Who Follow the Gleam: Chapter 3
FINALLY. This chapter has required me to create a general Theory of Magic in Merlin and go through two major revisions. My eternal thanks go to my beta, Bethany, for holding my hand through all that. And for not being afraid to point out that what I was saying initially didn't make sense. :)
Nerd Jokes!: I looked up the blostma spell Merlin uses in "Lady of the Lake," and I'm pretty sure the fact that Freya asks for a strawberry and gets a rose is a linguistic joke. The Old English word, "blostma," can mean "blossom," "flower," or "fruit." I play with that a little in this chapter. Also, Bethany and I decided that Morgana and Gwen are constantly rearranging Morgana's chambers after I repeatedly failed to figure out a consistent layout for that set.
Title: Who Follow the Gleam
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Merlin/Morgana (or hints thereof)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4,207
Disclaimer: Merlin belongs to the BBC. I mean no infringement.
Summary: AU season 2, post-"Lancelot and Guinevere." "Before he knew it, he was saying, 'You're not alone. I'm like you.'" Merlin and Morgana take destiny into their own hands.
Chapter 3: Of Woven Paces and of Waving Hands
At first they stood there in silence. The second the door closed behind Gwen, Merlin stopped trying not to grin like an idiot and Morgana burst into radiance like the sun from behind a cloud. But neither of them knew quite what to say, how to begin. For Morgana to cross the room and clasp Merlin’s hand now, in the daylight, seemed wrong in a way it hadn’t when her chamber had been veiled in grey light and magic.
As it happened, the first words spoken were, “Did this table move?” This hesitant inquiry came from Merlin, who had attempted, without taking his eyes off of Morgana, to set his bag on the dining table. Feeling his hand pass through the empty air, he had located it about two feet to the right of where he had expected it to be.
“Sometimes when Gwen and I get bored we rearrange the furniture.” Morgana sounded nervous, but then the corners of her mouth quirked upward. “How was the hunt?”
“It was, um…” Merlin pursed his lips. “Awful. It was awful. I’m so sorry.” He had expected her to be angry, but Morgana laughed, which made Merlin laugh, and all the tension of a day spent waiting melted away in an instant. Merlin looked up with a glint in his eye. “I, ah… I brought you something. Well-a couple of things, actually. First…” He set his bag down on the relocated table, cupped his hands, and breathed the word, “Blostma.” When he opened his hands again, a snow-white rose bud rested in his palm. He handed it to Morgana. “Here. It matches your dress.”
Between Morgana’s fingers, the blossom was soft and delicate and real. She handled it with wonder, gently touching each petal in turn. When she looked back up at Merlin, her eyes were shining. “It’s beautiful!” Merlin shrugged, but he looked pleased. Morgana tucked the flower into her hair, near the clip she’d fastened in the back. “Will you show me how to do that?”
“Eventually. I thought you should probably start with something more basic. I just learned that one after I left last night.” At the time, he had been able to think of nothing better to do than to devote hours to skimming and experimenting with spells he thought Morgana might like, spells that would show her a different side of magic than what she had seen. “I found it,” he explained, “in the other thing I brought to show you.”
Merlin reached into his bag, drew out the book, and placed it carefully into Morgana’s hands. He watched her open it and turn though the pages, just as he’d first done only a little more than a year ago.
“This is a book of magic!” It was difficult to tell if she was more excited or afraid. “Merlin, where did you get this?”
“Gaius gave it to me.”
Something in Morgana clouded over. She shut the book and held it, thoughtfully stroking the cover with her thumb.
“You didn’t tell Gaius about what happened last night,” she said.
Merlin sighed. “No. Thanks for covering, by the way. It’s… it’s a complicated situation. Gaius shouts me down every time I even think about telling someone about my magic.”
“Even someone like me?” He didn’t answer. “Merlin… why didn’t Gaius ever talk to me about my magic? He knew that’s what it was the whole time, didn’t he? If I’d just known…”
“He was only trying to protect you.”
“I didn’t need protection, I needed the truth. I had a right to know what was happening to me.”
She looked at him with a hard expression that twisted him inside. All he could think to say was, “I know. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not blaming you, Merlin. I’m just trying to understand. Why did he give this to you? Why did he choose to help you and not me?”
“I’m not sure. For one thing, I was already doing magic when I got here. If he hadn’t helped me control myself, I’d be dead by now. But mostly, I think…” He hesitated. “It’s so much more dangerous for you. You’re the king’s ward. I can stay out of his way-well, in theory anyway-but you can’t.” And now that he said it out loud, he could see the point. Morgana, with magic she could barely control, under Uther’s very nose… In trying to help her, he could be leading her to her death. “Morgana…” He waited until she met his eyes. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Are you? The fact that I’m the king’s ward could afford me some protection. You don’t have that. They’d go after you before they’d go after me.”
“Well, then I guess we’re about even.” He gave her a smile which she didn’t return.
“Merlin, I’m serious.”
“I told you I’d help you,” he said. “And I’m going to, as best I can. I just want to make sure…”
“Yes.” Her voice was soft, but certain. “This is what I want. I feel like…” She struggled to put the right words to it, this invisible pull she felt drawing her on. “I have to. Do you know what I mean?”
Merlin’s lips twisted again into a wry half-smile. “Oh, yes. Of course I do.”
All at once and without warning, Morgana felt as though she might cry. Yesterday, she had been alone. Today, Merlin was willing to risk his life with her, and he understood why better than she did. There were no words to describe the way that felt. So, almost before Merlin knew it, she had raised herself onto her toes and kissed his cheek.
He fought valiantly to recover as quickly as he could. “Right. Well. Um… okay.” He scratched his head, looking down as though that could hide how he was blushing. When he glanced back up, Morgana was giving him a bemused smile. Merlin got the book out of her hands and propelled himself back to the table with it. “Uh… Let’s get started, then.”
“We shouldn’t tell anyone.” It took Merlin a second to realize that Morgana was talking about their incipient magic lessons.
“Right, no, of course not.”
“Even the people closest to us. It’s safer that way.” She paused. “Do you think you can go on keeping it from Gaius?”
“Yeah, of course.” Morgana raised an eyebrow at him. “I’ll be careful! You can trust me, Morgana.”
She nodded. “I trust you.”
“Good. And everything else, well… we’ll figure it out.”
“We will.” Morgana tried her best to feel as sure as she sounded.
Merlin opened the book and flashed her a grin. “So, are you ready?” She nodded. Merlin started flipping through the pages. “I thought we’d start with a basic summoning spell.” He stopped, marked a passage with his finger, and held out his other hand. An apple rolled out of his open bag, over the edge of the table, and into his now-waiting palm. “Like that. It’s the first kind of magic I can remember doing” He placed the apple back on the center of the table. “D’you want to try?”
Morgana came to stand at his side. “Don’t you need to recite a spell or something?”
“Not always. I think that the way it works is, you need a spell at first, but some of them, once you know them really well, you can do them in your head, or… just by thinking. But the spell for this is right here.” He pointed out a phrase in the book. “It’s cume her.” The apple sped across the table again. Morgana, who had been watching Merlin this time, gasped.
“Your eyes! How did you do that?”
“Hm? Oh.” Merlin shrugged. “I don’t know. It just happens, I guess.”
“Your eyes ‘just’ turn gold every time you do magic?”
“I’m honestly not sure. I’ve heard it happens, but I don’t exactly watch myself do magic all the time.”
“Will my eyes do that?”
“I guess we’ll have to see.” He placed the apple back on the table. “Try it.”
She looked uncertain. “That’s it? Just… try?”
“Yeah.” Merlin tried to sound confident about that. Should there be more? He doubted it would be helpful to point out that he’d never exactly done this before, either, and trial-and-error seemed to be the best way to go.
Morgana leaned over the book and read the words. “Comeh hair?”
“Cume her,” Merlin corrected, giving a slight roll to the “R.” The apple moved toward him again.
“Cume her,” Morgana repeated softly. She trained her eyes on the apple. “Cume her.”
Nothing happened. She turned back to Merlin. “Um… it… sounded right…” he muttered. “Try… putting your hand out to direct it, like that, and, um… sound authoritative?”
“Authoritative?”
Merlin nodded. “I know you know how to.”
“Oh, really?” Merlin looked sheepish, and she fought back a smile. “Thank you, Merlin.” She extended one hand toward the apple and repeated the spell as though making a demand in front of Uther and the royal court.
Nothing.
“Could I see you do it again?”
Merlin obliged, but after two more attempts Morgana still had not made the apple move so much as an inch.
“Are you concentrating?”
“Yes, of course I’m concentrating!”
“Okay.” Merlin furrowed his brow in thought. “On the apple?”
Morgana rolled her eyes. “Yes, Merlin, on the apple.”
“Just checking.”
“Are you sure there isn’t more to it?”
Merlin had been thinking about this. Watching Morgana try the spell over and over, it had been slowly dawning on him that even the parts of magic which he thought of as instinctive possibly weren’t. It wasn’t that Morgana was bad at magic-prophetic dreams, broken glass, and fire damage ruled out that possibility-but she didn’t seem to have the sense he’d always had of what was the right thing to do. Was there more? Was there some sort of process he could identify if he dug deeply enough? It was the first time he’d seriously considered it. “Do you remember,” he asked, reaching back through his history of using magic, “what you felt when you set the fire and made the window break?”
“Yes; I felt scared.”
“No, I mean… Close your eyes.” Morgana looked skeptical, but did as she was told. “Okay, imagine this room. Picture the way it looks, everything in it. Now sort of… feel the room. Feel the… energy that connects you to it, to me, to everything. It’s there if you just look for it. Use the feeling you had when you broke the window last night-the deepest feeling, under the fear-to tap into that energy and… That’s all magic is. It’s finding the essences what things are and changing them the right way. You just have to change the apple from a thing that’s sitting still to a thing that’s moving in your direction.”
Morgana tried to understand what Merlin was saying to her. For a moment, while he was speaking, she almost could sense something. Maybe if she tried to recreate what she’d felt when she’d done magic, it would be clearer. She struggled to remember. Half asleep, images of flames dancing around Gwen, the terror of the future, the fear of herself, the desperate need to do something, the night wrapping her in and the sudden jolt of…
“Cume her!” Her voice sounded almost hysterical; she hadn’t expected the memory to be so intense. Still, the apple remained in place. Merlin eyed her with concern.
“You know, sometimes I have to repeat a spell over and over again to get it to work. I feel like I’m doing everything right, but something doesn’t quite connect. So I just keep repeating, keep trying. It’s all I can do. It can take hours, it can take days. If you can’t do it right now…”
Morgana glowered. “If you’re suggesting I give up that easily, you’re severely underestimating me, Merlin.”
“No, it’s not that, it’s just… it takes patience sometimes. That’s all. There’s no way around it. Like, the first dozen times I tried that flower spell, it kept giving me fruit for some reason.”
But Morgana wasn’t really listening. Her mind had turned inward. Merlin had been right-deep down, beneath the fear, beneath the wild, half-dreaming state, at the core of her very being, each time she did magic, there was… something. She’s never recognized it before. It was just a stirring, a shock of… something. She’d sensed it just now, and the enormity of it had scared her. But if she could find it again, if she could just touch…
“Cume her!” The apple went skidding across the table and sailed over the edge. Morgana dodged to avoid it and it slammed into the opposite wall.
She stared at the wall. Then she stared at her hands. She’d done that. With her own power, she had made that happen.
“Okay,” Merlin said at last. “We’ll keep going.”
***
They kept going for three more hours. Merlin sat at the side of the table with his chin in his hands, alternately paging through the book and staring into space. He was exhausted, and he was only watching.
But Morgana refused to stop. That first burst of magic had set her on fire. Her power felt real to her now, and it had ignited that spark of singular determination that had made her, at eleven, practice swordplay until she could beat Arthur, and never admit to Uther that she didn’t know how to do the job of a queen when she was thirteen. The idea that she could wield that kind of power and control burned within her, fascinated her. She would not let herself feel tired, nor would she let herself quit until she had achieved her goal.
She was also unlikely, in the meantime, to take much notice of Merlin. It reminded him a little of the way she’d been with Mordred-almost desperately determined. The results she got were sporadic. More often than not, nothing happened, but every now and then the increasingly-bruised apple would lurch forward or shoot off in a random direction. Merlin had nearly been hit twice.
“Cume her!” The recalcitrant piece of fruit quivered, but then settled again.
“It’s the ‘control’ part you’re not getting,” Merlin observed.
“Obviously.” Morgana glared, but at the apple rather than at Merlin, which on the whole was rather considerate of her.
“There’s no use looking at it like that.” Now she turned the glare on him. “It’s only going to get harder to focus if you keep getting angry at it,” he said.
Morgana conceded the point. She took a deep breath and tried shut everything else out, to trace her way back to that elusive source of the magic inside herself.
“Cume her!”
The apple exploded, showering the table and Merlin with fragments of fruit. She winced.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Merlin set about picking bits of apple out of his hair.
There was a knock at the door. Morgana’s eyes went wide and Merlin jumped to his feet. She tossed him the book of magic and did her best to compose herself as she crossed the room and opened the door just enough to see Sir Leon standing there. Morgana prepared herself for a question to the effect of, “I’m sorry, my lady, but were there magical sounds coming from inside your chamber?”
“Yes?”
“Sorry to disturb you, my lady. The king would like to know if you’ll be dining with him this evening.”
“Oh.” She relaxed. “No. Tell him I’m tired.”
Sir Leon bowed and was gone. Morgana shut the door and stood still, waiting for her heart to stop pounding.
“Oh, hey,” said Merlin, somewhere behind her. “I figured out what I was doing wrong before with that flower spell.”
Morgana turned around to face an apparently empty room. “Where are you?”
He shot up from behind his chair, holding the open spell book. “Blosma.” A new apple appeared in his hand and he set it triumphantly on the table.
“You know, you are allowed to be in here. I doubt anyone is going to think something’s amiss if I’m seen consulting with the prince’s manservant.”
Merlin set the book down. “You might be able to think of an excuse for me, but what about this? Because it’s definitely not allowed to be in here.”
Morgana could have pointed out that Sir Leon wouldn’t have known what the book was from a distance, but she couldn’t blame Merlin for panicking. Her hands were still shaking. She collapsed into a chair. “What am I doing wrong, Merlin? It must be something.”
Merlin wished there was something helpful he could say, but he was out of advice that he knew how to put into words. He was tired and hungry, he now smelled like applesauce, and he didn’t have any idea why the magic he’d been doing all his life wasn’t working for her.
“I don’t know what else to tell you. You’re not really using magic unless you’re controlling it. You’ve got the power, you know you do. Just… use it!”
Morgana nearly pointed out that “just use it” was not good advice, but looking into Merlin’s eyes, she could tell that he really thought it should be that simple. He believed that, for her as much as for himself, magic could be as easy as a few words and a snap of the fingers. It was like he could see her magic better than she could. While she floundered around trying to find it, she had the feeling that he could look straight into her core and see the essential. She’d felt it since the night before when he’d told her she wasn’t alone. He’d said that’s what magic was, seeing the essence of things.
It was then that it hit her. It wasn’t a thunderbolt, it was like someone opening a window inside her mind. Merlin had spoken of the path to, or maybe the source of magic as somehow involved with an energy that he could feel, energy that connects you to it, to me… She hadn’t been able to quite grasp that feeling of magic that had sparked and vanished each time she’d caused something to happen before, and the idea of finding it between herself and the inanimate objects in her chambers didn’t make sense. But ever since he’d shown her what he really was, she had felt a connection between herself and Merlin. It was something almost tangible to her, like an invisible thread. If there was magic in that, and if she could trace it…
She must have been staring at Merlin very intensely, because she registered his confused expression and inquiry of, “What?” But sooner than she’d have thought possible, she imagined that she could see… something. In an kind of double vision, the link between herself and Merlin was both there and not there. She thought it would be harder to hold on to that image once she closed her eyes, but to her amazement, without the light-inside her mind, perhaps-she could see it more clearly. It was a glowing, ever-moving line. Like a river, it flowed continuously and yet was never the same thing for two seconds together. And intrinsically bound in with it were gleaming, twisting strands of gold: magic. She could feel them extending from her and through her, and she knew that if she could just follow them she would find the white heat that was the center of her power.
She opened her eyes and trained them on the apple. “Cume her!”
Nothing happened, but she was close, oh so close, she could feel it. She reached out again for the magic in the air, and this time she found it more easily. It was a gleam of gold in the dark. She felt like she was falling-falling impossibly far and breathtakingly fast, but she followed that gleam, and…
Morgana looked inward, and then she looked out. Her eyes flew open. The whole universe was laid out before her feet. She felt that she was simultaneously seated in her chair and overlooking infinite traces of galaxies and time… Then something shifted and she knew that what she was seeing, what she was not-quite seeing, was only her chamber, but in addition to the energy that linked her to Merlin, there were traces of connection between everything, and everywhere she looked was the gleam of magic. It was just like Merlin had said; she’d only been thinking the wrong way. She’d been thinking of her magic as something separate from herself, like an enemy to be conquered, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t something foreign lodged inside her body. It was her. It was in every fiber of her being, her body and her soul, reaching out to the magic in the air, pulling it around her and through her. Now she had to just… use it.
She whispered, “Cume her.” Nothing, but she could see now what she needed to do. Merlin was right-it was simple. It was the most simple and the most complicated thing in the world.
It’s finding the essences of what things are and changing them the right way.
“Cume her!” She felt her power rise like a gigantic wave, and then she felt magic crash through every cell in her body. The web of energy shifted and vanished. The apple rolled briskly to the end of the table and dropped into her lap.
Merlin jumped up. “Yes!”
Morgana’s fingers wrapped around the apple and she blinked like someone whose eyes are adjusting to a change in the light. A smile slowly broke over her face. She tried to stand, but the room dimmed and swam before her. Her legs gave out and she sat again. Instantly, Merlin was at her side.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” The strength that had been drained out of her was slowly seeping back in. She looked up at Merlin. “How was that for control?”
“It was brilliant. Really great, on your first day and everything.” Morgana stood, still clutching the apple. Merlin took it from her hands. “You should probably eat this. You’ve missed dinner completely, and it’d probably help.”
“I feel more like I should save it.”
“Well, then… Blostma.” He handed her back a red rose blossom which, on closer inspection, she found to have white inner petals. “Now you can… dry it, or press it, or whatever you do to save flowers.”
She twirled the stem between her fingers, feeling suddenly as though she could run around the entire castle. “I did magic,” she said, just to hear herself say it out loud.
Merlin smiled. "And the answer is yes, by the way. Your eyes do change. Like mine."
“It won’t affect me like this every time, will it? It’ll get easier if I practice?”
“Yes, but you have to be careful.”
“Of course.” She was about to ask when they could meet again, but just as she was opening her mouth, the chamber door opened.
“Gwen!” Morgana exclaimed, and groped for something further to say. The words, I did magic, filled her mind, and a part of her would have liked to be able to tell Gwen, then and there, what she’d just done. Even though it would be dangerous to get Gwen involved, even though Gwen wouldn’t understand, she felt a stab of guilt, knowing that she would now be keeping an entire part of her life from her best friend. But it was the safest way, she could never let herself forget that, and so she asked, quickly, “Back so soon?”
Gwen looked bemused. “It’s near the time you usually retire.”
It was only then that Morgana fully realized that night had fallen in earnest. Her chamber was lit by candlelight, which could only have been Merlin’s work, because she certainly hadn’t done it. The exploded bits of apple were also cleared away. How long had she been sitting in that chair, exploring the nature of magic, learning about the way it moved and felt? She would have sworn that it had been no more than a few minutes, but it must have been an hour, maybe more.
“Still here, Merlin?” Gwen asked, hanging Morgana’s robe on the edge of her screen.
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean… I left, but then I came back.”
Merlin had been there with her the entire time, she was sure of that. When had he last eaten? He must’ve been exhausted, and he’d never said a word.
Morgana glanced back and noticed the magic book still lying open on the table. She slammed it shut and handed it to the stammering warlock. “Thank you, Merlin. You can take this back to Arthur now.
“Right. I’ll see you… later, then.” One last smile over his shoulder, and then he was gone.
Gwen did not ask, as Morgana half expected her to, “Arthur has books?” She didn’t even ask where the two small roses-the one in Morgana’s hand and the one in her hair-had come from. She put them in water without any comment at all beyond, “These are pretty.”
That night there were no dreams.
Back to chapter 2