Nimue and Merlin go out on an adventure

It was a perfect day to go traipsing in the woods so, with her mind and pack alike made up, Nimue went to convince her father of the same. She showed up to his tower study, where he was already nose deep in his weighty tomes of magic, and laid out her arguments with patient confidence. Firstly, she pointed out the mild spring weather. Secondly, she reminded him of the importance of hands-on practice, of picking up plants not only from the neatly organized, well-cared private garden he kept on the castle grounds, but from the wild too; after all, he himself had extolled the virtue of first-hand experience. Thirdly, and lastly, she remarked that it had been too long since they’d done any considerable walking – and no, the distance from his study to his garden, no matter how steep at times, did not make for enough exercise.

When she was done, her father cracked a small smile. “Well-argued.”

It didn’t take much more convincing than that. Half an hour later, they were out of the castle’s shadow and into the balmy morning air. They walked past the lavish, manicured royal gardens, into the grassy fields that rolled on until they were swallowed by the woods.

The wildflowers that have sprung up all around swayed gently as the hem of her skirt brushed past them, and swathed them in their sweet, heady fragrance. Nimue picked her way carefully, mindful of the bees that buzzed industriously all around, flitting from flower to flower, tiny, twiggy legs laden with pollen.

“The bees are hard at work,” she remarked, watching one of the little laborers zoom close by her side.

“Fascinating beings, aren’t they?” father said, which he’d know she’d agree with, so she said nothing, merely listened. “Diligently going about their work, without complain, each knowing their role, not needing to be taught, their duties an instinct, like the spells charmed into a training dummy, that breathe that simulacra of life into their limbs. All workers and fighters alike, ready to lay down their lives for the protection of the hive, and its ruler. How any well-run kingdom should be.”

Nimue looked up from the bumblebee she was observing, with its fluffy, chunky striped body, all pollen-powdered. “But bees have no choice about it; did you not call it their instinct?”

“Do humans have any choice?”

Her father smiled. It was not the kind, patient smile he turned on Arthur or leveled at some desperate noble from across a card-strewn table, as he prepared to tell them what they needed to hear. No, it was a sharp, almost cruel twist of the mouth, the kind of expression he put on for those that needed a reminder of their place. But its keen point was not aimed at Nimue – it had never been; instead it was an invitation, to take the blade and wield it herself.

The corner of her mouth twitched and she made a little thoughtful hum.

A crackle snagged her attention away. Close by, emerging from beneath the shade of a lonely tree, jutting too far out of the forest’s line to have any company, was a crow, sheened black wings slick in the sunlight. More perched on the branches above.

“Here they are,” her father brightly intoned, “I think they’ve been waiting for you.”

Nimue carefully approached. She couldn’t help it, the way her wry smile dug into her cheek as she watched the little critters – cocking their heads to turn those beady, curious eyes on her, hopping on their tiny legs, getting closer but never too much. She slipped her hand through the slit in her skirt, into the pocket tied around over her stays and produced a fistful of walnuts. She split it between her and her father then, moving still honey-dripping slow, she knelt and placed the offering on the ground and backed away.

The crow that had first made itself known hopped closer, head tilting this and that way as it studied the offerings before, diving beak first and fast, it grabbed one of the nuts and scampered away, making that hoarse-throat, cackle-like noise.

Nimue knew it was merely that human urge within her – so infinitely creative, yet so immensely deceitful – to ascribe more meaning than warranted. She indulged herself and fancied that the bird’s crowing was joyful thanks; or perhaps smug laughter as it took off with what it mistook for bounty, oh so conveniently dropped by Nimue.

“You’ll have become friends in no time,” her father remarked.

There, touching his features, was an expression that while not entirely foreign to his face, neither was it all that common – wistfulness. Her father was not a man who dwindled on the past more than was necessary – there was the present to seize, the future to unveil. And the way the expression sat on his face now was different than how it did when others were around; less dramatic in that compelling way that a poet translates their sadness to the page but rawer, like an old wound.

It was him who first ever facilitated this budding friendship, when he noticed her fascinated, unflinching attention turned on the crows. Awfully clever creatures, he’d said. I’d made friends with some myself.

He used to do the same when he was her age, forging friendships with the crows and ravens in his family’s garden by bringing them regular tasty offerings. In return, they gave gifts of their own; little trinkets, more often than not spirited away from his own house, sometimes of worth, sometimes not, but always well-received by him. The birds would not flee when he approached – they’d even come to perch on his proffered arm, and let him stroke their sleek feathers, when they so fancied.

The trinkets were now in a chest in the attic of his parents’ old mansion, along with all his childhood toys. Time moved on, and as her father left the coop to nest in the heart of the Court; the crows were exchanged for courtiers and the trinkets for far more valuable favors.

They didn’t loiter much; this was merely a respite, the trip only now about to begin in earnest. They left the crows to their feast and headed off, letting the woods swallow them up.

There was no one else in sight, but the forest was far from desolate. It teemed with life all around them, even more than the court itself – little mice and blackbirds scurrying through the underbrush, cuckoos and ravens weighing down the branches above.

They were still walking when it happened. Reality split and doubled; superimposed over the current moment was the memory of something that was yet to come. For a couple heartbeats, the latter came into sharp focus, blurring the former. She was walking down the same path, but this time her footsteps were her only company; the woods had shrunk down around her and her body felt both familiar and new.

She blinked, and the world snapped back into place, her ambling stride never broken.

They diverged from the man-made path in search of anything of potion-making and ritual interest: mushrooms and lichen growing in the damp shades of trees, leaves to cut off, flowers and fruit to pick. They made their way, hands gloved in leather and blades at the ready, wicker baskets slowly filling up. They’d talk at times – her father querying her on a plant’s properties and uses, and she’d answer with ease, and patch up her lack of knowledge with confidence. Other times they worked in silence, letting the sounds of nature wash over them.

By the time they stopped in a meadow and laid down their blanket on a patch free of wildflowers, the sun was already high in the sky. Nimue could not be persuaded to sit down more than it took eating and before long, she was toeing along the meadow’s edge, studying the undergrowth for something to catch her eye.

“A-ha,” she hummed victoriously, and slipped a leather glove over her fingers.

Soft footfalls came up behind her as she crouched and traced her hand along the leaf of the plant – which barely rose to her knee. “What have we got there?”

“Jagged blade,” she promptly replied. The leaves were each split into five jagged, thin tongues, sharp enough to cut through skin and let slip in its boiling-painful poison.

“It’s magical,” Nimue went on. “Faintly so.”

“Indeed,” her father said.

She looked up, past the shock of jagged blade. The woods sprawled on and on, the crevices in the foliage showing only more of the same scenery, more trees and bush extending endlessly beneath a ceaseless sky. “If we went in deeper,” she said, “we could find more magical plants, and more potent.”

“We could,” Merlin conceded, patiently, “but the sun is getting lower and we’d have a long way to return.”

“We could camp out.”

“We have no supplies.”

Her tone, calm and steadfast, mirrored his. “You’ve taught me to always be resourceful. Be it at court, or in the middle of the woods.”

At this, Merlin chuckled, and a small smile broke through her serious expression. “Yes, well, that is true. I’m sure we could easily arrange for you, Gawain and Galahad to have a couple nights camping out; after all, their fathers would be far more suited to give you a lesson in survival in the wild.”

Here he was, demonstrating yet another skill he’d preached to her: the art of making up excuses.

Nimue knew she’d get nowhere, even if she tried to press the matter. Still, she could give it a little prod, just for fun. “Are you only saying no because you’re afraid of getting lost, father? Mother told me about that time you met – how you would have wandered lost for hours, if it weren’t for her.”

“She said that, didn’t she?”

“She said you dressed up far too excessively fancy for a woodsy expedition, too.” She eyed his velvet cape and lacquered leather boots pointedly.

“No reason one can’t chose an outfit that’s both aesthetically-pleasing and practical, too,” he said, putting emphasis on the word as if that alone might be enough to make the fact true. “You never know who you could meet.”

“Like my mother?”

“Like your mother.”

They were almost out of the woods when she heard the chirping. It came from close by, yet it wasn’t until she combed through the bushes that she saw the source of it: a blackbird, she figured, and a very young one at that. Its brown plumage still retained the particular fluffiness of a fledgling, its proportions not quite balanced yet. It neither took flight or scurried off when Nimue reached out a hand, tentatively, squirming only as it lay in a pathetic little heap of ruffled feathers, chirps plaintive. She took a look at its body, prodding gingerly with her index. One of the wings hung limply, and a leg bent in the wrong direction underneath it.

“Poor thing,” Merlin gently said, leaning down to look over her shoulder. “Broken wing, broken leg…it has no chance to survive. Sooner or later, once we leave, a hungry creature will find its way to it. Such is the way of nature.” His voice was sympathetic, but it was empty commiseration, not an offer of aid.

“Unless we do something.” She didn’t wait for an answer as she reached for her water flask, wet her fingers and traced them carefully over the affected bits, murmuring a prayer under her breath, corralling her thoughts into order.

She whispered reassurances to the fledgling, even though she knew it was pure gibberish to it.

“Yes,” her father said, tone more thoughtful now, as he watched her lay the bird down in the basket, atop a bed of herbs and flowers. “Sometimes, it is within our hands.”

Nimue didn’t glance up, her eyes still trained on the little, chirping bundle. It had been an easy choice this time.

As for the future, that was yet to come.