Lailoken

"Summer, may I come in?" For all practical purposes Ellen Tenkiller was already in the room, but she made the effort to reinforce whatever fragile sense of privacy her youngest boarder might feel.

"Sure, Mrs. T." Summer emerged from the recesses of her closet with a faded plaid shirt stained the caramel red of Oklahoma clay. "I thought I'd go out and work in the flower beds for a while," she continued. "If that's okay with you," she added, ducking her head over shy words.

"Of course it's okay with me. If it weren't for you, this house would be an old plain Jane. You make it beautiful." As Summer absorbed the praise, Mrs. Tenkiller lowered her impressive weight to the whining mattress of the girl's bed. "I talked to Melvin Teehee a few minutes ago," she said.

Summer turned her back to the older woman and slipped the shirt over her tank top. "You did?" She aimed for a nonchalant tone and nearly cringed at her failure.

"Yes. He seemed impressed with you, young lady." Summer leaned toward the pride in Mrs. Turner's voice as if it were sunshine. "You know we were all so pleased when you stuck with your studies and got the GED. It showed lots of character and determination."

Summer threw a rare smile over her shoulder. "I just had to learn." She rubbed her temple with careful fingers, a patient testing half-healed wounds. "You know, to concentrate."

"Well, you did it. And all your volunteer work in the election, too. Melvin was glad he talked with you on Monday. He told me he's interested in giving you that part-time job in his store."

Worn cotton twisted in Summer's fingers. "Really?"

"Really. But you didn't hear it from me, did you?"

Mrs. Tenkiller laughed, then accepted Summer's hand as she levered herself up to a stand. "Now go on and make this place pretty. I'm sure Melvin will be calling you in a little bit."

Summer nodded her reply. "Thank you, Mrs. T.," she whispered. Before Ellen Tenkiller left, she favored the girl with a look Summer had only seen from a mother -- from other mothers, that is, given to their daughters, daughters who were whole and healthy. The tender expression touched a malignant darkness inside Summer, but for once the monster declined to wake.

***

The advent of fall meant death to many of the plants Summer had tended, but she knew that others could and would take their place. She felt a unique pride in the dusty millers, though, in the peristent gray leaves that endured despite the bitterness of winter. When the tulips and pansies and lilies of the valley had fainted and withered, the dusty millers were still battling for every breath of warmth. To use Mrs. Tenkiller's words, they showed persistence and character.

Summer abandoned herself in the dirt. The visions could manifest themselves on the lawn if they wished. At least she could continue unmoved without the shrieks and sweats that the nighttime delivered. The years of medication and counsel in the psychiatric hospital proved that she would never be free of the scenes that played out so vividly before her. The best hope for her in this halfway house and, soon she hoped, on her own, was to learn to concentrate despite it all and find peace when she could.

Here, in the garden, in the moment, was peace.

She'd worked her way along the walk, out across the back and toward the corner of the road before she realized he was there. He just stood on the lawn, staring out at Skiatook Street, hands in his pockets, taking in the city with an air of ownership. Summer drank him in with short glances. He seemed familiar to her, yet he certainly was not Cherokee, not from town, and she knew he hadn't appeared in any of her repeating dreamscapes.

Summer continued with her digging while debating the stranger's existence. He was beyond "yonega"; his face practically glowed cream, save for the ruddy patches of color in his cheeks. He reminded her of the aging men she saw when Benny down the hall watched his PBS mysteries, all houndstooth and broadcloth, thickening waist and whitening curls. His pose seemed affected just for her benefit. But why? If this was a new stage in the evolution of her illness, then she could not approach him and speak. Others might witness her mistake and she could lose the chance at Melvin's store. The risk was too great. Real or imagined, the man would have to make the first move.

As if he'd read her mind, the stranger began to amble in her direction. He was big, she realized, taller than Sam Deerinlake and broader across the shoulders. His shadow -- a good sign, surely -- fell across the grass before her. At last she dropped the pretense of work and turned on her haunches to face him.

He neither smiled nor frowned as his bold green eyes met hers.

The utter intimacy of his gaze undid her. "I know you," she said, no longer concerned if he were matter or make-believe. "I know you."

"Indeed, you do," he replied in an accented baritone. A slow smile spread across his broad features.

The darkness yawned and tried to swallow her. She took deep breaths to force it back down. Voices, loud ones, cried out in despair and ecstasy and above them all she could feel the shocking rhythm of her own pulse. She thrust her fingers deep in the earth and clenched fistfuls of dirt, anchoring herself against the violence of the moment.

"Please," she said, unsure why she was begging or what she needed.

The stranger reached into his pocket and withdrew a key. "I rented a room," he volunteered.

"Please," she repeated.

***

Images twisted and multiplied behind Summer's eyelids during the ride to the Sequoyah Inn. The voices returned, as if she were eavesdropping on a dozen conversations at once, each more passionate and horrible than the last. She braced her palms against the man's dashboard and weathered the minutes in silence. With each gasp she breathed around the madness, choked it back, blew it out.

When they reached the motel she followed him without question. Soon she stood in his second-story room, staring uncomprehendingly at the expanse of cars and concrete below her.

He stood beside her, bathing her with his eyes.

"What do they call you now?" His voice sounded hoarse and strained.

She swam past the visions and the voices until she surfaced in the room. He'd asked her a question. "I'm Summer," she answered. "You?"

"Summer. I like that. They call me Gareth. But that's hardly important, is it?" A large hand reached out to her, burrowed beneath her blue-black hair and closed around the nape of her neck. "Let's wake what's inside of you, love." He turned her head until she was facing him. "Dear God, but you are beautiful. Your eyes haven't changed, have they? Let's open them so you can really see again."

A detached spectator, Summer watched as he lowered his mouth to hers. He smelled of pipe tobacco and peat, the scent of life renewing itself in the violent green of the Welsh moors she loved...

The Welsh moors...

She screamed into his mouth and raised her fists to strike his chest. He caught her by the wrists and held her as the hallucinations ordered themselves: not dreams but memories, not visions but realities. Nightmare after nightmare unfolded in linear lifetimes with births and deaths and relentless insanities between them. Everything she once suffered was suffered again.

Gareth muffled her cries against his lips until she tore away from them, and then against his body as he embraced her. At last she grew numb and still. He lowered her to the carpet, then stepped back to sit on the edge of the king-sized bed before her.

"You did this to me. You did this to me," she chanted, rubbing her temple. "You locked me up inside my own head. Over and over again, you did this to me."

"Easy, love," he sighed. "I don't deny it. But it was your power that made it possible." At her huff of outrage, he shrugged. "I'm here now. It's time for things to be like they were." He leaned forward, hands on knees, and commanded her full attention. "They will be."

Summer hated this Gareth, this sixty-something Welshman on holiday, but she looked right through his green eyes and saw a playful girl, younger than her own twenty years, all dramatic lines and sensual shadows and breathy promises, and she hated that girl even more. And wanted her. From a source even deeper than memory, Summer yearned for that green-eyed seduction. The lust made her helpless and it disgusted her.

"You see me, don't you?" he whispered, his voice pitched low. "I see you, too, mentor of mine. I see your beard, the color of charcoal before it went gray. I see your broad back, where my nails drew blood. And I see your hands, big and powerful, holding the whole world." He held out his own and observed each finger in turn. "I wanted those hands."

"So you took them," Summer said. "And you left me in madness." Then she remembered. "And him. You left him to suffer."

"He is still with us," Gareth assured her.

"Where?"

"They have him in Argentina at the moment."

"And you're still in England?"

"I'm the only one. The rest are scattered across the globe." With a glance at the window he indicated her town. "I'm glad you were here. This place suits you well. These people are... open to possibilities."

"I belong here," she said.

"You belong with us," he countered. "The time is now. The forces are gathering, love. They need you before he can return."

The words required some time to digest. She huddled on the floor until she found her voice. "Even after everything, they sent you?" He nodded. "Why you?"

The arrogance of his grin cut her. "Because you could never deny me anything."

Lifetimes of bewildered anger rose up in her and she lunged at him with nails and fists. He overcame her easily and pinned her beneath him on the mattress. "Speak to me, Master," he breathed against her neck. His tore at her buttons with his teeth. "Give me my name. All of my names. Say them."

"Nimue!" She screamed, still fighting him. "Viviane! Damn you! Rhiannon, damn you, damn you --" But those hands were on her, those bewitching fingers, different skin yet same perfect knowledge of her own flesh, and soon she found herself pressing into them as she had so long ago, crying in frustration at her own weakness. "Damn you to hell."

"Yes," he growled at her. "You want me." A nip at her throat. "You need me." A tongue on her breast. "You love me." She arched against him and he laughed at her. "You always did, Merlin."

***

His bare skin was not seductive, not as it had been centuries ago. The meaty arm that reached for her in sleep was clay only, corruptible and corrupting. She knew that now. With the spell of insanity lifted, Summer was all but reborn. For a blessed moment she could see, really see, her past prison of madness and her future prison of prophesy and the siren song of choice that she had never before acknowledged, not even when she had held the world in her wizard's palm.

As he dozed, she pondered the afternoon's revelations. The two decades she had struggled for Summer's sanity seemed small to her now. At least these recent years were gentler than earlier incarnations, the scripts of her nightmares, when other peoples in other places proved more cruel to the insane.

Now she understood why the Cherokees had soothed her abused spirit, why the fancy dancing she watched at the powwows and the legends she heard over evening fires struck such a responsive chord in her memory. Charlie Brick's tale of becoming a hawk and flying high over the Oklahoma State Highway Patrol had never seemed outlandish to her; now she remembered that she had performed the same feat over the Roman army in Albion.

In this current world she had made real progress. Each success -- hard fought, an achievement of sweat rather than sorcery -- had stolen power from the curse. She had a family, of sorts, with Mrs. Tenkiller and the others at the halfway house. She had a job waiting for her. She could move in the clay and make things grow.

Persistence and character made their own magic, it seemed.

After centuries of penance for poor judgment she had finally wrestled a life from fate. And yet here she was again, bedded with the one who had stolen her soul.

He opened his eyes and smiled. "What are you thinking about?"

"Arthur."

"He's just as you remember him. You and I," he gestured toward her amber body and his own pale skin, "return again and again in different forms. He never really died. They've let him sleep, unaware, so the pain of his wounds wouldn't reach him. When you return, they will heal him and return him to his rightful rule."

She rose, still nude, and walked to the window. A three-legged black lab was dozing in the corner of the parking lot. His name was Tripod, Summer remembered. Dan Ross owned him. Every time Summer went by the Coney Islander, Tripod hobbled out and demanded that she rub his belly.

"And what if he doesn't want to return?" she asked.

The suggestion obviously surprised him. "He will," he said. "It's prophecy."

"My poor King," she sighed. "He's never had a choice."

Gareth appeared stunned by this line of thought. He reached out as if to touch her, then took notice of his own extended arm. After a moment's hesitation he curled back into the covers and pulled the blanket up around his furred chest.

"You're still not comfortable in your skin, are you?" Summer asked. He glanced away from her in unsettled silence. She returned her eyes to the window. A truck drove past, a shocking streak of primer and Northeastern State University stickers: Melvin Teehee.

"What if I don't want to return?" she continued.

"You love him."

"I love you, too, God help me. That doesn't mean anything."

"You're his servant."

"But I always chose for myself how he would best be served."

"You have a duty."

"Duty?" She rounded on him and in three strides stood over him at the bedside. His slight flinch did not escape her attention. It pleased her. "I've spent century after century in darkness," she said, her tone steady, "at the hands of the worst of humankind. I've been man and woman and child on every continent, and I've bled inside and out," she pressed her hand to her head, "in madness. You can't imagine what I've endured. My life's been taken by others and by my own hand, and I thought it mercy every time. No one can talk to me about duty. Least of all you."

"What else do you have?" he thundered back. "This morning I found you playing in the mud. Is that what you want for yourself?"

"This morning I was happy." She began to gather her clothes and dress. "I had my plants. Melvin Teehee was going to offer me a job. Mrs. T. was proud of me." For a moment she froze, carrying her conclusion to its farthest ends. "Why would I leave? I won't even have the nightmares anymore, now that you've lifted the spell. I can volunteer in the Cherokee cultural museum, or the office of the Principal Chief. Maybe I can even get a real position in the next campaign."

"The next campaign?" he asked, clearly at a loss. "You're talking about one insignificant tribe and I'm talking about uniting the world. Do you understand? You can lead again at Arthur's right hand. I'm talking about destiny."

"I'm talking about choice," she said.

He kicked his feet out from under the covers and moved to the edge of the mattress, hunched and uncertain. He was once her student and lover and betrayer, truly, but now he appeared to be only a broken old man, confused and saddened and miles from his home. There were tears in his eyes, she realized. She'd never before seen Nimue cry. "What have I done to you, Master?"

"You've set me free," Summer answered. She had to leave now; his frailty could seduce her as effectively as his strength. When she reached the door she paused to face him for the last time. "I need to get back. I'm expecting a phone call. I'll get a ride with Wes, from across the street." She touched a finger to her lips, then held it out in his direction.

"If you have any pity at all, love, tell them to let Arthur sleep."

THE END