The tour of the house was brief, culminating in the long, low-beamed classroom where Merlin would teach me. The room contained a dark refectory table, a wall of shelved manuscripts, and the locked door to the sorcerer’s tower, which was strictly out of bounds. After that, we returned to Ninianne’s light and airy study; she had brought in a second chair and invited me to sit down.
“What now?” I said. “Shouldn’t I begin learning something?”
Ninianne offered a shimmering shrug. “I can give you books to pass the time.”
She drew out a large, white-leatherbound manuscript and placed it in front of me—a detailed guide of ancient elemental deities and their affinities with the land. It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but the act of reading drew me naturally towards contentment, until a sudden wave of nausea clutched at my stomach. I sat back and gave a slight groan.
Ninianne looked up from her book of maps. “The child—does it bother you?”
“Just a little unease,” I said, though in truth I had been up since before dawn duelling the same sickly waves. “My sworn woman sent some herbal tinctures with me, but they’re diminishing in effect.”
Her eyes swept across my body. “The child is growing, becoming stronger. This part will soon be over, but until then he or she must draw on your life force.”
I gave a wan smile. “The pleasure of having children.”
“I wouldn’t know,” she replied. “Nor will I in this lifetime.”
It was a more personal comment than I was used to. Gracefully, she rose and took a glazed stoneware cup from a shelf, filling it with water from a silver jug.
She flourished her fingers over the rim. “Drink this. Perhaps it will help.”
The water had poured cold, but to my astonishment, the cup was steaming hot. “What is it?”
“A tea of sorts,” Ninianne said. “The water is full of untapped goodness. I can ask it to…do more.”
“Because you are a water fairy,” I said.
“If you like, yes.”
I raised the cup to my lips and sipped. It tasted like peppermint tea, but brighter, clearer. It ran into my stomach with crystal surety, the nausea and strain from my sleepless morning dissipating at once.
“Good?” Ninianne asked.
“Good,” I agreed. “How did you make it hot?”
“Fire and air are elements too. They can all be conversed with to various effect.”
“And with such ease, for you,” I said enviously.
She regarded me with her usual enigmatic gaze. “It needn’t have that draining effect, you know—when you held fire. It’s Merlin’s method because he struggles with the elements. His efforts require harsher spells, greater cost.”
“Are you saying the great and powerful sorcerer has weaknesses?” I jested.
Again her shoulders rose and fell, noncommittal. “Merlin’s strengths lie with his interests—in foresight, concealment and alteration. Perception and prophecy. But for you, with the sea in your blood, your natural connection with water, there are better ways to the elements. Joyous ways.”
I thought of conjuring fire for Accolon as the exhilaration of love sang in my blood; it had not been what the sorcerer taught me. “Could I learn it? Would you—?”
“I am no teacher,” she cut in. “What’s more, Merlin would never permit the time.”
“He’s not here now,” I pointed out.
Ninianne made no reply, instead leaning across to the silver tray and retrieving two goblets. She waved a swift hand over the jug and poured. The liquid emerged cloudy and golden, scented with high summer.
“Now that you feel better, try this. It’s a favourite of mine.”
We touched goblets and she watched me sip with a calm interest, as if she had never shared a drink in company before. The sweet liquid ran warm down my throat, singing of wildflowers.
“My goodness, that’s delicious.” I drained my cup and smiled wryly at her. “My old nurse used to say that one should not partake of a fairy drink, lest one be stuck in this realm forever.”
“This is not my realm,” she said, with a flicker of melancholy, then sipped thoughtfully at her goblet. Everything she did seemed to invite and discourage candour at the same time.
“How came you to be here with Merlin?” I asked.
“I’ve told you. I wanted to learn from him, gain all the knowledge he has.”
“You’ve been with him a very long time.”
“Learning has no limits,” she said. “Now there is King Arthur to consider. If I wish to help guide the High King through his destiny, who better to stand beside than Merlin?” Her glow darkened a shade. “Are you suggesting, again, that there is more to my place here?”
“I’m just…trying to understand.”
Ninianne regarded me curiously, her light building again until it shone like a polished golden shield. “Yes, that is your wish, isn’t it? To know everything, to understand.”
Before I could respond, she reached across the table and plucked a tall foxglove stalk from a vase. “To comprehend how the elemental forces work is to hear a flower speak. This foxglove has been influenced by them all. It grows in the earth, under the fire of the sun, and draws from water and air to live. But there will always be a dominant force.”
She laid her fingertips across several petals and gestured that I should do the same. I obeyed without words, in case speaking broke her sudden willingness.
“To find this primary force, you must concentrate and seek to connect with its essence. Ask the elements to show themselves and listen intently to what they say. Therein will lie your understanding.”
“How will I––?” I began, but she shook her head.
“You’ll know when you find it.”
I traced my fingers along the foxglove’s speckled bells. Inexplicable but distinct, water came to me first, then hints of air in the green, downy stem, a tiny hum of sun. Loudest of all, however, was a dark, rich presence, redolent with life and a warm, mossy scent.
“Earth,” I said. “The most important.”
Ninianne smiled in genuine pleasure. “Your elemental connection is stronger than I thought. Now you can have a little fun with form. Ask it to shift and change, like so.”
She held the foxglove aloft and the tubed petals stiffened, purple fading to grey and hardening before my eyes. Ninianne dropped it on the table, where it clattered like a bag of marbles.
I picked up the stem, flowers clicking together pleasingly. “Mother of God. It’s stone from the inside out.”
“Not perfect, given it was quick,” Ninianne said. “But yes. I asked the earth within to shift to another of its states, and it yielded to me with utmost courtesy.” She hooked a fresh foxglove from the vase. “Now you.”
I stared at her. “I couldn’t.”
“Try. Ask the element to grant your request. What have you to lose?”
I put my fingers against the soft, unresisting petals and felt the same swirl of elements sing out at different pitches. In my mind, I asked the earth if it would kindly turn to stone, which felt ridiculous. Beneath my hand, nothing happened.
Burning with failure, I tried again, demanding this time. Again, the foxglove remained a foxglove.
I huffed and crossed my arms. “This is pointless. It doesn’t work.”
“Patience, Lady Morgan,” Ninianne said. “Composure is essential in elemental magic. Not in denial of one’s nature, but as master of what fuels you. Be truthful and use your own voice. There you will find your power.”
I had little idea of what she meant but placed my hand back on the foxglove. A simple, genuine request, I told myself; no different from asking Alys to pass me a quill. Gradually, the foxglove grew cooler, pebble-like. Then, before I could push further, the connection broke free, leaving me bolstered, invigorated.
Ninianne picked up the stem; it was still purple and green, but when she dropped it on the table, it made the same satisfying clatter as hers.
“An excellent start,” she said, beaming from every pore. “Far better than idle talk, wouldn’t you say?”
I let myself bask in her praise, though I couldn’t help wondering if her sudden forthcomingness had all been to distract from questions of Merlin.
So what if it did? Ninianne’s serene smile seemed to say, and I found I didn’t care.
Still the sorcerer did not return, but I had ceased to think about him, so enraptured was I by Ninianne’s teaching, her deep wisdom, the enthralling way she demonstrated and explained; her glowing satisfaction as my skills rose to meet her elemental challenges.
She taught me to produce fire in my palm without needing to mine my darkest thoughts, showed me how to capture the air and channel it into a gust, and persisted with my lesser abilities with earth and stone.
“It’ll come,” she told me, a month into my stay, as I coaxed lily of the valley into hard white bells but failed to turn them grey. “One day you will reach for it, and it will simply be there.”
I abandoned the lily sprig with a sigh. We were in the long, narrow classroom, where we had come so she could select new reading for my evening.
“What about water?” I said. Strangely, we had yet to do anything with her dominant element. “When we spoke on the headland, you said I share your affinity.”
“I remember,” Ninianne replied. “Though we do not share the connection as much as we both possess it, in degrees, from different sources. I am of the lake…”
“And I of the sea.”
“Yes.” She leaned forwards with an air of confidentiality. “Do you miss it, Morgan? Living within the waves, the tides?”
“Every day,” I replied. “Though I can still…conjure it. Being in Tintagel, with the sea all around me, salt spray in the wind, the constant crash of the waves on the cliffs.”
Ninianne’s face had taken on a dreamy look. “The bond is strong. Maybe it’s time.”
Swiftly, she rose and fetched a wide, shallow bowl, placing it between us and filling it to the brim with water.
“Water is elusive, mercurial, often disobedient. Communication is less a polite conversation than it is a dance.” She extended her hand above the bowl. “At all times one must feel its fluidity, its wildness, as if your entire self has rained down with it.”
She began moving her fingers through the air in a slow stroking motion. The water in the bowl shivered then curved upwards, like the arching spine of a cat. “Once you are in harmony with the water, you can feel its essence and ask it to converse. It won’t yield to control, but it will answer to respect.”
With a flick of her wrist, Ninianne sent a stream up in a glittering leap, splashing it back down with a musical trill.
I laughed in surprise. She offered me a rare, broad smile and slid the bowl across. “You try. Let your mind be taken into the water, sense its form, and follow wherever it wishes to go.”
I held my hand a few inches above the bowl and looked at the water, conjuring thoughts of rain, of rivers and lakes, of the crystal pool I had once found in an enchanted glen and the cascade that fell into it, churning and alive. Last of all, I envisioned the sea embracing Tintagel, swirling eternal in my veins.
The water beneath my hand grew calm and glassy, a mirror containing my image. With a slight twitch of my mind, I shuddered the surface, until the water rose in tiny clear peaks.
“Good. Try more, go farther.” Ninianne placed her hand over mine and guided my fingers into making the same cat-stroking motion she had. The water shifted sideways, rising up one side of the bowl, but struggled and soon collapsed. I released a hiss of frustration.
“Again,” she said. “Offer more of yourself. Do not hold on—let go.”
This time, I let myself breathe, in and out, my eyes fast on the water, our hands drawing it up and back. By degrees, Ninianne eased her touch away, until the water answered to my effort alone. I kept moving, raising it into the air in a high, rippling stream, and all at once I knew I was not holding it in place—it was as much a part of me as my own arm.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Incredible,” I replied. This was a euphoria comparable to healing, but utterly different: silver where healing was gold; cool, assured and eternal instead of a warm, youthful thrill; and powerful, as though I had not so much achieved something, but become. “It feels as if I should have known this, been this, all along.”
“That is because you have,” Ninianne said. “Elemental work is where your strength lies, alongside your other talents, two powers intertwined. What you might do with such a force…” She swept her hands in an elegant arc. “It is limitless.”
I looked back at the water, smile rising on my face. Healing and the elements combined, coursing within me. Limitless.
A loud bang cut into our peace, water leaping between us and splashing over the table. At the opposite end of the room, the tower door flew open. A slim, sharp figure stood in the archway like a slice of night.
“Ninianne. Lady Morgan.” His voice was a knife on a whetstone. “How wonderful it is to finally see you both.”