Timeless Tales Magazine: Arthurian Legends

ARTHURIAN LEGENDS

Timeless Tales 8

Editor Tahlia Kirk

www.timelesstalesmagazine.com timelesstalesmagazine@gmail.com

Design and Layout Geoffrey Bunting

004 Never Meet Your Heroes S. Prescott 0 1 2 Unworld Beth Mann 0 2 2 When the Wheel Turns Over Celia Daniels 0 3 2 The Better Tool Jane Yolen 0 3 6 Lancelot Writes Arthur’s Epitaph Jane Yolen 0 4 2 What Do Simple Folk Do? Sandra Lindon 0 4 8 Serpent’s Skin Shelly Jasperson 060 The Hawthorn Muses Shannon Connor Winward 0 6 8 Galahad the Trickster Andy Scott 0 8 0 The Lancelot Poems Bob Beagrie 0 8 8 The Castle’s Mistress Sarah Deeming

Fiction

Words by

Never Meet Your Heroes

S. Prescott

About the story

I knew I wanted to write about Merlin, but the more I researched the more I realized what a creep he is. Being on the receiving end of that creepiness would make anyone angry enough to trap him in a cave. Plus, I love writing about angry women. Moral ambiguity fits so well in a Western setting, and I’d never done anything like it before, so I had to try. As for the fantasy aspect, I can never resist a little bit of magic.

NEVER MEET YOUR HEROES s . prescott

The last straw had been the wanted sign, a piece of dirty, crumpled parchment stuck to the outside of a saloon. Nim pulled the sign out of her pocket and seethed over it by torchlight, careful not to stumble in the dark tunnel. One more vault, she thought. One more, and I’m leaving him.

6000 G REWARD For the capture of wanted VAULT-ROBBER: Julian Milt (Aka THE WIZARD) May be travelling with sidekick, known as THE LADY The notice included a sketch of Julian’s handsome, distinguished face. The drawing left no doubt as to the artist’s admiration. Nim nearly choked on the derisive laugh that forced its way up her throat. She’d been taken in by that smile too. And those eyes that seemed almost kind when they turned down at the corners. She’d learned better.

“Sidekick,” she hissed. “If they only knew. . .”

“What’s that, Lady?” Julian looked up from his map and smirked through his thick beard. He knew how she felt about the nickname. “Oh, the wanted sign. Shame they left off your pretty face, but the less the authorities know about you, the better.”

He wasn’t wrong, but the injustice of being called his sidekick was a wound Nim wasn’t going to let close with that small a bandage. With one fingertip, she traced the familiar runes etched into the gun at her hip.

“Thinking of shooting me?” the Wizard asked, eyes on her gun.

“I’d rather not,” she said. “Give me the map.”

“In a bit.”

“It’s always ‘in a bit’ with you. I’m starting to think you’re just a liar.”

“And yet,” said Julian, “you still wait.”

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Nim muttered to herself and slowed her pace to stay a few steps behind. He never let on how he found the vaults, but Nim had a hunch. She just had to see the map to be sure.

They wound their way further into the cave system, the dry desert air turning cool and damp, like breath. Nim loosened the bandana around her neck and inhaled deeply.

She hated the desert. She hated its rattling snakes and its dusty air, so unlike her home. The North was in her bones, a place dotted with lakes and cut through with streams, where it rained as often as it didn’t.

Her first vault had been at the bottom of a lake. A chest the size of a foal, hidden in murky blue water, locked with a sparse scattering of simple runes. She’d nearly drowned herself opening it, but the knowledge inside was worth more than any gold or precious stones she’d hunted down since. The only thing the King and his marshals guarded more closely than the locations of the ancient vaults was the knowledge of runes and how to use them to lock and unlock.

Julian stopped ahead of her, where the cave branched into two tunnels. He thrust the torch into her hand and leaned over his map. His wide-brimmed hat, tipped back, blocking her view of the paper.

“Need a second opinion?” she asked.

“Now, now,” he said. “They don’t call me the Wizard for nothing. Be a good sidekick and give me more light. I just might let you take the lead on this one once we get to it.”

Nim’s amusement was genuine—the old fool was deluded.

Since they started travelling together, she’d “taken the lead” on far more vaults than he had. She was better, and she should have known it right away.

Early in her vault-robbing career, she’d taken a risk and snuck into the basement of a bank. She’d been antsy and distracted, having seen a marshal wandering around town

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earlier that day. She couldn’t stop picturing his pinched face, circular badge pinned to his shirt. The next thing she knew, she was being held against a wall by the throat, her own gun pointed in her face, the kingdom’s most famous vault-robber on the other side of the barrel. The Wizard was a rebel, an outlaw, a hero. He never got caught and he always found vaults that eluded the marshals. His kind smile didn’t leave his face as he pulled the trigger.

But the runes on Nim’s gun ensured that it worked only for her. It was a trick she’d learned from her lake vault. The Wizard had been so impressed that he’d taken her with him, saying he had to pass on his secrets to someone with talent. In the two years since, though, Nim figured he’d learned a whole lot more of her secrets than she had of his.

They took the left tunnel, finding the vault in a cavern with the proportions of a bedroom—low ceiling, tight walls.

Julian handed Nim his pack while he fidgeted with the runes. He took a while—Nim would have been quicker—but he managed to get it open with no further mention of who would be taking the lead.

Nim stood back and admired the size of the vault. It was taller and deeper than she had expected, with room enough for a man to stand in. The contents were not visible at first, so Julian held up his torch and stepped further in. Nim watched his back foot cross the threshold from cave to vault. When the door snapped closed with him inside, Nim almost expected it.

Julian’s laugh sounded from the other side of the door.

“A trick door!” he said. “Haven’t seen one of these in a while.

You’re ready for this, Nim. I’ll walk you through anything you don’t understand.”

Nim pressed a hand against the door. The runes felt warm beneath her skin where they’d been activated. “There are a few things I don’t understand,” she said. She rubbed the toe of her boot against the bottom of the vault door,

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where a thin slice of air separated it from the ground. “Slip me that map, would you?”

“Come on, Lady, don’t play that game with me. I thought you’d be better than to kick a man when he’s down.”

“I just want to see it.”

Julian was quiet, and she knew she’d caught him. Paper rustled. The map slid to her side of the door. She crouched down and tilted her head, trying to catch enough light to find the circle insignia that identified it as the King’s property. And there it was, in the bottom left corner.

“I thought that man looked familiar,” she said. “The one who gave you this map back in town.”

The man they’d met had a pinched face. His shirt, this time, had been undecorated.

“You don’t understand, Nim. This is my job. I couldn’t do it without the authorities knowing.”

“So you were just going to learn all you could from me, then send me to the gallows? Do you do that to all your little sidekicks?”

“No,” Julian said. He laughed again, but it was hesitant this time. “You’d be very valuable to them, with your talent.

They’d want your help. I. . . I can get you in touch with the marshals. Let you in on it. We can keep going on like this, or we can go our separate ways. Whatever you want, Nim. Just let me out.”

Nim let the silence drag, seeing if he’d try to fill it again.

“Nim?” he said. “Will you let me out?”

“In a bit.”

She found her way out easily, the fresh air guiding her up to the surface.

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Fiction Never Meet Your Heroes

About The Author

S. Prescott lives in Los Angeles, a city that smells either wonderful or terrible, depending on what part of it you’re in. She loves writing, talking to friends, talking to strangers, and shouting the names of animals she sees in the wild. “Never Meet Your Heroes” is her first sale, but you can find some of her other work in Suggest Zines, a monthly collection of stories and art based on a one word suggestion. She is on Twitter as @Expresscott.

Fiction

Words by

Unworld

Beth Mann

About the story

What sort of hero was King Arthur really? It was that question I wanted to explore, especially after reading ‘Preiddeu Annwn’ (‘The Spoils of the Unworld’), an old Welsh poem detailing the heroic exploits of Arthur and his warband as they raid the the Celtic otherworld. The poem is narrated by the Welsh bard Taliesin and full of derring-do, but I began to wonder: what kind of man leads his followers into a place where only seven of them leave alive? Why did his men follow him? And what does the narrator really think?

One of the things that caught my eye in the original poem was the mention of a hostage, and I quickly began to see the tale in a modern context — because ultimately, the nature of conflict never changes.

BETH MANN

The troops went in at dawn. So many men, armed to the teeth, with a single purpose. Light splintered across the island like glass as we ran.

Over the open ground, wincing in anticipation, into the undergrowth. I threw myself down and lay panting under a kaleidoscope of leaves, the hammering of my heart like gunfire in my ears. The camera dug into my cheek.

The leaves shivered. Art was crawling in beside me, an animal grin on his face. He was always such a calm man – not like Kay, who threw punches more easily than he spoke – until the fighting began; then he turned into a person I didn’t recognise. Who am I kidding? They all did.

Kay, Birch, Manny, Hawk. But Art most of all. They were soldiers, crack troops. Put them into combat and they stopped being men, began to be machines, well-oiled, ruthless. Killing machines. That was why they were here.

“You good?” asked Art, shaking my elbow. Somewhere above us, a grenade exploded. A man screamed. Through the static in my head, I wondered if it was one of ours.

“I’m good.”

“Good.” His hand snaked for his gun. “Keep up, huh?

Don’t want you to miss it.”

It. Short, brutal. All of their purpose, distilled into two letters. Like it was nothing very much. Like Art had turned to me on a Friday evening as we walked past the pub and said, “Pint?”

“I won’t miss it,” I said. The bulletproof vest seemed to clamp around my chest. I flicked the lens cap off my camera. You can do this. This is what you came for. This is who you are.

“Good on you, Tal,” said Art, scrambling up, away from me, into the open air.

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I ran after him. I ran through the compound, bullets flying around me like birds, and I closed the eyes inside my mind, seeing only with those in my head, those that never touched my heart. I saw a soldier go down with his leg blown into a cloud, so that it rained blood. I saw Kay throw a man to the ground and hold a gun to his head until he begged for mercy, then shoot him in the face. I saw Art, Captain Art King, laughing as bullets sang from his gun and the others fell.

I saw them all. These men, who I had to turn to heroes.

Already, I was taking out the words in my head, laying them down side by side, moving, polishing. A bullet pinged off my helmet. I lifted the camera to my eye.

“Down!”

The air shattered above me. Earth rushed into my mouth.

I waited for the pain, the suck of blood and air in my neck, but there was nothing. Only a weight across my shoulders, and words beating my ears like fists.

“Should never have brought you, he shouldn’t.” Kay held me by the scruff of my neck, like I was a dog. His nails dug into my skin. “Journalist wankers, good-for-nothing shite.

You trying to get bloody killed, or what?”

I twisted to look at him. There was blood at the corner of his mouth. His red hair licked over his forehead like flames.

“Not me,” I said. “Not my job.”

“Not your job,” he grunted. “Your job to get in the way.”

He dropped me as if I was a piece of rubbish, then pushed himself up to run back into the fight.

I squirmed along on my belly, keeping to the bushes.

Once, I stopped to take a photograph of one of them, his

Timeless Tales 8 15

mouth hanging slack, eyes wide as if surprised by the neat bullet hole in his forehead. That would be Birch, I thought.

Best aim in the team. Even Art wasn’t that good.

He didn’t need to be. They worshipped him, their captain.

King in name and deed.

I checked my lens. Paused.

If Birch had shot this guy, it must mean they’d broken through.

Sweat crawled beneath my armpits as I pushed through the bushes, towards the building. Shouts punctured the air, but there were fewer gunshots; no grenades. As I came up to the door, half crouching, my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth, I heard a cheer, ragged as the dying song of a swan.

Slowly, I stood upright. I brushed the dirt from my bulletproof vest, swallowing my nausea. The happy ending to the story was finally here – it was time to look like I believed it.

Broken glass and grit from grenade-shattered stonework crunched under my feet as I walked. By the door into the main room, a young man was sprawled with an arm flung over his face, as if somehow it would protect him—as if he could count to ten and Art and his men would all disappear, like the monsters under the stairs. He’d died from a spray of bullets to the gut. I stepped over him, my chest aching inside its armour of Kevlar. I pasted a smile over my face.

That’s why they’d chosen me for this assignment, according to Art. “That smile,” he’d grinned, as we’d poured over the plans.

“It’s good, Tal. Can’t fault it. It’s like a weapon all your own.”

Which I suppose was as good as saying that he thought me as mad as them.

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They were all together in a knot as I entered the room: Kay, Birch, Manny, Hawk, Art. Sun speared me from above—no roof left, only empty sky, empty men gathered under it. Birch, his face pale as the walls, had his arm in a sling. Manny was leaning heavily on one leg. Kay had a bloody nose. Art, glorious Art, didn’t have a scratch. Beside him sat Hawk, medic’s case at his feet, and his hand on the shoulder of a scarecrow.

“This the hostage?” I murmured in Art’s ear. “Actually him?”

“Actually him.”

The man we’d risked everything for. I still didn’t know the details. Maybe a diplomat, MP, businessman – he could have been anything, though he looked like nothing. A vagrant. He looked more tired than I’d ever known a man could be.

Art put his mouth to my ear. “Listen. There’s cash in a hole in the eastern wall. Take some. They don’t need to know.” I felt his lips curve against my hair. “We’ve earned it, huh?”

Earned it. I looked at Kay, and Birch, and Manny, and then around the room, realising how many men were missing. I numbered them off, one by one in my head. Out of so many men, only we seven were left.

“Bloody disaster,” said Manny quietly, in Welsh. That’s what he was in for, Manny. He could learn a language in days, speak anything you asked him to. Useful, in a hostage situation. Or it had been, until Art had decided to let the guns do the talking.

“This is…” I paused. I knew what it was, but I couldn’t say it. This wreckage of a building, wreckages of men lying

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in it, hollow, scattered in pieces. It was a part of the world, I knew that, always had. But the world had warped here, twisted into unnatural shapes, unnatural feelings. An unworld.

I met Manny’s eyes and the Welsh tasted bitter on my tongue. “This is hell.”

A finger tapped my shoulder; Art, sweeping his golden hair out of his eyes, smiling – a dangerous smile. “Tal. Photo?”

Deep breath. Smile back. Lift the camera. “Sure.”

First, I took one of the soldiers: Kay, battered and bruised, teeth bared, giving the victory sign. Birch, with his mouth pinched in pain, so that his smile was thin and drawn out, like razor wire. Manny, serious and straight, and Hawk, wistful, slightly fey, as if he wasn’t quite sure why he was there, only that he wanted to help. Art, hands through his belt, hair shining in the sun like a crown.

I took one of the hostage, the man we’d come all this way to save, who couldn’t smile, only drew back his lips into a corpse’s rictus. Art put an arm around the man’s shoulders. Claiming him. All part of the spoils.

The shutter of my camera clicked, and clicked again.

I will set this down for posterity. These men’s names will be spoken by everyone, in tones of awe.

That, after all, is my job.

The words are arranged in my head, now, strung like a necklace, glittering with their own unique pattern, magical and potent. I am the wordsmith. I will make these men heroes.

Around us, there are groans, the patter of falling stones, the endless shifting of the unworld. We have fought it,

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plundered it, and now we will go, heavy with triumph. I have the headline tight in the fist of my mind: These are the seven who walked out of hell.

And the man who brought me here, the man who is smiling at me still, all gold—this is the man they will talk about for years to come: Arthur.

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Fiction Unworld

About The Author

A native of South West England, a land soaked in folklore (and often rain), Beth studied for a literature degree before completing her MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Whilst there, she also co-edited the MA’s 2013-14 anthology of student writing, Beginnings. She enjoys writing fiction that explores history, myth, and the spaces in between. Her short stories have previously been published in World Weaver Press’s anthology He Sees You When He’s Creepin’: Tales of Krampus and Falmouth University’s interdisciplinary journal Revenant. You can read her story in Revenant here: www.revenantjournal. com/contents/the-last-werwolf-in-germany/

Fiction

Words by

When the Wheel Turns Over

Celia Daniels

About the story

This story comes from a fascination with reincarnation and a long love of Morgan in Arthurian legends. Morgan is a fluid character – a villain in one interpretation of the legends, an ally in the next (not to mention her varying familial relations) – but she consistently challenges the gendered expectations of the men around her by inhabiting a place of power.

When sending Morgan into the future, I wanted to make her tenacity plain and to explore the world’s evolving reaction to her as much as the grey morality and “f*** all” attitude that comes from centering one’s self between two binary narratives.

when the wheel turns over Celia Daniels

“We are the granddaughters of the witches you weren’t able to burn.” – Tish Thawer I. When all is said and done – when Arthur lies beneath his lake, when Guinevere hides alone in her convent, when Merlin’s prison buries its roots, when the knights clear their kingless table – Morgan remains.

She walks old battlefields with her feet bare. Buried arrowheads dig into her heels and leave her bloodied and infected, but she can’t bring herself to stop moving. She paces Camelot’s ruins in circles, always coming back to the castle, the lake, the stone that’s without its sword.

Morgan le Fay never learns how to die like the rest of them. Even when her heart stops, she never quite manages to move on.

II. She wakes the first time in the Spanish sun. 1515 threatens to choke her with its unfamiliarity. She wails at her mother’s breast and suckles, when she feels like it. Her child’s mind is too fragile to hold onto the memories bouncing around the back of her resurrected head.

Eventually, she remembers.

She kneels with her mother at Sunday mass, toenails broken and heels bleeding. She walks between parents who call her Teresea and rubs rosary beads between her child’s fingers. She reaches for a magic gone dormant and misses it like a lost limb.

God’s stained glass gaze doesn’t quite bring it back to her, but it’s close enough. Morgan throws herself at the altar when her mother dies, dons the nun’s habit and ignores the way her palms burn whenever she brings them together to pray.

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Then malaria shudders through her core, and suddenly she can See again. The world dances for her like Camelot used to. Her magic sings across the canvas of her skin. The church cardinals, though, they tut, and her sisters fuss and worry, so Morgan buckles down and learns to lie to herself all over again.

(She hears stories of her brother-nephew, Arturo y sus caballeros. In the quiet of night, she wonders what those stories say about her.)

When she dies in this life, she dies a saint. God’s voice rings in her ears, and Morgan Sees a lake, abandoned battlefields, and blood on her soles.

III. When she wakes again, it’s 1644. Her mother names her Märet and plaits her blonde hair into whips that smack against her back. They sit together and pray, but the breath in Morgan’s lungs grows cold and God never answers.

Left to her own devices, Morgan finds women.

They press together, these young girls do: Gertrud, Anna, and Morgan-Märet. They read salt for signs of sickness in cattle.

They pray and dance and slit their pinkie fingers before pressing them together, binding themselves as sisters do. Morgan hears Morgause, sister-mother-aunt, in her head and bends closer to Gertrud, who slicks her sore feet with copper oil.

When Gertrud gives her up to the church, rosary beads clutched in her hands, Morgan holds her head high. She pleads innocent to a court of angry men and reaches out to her family only to watch the lot of them flinch away, whispering, “sinner, heathen, pagan, witch”.

She doesn’t hear stories of Arthur here. When she is executed, either by fire or hanging or a merciless drowning, there is defiance on her lips.

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IV. She wakes for a third time, and she wakes angry.

It is 1769, and the language she speaks makes no sense in her head (and she’s beginning to wonder why God likes to make her travel). Two skeletons known as father and mother call her Barbara and feed her what little they can when there’s food to spare. (Barbara may have siblings; she sees one or two, but they disappear just as quickly as they arrive.)

Like Märet, she finds friends here, friends who takes her into deep cellars where the world smells of cinnamon and clove. They sit in circles, hands held tight against the cool of the evening, and someone comments on the crescent moon already carved into Morgan’s pinkie finger. She waves it away – a birthmark, nothing more – and rubs at it in the darkness, feeling magic spark beneath her skin again.

Magic drives her anxious feet away from her parents’ household and into employment as a maid. She works late into the evening, whispering spells into her broomsticks and mops, into deep buckets of water to scry the skeletons she’s left back home.

Morgan-Barbara is a dutiful maid with dark hair and keen eyes. When, one night, the world grows cold and her master’s eyes begin to wander, she lifts her hands high and pours too much oil into his unlit lamp.

Morgan thinks of Camelot and smiles.

The city of Rößel burns within hours.

The knights of old take her laughing and without resistance. Magic shakes out of her skin, even as her feet are bound. The judiciaries sentence her to burn at the stake.

Her captors strangle her before she can make it a hundred steps away from the courtroom.

(She wonders, gasping, if this’ll be the last time around—

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if God is still resting in the back of her head—if there’s a purpose to these multiple lives that goes beyond waking and constantly winding up dead.)

V. It is 1879, and Morgan wakes to the accusation that she’s killed her own mother. She waves small, meaty fists to fight off a litany of memories as her father sobs above her head (and were she older, less red in the skin, she’d grit her teeth and send him away. As it is now, all she can do now is scream).

He names her Margaret, but she rejects it, takes the “M” and walks the New World with simmering rage and blatant curiosity.

She finds her women again, these young, smooth-faced things, and feels impossibly old.

She does not bother finding God. Her magic feels different now, buried in her belly instead of beneath her skin. She waves it without incantation, lets it guide her to hospital beds and maternity wards full of weeping mothers and pain – a battlefield in everything but name.

It takes four hundred years for Morgan to buy herself a pair of shoes. All the while, she never stops walking.

She teaches her women how to protect themselves, potions to prevent the pain and ache. When her enemies come after her, wrinkled and angry, she flees, running back to the damp of England and the familiar, soggy soil.

She marvels at the train that takes her to the outskirts of Camelot. She loses her shoes and walks through tall grass, feeling for arrowheads that have been long buried.

When she’s stabbed in the foot, she can’t help but smile.

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The lake is as she remembers, the same as in her dreams: cold, misty, and dead. She sits on its edge and lets the water lap her feet. She looks for the gold of Camelot’s crown, for Merlin’s weary tree. A heaviness takes to her chest when she finds neither. It only lifts when she finds Arthur’s stone.

When she returns to America, she takes her brother-nephew’s sword with her. She wields it like her magic and teaches women openly. Her gifts protect women under the name of science. She leads them, offers them swords of their own and the means to continue walking.

It is 1966 when her strong heart fails her. 1966, and Rößel burns through her chest. There are hands around her throat—her worn feet are bleeding. Morgana looks up to the white plaster ceiling and hears God call her name again.

She hears Arthur laughing, Guinevere scolding, Merlin chiding, and the knights’ cool silence.

She asks no love from those who abandoned her, but her heart loosens, all the same.

Her head lolls.

VI. Morgan walks across the world and, even in death, never quite manages to die.

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The Death of King Arthur by James Archer (1860) Timeless Tales 8 29

Fiction When the Wheel Turns Over

About The Author

Celia Daniels hails from Indiana and masquerades as a freelance writer, poet, literary analyst, and solarpunk-advocate. She grows catnip but has yet to procure a cat to make use of it. Her works have been published in Road Maps and Life Rafts, Magic Jar, Entropy, Claudius Speaks, and 11/9: The Fall of American Democracy.

Poetry

Words by

The Better Tool

Jane Yolen

The BETTER TOOL JANE YOLen

A hand from the lake, knuckles like jewels.

I heard it was a lady’s, but this is a farmer’s grip, a scythe not a sword on offer. A better tool I think, for peace.

I take it from the hand which disappears with fewer ripples than a trout.

I will return home, to the castle, perilous because of its ruined moat, and run-down rooms.

We will beat our swords into plowshares.

The land needs tilling, people need food, and I need a rest from killing.

A king is not a butcher, whatever the Chronicles will say.

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Poetry

Words by

Lancelot Writes Arthur’s Epitaph

Jane Yolen

Lancelot Wr ites Arthur’s Epitaph Jane Yolen

He had a hawk’s eye, ram’s longing, and a hare’s hope of peace.

He kept his knights like the dogboy his hounds, eating and sleeping alongside.

He was full of courtesy and control, never bolting either food or speech.

If he failed, it was with honor.

In his name we will all dwell in Camelot Long after the towers fall, and merlins nest in the ruined stones.

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Poetry The Better Tool & Lancelot Writes Arthur’s Epitaph

About The Author

As of 2018, you will be able to read a Jane Yolen book a day for a year (even if it’s leap year) because she will have— by actual count—366 books out. Often called “the Hans Christian Andersen of America,” she has written for every age and in almost every genre such as adult poetry, novels, cookbooks, and music books (she writes lyrics for her band!).

Her New York Times bestselling books include OWL MOON, THE DEVIL’S ARITHMETIC, and HOW DO DINOSAURS SAY GOODNIGHT. With a Masters in Education from the University of Massachusetts, she was recently named an unsung heroine of Massachusetts (though she says, “Hey—I’m sung!”) Her books and stories have won an assortment of awards--two Nebulas, a World Fantasy Award, a Caldecott Medal, and three Golden Kite awards, among many others. Visit her on Facebook and Twitter where she is JaneYolen, or at her website at: www. janeyolen.com Jane Yolen calls herself an Arthurholic. In addition to much Arthurian poetry published in small journals and magazines, here’s a list of her books that are specifically Arthurian themed: The Young Merlin Trilogy (for young readers) The Dragon’s Boy (middle grade novel) Sword of the Rightful King (young adult novel) Merlin’s Booke (a book of adult Arthurian short stories)

Poetry

Words by

What Do Simple Folk Do?

Sandra Lindow

About the poem

‘Guinevere’s Complaint’ was written in 2000 after seeing the place where Princess Diana died in Paris. It had been made into an unofficial shrine where people had placed flowers, notes, toys, and at least one teddy bear. I started thinking about what had tempted Di, despite her beauty and obvious virtues, to be attracted to someone so obviously opposite from Prince Charles. Di must have wanted to cut loose and have the kind of fun that was denied her under the public eye. The poem was published in the Scottish magazine, Poetry Monthly in March 2001.

While I’d initially known that Merlin would respond to Guinevere, it took me sixteen years to fully shape his poem. In that time, advances in nanotechnology made Guinevere’s desired tiara almost a possibility, but Merlin’s living backward mindset remained the heart of the poem. Although I have been publishing poetry for

about 56 years (first published in a Sunday School magazine when I was eleven), I have never spent so long on a single piece.

Recording was a relatively new experience. I chose Kevin Drzakowski to read Merlin because, along with being Chair of the Stout English Department, he is also an actor and a playwright.

We recorded “Simple Folk” in a study room in the English Department of the University of Wisconsin-Stout, an appropriate spot for a poem that spans the history of English literature, from the 5th century to the 21st.

WHAT DO SIMPLE FOLK DO? SANDR A LINDOW

I. Guinevere’s Complaint

If I could wear another woman’s life like a corset from Victoria’s Secret, would Das Rheingold be better and parties more fun?

Are the hurried pedestrians I pass on the street secretly enrapt by nights of raucous love?

Do others have more fun?

In the years since Arthur pledged his love, being queen of the realm’s been pleasant enough; but where is my gauge for measuring pleasure?

Queen that I am, I’m entitled to more fun.

I’d take the average for human happiness and dial it up to the common joy plus one, thereby assuring my privilege.

Is there more to life than Camelot’s casual comforts— Parisian fashions, Dom Perignon and Lexus?

Should the rhythm of days so much the same be shaken?

Would risk pierce my idle pleasures with richness like dark chocolate?

After a while, even the crown jewels look passe’.

As Arthur snores peacefully beside me, I would not lose him; and yet Somewhere across my heart’s dark watered channel, Young Lancelot of the used car lot calls me away.

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II. Merlin’s Reply

What ails you, child that you require a gauge to calibrate pleasure?

Has Prozackian magic failed to give you joy unfettered?

“Fie on pharmaceuticals” you say.

An invention you order, to glitz the royal coiffeur with electrodes, filigrees and levers, a tiara to quantify pleasure, fashionable with the biofeedback set, like pyramids, crystals, and angels.

Would you feel any better to grace the cover of Cosmo crowned with a neuromantic barometer?

I think not! The simple charms of birdsong and fresh baked bread escape you.

Leisure’s over abundance drives you to sample the material dessert bar, a surfeit of nannophile confections, ever fancier.

Even love. Don’t look so surprised.

I see by your eyes as long as you seek the Grail in Tiffany’s RomanTech aisle, will anything be enough?

Even love? Forget your idle pleasures.

Joy’s not bought, nor magically conjured, but discovered like spring in late summer, flowering backward, from petal to pollen.

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Poetry What Do Simple Folk Do?

About The Author

Sandra J. Lindow lives on a hillside in Menomonie Wisconsin, where she teaches, writes, edits, and competes with varmints for the pleasure and sustenance of her vegetables and flowers. Her work has appeared in many magazines including Star*line, Tales of the Talisman, Dreams and Nightmares, Scifikuest, The Rhysling Anthology and Dwarf Stars. Her book, Dancing the Tao: Le Guin and Moral Development (Cambridge Scholars, 2012) was a finalist for the 2014 Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship in the Study of Myth and Fantasy.

She has seven poetry collections. The most recent is the Hedge Witch’s Upgrade (2012). Presently she serves as VP of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association and Regional VP of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. You can find out more about her at www.wfop.org/poets/lindowsa.html.

Fiction

Words by

Serpent’s Skin

Shelly Jasperson

About the story

When I saw that the theme was King Arthur, I naturally thought of the Aztecs... Actually, I have no idea where the Aztec idea came from. Alliteration? But I have always wondered why we focus so much on Arthur, when it is Merlin who seems to do all the work.

He’s powerful, clever, and selfless (in most iterations). What would happen if he wasn’t? It would take him less than a day to overthrow Arthur.

SERPENT'S SKIN S H EL LY J A S P ER S O N

Tendons bulged on the scout’s neck as he described the Olmec army, wearing serpents as skin, training in the valley between our cities.

To practice so openly was bold. They didn’t fear me or my armies.

I stroked my jade jaguar necklace, wishing for the wisdom Tezcatlipoca had always offered me. It’d been years since I’d seen the shaman, but he remained a voice in my mind in times of turmoil.

My only option was to organize my army and prepare for battle. I sighed, my breath disturbing the feathers at my neck. There would be casualties. After all my efforts, appeasing the gods with bird sacrifices when they called for blood, sending the Olmecs gifts of turquoise and gold, we would still be torn apart by war.

“Send for General Zolin,” I told my scout. He nodded and turned, his loincloth slapping against his thighs.

A disturbance across the room drew my attention. I squinted between the square sandstone pillars to see a man hunched over, fighting to get past a guard. The old man gestured wildly, the sleeves of his dirty white robe swinging over his head.

Despite my anxiety, I smiled. “Let him in.”

The old man’s cane echoed off the marble floors and reverberated through the painted stone walls of my chamber. His white hair fluttered with each step. When he looked up at me, I saw a black line drawn across his weathered face.

“What is your petition?”

“I need nothing.” The old man gripped his cane for support. “I am only here to give.”

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I raised a brow. To get to my meeting chamber, he must have already paid tribute. And instead of asking a favor, he wanted to give more?

“What do you offer me?”

He presented a long, flat piece of obsidian.

“You could have left that in the tribute room.” I waved my hand, signaling the guards to approach.

“Wait!” the old man shouted. “The gift isn’t the mirror, but what is seen inside it.”

My hand flew to my jaguar necklace and I stood. “Let me see.”

My guards halted. I descended to the chamber floor, and the old man tilted the obsidian toward me.

I peered into the black mirror, still gripping the pendant.

Instead of my reflection, I saw myself on a battlefield, wielding a giant maquahuitl, slashing through limbs and armor of Olmec soldiers. I watched myself conquer an entire army with inhuman skill.

When the image faded, I grinned, understanding who stood before me.

“Tezcatlipoca,” I said, watching his face form a devious smile.

“Where have you been, you coyote?” I pulled him into a hug.

I towered over him, wrapping my large arms around his emaciated body. The last time I’d hugged him I’d been the frail one. A boy.

“Who’s this?” My head priest, Tenoch, approached from the meditation room.

I held Tezcatlipoca around the shoulder. “This is Tez, my old mentor.”

I couldn’t believe it was him, especially after wishing for his counsel just moments before. It was fate.

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“And what brings him here?” Tenoch asked.

I frowned, remembering the images in the mirror. “What was that, Tez?” “That was the future. You are wielding the maquahuitl of Aztlan, a weapon so powerful that whoever holds it cannot be defeated.”

My grin widened. How had he known exactly what I needed? With the maquahuitl of Aztlan, the Olmec soldiers would be short work. I could meet them alone and save my people.

“Where do I find it?”

“Wait,” Priest Tenoch furrowed his brows. “How do we know this man isn’t a trickster? Give me the mirror.”

Tez obliged.

Tenoch examined the disc from both sides. The smooth surface showed nothing but a dark reflection. Frowning, he handed it back.

“You should trust my judgment,” I growled.

Tenoch bowed, but gripped my arm and whispered in my ear. “This is evil magic.”

I shook him off and turned toward Tez. “Show me to the maquahuitl.”

“Of course, great Quetzalcoatl.” Tez bowed.

I shook my head. “No titles between us.”

Tez smiled and rested a hand on my arm. Wind wrapped around us, obscuring everything but whirling clouds. I grinned at the familiar feeling of excitement rising in my chest. My feathers fluttered in the breeze and I reached up with one hand to steady my pointed crown.

When the wind dissipated, we stood before a muddy lake, surrounded by dying grass and buzzing insects. The

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sky was hazy, a dull yellow between gray trees, and the smell of decay was overwhelming.

“Where are we?”

Tez let go of my arm and staggered to a large rock. “I’m not as powerful as I once was.”

I ran to his side.

“I’ll be alright,” he panted.

After a few moments, he reached for my arm and I pulled him to standing.

“What do I do, Tez?” “The maquahuitl is at the bottom of the lake. You must wade into the mud and find it.”

I cringed. With my title came the ability to delegate uncomfortable chores to others. How appropriate that my mentor had come back to remind me who I really was.

I took off my crown and handed it to him. Next came my gold chest plate, lined with feathers. Then I took off my jaguar necklace.

When I handed it to Tez, I saw a tear form in his eye.

“You kept this?”

I nodded and removed my sandals.

At the edge of the lake, I shivered in my blue loincloth.

Entering the lake would ruin it, but I wasn’t about to go in nude. Even Tez couldn’t humble me that much.

I dipped a toe in. It came back out brown. The lake was more mud than water. I didn’t relish the thought of coating my entire body with it.

“Go ahead.” Tez nodded.

I was strong, but fighting against the mud, I could only drudge forward. I used my arms to wade through the muck,

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but it didn’t help. The smell of sulfur and decay rushed up my nostrils and I struggled to hold my breath.

Not far now.

I reached the middle. The mud came up to my neck.

I had hoped to find the maquahuitl with my feet, but now I wondered if that was wise. My hands could search faster. Wincing, I took a deep breath and dove under the mud to the lake floor.

When my air gave out, I pushed to the surface again, gagging. It was like wading through excrement. If I vomited in this lake, it would be an improvement.

I gasped for fresh air before diving back down again.

My arms ached, reaching and swimming, up and down, up and down. Curse whoever had thrown it in here to begin with!

The mud seeped through my loincloth, oozed under my fingernails, and coated my hair. When I dove, it threatened to pry into my mouth. I couldn’t keep it out of my nose.

Just before my strength left me, my hand bumped into something blunt and round. Without thinking, I smiled, letting the mud slip under my lips. I gripped the maquahuitl and hefted it to the surface, spitting mud.

I shoved it into the air, gripping the wooden handle tightly.

Mud dripped off the sharp obsidian, embedded up both sides of the heavy wood. I’d held many maquahuitl in my life, but never one as large as this. Already, it made me feel stronger, faster. I could tell it had all the power Tezcatlipoca had promised.

I waded back to the grass, gripping the maquahuitl with one hand. Tez patted me on the back as I scrabbled onto dry ground. “Good work, boy.”

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But as the mud dripped from my body, I felt like it was taking my skin with it. I screamed in pain. The muck left red, burned skin behind. It covered my whole body. I fell to the earth and howled.

“What’s happening?”

Tez dropped my clothes and riffled through his robes before pulling out a clay jar.

“Here!” He shoved it toward my mouth. “This will heal you.”

I swallowed the contents, smooth and fresh, and felt it rush through my body. The stinging gradually subsided. I took several deep breaths, each one with more relief, but a yellow haze developed on the edges of my vision.

“Tez,” I panted. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He bit his lip. “I didn’t think you’d go in if you knew.”

If I’d had more strength, I’d have struck him. I’d never felt pain like that before in my life.

Tez picked up my crown and ornaments before resting a hand on my arm. I jerked away without thinking, but Tez gave me a stern look and I relented.

I gripped the weapon tightly and again felt the rushing wind whip around us like a tornado. I closed my eyes, still relishing in my relief from the elixir.

When I opened them, I stood outside my palace, surrounded by Olmec soldiers.

“Tez!” I screamed. Dozens of serpentine soldiers aimed their weapons at me from all directions. Their scales glistened against my gold plaited walls. Where was Tezcatlipoca?

How did they get here so fast? Did they kill my guards?

I was bare other than my loincloth. Not even a chest plate to protect me. But I held the maquahuitl of Aztlan. I clenched it in my palm. I had all I needed to save my people.

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An Olmec stood where my guard had, outside the stairs to my meeting chamber. He growled and took a step toward me. I slashed with the maquahuitl, slicing the soldier in two, and ran up the thirteen steps.

Despite the haze still clouding my vision, I saw two soldiers standing at the entryway. One ran away, but the other tilted his head. I hacked through one and caught the runner in the tribute chamber. His blood splattered on a jade puma.

When I reached my meeting chamber, I chased down the first soldier and slaughtered him. The others ran, their screams echoing off the stone walls. I caught each one with ease. The maquahuitl made me swift, like an eagle.

The last soldier kneeled, his hands clasped together.

“Why, great one?” He shivered.

I raised the maquahuitl and hesitated. Squinting at the soldier, I watched the haze fade before my eyes. The man’s serpent helmet grew feathers and his face transformed into my priest, Tenoch.

Bile rose in my throat as I stepped back.

I searched frantically around the room for the serpentine enemies I’d slain moments before. Corpse after corpse lay strewn across the floor, but the faces were those of my friends and allies.

The elixir’s hold on me loosened further and I saw Tenoch flee outside. I had to explain. I rushed to follow him, passing my own guards mangled on the marble floor.

Tezcatlipoca stood at the top of the stairs, wearing my feathered chest plate and crown. I gasped. He pointed at me with an accusatory scowl.

“Quetzalcoatl murdered the guards and priests.”

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A crowd had gathered at the foot of the stairs. I heard a collective gasp.

I opened my mouth to condemn Tez, the only real serpent here. But as I looked at my people, I knew it was too late.

They jeered at me; their loyalties had already shifted.

I dropped the maquahuitl, no longer worthy of it.

As Tezcatlipoca stooped down to pick it up, my jaguar necklace emerged from behind his chest plate. He’d taken it back.

I stood straight as he sentenced me to exile, walked uprightly as I descended the stairs and took my punishment.

But I would be back. I’d take my revenge on Tezcatlipoca and regain my crown. For all that I was, I would return and save my people from the clutches of that betraying wizard.

I would be king once again.

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Fiction Serpent’s Skin

About The Author

Shelly Jasperson has a love for dead things and a bachelors in Archaeology from Brigham Young University. Whenever she’s not chasing after her three boys or joking with her husband, she writes.

Poetry

Words by

The Hawthorn Muses

Shannon Connor Winward

About the poem

I knew I had to write something for this issue of Timeless Tales, because what lover of the fantasy genre doesn’t have a soft spot for King Arthur stories? I went with the tale of Merlin and Nimue (Nynave), which has been part of my psyche since I read Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave series as a young girl—and, of course, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon. But I wanted to do something different, rather than just retell the story.

In some versions, Nimue traps Merlin inside a shrub or a tree (a hawthorn, according to the authorities on such things). For whatever reason, I had trees on the brain all spring—exacerbated by a poem* by Holly Lyn Walrath.

Once I decided to explore it from the hawthorn’s point-of-view, the poem pretty much wrote itself.

My favorite aspect of creating this was deciding which words and concepts would be part of a tree’s native “language”, and

which would have to be learned.

But it was always obvious to me that there would have been dialog between Merlin and the tree. I mean, what else would a man like that do with himself over centuries, if not talk, and teach?

*www.liminalitypoetry.com/ issue-11-spring-2017/pine-songrobin-song-star-song/

the hawthorn muses

Shannon Connor Winward

“There is no immortality but a tree’s love”

–Peter S. Beagle Even then, I was old, but trees have no measure for time beyond branch-breadth root-reach.

We have no word for it, either only patterns; leaf and bloom bareness, slumber.

But I have learned the way of naming the distance between stars the dance of one star up, down, up the march of seasons that he counts; one after another, always attending to such things.

This is his nature, and thus after all this time entwined now it is mine. Together we have seen centuries, he says, though to me they all look the same only the fall of foliage that people wear the cut of their cloth changes, and the way they move horses now carriages now automobiles, and tiny shining not-birds in the sky. The world

62 Timeless Tales 8

he says, is passing him by.

He broods sometimes, like winter quiet, cold, his thoughts burrowed so deep I could almost forget he’s here, except for the soft tickle-rumble when he snores but when he rouses to the rush-red and the bumble-buzz of summer he stretches long and hard within my ever-embrace and then he tells me stories; like the one about the girl.

Ripe as haw, my fruit he says, trembling on their stems, her lips plump and pouting, aching to be kissed.

Jealous? he asks as I stiffen and sigh—can I feel such a thing? No matter. She was inconstant, he tells me. She lied and though quick, and clever (perhaps moreso than he?) she cannot compare to me. And though steadfast we are not by choice, I cannot

Timeless Tales 8 63

fault the she, Nynave (that name that, even now, he cannot utter, save in the throes of dreams he does not know that I can see); for had she not led him here, bespelled believing my many-fingered touch was hers, had she not ensnared the great wizard in bark and branch with words of power, magic taught by his own hand, would I have lived so long? Would I know the vastness of the heavens, the business and busyness of kingdoms blooming like bees’ nests far beyond these green hills where I was seeded? Had she not tempted and spurned him, bound him to my boughs and crook, would I have known this need this we? If she had not, would I have ever understood what it means to love this man?

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Timeless Tales 8 65

Poetry The Hawthorn Muses

About The Author

Shannon Connor Winward is the author of the Elgin-award winning chapbook, Undoing Winter.

Her writing has earned recognition in the Writers of the Future Contest and the Delaware Division of the Arts Individual Fellowship in literature.

Her work appears in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Star*Line, The Pedestal Magazine, Eternal Haunted Summer, Strange Horizons, The Wild Musette Enchanted Conversation, Mirror Dance, Literary Mama, Qu, and The Monarch Review, among others. In between writing, parenting, and other madness, Shannon is also an officer for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, a poetry editor for Devilfish Review and founding editor of Riddled with Arrows, an online literary journal dedicated to meta-fiction, meta-poetry, and writing that celebrates the process and product of writing as art. Visit her online at www.shannonconnorwinward.com.

Fiction

Words by

Galahad the Trickster

Andy Scott

About the story

There’s something so excruciatingly pure about Galahad. The stories of his ‘piety’ and ‘godliness’ always left me feeling a little deflated, both as a small boy and a larger one. He’s just so good.

I wanted to make him squirm a little. So, I thought it would be fun to have him meet the one character wily and cunning, and just evil enough to put a mark on him for life. I like to think, having met Loki, Galahad would be wiser and more cunning himself in the future and be able to hold his own amidst the secrets and intrigues of Arthur’ court.

Galahad & The Trickster

Andy Scott

The bitter cold seared his skin as he neared the Kingdom’s border. Galahad pulled his borrowed cloak about his borrowed cuirass and smiled back at the Svarson farm, an unexpected refuge on the ancient North Road.

Their fare had been meagre but generously given.

Galahad had told the child stories of flashing swords and golden grails and a dragon’s only weak point. And though none but the husband had poured themselves mead, the last home in Christendom trilled with laughter that night.

Before reaching the Svarson farm, he’d slept five nights under God’s great firmament with nothing but prayer and the memory of his father’s face to keep him warm. He’d heard tales of his father since he was a boy. The brave Sir Lancelot of the Lake, saviour of Logres and fleeting visitor to Corbenic, where he sired a bastard on the princess Elaine.

Nevertheless, Galahad had only ever wanted two things in life: to serve God and do so as a knight at Camelot.

The first time he met his father was on his 18th birthday, in Camelot’s Great Hall where the torches made a halo around the King’s Table, wearing nothing more than ascetic robes and a cross by his heart. Now, the muffled clop of his horse punctuated those moments like thunder.

Clop, his father’s averted eyes. Clop, Guinevere’s searing gaze. Clop, the interruption of the messenger, frozen in fear. Clop, the royal decree.

“If you are to gain a seat at my Round Table, young Galahad, you must vanquish the demon who terrorises my border. And if you are not able …”

Galahad sighed deeply and whispered the Queen’s words to the bitter North wind, “ … you shall never set eyes on Camelot again.”

His heart still ached for the fear in the messenger’s eyes as he spoke of the North. The whole company of knights bristled with righteous anger but not Guinevere. She just

70 Timeless Tales 8

smiled, glanced at Galahad and sealed his fate with a whisper in the cuckolded king’s ear.

He ruminated on death and the Day of Judgement while the road slipped away beneath him like the river of life.

But he took heart in the chance to fight the forces of evil— to die a martyr’s death in the service of Our Lord and become a better man than his father was. Better than a Queen’s furtive lover. Before long, great oaks and ash passed by his soft gaze. He thought of the look his father had given him when he left Camelot. It was a passionless look. The look of a stranger.

Then his horse tripped. Only slightly, but enough to fracture his reverie and he found himself gazing at a tall wooden post with a long horizontal sign nailed to it. Galahad stared at the letters but they made no sense to him. They were carved into the wood, jagged and rough. As he focused, the leaves at the fringe of his vision seemed to ripple and take the form of a thin man reclining atop the sign.

“Hail,” Galahad called. “P-pardon me, good sir, I-I did not see you. Pray, tell me what language is that? Is this still the North Road?”

“This?” the man crooned. He turned and stretched like a cat, his lithe body lounging perilously on the old rickety post. The cold sun darted through the leaves as he moved and made his ice-white hair bristle and shimmer like a dawn frost. A pale hand - made for magic not for might - extended from his long black sleeve and his fingers twirled the air into shapes beside the muddled letters on the sign.

“There, is that better?”

The runes danced and transformed into letters Galahad understood. They read ‘Hen Ogledd’.

“Or perhaps this?”

They danced again and ‘The Old North’ appeared, carved deep into the weathered timber. Galahad gasped and drew his borrowed sword uneasily.

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“Demon! B-Be gone, wr-wretch of the infernal abyss.”

His voice echoed into the empty forest.

The man leaned back and closed his eyes. “Wuddifahcud, pup … buddahcan’t.”

Galahad was shaken. He eyed the glade around him, not a leaf rustled.

“Wh - why not?”

“Because, you impertinent runt, All-Father, in his one-eyed wisdom told me I couldn’t leave this hole until the prophecy was fulfilled.”

“Wh-what prophecy, demon? And speak true!” Galahad almost believed his own courage.

The man sighed and swung his legs over the sign.

“Odin’s prophecy, dolt. Can’t get around that.”

Swinging his legs he sang, “Never shall you see Asgard again, Loki, until a virgin ploughs Yggdrasil’s key from his consummated bed.”

Loki? Galahad’s insides squirmed. He had heard of the ‘gods’ of the North Men. Cruel, pagan demons with brutal rites. He whispered a prayer under his breath, sword still trembling towards at Loki’s neck.

“Enough of your tricks, demon, come down here and fight me with honour.”

“Honour?” Loki laughed, rocking backwards, “I’m immortal, dolt. That thing will have about as much of an effect on me as a fist on fog.”

Galahad hesitated. What if this demon wasn’t lying, what then?

“Y-you said ‘consummated’,” Galahad croaked, “but if the bed was consummated the giver couldn’t be a virgin?”

“You said it, kid.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“That’s gods, for you.”

Galahad was outraged, “There is but one God, Trickster, and in his name I’ll— ”

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“Yes, yes,” Loki said, appearing at Galahad’s side. “You’re a brave … uh … whatever you are—strong willed, can’t deny it. But tell me, wouldn’t you rather use that ardent spirit of yours on a more worthy cause… like her?”

A woman Galahad would have sworn was an angel appeared in the centre of the glade. Golden hair flowed down the arch of her neck. She wore nothing but a clear chemise and moved lithely in a dance to no music. Galahad floated towards her until the woman’s body was against his, rolling and turning against the curves of his armour.

“No,” he whispered. Then louder, “NO!” and he pushed her away with his free hand. She fell lightly to the ground and head snapped towards him. Her eyes glowed viridian and her supple limbs slithered as one until she curled into an enormous snake, twice Galahad’s size. It whipped its tail and wrapped him up, trapping his blade against his chest and began to pull him closer to its furious, dripping maws. But Galahad’s hand was still on the hilt of the sword.

As he strained to bring it upwards, he sliced the serpent’s tail and gouged a clean line up his cuirass.

The serpent wailed and hissed. Black blood dripped onto the grass. Galahad took advantage of its ire—slashing and stabbing and swinging blindly—stripping scales and skin from the enormous beast until its blood oozed towards Loki, who stood watching, smiling. Loki stepped between the small sanguine rivulets “Bravo, bravo,” Loki clapped slowly as he approached the kneeling knight who was heaving for breath. “You’ve outdone yourself, lad. But you might have made a mistake there.”

They both turned and watched the rivers of blood trickle southwards, then delve into the earth as one. There was a great rumbling and the grass was torn asunder by one, then two, then an entire battalion of translucent warriors.

The fearsome ghosts formed ranks and marched away,

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beyond the tree line towards Camelot. Galahad sat and stared in horror.

“What in hell are they?”

“Them?” Loki said, kneeling by the serpent’s corpse. He peeled away a single scale from its body. It shimmered viridian in the sunlight and quickly disappeared into a hidden pocket. “Souls of the dead North Men, pup, all those who died on this pitiful rock without an axe in their hands to take them to Valhalla. Reckon they want to reconcile that. You’re not having much luck today, are you kid?”

“Why didn’t you tell me that was going to happen?”

“How did I know you were going to kill her?”

“She turned into a snake!”

“Only because you spurned her advances. What’s wrong with you anyway? Never been with a woman before?”

“As a matter of fact, no. I’m a Christian and unmarried and… and that would be a sin!”

“And the murder of a poor defenceless wurm wouldn’t?”

“No. Just … just shut up. Where are they going? What are they going to do?”

“They’re on a raid. Rape, pillage, stretch their legs a bit I expect. It’s been a while.”

Galahad grimaced and wrung his hair.

“What are we going to do? We have to stop them.” He paused and then said, “how do you stop an army of ghosts?”

“Dunno, never met one before.” Loki counted on his fingers, “I’ve met Ice Giants, Dwarves, Völva, and Trolls.

Can’t say I’ve met any Ghost Armies, though. Quite pretty when you see them in the light, eh?”

“Pretty? PRETTY?!” Galahad said, turning his back to the marching phantoms. “Bring them back! You brought the woman … snake … thing here, you can send them away again, right?”

“Ha! I can bring these things into existence, sure, but not much more. They’re here as long as I am, kiddo.”

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Galahad stared; his mouth was dry and his breath shallow, “But … the Svarsons …” *** Bethel Svarson was taking advantage of the break in the rain to milk the cow. Her good-for-nothing husband was sleeping off the mead in the barn and her young son Tomlin swung a toy wooden sword at the foes of his imagination.

That was when she noticed a rumbling in the soles of her feet.

The milk rippled then toppled and spilled into the earth. Over the cow, she caught a glimpse of steel glinting in the distance like starlight through fog. She grabbed Tomlin’s tiny hand, wriggling in protest, and ran for the house. *** Galahad paced around the glade with his hands on his head while Loki sat cross-legged on the stump of a felled tree.

“God help us, what have I done?”

“You’ve ended one city’s rule, nothing more. Do you know how many cities, how many kings have risen and fallen in the history of your paltry race’s time? Thousands.

At least you played a part in one of them. Congratulations.”

“Shut up! Give me the prophecy again.”

Loki sighed and swung his head from side to side to punctuate the words. “Never shall you see Asgard again until a virgin hands you Yggdrasil’s key from his consummated bed. Honestly, all I did was say Freyja needed to keep it in her skirt and he goes and—” “Loki, shut up.”

Loki laced his fingers over his knee and watched the pacing knight nonchalantly.

“Yggdrasil. Yggdrasil. What’s that?”

“Yggdrasil,” Loki scoffed, “is the great ash tree that connects all the worlds: Asgard, Midgard, Jöt—” “Ash Tree! Wait, ash seeds are called … keys.” He dropped to

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a knee and plunged his hands into the shallow bed of leaves that covered the glade. “Loki! Look at the leaflets, they’re all ash.”

“Good for you. We have ourselves an extremely clever virgin but yet no consummated bed.”

“Wait.” Galahad stared down at the slashed and torn body of the serpent. Then he glanced at his bloody sword.

“Those soldiers, they were…they were born out of the earth, right?”

Loki leaned forward. “…re-born, I’d say.”

“And if she’s a… a she, and I put my uhhhh…Lord help me…I killed her with my sword …” *** Bethel tucked Tomlin behind her and looked tentatively out the window. Silver men surrounded their farm, marching in droves, and though they looked as intangible as nightmares, their weapons were sharp and they seethed with unbridled greed. They shattered her fences and kicked open the barn, and she yelped in her throat as a heavy stroke felled the sweet cow that had once given them milk.

The brute whirled at her yelp and she dropped to the ground. She patted beside her, but Tomlin was gone. *** Galahad stabbed the earth again and again, ploughing deep trenches towards him. He kept pulling the blade through the red-wet soil until he unfurled a small, brown, desiccated pod and held it up to his eyes. Loki was standing over him with his hands on his hips, grinning. He leaned forward and picked the key out of Galahad’s hand.

“Took your time, pup.” And with that he melted into the colours of the leaves that covered the glade and, with a chuckle, he was gone. Galahad looked around in an exhausted daze and then his head thudded onto the grass. Victoriously. ***

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Bethel wept silently for her boy, for her drunken husband, and for herself. She allowed herself that much. Then one of the North Men stepped into the room. He didn’t use the door, just blended through the wall. He upturned the table with his free hand, sending a shower of cutlery thudding to the floor. And then he saw her. He grinned and approached her with long measured steps and raised his iron axe high.

Her skin prickled. The ice-cold fear suddenly burned into rage and she rolled as the axe cracked the wooden planks behind her. The North Man tugged at the axe-shaft embedded in the wood. Bethel planted a foot and forced all her fear, her sadness, her earth-shattering wrath into the end of her fist and swung it with all her mind and heart deep into the savage’s face. And through it.

She tumbled forward onto the floor and grazed her chin on the splintered wood. She heaved for breath then hurled a silent scream for her son to run, wherever he was—to run south as fast as his tiny legs could take him.

She heard the creak of the wood as the axe was ripped from the board. She rolled over, brushed a tear from her cheek and glared like a cornered wolf at the North Man and his weapon. She reached out to her side and grasped a butter knife that had fallen from the table.

It would do no good but she would rather die with her blade in his chest than to cower and wait for the thud, the pain, and the dark. She scrambled to her elbows and readied herself for her last attack. He raised his arms high and just as he began the momentum of his swing a sword burst through the ghost’s chest. Long, and thin, and...brown?

The Norse Man stared at it incredulously. His arms fell and axe and man dissipated into mist and nothingness, leaving Tomlin standing in the space behind, toy sword gripped in his tiny hand, triumphant.

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Fiction Galahad The Trickster

About The Author

Andy Scott is the accidental homunculus of a mad English Alchemist who was trying to make rum from ink and seawater. Andy is still a fan of both.

He does not, however, have any comment on what happened to all the ‘No Exit’ signs in Islington Underground Station when he visited for Beltaine last year.

His words have appeared in The Literary Traveller, The Washington Pastime, The Verge, Spirit Guides Magazine, and Comic Book Resources.

He has written a series of books on his first love - Greek Mythology - and his Alt-History comic “What Happened When …” is now available online: www.whwcomic.com/welcome/ You can send him missives by bribing the Right Raven with sour-strings, or: Twitter: @movescottylearn Instagram: @ajsscott

Poetry

Words by

The Lancelot Poems

Bob Beagrie

About the poem

The Lancelot poems are part of a full collection entitled This Game of Strangers written in collaboration with Jane Burn. Since both of us were interested in the function of myth/legend as archetypes within contemporary culture, we decided to tackle England’s greatest love affair and create a dialogue between Guinevere and Lancelot, mixing the mythic and the contemporary realism. The poems were written at an astonishing rate, each of us inspired by one another’s take on the stories.

With each subsequent poem, we dug deeper into the psychological and emotional complexities of the characters, exploring the temptations, denials, hopes, justifications, and regrets for their

actions.

The full collection is available from Wyrd Harvest Press: https://folkhorrorrevival. com/2017/05/13/new-fromwyrd-harvest-press/

Before bed every Wednesday night he turns the tumblers of the Yale lock with the tiny key to open the backyard gate just as she turned the sneck of the cage to his coal and ice the alley lit by amber lamps, cobbles glint like dragon scales dead summer weeds crown the wall, browned heads stand thoughtless having shed their seed, no star blinks between the terraced rooves, a hint of Moon behind the racing cloud pale cheek turned toward her husband’s, eye flashing at him The communal bin shines like his old battle dented armour spilling household waste - faceless enemies’ drawn entrails an empty packet of McCann’s Oven Chips, greasy Pizza Box screw bottle tops and yogurt pots – a variety of plastic grails and a bouquet of red roses someone thought better of giving or receiving, still in the cellophane spelling ‘Beautiful Blooms’ under a half mulched pumpkin left over from Halloween.

He hoists the black bag up onto his shoulder, the weight of an abandoned world or the corpse of the crippled king thinks, again, how its time he got on top of the recycling but dumps the sack of unsorted rubbish into the yawning lid I do swear to uphold thine honour, thine laws and the faith To be, not only, a Trew Kniyght but the best in all the land! but the pout of her lips in the season’s last stubborn leaves the green woods in her eyes, plunge of breast, curve of hip the wild flame of her hair that near burnt him to a crisp when he first saw her in candlelight seated by his liege, and felt the wax fixing the frame to the sails of his wings

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begin to soften and run from flying to close to this sun, his heart a torn out circuit-board glitching to self-destruct.

The last giant has been slain, all of the dragons are dead.

He sees her gaze in amber puddles, among the frosted tiles hears her in the wind humming through the telephone wires sees her face in his breath’s plume as he bangs shut the gate.

The Sword Bridge Separates Us Weighed down by bulging carrier bags I stand, tilt, ready to enquire if there’s nothing safe to grasp since the age dissolved in yellow fog ‘Oh, don’t even ask’ she cuts me short and when she speaks I’m impressed we’re standing upon a cliff edge and the table she sits at in Starbucks is a remote, high mountain chasm the river below choked thick with junk cardboard cups with coffee dregs torn sachets of demerara grains, receipts plastic bottles, tossed lottery tickets, the question swirls in turgid rapids she’ll not glance up from her Latte absorbed in its neat division of light and dark, its meadow of milky froth the cinnamon biscuit on the saucer everyone knows she’ll not unwrap even though I have run the gauntlet of packed department stores, ascended in lifts, escalators, paced down spiralled stairs

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charged the aisles of Poundland, charted streets, shoulder to shoulder with clipboard wielding canvassers Excuse me Sir, can I just ask....Past a soap box saviour’s wagging tongue waving the pages of someone’s sums over a big issue seller’s hooded bonce, to meet her here in this glassed arena having hesitated for just one moment (or was it two) caught by second thoughts before hopping on the double decker that wound through roads of yellow fog on the slowest boat to China – what with my car being written off.

She knows all this. I know she does, ‘though don’t know how or why it matters.

Will she ask? And if she does will I answer with the truth?

How long can facts be kept under wraps?

Should we grit our teeth and take the plunge holding hands cos there’s nothing else to grasp and step out into empty space?

Her crumpled serviette’s a glacier the butter blade a sword bridge I must yet traverse to speak to her although she cannot see will not spot the drops of blood from my hands and feet smudged across the marbled tiles convinced they’re nothing but hot chocolate spills or ketchup stains; although we’re used to walking tightropes her and I, trained in the stages of deceit

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addicted to our age old circus trick of inching along the knife edge between loyalty and betrayal. Oh, I have scars already from all this slicing through tissues of lust and fear but still I dare not ask. I will not ask the right words fumble in their forming they’ll flit away like moonstruck moths so long as our lips remain impure, perhaps we should have jumped, together, all of those years ago?

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Poetry The Lancelot Poems

About The Author

Bob Beagrie is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Teesside University, co-runs Ek Zuban Press & Literature Development, and is a founding member of the experimental poetry and music collective Project Lono. He has performed at numerous festivals and venues nationally and internationally, and received commissions from Arts Council England, The Hydrogen Jukebox Cabaret of The Spoken Word, the Helsinki Refugee Centre, and many more.

Publications include, Masque: The Art of The Vampyre (Mudfog Press 2000), Huggin & Muninn (Biscuit 2003), Endeavour: Newfound Notes (Biscuit 2004), Yoik (Cinnamon Press 2008), The Seer Sung Husband (Smokestack Books 2010), Glass Characters (Red Squirrel Press 2011), Leasungspell (Smokestack Books 2016) www.leasungspell. com.

His work has also appeared in various anthologies and journals and has been translated into Urdu, Dutch, Finnish, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. You can find him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bbbeagrie/

Fiction

Words by

The Castle’s Mistress

Sarah Deeming

About the story

I have always loved Arthurian legends, especially their contradictions and hypocrisies. In ‘The Castle’s Mistress’, I focused on a quest with Sir Galahad and Perceval. Perceval’s sister is expected to donate her blood to heal another woman. This act will kill Dindrane but Perceval agrees his sister must do it. Galahad points out it will kill her but does nothing to stop it happening.

I’ve always been struck with this story’s contradiction. To save one woman, both knights are willing to let another die. Why was Dindrane’s life considered expendable when compared to

the other woman’s? It makes no sense that a young, royal maiden should be sacrificed for an older woman’s health. Often portrayed as cold and stand-offish because he was so pure, I’ve often wondered how Galahad’s motivations and behaviour would differ if the character was a woman disguised as a man, forced to behave a certain way to remain hidden.

The , Castle s e Mistr ss Sarah Deeming

‘Sir Galahad, you are quiet,’ said the castle’s seneschal.

‘Perhaps you are pondering our dilemma?’

It wasn’t a dilemma, it was a hostage situation. Either Galahad allowed the seneschal to drain all the blood from Perceval’s sister, Dindrane, to heal the castle’s owner or they faced imprisonment, unable to continue their quest for the Grail.

Galahad hid her irritation behind her well-practised passive expression. The stupidity of men was nothing new to her. She faced it every day when they failed to see the truth about her. But her current situation enraged her beyond all previous experiences. Her anger was as much at the castle’s seneschal who had involved them in this farce as it was at Perceval and Dindrane. Galahad hadn’t asked either of them to join her. She didn’t want to lead them. And yet, by their silence, they gave her no choice.

‘No,” she replied. ‘I was considering retiring for the night.

I wish to pray for God’s blessing for tomorrow, then sleep.’

‘God’s blessing for tomorrow?’

‘For when I kill your men.’

The castle’s knights stopped drinking and laughing to glare at her. She ignored them and picked at her plate.

The choice to eat light was deliberate, a trick she had learnt early in her ruse of being a man. In the morning, she wouldn’t suffer bloated stomach or a headache. The castle’s knights, however, ate and drank as if it was going to be their last night.

‘Do you not think that’s a little hasty? All these fine men for one woman?’

‘You are right” Galahad agreed. “It is selfish to kill so many men and women just to cure your mistress of leprosy.

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We accept your apology for our inconvenience and will part in the morning on good terms.’

‘But, Sir Galahad, you misunderstand. I was referring to your…’

She held the seneschal’s gaze while he floundered under her logic into silence. Then she leant forward on the table, tapping the table with each point.

‘No, you misunderstood if you thought I would allow you to sacrifice my companion. So, let me make myself clear. She is a daughter of God on a sacred quest and tomorrow I will fight to the death of every man here so she can continue that quest.’

‘But Sir, that course of action is foolish.’

‘Then you should pray I receive a divine message to that effect.’

She stood and Perceval and Dindrane followed suit.

Galahad held back her anger until they were alone in their quarters and she threw Perceval into a wall.

‘You pathetic coward. What brother gives up so easily on his sister’s life?’ she demanded. He bowed his head.

He’d lost his edge when he castrated himself. ‘Tomorrow, I have to be on form sixty times. They just have to be lucky once. Go and sober up. We are probably going to die, but, so help me God, I will take as many of them with me as I can, and that includes you.’

She pushed him away, shaking, and stormed to the other side of the room. Perceval left and she released as big a sigh as her body’s binding allowed. It needed changing but now was not the time. All it would take was for one person to see and the seneschal would have two royal maidens to sacrifice.

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Galahad closed her eyes. She’d thought the fear of discovery had long since passed. She’d been wrong. As granddaughter of two kings, and a maiden as well, she fitted the seneschal’s specific list of requirements. The chivalric code demanded she protect women in distress. Should she reveal herself for the sake of Dindrane and the castle’s mysterious mistress or let Dindrane die? Did her own life not matter?

‘Sir Galahad?’

Dindrane had not spoken for days, not even to defend her own life, and Galahad was in no mood for that to change.

Perceval’s weakness had given her a headache.

‘Do not be angry at him,’ Dindrane begged. ‘He is not as strong as you.’

Not as strong, as intelligent, as resilient. None of Arthur’s knights were, which only increased Galahad’s sense of injustice. Had she not taken fate into her own hands, they would be responsible for her life.

‘Are you not angry?’ Galahad asked, ignoring her headache.

She needed to know. ‘It is your life we are talking about.’

Dindrane frowned, her lips quivering into a thin line and she wiped a tear from her eye, the first emotion Galahad had seen from her.

‘I don’t want to die,’ Dindrane said. ‘My future has always been the nunnery. But you and Perceval have given me the chance to see more. Do more. Be more. I don’t want it to end here like this. Yet it is better than consumed by old age and wasted potential in the nunnery. That was nothing more than a prison.’

Wasted potential. Was that not how Galahad had perceived her own future before dressing as a man? She

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rubbed her face. This called for action, not getting knee ache in the chapel. That was Perceval and Dindrane’s job.

‘Go to the chapel, my lady,’ Galahad said. ‘Prepare your soul for God.’ Dindrane left as instructed and Galahad changed into the nun’s travelling habit, keeping her trousers and body binding on underneath. The habit was mud-splattered and too short but no one would notice. She examined her reflection and smiled. Her mother smiled back. Then she sneered and became Lancelot. Putting her hunting knife into its sheath, Galahad left their quarters.

No one had told her where the castle’s mistress was, but whenever the woman was mentioned, someone looked toward the tower. Galahad climbed the stairs, head down, stumbling over the unfamiliar dress and keeping her steps short. At the top, a thick wooden door was ajar, a fire’s light glowing round the edge and sounds of wheezing. She tapped on the door.

‘My lady?’

‘Enter.’

The voice was old and dried, like the rustle of dead leaves. Entering, Galahad closed the door behind her. The castle’s mistress, surrounded by pillows on the bed, was a mass of pus-soaked bandages. The stench of death filled the room. Battlefields were worse and Galahad ignored the smell.

‘Who are you, child?’ the mistress asked, gesturing for her to approach.

‘Galahad, daughter of Lancelot, son of King Ban, and daughter of Elaine, daughter of King Pelles.’

‘I heard Sir Lancelot had a son.’

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Galahad held a candle up and smiled to reveal her mother’s features. ‘Would you like to feel between my legs?’ she asked.

The mistress smacked her lips and hacked a laugh. The weak light revealed how far gone she was. She was a monster, already dead. She just hadn’t realised it yet. *** Dawn broke and the castle woke to find Galahad sitting at the head of the table in the great hall. The mistress’s body was on the table, wrapped in linens soaked in incense, ready for burning. Perceval had counselled running away.

Dindrane had remained silent. Typical responses, so Galahad’s resolve remained firm.

‘What have you done?’ the seneschal demanded.

‘I received a divine message that encouraged a different course of action to mass murder.’

‘I will see you hanged for this,’ the seneschal shouted.

‘You will not,’ Galahad said, standing on the table. She walked its length until she stood over him. ‘I have freed you from the delusion your mistress was cursed and could be cured by murdering my companion. I have saved you from a slow and painful death because you had leprosy in your midst and were too weak to deal with it. Now, there is no need to thank me. I will accept gratitude in the form of provisions and fresh horses.’

Perceval gasped. The seneschal and castle knights stared, mouths flapping like a dying fish. Galahad ground her teeth.

Chivalry was a ridiculous notion, clouding men’s judgement.

Defending a woman’s life at the cost of another’s? Only a man would think up such contradicting restrictions. Like

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Gawain, declaring he would not rest until he had found a mythical cup, forcing every other knight to follow suit or be called a coward.

Galahad had a plan though. She would abandon Perceval and Dindrane soon, then spend four months in Italy before returning with a memento of her trip: a drinking cup. No one would question her, experience had taught her that. If a man will believe a woman is a man, or that leprosy was a curse, then he will believe a wine cup is the Grail.

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Fiction The Castle’s Mistress

About The Author

Sarah Deeming has been writing since she was old enough to hold a pen but only started taking it seriously a few years ago when she had a daughter. Nothing motivates like telling a little girl she can do anything she wants!

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