Chapter XI: The Secret of King March

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Gilli asked for what must be the twelfth time.

"Yes," Gwen reiterated. "Someone needs to reach out to the people who are uncomfortable around spellbinders, who seek to avoid them, and I have experience explaining Arthur's plans."

"To stuffy monarchs, not the smallfolk," Gilli replied.

"Those smallfolk are the people I grew up with."

"They also think you're a witch," Isolde pointed out, "and then there's all those very true rumors about you and the sword in the stone. Maybe wait until you and your fiancé have made the official announcement before you start this… outreach thing."

Gwen winced. She'd hoped that the rumors about her having magic would have faded by now. Instead, they'd returned with a vengeance, merging with the tales about her and Excalibur so that people were claiming she'd used evil magic to subvert the will of the gods. The maid-turned-lady wasn't entirely certain that this new tale had originated naturally. Merlin and his kin had used the rumor mill very effectively in the last year and a half, and Gwen feared that they'd inadvertently inspired their enemies.

"I'd really rather nip some of the wilder suggestions in the bud," she told her friends. "And I think it might help people to see that those of us without magic can get along perfectly well with spellbinders, just as I do with Merlin and Morgana." She didn't mention Gilli and Sefa. They'd opted to keep their own magical abilities secret for a while longer, hoping that tensions would lessen sooner rather than later so they could safely be themselves.

"I don't think we're going to change her mind," Tristan sighed. "You know how stubborn she gets."

"I'm stubborn?" Gwen echoed, only to be met by a unanimous chorus of affirmation. She hmphed, mock-outraged, before confirming, "You're right, you won't change my mind about this. I was thinking we could start with some neighbors of mine who were always rather vocal in their hatred of sorcery. Would any of you like to come with me?"

Sefa preferred to remain behind, but Gilli, Tristan, and Isolde agreed to accompany Gwen on her self-imposed quest. They set out for Gwen's neighbors after only a brief stop by Geoffrey of Monmouth's library to pick up some of the statistics he'd compiled. While Gwen had memorized a fair few of those numbers over the previous winter, she wanted the papers as a talisman against accusations of making things up.

The first stop went a thousand times better than she'd expected. It turned out that Gwen's old neighbors had kin among the druids, so they'd been extra-loud in their fake hatred of magic as a defense mechanism. Now that magic was legal, they were looking forward to reuniting with their relatives.

It went so well that Gwen and her entourage were lulled into a false sense of security. They stopped in a tavern for lunch, intending to mingle with the general public.

That was when things started to go wrong.

They'd just ordered their food when Gilli nudged Gwen. She followed the warlock's gaze to a table by the wall full of citizens who watched them with suspicion. Gwen smiled at them, gave a little wave. A child waved back, opened her mouth as if to say hello, before her mother (or possibly an aunt) grabbed her wrist. "Don't talk to witches."

"Yes, Mama," the little girl mumbled.

"I'm actually not a witch," Gwen replied, "or a sorceress either. Some of my dearest friends have magic, though, so rumors started that I do too."

"A traitor either way." The mother spoke softly, but her voice carried, and she kept her gaze fixed on Gwen's face. A challenge, and one that the maid-turned-lady intended to meet.

"I want what's best for all the people of Camelot, as does our king. I don't see how that counts as treason."

The woman stood. "Magic has no place here," she declared, jaw jutting out, chin lifted.

In Gwen's peripheral vision, Gilli flinched. Tristan and Isolde shifted closer to him.

"Magic has always been here," Gwen retorted. "Magic quite literally built this city."

"And then Sigan turned traitor," the other woman sneered. "I haven't forgotten him destroying my house last year." A murmur went up from her family.

"Come off it," scoffed the barmaid. "The fire burned down one wall before the magical rainstorm quenched it. Your home took more damage from the riots."

"Riots incited by people like her," snapped a man who was presumably the first arguer's husband, pointing at Gwen and her party. "Maybe she did it herself!"

"I distinctly remember her starting a fire brigade for at least one of them, though," a bystander interjected.

With that, the floodgates burst. Everyone in the tavern had been watching, but now they felt able to chime in with their own opinions and anecdotes. Magic was evil, magic was neutral, magic was wonderful. It healed, killed, cursed, blessed. It had no place in Camelot and shouldn't even exist; the city had, as Lady Gwen pointed out, been built by magic, and Court Mages had served loyally for hundreds of years. Arthur Pendragon was weak, foolish, brainwashed, brave, brilliant, good, strong. He didn't know what he was doing. He was secretly planning to use this apparent reversal to lure magic out of hiding and wipe it out for good. He was guided by his conscience to do what was right. He was weak and short-sighted, and his foolishness would doom them all.

The entire pub was involved. Workers debated (or yelled at) customers, who debated (or yelled) right back, giving as good as they got. One man got up and started shouting about how sorcerers shouldn't be allowed near children because they would groom the little innocents into their evil sorcerous ways. When the bouncer (whose shift, he grumbled to Gwen, wasn't supposed to start for hours, and who had been summoned from his home to deal with this) dragged him out, he was going on about how the sorcerers were also planning to replace the nobility with sorcerers disguised as nobles. Thankfully, by that point, the other arguments were loud enough to drown him out.

Gwen and her companions split up for maximum coverage. Each one approached a… discussion… and began defending magic. Her cluster consisted of four customers and two staff who were evenly divided between pro-magic, ambivalent, and anti-spellcaster.

The argument involved a great deal of repetition, basic education, and generous usage of Sir Geoffrey's statistics. One of the magic-haters flatly refused to listen to any of Gwen's points, digging in deeper every time she opened her mouth, but the other seemed to be softening somewhat, one previously undecided individual was now cautiously supportive, and the other uncertain citizen was definitely more open to magic's return, although she remained unconvinced. Perhaps Gwen could have made more progress, but the irate bouncer stalked over then and kicked them all out.

"Is anybody else exhausted from that?" asked Gilli.

"Yes," Tristan groaned as Isolde and Gwen silently nodded.

"At least we had some successes." Gwen tried to be optimistic.

"Did you?" Tristan asked. "For me, it was like trying to punch down Hadrian's Wall."

"Same," Isolde sighed.

"I definitely convinced one person," Gilli assured them.

"As did I," Gwen seconded, "and I think someone else softened, but…."

"Some of them don't want to change," Tristan finished for her. He met her eyes. "What are we supposed to do when someone chooses hate over everything else?"

"I don't know," Gwen was forced to admit.

"What else can we do but keep trying?" Isolde sighed.

"Keep them from causing damage, that's what," Gilli replied. "Take away their power to act on that hate so that they can't hurt anybody."

"That's exactly it," Gwen agreed. "I wonder…. Do you think that we can ever completely eliminate that, that kind of thinking?"

Gilli's eyes were tired. "No. But we should never stop trying."

Merlin had to hand it to Cornelius Sigan. The man certainly knew how to make people regret entering his territory, and he'd thoughtfully recorded dozens of nasty traps in his grimoire. While some of them were a bit gruesome and/or fatal for Merlin's tastes, there was enough left over to keep unwanted visitors out of the warlock's new home.

The spell he eventually chose was one of the simpler ones, an enchantment that would knock out anyone who entered Merlin's solar when he wasn't there. He wouldn't be able to have servants, but that was all right. He'd been uncomfortable with the idea of his own staff anyways, and besides, his magic was so much more efficient with chores.

There were a few other spells that looked promising, but Merlin didn't have time to put them up. He tried scrying various people, including King Alined (still on the road. How boring), without expecting to see anything useful. Sure enough, most of his targets were sticking close to the anti-scrying wards, and when he tried to find Rience the pharmacist, he found yet another random fellow with that name. Grumbling, Merlin put away his scrying materials and headed to his next engagement.

When Merlin was a boy, his magic had bubbled up in him like a wellspring. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stop it entirely. He'd dream of magic and wake to find his blankets levitating and his mother checking to make sure that the curtains were closed.

So Hunith had decided to have her son channel the magic into something inconspicuous. He could whip up dust with little air currents, forming tiny tornadoes and sudden gusts. As his control had grown, he'd learned to shape the dust into increasingly complex states. By age ten, he could make little human and animal figures from dust, ash, and embers. Hunith would tell a story, and Merlin would act it out with his ephemeral puppets.

The dust figures were a bit too indistinct for what Merlin and Morgana had in mind, but the idea—using magic to illustrate stories—was a sound one. They were going to hold a storytime. First Merlin would speak and Morgana would demonstrate with crude figures of light (the illusions couldn't be too complex lest people remember the procession of the dead), and then they'd switch. Depending on how well things went, they might repeat the process.

His lady was waiting for him by a public bench, her hand raised in greeting. The people of Camelot left an empty space around her, not quite daring to get too close to the witch. They did the same for Merlin, which he told himself was a good thing because he didn't have to worry so much about traffic.

"Chosen your stories yet?" the warlock called.

"Of course. You?"

"Of course," he echoed. Morgana rolled her eyes, but the gesture was a fond one. "You've heard of King March ap Meirchion, right?"

Her eyes softened. "I've heard a couple versions. I assume that your mother always told you the nicer variants?"

"Yes," Merlin admitted. Pink tinged his cheeks. Was it really that obvious why he liked the tale? "But you're ready?"

She spoke the incantation, summoning beams of light that she sculpted into a crude humanoid figure with horse ears. The shape was mostly purple, but a band of gold encircled his head.

The people flinched away, but some of them—enough of them—slowed or even stopped. Perhaps they were just incredulous about spellbinders using magic in broad daylight, but Merlin liked to think that a few were curious.

"King March ap Meirchion had a secret," Merlin began. The light puppet pressed a finger to the place its mouth should have been. "Specifically, he had the ears of a horse. No one knew this except his faithful barber—" A second figure, this one silver-gray, appeared next to the king "—who was sworn to secrecy." The barber pressed a finger to his own lips and nodded. He and March smoothed the king's ears, hiding them against his head.

"But the secret weighed heavily on the barber. One day, he could stand it no more." The gray figure knelt on the ground. "He whispered what he knew to the earth. It lightened his burden, and he went home with a smile. However, reeds sprang up where the barber had spoken—" Morgana summoned thin strands of green "—and these reeds were cut into pipes." A new figure, this one red, plucked up the green reeds and pushed them together. It strode towards the other characters, pressing the new instrument to its mouth.

"The piper played before the king, but he really should have tested his pipes out before attempting to entertain royalty." Someone chuckled. Morgana grinned; she'd heard it too. "The pipes sang out that the king had horse's ears before the whole court." The witch muttered the spell again, conjuring three flickering figures of dusky gold. March, the barber, and the piper shimmered as though about to dissolve, but Morgana stopped them in time.

"March ap Meirchion was appalled, humiliated, furious. His horse ears snapped right up, quivering with emotion and confirming the newborn rumor. The poor barber fell to his knees to beg for mercy." The gray figure did just that, arms outstretched imploringly. "But despite his rage, March was a just king and a good man. He knew that the barber hadn't meant for this to happen, so he declared that the man would not stand trial for an accident. His forbearance so impressed the court that they didn't even mind his ears, but accepted them completely." The courtiers clapped in unison. March's ears twitched. "And the barber served a good king for the rest of his days."

The light puppets bowed, vanishing into a burst of sparks. A few onlookers clapped a few times, quickly falling silent when others glanced askance at them. It was about what Merlin had expected.

"My turn," Morgana announced. "Long, long ago, centuries before Camelot was founded, a Greek king abandoned his infant daughter in the woods." Merlin muttered the incantation, hastily conjuring a March-like purple figure and another, much smaller form in light purple. He'd never heard this story before, so he'd have to stay on his toes. "The girl's name was Atalanta, and she was raised by bears." A shaggy brown quadruped nuzzled at the little lavender shape.

"Growing up as she did, Atalanta became a talented hunter, a skilled wrestler, and the fastest runner in all Greece." Merlin conjured a little table between Atalanta, now full-sized, and the bear. They began to arm wrestle, with Atalanta quickly triumphing. Morgana's lips twitched as a few chuckles arose from the crowd. "Eventually, word of her legend spread to other kingdoms, and a prince named Meleager invited her to become his hunting companion." Meleager's figure was a very dark purple. He came to Atalanta with a small pack of gray hounds and offered her a spear. The hounds wagged their tails.

"They fell in love, but it was not to be. Meleager died—" The dark figure vanished. The dogs and woman lowered their heads "—and Atalanta returned to the land of her birth, where she somehow reconciled with her father. I've always thought he took advantage of her grief in the hopes of using her for a marriage alliance now that she was so accomplished and famous, but that's just my theory." Merlin, grinning, made the king-shape rub its hands together in exaggerated greed. The audience laughed again, more loudly this time.

"But Atalanta wasn't about to marry someone unworthy. She declared that she wouldn't marry any man who could not beat her in a footrace. Anyone was welcome to try, but if they lost…."

Merlin conjured a pair of bears licking their chops.

"Probably not that," Morgana chuckled, "but the losers did forfeit their lives."

"Do you have any proof that she didn't feed them to her bears?"

"I suppose not," she admitted. "Anyways, a few men tried, but nobody could outrun Atalanta. Merlin, stop that!"

"No," the warlock said. The bears, their tongues lolling, continued dragging a yellow figure away.

"You're ridiculous," she teased. "But back to the story. One day, a man named Hippomenes approached Atalanta for a footrace." Hippomenes was blue. He and Atalanta lined up by a freshly conjured starting line as the king and the bears watched. "But Hippomenes had a plan. He had prayed to the goddess of love, who gave him three golden apples and told him to use them during the race."

"How exactly does one use an apple in a footrace?"

"Three apples, and you'll see." Morgana winked. "The race started, and Atalanta immediately took the lead. Halfway down the track, though, Hippomenes flung the first apple as hard as he could. Atalanta saw it. Curious, she veered off-track, slowing down enough to pick it up. This gave Hippomenes enough time to pass her, but by the time they reached the end of the track, she'd caught up to him again. Hippomenes threw the second apple, and once again, Atalanta went after it. Hippomenes turned around and made for the starting line, which was also the finish line. It took Atalanta longer to catch up this time, but soon she pulled ahead. They were almost at the finish line when Hippomenes, with a silent prayer to the goddess, threw the third golden apple aside. Perhaps the apple was enchanted, or perhaps Atalanta was impressed by Hippomenes's cunning. Either way, she went to grab that one, too, and Hippomenes won the race."

The bears clapped Hippomenes on the back. He and Atalanta shook hands.

"They were married, and spent many happy years together. Contrary to what Merlin is implying, the bears did not conduct the handfasting."

"Says who?"

Merlin's characters bowed, then dissolved into a shower of sparks. The audience—and it was a proper audience, too, one that had stopped to watch—applauded. These claps were the loudest yet, and so was the laughter.

"Bears can't talk."

"Maybe Greek marriage customs are different than ours and don't require the officiants to talk."

"You're impossible."

"And you love it!" Merlin turned to the crowd. "Any requests for our next tale?"

Silence fell. Apparently having the scary spellbinder actually address them was more intimidating than just watching a show. As the quiet stretched on, Merlin began to fear that he'd pushed too far.

Then a voice piped up. It was a child, too young to fully understand the significance of her request. "Are there any more stories about Atalanta? I want to see more bears."

Alternate chapter title: "In Which Merlin Takes Artistic Liberties with Greek Mythology"

So. I'm a week late. I'm sorry about that. And I failed again to answer reviews. I'm sorry about that too. It's been... very stressful in my life lately, and I'm not even 100% certain why. NaNo's not going so well either.

Next update: December 2. Arthur holds an important meeting, Merlin hears disappointing news, and Gwen makes an alarming discovery. I will be on time this time!