The Lady of the Lake

by SilverConsular

"It doesn't matter." she said. "This is my fault. If I didn't exist, none of this would have happened." "Of course you matter-!" "Maybe. But I still have to do it."

1. Chapter 1

...Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur,

Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how

In those old days, one summer noon, an arm

Rose up from out the bosom of the lake,

Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,

Holding the sword—and how I row'd across

And took it, and have worn it, like a king:

And, wheresoever I am sung or told

In aftertime, this also shall be known:

But now delay not: take Excalibur,

And fling him far into the middle mere:

Watch what thou seëst, and lightly bring me word…

-Morte d'Arthur, Lord Alfred Tennyson

"We are here."

I mumble an answer back, rubbing sleep from my eyes, and stretching my legs out as far as I am allowed in the small car. Isabelle shifts fluidly from her seat, somehow managing to teeter out of the car in her heels and not immediately fall down. For a moment, I just sit there bemusedly, staring at the back of the passenger seat. Then-

"Come on, Bethany!" Isabelle opens the door, and I jump, staring at her a moment. "Do I have to carry you out of there?"

I groan and rub my eyes again before undoing my seat belt. Swinging my legs out of the car, I stand and stare at Isabelle in a daze. We had been driving nonstop for hours, and I couldn't seem to gather my bearings. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see several faces squished against the windows of the school building. We must have been a sight; Isabelle in her pinstriped jacket and pencil skirt, and me in a stained hoodie and jeans. I yawn as a grizzled elderly man walks up to greet us.

"Welcome! You must be Bethany Rose." he exclaims, his false enthusiasm beginning to sicken me. "We've heard much about you. Welcome to Yancy!"

Yancy Academy for the Gifted. Even the name sounded fancier than most of the places I'd been. Not that I'd been many places. I normally ended up home-schooled so that I'd stay out of trouble, or I'd be in the back of some run-down public school. Perhaps it was fitting that I'd be going to a place for troubled kids.

"I am...ah, sorry, I'm tired. I…" Why did I keep stuttering?

"Bethany is very glad to be here." Isabelle interjects when she sees I am not entirely conscious. "It has been a long drive, and it would be beneficial for her to get some sleep. Perhaps this can be done in the morning?"

"Oh, yes of course, Miss Jones." the man nods. "I am rather tired myself." I might have been imagining it, but I believed I heard him mutter "If that Jackson gives me any more paper work to do…"

I give myself a brief moment to look over the building-a large, musty brick building-before I wander over to the trunk of the car to grab my bag. Isabelle and the man continue conversing as if I hadn't left.

Before you get the wrong idea, none of this was my fault. I'd been in the system-the foster care system, I mean-for as long as I could remember. I'd been exchanged from family to family since I first had been found abandoned on the coast of Virginia around ten years ago. Isabelle, my current social worker, had set me up to go to Yancy because she hadn't been able to find a family to house me for the school year.

According to every social worker that's worked with me, my case is very strange. I was told that a family had wanted to adopt me right off the bat. I mean, there are a lot of people looking to adopt a baby. Later reports say that the family decided against it because I was 'constantly endangering myself and others.' When I was older, they told me it was because I had wandered off from my nursery group unsupervised (apparently I could walk at the time) and returned riding on a small fox. I probably would have found this story to be a fantasy, but there had been other incidents since then. Whenever I touched water, it would shape itself into some object or creature.

And of course there was that time (Heh, time, I'm hilarious) I'd spent in 1945 talking to some old war veteran.

And another time, an older neighborhood boy thought it would be a good idea to carry me back to his friends and keep me there until my current foster parents paid for my release. At least, he tried. I remember screaming, but I don't remember exactly what I did because my eyes were closed. All I remember is that I suddenly was hovering a foot off the ground, and the boy was unconscious in front of me, a trickle of blood leaking out of his nose. That was when the monsters started coming for me, and I no longer could stay in one place for very long.

"Hello." a voice, not unkind, sounds behind me. I whirl around and find myself staring, mainly because I hadn't expected anyone at all to talk to me.

The wheelchair, understandably, is the first thing I see. The man in it however, is more interesting. He has a well-kept beard, and his eyes seem to see right through me. "Um...Hi." unconsciously, I cross my arms around my middle, trying to make myself smaller.

"I'm Mr. Brunner." the man tells me. "I am the latin teacher here."

"They teach latin here?" I blurt out, before clapping my hands over my mouth. "Oh, erm, sorry, I'm tired and I've just never had a latin class before, and-"

The man holds up his hands and I fall silent. He smiles encouragingly at me before looking down at his clipboard. "It seems you'll be rooming with...ah, Nancy Bobofit. She's a bit older than you, but if you do well on your placement exams, you'll be in the same class-"

"Yeah, that'll happen." I mutter before I can help myself. Mr. Brunner blinks at me.

"And why is that?"

"Erm...books don't like me." I say. Mr. Brunner stares at me for a moment, but I don't elaborate on my statement.

"Ah." he says. It looks like he wants to say more, but stops. "...well, if you'll follow me, I can take you to your dorm." he informs me.

"Yeah, great." I sigh. All I want to do is collapse on a bed and never wake up. I snatch my bag from the trunk and sling it over my shoulder.

"Is that all you have?" Mr. Brunner blinks.

I shrug at him, and he stares at me for a bit before signalling something to the man speaking to Isabelle. "Who's that?" I ask.

"It is the headmaster."

"Huh." I answer. Isabelle spares me a quick wave when she sees where I am.

As we enter the school into a sort of commons area, I am peered at by several curious students, some of whom are carrying their dinner, others rigorously studying from textbooks as thick as the great wall of china. Or maybe I'm exaggerating. My gaze is drawn for a moment to one of the boys playing cards in the corner. Something about him seems almost...familiar. It doesn't look like he's bothered to take care of his hair for years, but I'm not exactly one to talk. His friend catches me staring and nudges him. As we make eye contact, I suddenly can't breathe. His eyes...the deep blue-green...they're the same eyes I see whenever I look in the mirror. The boy stares at me for a moment, cocks an eyebrow, then turns away. His friend, a scrawny looking fellow, glances at me a few moments longer before returning to his conversation.

I realize that Mr. Brunner is trying to get my attention and turn back to him.

"Thought I saw something." I murmur, before following him out of the room.

I was expecting him to take me to the stairs and give me directions from there, but Mr. Brunner leads me to an elevator. The sign on the front says "Only available for use by the physically injured or disabled." Mr. Brunner doesn't protest my using it, though, so I step in with him. When the doors close, I lapse into an awkward silence.

"Where are you from, Bethany?"The question is so sudden that I whip my head around to stare at him.

"Erm...everywhere. I think."

"You think?"

"It's strange." I evade.

"I see." the teacher seems amused. The doors open again. "Come along."

The dorms for the girls are clear on the other side of the building. As we walk, Mr. Brunner asks me several strange questions, and I feel myself become increasingly nervous. People don't normally ask this many questions, and I admit freely that I am an incredibly bad liar.

When he asks if anything strange had happened to me recently, I nearly trip over my own feet.

"Oh, sorry...um...there was...a rock."

Mr. Brunner looks pointedly at the ground, where no rock could be found.

"Well, erm...I had...bad...cheese yesterday? Is that strange? I think it is. Right?"

He smiles indulgently, but says nothing more until we arrived at the dorm.

"Here we are. Room 202. Nancy should be inside." he knocked, and a nasally voice answered.

"Go away."

"Hello, Miss Bobofit. You were informed that your roommate would be arriving…?"

A muffled groan, and then footsteps. A red haired girl with a scrunched up face, presumably Nancy Bobofit, peers at us.

"I'm doing homework." she declares, glaring at me. I enviously eye her sleek ponytail. I'd never been able to get my hair that orderly; in the end I had chopped it off to my shoulders. Even then, it always looked like someone had put bits of twine into it and forgot to take it out.

"I won't bother you." I say. "I just want to sleep after that-"

"You better." she says threateningly.

Mr. Brunner clears his throat, reminding her that he is there. "As you know, Miss Rose will be staying with you from now on."

"Of course." Nancy remarks sweetly. She opens the door about a foot, and sidesteps so that there is a small opening. "Get in."

I stare a bit before wedging my backpack in the opening and squeezing through. Nancy pushes on the door so that the moment I make it through, it immediately snaps closed behind me.

"Sleep well, Bethany." Mr. Brunner sighs through the wood. "And Nancy, do try to be nice."

Nancy rolls her eyes but says in her sweet soprano voice "Of course!"

She presses her ear to the door, and I take in the appearance of the room.

Much of the left side of the room is plastered with posters of famous actors and singers, and plush pillows. Several books sit untouched on a shelf. On the bed, a laptop is open, prominently displaying a picture of one of the actors from the posters. The other side is devoid of anything, though by the spare bits of tape hanging off of the walls, someone had pulled more of those posters off of it in a bed holds a faded green blanket, and is covered with scraps of paper, candy wrappers, and empty potato chip bags.

"That one's yours." Nancy glares at me. "Stay on your side."

She doesn't speak, just goes back to the bed. "Alright." I sigh and move to clean the bed up. "You stay on your side, I'll stay on mine."

I toss the food wrappings in the trash, ignoring Nancy's accusing look.

Welcome to Yancy, I tell myself. My roommate hates me, my teacher wants to interrogate me, I'm the transfer student, and I will be stuck eating school food for the next few months. Yay.

At least now I can finally, finally, sleep.

I had been right to assume that my placement exams didn't put me in the sixth grade, like Mr. Brunner had hoped. Instead, I was put into the year below. I had informed Nancy of this, but she seemed disinterested, and only answered with a "hmm…" as she clicked on the link to one of her gossip websites.

I spent most of my first days at Yancy in the back of the classroom trying and failing to read some of the textbooks I'd "borrowed" from Nancy's shelf. It wasn't like she was using them anyways. I'd established a semi-regular schedule where I'd either work on school or mope. Mostly I'd mope, which probably wasn't healthy. Isabelle called me a few times to check in, and to tell me to at least try to make friends. Which, to be fair, I did, but most of the girls seemed more interested in the latest gossip.

Mr. Brunner called me to his office a couple of times for some general discussions about my progress, which I surprisingly enjoyed. He would offer me a cup of hot chocolate, then enthuse about some legend from Greece or Rome. Of course, he would also ask the same sort of questions that he had asked me when we'd first met. However, my wariness at his questions eventually wore away and I came to respect him. It was Mr. Brunner that had pulled me aside after class one day to hand me a pad of blank drawing paper.

"Learn." he told me exasperatedly. "At least try to find something that you enjoy doing."

After that, I spent most of my free time with an art book on one knee and drawing vigorously. The teachers caught me a couple times, but I then started doing my drawings on my worksheets so that they couldn't take them away from me.

For a small while, life seemed almost normal. Then, of course it was disrupted, and I met Grover.

I, of course, was not paying particular attention to where I was going when I turned a corner and crashed into the poor unsuspecting boy. My sketchbook went flying, and Grover's algebra papers flew everywhere.

"Oh!" I give a start of surprise. I drop to the floor and attempt to compile his things into semi-decent order.

"Sorry!" the boy says, his voice two pitches higher than I expect it to be.

"I'm sorry!" I remark, not two seconds later, then stop as I register what he just said. "No, really. I wasn't paying attention." The boy remains standing. "Hello? Are you going to help me pick this up, or…"

I glance up at him, and find him frozen, shocked, and perhaps a bit frightened. I follow his gaze and find it latched onto my sketchbook, which had fallen open to one of my earlier drawings, a picture of a cruel looking woman covered in feathers.

"Hello?" I try again.

"Oh, right." the boy says. He places a three fingered claw briefly over his heart before crouching down next to me. "Your drawing is...very good."

I shrug. "Not really. I just started learning, and that drawing is the worst thing ever."

"Well, maybe, but it's cool. Why did you draw that woman, though?"

I wasn't about to tell him that I'd seen a woman like that looking up at my window. "Oh, I just had a dream about it."

The boy closes his eyes for a moment, and I worry that he's going into a daze again. Then he abruptly stands up with his papers. I follow a moment later, tucking the picture out of sight.

"I'm Grover." he says, an implied question in his tone.

"Bethany."

"I've heard of you. You're the one that arrived last month, right? Are you meeting anyone for dinner?"

"Uh…" I'd been planning on sneaking away from the giggly girls that expected me to sit with them every day, then maybe go to bed a bit early. "Not really."

"Would you like to sit with me and Percy? My friend, I mean?"

I don't exactly know why I agreed, but I did.

Of course, it was just my luck that Percy was the boy that I'd been caught staring at when I had arrived. He gave me another one of those looks that said what are you doing here?

Grover clears his throat. "Bethany, Percy." He draws our names out like he isn't quite sure how to pronounce them right. "Percy, Bethany." He glances between the two of us, as if he just discovered the very secrets of the universe. "I asked if Bethany wanted to sit with us." he informs Percy after a moment of us staring at each other.

The green eyed boy squints at me before speaking. "Aren't you Nancy Bobofit's roommate?"

"Who is Nan...oh, yes. Her. I am." my voice sounds more timid than usual, and I wince. "Her roommate, I mean."

"She says you keep peeing yourself at night."

"Oh, I...Huh." Don't cry. I frantically tell myself. You're not a crybaby. You can handle it.

"Nancy's like that." Grover pitches in, setting his tray on the table. Hesitantly, I follow suit, glancing around the room. "Urgh, we have to deal with her all day tomorrow." There is an edge of nervousness to his voice.

"What's tomorrow?" I ask, glad for the change in subject.

"The sixth grade is going to the Art Museum." Percy says. "Anyway, Grover, have you done that essay for yet?"

Percy for the most part, speaks to Grover, occasionally sparing me a remark or two when I ask a question. Then he mentions that he has ADHD and Dyslexia and I blurt out "I have that too!"

Once again, I find myself wishing that I could stuff a sock into my mouth so that I don't make a fool of myself. But Percy just laughs.

"This is a school for troubled kids."

"And you're...troubled?"

The boy gives me an indulgent smirk and says "You could say that."

Somehow, I find the idea hard to believe. Percy seems more sure of himself, more normal and easy to talk to. More than me, anyway.

I tune out the rest of the conversation, and spend the rest of the meal pushing food around my plate, dejectedly wondering about the math homework I had to do for Mrs. Dodds.

Finally, I can't stand it anymore. "I need to go do my homework."

Percy rose both his eyebrows at me, but bobs his head. "Alright."

"Will you sit with us tomorrow?" Grover asks me before I can leave.

"You-you want me to sit with you?"

"Oh." he looks dejected, and suddenly I feel bad.

"No, I mean, of course. I'd like to. I'm just...surprised. And...I'm bad at this."

"Huh?" Grover stares at me, his mouth full of potato.

I attempt to elaborate. "Erm...friends, and talking...and stuff."

Percy crosses his arms and huffs. "See you tomorrow." he states.

"Um. Yeah." I say hesitantly. "'Twas good to meet you, Percy."

Nancy sneers at me when I get back to the dorm. I sneer back.