Drawing herself up before the fearfully shaking Viviana, the haggard woman handed her the shattered sword.
Viviana took it, briefly wondering why she’d been offered it, what she was supposed to do with it.
Relieved of her burden, the haggard woman abruptly regained her beauty.
Of course, witnessing this abrupt transformation on the simple handing over of a sword, any normal woman might wonder if she had taken on the woman’s haggardness by accepting the shattered blade.
But Queen Guinevere was no normal woman.
She knew she was the most gorgeous woman alive.
*
‘So, you really were Guinevere!’ Morgana snorted, looking the transformed Viviana up and down as if in disgust. ‘How could I have got it so wrong?’
‘Oh Morgana, you old crone: don’t go flattering yourself you’re infallible,’ the queen imperiously snapped back.
Of course, although Viviana had had no idea whom Morgana was, Guinevere knew a great deal about her. She also knew the Lady of the Lake’s name.
‘Someone’s been playing us all for fools, Coventina,’ she declared irately. ‘Someone who flatters themselves they can exert even more motherly control than you!’
‘It must be for more reason than just a game,’ Coventina replied, closely watching the lady silently return to the centre of the well, quietly sink back into its depths.
Guinevere twirled the broken sword around in her hands, studying it closely.
She wasn’t quite sure what it signified. But she had some inkling of what it might mean.
The splintered sword of love.
A broken heart.
The shattering of a king.
The collapse of his kingdom.
*
Chapter 25
There were three other women by the well.
Women that neither Guinevere nor Coventina, nor Morgana, had noticed before.
Even so, all three women were familiar to the other three.
One was young, and carefully tending the flowers surrounding her, supporting them in their efforts to grow and reach out towards the beckoning sun.
The second of the three women was a little older, and she was nourishing the flowers, ensuring they bloomed beautifully.
The third was the oldest of them all, and she was directing the hundreds of serpents to drop their beads of dew into the well.
‘We saw your aspects within Viviana’s recollections…’ Morgana said to the three women.
‘…but we thought we were calling on you to help us,’ Conventina added.
‘Calling on us?’ The eldest of the three women blinked, as if a little confused by this admission; but really she was simply and patiently recalling every memory she had that would provide the most complete response.
‘The arrogance of young girls these days …’ the second woman said, calmly making an incision upon a nearby slip of wood, as if setting down a law.
‘…and it seems to be getting worse,’ the young maiden added, making her own incision, as if setting down a possible future.
Morgana wasn’t the type to shrink before any kind of authority, even that of the Norns.
‘You: you swapped Arthur for Guinevere!’ she stormed accusingly.
‘Why?’ Guinevere demanded, hardly less subdued by the Norns’ presence than Morgana.
‘Why?’ The eldest of the three women blinked, as if a little confused by this query.
‘Because we choose the lives for the children of mankind…’ the second woman said, calmly making an incision upon a nearby slip of wood, as if setting down a law.
‘…and even our own Earthly equivalents,’ the young maiden added, making her own incision, as if setting down a possible future.
‘Is it because,’ Conventina began, her tone far more conciliatory and subservient than the others, ‘you hold Guinevere responsible for Arthur’s fall?’
‘Arthur?’ The eldest of the three women blinked, as if a little confused by the mention of the king.
‘Brought down to the sensibility of the beasts…’ the second woman said, calmly making an incision upon a nearby slip of wood, as if setting down a law.
‘…by a young woman granted more beauty than we now realise was sensible,’ the young maiden added, making her own incision, as if setting down a possible future.
‘Oww!’ Queen Guinevere wailed, reaching up into her hair in pain where something akin to a crown of thorns had magically appeared.
It wasn’t a crown of thorns, however, but one of a curled branch full of spiked chestnuts.
‘Chestnuts?’ Morgana appeared surprisingly dismayed.
And then Guinevere vanished.
*
Chapter 26
‘Chestnuts?’ Morgana stormed at the complacently smiling Norns. ‘You’re expecting Guinevere to display chastity?’ She chuckled bitterly at the thought of it.
‘Chastity?’ The eldest of the three women blinked, as if a little confused by this term.
‘Modesty and piety triumphing…’ the second woman said, calmly taking water and mud from the well and its surroundings.
‘…over the temptations of the flesh,’ the young maiden added, calmly helping her sister collect the water and mud
‘Flesh?’ The eldest of the three women blinked, as if a little confused by its meaning.
‘The fruit displayed with its surrounding thorny case…’ the second woman said, pouring and spreading the water and mud over branches of the great tree rising up far below them.
‘…yet perfectly undamaged by it,’ the young maiden added, helping her sister ensure that the tree’s spreading branches neither rot nor decay.
Conventina sighed miserably.
She would have rather chosen anyone but the vain Guinevere for such a task.
*
Chapter 27
Guinevere, of course, relished the countless admiring stares she was receiving.
As she danced, her long and lustrous hair danced about her like another, wraithlike partner, glittering as wildly as out of control flames, the entwining coloured braids like rainbows fleetingly whirling through the air.
Arthur was delighted by the attention, the envy, his new bride was generating within the courtly audience. It all added to his sense of being all powerful, the king of his people and his land.
The energy she possessed as she spun around him was remarkable, the energy she gave him even more so, as if she were his bridge to heaven, to love at its very purest.
She, of course, enjoyed the king’s infatuation, the longing emanating like blazing rivers from his eyes: she revelled in it so much, she was greedy for more, for this was the source of her energy. And she knew she had all the power she needed to gain all the adoration she demanded.
It was a power, naturally, that in many women wanes, or is at least tempered: but Guinevere expertly nurtured and let it all flower within her, so that as a woman in full bloom her hold over men could hardly be more complete. They would watch her dance and lose all reason, risking literally losing their heads in the open appreciation they granted their queen as she and the king twirled around the dance floor together, her eyes glittering far more brightly than any of the jewels on the courtly garb the king now wore.
The king admonished himself for his envy of the youth of the queen’s many admirers. There was nothing wrong in them admiring a beautiful woman, just as there was nothing wrong in his wife enjoying such adoration. His enemies wished to bring about a frosty relationship between them by circulating rumours that he was being betrayed, but he could see no real reason to believe any of these supposed scandals had actually taken place.
The queen was pleased that the king, this giant amongst men, loved her so. It should have been enough for her, she recognised that. But what could be the harm in letting other desirous eyes admire her, especially in a court filled with the kingdom’s bravest, most chivalrous men, men who were honour bound to remain as loyal to their king as she would?
Even as the king aged, he still remained her king. She still strenuously maintained her loyalty to him, despite the almost miraculous retention of her own youth and beauty.
She tried to avoid drawing attention to herself while on the dancefloor by standing almost still, by standing at least in the very same spot, for she didn’t wish to grant her enemies more rumours to work with. The king twirled happily enough around her, and yet his eyes were rarely cast her way these days, concentrating instead upon catching anyone watching her in a way that proved the rumours true. For they would watch her dance as thirsty men eye a sparkling spring, their gaze as probing, as venomous, as serpents.
Many times, now, the king wished he could somehow erase from his memories the times he believed he had caught his queen acting suspiciously, wished he could eradicate this darkness gnawing at his soul,
The queen sensed this change within him, naturally: it pained her that he constantly observed her with suspicion, that he watched her every move, not because he adored her but, rather, because he no longer trusted her – the opposite, surely, of love?
And she craved love: being loved unreservedly, without qualification, and loving someone equally in return.
Perhaps, as they danced, her adoring gaze lingered a little too long on her real love.
Whatever it was, the humiliated king smouldered: and suddenly, he no longer retained even the faintest trace of the great man he had once been.
*
She was dressed in the simple white gown of a wandering entertainer.
She held a chain, a chain securely binding pathetic bear who danced around her.
Somehow, she recognised her surroundings, despite their strangeness. She was standing on what seemed at first to be a rolling, meandering road, and yet in reality it was just one of the countless intertwining branches of an unimaginably vast tree.
A girl was approaching along that road. And, somehow, just as her surroundings seemed familiar, she recognised her.
Viviana.
Yes, that was her name.
*
Chapter 28
Viviana was amazed by what she was seeing.
She wasn’t quite sure how she had arrived here, of course.
She seemed to be bizarrely walking along a road that was in fact just one path amongst what could be countless intertwining branches.
And just a little farther along that road, there was a performing bear, dancing around the most beautiful woman Viviana had ever seen.
As if to humiliate the poor bear even further, it had been forced to wear a decorative white ruff, its dancing obviously rewarded with honey, much of which was smeared across its snout.
Why would this beautiful woman do this to this poor bear?
Why would she do anything so cruel?
‘Why do you keep him chained him up like this?’ Viviana wondered out loud, glancing about herself in the hope that she might see someone else who could explain what was going on.
‘I don’t know,’ the beautiful woman answered innocently. ‘I can’t remember how I ended up here at all.’
She took in the misery of the dancing bear.
No, she realised, it shouldn’t be chained to her like this.
But wasn’t this how she earned a living?
How could she let him go? Would she starve if she did?
Would he attack her, exacting vengeance on her for the cruelties she’d inflicted upon him?
‘Can’t you let him go?’ Viviana asked concernedly. ‘I feel sure he won’t attack us.’
Viviana was surprised to see that the beautiful woman stared absently at the chain she was holding, as if she weren’t fully aware that she was holding it, as if she were simply in a daze.
‘There must be some other way of making your way in the world?’ Viviana pointed out, recognising that the woman might earn her living through keeping the bear enchained like this.
The woman let the chain go, yet again did it absently, as if she wasn’t sure this was the right thing to do, wasn’t sure even what she was doing or why.
The bear still continued to forlornly dance around the woman, however, for he still remained enchained.
‘The chain,’ Viviana pointed out, running both her eyes and her fingers along the links, ‘it’s all intertwined with your long hair!’
They both stared in astonishment at the mingling of chain and hair, the merging so perfect it was impossible to determine where one became the other: if, indeed, they were in anyway separate. Like deeply entwining roots, like the colours of a rainbow, they curled and coiled into each other and indelibly blended.
It was a chain, they failed to realise, that was made of delicate caresses, of soothing words, of tender kisses, and naked embraces.
‘Then I can’t let him go!’ the beautiful woman exclaimed. ‘I can’t be held responsible for this!’
‘A sword!’
Though she couldn’t quite understand why, Viviana seemed to recall that there should be a sword lying in the nearby grass. Catching a dull glint of metal amongst the blades of grass, she dashed over to it, her face falling in disappointment when she raised a sword that had been severely, perhaps even maliciously, broken.
‘Maybe we can find someone who could mend it,’ Viviana exclaimed hopefully as she once again drew closer to the enchained couple.
The woman chuckled sourly.
‘Broken blades can’t be repaired.’
Viviana swiftly took in the thick, heavy links of the chain once more, carefully studying them in the hope of determining any possible weaknesses.
‘Your hair,’ she declared excitedly, holding out the broken sword to the woman for her to take. ‘Where you hair grows close to your scalp, it’s still hair: even this useless old blade should be capable of hacking that off!’
‘Hack of my gorgeous hair?’
The woman’s stare was one of horror, as if she thought Viviana must be crazy.
‘My hair’s beautiful!’ she insisted vehemently, refusing to take the proffered sword. ‘When it's through no fault of my own, why would I want to–’
Viviana was neither listening to nor interested in her protestations. Taking the sword firmly in her hand, she began to hack at the poor woman’s locks, cutting it off in great, haggard clumps.
‘No, wait, wait,’ the woman shrieked, too fearful that she might receive a blow to the head to attempt backing away or even raising her hands to protect herself. ‘You might kill me!’
The bear appeared every bit as shocked by Viviana’s actions as the woman was.
But the bear was at last free.
*
She mournfully studied her reflection in the cold, almost perfectly stilled waters of the well.
Her hair, her once gloriously lustrous hair, was now nothing more than odd, stunted flames erupting from her scalp. Her scalp was also an angry red, almost raw where the blade had been so uselessly blunt that it had simply torn out the roots. There were sore cuts to the flesh too, where that stupid girl had been dangerously careless!
‘I would have let that poor bear go!’ she assured herself. ‘But surely there was an easier way than using that useless old sword!’
The broken sword she was thinking of suddenly appeared alongside her, disturbing the frost and snow surrounding the well as it dropped out of the air.
‘You know, I think you are supposed to mend this!’
She recognised the voice, the self-important tones of the girl who had already been told that swords couldn’t be mended.
She glared up at Viviana.
‘You again! Have you seen wha–’
‘The head,’ the girl replied, ignoring the complaints and the glowers, glancing about herself as if searching for something, ‘there’s a head around here that’s supposed to be the voice of reason…’
‘A head?’ The woman sniggered. ‘Are you sure you’re not imagining–’
‘This is all so humiliating…’
This was another voice, th
at of a man’s.
‘…so embarrassing: to be frozen out of things by all this frost!’
It was a man’s disembodied head, more and more of it being steadily revealed as the frost that had completely covered it continued to fall away after being dislodged by the dropped sword.
The woman only briefly looked askew at this bizarrely disembodied yet living head.
‘If he’s the voice of reason,’ she pronounced triumphantly, turning towards Viviana once more, ‘perhaps he can explain to you that a sword’s blade can’t be repaired!’
‘Ah, that depends upon the sword, of course!’ the head corrected her.
‘What?’
The woman was obviously disgruntled that she hadn’t received the head’s agreement.
‘The sword;’ the head continued, ‘it doesn’t look to me like it’s a normal sword!’
‘Of course it’s not; because it’s useless and broken!’
‘Where the eagle resides within the highest reaches of the great tree, there also lives both a goat and deer, who like many other creatures living there feed off the branches. Yet unlike these others, they offer something in return – mead from the goat, water from the antlers of the deer.’
The woman frowned, a mingling of bewilderment and fury, grabbing at the handle of the shattered sword as if it might in some way provide its own explanation for its poor state.
‘What’s all that nonsense got to do with repairing a broken sword?’
‘I’m here to help grant you reason,’ the head protested, ‘not the answer to every problem you face!’
*
Chapter 29
She recognised the darkness of this place.
The pathways here, once again formed by the coiling, curling stems of the great tree, were as black as what little space could be made out between the wickerwork of gnarled, intertwining roots, everything winding and snaking into so many impenetrable knots. A steady rain fell, a drizzle that brought a cool dampness to the living wood, to the electrified air.
The roots curling everywhere about her quivered and shook, as if being constantly pounded, continually gnawed at: she recalled the tales she’d heard of the dragon, devouring the memories.