Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [103]
“The Goddess will prevent them,” said Morgaine simply.
“Maybe so,” Lancelet said, and reached up to touch the blue crescent on her forehead. “It is here that you touched me when you made me see into the other world. Has this to do with the Sight, Morgaine, or is that another of your Mysteries of which you may not speak? Well, I’ll not ask you, then. But I feel as if I had been ravished into one of the old fairy forts where, they say, a hundred years can pass in a night.”
“Not so long as that,” Morgaine said, laughing, “though it is true that time runs differently there. But some of the bards, I have heard, can still come and go from the elf country . . . it has moved further than Avalon into the mists, that is all.” And as she spoke, she shivered.
Lancelet said, “Maybe when I go back to the real world, the Saxons will all have been vanquished . . . and gone.”
“And will you weep because there is no longer any reason for your life?”
He laughed and shook his head, holding her hand in his. After a minute he said in a low voice, “Have you, then, gone to the Beltane fires to serve the Goddess?”
“No,” said Morgaine quietly. “I am virgin while the Goddess wills; most likely I am to be kept for the Great Marriage . . . Viviane has not made her will or the will of the Goddess known to me.” She bent her head and let her hair fall across her face, feeling shy before him, as if he could read her thoughts and know the desire which swept through her like a sudden flame. Would she indeed lay down that guarded virginity if he should ask it of her? Never before had the prohibition seemed a hardship; now it seemed that a sword of fire was laid between them. There was a long silence, while the shadows passed across the sun, and there was no sound except the chirping of small insects in the grass. At last Lancelet reached up and drew her down, laying a soft kiss, which burned like fire, on the crescent on her brow. His voice was soft and intense.
“All the Gods together forbid I should trespass where the Goddess has marked you for her own, my dear cousin. I hold you sacred as the Goddess herself.” He held her close; she could feel that he was shaking, and a happiness so intense that it was pain flooded through her.
She had never known what it was to be happy, not since she was a small and heedless child; happiness was something she dimly remembered before her mother had burdened her with the weight of her little brother. And here in the Island, life had soared into the free spaces of the spirit and she had known exaltation and the delights of power as well as the suffering and struggle of the pain and the ordeals; but never the pure happiness she knew now. The sun seemed to burn more brightly, the clouds to move through the sky like great wings against the dazzling, sparkling air, every bud of clover in the grass shimmered with its own interior light, a light that seemed to shine out from her as well. She saw herself mirrored in Lancelet’s eyes and knew that she was beautiful, and that he desired her, and that his love and respect for her were so great that he would even hold his own desire within bounds. She felt she would burst with her joy.
Time stopped. She swam in delight. He did no more than stroke her cheek with the gentlest of feather-light caresses, and neither of them wanted more. She played softly with his fingers, feeling the calluses on his palms.
After a long time, he drew her against him and spread the edges of his cloak over her. They lay side by side, barely touching, letting the power of the sun and the earth and the air move through them in harmony, and she dropped into a dreamless sleep through which she was still conscious of their intertwined hands. It seemed that some time, a very long time ago, they had lain like this, content, timeless, in an endless joyful peace, as if they were part of the standing stones which had stood here forever; as if she both experienced and remembered