Author's Notes - Than you to end-of-rainbow for reviewing. I had hoped I'd get more feedback. I didn't want to give away too much of what wil happen but I felt it would be good to foreshadow a little bit. Also, concerning the latter half of the chapter, I had first decided to start Aranwen off as spoiled, girly and childish and allowed time for her to grow but then I went against it so now she's rebellious thought still spoiled. We will find out why Aranwe acts the way she does during the next few chapters. Let me know what you think!
Chapter 2 – Disruption
"Help me, Lucan... help me..." a burdened voice uttered in the silence. Lucan reached out and though he was not able to see anything in the unnatural darkness before him, he grasped a hand in his own. Swollen fingers clung to him as if he were the only hope left in the world. A strangled song was hummed in the darkness and Lucan could not help but weep at the sorrowful sound of it.
"Say something... speak," he pleaded.
"Tell him I love him, Lucan... kiss him for me." The hand that held his own trembled.
"I will," Lucan promised, choking on his own words as if they were to be his last.
"I cannot see your face in the dark..." The voice became more pained. "I want to see it... the sun has become but a myth to me in such a place..." Lucan felt the hand slip from his. The voice, a pitiful sound that was beyond recognition, had faded into the eerie quiet. A familiar odor filled his nostrils. It was the smell of decaying flesh - of rotting corpses and of death. It was then that Lucan awoke.
--
"Aranwen... stop it! Aranwen! Return at once... turn around, child!" Morgaine begged desperately.
"Or what, Aunt? I might disrupt my father's meeting?" Aranwen challenged angrily, marching down the corridors in such a hurry that Morgaine was not able to stop her.
"You would present yourself to your father dressed in such a manner?"
"I don't care!" Aranwen cried. She stopped swiftly in her tracks and faced her aunt with such a viciousness that Morgaine almost drew away in fear. The child before her held a sword in one hand and a bow in the other. There was a red mark etched from the corner of her eye down to the bottom of her cheek. For a moment, she did not even look human.
"You would not dare strike me," Morgaine hissed, gathering her wits about her.
"Only if you dare to stop me." So she continued on her way, not caring now whether Morgaine followed her or not. Aranwen threw open the heavy doors that soon appeared before her with such force that all on the other side, looked up from their places, dumbfounded at the girl who stood in the door.
"What do you want, girl?" the voice of Arthur demanded. Aranwen's heart sunk at his tone. Had she not waited all this time only to have him return and forget the face of his own daughter? Aranwen did not say a word and merely stood there, frozen, with her hands clenched and shaking upon the sword in her hand.
"Is it you, Aranwen?" Galahad, the closest to her, asked, a grin upon his face. Aranwen did not smile back for her gaze was fixed upon Arthur.
"Aranwen," Arthur said finally. He frowned at the sight of her, throwing a questioning glance at his half-sister who stood behind the girl in her last attempts to persuade her to leave the knights be. Aranwen felt the tears burning in her eyes. She was beginning to look like the girl she was again, a girl reaching marrying age and perhaps not really a girl at all.
"What happened to your face, child?" Arthur approached her slowly and it was as if he were afraid of her. He stared into her eyes, wondering if indeed this child who stood before him was a changeling as Morgaine had once suggested when she was but an infant in her cradle. His daughter would not utter a word to him, as if she were doing so out of spite. "Where is your mother?"
"I am surprised you did not tie her to your bedpost during your absence... she goes wherever she pleases," Aranwen told him boldly. Arthur grew angry and raised his hand to strike her. But his features softened when he realized for the second time who it was that really stood before him.
"What have you done to my daughter?" Arthur asked Morgaine slowly. It was as if Aranwen could not hear. She scowled and threw her sword down upon the stone ground so that the sound of metal against stone rattled the hall at a rather uncomfortable pitch.
"There's nothing wrong with her, Arthur," old Bors said heartily from his spot at the table. The aging knight raised his goblet to her, winking though his good nature did not succeed in lifting up her mood. Galahad, the knight in which Aranwen has declared her love for as a child, stood up and took the sword from the ground. He examined it, moving his finger across the clean blade.
"She is throwing a tantrum," Morgaine told them all. She grabbed Aranwen's wrist, pulling her from the hall and into the corridor. Aranwen thrust Morgaine's hand away, growling at her as if she were some wild beast.
"I warned you, Aunt, that you would do well to keep away from me," she threatened."Do not touch me! I will not let you work your spells on me! Let"
"What is wrong with you?" Arthur demanded, looking at his knights, almost embarrassed by the disruption. "Is this the way you go about seeking attention. Can you not see that I am here discussing important matters with my men?"
"And you could not do that all that time you were away... why could Rome not have come here? I thought they no longer cared for this wretched isle. Or is it a good drink that keeps you from seeing your daughter? You do not know how it feels to have waited for so long only to find that your father has indeed returned and no one had informed you?"
"Is that all that bothers you?"
"All?" Aranwen demanded, biting her lips to keep herself from sobbing then and there in front of her father's company. She felt like a fool now indeed. It was not the attention she yearned for, but the understanding. "No... that is not all," she confessed under her breath. Arthur did not hear her. He reached out to touch the wound on her face, tracing it with a scarred hand. His eye then fell upon the feather that hung from twine looped around her neck. He took it into his hand in an attempt to recall where he had seen it before.
"It is my mother's," Aranwen said quietly as her father drew his hand away thoughtfully. "An item of war..."
"Of murder!" Morgaine cried, snatching the feather from Aranwen's neck. "A mark of them, child... of painted savages!"
"That painted savage in which you speak so carelessly of is my mother," Aranwen said, raising her voice once again. "Wouldyou rather then, dear aunt, have me put a crucifix in its place? I told you to leave... and I would be weary in your place to speak in such a manner... or I will have your severed tongue in my hands."
"You will never marry if you keep speaking in that way," Gawaine said in a jest. Aranwen glared at him and the knight fell silent.
"I think you should both go... Lucan will escort you back to your quarters, Aranwen." A man much younger than all the others, stood up from his place. Aranwen shook her head defiantly.
"What?" she asked innocently, forgetting about the feather and taking the sword from Galahad. She faced all the nights with naught but a faint quavering in her voice. Her hair fell unkept upon her traveling cloak. "You do not think I have a place here at your table?" She found a place and seated herself there as if she were one of them. The knights, though weary, found this amusing and exchanged smirking glances when Aranwen did not see them.
"Aranwen... you are not even a knight."
"Lucan is not a knight... why does he sit here?" Aranwen challenged, pointing the bow in her foster-brother's direction. "Or must I return to my room and spin, spin, spin as Morgaine has taught me – a task fit for that of a common serving woman?" Her cheeks became flushed as the room was fell into awkward quiet. Bors broke the silence with a belch but even that was of no amusement to Aranwen. Arthur starred at his daughter blankly, searching the air in front of him it seemed for the words to say.
"You must do as your own life permits, Aranwen... you were born of two lands..." Aranwen had heard the speech preached countless times and never once was it properly explained to her.
"Indeed I am of two lands – or so that is what everybody says. I was born of two lands, two lives, two people... I know much of one life and not the other. I know everything there is to know about one people but have never been taught about the other. All I know are the myths spoken from the lips of my mother – all the gods and all the stories she has been forbidden to utter in front of those here who are too pious for their own good. Where is the freedom you speak of, Father?"
"I have never deprived anyone of their freedom!" Arthur told her sternly.
"My freedom?" Aranwen asked. "Morgaine seeks to put me in my place but I only seek to find it... my mother has grown even more ill since she saw you last. She bids you come to her when business is done here so that she may greet you. She has missed you so...."
"I apologize, brother... I shall take her away," Morgaine said suddenly. This time, Aranwen did not protest. She wanted then for Arthur to take her into his arms and embrace her but he did not. Aranwen, saddened, accepted his silent response with a simple nod. She scanned the now puzzled expressions upon the knight's faces, finding herself looking at her foster-brother, Lucan. He did not look back at her and she had half expected him to stand in her defense.
"Then take me away... lead me back to my dungeon," Aranwen said bitterly. "So long... so long..." she murmured. "An entire year, it seems, has passed since I saw you last."
"And you have changed, my daughter," Arthur said with a with sorrow in his voice much to Aranwen's dismay. She looked to Lucan again for the last time and whispered a silent plea.
"Help me, Lucan... help me..."