The wind lifted Viv up and darkness rushed past her. Her skirts were tangled between her legs and her own hair clogged her mouth as she tumbled dizzily through the air. She gripped the hilt of the shattered katana with all her strength. Then the wind finally released her and she fell to ground with a thump.
Light surrounded her, so sudden that she was blinded by it: she had to hold a hand over her face until her eyes adjusted. Then, pushing her tangled hair from her face, she looked around and found herself in a familiar setting.
She crouched in grass, on a gentle slope, although ahead it rose more steeply into a high hill. At the top of the hill she could see three standing stones outlined against the sky. Everything was bathed in the golden light of late afternoon. The wind, now, was only a breeze. The roar of the howling air had faded into a gentler noise of running water, behind her.
She looked over her shoulder. It was the stream where she’d fought the wyrm. Its carcass had been stripped but the bones remained, a few ribs sticking out to part the surface of the waters. The stream frothed and burbled as it ran around the dragon’s skeleton.
Viv knew who claimed those bones now, and she had no desire to speak again with the filthy Raabo. She turned her back on what was left of the dragon and pushed herself to her feet.
Her pink princess dress was in tatters, but her house keys and Swiss army knife were still knocking around in the bottom of her scabbard. The transit pass was gone. “Well, that’s seventy bucks wasted,” Viv muttered.
And, of course, Duane’s katana was only a jagged shard of metal protruding from the hilt she still clutched. He’d given it to her in trust and she’d already broken it: a bad omen, she felt in her heart. A bad beginning. Still, she held tight to what remained of the blade. She’d do her best to bring back what she could.
She had a pretty good idea where she was supposed to go. The overgrown orchard she had seen on her first visit to Avalon, and shied away from: that’s where Morgan waited for her. A chill ran down her arms thinking of the shadows beneath those knotted trees.
But the wind had brought her here, just over the hill from the dragon’s cave, the place where she’d found the lost child. As if she had unfinished business here.
Viv made a decision, and set off around the hill, away from the orchard. She wasn’t sure she was ready for that anyway.
Before her it was all as she remembered. First, the curve of the hill, and then on the other side the perfectly round cave-mouth retreating into the earth. There were patches in front of the cave where no grass grew: places, Viv thought, where the dragon’s blood had pooled. The smell of rot lingered.
And on the ground just inside the cave, half covered by shadow, there was a man.
“Auterre,” Viv breathed, and ran up to him. But it wasn’t Auterre.
At first she thought he was a fairy, because he was wearing medieval clothing and because he was so handsome: dark hair, very close-cut, and dark eyelashes closed in sleep; a strong aquiline nose and a generous, sensual mouth.
Then she actually recognized the clothes—black leather tunic and buckskin breeches. She breathed, in shock: “Noah.”
They’d shaved his beard, for whatever reason, and they’d cut his hair too. But it was Noah. Without his huge wire-rimmed glasses, the wild curly hair, and the shaggy beard covering his face, he looked transformed. He looked…incredible.
And she’d never seen it.
She’d never seen the strong features beneath the unkempt beard. She’d never seen the long dark lashes behind the thick glasses. She’d never noticed—how had she never noticed?—that all that swordplay and quarterstaff practice left him with an athlete’s body, slim-hipped with well-defined shoulders and arms.
“My true love?” she whispered.
Of course Noah was in love with her. She felt like an idiot as soon as she asked herself the question. She supposed she’d known, on some level, that he was interested: there was that first night at the restaurant when she was pretty sure he’d meant it to be a date. But when she’d shot him down he’d taken it in stride, and become a true and trustworthy friend. He warned her about Auterre, but never tried to interfere, and never made her feel uncomfortable or asked for more than what she offered. Still, he’d spent so much time training her with the sword, and running around parks with her at midnight, and giving her rides when she was stranded: once she stopped to think about it, Viv was pretty sure that guys didn’t do that sort of thing unless they were totally in love with some chick.
But—her true love? She trusted him, yeah. She had fun with him, and she could always be herself in his company. She knew he was scary-smart...not to mention good in a fight...so—was it possible?
Could she really have been so blind?
Viv reached out, gingerly, and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Noah,” she said, shaking him. “Hey, Noah.”
He didn’t wake, of course. She didn’t really expect him to. The gesture was pro forma.
She moved her hand, slowly, wonderingly, across his chest, pausing to feel the rise and fall of his breath. She traced the line of his chin—she’d never seen it before, under his beard—and felt the stubble already growing on his cheek.
Then she leaned in and kissed him. Not a maidenly peck, and nothing slobbery either: just softly closing her lips over his, feeling the warmth of his skin and his mouth beginning to part before she broke the contact. It felt nice. It felt right.
Noah was already blinking awake as she drew back. His brows furrowed. “Viv?” he asked, as if not at all certain.
“Hey,” she confirmed. “Hey, Noah, have you ever thought about you and me dating?”
“I,” he said, and stopped. He passed a hand over his face. “I— I—.” He stopped again and pushed himself up, blinking around at the cave walls with a bewildered expression. “I have thought about it probably way too much. Where are we? And where are my glasses?”
“We’re in Avalon,” Viv said. “Morgan le Fay stole Excalibur from Auterre and kidnapped you.” Once she started talking, she couldn’t seem to stop. “We broke up, Auterre and me. I came to rescue you. And to get the sword back, although I don’t know how. I didn’t know it was you, by the way, the redcaps just said they had my true love, but it kind of makes sense now. I don’t know where your glasses are, but you should think about contacts. Also the haircut is a good look for you.” She ran out of words, finally, and sat back on her heels.
Noah’s hand moved from his chin to the top of his head. “They gave me a haircut?”
“It looks really good,” Viv assured him. “I mean, if it was me who woke up with a buzz cut, I know I’d be mad. But on you it looks great.”
He passed his palm over his head, then dropped it. She couldn’t get over how strong and fine his features were, how strange and yet how familiar he seemed. He blinked at her, still a little muzzy, and then shook his head as if to clear it. “I don’t remember anything. I lay down on the couch for a nap, and then—I woke up here.”
“I’ve been here before,” Viv told him, and heard the grimness in her own voice. At that Noah looked at her, and leaned closer to focus fully on her face. Her pulse picked up as he got closer.
“Are you all right?” he said gently.
“I—I’ve had a couple fights since you saw me last. But I’m okay.”
He raised a hand to her chin. “Not bespelled or enchanted or anything?”
“Nothing like that,” she breathed. Though his eyebrows and lashes were dark, he was near enough to her now that even in the filtered cave-light she could see his eyes were lighter, a complicated hazel. And focused completely on her.
“And the thing that you want to know right at this minute is how I feel about you?”
“Yes,” she said, in a small voice.
He just nodded, tilted up her chin with his fingers, and leaned in the rest of the way to kiss her again, this time slowly and thoroughly, with such complete assurance that it left her breathless.
“Okay then,” she said shakily, when he was done, and his mouth quirked up in a smile.
“I knew you wouldn’t ask unless it was important,” he said.
“It’s important,” she said. “To me. I’m—Noah, I’m sorry, I’ve been an idiot.”
“I would have said something,” he said soberly. “It never seemed like the right time.”
“I just—I never—I never saw you that way until right this second.”
“Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto,” Noah said. It sounded like a quotation, even though she couldn’t place the words. “You’re beautiful!”
Viv shook her head. “I—yeah. I swear I’m not that shallow! But you look a lot different with a fairy makeover.”
“Well, I’ll take it,” said Noah, running his hand again over his close-cropped hair. “But look, you’d better tell me what’s going on again. And this time start at the beginning.”
So she did, sketching in for him the scene at Auterre’s apartment—and though her stomach clenched again as she recounted it, it was only the loss of Excalibur that she felt. The loss of Auterre seemed much more distant, as if it had happened months ago instead of hours. Noah listened impassively, and she went on to tell him about the redcap siege, the conversation with the tomte, and her journey through the tunnels and into Avalon.
At the end of it he only nodded, and said: “Help me look for my glasses.”
She did, patting down the earth in the shadows of the cave, but they both came up empty-handed. Noah shook his head. “Why would they take my glasses? And why the shave and haircut, of all things?”
Viv shrugged. “I guess the fairies care about things like that, even in their hostages.”
“I guess,” he said. “It’s damn inconvenient. I mean, I like that you like it, but I’d rather have my glasses.”
“I’d rather you did too,” she admitted. “I’ve only got a broken sword, and I know that you can fight. Our odds would be better if you weren’t blind.”
“Nearsighted, not blind,” said Noah. “I can still thwack something that gets close enough. So what’s our plan of attack?”
She took a deep breath. “We’re in Avalon. The only way back is the sword bridge—Irusan told me that. It means we need Excalibur to get home. And Morgan has Excalibur.”
“Do you know where to find her?”
“Ye-es,” said Viv, thinking of that shadow-haunted orchard. A sudden chill blew over her from the depths of the cave. “Yes. Let’s get outside and I’ll show you.”
They scrambled back out into the sunlight. Noah reached for her hand and she was glad to let him. She kept sneaking sidelong looks at him, still marveling that this stern and chiseled stranger was her own geeky Noah.
He stopped to scan the green hills, squinting a bit at the forests in the distance. “So this is Avalon?”
“Yes,” Viv said. “It always seems to be late afternoon and the seasons are kind of wonky.”
“The Summer Kingdom,” he said.
“But with the harvests of fall,” she answered. “Come on. The orchards are this way, and across the water.”
They waded together across the stream, hand in hand, though they had to separate to climb up onto the opposite bank. “It’s over the next rise, and to the left,” Viv said. “Watch for rats.”
But Raabo and his lucky rats were made scarce. As a matter of fact, Viv thought as she lifted her increasingly filthy pink skirts to trudge up the hill, she’d not seen or heard another living thing except Noah since the wind dropped her here. No birds. No crickets. No fish in the stream. Everything in Avalon was holding its breath.
“She knows we’re here,” Viv said with certainty.
Noah didn’t need to ask who she was talking about. “She has to,” he agreed. “And she wanted you to find me. Otherwise, why leave me unguarded, in a place you’d know to look?”
“Because that’s the way things are always done,” Viv guessed. “They just put you in the same place they put all their captives, until the Queen gets to them. It doesn’t matter that the dragon is dead. It’s still what they do.”
“Maybe,” Noah said, sounding unconvinced. “Or maybe she just wanted you to have something to lose. That would explain the fairy makeover, too. I’m not here to help you. I’m a liability.”
Viv thought about it, as she squelched up the hill, but her tired brain couldn’t follow the convoluted paths of fairy logic. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she said finally, “none of it does. Morgan has Excalibur. She could kill us both whenever she wanted.”
Noah didn’t argue. “What weapons do we have?” he asked.
“This,” said Viv, and handed him the hilt of the broken katana.
Noah turned it over in his hand. “That’s not much.”
She grabbed the scabbard and upended it, letting her house keys rattle out into her hand. “I’ve got a Swiss army knife.”
“Well, why didn’t you list that among our assets in the first place?” Noah said mildly, sounding again as if he were quoting something.
“It’s all we’ve got,” she said.
“It’s still not much,” he admitted.
“I know,” she said. She flicked out the knife and held onto it, her house keys jangling off the end. Noah kept the shattered sword. They trudged together until they finally reached the top of the hill.
“There,” Viv said, pointing. “The orchard.”
Noah squinted into the sloping golden sun. “It’s too far away. All I see is a blur.”
“Well, it’s there,” she said. It was exactly as she remembered: a tangle of overgrown trees and briars, sporadically white with flower, and at the same time red with fruit. Small flitting shapes moved among the trees. “She’s waiting.” But Viv’s feet made no move to go forward.
Noah turned his head, scanning. “What else is there? It’s all green to me.”
“Another hill up ahead. A big forest to our right. I came through there last time; there’s nothing but ocean on the other side.”
“What kind of a forest?” Noah asked sharply.
“A big one,” she said.
“I mean—evergreen, deciduous?”
“Oh, um, oaks mostly,” she said, remembering. “Big old oaks.”
“Any smaller ones? Saplings, maybe?”
“At the edges, yeah.”
“Excellent,” Noah said, and started off down the hill.
Viv hesitated a moment out of surprise, then hurried to catch up. “What do you mean? Where are you going?”
“When you say oak saplings,” Noah said, “I hear: quarterstaves, ripe for the picking. I’m going to arm myself before we go any farther.”
“You’re going to make a quarterstaff? Right now?”
“I am,” he said calmly. “Be my eyes, Viv. We’re looking for an oak tree no bigger around than your arm.”
“Uh, okay.” She didn’t have any better plan to offer. So she walked with him back to the oak woods, and helped him find the sapling he needed: he rejected the first, saying that it was too knotty and that would cause weakness in the wood. The second, he only nodded and started sawing at it with the shattered katana. When it was mostly cut through, Viv helped him bend the little tree back till it snapped.
Once he had a length of little tree, he used the edge of the broken katana to cut away the smaller branches and strip off the bark. “Hm,” he commented. “There’s not much sap. As if it were a winter cutting. That’s good.”
“The seasons are wonky here,” Viv said again.
“Apparently.” Then he didn’t talk much, focused on honing his quarterstaff. Viv stood guard, grasping her little penknife in her sweaty palm, and sneaking glances at—whatever Noah was to her now. Her best friend in the city? Her boyfriend? Her comrade in a hopeless battle, waged against the fairy Queen in her own kingdom?
She flashed back, briefly, to the fight against the dragon: its charnel breath, the hideous physical reality of pain and threat of crushing death. And that memory unlocked another. Rising unbidden to Viv’s mind was the kelpie, her dark malevolent eyes and her backwards hands, reaching and grasping. From that she could not help but think of the redcaps and their bladed fingernails. In each case she remembered blind animal terror, the threat of death: but the true horror in each memory lay in the alien mindset that she had faced, the driving intelligence that wanted only to bring her harm. That was Morgan. Something very clever, and very deadly: something that did not care for human life. That was what lay in wait, in the shadows of the orchard. That was what she was afraid to face.
“All right,” Noah said finally. “This will do.” He stood up, twirling the staff easily in his hands. “This will do rather nicely.”
But Viv was shaking, her skin wet and clammy with fear. Noah glanced at her, and then looked back, stepping in to focus on her more closely.
“Hey,” he said gently. “Are you all right?”
She shook her head and swallowed, though her mouth was dry. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t go there.”
“Hey,” Noah said again, and stepped closer. “That’s what she wants you to think. That’s why I’m here, to remind you of everything you have to lose.” He dropped the new staff and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his own warmth. “But they don’t know me. They never got my name. They don’t know that I’m the Quarterstaff Champion of the West. Listen to me, Viv.”
She laid her head on his shoulder, and let him stroke her hair.
“I’ve been watching you pretty closely, okay?” Noah said. “You’ve been risking your life again and again and pretending that it’s all normal, that you can cover up the scars and keep going. Pretending isn’t always enough.”
She breathed, slowly and steadily, and he went on: “Maybe you won’t win every fight. Maybe you’ll bear the guilt for the ones you couldn’t save. That happens, Viv. You can’t let it destroy you. You’re doing good, okay? You’re doing good. And I’m here to help you. You’re not alone.”
After a moment she pulled away. “Okay,” she said, and swallowed. “I’m ready if you are.”
Noah bent down and picked up his new quarterstaff. When he stood up he handed her back the broken katana, and she sheathed it in its scabbard. “One more thing,” Noah said, and when she looked up, he stepped in close and kissed her again.
It was enough of a surprise—his mouth claiming hers, so suddenly—that her body had just begun to react when he broke the contact, leaving her with a warm thrill still blooming along her spine.
“I want to know what I’m fighting for,” he said. “Exactly.”
She breathed out, hard. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. We’re going up against the Fairy Queen, who is possibly immortal and who has brought us here to serve her own purpose. Her weapons include Excalibur itself and all the magic of Avalon. Our weapons are a Swiss army knife and a big stick. But yes. If we survive this, I’d like to go out with you.”
“Outstanding,” Noah said. “Let’s go, then.”
He started walking and she followed him, smiling a little despite herself. With the quarterstaff in his hands he seemed to move with more assurance, and she had to lengthen her stride to keep up.
As they left the oak wood behind them, skirting the side of the hill, the blurred shadow of the orchard grew clearer. It wasn’t large; a couple of acres, maybe. The trees were knotty and old. Their branches, heavy with small, blush-colored apples and white blossoms that buzzed with bees, grew together to form a tangled canopy, leaving shadowed paths that passed between the trunks. Viv and Noah both slowed as they drew closer, touched by the sense of an ancient and watchful intelligence. Viv stopped entirely just before the first shadow of the orchard could fall across her feet.
But the shadows came to meet her. The trees moved their branches restlessly, though no wind stirred the heavy afternoon air, and from within the trees a figure stepped forward. A man, entirely covered in dark plate mail, with the helmet worked into the shape of branching horns. He stepped out into the sunlight and stopped, waiting.
Viv stepped backwards.
“Friend of yours?” Noah asked, squinting at the dark knight. In the sunlight Viv could see that his armor wasn’t truly black, but a very dark green, with some sort of runes or fine tracery worked into the metal. It looked organic, fractal, like lichen on a stone.
“Not a friend,” she swallowed, drawing her broken blade. “He’s Morgan’s Huntsman. He beat me before—and I had Excalibur then.”
The Huntsman drew his own sword in response, lifting it in solemn salute.
“I think we should run,” Viv whispered.
“No,” said Noah, and stepped in front of her.
“Noah!” she cried in real fear: but he was already closing with the green knight, his quarterstaff held at the ready. “What are you doing? He beat me with Excalibur—you’re blind and you have a stick!”
“Nearsighted,” said Noah calmly, “and yes, it’s not a fair fight.” He swung out with the staff: it cracked solidly against the Huntsman’s side, ringing sharply where it struck the metal. In the trees, the humming of the bees abruptly silenced, as if the orchard itself were listening.
The Huntsman lashed out with his sword, smooth and fast as a striking snake: but he cut only air. Noah was beyond his reach, and as the Huntsman recovered Noah’s staff drove back in, landing this time on the knight’s gauntleted wrist. There was no sound other than the bright clear ring of metal, but the Huntsman’s sword shivered in his grasp.
“That’s why the SCA won’t allow a mixed match between staff-fighters and sword-fighters,” Noah continued in the same calm voice. “It wouldn’t be fair—to the swordsmen.”
The green knight lunged forward: Noah pivoted a little back and to the left, and rapped him again on the side. The clang of wood on metal echoed like a gong beneath the trees, and the Huntsman stumbled, breaking his charge. “The reach of a staff is so much greater,” Noah said as he gave a little ground. “If I know what I’m doing, I can always get him before he can get to me. —And I do know what I’m doing.”
Viv held her breath as the Huntsman regained his footing, swinging again: but Noah seemed to evade the blow easily, and needed only a half-step to return the strike. Again the Huntsman’s armor rang out as the staff landed, and this time it left a dent behind in the mail.
“His armor helps him take the blows, but—” Noah twirled the staff, pulling it back and then swinging it in a large arc over his head, “it’s really only a matter—of time.” With his last words he drove the staff down, aiming again for the Huntsman’s gauntleted wrist.
But the green knight had anticipated the strike, and with a speed and grace that should have been impossible for a fully-armored man, brought his sword up to block. It bit deeply into the wood of Noah’s staff, but the green and springy wood did not splinter.
Noah recovered quickly, twisting the staff hard. The sword, still embedded in the wood, was wrenched from the Huntsman’s hands. The force of the motion sent it flying, along with a large flake of wood from the staff, to land not far from Viv’s feet.
She lunged for it, but her fingers couldn’t seem to close around the sword’s hilt: her nails scratched through dirt as she tried to grab it. She blinked, and saw that the earth itself was rising up around the green blade, swallowing it. In the next moment it had melted into the grass and was gone.
The Huntsman stood very still. Noah held his notched quarterstaff at the ready, waiting.
Then the Huntsman inclined his horned head, and stepped backwards, into the shadow of the trees. He seemed to melt among them as the sword had melted into the earth. The orchard was still.
“I am the Quarterstaff Champion of the West,” Noah called out in a strong, ringing voice. “I am the Hacker Knight. Who else cares to try me?”
His words echoed among the trees, and were answered only by the buzzing of the bees.
“I think the way is open now,” Viv said uncertainly. She set one foot into the shadows, then another, until she stood fully beneath the canopy of the trees. “I think we can go on.”
“Right behind you,” Noah said: and, bolstered by his presence, she kept walking.
The apple trees might have been evenly planted once, but it seemed they hadn’t been tended in years, and the rows beneath the trees were no longer clear. Viv and Noah had to step carefully, dodging branches and upthrust roots, picking their way around little saplings that had taken root in the center of the rows. Her tattered skirts kept catching on little branches, and she had to stop to yank them free. The scent of apple blossoms and ripe fruit drenched the air, though Viv also thought she caught a whiff of something spicier, a trace of pungent herbs. “We’re close,” she breathed. They kept on, picking their way carefully through the tangled trees.
And then, sunlight. Viv stepped over a mossy rock, ducked through a gap in the trees, and found herself in a clearing. The knobby old apple trees grew all around, but in the center the ground was bare. Soft grasses, pressed down as if with the passage of many feet, ringed a little depression in the ground: a natural well, pooling with dark water. Green herbs—especially thyme, with its tiny purple flowers—grew thickly around the wellspring, trailing graceful sprigs in the water.
And above it stood the Queen.