Quid Stellae Signant

When they get off the plane and stand in the airport with their suitcases–Mordred bought a matching red set with wheels, and Clar laughed at him–people streaming around them, cloaking them in voices and noise, Gareth is the one who first finds Gawain. He points and lets out a triumphant laugh.

“Hey!”

Gawain turns at the sound and comes to them; the crowd parts for him. When he gets to them he’s already smiling, reaching out to them. He’s like a dog, always has been, eager and friendly and ready to be loyal, and for his family, at least, filled with that same blind adoration dogs have for their masters. With outside people it’s not the same. If you kick him hard enough, he’ll turn on you. Now, though, he’s all doggish joy, his face alight.

“Gareth!” he says, hugging, then, “Mordred!” He and Mordred hold together for a long, long time. Gaheris thinks they’re talking soundlessly, watches their bodies tense with relief and warmth and welcome. Mordred seems suddenly smaller and a little submissive, while Gawain’s finally taller and older, after all these years. “Look at you,” Gawain says at last, drawing back a little. “Do you eat enough?”

“You goddamned nursemaid.” Mordred laughs. “You should be asking Gareth, he’s the one Clar’s trying to fatten up.”

“Well?” Gawain’s eyes shift to Gareth, who grins meekly.

“Yeah. I do whatever Clar says.”

“Mm. That’s not always safe,” a little vaguely. Mordred laughs again, free and easy, trying to disguise the fact that he’s hanging on Gawain’s words.

“It’s not like we suspected he has a self-preservation instinct anyway.”

“True enough,” Gaheris says quietly.

At once Gawain turns to him. He looks away.

“Gaheris is resident drama queen.”

Gawain ignores Mordred; he takes Gaheris’ chin in his hand and turns his face back, looking at him with eyes that are gentle–misunderstanding, but gentle. They’ve never understood one another. Gawain is strong and brave and skilled, courteous and easily loved. As a King he was gracious to his people and joined them in their work, gladly gave to them, and when he took from them they were proud. The fishermen on the coasts admired him, and the shepherdesses in the hills were in love with him. He can’t understand his younger brother, can’t understand his fearfulness or his clumsiness, and especially can’t understand his hatred. He’s forgiven Gaheris for their mother’s death, but he doesn’t understand why it happened and Gaheris saw it every time he looked at him, and he sees it now.

It only makes it worse that he doesn’t know himself.

“It’s good to see you,” Gawain says, smiling.

“You, too.”

But they don’t know how to speak to one another, and quickly Gawain goes back to Mordred, and Gareth and Gaheris follow them out to the parking lot, Gareth talking a blue streak, his quick eyes regarding everything around him.

Gawain ruffles his hair before he can duck, and pops the trunk of the sleek sedan, heaving their suitcases inside. “Come on, hop in.”

“Christ, you’re a dork.”

“You’re just jealous because I have such a great car,” he says mildly, opening the passenger side door for Mordred. “Wait until we get back to the house. I want to show you my wind turbines.”

“Oh, God.”

“Really, they’re wonderful.”

“I came here to see you, not your damn wind turbines.”

Gawain beams. “That’s what they all say.”

~~~

Gawain’s house is enormous. The wind turbines are visible from the white gravel drive, towering above everything else and shining under the sun. In front of the house, the drive makes a wide circle; inside the circle is a garden, with a pond of koi and a delicate bridge, and all kinds of flowers. There’s a long porch, open and covered with chairs and tables and hanging windchimes.

Gareth stares, his mouth partly open, looking around at everything. “Oh, my God.” He stops abruptly when he sees the car sitting out in front of the house.

“Shit!” It comes out a delighted squeak.

“Watch it,” says Mordred. “I’ll get the soap.”

“Sorry,” thoughtlessly. “Whoa. It’s fantastic.” He runs his hands carefully along the bright surface of the car. It’s red as red, brighter than blood.

Gawain beams again. “It’s electric.”

“Yeah!”

“No, no. I mean it’s actually electric. A Tesla Roadster–what we just drove in was the sedan version. We customised and reserved it for when they came out in two-thousand and eight.”

“How fast does it go?”

“One hundred and thirty miles. It goes zero to sixty in four seconds.”

“Can we do that?”

“Sure! I’ll show you later.”

“Great.”

“And the best part is it only takes three and a half hours to charge, and that’s good for two-hundred miles.”

Gareth just looks at him blankly. “You have to charge it?”

“It’s easy. It’s like stopping for gasoline.”

“For three and a half hours.”

“Not as much trouble as you think. I do it at night.”

“Will you people shut up about the car for a minute and help me get the stuff?”

Laughing, Gawain gets their suitcases out of the trunk and wheels them up the porch–there’s a ramp built in at one side, Gaheris supposes for wheelchairs, though he can’t think why–and into the house. Mordred follows along.

“I really can’t believe this.”

“Me either,” Gareth says. He’s looking around the foyer blissfully. “It’s huge. Do you have a pool?”

“Well, all the chemicals are bad. We’re working on a natural swimming pool, but right now we just have a lake. There’s a dock and everything, though.”

“You own a lake?”

“Well. Yes.”

“It’s nice to see you have the grace to blush when you say that. What do you do, sell kidneys on the black market?”

“I invented a solar panel,” cheerfully.

“Christ.” Mordred shakes his head. “Oh, well. At least it’s you and not Agravain.”

“How is he?”

“A pain in the ass.”

“The usual, then. I see,” comes gravely from behind them. They all turn to the woman who comes into the room. Gaheris draws back from her warily, but Mordred lights up.

“Hey!”

“What a greeting. You’re as ill-mannered as ever. Have any of y’all changed?”

She’s beautiful. He’s never seen anyone so beautiful; it makes him feel hot and strange. She’s tall and heavily built, dressed in old clothes dirty with mud and grass stains, and her eyes are dark, her skin is dark; her dark hair is down around her shoulders. There’s laughing in her face.

Mordred catches her in an embrace immediately, holding her round body to his thin one, and she laughs aloud.

“Wickedest.”

“I am incorrigible.”

“Don’t think I don’t know it. How are you?”

“Who wouldn’t be better for seeing you?”

“Do you want the list?” She kisses him. “Now I suppose Gawain will give you the tour.”

“I was hoping to avoid it.”

“If you have better luck than our last eight thousand visitors, I’ll be astonished.”

“So will I.”

“Are you going to share me at all?”

“I didn’t think you wanted anyone but me,” he says, releasing her at last.

“How well you think of yourself! Really, do you suppose I speak with you for any other reason than that you are passing fine to look at?”

“Yeah, and I’m wounded to the core.”

Gareth clears his throat eagerly and the woman turns to him. “Your brother is a terrible man.”

“I know. Clar says so, too.”

“I’m sure she does. How are you?”

“I’m good. Are you married now?”

“Wedded and bedded,” she says, looking at Gawain. He blushes immediately. “Well bedded.”

“They don’t want to hear it–”

“Not unless they’re worse than I give them credit.” She smiles sweetly and reaches for Gaheris’ hand. “And my fourth brother, how does he?”

“Fine.”

“Are you afraid of me?” Her eyes dance.

“No. I just don’t remember–”

“You don’t remember ugly Dame Ragnelle?”

“No,” he says quietly.

“I’ll have to remind you some time.” Suddenly her smile changes, small and subtle, but he can see that it does. It becomes something else, it’s no longer mocking. “Come out, I want you to see my garden.”

“All right.”

He follows her; the others don’t stop them. Ragnelle leads him to a tall greenhouse, the glass so bright it sparkles. Inside it’s filled with green, most of all green, but with sudden colour tucked in. Leaves give way to flowers. A tiny orange tree bears fruit in one corner. She looks around at it with quiet pride, her dark eyes (sharp and clever and sweet) seeing everything at once, observing and noting.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know anything about flowers.”

“Neither do I, but I do my best. They’re just like you and your brothers. I hardly know what they need, but I try to use common sense and work for them until I find what helps.” She touches a flower with one finger. “You haven’t changed.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“I know. That’s why you’re in my greenhouse looking at my Bird of Paradise.”

For a moment there’s silence, and then she embraces him, holding him like a mother. She’s the tallest of all the girls who married Orkneys, always was, is now, with a warm body and arms that seem to hold off all sorrows. Gaheris clutches her like a steady rock in a river of rapids, knotting his fingers a little in her hair. He doesn’t know why.

~~~

“Lizzie, doll, there’s a boy on the telephone for you again,” her mama said, so she went back into the house, off the sunwarmed front porch where you could smell the magnolias for-ever, and curled up on the sofa with their old telephone.

It was always boys calling, her mother didn’t mind but her father hated it, and she didn’t know exactly what to think about it–not when she came right off the porch where the summer wind was blowing her dress around her knees and remembered other dresses in other summers, longer and more flowing, remembered the months she’d spent under a forest tree waiting for someone to find her.

She remembered how strange it was, after all that time, to have given the laughing answer that freed her in just three words. That had been all it took, those three words, and suddenly she wasn’t waiting any more, she had a destination; she followed a King back to his court on his horse as grey as ash. There he gave her to a husband from distant Orkney–from Scotland, someone said, and they corrected him, Orkney, it’s not Scotland, how wouldst thou like of it did we say thou wert of England’s shores–a smiling man, shorter than she, whose fairish-reddish hair shone in the firelight redder than it was, who bowed before her and did not turn his face away, as the others did, at her ugliness.

She didn’t bother reading about it. She remembered everything perfectly, as though yesterday instead of going to school and learning algebra she had gone with him to his chamber and asked him whether he would have her fair by day or fair by night. Gawain had glanced into the fire and told her, embarrassed, that he would have liked to have her fair by night, that he might love her in her beauty, but that he thought she might prefer to be fair by day, that company would not shun her–and that he knew in his heart he could make no choice for her. He said that certainly she must choose herself, and so saying broke her enchantment.

And with all that to remember, how one day no one would look at her and the next day half the court sent her love-notes, telephone calls from boys didn’t seem very important. She answered them anyway, she was fourteen and afterwards she called her friends and told them, but she wrote Gawain’s name in gel pen cursive on her social studies tests and never went out with anybody.

When she got older she went to college and got her Major in English history; she had a knack for the details that amazed her professors. Boys still called her, or slipped their phone numbers into her things, or sidled up to her when she went out with her friends, and she laughed and turned them down. Sometimes people called her an ice princess, even though there was no one more friendly, or suggested she was a lesbian, even though she never went out with girls, either. Her eyes danced and she would lift her eyebrows and say, in her soft Georgia accent, that she wasn’t available; if someone persisted she said she was holding out for the flower of chivalry.

She’d seen Camelot on Broadway and laughed and cried the whole way through.

One day she went down to the Mississippi, right outside of Memphis, and after she climbed down the embankment she sat on a rock and put her dark-skinned feet in the water, and after a while more curious minnows came and touched her toes.

It had been a long time. She remembered hawking with Gawain in the forests, and how she was always happy in the forests; she’d spent so long there during her enchantment. The deep woods were her second home. She held her knees with her long brown arms and realised her chest was aching like a blood clot in her heart, and suddenly she jumped up, scattering minnows, and ran up the embankment, threw her leg over her bicycle and pedalled back into the city so fast she would have sworn her tyres smoked on the black-hot roads.

She was just out of college then, she had no job, and she took the three thousand dollars her grandmother left her when she died and moved into a tiny house by the side of the badlands in North Dakota, where the trees grew up thick and she paid her rent by helping on horse tours of the badlands.

It was while she was there that she decided one day, maybe for no reason at all or maybe because of the little magic that had been hers once, to buy a New York Times in Kildeer. The article on the front page was about a young man who’d invented an affordable, effective solar panel at the age of twenty-nine, and came complete with big colour photographs of both the solar panel and the young man.

So she quit her job, bought a battered car, and drove to California, and she showed up on his porch on a day when there were orange trees flowering.

“Hi,” she said. “Remember me?”

~~~

Ragnelle cuts flowers and gathers them up in her arms.

“I can’t go back without something to offer my lord. Have you a lady, Sir Gaheris?”

He almost laughs. “No. Not like that.”

“Not like that? Then what kind of lady do you have?”

“Lynet,” he says.

Ragnelle understands. He can see it in her eyes, even though she’s laughing at him, laughing so that her dark hair falls down her back like a poet’s cascade, and with her flowers she looks like Epona or some kind of goddess. She knows what Lynet is to him. “A terrible kind of lady, I understand. You have my sympathy.”

“I’ll need it.”

“I know.” She lifts her eyebrows. “Let’s go. Gawain’s probably boring Mordred to death.”

“He’s probably boring Gareth to death. Mordred won’t care what Gawain says as long as Gawain says it,” and there’s a note of bitterness in his voice he can’t hide.

“You’re jealous,” she says. Her laugh half-quiets, but the other half turns mocking. “You know you have as about as much reason as I have to be jealous of Mordred? Really, my husband is the Courteous Knight. An affair would be unthinkable.”

“Stop it,” too loudly. Then, sullen, “Do you mind not talking about my brothers like that?”

“Gaheris.”

“What?”

“They’re glad to be together again. Let them be glad. Soon enough you’re leaving, aren’t you? You’ll go back to what you’ve done before this–I want all the details later–and Gawain won’t be there. They’re best friends, and they’ve been apart too long. Let them have this while they have it. Gawain’s his brother, his closest.”

“Mordred just acts like he’s God–”

“When you and Gareth and the kingdom died, Gawain fought Lancelot every day for you. Lancelot nearly killed him every time, and he’d only wait until he could stand and put his armour on and then he’d go back and it would happen again, over and over. He was broken. He kept going back when everyone begged him not to, and he didn’t hear anyone. He was too broken for living, and he was waiting for Lancelot to kill him, but Lancelot always gave mercy and sent him back to heal again. It went on for months.” Ragnelle looks at him until he looks away. “And then one day Lancelot killed him. At last, do you understand?”

Gaheris doesn’t speak.

“Clarissant took the women away, all your wives, but not me, because I’d gone back to the forest before everything fell to pieces. When Gawain died, my children were already dead. Lancelot killed them before he killed you. Do you understand how much death there was? Your brother was alone in the middle of a slaughter.”

She holds her flowers in one arm and takes his hand with her free one. Her fingers are warm and a little sticky with the sap from the flowers, and Gaheris is cold.

“I understand,” he says quietly.

“Mordred did not die sane.”

“I understand.”

“Now they’re together and they can forget the death. Gawain’s a whole man, he’s successful, he’s happy, I’m pregnant. He’ll have children who won’t die by the sword. Mordred can live without everyone around him pointing and whispering and teaching him that he’s less than he is because of what he was born from. We can do better this time. We have remembrance, not shadows.”

He nods. Ragnelle smiles and then laughs.

“And I’m getting all squishy and sentimental. Anyway, let them rejoice in one another and their fortune; thou and I shall succour thy brother in his distress and perchance we shall douse him in the lake. Come on.”

He’s still cold, and it takes him a moment to move, but Ragnelle rescues her hand from him and rubs his shoulders a little, and once he’s walking she leads him back along the hill to the wind turbines, where Gawain and Mordred are. Gareth is a little beside them, scuffing the grass with his shoe.

“Dearest lord!” Ragnelle calls out. “Release thy brother to us.”

Gawain’s face falls. “We were going to look at the roof next.”

“Oh, you can take Mordred to the roof and back, and with any luck you’ll push him off. We want Gareth.”

Immediately Gareth sprints over to her, beaming hugely with relief. “Okay! Let’s go! Where are we going? I’m ready.”