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On the third day, they rise together with the birdsong, and walk in companionable silence through the trees. Lancelot’s hands no longer stray to his sword-hilt, it’s been days since he’s heard the scrape of steel ringing through the forest. With the sun high in the sky and Merlin by his side, quiet and comforting as his own shadow, Lancelot feels safe and content.
“I have to thank you, Merlin,” he remarks, as they settle beneath a tree for an afternoon rest. “Your companionship has made this stretch of my journey most pleasant.”
“I am glad to be of service,” Merlin smiles. His gemstone eyes catch the light, shifting in their curious way from blue to amber to green.
“And to think, I was almost convinced that the forest would be too difficult to navigate, and to make my way around its borders! I must admit, the villagers I encountered looked to this place with a wary eye. I am glad their trepidation amounted to nothing.”
“Nobody warned you about me?” Merlin looks almost amused, the tilt of his head so like a bird’s.
“About you?” Lancelot laughs. “What warnings accompany one such as yourself?”
Now Merlin frowns. “Why, every warning. Every childrens’ cautionary tale.”
“Oh.” What Merlin could possibly mean, Lancelot has no idea. “Well… I suppose,” he attempts, “every child is cautioned against befriending strange travelers. Even so, I am glad I disregarded that lesson in this instance.”
He moves to stand, fastening his water skin back to his belt, but Merlin does not move.
“Lancelot,” he says slowly. “What do you think I am?”
Lancelot sinks back to the ground. “A traveler,” he says, but with the growing sense that that is the wrong answer. “On your way to the city. Like me.”
“Ah,” Merlin says ruefully, “but I have no pack.”
That is true, Lancelot realizes, all of a sudden. Merlin’s hands are empty. He carries no belongings. And… has he taken no food? No water, in their three days together? Has he never tired, slowed, stumbled?
And all this, Lancelot never noticed. “Oh,” is all he says.
Merlin tenses, curling his long legs where they had been spread, carefree, on the ground. As though he might spring up and bound away at a moment’s notice. “Have you never heard?” His tone is careful, a wary edge to it that Lancelot does not like. “The stories, I mean? The travelers who enter my forest and never leave it? The children snatched away by my branches in the dead of night? Or eaten, perhaps,” he laughs, short and bitter, “in one monstrous bite?”
“I… I come from an outlying village,” Lancelot flounders. My forest, Merlin had said.
Merlin just looks at him, wide-eyed with wonder. “I have no taste for children, by the way,” he finally says, quietly.
“You, then,” Lancelot whispers back. His throat is suddenly dry. “You are the spirit of the forest.”
Merlin only nods. His eyes do their dance, shifting to gold, to deepest brown, to a blue so dark it’s almost black.
They sit in silence, the forest around them completely still, as though holding its breath. It is, Lancelot realizes. He is. He waits for me to say something.
Distantly, Lancelot registers that he should be on edge in this moment. He has trained well, and for years. His instincts have never failed him. And now, his hands won’t so much as twitch toward the hilt of his sword.
So he stands, slings his pack over his shoulder once more, and holds a hand out to help Merlin to his feet.
Merlin stares at it for a moment. Then he takes it, though he has no need of it, and gets to his feet in one fluid motion.
They continue on in the same companionable silence, and the trees around them breathe out their relief.
Hours pass and the sun begins to sink before Lancelot asks, “Do they?”
Merlin startles beside him. In the distance, a tree rustles as a flock of birds wheel into the sky. “Do they what?” he asks.
“Travelers,” Lancelot says. “Do they disappear into your forest, never to return?”
“Some do,” Merlin sighs. Then he looks directly at Lancelot, his eyes clear as water. “But never for the reason I wish.”
They lapse into silence again. A hare leaps across the path and into the undergrowth. A deer keeps pace with them for a while before vanishing again into the cloak of trees. Birds twitter freely overhead. More wildlife than he's seen in the past three days, Lancelot realizes.
“Tell me,” Lancelot speaks again as the trees around them begin to thin.
Merlin stops, frowns as Lancelot turns to face him. “Tell you what?”
“About you,” Lancelot presses. “Your forest. Your life.” Their journey together is almost at an end, he realizes. He will quit this forest soon, reach the city central by sundown, but Merlin, of course, will stay.
Merlin smiles, abashed. Maybe no one has asked him before, Lancelot realizes.
“I am all that you see,” Merlin says, spreading his arms as though he could encompass the whole of the forest in their breadth. And maybe he could. “I am the breath that stirs these trees, the sap that runs through their veins. And I protect them, and all those who call this forest their home.”
“My sword,” Lancelot remembers. Merlin had appeared to him as soon as he’d stepped beyond the tree line, sword drawn. That will not be necessary here, he had said, his lip curling at the wicked point of it.
“You are one of the few who have ever listened,” Merlin says now. “You put it away, just like that.”
“I trusted you,” Lancelot says. “I sensed no danger.”
“Your heart is true,” Merlin nods, a little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “It guides you well.”
“You must have met many such men, surely?”
Merlin shakes his head. “Many who venture here take more than they need, for the pleasure or the power of it.”
“I am sorry.” Lancelot means it sincerely.
“I ensure the balance is repaid,” Merlin shrugs. It’s a casual movement, but it strikes Lancelot suddenly how powerful the figure is standing before him. He must have dispatched many a trespasser with just such a casual movement, a flick of the wrist, a blink of an eye. With one look, Lancelot knows, Merlin could dissolve him into sunlight.
“I can only imagine that you do,” Lancelot acknowledges. “And for that… I am grateful.”
He turns to continue on, takes three steps forward. But Merlin is no longer at his side.
He turns back to see him standing in the same spot, arms clasped behind his back.
“You will not continue on from here, will you?”
“I will not,” Merlin affirms.
“Oh.” Lancelot carefully retraces his steps, until he could reach out and take Merlin’s hands in his own. He does not, though he wants to. The delicacy of those hands, their quick movements like the fluttering of wings, makes such sense now.
“I never told you my purpose in the city.”
“You did not need to.”
“I aim to be a knight.”
“I know,” Merlin breathes.
“Then…” Lancelot hesitates, but something in Merlin’s eyes invites him to go on. “You know whether I will succeed?”
Merlin bites his lip, and it strikes Lancelot as such an utterly human gesture.
“You will not serve Uther,” he finally says. It is a blow, and Lancelot’s heart stutters in his chest. And yet…
“But?” he asks.
Merlin’s eyes, the rich brown of good soil, fill with a great sadness, something too vast for Lancelot to fully grasp. The life of a single tree, he realizes, is unimaginably long to a human. Generations come and go, and trees stand, witnessing them all. What Merlin has witnessed, Lancelot cannot know.
“You will serve the Once and Future King,” Merlin answers, an odd mixture of pride and sorrow in his voice. “As I do, even now. A heart as steady as yours… listen to it. It will guide you to him.”
“So we will see each other again?” Lancelot realizes now, too late, he feels, what Merlin meant when he first asked about the travelers who stay in the forest. Never for the reason I wish, he had said. His heart aches, remembering those words.
“Perhaps,” Merlin murmurs. Merlin may be a spirit, an all-powerful force, but the longing in his face is, again, all too human.
Lancelot does the only thing he can think to do, and takes Merlin’s face in his hands. It’s warm and alive as any person’s, but he can feel the thrum of power beneath his skin. When he kisses him, soft lips pressing into his own, it is as though sunlight floods through his whole body, lightning sparking in his limbs. He smells earth and rain and tastes honey on his tongue.
“Then I leave a piece of my heart here,” he says as he pulls away, “that it may guide me back to you one day.”
He turns before Merlin can say anything, not wanting to hear the word goodbye fall from his mouth. When he turns back in ten paces, Merlin is gone.