This is the continuation of the story that started in The Hidden Hills. It might not make much sense at first if you haven't read that.

This takes place in an alternate universe where the episode 'The Lady of the Lake' never happened, to give me more space to play with the character of Freya. Bevause really, having to stick with her being a shapeshifter because she was cursed and then being somewhat dead is irritating.

This entire storyline was inspired by me looking up the meaning of the name 'Freya' and seeing that it meant 'lady'. Then I thought ''that's more of a title than a name'' and then ''hey, that's kind of like Emrys'' and then ''what if Emrys had a successor? And Freya was it?''. So that's where this strange little AU came from, and why the character of Freya does not go by the name of Freya at first.

There's a slight crossover with Doctor Who, and for any of you Discworld fans who are reading this, Tiffany Aching makes a brief cameo (along with a certain Nac Mac Feegle) later along. I couldn't resist. :)

It was cold, it was cold, and the roof was made of bones.

What?

She opened her eyes. Light danced all around her. The air was cold and damp. The lines from Watership Down raced around and around in her head. But she was in a cave, not a warm burrow. Also, she was not a rabbit. She was pretty sure about that, because she could just see hands in her peripheral vision. They were folded neatly on her chest.

She unfolded her fingers slowly. What was that? There was a little piece of rock in her hands. It was carved into a rosebud, simple and perfect. She held it up closer to her eyes, staring in fascination as it twinkled and sparkled in the distant blue light. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

Cottia sat up quickly. "Merlin?"

The word echoed into the distance. She looked around. She was completely alone in a world of light.

She was lying on a shelf in a tiny cave. Someone had dressed her in her armor over her regular clothes, and fastened her dagger in its sheath to her belt. They had also folded up her furry jacket and placed it beneath her head as a pillow. She shivered, and picked it up and slipped it on.

Beyond the doorway, there was a forest of stars. Cottia blinked and refocused. It was an enormous cavern, filled with stalagmites and stalactites of clear crystals. They were carved and cut into polished spikes with flat facets and sharp edges. Through the very bottom of the sloping cave, a little stream ran leaping from ledge to ledge, tumbling onwards in a torrent of white foam.

" 'The stream is running, running over the gravel.

'Through the brooklime, the kingcups, the blue and gold of spring.

'Where are you going, stream? Far, far away

'Beyond the heather, sliding away all night.

'Take me with you, stream, away in the starlight.

'I will go with you, I will be rabbit-of-the-stream.

'Down through the water, the green water and the rabbit,' " she murmured. "Except that it's blue water, and flowing through rock and molten starlight. Also, I am not a rabbit. I think. What is this place?"

She took a few stiff steps forward. She felt strange, light and quick and strong. The air around her was humming with power. She glanced at the nearest tower of crystal.

An image rushed up to meet her. The well and the ravine with the strips of blowing cloth got bigger and bigger. The hooded person appeared and held out a hand.

"All right, all right," she muttered, tearing her gaze away. Now every crystal in sight was showing the same sequences of images. "Why do you keep showing me that?" she asked.

The pictures shifted and changed. Now they carried the sense of great age. Cottia recognized Morgana from her portrait in the gallery. She was holding a sword and fighting a man in what looked like a little village. Cottia looked closer. The armor that she was wearing looked strangely like her own.

Then Morgana was sleeping in a bed, and a woman with curling blond hair (the funny kind, with dark stripes in it) was standing at the foot, watching her. The view changed from her back to the woman's face. She had vivid dark eyes. She held up a bracelet identical to the one Cottia wore and her eyes glowed golden. The woman placed the bracelet at the foot of Morgana's bed and left.

Morgana lay cradled in the fair woman's lap. They were both sitting on the floor, shafts of sunlight falling all around them. The fair woman looked up, hatred and fury filling her face. Then she began to chant soundlessly and dark mist swirled around them until they vanished.

Now Morgana stood alone in darkness, a jeweled dagger held in both hands, preparing to stab a man who was sleeping in front of her. Cottia felt that she should know who he was. He had a faint resemblance to Arthur, especially in his nose and chin. Morgana tensed, ready to drive the dagger in, but there was a flash and she was sent flying backwards. The man awoke and saw her, but instead of reacting with alarm, his face showed concern and he pulled her into a hug. She smiled, but when he could not see her face, it went wooden.

The fair woman lay on a block of stone, unmoving, and now one side of her face was horribly scarred. Morgana stroked her cheek and wiped off a ceremonial dagger. Then she turned and strode away into blackness.

Morgana was sitting on the throne in the great hall of Camelot, an elaborate crown on her head. Cottia frowned. Before, she had looked angry and restless, but now there was a manic franticness and fear in her eyes.

The pictures blurred and sped up. All were of Morgana; walking, chained to the wall of a pit, riding horseback with a captive that Cottia barely had time to recognize as Guinevere, holding a baby in her arms, standing in front of an army, looking up at cliffs in the dark as men fought around her.

Abruptly the images halted. Morgana was standing still, looking down at something or someone with mad, obsessive fury in her eyes. Cottia shivered. The girl had clearly passed the bounds of sanity and was a long way on the other side. She gloated, but suddenly spun around. Someone was standing behind her, a shadow holding a sword. She glared at the person, but they stepped forward and thrust the sword into her heart. Her expression changed from fear to hurt to gratitude, and she was let gently down to the ground.

Cottia looked away and blinked hard as the pictures ceased and once more the crystals were just crystal. What had that been for? How could she get out of here? How had she gotten in here? Where was here?

"This must be the Crystal Cave," she said out loud. "But why -" Memory began to return. Sitting in the sun on the walls. The silence. Guinevere, asleep at her desk. Everyone else, asleep where they had fallen. Merlin and Arthur, running into the room. Merlin's eyes as he -

"No," she said. "He wouldn't!"

But she remembered the ruthlessness, and what he had said about not letting anyone get in his way, and she knew that he had done his best to kill her.

And after that, apparently he had brought her here and buried her, and put a crystal flower in her hands. Cottia turned it over and over in her fingers. For a moment, it flashed, showing her the picture of the hooded man waiting in the trees.

Well, she couldn't go back to Camelot. Merlin had turned against her. That hurt, quite a lot more than she let herself acknowledge. If she was supposed to be dead and had somehow survived, it was sheer idiocy to go back. Meeting the person in the druid camp was important, was it? Then she'd go there.

But how on earth could she get out? She took a few cautious steps forward. Even though she felt as if she could float, in reality her legs were as unsteady as a newborn kitten's and her vision was blurry and made everything look a little further away than it really was. This cave seemed endless.

Well, the floor was sloped. The water was running down. Maybe it came down from outside. On the other hand, it could go down to come out. Cottia glared around at the sparkling rocks. It was pitch black in the cave apart from the light of the crystals, and that light was wavering and uncertain. There! There was the entrance. It was obvious, really. How had she missed it?

Oh. That was strange. A few seconds ago and a few steps further away, she could have sworn that there was an archway leading to a long straight tunnel upwards, daylight pouring in through the end. Now she could see that it was just a hollow in the side of the cave, filled with rubble. But at the same time, it was an archway leading out. She squinted hard. It made her eyes water and her mind ache with effort, but she could see both things at the same time. How strange.

It's because both things are there, she thought. That's perfectly obvious. There is a lot of power in there. Enough to twist time and move space.

"What?" she said out loud. Sometimes those sardonic, biting little thoughts that bubbled up from somewhere deep in the part of her mind she kept shut were useful, though it wasn't very often. She screwed her eyes shut, feeling the relief as she no longer had to look at the weird distorted dance that space was doing on the other side of the arch/hollow.

With her eyes closed, she could smell fresh air now. It was coming in on the breeze generated by the rushing water, drifting with glacial slowness down from above.

Cottia tucked the little flower carefully into her jacket pocket and began to follow the slope of the cavern upwards. If she kept her eyes shut and concentrated, she could smell Merlin. His scent of herbs and cedar soap and wood smoke was unmistakable. It hung in the nearly stagnant air as a faint blue-green line. Her sense of smell, always keen, had suddenly become phenomenally good.

She followed her nose through a winding series of caverns and tunnels, all covered in the same crystals. At one point, the path went through a perfectly spherical cave. The power there made her head spin. The images of the druid camp and of Morgana flashed out at her on all sides. She felt sick.

At last there was real sunlight ahead, pouring in through a narrow crack. Cottia squeezed out of the cave and looked around. The scent of Merlin was nearly gone now. It was several days old. There was another scent hanging around the rocks outside the cave entrance, one of armor polish and leather and horse and . . . lavender? Probably Arthur, she thought. I bet he picks up the lavender smell from Gwen. All her clothes are stored with it.

Cottia wandered down to a little stream and looked at the plants growing on the banks. They had dark green, three-lobed, serrated leaves, and five-petaled white flowers with yellow stamens. Strawberries? There were certainly a lot of them.

A club caught her a glancing blow on the head and she fell sprawling, landing full length in the stream. Another blow splashed into the water as she rolled instinctively out of the way. Seven bandits had ambushed her. She flailed in the shallow water and crawled up the other bank of the stream. One of the men had a crossbow.

"Got any money, boy?" one of them said. "Hand it over."

"I have nothing," she said.

The bandit snorted. "No one comes here without something. Come on. Be reasonable."

"Orrr what?" She couldn't stop her voice from slurring into a growl as she pronounced the 'r'. She was suddenly hot. Her clothes felt too tight, and her boots bit into her feet. She shrugged off her wet jacket and let it fall to the ground. The bandits' eyes narrowed when they saw her armor.

"Or we won't be."

She unbuckled the belt and let it fall. Her dagger went with it. She tore off the metal corset and dragged the chain mail shirt over her head.

"What are you doing?" The men were sidling towards her as she kicked off her boots. She looked in bewilderment at her clothes on the ground. What was she doing? Why were the clothes suddenly so constraining?

"I don't know," she hissed, and it was a real hiss, from deep down in her throat. The men stopped, staring at her in fascinated horror. "What arrrrre you looking at?" It was starting to be hard to talk. Her face felt stiff.

The crossbow twanged. She ducked, landing on hands and knees. Cottia stared at her hands. There was a faint golden shimmer flowing beneath the skin, and her fingernails were thickening and lengthening and disappearing into her fingers, which were growing shorter and more . . . pawlike. Hmmm. She closed her eyes and felt the world shift, just a little.

When she opened her eyes, everything was a little less colorful, but there was a lot more of it. She could see a much wider range of slightly monochromatic and blurry vision. But that didn't really matter, because ears and nose and whiskers were suddenly working overtime, supplying her with a flood of new data. Whiskers?

She barely had time to think about that before she was in mid-leap, sailing over the stream and landing on the bandit who was aiming his crossbow again. She flexed new muscles and claws slid out of what had been her fingers, and with one swipe at the cowering man, red lines opened up down his back and side where he had rolled over, trying to protect his face.

Her claws had sliced through his armor like it was not there.

Cottia looked up, arching her back and hissing. One of the bandits, braver than the others, lunged at her with a sword. She twisted away and jumped up easily into the air, clinging to the trunk of a tree for a moment before flinging herself off and landing heavily on him. The sword spun out of his grip as she landed on his back. The other bandits were already running, dropping their weapons in their terror.

She stopped herself as she was about to deliver one last swipe, and stepped over the man. "Go," she managed to articulate. There were still vocal cords in there somewhere, but they took some finding. The man sprang to his feet and ran, dragging her first victim with him.

Cottia padded over to the stream and looked down into a still pool. The head of a cat stared back at her. It was a light tan, with a ruff of hair almost like a mane around the head and trailing down over her shoulders. She looked like a cougar or a female lion, or maybe a leopard without spots. A bit smaller than a horse, much larger than a hunting dog. How odd. It hadn't hurt at all to change. And her eyes, although they now had the glass-fronted and intense look of all cat eyes, were still unmistakably her own.

Her clothes were all in a pile on the bank where she had been kneeling when it had happened. She explored them with her whiskers and nose, since her vision now was more adapted to seeing movement than detail. They seemed unharmed, apart from a few torn seams. So if she took off her clothes before . . . this . . . happened, everything worked fine?

How did she turn back into a human? This cat shape was all very well for scaring attackers, but it couldn't carry things without help. She sat down, curling her tail neatly around her paws, and thought. I don't think like a cat, she thought, feeling the air stir her whiskers and enjoying the scents floating tantalizingly past. Even at this distance from the cave entrance, she could smell him. It was achingly familiar. I still think like me.

Maybe it had all been a mistake. Maybe he had been possessed by something. Maybe she was dreaming, had been dreaming since the day the box had come, and she would wake up to him kneeling beside her low bed, shaking her to wake her up from this nightmare, and they would sit together and he would read to her and let her rest her head on his shoulder when he came to the illustrated pages.

But it had to have been him who poisoned her. He had brought her here, to the place he had promised to and never had before it was too late. Why had he done that? Guilt? Was it just the place where people with magic were buried? Had it been something else that made him bring her here?

She blinked and tried to rub her eyes, sheathing her claws again just in time. After a brief moment of hitting herself in the face, she managed to rub one paw over her eyes. Cats didn't cry, did they? Could they? She was, and it was stupid and soppy. What was the use of wanting him back? She'd been an idiot to trust him, and then to . . . what exactly had she done? She hadn't fallen in love with him. That was certain. She knew that he had faults, and could enumerate them in detail. People in love were airheads, and blind to everything bad. But she missed him already, and it had only been half a day since she saw him last.

So I'm not really a cat now, I'm just wearing a cat's body, she thought. Like changing a shirt. I can wear whatever shape I want. Human is my natural shape, but I can take on others when I need to. For some reason, 'large cat' is my default. I wonder why. I wonder what I am. Why couldn't I do this before? I've dreamed about it often enough, literally. Sauron was a shapechanger. He was a different species. Am I not really a human?

She skittered away from those thoughts. They were too disturbing, just like the ones that were mostly curled up in a corner, mute with fear and longing for understanding blue eyes and warm arms and the scent of cedar. She dug her claws angrily into the mud, once again feeling strange muscles in her paws flex as they slid out. That was the past, and it had betrayed her.

"There will never be anyone else," she tried to mutter, although it came out mangled by sharp pointy teeth and a thinner tongue. "No one I depend on. No one I trust like that. Just me. Only me. I am my own support."

Turning back into human was easy, once she found the trick. It was like using magic. Just be certain, and reach out to the switches confidently, and the laws of reality looked ashamed and then obeyed meekly, probably out of embarrassment. She stood up.

Her feet were covered in mud, and so were her hands. There was blood beneath her fingernails. Her hair - now about long enough to reach the bottom of her shoulderblades - was a knotted mess, curled up and standing on end. And she was naked. Well, that was only to be expected. After all, all her clothes were lying in a neat little pile right there in the leaves. What was there to be embarrassed about, really? It was just skin. Everyone had skin. But it was cold now without her nice thick double coat of fur.

Cottia washed her hands and feet in the stream and dried them off on her already wet jacket, wringing as much water out of it as possible. Then she put her clothes back on, including the armor. She didn't want to carry it. As she shook out the jacket before draping it over her arm, she felt something hard in the pocket. Oh yes. It was the crystal rose.

Why had he -? Did it mean, 'sorry', or 'be at peace', or 'I'll miss you'?

It didn't matter. He had betrayed her trust. There could be no going back. Ever.

Cottia turned away from Camelot and trudged towards the wilderness.

The poem quoted is from Watership Down.