Mordred

Charloft 2/19/09: What's in a name?

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:56:37 GMT

Originally it was Medrawd, a good old Welsh name, meaning something like "capable" or "skilful"; my mother, being a Cornish woman, called me Modred. The French slipped another R in after the fact, either by conflating me with my aunt Morgan or, God knows, out of sheer laziness. But by now everyone's used to that version, even me.

I don't use it anymore, for fairly obvious reasons. I managed to spoil it for everyone else; these days it's like naming a kid Judas.

The journal is called "morethanson" because it's true, in several senses. Make of it what you will.

100 words
prompt is here

justprompts: Repossession

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 22:18:23 GMT

With the part of his mind that still reasons, he knows the arguments. His brother-in-law, the fox, has laid them all out for him. Blood right, the man says, as if his blood is anything but poison; the good of the people, he says, and Mordred wants to laugh. Oh, aye, my loving kinsman. I know your idea of the common good. I'm to put my father out of the way for you, and when something happens to me -- as it will, won't it? -- my son will be no more than thirteen. That part of him sees very clearly indeed. He's seen the admiring looks from men half his age -- God, you little fools, this isn't strength; it's despair. Don't put your faith in me, damn you!

The rest of him, the greater part, the part that despairs, thinks Why not?

He will almost certainly die for it. If Arthur doesn't kill him for his presumption, someone else will do it in their own self-interest; he needn't defend himself. His wife will be free of him; his sons won't have him to fear. Gawain-- He falters then; but he knows that Gawain, like himself, is worse than dead already.

And God help him, he wants to hurt Arthur, as Arthur has hurt him. Has betrayed him. You did this to me, you put me here, I told you not to trust me -- damn you, I'll make you take it back! Fight for it. Suffer for it. Cut me down as your precious Lancelot cut down my brothers who believed in him.

Part of him knows that this is madness; but not enough of him to care.

Mordred
Words: 280

Interlude

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:34:26 GMT

I'm losing him. Christ Jesus, is nothing to be left to me? My brothers are dead or gone from me, my wife's a stranger. I can see his eyes changing, now. He doesn't see me any longer, only the shell, the armor, reflecting his fear; he who always saw me for what I was.

Sometimes I can still get through to him. If I come to him at night, if I can kiss him before he pushes me away with courteous words, if I can touch him skin to skin and make him forget.

If I can forget. Inside the shell nothing is left but the hard kernel of my heart, but it aches no less for that. If I can forget that I have no friend but him, that if I let him go from me I will have nothing-- for love like water slips away the tighter it's held; but God, God, it's too much.

"I need you," I said last night. In his bed, in the warm moonlight, so like the old time that I could have wept; but he would not look at me.

"Truly I don't think you do."

"Christ, Sagramore--"

He ran his hands over my skin as if with a stranger, as if my nails in his flesh neither pained nor moved him, and kissed me without ever meeting my eyes.

I think I have already lost him.

#232: Is there a situation where it's appropriate to be unkind?

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:33:00 GMT

I'm not the one to judge. If it's right to be unkind, it's better left to someone without a gift for it. I have that from my mother, I confess to it; I don't speak as she did, wilfully, but sometimes I can't govern my tongue.

When we knew what Gaheris had done, how he'd taken revenge on her for her cruelty, then it might have been right to be hard with him; I don't know. He expected it, for he fled us. Maybe he even hoped that Gawain would punish him, as he'd done the man who killed their father. But Gawain did nothing, and even Agravain was more sick at heart than angry. I went after Gaheris, and bade him come home again; I told him truly, that I forgave him.

It was later, years later, when he'd done his penance in exile, and the wound had scarred over; when our brother was dead, and I was in the wrong. It was then, when Gaheris had grown strong enough to confront me with my folly, that I turned on him in anger and reminded him of what he'd done. I knew what I did. I meant to hurt him.

A week later he too was dead, having faced our enemy unarmed and unprotected. He went at Arthur's bidding, but that made no difference.

Of my many sins that one was not the greatest, but it's the one I can't justify. I can't answer the question; I don't have the right.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
252 words

#227: A friend asks you to recommend a book: which book would you choose and why?

Mon, 05 May 2008 03:07:24 GMT

Okay, in all earnest? Thomas Malory, Morte d'Arthur.

I know, I know, I can hear you now: after all your bitching about stupid inaccuracies and novelists who don't know what the hell they're on about, you're going to recommend Malory?

Well, hell, it's better than that ripoff artist T. H. White and his lousy twentieth-century remake. All the bias and inaccuracy, plus a heaping dose of armchair psychology and condescension thrown in. No, thank you. I don't loathe all the modern stuff, mind; most of it's made up out of whole cloth (Guinevere, warrior princess? Please), a lot of it is wildly improbable (teleportation? Really?), some of it is personally offensive (I am not a Goddamned innocent victim, stop trying to make me one), but hell, at least it's entertaining. But White was all of the above and not even original about it, apart from the talking badgers.

At least Malory isn't so invested in precious Lancelot's emotional turmoil that he can't talk about anyone else, and he's capable of being funny without cute little asides to the audience. Ask him about the time we ran into Dinadan and King Mark. True story. No, really, look it up. I'll wait.

See? Often imitated, never duplicated. Spare yourself the damn badgers and just go to the source. You'll thank me later.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
220 words

#223: I swear I didn't put those...

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:36:51 GMT

"I swear I didn't put those things down a minute ago, and now can I find them?"

"On the bench," Gawain says patiently.

He sits down to put them on, his hands shaking. "Christ."

"You're tying yourself in knots, brother. Take a deep breath."

Mordred laughs shakily and drops his face into his hands. "I've lost my damn mind."

"Nonsense," determinedly cheerful. "You're doing splendidly."

"The hell." He rakes both hands through his black hair, and looks up wildly. "I can't do this, I can't go through with this, Christ Jesu--!"

Gawain takes a firm grip on his shoulder. "Breathe, I said. It's your wedding, not your execution."

"More's the pity."

"Mordred..."

"God, I can't even look after myself, what am I going to do with a wife?"

Gawain laughs at that. "Oh, you'd be surprised."

A deep breath, then. "I can't believe I agreed to this."

"She's a good woman," gently.

"I know! I know that. What do you think I'm worried about?"

Mordred
Arthurian legend
164 words

#222: Sleeping on the couch

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 05:25:33 GMT

Her husband comes in as she finishes the packing. She has already dismissed the maid that Guenever sent to help her; the room is empty except for themselves, and he looks as small as she feels. "What are you doing?"

"As you see."

Mordred is quiet for a moment, and she concentrates on tying the last of the bundles; quiet is the worst sign.

"And where do you think you're going?" he says at last.

She keeps her eyes down. Careful knots, holding things together. "I am taking the children home."

"What for?"

"Better so."

Then there is no more to do. She looks up at him, at his still face, eyes black as blight. "Better!"

"You frighten them," she says softly.

He goes white.

"You frighten me."

"Christ, lady--"

She rests her hands flat on the bed to steady them. "I understand. Even so, I understand, but how can they? How shall I tell Melehan why you curse him when he tries you, when you never have before this? How shall I promise them you'll not do them harm? Or me?"

"Damn it--"

"How?"

A silence, then: "Don't go." Very low. "Lady, in God's name, don't leave me."

"Do you forbid me?" she asks, and watches him flinch. "Then I must."

He swears bitterly then in his own alien dialect, and turns his back on her, leaning trembling arms on the wall. She closes her eyes a moment to shut him out, to school herself to calm; she thinks of her sons, their faces grown wary, and armors herself against his weakness.

"When this is over," she says then. "When the King comes home, then come thou home to me, and it will be well."

But when she opens her eyes, he has gone.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
295 words

#218: Write about a lie your parents told you.

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 04:52:45 GMT

My mother told lies as easily as she breathed, and almost as often. They were so many that I've forgotten most of them, put them out of my mind, as they deserved.

The only one that mattered was the first.

Understand-- for the first ten years of my life, she took an interest in me. I was her talisman against Arthur, her weapon against Lot. And she would speak to me gently, take me aside and teach me things, tell me I was hers and that nothing could take me from her. Told me, without so many words, that I mattered to her. She was my mother; of course I believed her.

Until my sister was born, the daughter that she'd wanted all along. Being sensible for ten, I relied on my brothers after that, and when I was sixteen I went to my father.

Who raised me up beside Gawain, and looked me over, and said that he was glad I'd come. I think that was the only lie he ever told me.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
174 words

#214: "To be great is to be misunderstood."

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:21:57 GMT

FROM:    M****** Morgan <md_morgan@yahoo.com>
TO:      K**** <dorkempress@dreamthoughts.net>
DATE:    Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 1:41 AM
SUBJECT: Re: Quote of the Day

> "To be human is to be misunderstood."

Fixed that for you.

Seriously, come on. What kind of self-indulgent platitude is that? To be great is to be at least halfway understood, otherwise you're just another crackpot. The rest of us, on the other hand, have to suck it up.

You ask yourself how many wankers invoke Emerson to convince themselves and their Myspace friends that they're secretly geniuses. For that matter, ask yourself whether Emerson wasn't doing the same thing.

The fact is that there are *always* going to be people who don't get where you're coming from, even if you're the most heartbreakingly boring person on the face of the earth. That's just the way life goes. You think anyone really understands you? Or me? Or the whiny teenager in the line at Starbucks? Or the wankers on Myspace, for that matter -- it just doesn't make them as special as they think it does.

Look at me, I'm philosophical at two in the morning with no company. Obviously, I'm the next Emerson. :P

Now stop sending stupid forwards and call me, okay?

Love,
M

Mordred
Arthurian legend
185 words

#211: Old acquaintance

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:40:05 GMT

There were those who would say, later, that Peredur had died there in his holy isolation, not long after his sister and his friend. His soul, having undergone its last refinements, would have departed his body with a quiet smile, and left it there to molder, becoming part of the earth he had loved. It seemed fitting.

But then they supposed Mordred dead, too, and that was another poetic end.

He made his way southward slowly, across empty moors and hard hills, down into the forest that hid so many secrets. He did not trust it. The trees were too tall, too numberless, crowding too closely. They made a world without a horizon, full of a ceaseless whispering, like and unlike the sound of the sea. Nothing human lived this deep in the wilderness; that was all the reason Mordred had come this way, but he felt eyes on him nevertheless.

* * *

The clearing was awash in sunlight. He stood under the fringe of the trees, dazzled; his eyes had grown so used to green twilight that he could not see anything but brightness, a blur of golden light and vivid green, a flash of coppery red. Fox, maybe. He put a hand up to shade his eyes from the glare.

"Oh," said a startled voice. "Good day. --No, no, please -- I didn't see you, is all. It's all right."

The voice caught at his memory. He stood, blind and bewildered, as footsteps approached him through the grass; heard a soft intaken breath. Felt a shadow fall between him and the light. "Gawain?" And as he flinched: "No-- Mordred, isn't it? 'Course. I'm sorry, it's been so long... Are you all right?" A touch at his shoulder. "It's me. Percy."

Percy. Red-haired Peredur. He blinked the stars from his eyes, and saw that it was.

"Gawain is dead," he said, flat and harsh in his own ears.

"I'm sorry."

"So am I." He could not hold back the shudder; and Peredur reached out a hand, solicitous. "No, dammit, don't--" Bloodstains on the trampled grass. The sun slanting low, casting his brother's body into shadow. "Don't touch me."

Peredur fell back a step. Tall as ever, leaner than he had been; his boyish face had acquired lines, a look of deep patience.

"All right," he said, gently. "You want to come inside? There's soup on."

"You don't know what you're asking."

"Asking you to come eat with me. That's all."

"You don't know," Mordred said again, and then realized it was true. Peredur had left them years ago, and not been heard from since. He was, as he had always been, innocent. "Christ have mercy."

Peredur only smiled.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
447 words

#209: What are you afraid of?

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:10:52 GMT

"What are you afraid of?"

"Commitment, what else?"

"Don't give me that." She's sharp in her anger, like Lynette. "You're so goddamned flip."

"You're so goddamned serious. What exactly do you think I'm holding out on you?"

"I don't know! I don't ever know." In another woman, the tears would begin; but not this one. This one stares at him with eyes hot and dry, her mouth gone thin and hard. "All I know is what you tell me. Which is fuck all."

"So ask."

"I shouldn't have to! You don't give me straight answers anyway."

"The hell."

"The hell you do. You turn it around or you laugh me off or change the subject--"

"Maybe you don't want to know."

"Maybe that's my fucking decision! What, are you secretly an ax murderer? --Don't laugh at me!"

He sinks onto the couch, his smile fading. In the language of his childhood, he says, "Lady, I would not dare to laugh at thee."

She's caught off guard. "--What?"

"You heard me."

"What the hell is that, Swedish?"

"Icelandic," he says. These days he's reduced to half-truths.

"Since when do you speak Icelandic?"

"See? You have to know what questions to ask."

"Dammit, you're doing it again. Stop it."

"As my lady bids me."

"And don't do that either. It's only cute when I'm not pissed off at you."

He does laugh at that. "God. You're wonderful, you know that?"

"I mean it. Knock it off."

"Okay." He looks up at her: arms folded across her ribs, scowling under floppy bangs, young, furious, honest. "Make you a deal. I'll answer one question, no tricks, word of honor. All right? Go."

"Bastard," she says, but less angrily.

"Well, yes."

She's quiet for a moment, thinking. A wise one, this, as well as clever. She knows to be careful with bargains she doesn't understand; not to waste a wish. Finally she says, "I already asked you."

"Yeah?"

"What are you afraid of?"

He doesn't flinch. "Telling you everything."

Her shoulders sag in exasperation. "Why?"

"That's two."

"Dammit--"

"But I'm feeling generous. --Because, whether you believed me or not, I'd lose you. And I'm not okay with that."

A long silence. "You're not okay with that."

"No."

"Jesus." She sits down beside him. "You are such a jerk."

"I've heard that."

"Shut up," she says. "Just shut up." And puts her arms around him, her head on his shoulder, and holds firmly. He leans back, pulling her with him. They sit like that without speaking, until she falls asleep and he has to get up and half-carry her to bed.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
434 words

#208: Four

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:15:48 GMT

Four corners of the earth, four arms of the cross; four seasons, four humors; four men, his brothers. The entire world.

Gawain was bright as the midsummer sun, bright as the midwinter fires; swift and terrible in anger, hearth-warm and merciful in his kindness. Gawain was light and life, beautiful and dangerous (when Gawain was gone, he took the light with him).

Agravain seemed more at home on Britain's wooded hills than Orkney's shores: hard as stone, difficult as sand, stolid as the soil; heavy, silent, taken for granted (when Agravain fell, the foundations began to crumble).

Gaheris, melancholy, secretive, was drawn to the coasts as to a lover's window; skittish always, changeable as the moon, in thrall to their mother's shifting moods. In him there were cold and terrible depths (but Gaheris bled his life out, leaving a desert).

And then there was Gareth, gentle, quiet, loving but elusive; easily swayed, his moods variable as the breeze; transparent as water, and sweet as the spring wind off the sea (when Gareth died came a terrible stillness, without even breath to weep).

(He spoils the conceit, though. What is he? Only what is left when all the world is lost -- darkness, the void.)

Mordred
Arthurian legend
203 words

#207 Control

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 08:59:58 GMT

Even the kindest of the chroniclers, the ones bent on absolving me, find no better motive for me than ambition. They just dress it up -- make it sound, if you will, legitimate. They toss around words like 'birthright'. But I was born to nothing, you understand me? All I had was granted me, even my very life. And thirty-five years of debt starts to weigh on a man.

I could bear my debts to Gawain, who loved me. But Arthur--!

The last, the greatest gift, I tried to refuse. It's a rare poet who remembers that, but it's the truth. I said it straight out: let me go with my brother. It's not right; it's not my place. If you're bound on going yourself, then in God's name use sense and leave Britain with someone who knows what the hell he's doing. I begged him.

And he laid it on me anyway. Absolute trust. All those lives.

Then he sailed away, and took with him the last and best of my brothers, and most of my friends besides. I was alone, with everything going to pieces.

To this day I don't know what possessed him. I don't know whether he overestimated me that badly, or whether he expected a miracle-- whether he thought, God, as plenty of you seem to think, that my pride was stronger than my grief--

I managed it. I held it together. For years. Half of that was because people liked me -- why shouldn't they? -- and they trusted me because Arthur had trusted me. On that fragile a thread the whole thing depended, and every hour I expected it to snap. For years. Sooner or later something would go wrong, and I would not have the strength to stop it, and God only knew what would happen, or who would suffer, or how much would be destroyed.

Do you understand me? It wasn't about power. It was about control.

Some guarantee. Something I owed to no one. Something I had a choice in, though all the choices left to me were bad ones.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
350 words

#206. What do you live for?

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 05:17:31 GMT

I'm waiting. Haven't I mentioned?

I live suspended, between two ages. Sometimes I think I'm still only half in the world, ever since she brought me back. The decades tick by and I don't change, really. I find interest in things, lose it again. I work at one thing and another; it's good to have work to do. I take lovers from time to time. I collect books, small eccentricity -- God, the things they find to invent! and one about as near to the truth as another, in the end. I write to my sister, when I remember; mostly she doesn't write back. I bide my lifetimes until I'm released.

It's not that I'm living for anything particularly. I just don't, at the moment, have anything to die for.

But I will, one day. I've a little more faith in things foretold than I once did. And when the day comes I'll be waiting.

Rex quondam rexque futurus.

I'll be here.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
162 words

#204. "Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane." --Philip K. Dick

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 04:04:50 GMT

They left me here, Arthur and Gawain. Of course they were in accord. It was almost miraculous, how they understood each other from the start. I've never understood my brother, not really; only loved him and all the good in him. He shone with it like the sun. It was all too easy to love my father, cut from the same cloth.

"Mordred. Give this up."

I would have gone with them, given the choice. But I wasn't.

No, I was left here in the wreckage, with the whole thing in my hands. It was put very kindly, to spare the feelings of a man lately wounded and grieving -- oh, you and your infinite tact, Arthur! -- but it wasn't a request.

Stay here. Keep order. Shore up the crumbling walls.

God help me, it's not my work, not my place. But I could do it, I found that out. God only knows what it takes out of me--

"You don't want this. I know you don't."

All my reserves are gone. I've been sleeping like the dead, waking restless as a ghost. I do what I must; I have no strength for more. Someone has to hold things together.

No accounting for the sick sense of panic. Wasn't this what I wanted? What I'd daydreamed in odd moments, like a child-- for him to trust me, to need me; to do something no one else could do for him.

But not like this, not like this. Please.

Not over my brothers' bodies. Not to do what Gawain would not. Not now that I've lost all faith in his judgment, of me and everything else.

Not like this.

"Give it up, brother."

Please.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
284 words

#203. Intrigue

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 11:33:49 GMT

Aunt Morgan came to me again last evening, and spent an hour and a half pouring treason in my ears. The long list of her wrongs, the spells she's cast, the traps she's laid for Guinevere. It's always much the same.

"I can't listen to this," I say.

"It's for your own good, my dear."

"The hell it is."

"You know as well as I do. I'm sure your mother's told you--"

"Never to listen to that old fraud, so don't you begin." She only brings these things up to see my reaction, I tell myself; don't flinch, don't cry out. "If you're going to be offensive, you can leave."

Morgan makes a face. "You used to be such a polite boy."

Mother always called her crude, said she lacked subtlety and therefore mastery. I can see why. Even her words are blunt compared to Mother's; her insults leave bruises, no more. It's easy enough to shrug her off. When she fails to draw blood, she loses interest, and she's off again. It never seems to occur to her how much she's telling me; how easily I could go to Arthur, as soon as she leaves, and give everything away.

Not that I ever do.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
205 words

#201. Talk about something you lost.

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 05:19:38 GMT

I've been married twice since Camlann; once for love or something similar, once for the pure hell of it. Nan was barren, back when it still mattered, and she was glad when I told her I didn't care. She was beautiful, and made me laugh without bitterness. What I had to leave I would have left to her, to do as she pleased; but she died of fever, about when I should have begun to go grey, so that at least was simple.

Cathy didn't want kids, she said; she'd hated her own parents, hated babies, wanted her career. That was fine too. Anything was fine with me, in those years. I left her when it grew inconvenient to stay; for all I know she's still telling her sister's grandchildren what a louse I was, and she's not wrong.

And that was all. I would have married Isabel; she was sweet, and efficient, and easy to talk to, and knew me as a soldier who might any time be taken from her. But Isabel loved children, wanted them. I couldn't have denied her.

Neither could I have borne it. To get them, watch them grow, worry over them, learn to care for them in a way that hurt the heart; or worse, to look at the little boy and little girl that Isabel dreamed of and see in their faces the two boys whose bones were gone to dust, and always be comparing--

And then to leave them. To turn my back on them, deliberately, as I did on my two sons, because there was no choice.

No. Never again.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
270 words

#199. You've woken up as the opposite sex this morning... now what?

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:02:26 GMT

Mordred is barely awake when he hears Sagramore's startled voice in his ear: "My lady?"

Like a fool he sits up, with the uneasy sense of something clinging to him; but the door is still shut, there's no one in the room. He turns back, confused, about to speak, and hears her say, "Who--?"

Then it hits him. Inescapably, as he looks down.

"Bloody hell--!" Mordred grabs for the blanket, cursing, as Sagramore starts to laugh hysterically. "Shut up, shut up, dammit--"

"Jesu," between spasms. "The look on your face-- it is you, lover?"

"Who else? God!"

"I'm sure I don't know." He gasps after breath, and sits up. "My lady Clarissant would never honour me, I'm sure."

He has a point, Mordred realizes. It's Clarissant's long hair that clings about him, waves of it, like black smoke. Clarissant's small-breasted, slim-waisted body; her fragile hands, clutching the blanket against him. He says, in exactly Clarissant's soft, surly tone: "Christ in glory."

The bed shifts behind him. Hands gather his hair back, gently, and settle on his shoulders. "You haven't vexed your aunt lately?"

"No." The voice is the worst, something he can't cover.

"Then I can't imagine what happened. I certainly didn't slip you any potions."

"You'd better not have."

"Never, dear friend. I swear it." Sagramore's hands slide downward, over his own, and start to tug the blanket free. "But since somebody did--"

"My God, you have no shame."

"Of course not. Why, do you?"

"I'm not--" He catches his breath as cool air and warm fingers find his skin all at once.

"Not that sort of girl?"

"Son of a--"

Sagramore laughs in his ear, hands cupping his breasts. "Aren't you curious? I know I would be."

Of a sudden he has trouble finding his voice, or even his sister's. He leans back, feeling smaller than ever before in his friend's arms, feeling a warmth so diffuse and soft that it's long moments before he realizes the depth of his desire. "God." He turns then, reaching upward for a kiss.

And swears. The hair's in the way. Sagramore pushes it back again with a breathless laugh. "Jesu, you're beautiful."

His stomach knots. "Shut up."

"Dear sir, sweet lady, forgive me, but you are still beautiful."

"Shut up!" It comes out absurdly shrill; a maiden's pique. Mordred grimaces. "Hell and bloody damnation. Don't be an idiot."

Sagramore pulls him close then, smoothing his hair back gently. "I'm sorry, sir, truly. But if you could see yourself -- the way you looked just then --"

The sick feeling is still with him. "I can guess."

"Oh, can you?"

"I look like my mother. God-- leave talking, will you?"

And Sagramore, being no fool, winds a hand in all that hair and sets, instead, to showing him all he ever wanted to know.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
472 words
Cut for length and sexual content.

#193. Picture prompt

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:44:37 GMT

The light falls dim and green, as if through colored glass. Trees rise like walls on every side. The hush is profound; even the sound of the wind is deadened, a whisper in the leaves. It's enough to give you the creeps.

There are no forests in Orkney. There isn't even room for them. What trees we have are hardy, lonely creatures, deep-rooted to withstand the wind and the cold, and very small under the sky.

This wilderness, these lush green palaces, are alien. It's like walking through a vast, silent throng, with a thousand thousand eyes upon you. Now and then the sound of a stream breaks the quiet, chuckling through the undergrowth with a sound like mockery. When you turn to look, there's no one.

I'd like to turn back that way, go crashing through the brush and be damned to this holy hush. Find the stream among the ferns and follow it down to the sea, where at least I know the dangers.

But I have business, the other side of these woods, and all I can do is brazen it out.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
185 words

#192: Write about a recurring dream you've had.

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 13:38:13 GMT

He comes to me, does faithful Bedivere, on the field where I saw him last: exhausted, filthy with blood and sweat, but on his feet. He's the only one. Kneeling in the mud, a stone's throw from my father's body, I wait for him to reach me. His voice is a rasp.

"Proud of yourself, boy?"

Of this desolation? It's a taunt, no more. I don't look up.

"I was your friend, you know that? I spoke up for you. Let him come, I said, he's a boy, what harm can a boy do?"

I know all this. I've known it a long time. What does it matter now?

"If I'd known--"

You'd have bade him beware of me? You'd have seen to it that he never trusted me? Maybe you should have at that. I never wanted this. I never planned this, I never asked anything of him but he gave it to me anyway, and I don't want it, and I should have died here. I wanted to. You want to kill me now, Bedwyr, my friend? Do it.

God knows I've been waiting.

"I'm done doing you favors," Bedivere says, and sheathes his sword.

* * *

Another night, another place. The lights are hot on my face, the music's not too loud. I'm sitting by myself with a drink half gone, listening to the jokes and the flirting all around me.

"Kiss for luck?"

My heart leaps.

Sagramore is standing there in jeans and a bawdy T-shirt, hands in his pockets, tall and lean and desperately handsome as he always was. He looks down at me with a wry smile, but when I stand and reach out to him, he moves away.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I mistook you for a friend of mine."

"Sagramore? You know me--"

"The way you mistook me for an enemy, sweet man." Again he slips out of reach. "You remember."

Dead at Camlann. I knew him even as I killed him, too sick with anger to care then. But the image stayed with me, perfect: his body grotesquely torn, his face thinned and twisted by agony.

"Yes," he says gently. "It took me quite a while to die."

"God, don't--"

It's too late. The crowd's gone silent, listening. They all know now what I am.

And still there's no malice in his face, no bitterness. He only keeps back, out of arm's reach. "You'd better go, lover. You don't belong here, you know."

No one lays a hand on me as I turn, blindly, and walk out into the cold wind.

* * *

This time I know the dream by the ache in my heart, even before I hear him say, "You're quiet, brother."

God, no, I can't bear this. I stare at the fire; like everything in dreams, it's a little awry. The hearth is the one we both grew up by, in Orkney long ago. The room around it, rich and warm, doesn't match. The room came later. They're both gone now.

"Mordred?" Gawain says behind me.

"Please don't."

"Don't what?" That was Gawain. Slow to follow the track of my thoughts; or if he did, and didn't like where they were leading, he'd feign confusion anyway. It was hard sometimes to tell which. I dare not look at him. But he comes up and rests his hands on my shoulders, gentle and warm as summer sunlight. How can he be so gentle?

"You shouldn't be here," I say.

I can hear the wry smile in his voice. "I never came to Arthur. That was a tale."

God hath sent me to you to give you warning that in no wise ye do battle as to-morn, but that ye take a treaty... for within a month shall come Sir Launcelot with all his noble knights, and rescue you worshipfully, and slay Sir Mordred...

But Gawain's ghost never appeared to Arthur on the eve of battle, counselling deceit, because Gawain wasn't dead then. Lancelot hadn't killed him.

I did that.

My brother whom I loved above all else, whom I honored and admired and would gladly have died for, my only living kin beside Arthur himself, my one hope. I killed him, in the last light of a late summer day, because when it came to it, he would not kill me.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
672 words, plus 46 of Malory

#191. Where do you see yourself in twenty years?

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 08:01:35 GMT

"Where do you see yourself in twenty years?"

"Where do you get these questions? Out of a hat?"

She rolls her eyes at him. "They're just things I'd like to know, okay?"

"Like fun they are," Mordred says. "Last week it was 'What's your approach to problem solving?' If that's your idea of pillow talk, I'm not sure we've got twenty years together anyway."

"Very funny."

"You think I'm kidding."

"It's in a book, okay?" She folds her arms, aggrieved. "Called I Should've Known That: Significant Questions for Significant Others."

He rests his head in his hands. "Jesus Christ almighty."

"It's a bestseller! It's really good. See, there's all these things people don't talk about when they're dating, and then in a year or two it bites them in the ass, whereas if you just talk about it up front--"

"Please."

"Fine," poking him with a glossy nail. "You'll be sorry when you find out I voted for Bush or something."

"I'm sure I can weather the blow," he says.

A smile tugs at her pout. "Jerk."

"Always," Mordred says.

Mordred
Arthurian legend
180 words