Old Man Wizard
By Craig Hinds
“‘Sir Arthur, king,’ said the damosel, ‘that sword is mine’”
Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D’Arthur
☼
“Were I not a woman, I could tell a tale.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Merlin and Vivien
In the forest, the first leaf falls from a hawthorn tree.
Merlin walks on the surface of the lake. Beneath him, in the water, a lady matches his step. Her white dress trails behind her.
“My love,” his ivory shadow sings to him, “did I ever tell you how I forged Excalibur beneath the lake? I did it with a bolt of lightning.”
“No, you have not,” replies the wizened wizard, “though I have asked you many times. Tell me then, how it was you put the magic in the blade?”
“Devil’s son, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise me something first,” she answers playfully. She is swimming now and then again she is walking.
“What?” he asks warily.
“A token of your love.”
He frowns. Age’s wrinkled hand has inscribed volumes on his forehead.
“I have heard that you have a charm,” the submerged lady continues.
He comes to a stop, the bottom of his staff sending out ripples over the lake.
“What charm?” His old voice creaks with suspicion.
“A charm which you use to lock up your buxom maids so that no one can get at them but you. It is like they are imprisoned in a tower.”
“And where did you hear of this, Nimue?”
“I heard it whispered in the trees, old goat head.” She dives away and chases a fish around and then comes back.
“There is no such thing.”
She howls and her teeth become pointed and shark-like. He raises a hand.
“Calm yourself, nymph. I have something quite like it. A few things actually. Hmm.”
He takes several long strides and her feet kick madly to catch up.
“Tell me, tell me.”
He glances over the length of her body as she drifts beneath him, turning slowly in the water. His eyes slide from her pleading face to her powerful legs and to the ends of her trailing dress.
“Fine, yes, yes, I will give you a charm,” he sighs.
His fairer reflection rewards him with a sly smile. He eases his ancient body down in the middle of the lake and they both sit cross-legged and look into the other’s face, Merlin looking down, Nimue peering up. Merlin rests his staff across his knees. Bubbles shoot from Nimue’s lips as she clears her throat.
“Did you know, my magician, long before we met, many turns of the world ago, that there was a time when I set foot on the lakebed? My feet—”
“No, I did not know you had ventured so deep,” he says over her.
She looks at him sharply for interrupting.
“Forgive an old man his deafness,” he chuckles.
She sends a small wave over the lake from behind him that nearly knocks him from his seat. He steadies himself with the staff and nods, with some measure of respect, for her to proceed.
Nimue closes her eyes. Her face becomes calm and beautiful once more. Merlin leans closer, until his beard hangs down above her face. Something like a smile twitches her lips. She stifles it and begins again.
“Long before I heard the name Merlin,” she says pointedly, “many turns of the world ago, I set foot on the lakebed. My feet slipped into the sand as I made my way through the primal dark.” This time she keeps her eyes hidden behind her pale lids, her voice pure and intent. It sings out from the water like a leaping fish.
Merlin’s eyes remain wide and eager. They glint greedily; his long fingers look ready to snatch each word from the air. They tense as she reaches up and absently twists one of her fair tresses. Already her voice has become softer, gentler, as she loses herself in the memory, challenge and guile replaced with an apparent lack of self-consciousness. Merlin is entranced; he could be a deep-sea creature snared by a predator’s light.
“I plucked seaweed and made of it ribbons for my hair,” she says as if in wonder, as though Eve returned to Paradise. “Clouds of mud broke over me. I took fish from their shoals and prised their scales off one by one with my nails as their tails beat uselessly against me. I took the scales, silver, pink and golden, and made a corset to line my waist.” She rubs a hand over her stomach in memory of the hard scales. “Resplendent in my briny jewels I trekked through the deep. Yet my long and sleepless walk was to have an end.
The lightning found me. It smashed into the lake like Heaven’s fist.”
Her lids snap open.
“Yes, now we come to it,” Merlin purrs lustily.
“The water seethed and boiled,” she narrows her eyes at him, the pleasure of reverie fading from her voice. “The lightning zigzagged between my forearm and my waist and sent up the sand at my feet. Thrown in a stream of bubbles, I twined and clung round the white fork.” She grits her teeth, as if gripped by that struggle again.
“Fastened between my hands, the bolt could not retreat into the clouds, or dissipate into the water. I held it there, my body spasming and wracked with pain as it squirmed against me. Its neck curved this way and that as it tried to swim to the surface. Its blind face struggled upwards, the point of its nose cutting through the water. But ever I weighed it down and kept it submerged.
For untold days, we grappled in the timeless deep. Sometimes we floated up towards the surface and others we thudded into the sand. Always my watery brain was at work with ways to beat it, my thoughts boiling and bubbling like a cauldron’s brew.
The next time we reached the bottom, I grabbed a stone and directed us towards an outcrop of ancient rock. I pushed it against a boulder and beat on the electric snake with my stone. I did this until rock and pebble crumbled into dust.
Weary from my toil, it dragged me towards the surface world, but like a rider on a wild horse, I pulled it back. Like Zeus or Thor, I rode the sky flame. On the lakebed once more, I grabbed another stone, setting the fabric of my realm against another.
And slowly, rock after rock, I ground my foe into shape. Sparks shivered and shrank from it at my every strike. The bones of fossilized creatures caught within my rocky anvils exploded into powder. With dust and marrow and sky fire, I forged the magic blade.
Excalibur. Its holy light shone in the lake like a submerged star. Soon I learned that while all in my oily zone was mutable–the waving plants, the bloody coils, even reef and rock would crumble–the law of flux and fluid was broken by the blade. I took it against the sea monsters and severed their long necks and separated their soft hides. What I had thought was true. Its shape was fixed and it could not be broken, no matter what monster I slew, no matter what rock I cleaved. If only your Round Table was made so well.”
“Speak carefully, if you still want your charm.”
“Yes, yes, I do,” she cries. She bangs her palms against the surface of the lake as though it is ice.
“I will tell you the charm.”
Her features are contorted with longing as she searches his smug features, as if he hides the secret in his beard. Bubbles froth from her open mouth. Carefully, Merlin prostrates himself over her thrashing body. She continues to thump silently against the water’s skin. He brings his mouth close to the surface as if to take a drink.
He whispers the charm.
Instantly, she turns still. She smiles again, coyly.
“There is more to the tale.”
His ear hovers over her lips.
“Exhausted from my labors, I drifted in the lake. My eyes glazed over and my hair fanned out around me. I lost all strength. My body ceased to move, the blade’s hilt fastened to my hand. For centuries stacked upon centuries that was our existence. We floated closer to the surface world than ever before.
I thawed. Sensation returned to me in time to see an enormous and monstrous sun bearing down on me. Its red tendrils reached out for us. Tangled in its feelers, we were buoyed up. The tip of the sword ripped through the lake’s surface and into the open air. My hand followed. My skin burned as it was exposed to the surface fire. I watched as a boat was drawn up beside my aching hand. A boy reached out and wrenched Excalibur from me. I tried to recoil, but could not. And in the boat, Merlin, your face.”
Her hand smashes out as it would through glass and grabs him by the throat. Half of his face is dragged into the water. He tries to push himself away, but her hold is too strong. Her fingers feel cold, damp and hard digging into his neck. She bobs up at the back of his head and leans over his ear. Above the water, her plastered locks are darkened and slick. Droplets rain down from her chin and on to his forehead. She struggles him into position. Her cheek glistens as each slow word drops from her lips.
Merlin breaks from her wet grip and bounds away over the surface of the lake. He glances back at her with terror in his eyes and splashes through into the water. She laughs as he flounders in the shallows. Wobbling to his feet, he sloshes to the shore and into the trees. Her cold voice follows him.
“In the hands of kings, it ventures through the ages of the world. But Excalibur is always returned to me. If only you could remember that wizard, in your small and addled brain. I am enslaved as Arthur, your deathless king, and must pawn my most precious trinket.”
He twists and sees her through the gaps in the trunks, walking on the shore. Her form waves with new power.
“Always your face, Merlin, always it is your face beside the boy’s. You have your occupation, but your liberty also, while I, I am free to emerge only when that which I am apprenticed to permits.”
He runs through the trees.
“I nursed my hand for years, years after he took it from me.”
He goes deeper into the wood. Her shouting fades. He tugs at his sleeve. His wrinkled flesh is dry and hard and flaking. He continues to run, but the transformation is upon him. His robes whip about behind him and he tosses them aside piece by piece as he flees over the hills. It gets harder to run. His feet fan out and his long toes work their way into the soil, his wide and swinging steps leaving muddy craters in the grass.
He is brought to a stop in a distant wood. Merlin falls to his knees and places a hand on the ground. He spits and looks down at a pool of milky sap. His hand is lifted away. His knees are straightened. He rises further and further from the soil. Around his chest, his remaining robes burst and drop away. The staff buried at his armpit is knitted into his side. He feels his hair stand on end, as though by static. It twines up and into branches. His arms stretch out and snap into new angles. His face becomes a knot in the wood. Finally, his lips split into a twisted and mournful cleft.
The metamorphosis is complete. Merlin has become a tree.
The soonest is the first taken. A breeze shivers the hawthorn’s branches and a second leaf falls.
Beset by dreams and darkness, Merlin wanders from Camelot. He tramps by post and standing stone, towards the distant lake, in hope of the sweet Lady of the Lake, who is waiting for him.
The wizard smooths his beard and walks out onto the surface of the lake...
Craig Hinds(he/him) lives and works in Newcastle, UK, where he is often mistaken for his identical twin brother. He graduated from Newcastle University with a first-class degree in English Literature, and a Distinction in his English Literature 1500-1900 MA, for which he was awarded two prestigious scholarships, the School Bursary Award and Excellence Scholarship. His fiction has appeared in Lackington’s Magazine and The Broken Spine. Twitter: @CraigHinds_