Merlin fic: The Love You Kept Inside (Hunith/Nimueh)

[sophinisba]

Title: The Love You Kept Inside
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Hunith/Nimueh (other pairings mentioned), Merlin and Gaius
Warnings: Reference to character death (canon and OCs); grieving, miscarriage, one scene of a lesbian character having sex with a man.
Spoilers: Only through the end of season one. (Not fully compliant with season two.)
Rating: R
Word Count: 25,191
Summary: When she was the age Merlin is now, Hunith made her own journey from the village to Camelot, trying to find her destiny.
Author's Notes: This was the fic I wrote for the fabulous themadlurker for camelotsolstice! She requested Hunith/Nimueh with bonus points for Hunith having magic and for Nimueh being connected to Merlin's birth. Big thanks to my beta slightlytookish who helped make this much better, to claudia603 for reading and handholding, and to my special guest femslash beta glimmergirl.
Links: You can also read this in three posts at camelotsoltice or in one file at the AO3.



The life you left behind won't find you
The love you kept inside will come
And even when your own heart blinds you
Nothing undoes the work you've done

The sun's still in the sky
The moon is there at night
The ground's still underfoot
And still holds you
-Sinéad O'Connor, "Petit Poulet"

*

All along the road back to Camelot, Merlin kept having to check his horse, hold back to Gaius's pace and try not to let it show how he wished he could go faster, let the horse gallop ahead along with his heart. Nimueh had said his mother would be safe, but who could trust the word of a person like her?

But once they finally reached the castle a groom came out to meet them, and though Merlin knew it wasn't his place to let some other servant take care of the horse for him, Gaius nodded and said, "Go ahead, Merlin. I'll meet you there."

Merlin nodded and, once that was decided, couldn't help taking off at a run back to Gaius's rooms to check on his mother. The last time he'd seen her she'd been barely conscious, breathing with difficulty, as whatever sickness had brought the boils out on her skin had begun to rot her lungs and throat as well. Could something so insidious have reversed itself so quickly?

But even as he burst through the door could hear women's voices talking and laughing, and once he stopped he saw his mother sitting up in bed and Gwen sitting beside her. "Merlin!" Gwen said, and she jumped up to greet him, pulling him into a quick but fierce hug. "Where have you been? Hunith's been awake for hours and we couldn't find you or Gaius."

"It's because he went off to save me, just like I told you," Hunith said, gazing at them fondly from the bed.

As soon as Gwen let him go Merlin went to his mother and took her hand, squeezing it tight. The skin of her hands and face was scarred but dry and cool, showing the marks of the sores but with none of the pus that had seeped out of them before. Gwen had probably tended to her all by herself, and helped her get clean once she started to recover. Seeing her awake and smiling at him, Merlin wanted to break down again and let the sky break with him. The relief he felt now was even stronger than when he and Gaius had sat together and talked and wept in the rainstorm. Still he held the tears back and only said, "How are you, Mother?"

"I feel fine, just tired."

"I'm going to check on Prince Arthur again," Gwen said from the door. "Is there anything else I can get you, Hunith? Merlin?"

Merlin shook his head, still looking at his mother. "Gaius will be back here soon. We just had to… Thank you, Gwen."

Hunith ran a hand through his hair affectionately, and as soon as Gwen was out the door she asked softly, "Tell me, how did you do it?"

"I…Gaius went to try to stop it, and that didn't... So I…I took care of it."

"Mm hm," Hunith said calmly, expectantly. "I did raise you," she added after a moment, when he hadn't said anything. "I'm not completely...innocent, when it comes to magic."

Merlin ducked his head. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't want to trouble you."

Hunith nodded slowly. "You've become a lot more careful since you left. It's good to see that. But you know you never have to keep secrets from me, not about who you are."

And that was so good, so familiar and like home, after all these months of keeping secrets. He'd always loved her, but he'd never felt so grateful for her love and her life as he did at this moment. And even with all of today's hurts, the taunts and the pain and the impossible decisions, he'd never felt so glad to be himself, to be the kind of person who had the power to help the ones he loved.

"I don't remember much of what happened," Hunith said. "Only as soon as my skin started prickling I knew it was a curse, not some ordinary sickness. I knew if there was any help for me it was here, with you and Gaius."

"You were right. It was…it was my fault it happened at all, though we didn't realise. But you were right to come here."

"What happened to your shirt?" she asked suddenly, pulling at some of the charred threads at his chest, where Nimueh's fireball had struck him.

"Oh, that? I…" There was really no reason to lie to her. "There was a battle, because the person who'd made you sick tried to take Gaius as well and I…I figured I'd stop her any way I could. And that's what I did."

"Her?"

"She's a sorceress, a priestess of the Old Religion. That was what happened, you see, I needed to protect Arthur but she said there had to be another life to balance out… But it's all right now, you see? Because I gave the Old Religion their own priestess instead, so they don't need to take anyone else."

As he spoke he felt his mother squeezing his hands, tighter and tighter, and her voice sounded choked and angry when she said, "What have you…Merlin, what have you done?"

"I'm sorry, Mother, I didn't know. I never meant for anyone else to get hurt. But it's over now, I told you. I've taken care of–"

"Nimueh?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, surprised that she knew the name, and then his mother started screaming.

Merlin didn't know what to do. He put his arms around her and hugged her tight, trying to keep her still, wonder wildly if saying the sorceress's name aloud had somehow brought back her curse.

"Gwen!" he called out, hoping she hadn't gone far, but at that moment Gaius appeared at the door. "Gaius! Gaius, help!"

"What is it?" Gaius said as he came in, but there was nothing to explain, as he could hear and see for himself. He moved to his cupboards first, quickly taking out two flasks and pouring a measure of each into a cup. "Drink this, Hunith," he said, bringing it to her.

She shook her head and tried to wave him away, but she was still tired and weak, and Merlin was still holding her, and at Gaius's nod he gripped her tighter, saying, "Please, Mother," at the same time. She finally went still - Merlin thought she was startled as much as she was overpowered, not used to being handled so roughly by her own son.

Gaius held the cup to her lips and she sputtered at the first swallow. Merlin wavered and loosened his grip. What if he caused her to choke, after everything else they'd done to make sure she lived through this? But Gaius said, "Steady," and Hunith nodded.

She took a breath and then drank the rest without protest, only murmuring "My boy," and then sobbing again, more softly now.

"I'm right here," he said. "I won't leave you again." He helped her lie back and she turned her face away from him on the pillow.

Her voice faded to a whimper and then only deep, uneven breaths. Her body was curled up with pain, just as it had been when he rode off to meet Nimueh.

Merlin had never done anything like this before. He'd argued with his mother plenty of times, of course, but never physically fought with her, never forced her into anything she didn't want. Then again, he'd done a lot of things today that he never thought he'd do.

He laid a hand on her shoulder and waited while her breaths evened out. "I'm sorry, Mother," he said, but he wasn't sure that was true, and anyway she couldn't hear him now.

---

Ever since Hunith could remember, all the girls and most of the grown women – even the married ones, which was almost everybody – had talked about Uther Pendragon. Handsome young Prince Uther when she was a girl, and now King Uther, getting ready to marry the luckiest woman in Albion come Midsummer – the village gossips had talked of little else for the last year. When Hunith announced she was moving to Camelot her friends all teased her: "You're too late now, Hunith. He's taken!"

"Don't try to cheat the Lady Ygraine out of what's hers!"

"The Lady Ygraine has nothing to worry about," Hunith answered, smiling easily. "I'm going to Camelot to study healing and magic."

This was not the way Culworth girls talked. Her father wasn't happy about it either, but her brothers defended her, in their own way.

"What's the use of keeping her here?" said Carl. "She can't cook, she's a horrible seamstress, and last time she tried doing the laundry she lost my smallclothes downstream."

"Thanks," said Hunith. "I think." Carl clapped her on the back and winked at her.

"Just because she can't do her job here doesn't mean she'll do any better in a big city."

"Father, you know there's other work there," said Hunith, who was getting tired about being talked about as if she weren't there. "And if I can get a real sorcerer to take me on as his apprentice–"

"It's not right," her father interrupted. "Leave aside the sorcery, though our family always did without that until now. It's just not right for a young woman to go off on her own."

"You don't want to send us away with her though, do you?" said her older brother Emmett. "You need our help on the farm. And just think, once she's done learning her spells she can come back and poison all the neighbours' crops so they have to buy or borrow from us."

Hunith just glared at him for that. It wasn't even worth arguing.

In the end it wasn't so much that she changed her father's mind as that he couldn't change hers. He wasn't an affectionate man or a cheerful one, but he wasn't the kind to beat his daughter and lock her in the house either. On the day she planned to leave, he went out to the fields early and kept his back toward the house.

Carl and Emmett wanted to go with her, saying they'd protect her from bandits on the road and make sure she got settled in all right, but she said they really just wanted to get away from Culworth for a day, and eventually they admitted this was true.

"Come and see me at harvest time," she said, knowing they'd make the journey as they did every year. Most years they'd left her at behind at home. It was only half a day's journey on foot, but there wasn't much time to spare for idle journeys, and her father thought most any journey was idle for a girl. The boys promised they'd come soon and they hugged her goodbye.

Hunith had never walked so far on her own and in one day, let alone on a hot July day like this one, but she carried water and fresh fruit, and though the hills were steep, the road was well warn and her steps were easy and light as her heart.

*

Everyone had thought she would go to see the wedding – as half the people of the country were doing, going to spend only the day in the city so they could witness the ceremony that would live in their memory for the rest of their lives. But Hunith said the road would be too crowded that day, and anyway she'd have plenty of other chances to catch a glimpse of the king and queen. She left a few weeks later, figuring the excitement would have died down by then.

She didn't expect to arrive just in time to see another ceremony, but as soon as she entered the gates of the city she could tell everyone was heading in the same direction. She let herself be swept up by the crowd – after all, she didn't have any other idea of where to go – and soon found herself within the walls of the castle itself, gazing up at two beautiful young women standing on a wooden platform in the centre of the courtyard.

One of them, she realised after a moment, was wearing a crown.

"Nimueh," said the queen, and stopped, as if she needed time to rein in her joy before she went on. Her eyes shone with pride and affection as she took the hands of the other woman in her own. Both of them were so lovely Hunith barely knew where to look. Ygraine was pale with flush round cheeks, and long yellow hair falling all down her back in gentle waves. And the other woman, Nimueh, was all sharp angles in her face and her long limbs. Her tight dark curls were pulled back and bound up with green ribbon that matched her dress and her eyes.

"My dear Nimueh, you have shown your loyalty to me and to Tintagel in your years of service. Without you I would never have lived to see this day, nor known that my destiny lay here, in Camelot, with Uther Pendragon as my husband and my king."

She turned her head to look up at one of the castle walls, and for the first time Hunith noticed the men watching from the balcony. The one in the middle must be Uther. He nodded at his wife, though his smile was thin, his eyes narrow.

"I know you will continue to serve me now that I am queen."

Nimueh knelt at Ygraine's feet and kissed her hand. Ygraine smiled and Hunith thought the blush on her cheeks coloured deeper, as if she hadn't expected the gesture. "I will, my lady," Nimueh said.

Hunith thought the air around them shimmered with some kind of power so unfamiliar she could barely perceive it. They looked like…Hunith didn't even know how to compare them. Like a mother and child, perhaps, except that they looked so different, Nimueh as dark and lovely as Ygraine was fair. Besides that, they were nearly the same age, not much older than Hunith. Hunith didn't have any sisters, but she had friends at home, girls she worked with and girls she had played with as long as she could remember. None had ever looked at her with so much love.

Hunith remembered the first time she'd seen a knight. She'd been walking by the road with her aunt Margaret when they heard the hoof beats, and Maggie jerked at her hand so sharply that Hunith fell to her knees rather than going down softly, properly. Her aunt's hand pressed down forcefully at Hunith's neck and she couldn't understand how that had anything to do with what she was saying: "Show some respect, Hunith." She'd learned better in the years since, learned to bow her head as if she were worth less than the person standing before her. Nobles didn't often pass through Culworth, but she'd known she needed to get used to being on her knees, now that she was to live among them.

But Nimueh on her knees looked as proud and grand as she had on her feet, and her gaze never faltered as she looked up into Ygraine's eyes.

They were the most perfect thing Hunith had ever seen. She wanted that. She would give anything to be part of something like that.

"I hereby appoint you my Court Sorceress," said the queen.

Hunith was the first in the crowd to raise a cheer.

*

Hunith figured there was no use in asking for a job she didn't really want, so as soon as the ceremony was over she went straight up to one of the castle guards and asked where she could find the sorceress. She followed his directions, but instead of Nimueh she met a man with long greying hair and a serious face.

"Are you the Court Sorcerer?" she asked.

"I am a sorcerer, but it is not my only work. I am a physician and a scholar, and you…"

"Oh, that's perfect!" Hunith exclaimed. "I want to work for you! And do any work you can give me, and study, with you and with the Lady Nimueh and everyone."

"I'm sorry, young lady, but–"

"I'm a diligent student and a quick learner, and I already know how to read and write," she added quickly. That was exaggerating things a little bit, but that was the kind of thing you had to do if you wanted to be noticed in a place like this, she'd decided.

Still, he barely paused before finishing, "I have no need of an apprentice at this time."

"But why not? You serve the court, do you not? The king has just married. His household will only continue to grow, and so will your work. You could use the help."

He looked at her more carefully then, with one eyebrow raised and both eyes wide, surely surprised by her impertinence. Ah well, she thought, better to be sent away for impudence than to be ignored completely.

"I can work for free. That is, I only need a little bit of food and a place to stay." That sounded like a lot when she said it out loud, so she added, "I'm used to getting by without much – I could take your scraps, and sleep here in your workshop."

"What is your name?"

"Hunith, sir. Hunith of Culworth."

"Have you had any other apprenticeship, Hunith? Do you have a letter, someone to recommend you?"

"I worked for the healer in my village. He taught me the herblore I know, and how to take care of fevers and colds, and a few spells. But he doesn't write. No one at home does."

"Then how did you learn, child?"

"He had a book, a book of spells." It was the heaviest thing in her pack. She hoped he'd agree to take her on soon so she could at least take it off her shoulders. "He'd learned how to read some of them from his own master. I taught myself how to copy the letters along with the magic."

"I see. So you do have magic then?"

For the first time Hunith hesitated. She didn't want to pretend to be some great sorceress. Surely he'd be disappointed when he tested her. "I know a little," she said. "I want to learn more."

"Show me what you can do."

Hunith took a deep breath, reminding herself that this was an intelligent man. He wouldn't be impressed by some showy trick like those of the magicians who travelled from one town to the next, throwing fireballs around in the air or making animals disappear.

She looked at the supplies on his workbench, recognising the plants from their leaves and the liquids from their labels. "May I?" she said.

He nodded and she crushed some comfrey into a cup with lavender oil, then said the words she'd practised a hundred times before she'd first got it to work. She held the cup toward him, knowing he'd see the contents shimmering with their transformation, and said, "That will heal magical burns."

He nodded as one does at a child who's said that two and two make four.

Hunith swallowed. "I want to learn," she said. "And I can take messages, I can gather herbs, I can scrub the floor. Please, sir."

She did not say, Don't send me away, or I can't go back to my father now. She did not want to act desperate, to be desperate. She wanted to be accepted because she would be a good student and a helpful assistant, not because she was young and poor and could make a kind old man felt sorry for her.

"Well," he said after quite a long time, "the castle already has a sorceress. Why don't you put down your pack, at least," he said finally. "I can show you what I'm working on today and you can sleep here tonight. Tomorrow we'll decide what to do next."

*

After that he didn't want to turn her away, and Hunith decided she didn't mind being kept on because of affection, since that wasn't the same thing as pity. She was not very useful at all in the first few weeks, as she could barely find her way around the city let alone do the kind of bargaining with merchants and badgering with patients that he expected of her.

He probably thought the book was more valuable than she was. He certainly spent more time poring over it. But once he'd mastered a spell from it he would always try to share it with her. Hunith's tongue and her fingers felt stiff when she tried to channel the magic she knew ought to be within her reach. After all, the instructions were right there.

"Do not blame yourself," said Gaius. "It comes more easily to some than to others. You and I are much alike: we study, we attempt what we can. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail, but each time we learn something."

Hunith nodded and kept on trying along with him, but they both knew it wasn't what she really wanted.

The first time she had to take a delivery to the Lady Nimueh, she stood outside the door for two minutes trying to talk herself down. Hunith wasn't used to feeling this way. She was used to speaking her mind to everyone she met. Right now she was trying to think what she'd say when Nimueh spoke to her, and her heart was racing but her mind was blank.

"Is there something you need?" called Nimueh, who of course would know she was standing there in the corridor like an idiot.

"Gaius sent this for you, my lady. The chamomile and coltsfoot flowers you asked for."

Nimueh only nodded and indicated the table where she was working. "Leave them there," she said. Hunith did so and stood there, frowning. She hadn't expected Nimueh to shower her with kisses or offer her an apprenticeship on the spot, but a thank you would have been nice.

"Was there something else? Something Gaius needs?"

"No," said Hunith, and she left.

Gaius noticed she had trouble concentrating on their work that evening. She was playing the scene over and over again in her mind.

The next time she went to her she set the potion down on the table, crossed her arms over her chest, and said, "My name is Hunith." Nimueh said nothing. "I work for Gaius, I've been here for almost a month now."

"Yes, I've seen you."

"That's the same time that you've been here, as Court Sorceress."

"Yes…?" Nimueh smirked a little as she spoke, looking at once baffled and amused.

"You haven't said hello."

"No."

"You could have said hello," said Hunith. "We're both new here, and we're both… I'm trying to learn magic, you see."

"I'm not trying to learn magic," said Nimueh. "I know it already –"

"That's not what I –"

"And it's not enough to accomplish what I need."

"Oh."

"Go back to Gaius now," said Nimueh. "I have work to do."

That night Hunith told Gaius she couldn't take things to Nimueh anymore and asked if that made her a bad apprentice. He said it rather did but he wouldn't send her away. He asked what had happened and said he didn't think it sounded so bad. She shouldn't take it to heart.

"Nimueh is proud, she does not like competition or…insolence, I think she would call it."

"But I'm not insolent. I don't want to be her rival. I could never… I just want to learn from her, and I want her to notice me."

"Oh, she has noticed you, have no doubt." Gaius was smiling fondly and Hunith couldn't understand why. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

"And she seems not to want your help at this time. But you have talent, Hunith, and you have intelligence and discipline. Some sorcerers have so much raw power that they do not bother to study or to hone their skills. You are taking the time to learn, I believe you will go far."

"Thank you, Gaius."

Hunith went to bed thinking that Gaius was proud of her because she was observant and practical, just like him. But she didn't want to be just like Gaius.

*

When her brothers came in the autumn they were amazed to find she was living in the castle itself, but she assured them it was nothing terribly glamorous. She saw very little of the queen and even less of the king. If the royals or their guests needed something from Gaius he would always go himself rather than send his servant, and if they saw her in Gaius's rooms or passed her in the corridors she would bow her head, and they would barely look at her, and that was all right. She held no ill will toward them, but they weren't the reason she'd come to Camelot.

Still, Carl and Emmett were impressed with the magic she was able to show them. She poured liquid over a dry stalk to make it bloom to life and then rise a few inches the air. They were little tricks she would have been ashamed to practise in front of Gaius, let alone Nimueh (whose name she did not mention), but she knew they looked good, made it look like her time here had been well spent.

"If you come home now you'll have half the village out to see," said Carl. "Why, you could make a living just like that, travel the countryside and have them pay for the show."

Hunith just smiled, but Emmett said, "You're not coming home again, are you?"

Hunith said, "I don't know."

They stayed only a night. Emmett hugged her long and warmly before he left, but Carl just slapped her back and said, "Don't let Dad decide he was right about you."

*

When Gaius told her the queen was expecting a child, Hunith's first thought was to be afraid for her. She chased the thought away at once, annoyed with herself. This was Camelot, not some narrow little village where they didn't know how to take care of pregnant women. "That's wonderful," she said, because this must be the thing Ygraine most wanted, "they must be so happy."

"The king's household will only continue to grow," Gaius said, teasing her, "so you'll only have more work to do."

That meant more work with Nimueh, which meant more being bossed around with no thanks, and very little explanation as to the reasons and the meanings for anything she did. But it also meant being near Nimueh and seeing her practise magic, and feeling the magic that flowed between Nimueh and the queen, even when they were doing something as simple as choosing a dress or sharing a meal.

Hunith still had her chores and her studies with Gaius and she was exhausted half the time, but she was happy, and so were Gaius and Nimueh and Ygraine and Uther. Uther would want a son, of course, a leader to take his name and carry on his reign. Having an heir in place would help keep peace in the kingdom, and for that reason it was what everyone wanted. But she'd also waited on Nimueh and Ygraine while Ygraine talked of girls' names and of teaching a child to sing, and Nimueh talked of the Old Religion and how it should always have as strong a defender in Camelot's queen as it did in Ygraine.

Falling into bed Hunith would think back to her old life in the village, how she'd had enough work to fill her days but she'd still always felt worthless. She thought how good it was that she'd never have to go back to that.

*

It wasn't Gaius that woke her but a woman's scream, from so far off she wondered if it wasn't a dream. But she couldn't risk ignoring it, so she threw on a dress and went running.

Gaius called out as she ran past his bed. "What is it?"

"I don't know, but come," she shouted, and was out the door before he could say anything else.

She ran up the stairs and down the corridor straight to the queen's chambers, not because she remembered where the sound had come from but just because she knew. She tore inside, not bothering to knock, and saw Nimueh knelt on the bed in front of Ygraine, and the sheets soaked in blood.

Hunith stopped short, feeling she wasn't supposed to be here.

Then she noticed no one else was moving either, not even Nimueh, who surely needed to help.

Then the king was there, shouting. He ran past Hunith and reached the bed, cradled his wife's head in his arms, and Hunith could barely make out the words he was saying, could only feel the rage and the fear and she thought, he wasn't supposed to be here either.

"Nimueh," she said, but could barely hear herself over Uther's load moans and Ygraine's softer ones – her voice was fading even as Hunith stood there.

"Nimueh!" she shouted, and now she went to them and tugged at Nimueh's arm. The sorceress whirled on her with her eyes flashing gold and Hunith was afraid again, wished she could run back to her room and fall back asleep and not have anything to do with these powerful people, this failed magic and this terrible night. But she made herself look back and she said, "You need to help Ygraine. We need to stop the bleeding."

Then it was as if Nimueh snapped out of a trance. She said, "Boil a pot of water." Hunith nodded and moved to obey at once. "Once you've set it, bring fresh linens. Is Gaius on his way?"

"Yes, my lady."

Nimueh pushed Uther out of the way so she could tend to Ygraine herself, feel her forehead and whisper incantations over her body. Ygraine lost consciousness soon after but Nimueh promised it was only because she'd slowed the flow of her blood, given her a rest from the pain.

Hunith ran errands for them for the rest of the night, between Ygraine's rooms and Nimueh's and Gaius's, but in the morning they told her to go to bed.

When she woke up Gaius was sitting with her. He said Ygraine was weakened from the blood loss and from grief, but there was no fever and no poisoning of the blood, the sickness that killed so many mothers.

Hunith nodded and thanked him for the news. She'd never told him that her own mother had died like that, sweating and shaking, two days after Carl was born. She didn't tell him now.

The queen stayed in bed for three days and did not appear in court for a long time after that. Nimueh tended to her herself sent the king away as brusquely as she did the chambermaids. Hunith didn't even try to get close.

After that Hunith had less work to do for a while, which didn't mean she got any more sleep. She would lie awake thinking about it, how after all this time she was just as useless as she'd always been. Or she would fall asleep and wake up with a start, hearing a scream that she knew wasn't real.

Gaius asked if she wanted to go home to visit her family. He could manage for a few weeks on his own. She said no, she preferred to stay, but she could look for other work if he had no need of her.

"We do have need of you, Hunith. And I would regret it if you decided to leave."

Hunith kept up her work of carrying messages and medicines, and one day, some weeks after the queen had recovered, she met Nimueh alone and heard her say, "Hunith, wait," as she was turning to leave.

"Yes, my lady?"

"You…It is a good thing you were there, the night Ygraine lost the baby."

"Me? I didn't–"

"You kept your head. It was more than I could do. And all my magic was useless if I didn't… Thank you."

Hunith nodded and said, "Of course."

Nimueh continued to ask for her after that, not just for work to do with helping Ygraine, but for other spells and potions. Hunith came to understand that Nimueh was not going to apologise for having treated her badly before. She would just move on, but she started saying please and thank you more often, in addition to hello. She noticed Hunith and noticed her moods, and she asked what she needed, and asked for her help. The surprise was that she wasn't only interested in having someone do extra chores for her but, like Gaius, she wanted an apprentice and a student after all.

It wasn't quite what Hunith had dreamed of – there was no declaration, for instance, no ceremony in which Hunith would get to kneel down and pledge her love and loyalty before the whole of Camelot. She went on sleeping in the little room in back of Gaius's workshop and officially she worked only for him, but her time was divided between them, and her heart…well.

Gaius had always been kind to her and Nimueh still wasn't, but Hunith's heart would still race whenever she was in Nimueh's presence. It wasn't like work (and Nimueh had other people to sweep the floors for her, and she did not send messages or medicines, as she attended only to Ygraine herself and occasionally Uther and a few of their close friends), it was adventures and revelations. They never read out of books or took time to write down the results of their efforts. Sometimes Hunith would hold a chalice while Nimueh spoke incantations over it, and sometimes Nimueh would hold Hunith's arm to steady her and they'd speak together, Nimueh's breath hot by Hunith's ear. It wasn't the same at all.

Spending more time with her made Hunith realise she wasn't the only one who wanted more of Nimueh than she got. She'd come to understand some time ago that Nimueh cared little for Gaius. Of all those who dwelt in the castle he was the one who had most in common with her, but she disdained his careful, plodding knowledge, his attempts to document things that should only exist in the air and earth and water and fire, not in libraries where any fool could blunder into them. Hunith thought of her old teacher in Culworth and said nothing.

The other servants were more or less terrified her, and Hunith was always embarrassed to be at her side when she shouted and cursed. Usually it was because they'd failed the queen in some way, and Hunith knew for most people that would seem a more terrible sin than failing the sorceress. She tried once or twice to convince Nimueh to go easier on them. "Don't try to make alliances with the chambermaids, Hunith," Nimueh advised her. "They're even less faithful than magicians, you'll come to understand."

Nimueh had never professed or demonstrated loyalty to the king. Sometimes Hunith was amazed at Nimueh's rudeness to him. She was sure no one else would have been able to get away with such insults and open defiance. But Nimueh had the queen's protection. It didn't surprise Hunith that Uther would give in to anything his wife asked of him.

What did surprise her was to realise that the queen wanted more from Nimueh as well. That the loyalty Nimueh had sworn to her was nothing so binding as what a husband said to his wife or a knight to his king. It wasn't what Hunith had thought she was witnessing at the time, what she had wanted, what she had cheered for.

At the changes and crossings of the sun and moon Nimueh would ride out from the castle and return days later with no explanation for anyone of where she had been or what she had done.

Hunith tried asking about it once, and Nimueh said, "We have our positions and our posts, we have our little rooms and the work we do from day to day, but these things are not what we are. I am not a magician. And you, Hunith, are not a magician's apprentice."

Hunith frowned, confused, and Nimueh sighed. "Oh, don't act like I'm going to dismiss you. The work you do here is fine. I only mean, it's not your life's calling."

"This is what I've always wanted to do."

"To take orders?"

"To learn."

Nimueh shook her head and said nothing more on the subject. Hunith learned when to expect those absences and learned not to resent them. She would simply stick to Gaius's rooms and his books, studying more intently than when Nimueh was around.

*

Ygraine had two more miscarriages in the two years Hunith lived at Camelot. Hunith and Gaius and Nimueh all got better at knowing what to do. Uther did not.

He was afraid of losing her, and there was talk of him taking a mistress, of using a handmaiden to conceive a son without putting her at risk. Hunith knew most of the maids in the castle and wondered quietly whom Uther might be considering. She was sure she wasn't in danger herself.

"But she won't hear of it," Nimueh told Hunith with a sigh. "Anyway it wouldn't mean as much. Such a child might inherit the throne but it would be disputed."

"Isn't that better than –"

"Of course it's better than putting Ygraine in danger, but try convincing her of that. She says nothing's more important than the good of the kingdom. And she says she can handle it."

There was talk of blood sacrifices, of rituals entered into with fear and fire, and at the end of October (Hunith's brothers had stopped coming to visit her, she had no word from home and sent none) the king and queen rode away with Nimueh and came back looking proud but uneasy.

Uther and Ygraine took to spending more nights together than at any time before, and Hunith should have known there was a reason why Nimueh sent for her that afternoon in December.

"What is it my lady?"

"Nothing, Hunith, all is well. I only wanted to talk to you."

Nimueh's room was almost bare, as always, nothing but a table and a chest and a bed. They sat there together since there were no chairs. Nimueh always worked standing up.

"Are you still studying with Gaius?" Nimueh asked.

Hunith nodded slowly. "He is very kind, and he has much to teach me. I know you don't care much for his methods, but they are…It's hard, for those of us who don't have magic in our blood, for whom it doesn't come naturally. Gaius says if something is done right it must come out the same way every time. This is how it works, for us."

"And yet you still want to learn from me too?"

"Of course!" Had she sounded like she was complaining? She didn't want to sound like that, like an ungrateful child.

"Why did you decide to study magic, if it didn't come naturally," Hunith couldn't tell whether that was scorn or just weariness in her voice, "and you didn't grow up with it? Your parents…"

"My father," she said quickly. "No. He thinks it's wrong. Unnatural, dangerous."

"So what gave you the idea it was good?"

She shrugged, because she was used to avoiding the question, not taking it seriously. She wasn't used to talking to people who understood about magic, and she wasn't used to Nimueh showing such curiosity about her. Still, it seemed genuine, and it felt good to be asked, so she tried to remember.

"There was a woman who came through the village when I was a girl. She could fly…or at least she made it look like she could. I thought, of course I wanted to do that. How could anyone not?"

"And when you saw that you couldn't, just by jumping off the cowshed…"

"I decided I needed to try harder."

"Good thing you didn't jump off the roof of the house."

Hunith laughed and swatted at Nimueh's arm. She wasn't usually the one to initiate touching between them – Nimueh would decide if it was needed for the magic to work – but today didn't feel like a normal day. Hunith wasn't sure what the rules were. "The house wasn't that big anyway. I would've been all right."

Nimueh smiled and nodded her head. "I've been trying to explain it to Ygraine."

"Explain what?"

"What you already know. You probably figured it out before you even came here: that all our bodies are sites of magic. With some it flows in and out more easily, but all of us can reach for it, all of us can touch it."

Nimueh's hand was touching hers now, fingers playing on Hunith's open palm, and there was magic in them, even though she wasn't trying to teach a spell, even though they weren't working, were just together, talking. Hunith felt it travel through her with a shudder she tried to hide, but Nimueh saw it and smiled at her. Hunith looked away.

"The men too?" she asked, thinking of Uther with his hard eyes.

"Yes, they can call magic to work for them. Some of them. They can channel it. But it's different with us. A woman's body can make another life. Think of the way we grow, the way we transform. How could that ever happen without magic?"

Hunith didn't answer at once, unsure of what she thought. It happened to enough girls at home, girls who didn't even want it; she wasn't sure she liked thinking of that as magic, as something she wanted. She didn't think she had much in common with those girls. And what of Ygraine, whose body didn't seem to want the magic to take hold? What of her mother – had it been magic that killed her? Still, "Sites of magic, I like that," she said.

Nimueh's fingers were on her wrist now, then tracing patterns up the thin skin of the inside of her arm.

"Want to know more?"

"Hmm?" But Nimueh was leaning toward her, untying the laces of Hunith's bodice and "Oh," opening her up. "I…yes."

"So do I."

Hunith shrank back for a moment, looking from side to side and to the door, but they were alone, not hiding in a corner, trying to uncover a secret before they got caught. They were in Nimueh's room, where no one would enter without her permission.

"I've told you before I won't dismiss you," said Nimueh, "as long as you keep doing your job well. And this isn't your job. If you don't want it–"

"I want it," Hunith said quickly. She tried to think of something more to add, but her mouth was dry, her mind blank.

Nimueh nodded and seemed to understand. She was slow and purposeful in her movements, not pushing up Hunith's skirt but peeling all her clothing off, slowly and layer by layer, until Hunith sat with her legs up on the bed, bare from head to toe.

She brought her arms over her chest to cover herself again, and she looked away while Nimueh removed her own clothing and then sat down facing her, their legs crossing, touching. For some minutes they sat there like that, Nimueh watching Hunith without comment or hurry, waiting for her to relax.

Hunith's nipples were pricking under her hands, even though it was warm in the room. Hunith thought Nimueh made the fire blaze brighter without even sending a spell, just by wanting it to. As time stretched on she realised she probably looked sillier with her hands over her breasts than she did naked, but still it almost hurt to take them away. And then she didn't know what to do with them.

As if understanding this, Nimueh took one of her hands and kissed her fingertips then her knuckles, then gently brought it across to touch Nimueh's breast.

It felt good – full and soft, not nervous or excited like her. It felt right under her touch and it still felt very wrong to touch her. Hunith swallowed. "Shouldn't… Does not the queen…"

"I have sworn my loyalty to Ygraine," Nimueh said smoothly. "She understands this means I will not harm her. But I am a priestess of the Old Religion. No one owns my body or my heart."

Hunith moved her hand up to feel Nimueh's heartbeat. It was steady, sure. She held still and stared at Nimueh's face, wondering how anyone could be so calm and serious and proud when she was naked – Hunith herself was fighting the urge to giggle out of nerves. But then, Nimueh was beautiful, more so than ever now, here, with her smooth dark skin and her sharp green eyes gleaming in the firelight. And she was always proud.

Then Nimueh put her hand on Hunith's breast, mirroring her, and Hunith tried not to think that hers were smaller, or that her face was plain, her legs stumpy and her hands clumsy, or that her hair simply hung while Nimueh's curled and bounced.

Hunith kept quiet, or she tried to, but Nimueh was massaging her breast, thumbing her nipple, rubbing at that sensitive spot to the side and under her arm. And Nimueh was listening, waiting for Hunith's sharp indrawn breaths and her slow moans. As if she were experimenting and taking note as to what drew the best reaction, what made her nervous, what left her cold.

Hunith thought of Gaius's lectures about hypothesis and proof, and she really couldn't help laughing then.

"What is it?" Nimueh asked, smiling, pausing with her hands on both sides of Hunith's torso, supporting her.

"Nothing, I'm just…I'm glad it's you, doing this. I haven't really…" The really, that was a lie, that was her trying to pretend she was like other girls, that this wasn't completely new, that this wasn't completely wondrous. "I haven't done this before. I'm glad it's you because…"

"I know what I'm doing."

So Nimueh was arrogant, and perhaps the arrogance made Hunith love this moment that little bit less. Still, there was no arguing with her. She knew exactly what she was doing when she kissed Hunith's breasts, or when she brought her mouth up to Hunith's collarbone, her throat, her jaw.

"And so do you."

"What?" said Hunith, biting her lip as she arched her neck, wondering how something could be so good and so confusing at the same time.

"You know what you want. You know what you want to do."

She wasn't sure she did know, but she did it anyway, leaning over to kiss Nimueh's chest the way she'd been kissed. She made her way up her throat, remembering how good it had felt, and when she came to her mouth she stayed there, and Nimueh kissed her back, sealing their mouths together and opening, deepening. Hunith leaned forward and their breasts were pressed between them, and for all the times she'd imagined touching Nimueh she'd never thought of that, and now she couldn't think of anything else, the feel of it was so glorious. Nimueh held the back of Hunith's head and kissed her harder and it was too much, too fast, and with her blood flowing in ways she wasn't expecting and not quite knowing how to breathe like that Hunith started to feel faint, and she turned her head to break the kiss and murmured, "Stop," and was caught by surprise when Nimueh froze and then moved away from her completely.

"What's wrong?" Hunith asked, bewildered. What had she done wrong?

"You said to stop."

"Oh. I…just the kiss. I mean, it's all right…"

"All right?" Nimueh repeated, as if she'd never been so insulted but she still wasn't going to kiss her if Hunith didn't want her to.

Hunith nodded. "It's all right, but it's not, um…" Then she took Nimueh's hand and brought it to her thigh, and Nimueh grinned at her and said,

"All right."

She swept her hand down and up, again and again, massaging the thick muscle until Hunith without thinking spread her legs wide, making space for Nimueh to come in closer, and Hunith wrapped her legs around her. Then Nimueh put an arm around her back and kissed the side of her face softly, slowly. Hunith looked over Nimueh's shoulder toward the fire while Nimueh's other hand moved in between her legs. She had the hand turned around first, like a loose fist with the backs of her knuckles moving lightly over Hunith's thick hair. Then she opened her hand and started to smooth the hair away, to push her lips apart and touch that soft, wet skin in between.

"Oh, God."

"Be brave, Hunith."

Then those two fingers were spreading the wetness around the opening and up to, oh, she was touching her there and Hunith

"Oh!"

thought she might lose herself but Nimueh told her, "Hold on," and Hunith's legs were shaking but she pulled them tight around Nimueh's body and held she held on with her arms. She wanted to squeeze and to push and to pull and to kiss back but she still wasn't sure how much she was supposed to do, how much was hers to take.

Nimueh didn't speak incantations or touch Hunith with the power of the elements. She touched her with her own body, her arms and legs holding her up, her mouth at Hunith's breast, her hips slowly rocking them together. Nimueh's fingers were long, strong and careful, and whether the touch was light or firm, all her movements were intentional.

Hunith stopped holding back and just held on, let Nimueh manipulate her, and Nimueh knew, she knew what she was doing and her fingers were undoing her, taking her apart from the very centre, so that when she peaked she felt like she was falling, and she cried out, because it was closer to pain than to anything else she'd known. But Nimueh still held her and let her fall back gently, until they lay on the bed together, and Hunith pressed her hand between her own legs, not because she was afraid and not because she was ashamed, just because she wanted to keep this feeling and remember it. Nimueh lay beside her and whispered, "You see, you know, you always knew."

Hunith lay like that for a while, but she couldn't ignore the exquisite body lying next to her for very long. Hunith's blood was rushing all over, and her fingers and toes felt as alive and flushed as her cheeks and her lips and her groin. So when she reached for Nimueh, wanting to give something back, she wasn't surprised that it felt better to her hands than magic ever had. Nimueh grabbed her hand and guided it, pushed and pulled so that even the rhythm of it was just what Nimueh chose, but the touch was still Hunith's.

Nimueh didn't break or cry out the way Hunith had, just swelled and pushed up, and Hunith heard a deep slow sigh and thought she should stop, but Nimueh kept her hand moving there, slower now but pressing harder, and Hunith loved moving and being moved this way, and when Nimueh came again, wet and throbbing on her fingers, Hunith felt triumphant as a woman taking flight over a green valley, or a sorceress swearing her love under the summer sun.

They lay still for a time, and when Hunith started shivering Nimueh covered her with a blanket but didn't come back to lie with her. She sat up and looked away, at the fire, and it blazed higher again, but Hunith felt cold. The minutes stretched on in silence until Hunith looked for her clothes and left.

*

It only happened a few more times, and even though it was the most marvellous thing her body had ever known, it always left her heart with the same dull, aching guilt.

Before it started, she'd thought about Nimueh all the time, thought about her magic, her beauty, her uniqueness. Now she spent as much time thinking about her kisses, her touch, the sureness of her fingers, the shape of her bare breasts. Hunith walked around with her flesh prickling and often sore, whether she'd been with Nimueh the night before or not. She'd never been so aware of her genitals before – it seemed they were filled with blood all the time, reminding her they needed attention.

She believed that Ygraine didn't mind. It would almost be better if she did.

"Does she know?" she asked once.

"What are you talking about?" said Nimueh.

They were lying naked on Nimueh's bed, in Nimueh's room, the only place they ever did what they'd just done. What else could she possibly be talking about? Who else but Nimueh's mistress could she mean? But she went along. "The queen. I'm asking whether Queen Ygraine knows about us."

"She knows I am a priestess," Nimueh answered casually. "She knows I have other lovers. I told you that before."

"And she doesn't complain? She doesn't…she doesn't want to know their names?"

Nimueh shrugged. "Even I don't know all their names."

Will you even remember mine? Hunith wondered.

She'd never thought of herself as – all right, she'd never thought of herself as anyone's lover. Before she came to Camelot she didn't know that was possible. But once she did, she'd never thought of herself as one more lover. Someone to come when called, to be available even when the queen was with her husband, trying to make the child that kept trying to hurt her.

I'm safe, she thought, she lives for danger, but she thinks of me as safe. Hunith had no husband, no family to speak of, no rival for Nimueh's attention.

She tried to let go of her disappointment, to remember this was still an honour, was still more than she'd ever thought she could have. Maybe there was still too much of the village girl clinging to her after all – and the wrong kind of village, one where the only happy ending to a story was marriage, one where people loved Uther too well and the Earth not enough.

There were villages and tribes where people still lived with the Old Religion, where women lived the phases of the moon as intimately as the changes in their own bodies. Where people loved Nimueh not just because she was beautiful or because she was the first woman to look at them that way. They loved her because she commanded the elements, because she was their connection to forces more powerful than individual human minds and hearts could even hope to understand.

How many rites of initiation had she presided over? How many maidens and virgin boys had learned pleasure at her hand? To be one of them was not shameful, Hunith told herself, lying awake at night. (Gaius had noticed her shoddy work of late, along with the hollows under her eyes. He tried sending her to bed earlier, asked if he might prepare her a sleeping draught. She said no.)

Mysteries like these had awed her until she'd come this close. Now she wanted the power of the elements out of her way. She wanted one living woman, one body, with her, here, in this bed.

*

For the first time, Ygraine had kept the pregnancy past the nausea of the early months. Her belly was visibly grown now and, despite the murmurs it aroused among the nobles and grumblings from the king, she walked about the castle. It must be because she was proud. Hunith was happy for her, and proud for Nimueh, who must have found a solution in magic at last.

Nimueh said it had only taken Uther trusting her a little bit more, giving up some of the control he held so tightly, giving some power back to the Earth. Hunith said, "Anything for her and the child to be safe," and she meant it.

She kept on working for Gaius and Nimueh both, kept learning the separate aspects of healing and magic they had to teach. Nimueh still guided Hunith's limbs and her fingers when they'd say a spell together. But the next time Nimueh kissed her lips Hunith said, "Will there be anything else?" Her voice was unsteady and her knees about to give out, but her mind was set. She'd spent too many nights fretting through this decision to give in now.

But after a pause, Nimueh only said, "If you have other things to do, you can go ahead."

She kept on working for both, and she believed they both needed her help now more than ever, but Nimueh stopped sharing secrets, and she was even more scornful than before. Hunith had become a servant again.

She told herself she'd known that was a risk. At least she still had both her jobs, and at least she still had her pride.

She still thought of Nimueh when she touched herself at night in bed, and she'd stopped feeling guilty. She felt her body was hers by right, but it wasn't Nimueh's, to do with as she liked and abandon on a whim. Anyhow, most nights she was too tired to bother. She had enough work and enough confidence in her place that she didn't need orgasms and she didn't need Gaius's drugs.

She was sleeping soundly the night Nimueh came running to her and shook her awake. She'd dreamt of Nimueh in this bed enough times that at first she thought it only a fancy, but Nimueh's brow was creased and her grip was urgent and angry, and once Hunith came fully awake she was sure it was about the queen again. They shouldn't have hoped for so much.

"Is she–"

"Go," Nimueh said before she could finish.

"What?"

"Get out, you need to get out of Camelot."

"I don't understand. Has she–"

"Of course you don't. You never understood and you never will."

"Do you need my help?" Hunith was putting on her clothes, ignoring the casual insult. It was never wise to expect much kindness and consideration from Nimueh, less since she'd stopped going to bed with her, and still less in a time of crisis. "Is it the queen?"

"There's nothing you can do. There's nothing any of us–"

"Tell me what's happening, Nimueh! You don't get to give orders just because–"

"Dark times are coming. For all of us."

"You're not a Seer."

"Shut up, you stupid–"

This wasn't normal. Nimueh seemed to be breaking, raising her hands to her forehead. Hunith grabbed her wrists and spoke forcefully.

"Tell me how you know, Nimueh. I'm not an idiot. I'm trying to learn from you, still, you know that."

"There's no time now."

"He's not going to kill anyone in the next five minutes."

"How do you know?" Nimueh mocked. "You're not a Seer either, unless you've been keeping something from me."

Hunith simply looked at her and held still, and after a moment Nimueh's shoulders dropped and her arms went limp in Hunith's hands. Hunith hugged her, a simple thing she'd never done. But they held it only for a few moments.

"I don't know when," Nimueh said, "I don't know how it will happen. But I've just understood, what we did."

Hunith thought of last autumn and hesitated, but then they were saying things they didn't normally say out loud. "You mean what you did…to help Ygraine's child?"

Nimueh closed her eyes. Hunith had never seen her look so pained. "The Old Religion," she whispered. "I thought we could – I was sure it was the right thing, to bring this child into the world. Not just for Ygraine or any of that nonsense about the kingdom, but the magic seemed to want it too. Only it needs a sacrifice." She stopped.

"You think Uther will sacrifice one of us?"

It could happen that way, a servant chosen at random or for some slight or mistake, made to give his life or hers so a prince or princess could live. Especially if Ygraine was too weak or too ill to stop him. He could command it, he had power over all of their lives and deaths. Even if she'd always known him to be a just king – that went along with every tale of his good looks she'd heard since she was a girl. So good, Prince Uther, so fair…

"No," said Nimueh. "He doesn't get to choose. None of us do. It will take her."

Ygraine's death, the thing everyone had feared, whether they knew her as a person or only as a ruler. And Nimueh loved her, even if she never said so.

"But if it's from the magic," said Hunith, "if it's the sacrifice needed to keep the child alive, then you can stop it."

"No. She won't let me."

"She doesn't need to let you! You're a sorceress, what can she do? You'll find another way! There are a dozen poor girls right here in the city carrying children they don't want to raise. There are ways of disguising a human child, of switching one for another. You taught me that! How can you act like it's already–"

"Because it is. It's done, it's decided, ever since the ritual." Nimueh turned away slowly, and then she was moving again, pulling open the cupboard where Hunith kept her things and roughly stuffing her clothes in a bag. "Hunith," she said, not looking at her, "this is not your fight. Many, many of our people our going to die because of what I've done. I'm going to do what I can to stop it, but I know already that I'm going to lose Ygraine. I couldn't stand to lose you too."

"So you're sending me away?"

Nimueh nearly growled as she turned back to her. "Yes, and stop acting like a spurned lover about it, Hunith. Put shoes on. You'll need to go on foot, and go far away, out of his kingdom. It won't be safe for any of us from now on."

"Then you'll come with me?"

She shook her head. "I need to stay with Ygraine."

"Gaius should–"

"Gaius can take care of himself." Nimueh put the pack in Hunith's hands.

"I need to say goodbye."

"Then tell him your father's sick, but go, go before daybreak."

"Will I ever see you again?" Hunith said, feeling foolish.

"I don't know."

Hunith set the pack down on the bed. She put her hands on Nimueh's shoulders and kissed her, direct and open, with no attempt at seduction or subtlety. Even she didn't know what she meant by it, perhaps goodbye, perhaps I'm sorry, or come for me, I'll wait for you. Perhaps only that she wanted to be kissed. Nimueh held her and hugged her and for the time it lasted it was right. Then Nimueh pulled away, turned her back and ran.

---

Merlin held his mother's hand as he sat by her bed. She was breathing regularly now and he tried to concentrate on that, the good. It seemed to him that her skin was continuing to heal as well, that even in the minutes he'd sat with her the sores had faded. By the time she woke she'd truly be back to herself, he told himself, and whatever had happened just now was only…a mood, a "spell" in the sense old Widow Hendry used to say it, not the kind of spell an enemy sent.

Gaius brought him a cup of something warm. "Will this knock me out?" Merlin asked, somewhat hopefully, but he started drinking before waiting for an answer. It tasted familiar, though he couldn't have identified a single ingredient. His work with Gaius had not developed any special affinity for remedies and healing, much to the old man's disappointment, and probably Hunith's as well.

"No," Gaius said, "it's for strength, though it won't disturb your nerves either. I've made a dose for myself, and Hunith can have some once she comes around.

"She won't be out long? Perhaps we shouldn't have…perhaps we should have just let her talk."

"Perhaps," Gaius said, and his eyes did not quite meet Merlin's. "But she does need her rest. If she wants to talk to you when she wakes up, there's nothing to stop her. But an episode like that could have tired her more than she can handle after her sickness.

Merlin nodded quickly. "I just… I'd never seen her like that. I mean, it takes a lot to get her upset in the first place, like knocking down the biggest tree in Ealdor right in front of everybody. Or breaking Will's arm or…and even then she just gets quiet."

"She always did have a strong, steady heart," Gaius said, as if he were agreeing, even though that wasn't really what Merlin had said at all.

"Of course, I shouldn't be rabbiting on like this. You've known her since before I was born, haven't you? I don't need to tell you what she's like."

Gaius only chuckled.

"You should get some rest yourself," Merlin said, suddenly guilty for a whole new reason. "I can't even think what you've been through already today."

"I could say the same to you."

"Yeah," said Merlin, "I killed someone today, and it wasn't even..." he didn't want to chase that thought to the end of it, so he just stopped. "I reckon that's why my mother got so upset, don't you?"

"She reacted when she heard you'd killed someone?"

"Yeah, when she found out about Nimueh. She must have heard her name when we were talking before, when we first found her here. I didn't think she'd understood. She was so sick." Merlin felt himself tensing up with fear again, remembering seeing his mother collapsed on the floor and Gaius bent over her.

"That name would have been known to her," said Gaius.

"That's right," Merlin said, "Uther knew her name too. You fought her before, didn't you?"

Gaius was silent for a moment, choosing his words. "It must be hard for you to imagine now, Merlin, but things were very different in Camelot before you were born. Before Arthur was born, I should say."

"You mean before the Purge."

"Yes. At the time that your mother lived in Camelot…"

"Yeah," said Merlin "so she doesn't hate all sorcerers like everybody else here does. I kind of figured that out already."

"There's more to it than that. In those days there wasn't the kind of separation between sorcerers and the rest of us that there is now."

"But my mum's not…She's not like me. I was always the only one in Ealdor. And she always told me to keep it secret. She didn't get as worked up about it as you –" he grinned sideways at Gaius when he said that – "but, well, like I said, she doesn't really get worked up about things."

Gaius nodded slowly. "Of course. But she lived here at a time when magic was not something to be hidden. Nimueh lived here in those day too."

"What?"

"And your mother would not have known her as an enemy. It was…a very different time." He paused, and his voice sounded very heavy, tired and old when he added, "It was a very good time."

Merlin thought of Edwin – and he tried not to think about killing Edwin. He wished he could stop remembering that, and Nimueh, and the old woman from when he'd first come here... But no, Edwin when he'd been alive, he'd said that Gaius had been his parents' friend and had betrayed them, let them burn on Uther's pyre. How many other friends of Gaius's had been killed? And for the first time Merlin wondered, how many of them had also been friends to his mother?

Then he remembered the first time he'd heard Nimueh's name himself, when she brought the plague that almost took Gwen's father, along with so many others. How bewildered Merlin had been then to think of someone using magic for evil. The way he'd made sense of it was to decide those people, people like Nimueh, must just be evil through and through. Born that way, the same way he was born with magic but born good.

Only now Gaius seemed to be saying that even Nimueh wasn't always that way. It was like having the rug pulled out from under him all over again, and Merlin was annoyed, Merlin was angry, he thought he'd had enough threats and reverses in the last few days, and it wasn't fair that he should have to figure this out as well.

He rubbed at his forehead with tight fisted hands. "Gaius," he said.

"Yes, my boy?"

"Tell me it was all right, what happened today. Tell me it was the right thing to do."

Gaius sighed deeply and put his arm around Merlin's shoulder. "You saved my life today, Merlin, and you saved your mother's. I can hardly hold it against you. You rid the world of someone who has sought to bring death and destruction to Camelot. If your destiny is to protect Arthur then…it would seem you made the right decision."

Merlin was starting to breathe a little easier, but then Gaius added, "Of course, with magic one can never be sure of these things, and with the powers of the Old Religion even less so. No one now living understands it as well as Nimueh did, and even she…made mistakes in her time."

Merlin didn't like the thought of Nimueh making mistakes. It seemed much more serious then him making mistakes, for example.

"You did not know that your offer of a sacrifice would harm your mother, and you and I cannot know what Nimueh's death will bring. You acted rashly, Merlin. You saved us, for now, but I do not know what consequences your actions will bring. And I do not believe we can ever say that killing is the right thing."

It wasn't the answer he'd wanted to hear, and he thought about arguing (Hadn't Gaius just said she tried to kill them all? And hadn't he gone along with Uther's executions all this time, and wouldn't good magic users like them be able to do more good without people like Nimueh and Edwin and Tauren and Sophia going around making Uther think all sorcerers were evil?) but he was honestly far too tired, so he just nodded and sat there, and was grateful to have his mother and the closest thing he'd ever known to a father here with him.

---

The woman at the door was ragged – not old, but stooped low with the weariness of travel and hunger.

"I have very little," Hunith said, "but you are welcome to share a meal and stay the night."

"These are dangerous times," said the woman, "especially for a woman alone. Why are you so quick to share with a stranger?"

"Because these are dangerous times. And because I am a woman alone, and I have been a traveller. Will you come in?"

"Of course, Hunith. Thank you."

"How do you–" But before she'd finished speaking (taking the woman's cloak and stepping aside to let her in) she understood. "You're still lovely," she said.

Nimueh shook her head – a mess of faded brown tangles now, not the dark curls Hunith remembered. "We have other priorities now," she said. "The last thing I want to do is attract attention with my stunning beauty."

"You should have travelled as a man then," Hunith said, laughing. She poured a cup of water from the pitcher and brought it to the table where Nimueh sat down. "It's safer for them on the road."

"But then you wouldn't have let me in." Nimueh drank the whole thing down without pausing. "Do you have any beer?" she asked.

Hunith laughed again. "I'll ask next door."

"Don't bother. I want to look at you."

Hunith sat down and let her look, even though she didn't like sitting still when she could be helping. "I look the same as before. You couldn't wait to get rid of me then."

"Don't," said Nimueh, and the look in her eyes (soft brown, tired, with little crow's feet at the corners) made Hunith want to weep. She went still and they studied each other in silence for a few moments. Nimueh touched Hunith's face, and her fingers were calloused, nothing like the fine hands of the queen's companion.

"This body…" Hunith began.

"Mine, not stolen."

"I thought," Hunith explained, "I know there are sorcerers who enchant the eye, make you think you're seeing something that you're not, but I'm seeing…what you are now." Hunith also knew there were sorceresses who would kill in order to take another's form. She wouldn't put it beyond Nimueh, but she wasn't about to admit that.

"Let me get you some food. I only made soup for myself and it's…" It shamed her, but there was nothing else for it. "All I can do is add some water and split it between us."

"It's fine, Hunith. Thank you."

Hunith took the pitcher of water to the stove, thinned the soup and wait for it to heat. "How did you find me?"

"You haven't done much to hide yourself. Crossed the ridge of Aesctir but didn't even bother to change your name. We don't all have to get new faces but–"

"He never even looked me in the eye," Hunith said, not looking at Nimueh now, "let alone learned my name. He didn't pay attention to any of us servants." But that made her sound bitter, when really – "It was good I got out when I did, it was good you warned me, I…"

Her voice was breaking so she stopped, ladled out the soup and came back to the table. Before they ate she took the strange hands in hers and said, "Thank you, Nimueh. I don't know that I'd be alive today if I hadn't had your help."

Nimueh took to her food without saying anything, and Hunith guessed it was a subject she'd rather not speak of more than necessary. Hunith had heard of mass executions, of fires that could be seen and smelled as far away as Culworth, of witch-hunts that crawled throughout the kingdom and beyond.

"I'm glad you got out," Hunith said, even though she knew Nimueh would rather not hear it. "I hadn't known, and I'd worried about you, of course. I'm glad to see you, even though I'm not, really…"

The woman frowning at her could have been her mother's age, if her mother had lived…though perhaps a little younger. She reminded her a bit of her Aunt Maggie, which made her laugh. It was a good thing she'd learned to keep her head down all those years ago. Perhaps if she hadn't learned that lesson Uther would have remembered her impudence and decided to punish her for it. Other women and men had died for less.

She hadn't had any contact with her family since she'd left, but someday, she thought, she ought to go back to Culworth and thank Aunt Maggie, if she was still alive.

"Getting out was easy for me. With enough magic these things always are. It's the amateurs who…Gaius is all right, you know."

"Yes, I did hear that. He remains at Uther's side."

"On Uther's side," Nimueh said roughly. "What about you? How do you live?"

Hunith paused. "I have a garden…"

"For medicines?"

"No. I don't want them to think of me as the village witch."

Nimueh frowned. "Every village needs someone to heal their sick. That doesn't have to mean–"

"There's an old man, he's much like the healer in the place where I grew up, only he doesn't even have a single book. I leave it to him, though if I had children I'd take care of them myself. No, Nimueh, I plant the same vegetables everyone else does, and I earn some extra whenever someone needs something written or read."

"Is that enough for you?"

"Not really. But I'm surviving. I think things will get better the longer I stay, as they learn to trust me more. I'm getting better at gardening too."

"Hmm, not at cooking though."

"Why you ungrateful…"

Nimueh laughed and Hunith couldn't help joining her. It was only the truth, really.

"After all the potions we worked on together, you'd think you could at least make some decent soup. No wonder you still haven't found another peasant to marry and get you with child."

Hunith stared at her. "Did you ever know me at all?" she said. "I'd never marry a man. I never…"

Nimueh dropped her spoon and looked at Hunith intently, even grabbed her hand. "I know that, Hunith. I'm teasing you."

"Sure, all right. Are you finished?"

She shook her head and ate another spoonful. "I may be rude but I haven't eaten since yesterday."

Hunith ate her own food and said nothing.

Hunith washed the dishes and Nimueh dried them. Hunith half expected her to use magic – to show off, if for no other reason – but she just wiped them with a cloth that Hunith had knit. She said, "Some get married. Some live with another all their lives, just as if they were married, even if they don't have the ritual to make it binding. Some are meant to find one other person, and some of us aren't made like that."

Hunith wasn't sure what some of us meant just then.

"No husband then," said Nimueh, "that's out of the question. But have you had your eye on anyone else? Or your hands, for that matter? Some other traveller, perhaps? Some other villager?"

Hunith didn't think Nimueh had any right to ask that, but she also didn't have any reason to keep it secret, so she answered mildly and truthfully, "None that weren't already taken."

Nimueh sighed, and Hunith felt young and foolish again, which she didn't think was really fair. "What," she said, "was the first thing I did after leaving my entire life behind and moving to another village supposed to be…stealing some farmer's wife?"

"A wife doesn't belong to her husband," Nimueh said quietly.

The dishes were done and the last thing Hunith wanted to do with the woman she'd been missing and worrying about for the last sixteen months was to argue. She said, "I know, and I know you don't belong to anybody. I'm still glad you're here."

She made up the bed for Nimueh and started to lay out the extra blanket for herself on the floor.

"What are you doing?" said Nimueh.

"I'm…" Hunith sighed. She wasn't at all sure. "Tell me what I should be doing."

"Why don't you come sit with me."

Hunith sat next to her, and Nimueh put an arm around her shoulders, and for a while they were still together, getting used to each other's warmth, their scent, their soft breath.

"You're just the same," Nimueh said, with wonder in her voice, as if this were a great discovery.

"I'm not," Hunith said. "I'm worn down. I've been alone for all this time, since I left. I've been…" She stopped and took a breath. She didn't like the way her voice cracked, but she couldn't keep quiet. "I'd been alone all my life until I met you. Did you know that? Did it matter to you at all that I was…that you were all I ever…"

She still had her mouth free, but Nimueh was kissing her throat, the base of her neck and she couldn't go on talking when she was feeling that. She didn't want to go on complaining or even thinking about how lonely she'd been and how long. She clutched at the cloth at Nimueh's back, touched her smooth, thin hair. She pulled her up closer. She kissed her on the mouth and Nimueh kissed back but didn't hold it for too long. She remembered.

Hunith relaxed her hands, sliding them down Nimueh's sides to her waist, remembering another woman's shape.

"It's not just the body that's different," she said.

Nimueh smiled. "You like being prettier than me."

"Oh, stop it." She squeezed her and kissed her again, and Nimueh laughed.

The first woman to make love to Hunith was so beautiful it had frightened her. The woman she was holding now was so beautiful she never wanted to stop touching her. She was shorter, rounder about the middle, where Hunith held her now. Her body was more like Hunith's own, though older, her breasts less full, her face more deeply lined.

"Admit it," said Nimueh, "you like seeing me humbled."

"Well…all right. I don't like seeing you hurt, I wouldn't ever want that. And you're not ugly, Nimueh, you could never be. But I like…you're kinder now, I think. You're listening to me."

"I always listened," said Nimueh. She pursed her lips, starting to pull away, and Hunith decided it was her turn to shut her up with a kiss.

"Relax," Hunith said when she let go of Nimueh's mouth. "I know what I'm doing."

That wasn't completely true, but as they finished getting rid of their clothes Hunith decided to pretend it was.

She wasn't an expert, and it wasn't comfortable. It wasn't like tumbling into bed alone at the end of a long day. It wasn't familiar and it wasn't like the joyous reunion she'd been dreaming of. But it was almost as good. Better, maybe. Once she let go of her nervousness, it didn't come back to trouble her again. This was Hunith's home, her bed, her fire that was never quite warm enough, no matter how hard she wished, and she hadn't had another body or the excitement of another woman's touch in all the time she'd lived in this ugly little hut.

Nimueh's hands were different but she still knew where to reach with them. Hunith had to relearn what Nimueh wanted, for it wasn't quite the same, but the learning was easier now, as the touching was easier, and everything inside these four walls was a little bit closer to what it should be.

They slept together, with Nimueh's back against Hunith's chest, and Hunith's hand rested on her lover's hip. She could get used to this, she thought, even though she had no idea how long Nimueh planned to stay. She could be happy, just like this.

*

The next day Nimueh helped Hunith pull up weeds in the garden. Hunith was surprised to see her on her knees, working with her hands. She wasn't surprised that the plants responded more easily to Nimueh's hands than her own, or that she could feel Nimueh's magic moving through the earth, reaching out to her.

"Nothing too obvious," Hunith said quietly.

"Don't worry, I've learned a thing or two about subtlety."

Hunith's face heated and she bent her head. Nimueh was the most powerful sorceress Hunith had ever known. If she had survived everything that had happened since Hunith left Camelot, she had to know a lot more about keeping magic secret than Hunith ever would.

Once they were inside again Hunith asked whether she still practised magic, and if she ever thought of bringing it back to Camelot.

"Every day," Nimueh said, "I couldn't live without it any more than I could stop eating and breathing. As for Camelot, we're staying away for now, but we'll go back when we're strong again. And things will be…different next time."

Hunith nodded, pity for her friends and fear of Uther mixed with something new, fear of the hardness in Nimueh's voice. "Who is 'we'? How many escaped?" she asked.

"Not enough, not as many as were caught. But it's…there were some whom Uther knew, there were others he discovered. But there are some who live in the villages and do a spell once a year to call back the sun. He'd have them killed if he knew, but there's no way he can know what every man and woman does in secret."

"And some of us are able to keep it to ourselves more easily."

"Yes. It's not a question of a few people who are sorcerers and the rest who are normal, though he wants to think it's that way, that he can just hunt down the Druids, route out a few others, and keep the rest of the kingdom under his thumb."

"He'd end up executing himself and his own wife, if everyone who ever –"

"Yes, exactly."

Hunith bit her tongue, wishing she hadn't mentioned Ygraine. But since the subject was there, she took Nimueh's hand and said, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for all that you lost."

Nimueh acknowledged her with a slight nod. It was a little while before she spoke.

"There are…cycles. Our people have suffered before, we've gone underground before. The Druids went into hiding so quickly – so easily, most of them – it seems hard to believe now that they ever lived out in the open, even though it was barely a year ago… But they're like me, you see. We don't call it the Old Religion because it's been replaced by the new. We call it that because it endures."

These were things Hunith knew, things Nimueh had taught her back at Camelot. Still, she was surprised that was what Nimueh would talk about now. A people, not a person. Not the beautiful queen who'd trusted Nimueh with her life, her child, her marriage, and her kingdom.

*

Nimueh went away after three days. She had errands in the north.

A few weeks later she was back, this time she was a girl younger than Hunith, with blond hair cropped short and chest bound flat under her shirt. She looked like a girl who'd tried to live like a boy, perhaps as a travelling farmhand, and found it hadn't worked. This time Hunith recognised her immediately.

"Looking for a place to stay, young lad?"

She looked at Hunith out of the corner of her eye.

"Come in, my old, dear friend," Hunith said, and hugged and kissed her as soon as the door was closed. She pulled off the boy's clothes and took the girl to bed. She'd missed her.

She'd never felt such a need to take care of her before. She wanted to keep her here in this house, in this bed, warm under this blanket and wrapped in Hunith's arms. Not let her run off again and come back as someone else – or worse, not come back at all.

"Did they find you out?" she asked. "Did you have to hide again?"

Nimueh shrugged. "I'm always hiding. I try not to stay in any one place…or any one face, for very long."

Hunith nodded. "And the one I knew before, was she…"

When Hunith didn't finish Nimueh offered "The real me?"

"Yes."

"No."

Hunith laughed, a little startled. "Of course not. I should never have thought."

"Well, most people are. You don't stop to think whether you're looking at the real thing."

"You do though, don't you? You don't trust people to… You're not quite like us. You're not just wise, you're not just talented, you're…you've been alive for a very long time."

"Yes." It sounded so strange, coming from this awkward young girl.

"And after I'm a withered old woman you'll still…you'll look just like this, if you want to."

"Hmm, I don't know. Maybe I'll decide to grow old with you."

Hunith smiled but she didn't really think it was funny. "No wonder you…"

"What?"

"No wonder you don't let yourself care for any one person too much. It would hurt, having to see them grow old and die, having them leave you."

Nimueh frowned but didn't say anything, and Hunith thought about trying to soften her words, but she didn't. Nimueh's hand moved idly on her thigh. Hunith flexed the muscles in her leg, wondering what it would be to move someone else's leg as if it were her own. What it would mean to live for a thousand years was more than she cared to contemplate.

"What happened, while you were away? Were you in danger?"

"Do you really want to know?"

Hunith held back a groan and the words, I wouldn't have asked… and made herself stop and ask whether she really did.

Nimueh was tracing patterns on Hunith's skin again, gentle, almost idle, not looking at her when she spoke. "I have a lot work to do. I have people who need me, and I have people who hate me. I won't give up my work – I couldn't. That would be giving up what I am. You understand that, I think."

"Yes."

"But I like being able to forget about it sometimes, at least for a little while. I'd like to be able to come here and do that. Keep the world outside."

Hunith thought of women she knew, wives here and in Camelot and in Culworth whose husbands saw them a few times a year, in between trade journeys or military campaigns. Some of them raised children on their own. Some of them had lovers and others lived alone. She'd never thought of herself being much like them. She'd never thought of being much like anyone else. What if it turned out she was just the same as the good wives at home, if the only difference was the kind of warrior she gave her hand to?

"I want you to feel safe when you're with me," she said slowly. "But you know my house is part of the world, don't you? That I'm part of it. I'm not just…someone who waits for you."

"I know."

Hunith wanted to ask a hundred questions, about the last few weeks, about the months before. But she had her arms around Nimueh and she also wanted to keep her here and keep her safe. If the closest thing to that she could do was to keep her questions to herself, all right, she would do it. At least she would try.

*

Nimueh never stayed for more than a week, and sometimes she stayed away for months at a time. Other women began to arrive at Hunith's house, bearing Nimueh's mark on their arms, or simply saying they'd heard this was a safe place for women travelling alone. Some would pay her with coins or jewels or good cloth while others offered only their apologies, explaining they had nothing to give. They'd had to leave home suddenly, or they'd been robbed along the way.

"It's all right," Hunith would say. "I was in your place once. I understand."

Some of them were sorceresses, exiles from Camelot, but she was never sure how many, for most chose not to tell her anything about themselves, and Hunith too kept her past to herself. It was safer that way, even if it did sometimes make for stilted conversations over food that she never got much better at preparing. They would talk of the little joys and hardships of travel. Some told her they were eager to get back to their families, and others said they hoped they'd find another person so kind as to take them in the next stop on their journeys.

They would stay for only a night. Sometimes they would share Hunith's bed only because the winter nights were cold, and sleeping together was easier than deciding who would sleep on the floor. But if anyone put an arm around her at night she would gently push them away, saying only, "Rest now."

Nimueh had far to travel, and Hunith guessed she must take shelter from the bitter winter in other homes, visiting sympathetic men and women scattered across the land. Hunith wondered if she shared a bed with her other hosts. She wondered if the others kept themselves only for her, if they longed for her in the months she was away. She wondered if Nimueh visited her more than any of the others, if Ealdor was more to her than one place to rest among many. She wondered if she was loved. She didn't ask.

Recognising Nimueh among the other women became easier each time. Sometimes she even looked the same, holding on to a face for some months or returning to one she'd left behind. The longer Nimueh stayed the same, the safer Hunith felt – it must mean no one had recognised her, decided to hunt her down. But even when she looked different, she looked at Hunith the same way – with intent, with confidence, with an arrogance that never left her, even though news of the killings never seemed to stop.

When they were together they spent much of their time arguing – usually while getting work done at the same time. But it didn't upset Hunith the way it had when she lived in Camelot. Well, she didn't have to fear being dismissed anymore. Being scorned by Nimueh was only that, one woman's scorn. People around here cared what she thought even less than they cared about Hunith.

She feared for Nimueh's life in a way she hadn't back then, but then again, Nimueh always seemed to take care of herself. Hunith didn't even think of trying to get her to settle down and stop travelling, stop plotting, stop fighting.

When Nimueh asked, "Don't you get tired of living here all by yourself?" at first Hunith thought it was a trick.

"Yes," she answered without hesitation. "But it's better than the alternative."

"You mean better than living with me?" Nimueh said, but she was only teasing.

"No, you self-centred witch, I mean better than being married, and better than living on the run." She hesitated, and then added, "You know that if you wanted to stay here you could. I'd rather live with you than live alone."

It was the first warm day of the year, the first day there were able to sit out on a hillside, looking over the village. Below them it looked tinier than ever, and Hunith too felt small, barely worthy of notice, especially since Nimueh didn't answer her offer. Instead she said, "But you liked Camelot. You liked living in a big city, meeting new people, knowing others who used magic."

"In the old days, yes, of course I did."

"You didn't come back here because it was like the place where you grew up. You came here because it was safe."

"And that was what you told me to do. Go someplace safe."

Nimueh nodded absently. "But have you thought about…"

"What?"

"Of how you could change things?"

"What, me? We decided to leave that up to you and the Druids, remember? I keep the refuge for when you're tired of fighting."

Nimueh shook her head. "I mean change things for you."

"Why don't you come out and say what you're thinking?"

Nimueh's eyes glinted when she did: "It's almost May."

"What, and the festival of –"

Hunith could feel her eyes getting huge, all her annoyance replaced by sheer surprise, but Nimueh just grinned at her and said, "Yes."

"You mean lie back and let some man I don't even know –"

"Yes."

"Nimueh!" she said, in a tone that she hoped conveyed both I don't know what I'd do without you and I don't know why I even keep you.

"Hunith, you're far too set in your ways. And far too resistant, considering I taught you everything you know about this."

"Just because you deflowered me doesn't mean–"

"I'm telling you the truth, it's the easiest kind of sex there is! He doesn't know who you are, and you don't know who he is. It's like being with no man in particular, which is like being with no man at all..."

"You know what else is like that?" Hunith teased. "Sex with no man at all."

"Except this way you can get a child."

Hunith stopped. She had nothing to say to that, hadn't even known that Nimueh knew, not really. Not enough to throw it into an argument like that, knowing it would make her win. She hadn't wanted it when she was at Camelot, and they hadn't spoken of it since. Sure, Hunith sometimes watched the young mothers of Ealdor with envy, but that was when she was alone. When Nimueh was here they spent all their time inside the house, or they had until today.

"Well, that's what you want, isn't it?" Nimueh insisted. "A merry-begotten child will be yours alone. The father will have no claim on it."

Hunith thought for a few moments. "There's only a little chance," she said. "All the girls go to Beltane and only a few of them –"

"Have powerful sorceresses casting spells on their side?"

Hunith smiled, carefully putting aside the knowledge that Ygraine had had a powerful sorceress on her side. She was sure Nimueh was thinking of it too. If she'd made a mistake back then, she'd learned her lesson, and if it was dangerous she wouldn't do the same thing again. Hunith said, "Convince me."

*

They travelled two days to the south and west, riding together on Nimueh's horse for the first few hours and hiring another for the bulk of the journey. Of course there were other celebrations nearer by (though none in Ealdor and none within Uther's lands, because even if it was called a dance and a festival of spring, it was too much like magic for anyone to risk doing it out in the open like that), but they agreed it was best not to risk spending a night on the grass and a lifetime's shared blood with Ealdor's butcher or the boy who worked at the mill. "No one will know you," Nimueh promised. "It isn't supposed to matter anyway, but they'll never come after you from here."

There were a hundred men and women gathered in the field when they arrived. A few were playing music but the pole was stark and unadorned, and only a few people danced in casual couples at first. Nimueh presented Hunith to a few friends and said she needed to see to the horses and would be back in a few minutes. Hunith was nervous to be left alone, but the people she was with smiled and laughed and served her spring wine, and slowly she began to let her guard down, even though Nimueh was staying away longer than she should.

After all, she told herself, I used to be bold. She remembered the day she came to Camelot, how she hadn't been afraid of anything then, least of all saying hello to a stranger. She smiled at them and decided to stop looking around for Nimueh to come back. She talked about her journey but did not say where she'd come from.

The people here seemed happier than the ones Hunith was used to seeing, the ones who lived in Ealdor and the ones who passed through. They were poor, like the peasants she had grown up with and the ones she lived with now, but their lives did not seem so narrow, if their smiles and their gestures were any indication. Perhaps she should have travelled farther in the first place, rather than settling down as soon as she'd crossed the border. She should have sought out a place where magic was practised openly and people liked to dance. Or perhaps it was just the drink and the sun and the tilt of the earth that made everyone around her so gay.

The dance was not quite the same as the one Hunith had learned as a girl, but she held her ribbon high and watched the woman a few steps ahead of her – she'd heard her name, but she couldn't remember it now – ducking and turning into and out of the circle whenever she did, and though that meant twisting her ribbon with those of the men and boys, Hunith's eye was always on the others who were dancing the same steps as she. She laughed and sang in harmony with them, and pushed the thought of what needed to happen next out of her mind. An old man with a long grey beard stood among the musicians and called out blessings along with the dance steps, saying it was up to them to bring back the warmth of summer.

When the dance ended Hunith was standing next to a tall, slender young man with dark hair, gentle features and an easy smile. They'd run under the other couples' arms and that seemed to be the end of it. The younger children had gone off home already, and the older, more experienced ones were walking off two by two.

Hunith looked around for someone else. Nimueh hadn't promised to stay with her through the night, and perhaps she'd been foolish to assume, but "No," she said, "no, this isn't right. Nimueh is supposed to be here."

She shut her mouth suddenly, remembering she wasn't supposed to say that name. Even this far from Camelot, even in a place where magic wasn't kept secret, everyone knew the story of Nimueh's crime (betrayal, they called it) and Uther's rage. Anyone might try to gain Uther's favour or his gold by handing over the witch.

But the man only hushed her and said, "Don't worry, she's here, you're not alone."

And he laid a gentle kiss at the base of her throat that made her knees go weak, and somehow made her feel strong at the same time. This was what she'd come here for, and for the first time she really knew this was what she wanted. She leaned into him and said, "All right."

And after that it wasn't strange or scary at all. She'd let Nimueh touch her with other hands and mouths before. So this one's fingers were thicker and his voice was deeper than the others. It hadn't mattered before and it mattered only a little bit now.

The ground was soft beneath her and the night warm with bodies and bonfires. He wasn't like the men she'd heard about. He didn't lie on top of her, cut off her breath or force her open. He knelt between her legs and touched her in all the ways she liked best, and by the time he did push into her it didn't hurt, because Hunith was already overcome, wet and open with the bliss he'd brought her with his mouth. He didn't say anything after, just lay down next to her with one arm resting lightly at her hip. She kissed his brow and his face lit up with a smile. He pulled her to him, and even though his body was harder than what she was used to, it was still warm and still loving and she fell asleep happy, full of hope.

When Hunith woke she was in the arms of the woman who'd brought her to the field. Their bodies were wet with dew and the residue of what they'd spilled in the night. The sun stung her eyes.

Hunith pushed up on her elbows and then her knees to look around. There were a few couples still lying on the ground. Others were walking away together or separately. Hunith smiled at two boys who lay together, kissing passionately as if the fires were still roaring and no one else were looking.

She looked over at Nimueh, who opened her eyes and smiled. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" she asked.

"No," Hunith said, and kissed her, "but I do want a bath. That's allowed isn't it? That doesn't…interfere with the magic?"

"No." Nimueh sat up and took her hand. "The magic is done."

But that wasn't the end of it, much to Hunith's relief, and eventually her joy. She was used to Nimueh leaving her after a night or a week, and after all that was what Beltane fathers were supposed to do – go on their merry way in the morning, and leave the women to theirs – but that wasn't what Nimueh did this time.

They bathed each other tenderly in the stream, almost as if it were another ritual, even though Nimueh assured her it wouldn't affect the magic one way or another. Then Nimueh rode with her back to Ealdor, staying close on the journey and once they reached Hunith's house. Weeks went by and they slept together every night. Even when Hunith was vomiting up half her meals, even when she grew so sore and irritable she didn't want anyone to touch her. Nimueh stayed by her side for as much time as she used to spend away, only leaving for a day or two at a time when she had news of an emergency. She didn't go back into Uther's lands; she promised she wouldn't do anything dangerous now. She would stay safe, and she would keep Hunith and the child safe as well.

If another woman came seeking shelter, she would sleep on the floor, and sometimes Nimueh would too, leaving the bed to Hunith, who found it harder and harder to get comfortable and to sleep through the night as the months went on.

The form Nimueh had taken was of a woman Hunith's age again, with pale skin, long dark hair, and full red lips that were nearly always smiling. Her eyes were an intense clear blue.

"I think I'll stay like this from now on," said Nimueh, "if I can."

"It's not dangerous?"

"Not really. No one's seen me like this except for you and a few other witches and the revellers that night, and the people of Ealdor who only know me as…"

"As the one who stayed," Hunith finished for her.

Nimueh huffed a little laugh, as if she hadn't thought of it that way, as if she didn't like the thought very much. "Sure," she said. "I have stayed a long time, haven't I?"

"Not by Ealdor's standards, but by yours, yes, I think so." Hunith was still a newcomer by Ealdor's standards, and they didn't get many.

"Yes, that's right," said Nimueh. "Nearly four months that I've made no move against Camelot, that I've done nothing to help my people."

"All right," said Hunith, "But that's only if you don't consider me one of your people. And you know…she flexed her fingers for the magic that didn't flow through them, but then she laid her hand on her stomach. "I may not have been born as one of you, like this child will be, but I chose to be one of you. Only seems right you should choose to spend some time with me."

Hunith smiled and Nimueh smiled back at her. "I like staying here," she said.

"I like having you. And my neighbours would think it strange if you went out with a different face tomorrow."

Nimueh laughed with real mirth then. "Thanks for the advice. Think of it, you're the one who's changing now. I may as well stay the same. And I like looking like this. Or at least, I like the way you look at me."

Hunith was used to that, to the way Nimueh would mention the struggle for justice as if it couldn't have anything to do with Hunith. As if she couldn't love Hunith and love magic at the same time, which was mostly absurd, considering magic was what made Hunith fall for Nimueh in the first place.

She didn't think she meant it as a reproach. If Nimueh wanted to she could leave, cast whatever spells or fight whatever battles she needed for her conscience and her people's sake. Instead she stayed here and rubbed Hunith's back until she relaxed and fell asleep in Nimueh's arms. Instead she stayed here and smoothed her fingers between Hunith's legs, over the flesh that seemed to be swollen all the time now, even more than when she'd first discovered sex and was touching herself all the time.

Autumn came and Nimueh helped Hunith pick the herbs and dig up the vegetables in her garden. She even helped some of the other neighbours, joined in the communal work and celebrations as they brought in the wheat and barley, and helped with the figures and the work of separation when it came time to send tribute to King Cendred.

They called her Viviane, and they started to say Hunith's name more easily, to smile more quickly when they saw her. By that time everyone could tell she was with child and they'd decided she deserved their support, even though they didn't know her father or her baby's father, even though she did come from far away, and even though she did have some rather strange visitors. At gatherings they handed her their own young children to hold, told her their names, told her to ask for help when she needed it.

"Next time you go travelling," she said when they were alone, "go in the body of a pregnant woman. They'll treat you better."

"Sure," said Nimueh, "but I'd still have to walk the road. I'd rather not carry any more weight than I have to.

It wasn't just a question of weight, of course. The nausea had passed but Hunith didn't feel anything like herself, nor did she feel like a powerful transforming magical being, for all she tried to think of it that way. It wasn't just her belly that swelled up, but her legs and her arms, and her breasts were such heavy, foreign things that she forbade Nimueh to touch them.

Nimueh gave her a potion to ease the pain in her back, but walking from one end of the village to the other was still a formidable task. She wouldn't think of travelling across a kingdom, as she'd once done, as Nimueh could still do if she wanted.

Hunith was tired all the time, and as the days grew shorter and the sun more distant her mood sank. Then snow covered the houses and all the villages kept more and more to themselves. She tried to tell herself she was lucky, that at least she didn't have to spend this winter alone as she had the year before. Nimueh's magic was keeping the little hut warmer than wood and stone and a fire ever could. Nimueh cooked hot food, and even though Hunith quickly grew tired of the carrots and onions and spare bits of meat they had to live on until the spring, Nimueh had a talent for seasoning it, and for making sure there was always enough.

This ought to be enough, she told herself, this simple life alone with the woman she loved, this hope for the future. But along with the hope there was always dread, because she couldn't quite believe it would last for very long. What if this was the only year she had with Nimueh, and why oh why did she have to spend so much of it so miserable and sore she'd push Nimueh away whenever she tried to touch her?

*

"Shouldn't you be out on a hill somewhere, calling back the sun?" Hunith asked Nimueh on the longest night of the year.

"Not this time. Wait, I'll call it from here." Nimueh bent over and spoke with her lips pressed to Hunith's belly: "Hurry up! We're tired of waiting for you."

The movement of her lips tickled and they both laughed.

"The sun knows how to find its own way back," Nimueh said, "and so does the child."

"I'm just ready for it to be over and done with," said Hunith. "If I could give birth right now I'd do it. If it were old enough to survive, I mean."

Nimueh nodded in that calm way that made Hunith think she didn't understand at all. "It's like the sun though. They know their own time."

"Sure. Why is it kicking me in the ribs all the time if it's patient like the sun?"

But a few weeks later in the middle of the birthing pains Hunith shouted, "I can't. I'm not ready yet."

"Of course you are, of course you can."

"It's trying to kill me, Nimueh, make it stop!"

All right, Nimueh had promised her she'd live, and Nimueh could be cruel, but she wasn't a liar. So Hunith knew she would live, and she was only joking. Except that deep down the fear was still there. It had never gone away. How could it? And of course it would come to the surface now. All the fear and hurt she'd ever known was with her now. It was hard to think of anything else.

"You don't want me to stop it," Nimueh said, her voice slow, calm and clear over Hunith's cries. "It's not going to kill you and you two will love each other more than you can even imagine. Now look at me and push."

Hunith pushed and screamed, and when she had breath again and words she shouted, "What's the bloody point in being a priestess of the Old Religion if it's still going to hurt this much?"

It went on for hours and Nimueh went on with her usual cool, keeping the fire and the water hot, massaging Hunith's back and her legs and the great gaping hole at her centre, and Hunith kept on screaming because it kept on hurting more and more, but all the time she held on, not so much to Nimueh's hand as to her promises. It was a complicated magic Nimueh had worked, to capture a seed and give it to Hunith, but it was not a dangerous magic like what she'd done for Ygraine and Uther. She would live, she had to.

Nimueh caught the baby while Hunith sobbed with pain and joy and relief. She cleaned him as he screamed and wrapped him in a blanket and helped Hunith cradle him in her arms. She helped him find Hunith's breast and touched his little head as he suckled. Hunith gasped and Nimueh said aloud what she was thinking, that this was surely magic, that she had found it in herself at last.

*

Hunith wanted to give him a Christian name, not because she cared for the priests (who only passed through these villages every few years, performing a handful of baptisms each time) but because she thought it would help him fit in with the other children, the Toms and Timothys, the Michaels and Matthews. Nimueh wanted an older name, something to tie him to this land, but Hunith reminded her these were dangerous times. The three of them were already strange enough in this town. They'd talked about names from nature as a compromise, but though it was easy enough to name a girl-child after a flower or a gem, it was a bit trickier with a boy.

"My darling duck," Hunith would say while she bathed him in the washtub. "My little mole," she'd say when after hours of rocking he'd close his eyes and fall asleep in her arms.

"Well," said Nimueh, "we don't have to decide yet."

Nimueh taught him to play with magic.

At first she would just hold him to her breast. Hunith was the one who fed him, but he learned to love the comfort Nimueh gave him just as much. Even from across the room, even though there was nothing to see, Hunith could feel the way she wrapped him up in care and love and protection.

Later, in the months when Hunith was helping him to sit up and hold a rattle, Nimueh would entertain him by sending balls of light spinning through the air over his head. At first he would just watch them and laugh, but soon enough he started sending his light to chase after them. It was dimmer and wobblier than hers, but still steadier than the movements of his own limbs.

"Were you like this?" Hunith asked.

"As a baby? I don't remember."

"But you had magic, as a child, before anyone taught you?"

"I think so, yes. It was–"

"A very long time ago, I know." Hunith shook her head and looked at her mending. "He can't even speak yet and already he's a better magician than I ever was."

"Just think what he'll be capable of when he comes into his own."

The first thing Hunith thought was, he'll fly away from me, and the thought terrified her, but she tried not to let it. He'll fly wherever he wants, she told ammended, and then he'll fly back. "My little merlin," she started to say, or sometimes, "my sweet little swallow. You'll know your way home."

That spring the three of them would walk through town together. The women who had given Hunith advice and smiles during the pregnancy were warmer but less talkative now, simply cooing at the baby, so Hunith and Nimueh didn't have to say much at all.

Nimueh started to go off on errands again. In May she was gone for almost a week, and at first when her little merlin cried Hunith thought he just missed her, as she did, but then she realised his skin was hot. Then she realised she didn't know how to live without Nimueh anymore.

But she made herself remember what Gaius had taught her, and the fever was gone by the time Nimueh came home.

The weather was warmer and sometimes now the three of them sat outside in the field, and Nimueh would play the same magic games she did inside the house.

"No one here knows about us," Hunith said carefully.

Nimueh shrugged. "For now all they know is we're a little bit queer."

Hunith reached out her hand to where the boy's light was dancing, and it faded into shadow like a candle snuffed out. Nimueh sat up straighter. She let her light settle to the grass and die.

"He should…" Hunith said, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth. "He'll have a lot of magic in him, but maybe he shouldn't be practising every day. Or here, out in the open."

"No one's watching," Nimueh said quietly, stiffly.

"It ought to be something…special, that he'll only use when there's truly a need."

"Like you do."

"Well, yes." Just the one time since he'd been born. But why should she do more than that? Hunith had never had any skill for the things that had to happen quickly. The things that could wait, she'd always wait for Nimueh's return and ask her for the favour.

She wasn't the girl she'd been in Camelot, she reflected. The one who'd begged the physician and then the sorceress to pay attention to her, to believe she was special. She wasn't trying to prove herself anymore. Nimueh would say she was hiding, but she didn't really care.

"You do realise you're outside of Uther's kingdom now."

"There are people who are hostile to magic everywhere. I have to live here, Nimueh, I can't put on a new face and go off to a new village every time someone gets nervous about having a lonely sorceress and her changeling boy around."

"Do you think it's easy, living as I do?" So she still thought of her life that way, as the life of a fugitive. This was only temporary, what they'd had the last year.

"Of course not. I've made my life and you've made yours. I thought you liked living it together, but perhaps I shouldn't have taken that for granted. I only think...I worry about the boy."

"And I worry about the balance of the universe," Nimueh said, exasperated.

"Exactly."

"You've got this humble little domestic life all planned out, Hunith, but don't you ever think your child has a destiny? Do you think this would have gone so easily if he hadn't?"

"Sorry, did it seem easy to you?" Hunith was shouting now, and she hadn't meant to. So much for her talk about discretion.

"Compared to half of the births I've seen, yes."

"What if he's not destined for anything? What if he's just supposed to be a boy? And grow into a man and be good to his friends and his family?"

"What if he ends up just like you, you mean?"

Hunith wondered what would be so bad about that.

*

Nimueh went away before Midsummer, and the woman who showed up on the doorstep a month later wouldn't speak. She didn't want to eat anything either. She wouldn't even look at the baby. She just sat and stared and let Hunith rub her back and shoulders, then kneel in front of her and rub her feet.

Hunith talked to herself, as if she weren't longing for an answer. "You must have been walking a long way," she said, "to have your shoes worn down like that. It's good sometimes, just to sit and be with someone. You don't have to talk if you don't want to. Just let me know if you need anything else." Then she went quiet herself for a time, fed her baby and put him to sleep.

They went to bed and Hunith massaged the thick muscles of Nimueh's legs. She stroked her arms, her sides, but she didn't kiss her. Nimueh fell asleep and Hunith rubbed herself off, as if she were spending another night without any visitor at all. She woke up to a baby's cry, alone in her bed, and wondered if she'd dreamed it all, until she saw the plate of uneaten food lying on the table.

*

"He'd killed a family," Nimueh said when she came back in August. "Last time I was here I'd just come from trying to… They had a little girl, not much older than Arthur."

"Arthur?" said Hunith, taking Nimueh's cloak.

"Ygraine's son. I haven't seen him – not since he was a bawling little thing covered in afterbirth–"

Hunith swallowed. She knew Ygraine had died in childbirth, but not much more than that. Was she already gone by the time the child was born? Did she survive for a few more hours, and how long was Nimueh able to stay with her? Nimueh hadn't wanted to talk about it before, and she clearly didn't want to now.

"But he's growing up in the castle, with only a few maids and Uther and Gaius to take care of him. Can you imagine? A child being raised by that monster, and that traitor, and no mother to help him through it?"

"I can't," Hunith said simply. She felt simple, lacking in experience or perspective. Yes, she'd grown up without a mother, with a father who could be harsh at times, who never really understood her…but a murderer?

"Anyhow," Nimueh said, "that was why I wasn't myself, last time I was here. I'd just watched them burned at the stake. Uther…he was leaving the children alone, up till now. He was leaving them orphaned, and there was one little boy who ran into the flames, but…He's getting worse, all the time."

"That whole family," Hunith murmured. She hesitated, then added, "And it's your family too, I know that. It would hurt anyone with a heart to watch such a thing, but for you…I don't know how you can stand it."

Nimueh shrugged, looking distant again. "I can't," she said. "I can't stand it. I ran away. I keep running away, I keep coming back here." She was smiling, but it was a cold, hard smile. "And you keep taking me back, even though sometimes I'm…"

"Sometimes you always were," Hunith answered. She smiled lightly and thought about letting it go, talking about the weather or how the baby had said something that sounded almost like "Momma" or that he turned to look at her when she said "Merlin." She thought about saying how she was always glad to have Nimueh back. But she wasn't happy, and she was tired of keeping silent around Nimueh, especially since there was no one else she could talk to at all, no one who would understand.

She let Nimueh touch her cheek and kiss her neck. She said, "You told me once that all our bodies are sites of magic."

"Hmm," Nimueh said, still smiling, "I'm not sure I'd say that now, but I know yours is."

"You said you'd tried to tell the same thing to Ygraine. Did you ever get her to believe it?"

Nimueh's grin disappeared and she slowly pulled her hands away. She stood up.

"We don't…" Hunith tried. "I know it was hard for you. We don't have to talk about it tonight if you don't want to. But we can't never talk about it. I want to know–"

"What, Hunith, exactly what do you want to know about it?"

"You sent me away. You do remember that, don't you? You act like I'm the boring one, like I'm the coward, but you're the one who told me to go away and hide, and you wanted to stay with her and I wanted to stay with you, but I did what you told me and I never knew what happened, and when you came here you were different. And I want to know what happened to you, because I love you, Nimueh."

She wanted to take it back as soon as she'd said it, or if not that she wanted to cry. Of all the ways she'd ever thought of saying it, after all the months they'd lived together and the months they'd spent apart, after making a child, she'd never thought it would come out like that, in a burst of defiance and anger.

"What happened to me is that I made a choice, and I have yet to see whether it was the right one."

"But you said before, when you told me to leave, you said you'd made a mistake."

Nimueh paused, considering her words. "I knew it would take a sacrifice to bring Ygraine's child into the world, and that was the choice I made."

"But if you'd known it would be her you wouldn't have–"

"I don't know."

Hunith's jaw dropped. Her heart sank. "But how could you do that to…"

"I didn't do it to her. I only–"

"You loved her."

"Of course I did!"

"So how could you let her die?"

"What else could I do? Let the Old Religion take some other innocent instead?"

"Yes!"

"I would think you'd be relieved to have your rival out of the way."

Hunith felt as if she'd been struck. It was worse than hearing that Nimueh would choose to let Ygraine die, even though Ygraine was more to her than Hunith ever could be. A moment ago Hunith had hoped this could be a real conversation, the one they'd been putting off all this time. The one where they both admitted that they'd made mistakes. But now Nimueh was lashing out again, hurting. Perhaps she needed that, to protect herself.

Hunith set her jaw, breathed through her nose and steadied herself before she said, "I never hated her."

"You did, Hunith, because you couldn't love me without hating everyone else I loved. I don't blame you, it's the way you were raised."

"Who I am and how I feel has nothing to do with the people who raised me."

"Then how could you go back to it? How can you stand to live in a place like this, where you're the only one around? You never even travel. You barely even ask about what's happened to the people you left behind."

"You told me not–"

But Nimueh wasn't listening. "You were cast out of the only place you'd ever been happy, and men and women and children have been killed for less than what you'd done, and you know that, and you don't even get angry! You only say you're sad. You've never even spoken a word about revenge."

"What use do I have for revenge? And what could I ever do against Uther? Anyway, he never hurt me. It's not my place to–"

"But it is. He'd have killed you if you'd stayed, he'd kill your son if he knew what he was and had him within reach. But it's not even that. It shouldn't matter whether it's your flesh and blood that's burning or some other sorcerer's. The people he's killed can't fight back for themselves. And you…you're just like Gaius. If you can save yourself – all right, if you can save yourself and hold on to your precious baby, nothing else matters."

"Are you telling me now that I was wrong to leave Camelot – even though it was what you ordered me to do – and Gaius was wrong to stay?"

"You were both wrong not to fight."

"Gaius was fighting in his own way," Hunith argued. "He tried to be Uther's friend, to help him see what you told me, that we're not two separate peoples, one side against the other."

Nimueh shook her head. "Gaius didn't just save himself. And if he tried to convince Uther that magic could be on his side then I'd just as soon have revenge for his incompetence. He hasn't done anything to stop it. Surviving is one thing. Going into hiding or running away. All right, so it's what I told you to do. It hurts me that you left so easily and that you never even asked how it went. But Gaius was a hundred times worse. He fed Uther information, turned people in. He helped Uther put them to death."

"I don't believe you," Hunith said.

"You weren't there."

Hunith couldn't find an answer to that. For a few moments, she couldn't even find air to breathe. Nimueh was right, she'd run away, and she didn't know. She hadn't asked because she didn't think Nimueh wanted to tell her, but it was also because she was afraid to hear. And Nimueh had been right, all the times she'd avoided talking about those days, avoided talking about Gaius, because she knew it would feel just like this. And Hunith couldn't stand it.

"Shhh," Nimueh said, and she had her arms around her, and Hunith only realised when she had her face buried in Nimueh's chest that she was sobbing, her face wet with tears. "I don't blame you, I never did."

And Nimueh had been living with it all this time, this anger, this one betrayal among many.

"I'm…I won't say I'm sorry, Hunith. I don't say these things to hurt you."

"I know." But it hurt.

"I know he was kind to you, kinder than the people you'd known before. He was warmer, and easier to know than I was, I'm sure. You're grateful to him and you're loyal, and that's…touching."

Other times Hunith would have resisted – did resist – being treated like a child, but she was crying and rocking in Nimueh's arms. She couldn't make herself stop.

"But he was always loyal to Uther, not to you. Not to us. If you'd stayed, he would have let you burn."

Hunith said nothing, but she still couldn't believe it, still couldn't hate Gaius in her heart. She knew she never would, just as she would never try to seek revenge against Uther, or his son, or his kingdom. She was loyal to the people who cared for her and who needed her, not to a religion or a cause. She wasn't sure what Nimueh meant when she said us, but whatever it was, it was disappearing with every minute the silence stretched out between them. Or else Hunith was just ceasing to be part of it.

*

She couldn't be Nimueh's refuge after that, or not more shelter from the storm than a roof and four thin walls. Ealdor still lay on a road Nimeuh had to travel, but she never stopped for more than a night's rest anymore. They spoke little, and neither of them would mention that the weeks in between visits were stretching longer and longer.

Other women still came to the house, though also less often than before. More of them were simple travellers, Hunith was fairly sure. One day there was a stranger who wasn't Nimueh but reminded Hunith of Nimueh. She had the same direct gaze, the same confident smile while Hunith rehearsed her speech, explaining what she had to share, and that she would take whatever the other woman had to give. "I can sleep on the floor," she said, "or if you want we can share the bed." And although she'd said the same thing to a hundred women over the years, this time her face heated and she knew she was offering something else.

She took other women to bed from time to time. A few of them stayed for longer than a night, but never more than a week.

Nimueh stopped coming back. Merlin never learned her name and she probably didn't know his, since they'd taken so long to settle on just one.

The other women too disappeared, until finally there was no one at all. The years passed and Hunith waited. At dusk especially she would sit outside her door and watch the horizon for travellers, but if they came that way they kept on walking.

So she turned away from the road, back toward her neighbours. People were slow to accept change here, but Merlin was born among them. Hunith went out to speak to them more often, carrying him with her, and she was surprised at how friendly they could be now that she was…what, a widow? A mother whose name they knew. More and more of them came to ask for her help with a letter or a will now that they'd known her for a time, and they'd stopped seeing strangers stop at her door. Alone at night sometimes she'd still weep. She hated the loss of visitors, of news, of Nimueh's touch and her company. Still, she had more friends and steadier work than before, and it was easier to feed her herself and the child.

Sometimes decrees came down from King Cendred, demands for tribute in grain, or in men to fight in his wars. And the washerwomen here never talked of how handsome he was or how lucky his bride, only shook their heads and said, "He's the king. What else can we do?"

Hunith didn't want trouble with royalty, so at first she tried to keep her opinions to herself. But it was her job to read the documents aloud, and sometimes her voice would break when she realised what the new order would mean. "This isn't right," she would say, imagining Nimueh standing beside her. "We mustn't stand for this." It was her job to write down the villagers' answers, and she made them stronger – sometimes by winning a debate, sometimes just by picking a better word.

Some ten years after Merlin was born, the villagers (going against Hunith's advice, that time) decided to send a letter to Camelot, asking Uther to pull his men away from the border. They had no desire to fight, though their king ordered them to. After debating with herself for a week, Hunith decided to send a short letter to Gaius along with the same messenger. She said nothing of her son, or of her contact with Nimueh or the other women. She didn't even use her name, but she was sure he'd recognise her hand and understand what she meant when she asked if she was remembered in Camelot.

There was no answer from Uther for Ealdor – perhaps he sent a messenger directly to Cendred, or perhaps he sent an army – but Gaius sent his own short, kind letter, addressed plainly to Hunith of Ealdor. He said he was delighted to have news of her after all these years, that he remembered her fondly but others did not speak her name. She was safe, she understood, no one was looking for her. After that she wrote him once or twice a year, relaxing a little more each time, daring to say a little more of the truth. He always answered a short time later, and always he was friendly, genial, and as if no one like them had ever been killed by Camelot's king.

Hunith stayed careful, but she grew less and less afraid.

Merlin grew taller and played with the other children his age. They liked him, though he was not quite one of them.

She taught him that he was different from the other children, that he was special and would do great things, but he should try not to let anyone else know. He could use his magic inside the house, or if he went far enough outside the village that no one would see. But not in front of the neighbours, she told him.

"Is it bad?" he asked.

"No," she said. "It's just a secret, just for the two of us to know."

She noticed how much time he spent with Will, another young boy who always held himself a bit apart from the others and always was held apart, though to Hunith's knowledge he didn't have magic. He was the only other child in Ealdor growing up with just one parent. His father sometimes helped Hunith by chopping her firewood or repairing the roof. They even tried having dinner together a few times, but he seemed to understand they were best off as neighbours and friends.

Hunith was happy for Merlin to have so dear a friend as Will. If only she'd had that when she was his age, someone to share things with, someone who understood. She suspected Will knew of Merlin's magic, because what kind of secret was one you couldn't share with your best friend?

Hunith didn't find her own best friend until after Merlin had grown up and gone away. Ellie was a few years younger than her, and childless. She'd been "taken" when Hunith first arrived, back when Nimueh had teased her about farmer's wives. Then her husband had died in the same senseless campaign that took Will's father. But instead of lashing out in anger Ellie withdrew into sadness, and most of the village forgot she was even there. Only Hunith kept bringing her food and keeping her company day after day. She knew Ellie liked that Hunith didn't always try to talk. They could be alone together, and it didn't make the loneliness go away completely, but it helped. It wasn't love. It was better than nothing.

---

Eventually Gaius did go to sleep, and though he'd said Merlin should do the same, Merlin couldn't think of leaving his mother alone, not until she'd looked on him again and said, if not that she forgave him, at least that she still loved him. He sat and listened to the familiar snore from the other side of the room and wondered what he would ever have done if he hadn't had Gaius as a friend.

"You did the right thing, sending me to him," he said, because he liked talking to her, pretending she was listening and wasn't angry with him.

It wasn't that he had never wondered. It wasn't that he had never been asked, teased, called a changeling and a bastard, a fairy and a freak and every other insult young boys like to throw around. If it was just about him it didn't bother him so much. She'd told him he was special and he understood well enough himself that he could do things no one else could. He figured boys who couldn't move things with their minds probably couldn't help but be jealous. But if it was about his birth then it was really about his mother, and Merlin would never stand for that kind of talk. He'd seen it as a question of respect, never to ask her more about her past than what she volunteered.

Merlin thought of what little he knew of her time in Camelot, and her life before. He thought of how he'd wondered, as a child, why he was the only one who didn't have aunts and uncles and cousins. "It that because of the magic?" he'd whispered to his mother. "Is that because I'm different?"

"No," she'd said, "it's just because I'm not from here."

"Brigitte's got relations on her mother's side and more on her dad's. How come I don't have those?"

"They wouldn't be from here either."

Merlin had nodded and decided he didn't mind not having relations, since most of Brigitte's were boring anyway.

"Gaius is a good man, you can trust him," she'd said when she sent him away. She never explained exactly how she'd come to know this.

"You were born in the winter," she'd said once, the day there was a snowstorm but it was all right because they stayed inside and he didn't have to do his chores and she gave him a plate of baked apples all because he'd turned twelve years old. "Born into the cold, like all the children of May."

Gaius was right. If she wanted to say more when she woke up, she would. If not, he would leave the matter alone as he always had before.

He bent over her and kissed her forehead.

"I'll always take care of you," he whispered.

---

When Hunith woke up her son was still sitting by her side, but he'd fallen asleep in his chair, so they didn't need to speak just yet. That was a relief.

She watched him for a time. He'd leaned over her body and had his head resting on his arms over her stomach. He looked so young and familiar again, so innocent she wished she had the strength to gather him up in her arms and carry him off to bed. But he'd been taller than her for years now, and today he too big. He was young and impulsive, young and angry, young and too confident for his own good. He wasn't the boy she'd raised.

Except that he was, of course. Perhaps it was her own fault he'd grown up into a murderer (a traitor, said Nimueh's voice in her head). Even without Nimueh there, Hunith could have talked to him, when he was young, about the Old Religion and its people, about how they needed to help and protect each other. Instead she'd told him there was no one else in the world like him. She'd told him to trust her and now she was surprised he'd turned against everyone else, never mind if they were only doing what they thought was right, never mind if they were his own kin.

And here he was, sprawled over her body like the child he'd once been. Only he was grown now, thin for a man but there was weight to him, especially at awkward angles like this – his right elbow was starting to dig into her stomach in a way that really was uncomfortable.

So, as gently as she could, she raised herself up and stroked his hair. When he startled awake she said, "Shh, Merlin, go to bed," and she sat up with him.

"I'm sorry," he said, still silly with sleep, and he probably wasn't any more aware of what he was sorry for than she was.

"Go to bed now, Merlin," she said, rather than say, It's all right or You've done nothing wrong. "I'll be fine, I've done nothing but lie here for days, but you've done too much. You need to sleep."

She was pushing him up. She was caressing him because she was still grateful to be alive and to have him, but she was also shoving him away, because she couldn't talk to him about what had happened. Maybe she would someday, but not today.

He went, mumbling another apology, stalked off to his bed, to the little room where Hunith had lain awake so many nights, figuring out who she really was, the room where Nimueh had kissed her goodbye.

When he'd closed the door Hunith let herself cry. She kept it quiet and wiped her tears on the sheet. If Gaius heard her he pretended not to, and she felt she was alone.

*

She stayed on in Camelot for another week, letting the shock and anger sink into a deeper, softer sadness. She spent most of her time in the company of her dear boy, who loved talking to her when no one else was around, and who loved showing her how much he'd learned since he'd started working with Gaius, and learning spells from the book Gaius had given him. When she was still recovering he'd make the teapot and cups move through the air without touching them, and poured her tea without spilling a drop. It was silly showing off, but purpose and control were much more focused than when he used to throw objects around the house at home, reacting to surprises but unable to plan anything out or know what would happen when his eyes flashed. When she was well enough to walk they went to the garden and he made flowers bloom for her. The simple pride, the childlike joy on his face when he showed her a new trick made her want to gather him in a hug and take him home with her to Ealdor. Instead she just smiled back at him, told him she was proud, and reminded herself she'd made the right decision in sending him here.

Guinevere came to visit often and spoke as easily with Hunith as she did with Merlin and Gaius, as if they were good old friends, and not two women of different generations who'd only spent a few days together. Gwen reminded Hunith of herself when she was younger, with her eagerness and her calm. She hoped she'd have an easier time of it, that she wouldn't have to leave Camelot behind, as Hunith had. Still, she knew Gwen was suffering already. Gwen spoke little of her grief and Hunith said nothing of hers, but she thought they understood each other all the same.

The Lady Morgana and even Prince Arthur himself each came to see her as well. The were respectful and kind, remembering her hospitality in Ealdor and inquiring after her health. (Hunith in turn respected Arthur's clear wish not to discuss his own injury, but thanked him for granting Merlin time to spend with her.) She thought they were somewhat restrained here, that they couldn't speak as freely or linger as long in a peasant's company as when they were away from the castle. Still, she was pleased with them. If Merlin had only a few friends to whom he was completely devoted, she thought he had chosen well.

She was less comfortable when left alone with Gaius, who knew too much and not enough about what she was feeling now.

"Merlin doesn't know, about Arthur's birth, or any of it," he assured her.

"That's as it should be," said Hunith.

Gaius himself didn't know anything about Merlin's birth, or that Hunith had ever seen Nimueh after she left Camelot, and that was as it should be too. Still, he wanted to talk to her, as if he could make her grief go away by convincing her Nimueh was not the woman she'd known.

"She had changed," he said. "She'd become bitter, striking out at innocents, common people who had nothing to do with one side or the other, all as a way of punishing Uther."

Hunith nodded but said nothing. She did not like the way Gaius shook his head, like a scolding father. She did not think it was his place to talk about the suffering of innocents.

She wondered if Nimueh had been telling the truth, all those years ago, when she said she wasn't the one to choose who lived or died. She wondered if it was true now.

Perhaps after what had happened in the last few months, Nimueh had thought Hunith and Merlin traitors, no better or worse than Gaius, with the way they sacrificed other magical people to protect Arthur, or the way they bowed before Arthur's father. She would have been disgusted at what she'd seen, delighted to strike back at one after the other.

But Hunith couldn't believe she was wrong, not in the life she'd lived, not in the way she'd raised her son. She couldn't believe Nimueh was right. Because whether or not it was about revenge, keeping loyalty to her people and her faith should never mean sacrificing her own family, or someone who used love her.

Or someone she used to love. Because it wasn't ever only on Hunith's side, was it? There had been something between them, something more than distance and safety and the resentment underneath. There was some us that was real and that kept the most powerful sorceress in Albion coming back to a one-room house in a dusty little village by the border when she could have been leading armies instead.

Well, the thing about Nimueh was, you could never be sure just what she was up to. If you loved her you could never be sure whether she felt the same way. If you thought she was gone she might still show up at your doorstep one day, asking humbly for a place to spend the night.

Gaius said the killing blow had been a lightning strike. Hunith couldn't imagine that was worse than a Purge, and Nimueh had survived that. Merlin was special, but she'd seen him grow from a baby, and she knew his magic was powerful but still new, trying to find its form. As young and lost and wild as Hunith had been the day she first laid eyes on the Lady Nimueh.

No, the priestess wouldn't trouble herself avenging individual lives and deaths and betrayals. She'd be back someday, if perhaps not during Hunith's lifetime. She would go on.

And so would Hunith. She kissed her son goodbye and set off for Ealdor on foot. Ellie would be waiting for her at home, would make them as hearty a supper as she could with what little they had left after taxes, bandits, widowhood and winter. They'd both cry for the loves they'd lost and then Ellie would take her to bed. It would be good, but it wouldn't make her stop hurting.

The journey was long and her heart was heavy.

Comments

[woldy]

Wow, this is lovely! I really enjoyed the complexity and nuance of their relationships, how Hunith loves Nimueh without entirely trusting her and that despite the way they drift apart Hunith still cares for her. It was really interesting to see her relationships with her family and then the villagers in Ealdor too, and the glimpse of what draws Merlin and Will together. The scope of this story is wonderful especially with all the details about Nimueh, Ygraine and Arthur's birth, and I found it interesting how Nimueh realises too late but can't bring herself to change it. What a beautifully woven story :-)

[sophinisba]

Yay! I'm happy you got a chance to read this. I was thinking a lot about your Morgana/Nimueh fic and femslash discussions on your journal and elsewhere when I was writing this back in the fall. I'm really glad the different parts of it worked for you. :)