Chapter 6: Of Grandparents and Smiles

By some odd twist, all the parents of my parents were dead long before I was born. I've never wanted for grandparents, though.

Mother's mother died of illness when Mother was young, leaving her trying to mother Elyan; her father Tom was executed by Uther, falsely accused of sorcery. Mother has never felt like telling me the details of that story, and I don't press her. Father's mother died when he was born, and his father was a king I grudgingly admire for his bravery and hate for his persecution of magic. Uncle Merlin seems to be the only one who knows the full details of how he died, and he doesn't tell me that story either.

It is through Uncle Merlin, though, that I have had grandparents. Gaius was the old court physician until he retired and passed the post along to a young sorceress when I was a small boy. He is almost Uncle Merlin's father, and I have been convinced since I was very young that he knows absolutely everything there is to know. Even Mother goes to his chambers when she has a problem she can't solve or when she simply wants to relax for a bit. He doesn't leave his chambers often anymore, but I have always enjoyed visiting him, since he is a wise old man with plenty of funny stories about Uncle Merlin. He has been married to Alice ever since I can remember, though Uncle Merlin says the wedding happened when I was about two. She is a very sweet grandmotherly woman who gives warm hugs and always has cookies when I come to visit. Uncle Merlin says I don't want to know what Gaius's cooking was like before she came and took that aspect over.

Uncle Merlin's mother, Hunith, is my other grandmother. She moved to Camelot when I was young too, and she mothers everyone in the castle, from the queen to the knights to the court sorcerer, who goes to her small hut in the lower town whenever he needs to clear his head and be with his mother for a bit. He took me with him fairly frequently when I was young enough to babble in the background and not eavesdrop, and Hunith promptly took me under her wing as her grandson. Her door is always open, and she gives warm affection and is an excellent listener.

She is also the only person I know who can always make Uncle Merlin smile when he's with her.

Uncle Merlin has the brightest, warmest smile of anyone I know, if you can coax his full smile out of him. He doesn't give it much these days, in contrast to the days Mother first knew him, when she says he gave it freely, but it always makes me feel warm and safe deep down inside if I can get him to give it instead of the slightly bitter half-smile he typically gives.

The first time I remember seeing Uncle Merlin's real smile was when I was very young, and really under very ordinary circumstances. It was the first snow of the year, and I had coaxed him out of a giant pile of paperwork to play with me in the courtyard. I don't remember what he was working on – some druid quarrel, I think – but I do know that he was more resistant to playing with me than usual. My childish charms eventually worked, though, and we scampered around the castle courtyard, making snow men and snow angels and throwing snowballs at each other and having a great time. I was too young to really hit him with any of my snowballs, whereas he was fearfully accurate; he was probably using a bit of magic for that.

"You can't hit me!" he said playfully. "I am the great sorcerer Merlin and invulnerable!"

"I am the great knight Amhar!" I called back in my little highpitched voice, "and any man's equal!" I was mostly quoting Uncle Leon, I think, but coincidentally my next snowball was the first to hit him.

Uncle Merlin threw back his head and laughed. But when he was done laughing, he gave me his full, broad smile, unhindered by pain or worry.

I think it was that day that I made it a private, personal mission to make Uncle Merlin smile as often as possible.

Over the years, I've managed to coax that smile out of him every so often. Getting him to play with me until he was lighthearted and forgot the cares of the kingdom was usually a good way to draw it out; usually when we fly on Aithusa he'll give it at least once during the flight, which may be one of the reasons I love flying so much. But also, if I could get him to talk about the good memories he has of Camelot in my father's day – his friendships with Lancelot and Gwaine, the glory days of Mother and Father's romance, the times he and Father were carefree friends together in spite of the fact that they were prince and servant and had the weight of the kingdom on their shoulders – he will smile that way. Of course I love the stories of the grand adventures he had with Father in those days, but as I've gotten older and realized that most of those stories had sharp edges to them – memories of pain, of difficult decisions made, of loss and sorrow that he never told me when I was little – I've come to prefer the stories of simple friendship, for those are easy stories for Uncle Merlin to tell and often make him smile.

There was one night, not that long after the night we spent mourning Father together, that Mother, Uncle Merlin, and I ate supper together; Mother and Uncle Merlin were lightheartedly reminiscing about the early days of their friendship – time spent serving Father and the Lady Morgana at feasts, the statue of a dog Mother inspired Uncle Merlin to bring to life. "It became one of Arthur's favorite hunting dogs and the only one that ever really liked me; maybe it felt grateful," Merlin commented.

"How did you two meet?" I asked suddenly, curious.

Uncle Merlin chuckled. "It was the day after I came to Camelot, I think," he said. "I was making my first acquaintance with the stocks."

Mother's eyes lit up. "And I'd seen you standing up to Arthur the day before, so I decided to introduce myself," she said.

"Right, and you said I wasn't a rough, tough, save the world kind of guy for all my standing up to Arthur had impressed you," Uncle Merlin said. He was smiling now, the wide grin he rarely gave that made me feel all warm inside.

"You told me you were in disguise," Mother reminded him. "And you were right."

That comment brought a faint shadow to Merlin's face. "I was more reckless back then," he admitted, but it made Mother laugh. She turned to me. "And we've been friends since," she said.

"You were my first friend in Camelot," Uncle Merlin reminded her.

"Before Father?" I asked curiously.

Uncle Merlin's lips twitched toward that smile again. "Of course," he said. "Arthur, I'm afraid to say, was quite a prat and a royal one back then. It took a while before I even realized he was tolerable to be around."

This wasn't the first time I'd heard that, so I brushed it aside in favor of getting an answer to my other question. "What on earth were you in the stocks for?" I'd never seen my uncle in the stocks, and it wasn't a mental image I could readily conjure, even though I knew from the stories that it had happened more than once. Uncle Merlin wasn't the most dignified of men, as he could still trip over nothing at times, but he was a far cry removed from the stocks.

"I was in them a fair bit back then," he returned, looking as though he was trying not to smile. "That time I believe it was for the way I treated Arthur when I first met him."

"How did you meet Father?" I pressed. If I'd heard the story, it had been when I was so young I didn't remember it.

This time Uncle Merlin really laughed. "I've not told you the details of that?" he said, and his broad smile was staying on his face now. "Well, it happened like this. A country boy without much sense of manners and even less of a notion of how to treat royalty ran into a prince who was a prat and needed to be taken down a few pegs . . ."

A/N: Shorter chapter this time. This wraps up Amhar's memories of his childhood, though, so the next chapter, out on Wednesday will focus on the present day and the plot - "The Day My World Began to Change."

Just as a heads up, my updating schedule might not be quite as neat in August, because I really want to finish this story before I go back to college at the end of the month, but August will be a busy month for me too. That will probably mean more chapters closer together, though!