Page 50 of The Faerie Morgana
“Are you angry?”
“I am not.”
Braithe sighed, a small, sad little sound. “I couldn’t help myself. He is so beautiful, and so wise and kind.” She spread her hands in a gesture of surrender. “In my dreams, I see him again. Lie with him again.” She expelled a sharp breath and turned her gaze out to the lake. “I know better, never fear. I know who I am. I understand who I am not.”
“And you understand that Arthur has no choice.”
“I understood even then.” Braithe turned her blue gaze up to Morgana’s dark one. “I am not sorry.”
“I am glad to know that.”
“Are you sorry you didn’t protect King Uther?”
“I am not. He was a cruel man who cared only for power. He was a traitor and a murderer.”
“Why didn’t the Blackbird see that?”
“He must have seen, yet he did not want him to die in battle.” The old hurt, the persistent and painful feeling of unfairness, rose in Morgana’s breast again, hardly lessened by the passage of time. “He would not explain. He would not let me explain.” Her voice dropped. “He was wrong, but he will not say so.”
Braithe started to say something, but she stopped herself. She was gazing at something past Morgana’s shoulder, and Morgana twisted her body to see what it was.
An old fox, his coat glowing red in the amber light of the setting sun, had slipped around the trunk of the holm oak. His muzzle was tipped with silver, and the plume of his tail trailed the ground behind him. He padded toward them on soft, silent feet, and when he reached their bench, he sat down, peering up at them without fear.
Morgana murmured, “Hello, little brother.”
The fox’s tongue lolled, showing his sharp teeth.
“Ah,” Morgana said. “Yes.”
Braithe whispered, “What is it?”
Morgana held up one finger to ask her to wait. She bent forward so the fox could look into her eyes and she could look into his black, shining ones. He closed his mouth and tilted his sharp little face to see her better.
Morgana felt the beat of the fox’s heart in her own breast.The pulse of his blood matched her own. His breathing slowed to the pace of her lungs, and for many moments, they were one and the same, the fox and the woman, connected by the living force that binds all things.
At last, the creature’s mouth opened once again, tongue lolling, teeth bared to the air in his grin. He jumped to his feet, tail flicking against the mossy earth.
Morgana nodded to him and touched her heart with her fingers. The fox’s nose quivered in answer before he whirled to dive back into the woods. As his silver-tipped tail vanished into the underbrush, Morgana sat back, breathing a sigh of release and acceptance.
“What was his message?” Braithe asked.
“That things always change, and it’s useless to grieve for something that has not happened.”
Braithe wiggled her bare feet, thinking. “These creatures who speak to you—how does that work?”
“I could not tell you.”
“Because you don’t know?”
Morgana stood up, shaking the skirts of her robe free of the dust that accumulated on the bench. She stretched her arms up toward the stars that had begun to appear in the darkening sky, letting her fingers spread against the pattern of sparkling lights. “Do we know why we love seeing the stars at night? Or why the changes of the moon call to us as they shift from new to old and back again? Or for that matter—” She paused, letting her arms settle to her sides and giving her handmaid a sympathetic glance. “For that matter, how it is that our feelings bindus to one another? We do not touch or see or hear feelings, but we know they are part of us, deeply twined in our hearts and minds, perhaps more powerful than any force in the world.”
Braithe was silent for a time, savoring this. Then, closing her eyes, she quoted:
Trust the earth.
Believe the sky.
Doubt not the air nor deny the water.
