#211: Old acquaintance
There were those who would say, later, that Peredur had died there in his holy isolation, not long after his sister and his friend. His soul, having undergone its last refinements, would have departed his body with a quiet smile, and left it there to molder, becoming part of the earth he had loved. It seemed fitting.
But then they supposed Mordred dead, too, and that was another poetic end.
He made his way southward slowly, across empty moors and hard hills, down into the forest that hid so many secrets. He did not trust it. The trees were too tall, too numberless, crowding too closely. They made a world without a horizon, full of a ceaseless whispering, like and unlike the sound of the sea. Nothing human lived this deep in the wilderness; that was all the reason Mordred had come this way, but he felt eyes on him nevertheless.
* * *
The clearing was awash in sunlight. He stood under the fringe of the trees, dazzled; his eyes had grown so used to green twilight that he could not see anything but brightness, a blur of golden light and vivid green, a flash of coppery red. Fox, maybe. He put a hand up to shade his eyes from the glare.
"Oh," said a startled voice. "Good day. --No, no, please -- I didn't see you, is all. It's all right."
The voice caught at his memory. He stood, blind and bewildered, as footsteps approached him through the grass; heard a soft intaken breath. Felt a shadow fall between him and the light. "Gawain?" And as he flinched: "No-- Mordred, isn't it? 'Course. I'm sorry, it's been so long... Are you all right?" A touch at his shoulder. "It's me. Percy."
Percy. Red-haired Peredur. He blinked the stars from his eyes, and saw that it was.
"Gawain is dead," he said, flat and harsh in his own ears.
"I'm sorry."
"So am I." He could not hold back the shudder; and Peredur reached out a hand, solicitous. "No, dammit, don't--" Bloodstains on the trampled grass. The sun slanting low, casting his brother's body into shadow. "Don't touch me."
Peredur fell back a step. Tall as ever, leaner than he had been; his boyish face had acquired lines, a look of deep patience.
"All right," he said, gently. "You want to come inside? There's soup on."
"You don't know what you're asking."
"Asking you to come eat with me. That's all."
"You don't know," Mordred said again, and then realized it was true. Peredur had left them years ago, and not been heard from since. He was, as he had always been, innocent. "Christ have mercy."
Peredur only smiled.
Mordred
Arthurian legend
447 words