms followed, another flower – this time the daisy – appeared within Scott’s hand.
‘The innocence of the Child; the sleep of indifference.’
As he spoke, the flower transformed once more, this time becoming a poppy, the poppy Viviana had first seen within the pool.
‘You left all these for me?’
Viviana understood now why she had been having the dreams, visions, or flashbacks; whichever they happened to be.
‘Yet if you’re my enemy,’ she asked unsurely, ‘then why would you be trying to help me?’
‘Because something went wrong: something, I’m sure, beyond even your intentions. Because whatever you did – and I’m still not sure what it is, which is why I need you to remember – has placed the whole world in jeopardy!’
*
‘The bear!’ Viviana unintentionally blurted out. ‘Who’s he? Why’s he constantly appearing in my visions?’
‘He’s you: you trying to work out who you really are! But they’re not visions: everything you see is your recall of a place where time doesn’t exist – and so you’re really there.’
‘Then the bear – me – what happened to me when I was fighting the dragon?’
‘You realised you shouldn’t be fighting it of course: you withdrew, saving yourself.’
‘But it’s devouring my memories! How can I remember who I am if I let it to do that?’
‘How can it devour your memories? Why would it devour your memories? Only because you choose to forget the memories that don’t fit into the way you wish to regard yourself!’
‘The dragon is me too?’
Again, Scott nods.
‘So why fight it, rather than recognising it for whom it really is? Only that way can you calm it, and stop it from destroying your memories; and yes, even those you’d rather forget.’
The flower he was holding had once again changed.
Now he held a foxglove, one glistening with the finest sheen of sparkling dew.
‘Our lady’s gloves,’ Scott announced proudly. ‘They can both kill or cure.’
*
Chapter 14
Coed-y-mwstyr.
The Forest of Mystery.
Viviana recognised something about this place; the name, for a start.
It was the way leading towards a place of burial.
Mynwent-y-Milwyr; the grave of the Britons treacherously killed by the Saxons at a peace conference.
The earthwork shaped like a ship, its prow facing westward to the rising sun, the Circle of Lllan-bad-fawr. The burial mound of Uthyr Pendragon Meurig, situated towards its stern, the helmsman’s position.
Around another nearby burial mound, the huge slabs of shorn rock have fallen inwards, blocking the doorway to the barrow, the mound that formed the actual grave.
The bear is already there, still clad within his shining white armour (still – despite the urgency of his strenuous task – with his helm’s visor down, as if hiding his face), trying to lift one of the massive slabs.
*
Viviana held back.
She didn’t want to see whose name was carved upon the gravestone.
For that, of course, was what she realised it must be.
Even though there were no other gravestones around here.
All these mounds, these barrows, they were from the Dark-ages: the stones, the massive slabs, not gravestones at all, but forming the approaches to the entrance to the realms of the dead. The monstrous teeth of dragons, drawing you in towards the mouth, the tongue, the gullet.
Yet where the bear struggled to lift the slab: this was different.
A mausoleum. The gravestones lifted, perhaps, from a mediaeval cathedral, with its elaborate carvings, its prostrate renditions of the dead lying beneath.
She was dead; that’s what this vision – this recall, this memory that existed outside of time – was about to tell her.
‘It’s the future for every man or woman eventually,’ a woman standing upon a nearby barrow said nonchalantly.
She was tending flowers upon the grave, flowers that had rooted, and were stretching out to find a sun almost hidden within a dim sky.
‘Though some attain a greatness other’s envy,’ the young woman added, staring towards the broken mausoleum with an admiring gaze.
Viviana edged closer towards the shattered tombstones.
Beneath the previously perpendicular but now toppled slabs, she could at last more clearly make out the effigies that had almost been crushed out of existence by their falling.
One was of an armoured knight, his armour resplendent, perhaps that of a king. The other prone figure was that of a lady, again richly dressed in her gown of marble, perhaps a princess if not a queen.
With a shrill howl of triumph, the bear dragged aside the slab. He let its base slip towards the floor, allowing its deeply carved legend to be seen.
‘Ub-Arth.’
*
Chapter 15
‘The bear,’ Viviana translated, just in case the bear was incapable of doing so (and she was a little surprised that she was capable of interpreting it). ‘King Arthur,’ she added, in further translation, surprising herself once again that she should know this.
She frowned, perplexed.
The bear was King Arthur?
‘I thought…thought it was just a legend,’ the bear stated, reflecting her bewilderment as it at last raised the visor of his helmet.
‘What…what about the other grave?’
Viviana stared apprehensively at the remaining monument, the one featuring a prostrate female.
With a disinterested shrug, the bear moved towards the other slab anyway, putting his great weight towards pushing it aside from the partially crushed statue.
As before, although it took a remarkable degree of effort from the immensely powerful bear, the slab eventually shook, moved, partially slid aside.
Like the other slab, it began to slip down the side of the tomb, at last readable.
This legend was in English, not Welsh.
‘Beware the betrayer.’
*
Despite the stone dress having been crushed out of shape, the face was clear and recognisable.
It was Viviana’s face.
The bear, King Arthur, let the slab he was strenuously supporting drop once more across the prone figure.
He looked towards Viviana.
Even beneath that great helm, that visor which hid his face, she could sense his shock, his hurt.
‘You…you betrayed me?’ the bear said despondently, his head hanging low. ‘I think I know now who you really are.’
And with that, he turned and began to dispiritedly walk away.
*
Chapter 16
Within the cell, it was surprisingly cold.
It was a coldness, Viviana felt sure, that emanated from deep within her.
‘I’m…I’m not the good guy here, right?’ she whispered fearfully.
Scott shook his head.
‘But you could be – if you can remember what you did with my powers.’
Viviana came out of her dazed, trance-like musing, looked towards Scott with deeply puzzled eyes.
‘What I did with your powers? But I’ve seen your powers,’ she protested, confused. ‘You’ve still got them.’
‘Only for the moment: you do steal th
em. You hide them.’
‘You’re Arthur?’ Viviana asked unsurely. ‘I’ve betrayed you?’
‘No, I’m not Arthur,’ Scott replied, rewarding her with a smile that tried to say he understood her confusion. ‘I’m the Lady of the Lake.’
*
Chapter 17
The cell walls suddenly seemed to be rushing away from Viviana.
No, they didn’t seem to be: they actually were rushing away from her.
The cell was disintegrating around her, the walls swooping away as if caught in a whirlwind, a whirlwind that abruptly decided to tear those walls to pieces.
In place of the cell, they were both suddenly standing within an expansive, rolling landscape of fields and forests. A landscape whipped mercilessly by a violent storm.
‘What are you doing?’ Viviana cried out worriedly above the roaring wind, glaring anxiously at the boy, this boy who’d just ridiculously claimed to be the Lady of the Lake.
‘Me? I thought it was you,’ the boy hollered back, suffering as much difficulty as she had when it came to being heard over the brutally buffeting wind.
‘Me? How would I do this?’
The tempestuous storm raged at her clothes, battered her skin, pummelled her face. Off to one side, the whirling winds uprooted a small tree, spun it through the air, dashed it against a larger tree so violently it cracked sickeningly
‘She’s inside of you, of course! She’s recognised who she is!’
As if to give proof that there could indeed be some other person secreted away inside of Viviana, the boy’s own face, his whole body, quivered as if suffering the worst of the storm’s blows: but then he abruptly transformed, becoming in an instant an elegantly ethereal woman more angelic than human. Her hair was immensely long, but thankfully flowed upwards as if caught in an invisible current of water, the strand of each hair a brilliantly translucent green.
As soon as this gracefully beautiful woman had revealed her real nature, however, she was whipped up off her feet by a gust of the increasingly powerful winds. In the same way it had effortlessly spun the small tree, the storm now twirled her around within the air, throwing her mercilessly against a nearby rock formation.
Like the tree, the woman’s bones, her entire body, should have cracked under such a terrible impact.
Instead, she sprang to her feet as if floating upwards within her own sphere of rising winds.
As she rose, she held out an arm: throwing a spume of water hard against Viviana, sending her uncontrollably bowling across the ground.
Viviana was shocked by just how much the pulverising fountain of water battered her, its effect being more that of a raging sea dashing her against a rocky shoreline. She was bruised and yet, quite amazingly, free of any broken bones.
In the same way that the Lady of the Lake had appeared to magically survive the blows that would have killed any human, Viviana also seemed to have almost miraculously survived a magical onslaught that would have killed any normal girl.
So, once again, this Lady of the Lake had proved she was right: she, Viviana, was no ordinary human after all.
‘I thought you said you wanted to help me!’ she screamed out above the raging howls of the increasingly violent storm.
Yet even as she yelled this out towards the imperiously approaching Lady of the Lake, it seemed all her other actions lay outside of her control: because she yet again flung a furious whirl of gusts towards the oncoming woman.
This time, the Lady of the Lake was prepared for the strike: the rapidly accumulating squalls mostly streamed uselessly around her, their enforced misdirection highlighting the presence of a glowing, protective sphere of energy surrounding her. Even so, the force of the blast was still more than enough to lift her and the energy sphere up into the air once more, this time flinging them violently against a copse of trees.
The trees cracked and shattered under the impact, the splintered timbers flying back across the fields as a deadly rain.
‘She wants to kill me!’ the Lady of the Lake announced as she regained her feet, flowing up and through the air as if she had invisible wings. ‘If you can’t control her, I have to fight back!’
‘Who is she?’ Viviana shrieked back, somehow unconsciously throwing up her own protective shield as another deluge of water rushed towards her.
The Lady of the Lake gasped, ducking a little within her buckling defensive sphere as winds struck her from multiple directions.
‘Morgana Le Fay!’ she cried out to Viviana. ‘You’re Morgana Le Fay!’
*
Chapter 18
No, no!
Viviana screamed inside.
Morgana Le Fay!
Even she knew enough history to know what that meant.
‘I guess I really am the bad guy here then, huh?’
Half-sister of Arthur, if she remembered correctly. An enchantress who had tricked and imprisoned Merlin within the trunk of a tree.
Who had betrayed Arthur.
Hey, she never realised she knew so much about Morgana Le Fay!
But then again: if she really was Morgana Le Fay, why shouldn’t she know everything there was to know about her?
It was a dispiriting realisation.
Maybe so deeply dispiriting that it even affected the real her, this Morgana, briefly taking all the fight out of her.
Whatever the reason, she was caught off guard by the next strike by the Lady of the Lake.
The blast of waves hit her full on, the energy shield that had previously protected her proving either useless against it or completely non-existent. She was launched off her feet, carried along as if caught up within a tumultuous sea, cast aside as carelessly yet ferociously as any unwanted flotsam.
Even worse, of course, was that this wasn’t just a surge of water, but a burst of magical energy.
It burned her, far more terribly than any fire could. It burnt even the interior of her lungs, even her innards, as if roasting her alive and wishing to turn her inside out.
This wasn’t just any normal injury. Viviana might really be Morgana Le Fay, yet this blow was too much for even her to bear.
It was a deadly blow, a mortal blow.
Viviana slumped to the floor, gasping for breath, her lungs so badly charred, however, that each inhalation was agonising. Her vision was hazy, getting ever more blurred by the second.
The eyes of the Lady of the Lake widened in shock, maybe even horror: the look of someone who’s surprised that they have caused so much damage. Of someone who has used as much force as they believed necessary, only to discover that it was all too much, that their target was far weaker than they had presupposed.
She rushed forward, towards the dying Viviana.
‘I was just trying to stop you from killing me…’ she wept apologetically.
She bent down beside Viviana, taking in with growing dismay the immense damage she’d caused, casting her eyes quickly over the burnt and sorely battered body as expertly as any nurse or doctor, but in this case wondering which spells might save her patient.
But none of her spells could help Viviana now.
Viviana closed her eyes.
There was, perhaps, an attempt at a smile, the sad, knowing smile of someone who has accepted that they are about to die: but she couldn’t smile, for the pain was too much.
She couldn’t manage any final words either.
*
Chapter 19
As Viviana died, the rolling, storm-riven landscape vanished.
The walls of the cell, its floor, its door, were all as solid as they had been only moments earlier.
The chairs that the Lady of the Lake had brought into being were still there.
The Lady of the Lake had also brought about the death of Viviana, of course, and so the girl’s lifeless body was still there too, lying upon the floor.
This would usually be the time for someone like the Lady of the Lake to disappear.
Instead, she remained, weeping o
ver Viviana’s motionless body.
She wasn’t lamenting the death of Morgana Le Fay. She was, she realised, lamenting the death of the young girl Morgana had briefly become: for this poor girl had had no real idea of whom she really was. She had, in her way, been completely innocent, completely unknowing.
She hadn’t deserved to die.
Behind the weeping Lady of the Lake, the door to the cell opened. The police woman who had brought Viviana into the station walked in.
She expressed no surprise at seeing the dead Viviana on the floor. Neither did she show any signs of shock at seeing the weeping Lady of the Lake, a woman ethereal in her angelic elegance, her diaphanous gown of water woven into a silken material.
‘So you killed her?’ she asked calmly. ‘But weren’t you supposed to find out what had happened to all of your powers first?’
*
The Lady of the Lake glanced up in astonishment: the policewoman shouldn’t be capable of seeing her. Not as she was now, when her magical essence should automatically veil her from view.
Yes, of course, she hadn’t had time to prevent the policewoman from seeing Viviana’s lifeless body laid out across the floor. But as the Lady of the Lake, her natural state was one of invisibility to humans.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded with a puzzled frown.
‘Who am I?’ The officer grinned in amusement at the demand. ‘Shouldn’t you be asking yourself whom you’ve just killed?’
Strangely, the newcomer said this as if she were indeed just a regular police officer, questioning a suspect found leaning over their dead victim.
‘I’m not quite sure how ridiculous this might sound to you,’ the Lady of the Lake replied with uncharacteristic uncertainty, ‘but she’s Morgana Le Fay.’
‘Hah, a likely story.’ The officer responded with another highly-amused chuckle. ‘Morgana Le Fay!’
‘I know it sounds ridiculous–’ the lady began to say, elegantly rising to her feet.