Metamorphosis, p.11
The Once and Future Queen, page 11
“Pardon me,” he said. Without a nod or bow or another word, he abruptly walked away. She was left staring at Lancelot, his eyes wide and the corners of his mouth dipped into a frown.
“I take it that’s not normal,” Vera said.
“Er.” His eyes followed Arthur as he exited the hall. “No,” he said.
Vera let out a single, ridiculing laugh.
After a long moment, during which Lancelot twiddled his fingers and scrunched one eye shut with his mouth in a nearly comical grimace, he looked up at her brightly. “So,” he said, “Do you want to run tomorrow?”
Now fully outfitted, rising before the sun to run was the one constant between Vera’s life before and her life as Guinevere now. This time, though, she had company. Like tonight, Lancelot would confirm at dinner whether they’d run the following morning, and most days they did. They met at Vera’s door, ran for the better part of an hour, flopped onto the grassy hillside by the castle’s back wall, and talked until the sun rose.
Routine took its course in many aspects of Vera’s life in the early days of her new normal. Run with Lancelot. Household duties with Matilda. Dinner. It was the ample amount of idle time in between that prodded Vera’s anxiety awake. Merlin was scarcely around the castle. He was almost constantly in a neighboring village, fixing their magical problems. Vera was eager to begin the work of recovering Guinevere’s memories. She couldn’t possibly pull off this ruse for long—a nobody draped in the body of a queen. But when Merlin summoned her to his study after nearly two weeks, her relief was short-lived.
“What are you—?” Vera started, but it was obvious. Merlin already wore his traveling cloak as he carefully tucked potions into his saddle bag. “Why are you packing?”
He sighed as he glanced up at her. “There is trouble in Exeter.” At Vera’s blank stare, he explained further. “It’s a two-day ride from here. Larger towns have mages. In places like Exeter, however, they rely on the gifts of the many, pooling the collective resources of all born with a gift in that area. Exeter supplies grain to Camelot and the next four towns. But the reason they could claim that role was down to the gift of a woman who crafted a rather ingenious irrigation system.
“The complex turbine system that rerouted the water came from her magic. She died shortly after its construction, and, for the most part, the town’s folk have been able to maintain it and repair it when it broke. But now the whole system has stopped. There’s no water flowing, no one with a suitable gift nearby that can fix it, and the late harvest is in imminent peril without intervention. So …” He shook his head as he continued shoving tomes and bottles into his bag.
Crestfallen, Vera dropped into the same chair she’d sat in during their first conversation. “Why did it stop working?”
“When a person has made something with their gift, they obviously can’t sustain it once they’re gone.”
“The magic dies with them?”
Merlin rushed to the baskets of scrolls and began rifling through them. “Not exactly,” he said as he plucked two rolls of parchment from the bundles. “The work of the magic will fade from what they touched without that individual’s force sustaining it, but the gift itself returns to circulation. In theory, babies are born all over the world with gifts every day. It should stand to reason that somewhere, a child was born with her gift the day she died. As long as we’ve studied it, magic functioned like air, a resource we use that recycles itself.”
She nodded. “But not since Viviane?”
Merlin stopped packing and looked at Vera in earnest. He seemed older than she remembered. “Not since Viviane,” he confirmed. “I’ve spoken with Arthur, but …” He shook his head. “I’m sorry that this is on your shoulders, but he needs to hear it from you. If you tell him you need him, I don’t believe he will refuse you.”
“I hardly see him. I don’t know how to even get a word in—”
Merlin dropped to his knee in front of Vera, his eyes rent with desperation. “Please,” he said. “Please try. The situation is being gravely underestimated.”
Vera swallowed, alarmed that the plea was as evident in his face as it was in his words. “I will. But what if he says no?”
Merlin sighed as he rose and resumed gathering his things. “We’ll consider magical intervention when I return.”
Under different circumstances, the lengths to which Arthur went to avoid speaking with Vera might have been amusing. She’d thought dinners might be her best option to corner him now that he attended them. After all, they were in the same room and right next to each other for at least the length of a meal. But the performance from the acting troupe hadn’t been a one-time visit. Every subsequent evening brought yet another performance, which would have been infuriating if each wasn’t as wonderful as the last, some with magical elements and some without.
A minstrel who sang the kingdom’s legends. A band of musicians who ended up playing far beyond the dinner hour. More acting troupes. Dancers. The night Merlin left for Exeter, there was a storyteller who painted while he regaled them with legends. Vera felt this had to have some kind of magic to it, though she couldn’t pinpoint the mystical quality. There was a lull when the storyteller grew quiet to make adjustments to his painting, and Vera made a snap decision that this was her chance.
“I have to unlock those memories.” She said it quickly, leaning closer to Arthur. She didn’t wait for him to acknowledge her; she knew he could hear. “Merlin thinks that connecting with you is the best way to start remembering.” She hesitated, embarrassed to say the next part. But she thought of Merlin’s plea, and the words tumbled out. “I need you.”
Arthur flinched. He hadn’t turned toward her as much as he’d angled his head in Vera’s direction. He opened his mouth to interject, but Vera put a hand on his arm and plowed on even as she felt his muscles stiffen under her fingers.
“Just listen, please. I won’t try to replace her—”
She stopped—because he looked at her. But it wasn’t with interest or even politeness. He was furious.
“Guinevere.” He snarled the name. “I can’t.” His voice was strained and low, and behind the rage in his face, Vera saw it in his eyes and a tremble through his rigid form: a flash of fear. The performance wasn’t finished, but Arthur stood and left the hall, an action which didn’t go unnoticed through the room.
She tried to keep her face composed as if this was ordinary. Heads turned toward Arthur until he disappeared through the side door, and then they turned to her. Even the artist faltered and paused, looking at Vera as he stuttered to a stop. The room was uncomfortably quiet. Her palms went slick, and nausea swept over her. Did they expect her to speak? She wasn’t—she couldn’t pretend to be their queen. She was a broken projector of a memory. That was all. She stared down at her hands.
Lancelot leaned toward her. “Guinna … ?”
“Help me,” she whispered, hating how pathetic she sounded.
Lancelot’s brow furrowed. He turned to face the waiting watchers, plastering on a dazzling smile. “The king offers his apologies. He has been called away and requests that we all enjoy the remainder of this superb performance on his behalf. Carry on, good sir.”
Vera didn’t remember another second of the performance. As soon as the applause began, Matilda ushered her from the room, and Vera followed to her quarters in a fog. There had to be a reason for Arthur’s behavior.
As Matilda unlaced the back of her gown, Vera glanced at the closed door to his chamber. She knew he didn’t believe she was Guinevere; neither of them did. But was that enough for him to respond to her like this? There had to be more to it.
She was changed into her nightgown, and Matilda was two steps from leaving the room when Vera made a decision.
“Matilda?” she said, and Matilda turned toward her in surprise. “Would you like to have a drink and … talk?”
She stared at Vera for a long while, her eyes soft. “I would be honored.”
Vera gestured to the seating area by the fire, where Matilda sank into one of the comfy poufs. Vera fetched two glasses and the pitcher from the desk, which was always filled with fresh wine (presumably by Matilda herself). She poured Matilda’s and then filled her own cup. Matilda shook her head as she took her first sip.
Vera wasn’t sure where to begin. She had a plan for this conversation, but it felt unnatural to jump right to it. Her eyes landed on the vase of flowers on the low table. They were replaced with new ones at least once a week. When Vera left this morning, they’d been blooms of yellows and golds, and during the day, those had been swapped for large burnt orange blossoms mixed in with smaller white and cream flowers so lovely and perfect that Vera wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d been made of silk. She fingered a petal in an unnecessary confirmation that they were real.
“Thank you for these. They’re lovely,” Vera said. “I always enjoy seeing the week’s bouquet.”
“I—” Matilda became keenly interested in her glass of wine. She stared down into it, swirling her goblet as she answered. “You are very welcome, Your Majesty. But you should know—”
“I was hoping you might call me Guinevere instead of Your Majesty,” Vera said.
Matilda pursed her lips. “It would be improper for me to address you so informally.”
“What if you just called me Guinevere in private?”
Matilda sighed a slow, deliberate breath. “I’ll try, Your Majesty, but it’s a rather big adjustment.” Vera smiled at the first lapse. “Your—Guinevere,” she said it stiffly, “your sense of propriety has been … relaxed since your return. And,” she shook her head as Vera refilled both cups, “you should not be serving me.”
“I’m sure you’ve noticed many things that are different,” Vera said. She’d been thinking about this since her first night when she couldn’t ask Matilda her most pressing questions, certainly during all their work together around the castle. After tonight, it was unavoidable. Vera needed more help. More importantly, though, she needed to be less alone. Maybe there was a good reason Matilda had been left in the dark about all that happened to Guinevere, but they clearly trusted her to care for Vera and to be around her so much. She must have noticed the books while tidying up, not to mention Vera’s undergarments.
“Matilda, I need to tell you something.”
Matilda set her cup down and leaned forward. “I think I may already know.”
Vera blinked. “You do?”
“You have memory loss, don’t you? From the accident?”
“I—” Why hadn’t she thought of that? Come to it, why hadn’t Merlin or Arthur thought to feed Matilda that story? “Yes. That’s it. I do.”
“I’m not sure why anyone thought that needed to be a secret from me.” Matilda smoothed her skirt, somehow conveying her irritation with the gesture. “Arthur knows, of course?”
“Yes,” Vera said, noticing how easily Matilda called Arthur by his name.
“He hasn’t been the same since it happened.”
“Did I do something before the accident?” Vera asked. “To make him so angry with me?”
Matilda frowned as she lay a comforting hand on Vera’s arm. “No,” she said. “I was with you nearly always, and in the times when I wasn’t …” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine what you could have done.”
“Then why does he hate me?”
“He—” Matilda went silent, and Vera thought she might not answer at all. She leaned forward to straighten the flowers. “I don’t get these, you know.”
Vera laughed in stunned discomfort. She wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything. “Who else comes in here?” Her eyes shot to the wardrobe where her bag of anachronisms was now carelessly tossed. Her photograph with her parents was on the bedside table, tucked into The Hobbit as a bookmark.
Matilda looked at Vera pointedly. Why wasn’t she answering? If there was someone other than Matilda and Arthur coming in the—oh.
They were the only ones who ever came into the room.
Matilda nodded as Vera’s eyes landed on her.
“Is that … has he …” She thought back on her chamber, on how everything had remained the same except the flowers, the only physical evidence in the room that time had passed these first few weeks.
“Every time?” Vera asked, her voice breathy.
“Every time.” Matilda finished straightening the flowers with a frown. “I don’t understand his behavior since you returned, but he has never, not once, hated you.”
Vera felt an irrational certainty that, the strange kindness of bouquets aside, something had happened to make Arthur treat her so poorly. And she knew who she really needed to ask. Based wholly on her experience so far, if there was something Guinevere had done, Lancelot would know—because it would have happened with him.
It was unseasonably warm when they set out in the early morning darkness. Lancelot didn’t mention Arthur’s behavior the previous evening, but he did watch Vera more closely. Like she was a tea kettle on the edge of boiling, one that would scream out any moment. She was used to their route now, but he turned right instead of left at the fork in the road, and Vera followed without question. It would be nice to have a diversion from the conversation she knew needed to come at the end of their run.
She enjoyed the new trail and could understand why he’d held off on it until he knew she was capable. While the other wove between and around hills, keeping the loop submissively flat, this trail was narrower and took them into the woods, where it climbed and fell frequently. But it was lovelier, even in the dark. The trees they ran through were rich with their autumn leaves, and Vera could hear flowing water nearby.
Twenty minutes in, Lancelot stopped. He’d not done that during their runs before.
“What’s wrong?” Vera asked.
He turned off the trail and held aside a bendy branch, beckoning Vera to follow. “Nothing,” he said. “Wanted to show you something.”
She followed him down a well-trodden game trail, the sound of rushing water growing in her ears until the branches thinned and gave way to a grove straight out of a fairytale. A pond lay before her with water so clear that she wasn’t sure where it began until a frog jumped in, and the widening ripples traced the outline of the shore. On the opposite side was a tree so vast and ancient that the trunk was the size of a small cottage. She turned to match the sound to a stream gurgling down the rocky hillside and falling into the pond from ten feet above, a narrow curtain of a waterfall.
Vera turned back to Lancelot, her joy at this place on her lips, just in time to see him taking off his shirt.
“What are you doing?” she asked, aghast but laughing.
“Going swimming,” he said, as if it were the most obvious answer to the silliest of questions. “Can’t imagine we’ll get a day warmer than this before spring. And I have a rule that I follow fastidiously: when you come upon a beautiful body of water, always go swimming. Always.”
He took off his shoes and dropped them in a pile with his shirt, leaving him only in his trousers. He tossed the orb light underhanded in a high arc over the pond, but rather than falling after reaching its highest point, it stopped and hung there, a miniature moon that only answered to the tide of the sacred grove.
Lancelot scrambled up the rock next to him and unwrapped a rope from the tree branch above. He held tight just above a hefty knot at the end, swung from the side, and dropped, his body in a tight cannonball, right into the middle of the pond. An impressive splash exploded in all directions around him.
He resurfaced moments later, positively howling and gasping the specific sound humans make when shocked by cold water.
“Catch the rope, Guinna!” he called between gasps.
Vera, obligingly, did as it swung back toward the shore. Lancelot laughed loudly into the night, especially when he saw her disbelief.
“It is rather cold, Your Majesty,” he said. “Not suited for a lady’s disposition.” He ducked his head underwater and swam away without giving her time to retort.
“Dammit,” Vera muttered. He had her number. There was no way she was staying on dry land now. She climbed up on the rock and secured the rope before taking off her trainers and socks. She hesitated with her hands over the buttons of her trousers. She could stay fully clothed but then would have to finish the run dripping wet. Or she could undress as fast as possible and get in before Lancelot caught a glimpse of her mostly naked body.
He was still underwater. She heard the splash of his kicks as he swam away from her and saw the ripples extending in his wake. Vera sighed. She fumbled with the buttons at her waist and wiggled her trousers off. She flung her shirt over her head and tossed her garments into a pile, save for her sports bra and underwear, before grabbing the rope. Vera held tight with both hands and swung. Her drop into the water was less coordinated cannonball and more indelicate flailing.
She hit the surface with a slap and a splash, and the cold surged over her, waking up every inch of her body. Vera came back up, gasping and shouting gibberish as Lancelot flung both fists into the air.
“Yes!” he shouted, bobbing up and down as his legs treaded water beneath the surface. He left one open hand raised and stared at Vera expectantly. She shrugged while doing a breaststroke in place to keep afloat.
“I know I’m new to this, but I’d say that’s a high five–worthy action,” Lancelot said.
“Oh!” Vera laughed. She swam over to him and clapped her hand to his. She deliberately kept her eyes above his chin, away from his bare chest. A week ago, she wouldn’t have had a second thought about seeing a man shirtless, but context was everything. Vera was surprised by many aspects of seventh-century life, yet she felt confident that this was dangerous territory.
