This story takes place in an alternate universe where the episode ''The Lady of the Lake'' never happened, to give me more room to play with the fascinating but (in my opinion) underdeveloped and underused character of Freya. She is in this story, although it may not seem like it at first - there is a reason why it isn't told from the perspective of Merlin or Arthur. Slight crossover with Doctor Who and mentions of numerous other fandoms.
The gravel crunched under her feet as she ran. It was strange. The light in the sky was bright, but the air was moving unpredictably around her face, and it was not warm. Lights had always meant warmth in the past. It really was different Outside. She had forgotten that. Somehow it had all been so different when she was four years old. The sun had been warm, the grass had been soft, and the mud she had carefully made from dirt in the garden - an actual garden, with plants to eat that came out of it! - had been squishy and so much fun to squeeze into the molds.
Now the sun was painful, the air was freezing, and the ground was very, very hard. She ran through the park. It was noontime, and all the adults who had clearance for this area were on their food shift. Somewhere else. The park was empty. She had planned it that way. They really had been stupid to give her this section to Monitor. It had brought back all the memories they had taught her to suppress at the school. The memories of wind and light and love and freedom.
She wondered if her parents were enjoying life as workers in the freedom of the fields. Their expertise had been valued. She had gotten pictures of them every year, smiling in their labs overlooking the huge monocropped fields. How she had wished to join them, but they had always said, soon. Complete your education, become a qualified Monitor. You have rare skills and a good keen intelligence, even if it expresses itself in words instead of numbers. When you have fulfilled your potential and become qualified and classified as Adult, we will make a space for you, and we will be a family again.
But a Monitor's job was draining, and she hated the illogical rules of the school. And so, just for disagreeing without ever actually breaking a rule, she had been branded a delinquent and sent back to first grade. Sent to a special school, where the work was so easy the bacteria on her toothbrush could do it and her job as a fill-in Monitor began to consume her thoughts.
The heavy running footsteps of the guards were far behind her now. She was almost there. The Clever Ones had helped her escape, sent her the map inside their minds as she Monitored. She was nearly there.
Hell. A squad of guards appeared. She could not run to the hidden tunnel in the thickness of the wall now. Well, she could, but that would give it away to the guards, and put other people in danger. Not that she actually knew any of them except for the one who had spoken the words into her mind, but still. People had broken free of the rules and were doing their own thinking. She loved that thought. She would give her life for that thought. She slid on the horrible loud gravel and changed direction.
A shot rang out. A bullet buried itself in her thigh. Her sides were already aching, her torn shoulder muscles itching and burning. It was an old injury from a fight. The clever people were always targets of the sullen. And she was no fighter. She had been lucky to get away with a torn shoulder muscle as the only long-term result. She staggered, limping forward at a slow run from sheer momentum.
If the guards were shooting, then they don't want me alive. No one wants me. Except my parents. And they can't help me. I'm the property of the government now. Stupid. Stupid. She could feel the warm blood leaking down her leg and soaking the fabric of her trousers. She stopped just around a bend in the path. It was lined by thick green bushes just here. The guards wouldn't know which way she had turned. It was a few seconds to say goodbye.
And then she saw it. Ahead of her, the path led into a dark woodland. The trees there grew as they pleased, wild and thick. It was a tiny patch, she knew. A scrap of the old world that for some reason no one had ever been able to tame.
She staggered forward, pleading within herself. "If I must die, let it be there, under freedom and clear light. Out of sight of the buildings and the signs. I never belonged here. It's not my world."
The forest seemed to leap up to meet her as she ran towards it. The guards were closing in on her now. She looked back just once, and saw them only fifty feet behind. They weren't even running now, just jogging. They were laughing at the trail of blood on the ground.
"Why do you run to the trees, fifty-seven?" one of them called. "You'll still die, and like a barbarian."
She reached the first tree and stood supporting herself on the trunk. She looked back at the men. They had stopped too, grinning. "I want freedom," she said defiantly.
"That's what you're getting, sweetheart," they said. "Best thing for people like you, the ones who don't fit in."
She turned back to the tree. The horizon beyond it shifted and changed. No longer was it just a few hundred square feet of rather weedy woodland. Now there were mountain peaks, capped with glistening snow, and valleys of the most beautiful green, and spires of smoke from distant fires. She stared, mesmerized. If that was death, she should have tried it long ago. Perhaps the little blue men in the wonderful storybooks were right, and the living were merely waiting to be dead again. Or was it the other way round? Anyhow, at this particular moment, she thoroughly agreed with the fuzzily remembered philosophy of the Nac Mac Feegle. No king, no queen, no master.
The hissing noise behind her made her turn. The guards had all raised their guns. "No hard feelings, cutie, but orders is orders. Runaway delinquents with a Independent Thought rating of above fifteen percent must be executed. Government orders."
She turned and ran towards the mountains. Unseen by anyone and unnoticed by her, the iris of her eyes glowed golden for a second.
The firing squad followed. They ran until there were no more trees. They stopped, puzzled. It was a blind alley, surrounded by metal walls on all sides. The trail of blood led straight up to the very edge of the forest soil and vanished. The golden-haired girl had disappeared.
0000
She stumbled forward, sprawling painfully on the ground. The trees around her were suddenly pitch black. She pushed herself up with her hands, ignoring the pain from her shoulder. She fumbled in her pockets and found a napkin taken from the breakfast table on the basis that you never know when you might need a strong piece of absorbent paper. She clumsily tied it around the wound in her leg. That hurt, so much.
There was a light ahead! An unsteady, flickering kind of light. Perhaps it was a trap. She hesitated, and then thought, "I think I'm dead, anyway, and if I'm not I soon will be. So perhaps the light means people, people with painkillers so I can at least die in relative comfort."
She managed to get to her feet and walk slowly towards the light. Suddenly, a pair of arms seized her from behind in a crushing grip and a voice in her ear demanded "Who are you?"
"Please," she gasped. "It hurts. Can you help me?" She clenched her jaw. She would not cry. Crying was stupid.
The arms relaxed a little and she felt a light touch run down her body. "No weapons, girl? That's dangerous out here." Her captor sniffed. "Is that blood? Are you hurt?"
"My leg. Upper. Left. Shot," she said as the world went very small and narrow, with wide margins populated in dancing dark sparkles. She had a brief glimpse of a tall, blond young man with gleaming metal on, and then everything went peaceful and painless.
0000
She woke up next to a fire. She tried to squirm away from it.
"Easy now," said a voice. It was the man. He was kneeling beside her, doing something to her wound that made her stiffen all over and dig her nails hard into her palms to keep from screaming. "I have to stop the bleeding," he said apologetically. For such a big man - and he was huge - he had gentle fingers, she decided.
"Give her a bit of the pain potion," said someone else. This was a man sitting on the other side of the fire. He was also wearing one of the funny metal shirts, and a big red piece of fabric over it. It looked like a curtain. He tossed a little glass bottle to her attendant.
"I'm afraid this tastes rather nasty, miss, but it will take away some of the pain," he said. "Open your mouth."
She looked at him nervously.
"I will not harm you in any way, miss. You have my sworn oath. And neither will my friend, Sir Leon."
What else could happen? She opened her mouth and swallowed the bitter dose.
"And now you should sleep," said the man, covering her with another of the heavy red curtains. It smelled of smoke and metal and sweat.
0000
The two men had horses, real horses, that they actually rode on. If she hadn't been in so much pain, she would have been elated to see that. As it was, she lay limply in the crook of her rescuer's arm and watched the scenery pass by very slowly, clenching her teeth at the worst jolts.
The big man who had caught her was called Sir Percival, and his friend was Sir Leon. It was odd that they put their last names first, but perhaps they were from one of the old Asian cultures. Anyhow, they were kind and doled out the painkillers generously. And she was alive.
They rode all day until sundown and then stopped for the night. The two men set up a little camp with a fire and let her lie wrapped up in the big red curtain, which she found out was a cloak, an actual cloak like in the storybooks. Who had cloaks nowdays? No one.
They didn't try to make her talk. She was very relieved and very surprised. They had only asked her her name, and after that, just inquired politely about her comfort. They kept calling her 'miss', too. That was odd. Archaic, even. And they had seemed bewildered by the fact that she had no legal name now that she was a delinquent. She was Fifty-Seven. That was all anyone would ever call her, and it was no use trying to be - horror of horrors - 'creative' about her label.
The second day of slow jolting travel on horseback was sheer agony. Sir Percival was kind enough to give her an extra dose of the bitter painkiller, and she drifted into merciful unconsciousness as the unpleasantly hot sun reached its full height in the clear blue sky.
0000
She woke up again in a narrow bed. It was soft, and the blankets were warm. That was good. But it wasn't her bunk in the school. The room was smaller, and there was no one else in it. The walls were - she squinted at them - stone? Weird. And there were real windows in the walls, tall narrow ones with a grid of wood or something over them like a really wide-meshed screen. She knew they were real windows leading to the real Outside, because a breeze was blowing through them and she could smell real Outside smells. No chemical dispenser and screen arrangement had ever been able to come close to the real thing.
Someone came into the room. It was a plump woman with a round face and kind eyes. She looked inquiringly down at the girl, and put a hand on her forehead. The girl flinched.
"It's all right. I won't hurt you. I've been looking after you. My name is Alice."
The girl stared up at her. She was an old woman, old enough to be retired. But her eyes still looked young. She wasn't broken and thoughtless like all the other old people she had seen.
"Sir Percival says you are called Fifty-Seven?"
The girl nodded.
"Do you have another name? One that isn't a number?"
The girl shook her head.
"Well, you'll have plenty of time to think of one later. Don't worry! You've been very sick, but we got the little piece of metal out of your leg. You'll recover completely; you're young. You may have a limp for while, but that's only to be expected."
"What are you?"
The woman looked puzzled for a few seconds, then smiled. "I'm the town doctor. I know. I don't look like one. But I am one of the best healers in the land, if I may say so."
She gave the girl some queer-tasting medicine and left. The girl didn't wonder too much about where she was. She was away from the people who tried to do her thinking for her. That was enough. She could feel their absence. Her portal no longer connected. It was glorious.
0000
The woman - who insisted that the girl call her Alice - came and went many times over the next four days. On the fifth day, the girl was strong enough to sit up and begin to take notice of her surroundings, and remember the men in the trees who had presumably brought her here.
This time, when Alice came in, she had a look of suppressed excitement. "You have a visitor," she said. "She won't stay long, but she wants to talk to you."
"I don't know anyone here," the girl said quietly. Then her eyes widened in panic. "Do I?"
Alice hurriedly reassured her. "No, child, you've never met her. But she wants to talk to you. Please answer her questions." She smiled at her and hurried out the door. There was some murmuring in the space outside, and then another woman came in.
She was younger than Alice, probably in her mid-twenties. She had skin the color of coffee with cream and thick curling dark hair and the biggest, brownest eyes the girl had ever seen. The girl thought she was beautiful. She carried herself with dignity.
"Hello. My name is Guinevere," she said, and smiled.
The girl nodded.
"Do you want to know where you are? Or have you already guessed? How much did the Clever Ones tell you?"
The girl stared. "Are you one of them?"
"No. But I know of them."
"They said they knew of a land where people are free to think for themselves and they do not have to work for a company."
Guinevere nodded. "That is true. You are in that land. You found the entrance for yourself." Her long skirt rustled as she sat on a chair beside the bed. "The Clever Ones got their start here. Some of them found your world and began to help people like you. They would have brought you here after making sure that you were not a spy. But you came here yourself." Her eyes were gentle. "How did that happen?"
"I don't know. I escaped from the special school and made it all the way into the Outside, and into a little park that they had told me to go to. But there were guards near the entrance to the escape path, and they would have seen me go in. So I turned away, and then they shot me. I thought I was going to die, and if that was true, I wanted to die in the woods. So I ran to the little bit of forest in the park. And then suddenly it was nighttime and I saw a light and then the big man caught me." Her voice was level.
"Good for you." Guinevere patted the girl's hand. "Did they explain how our worlds fit together?"
The girl shook her head.
"Then I will explain. This world you are in now lies over the one you come from. It occupies the same space and time but is in a different dimension. Think of it as two big rooms with their walls pressed together on one side. There is one big doorway between the two, but there are also lots and lots of secret doors. You stumbled through one of those doors. That's how you came here. The bits of your world that look funny are really bits of ours, and the same is true here. But most people can't just slip through like you did. You must really want to come to fit through."
"What does being in a different dimension mean? What's different?"
Guinevere looked impressed. "Some things that are stories in your world are real in this one. Dragons, for instance, and unicorns. They are real creatures here, like bears and wolves. And some basic laws of your universe are more like suggestions here. They can be broken by some special people. But those skills are dangerous and rather discouraged. They brought this catastrophe on us in the first place. We used to be part of your world, many hundreds of years ago, but those people messed about with space and sent us into a sort of bubble universe. At least, that's what the scientists say. All I personally know is that the whole land slept for hundreds of years. Think of it. Every living creature asleep for centuries. And then a few years ago we all began to wake, and some of the dead began to return. In a good way," she added quickly, with a little laugh in her voice. "Not like zombies. Like they had been before."
"Why did you wake up?"
"We don't know. We're still finding sleeping villages. That's what Leon and Percival were doing when they found you." She hesitated. "I know that stories are discouraged in your world, but did you ever hear the tale of King Arthur?"
The girl looked blank.
"The Sword in the Stone?" Guinevere tried.
The girl nodded. "The king who got a sword out of a rock and won a battle and then died and is waiting for the next big battle?"
"That's the one. This is his kingdom. It's called Camelot. His name is Arthur Pendragon. I'm the Queen."
A little smile touched the girl's mouth. "You're awfully nice for a queen. I thought they were supposed to be above the people."
"Not queens like me," said Guinevere firmly, smiling too. "So if you want to stay here - " She left the sentence hanging.
The girl thought about it for a few seconds, then nodded.
"You will have to fit in, and work for your keep. We are at war, after all."
"With whom?"
"With your world. They view us as a threat. They don't know we exist, but they still attack us." She got up. "When Alice says you can walk, you will go talk to the King. He will help you find a place to live and a job, and you will be given a citizenship here." She smiled again and left.
0000
The girl gained strength quickly. Three days after the Queen visited her, she was able to limp around her little room. She spent most of her days after that sitting by the window looking out over the town.
She was in a big stone building, apparently. A real castle. And below it and all around it was a town. There were other towns in the country, but this one was the most important. It was where the King and Queen lived. And there were knights, real ones that wore metal armor and rode horses.
The girl was thrilled.
The castle was very old, but they had been taking pains to adapt technology from her world to it. Running water was one of their favorite inventions, and so were closed stoves. But the King did not allow electricity in his lands. The girl approved. If they had that, then the Monitors could listen to the thoughts of anyone with a portal. And she did not want that.
She could feel it cold against the back of her spine. She wished she could tear it out, but it was impossible for her to reach it and she didn't know how. She barely remembered life without it. She had been five when it was put in. From the age of six she had been able to link her mind directly into other peoples', and into the humming web of the Internet. She had become so adept at manipulating the interface that she had been the youngest person ever to be trained as a Monitor. And that was where the trouble had started.
Alice knocked gently on the door and came in. "Are you ready, child? Good." She looked the girl over one last time and led her to the door. She was going to see the King.