Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [438]
“Is this one of your magical spells from Avalon, Mother?”
Morgaine shook her head. “It is herb lore, no more,” she said, went to the kitchen and made up the brew over the fire. She brought it to Maline and said, “Drink it as hot as you can, and wrap up in your shawl while you spin, try to keep warm.”
Maline drank up the brew, emptying the little pottery cup, and grimaced at the taste. “Ugh, foul!”
Morgaine said, smiling, “I should have put honey in it, as I do with the brews I make for the children when they have fever.”
Maline sighed, taking up the spindle and distaff again. She said, “Gwyneth is old enough to spin—I could spin when I was five years old.”
“So could I,” said Morgaine, “but I beg you, defer the lesson another day, for if I am to weave in here I do not want noise and confusion.”
“Well then, I will tell the nurse to keep all the children out in the gallery,” said Maline, and Morgaine dismissed her from her mind, beginning to run the shuttle slowly through the cloth and making sure of the pattern. It was a pattern of green and brown checkered cloth, not very demanding for a good weaver; so long as she counted the threads automatically, she need not keep her mind on it very long . . . spinning would have been better. But she had made her distaste for spinning so well known that if she volunteered to spin this day it would be remembered.
The shuttle slid through the cloth: green, brown, green, brown, picking up the other shuttle every tenth row, changing the color. She had taught Maline to dye this green color, which she had learned in Avalon . . . green of the new leaves coming into the spring, brown of the earth and of the fallen leaves where the boar rooted in the forest for acorns . . . shuttle sliding through the cloth, the comb to tighten each row of threads, her hands moving automatically, in and out and across, slide down the bar, pick up the shuttle from the other side . . . would that Avalloch’s horse would slip and fall and he would break his neck and save me from what I must do. . . . She felt cold and shivered, and willed herself to ignore it, concentrating on the shuttle sliding in and out of the threads, in and out, letting images rise and go at will, seeing Accolon in Uriens’ chamber playing with his father at draughts, Uwaine asleep, tossing and turning with the pain in his cheek wound even through his slumber, but now it would heal cleanly . . . would that a wild boar would fight back and Avalloch’s huntsman be too slow to come to his aid. . . .
I said to Niniane that I would not kill. Never name that well from which you will not drink . . . an image rose in her mind of the Holy Well of Avalon, the water rising from the spring, flooding into the fountain. The shuttle flickered in and out, green and brown, green and brown, like the sunlight falling through the green leaves onto the brown earth, where the spring tides rising within the forest ran with life, sap running in the brown wood . . . the shuttle flashing now, faster and faster, the world beginning to blur before her eyes . . . Goddess! Where you run in the forest with the running life of the deer . . . all men are in your hands, and all the beasts. . . .
Years ago she had been the Virgin Huntress, blessing the Horned One and sending him forth to run with the deer and to conquer or die as the Goddess might decree. He had come back to her . . . now she was no longer that Virgin, holding all the power of the Huntress. As the Mother, with all the power of fertility, she had woven spells to bring Lancelet to Elaine’s bed. But motherhood for her had ended in the blood of Gwydion’s birth. Now she sat here with her shuttle in her hand and wove death, like the shadow of the Old Death-crone. All men are in your hands to live or die, Mother. . . .
The shuttle flickered, flashed in and out of her sight, green, brown, green like leaves and forest intertwined, where they ran, the beasts . . .