The Wreath
(Disclaimer: Though this story was inspired by Tennyson's poem, The Lady of Shallot, my version of it is slightly different and I have no intention of infringing copyrights. Thank you and enjoy! Please comment and review.)
Lady grimaced at the wreath Lancelot had fashioned out of flowers. But she quickly composed herself as he beamed at her with anticipation and held the gift out with a refulgent grin.
Originally she had thought that the parting gift was quite childish—they were, after all, nearing the eligible age of marriage. But as Lancelot remained smiling, his black locks catching the sunlight and glistening gold, she couldn't help but smile back. Slightly though. Sadness pulled the smile out of her eyes.
"Thank you," she murmured grimly as she took the offered wreath. It was beautiful, rimmed with laurel petals and leaves of different hues. Lancelot had even taken the time to adorn it with a lace ribbon. She thought that was kind of him, even if the ribbon was lopsided.
He frowned. "You do not fancy it, do you? I know you enjoy roses, but I just couldn't find them in time—I'm leaving within the hour, Lady."
Lady shook her head mechanically. Her voice was hollow as she tried to control her tears. "N-no," she stammered. The wreath shook in her trembling fingers.
Lancelot wasn't sure what to do—at first he leaned closer and closed his eyes, parted his lips. But then he thought better of it and withdrew, though reluctantly. Saying "goodbye" was proving more arduous than he'd thought. He swayed in place, not sure whether to kiss her or to just leave—two sides of him, his mind and his heart, were battling for equilibrium.
"I-I like it, I do," she said truthfully, tears eroding her composure away. "It's just that… never mind. You should just go. Goodbye, Lancelot."
With that, she tore away from the spot, dropping her wreath to the ground and stepping over them as she ran from the garden.
Lancelot caught her wrist, though, and she froze in place, her sobs rocking her frame.
"Lady, O my beautiful Lady of Shallot," he murmured, begging. He didn't know how he wanted her to respond; he just wanted her to stay. "Has this war affected our love too?"
She wrenched her hand out of his and faced him, brows creased. "Be reasonable, Lancelot. I am to be arranged to someone in the next few years, and you will be too. By the time you come back from the war in Camelot, we'll be separated. This "-- she glanced at the torn petals strewn across the grass—"will be part of the past."
Lancelot gave out something between a scoff and a sob, "Lady, O Lady. You told me our love could last through anything. Don't leave me—"
"Pardon, but I do believe that you are the one leaving, Lancelot—or should I call you King Arthur's knight now?" she fumed—but it sounded more like desperation than anger. Lancelot opened his mouth, but Lady interposed. "No. You will come back—if you even live—"
Lancelot flinched, but Lady continued, "If you even live to see Shallot again, you will have another lady, hooked onto your arm like an ornament. I know it, Lancelot. I can see it happening already. You haven't seen me in a fortnight, Lancelot. Remember those days when you came here every day and stayed till midnight? Remember we used to sit on that swing together? Now, that swing only has room for one!" Tears broke free again.
Without any hesitation, Lancelot pulled her close to him, his arms locked around her waist.
"I promise that as long as there are flowers in bloom during the spring, I shall love you. I'll survive for you, and there is no way I can die if I have your love…"
"Then I shall not stop loving you," Lady promised, burying her head in his chest.
"Nor shall I," he agreed.
They stood there underneath the branches of their cherished oak tree, abreast their childhood swing. The wind blew and the swing swayed, and the petals Lady had stepped upon flew away. Lancelot espied it and caught the wreath just as it was about to blow away, too. He dove and landed in the sea of grass, and the way the golden light caressed his face caused Lady to smile. Her smile made him smile.
She followed his suit and dove into the rolling grass, too. The wind froze around them for a moment as they just were—smiling at each other and spending this last afternoon in their Eden.
And after that eternity, Lancelot lifted Lady off of the grass and onto the swing. He realized that yes, it was too small to fit two anymore, so he pushed her gently and watched as her long hair danced in the breeze. His smile was nostalgic. He etched this memory of her into his mind, just in case in the future… in the war…
He shook his head. He didn't wish to think of that now. He had to savor the moment.
Later he picked the tattered wreath from the ground and placed it lightly upon her head.
"I'll always remember you like this, my love," he whispered into her ear, and she looked up to kiss him one last time.
Lady loved Lancelot's lips—so soft, so patient.
But then the radiance of her pleasure was eclipsed by her knowledge that now, without him, she might as well be a cursed maiden.
One could hear many sounds from the island of Shallot five years after the war had commenced. They could hear the sounds of bells tolling each time a soldier was buried. They could hear the clamor of swords and cries of death coming from the land of Camelot. And on this particular day, shrieks from a maiden's tower.
"Ah!" Lady gasped.
She was bent over in her stool, clutching her pricked finger with her other hand. Blood dripped steadily to the floor and ran in rivers through the crevices of the stone floor.
"Alright," she told herself. "No more weaving for today."
She pressed the cloth of her apron against the wound and shuffled over to her bed, away from her spindle. Around the circular and abysmal room hung her embroidery—of knights. A knight with black, curly hair that glimmered in the sunlight.
A small and abandoned hole of a window was in the wall across from her, but she never looked that way. She refused to. She couldn't get her hopes up—Lancelot would never come back.
She pulled her quilt closer to her, trying to fill the hole he had left in her heart.
Outside her window, two reapers walked by with their mules, glancing at the tower and whispering apprehensively.
"They say it's haunted," one apprises the other. "They say there was a maiden who lived there a few years ago, and she has never been seen leaving the tower since. People thought she had moved away, but we hear her sing sometimes. And sometimes we hear weeping."
"How very suspicious," the other replies in a frightened tone.
Lady heard this short conversation, but didn't respond in a significant manner, for she heard variants of this quite often; she merely closed her eyes tightly and buried herself under the quilt, wondering if she was truly alive or not.
In the morning, she awoke yet again to her dismal gray walls. No sunlight blessed her particular window. With a wistful sigh, Lady placed her feet on the aching ground and stood up, making her way to her spindle. What the reapers said was true—maybe she was a specter. She certainly acted so—the minute the sun shown over the horizon each day, she condemned herself to her weaving until she either collapsed mid-work from exhaustion, pricked her finger from tiredness and then went to sleep, or kept working till the next dawn came. Her current project was a web of thread and colors—mirthful colors, to alleviate her pain. But sometimes, the pain conquered and she couldn't control herself when her eyes once again met the mirror in front of her spindle. Since she refused to look out the window in reality, she saw the world through the reflection of the mirror.
Condemnation of the soul. That was precisely what she was attempting to do. Suffer fully so that if disappointed, she would not have to have hopes fall. And if Lancelot came back and his heart was still hers, she'd have every reason to be truly elated for the first time in many years.
Lady went about her job like she always did—weaving slowly but tensely, as if trying to stop herself from losing control and doing something that she might regret—anything, she knew, could get her hopes up.. She was getting too desperate, too lonely. She might as well be dead if Lancelot was.
But there was too much at risk if she ended her life. What if Lancelot was alive? What'd she do? She couldn't do much if she was dead, in that case.
So there she sat, night and day, weaving her stories of cloth—stories of a knight with coal black curls.
But today was different. Usually on spring days in Shallot, since Lancelot had gone, it was deathly quiet, perhaps a reaper or merchants passing by once in a while. But otherwise like the inside of a tomb.
It happened when Lady was weaving the last stitch into her quilt—a quilt that had pictures of wreaths and roses and laurel leaves. A quilt that told a story of her childhood, a childhood made by two young kids, later lovers.
She smiled as she remembered his curls, the way they shone in the light. Golden threads…
She gasped as a glint of gold shimmered in the mirror in front of her. She lost control, and dropped her needles. She bolted upright and stood. Her body knocked violently into the spindle and it tipped over into the mirror—smashing it into a million pieces that cascaded to the floor. But in the split second before the spindle had made contact with the glass, Lady had seen a flash of gold among a cloak of black.
Forsaking her embroidery, forsaking the loom, she spun around and dashed toward the window, looking out at the world for the first in five years.
Lancelot. It was him— bearded and taller, surely, but he had the same eyes, the same hair. The way he seemed to hold the sunlight to him and the way his aura glowed with youth and vitality and exquisiteness was the same.
Lady smiled, but nearly collapsed, for standing next to Lancelot, with a wreath made of roses in her hair was a young maiden. She was beautiful, with wavy tendrils of wheat and meadow-green eyes. A collarbone that showed delicately through the fabric of her dress. Pale skin that looked untouchable. The paragon of femininity. Not only a goddess in all juxtapositions, not only an angel compared to Lady, but the winner. She walked victoriously next to Lancelot, laughed with a fragile laugh, like bells. And like Lady had predicted, this maiden's arm was hooked neatly around Lancelot's, and it looked like it wasn't leaving any time soon.
Lady shook her head vigorously, willing it all to go away. And then, emptily and mechanically—like a ghost—she stood up, walked to her loom, picked up a needle, and made her way down the spiral staircase.
At the base of the stairs, she opened the door and there before her was her garden. Once Eden, now Purgatory. An abandoned place of forsaken shrubs, weeds growing and dominating the grass and once-lovely flowers. It looked as if a wildfire had left a trail of death and decay in its path. All that remained were shriveled plants, rotting twigs, and the creaking of the neglected swing that hung from a deprecated branch of the oak tree.
Needle in one of her much- battered hands, she bent down beneath the tree and performed the motions like it had been rehearsed before. Without dropping the needle in her right hand, she lifted a rock with the other, revealing a withered wreath.
There were no flowers this spring. She threw her head back and laughed maniacally, a deep and emotion-drained laugh. And when she was done, she placed the ruined wreath upon her head, and, humming, dutifully made her way to the swing.
It creaked as she collapsed onto the wooden plank of a seat and the ropes rattled, like the moans of the dead. She laughed again, and before raising the needle to her throat, looked around at her garden—the oak tree, the brown grass, the crumbling stonewall that separated her from the rest of Shallot, from the rest of the world.
And then, as the sun began to set in the spring sky over Shallot, the lady placed the needle on her neck, held it there for a second, smiling through tears, and them plunged it into her throat. Immediately her legs and arms went limp, her head fell back, and the swing caught her by her back before her body could hit the ground, the impact shaking her and the swing. The tree quivered. And then, everything was still. And there she stayed, hanging with her neck exposed to the sky, the blood flowing down the side of her neck and dripping into the dead grass. Her blackened wreath fell to the ground and soaked in her blood. There she lay, white-robed, pale, and lifeless, her blood running in the direction of Camelot.
Sir Lancelot, the great knight of King Arthur, strode in the lane with his lady, laughing at her wit and admiring her beauty. So long he had been away from the island of Shallot—for five years he had traveled all across the country, meeting nobles and kings and maidens.
His lady said, "Look, my dear Lancelot—a tower! Do you remember it?"
Sir Lancelot glanced at the tower to his right, one that was decrepit but beautiful in its authenticity and age. There was a long, worn-away fence farther ahead that was appended to the edge of the tower. Something pulled at his memory. He turned to his lady and said, "No. I think my father used to know that family… I fear that my memory hasn't been cooperating. It was a long time ago."
"They say a sad girl lives there by herself. They call her the Lady of Shallot."
"Poor girl."
"Quite," his lady frowned, uncomfortable with the thought of being alone. She tugged at Sir Lancelot's sleeve.
They neared the low fence—it must've been tall once, for a profusion of debris and pebbles lay strewn on the floor around it. And then the couple froze in place. Beyond the wall, in the garden, a girl lay dead on the swing beneath an oak tree.
"Who is this? And what is here?" Sir Lancelot breathed.
Lancelot climbed over the wall and brought his lady over, too. Lancelot mused the body, beautiful even in death. Mysteriously, and for no reason he could comprehend, he feared none. He, without inhibition or trepidation came closer to the swing and examined the ropes and the girl.
"Lady..." he read the carving in the tree. His fingers traced over the word, and a shiver or a wave of some puzzling element came over him. He withdrew, and, dazed, brushed his black locks away from his eyes.
"She has a pretty face," he murmured. "God in his mercy lend her grace, the Lady of Shallot."
The Lady of Shallot was buried the next day. On her headstone read not her name, but what the town knew her to be, which was just that—the Lady of Shallot.
Sir Lancelot was to leave Shallot that day, but before he did, he made a point to return to the garden where he had found that girl. He watered the flowers. Like magic, the roses and the laurels sprang back to life almost immediately, as if gloriously resurrected by the knight's presence.
And then, with the new, lively laurels, he fashioned a wreath, and placed it on the swing beneath the oak tree, and left, but not before tracing the name etched onto the bark once more.