Posted in Arthurian, Catechism on Mar 27th, 2007 No Comments »
Shouting. A rough, angry voice.
A deeper one answers, and the rough voice comes out again, clear with fury. “Y’come home drunk every day, every night, y’expect me t’go on kissing you when y’get back, and y’call me her name! I don’t care what y’remember!”
“Sounds like ours,” Mordred remarks. “Poor bastard.”
Posted in Arthurian, Catechism on Mar 25th, 2007 No Comments »
“Na, na,” he says, clucking it softly with his tongue. “I know as well as thee thou art no longer so. The age is fourteen summers, is’t not? Thou hast surpast it, and with thy father’s goodwill thou couldst be my bride.” For some reason a laugh is pressing at his chest from inside, strange. How can he be wanting to laugh? “A goodly bride, ’sblood, an thou wouldst.”
“Okay, no. My dad would kill you.”
“Ah, to die for love!”
Posted in Arthurian, Catechism on Mar 19th, 2007 No Comments »
She smiles now, gentle, with a soft seeming of understanding, as if he could tell her anything and she’d not be angry, perhaps she’d even know the why behind it. He wants her to know. He wants to tell her all his secrets and all the things that frighten him, the unexplained parts of his memories, the deaths of his mothers, the longing he has for Mordred to be proud of him, the cold that comes when he thinks of his daughter. For a moment he sits poised on the edge of it, and then in one breath he breathes it out and it’s gone.
“Thanks.”
Posted in Arthurian, Catechism on Mar 13th, 2007 No Comments »
Mordred stops trying to knot his tie. “Shut up. Don’t you ever call me that again. Never again.”
“Modred,” she says, hissing the words between her teeth. “Modred son of Morgause.”
For a moment he seems to shake. His hands are wrong, and his breathing is too soft to hear; really, he doesn’t seem to be breathing at all. His eyes are dark. Gaheris knows that he’s going to shout, that he’s going to hit her, that something’s going to go horribly wrong — Mordred suddenly turns and leaves the room without a word.
Posted in Arthurian, Catechism on Mar 13th, 2007 No Comments »
“We’re turning off now,” Gaheris says, looking out the window. “Your choices are Wendy’s and Subway.”
“Wendy’s. He needs something deep-fried.”
Gareth beams. “I do!”
Posted in Arthurian, Catechism on Mar 11th, 2007 No Comments »
“Well, I wasn’t sure, all right? We’re not blood any more, and I thought–”
“I think this is more than blood. We’re the only ones who remember us any more. I think it means more now,” reaching out to tease a line of ants creeping across the cement towards someone’s fallen potato chips. “We only have us.”
“We only ever had us,” says Gaheris.
Posted in Arthurian, Catechism on Mar 9th, 2007 No Comments »
The homeless man suddenly grasps his shoulder, and before he has time to push him away, doubles over and vomits on the pavement; then slumps against him so hard that Gaheris has to hold him up or be knocked down himself.
Posted in Arthurian, Catechism on Mar 8th, 2007 No Comments »
But he doesn’t know. He plays with the ideas the way he always does, tosses them around but never gets an answer from them. It sounds good, but it’s just as likely not the reason for everything, so there’s no reason to believe it. Guessing games, that’s all.
Posted in Arthurian, Catechism on Mar 4th, 2007 No Comments »
It’s not like with Mordred. He doesn’t know what to say to her, and he tenses uncomfortably, longing for his voice to return and his mind to return. His throat feel strained with something that wants to come out but doesn’t know what shape it will turn out to be once it leaves the darkness. She keeps on looking at him.
“She’s here. You won’t be looking long. You just have not to be an idiot.”
Posted in Arthurian, Catechism on Feb 27th, 2007 No Comments »
The smile seems so warm that Gaheris is a little afraid of it — who would welcome them back so easily? The cursed Orkney brothers and their cursed heritage of killings that shouldn’t have been — but Peredur doesn’t seem to remember or mind all of that. He’s so full of good will, looking at them like they’re his own brothers, instead of two men not even related by country. “It’s been such a long time.”