Another fic that inexplicably only ever got posted to my AO3. DDNE. For full warnings, check out the tags on my ao3 post. Originally posted to ao3 2022-01-25
Hunith learns there's something strange about the child before he's even born.
She misses her monthly, but feels better than she can ever remember. She doesn't think much of it, she's missed or been late before, and with all the work going into gathering crops, it's not unheard of. The harvest is abnormally fruitful despite the below average rainfall, enough so that the village can trade for goods. By the second time she fails to bleed, she's too giddy with the unseasonable bounty and her elated at simply being with Balinore, she forgets to tell him at all.
And then Balinor leaves. Gone, maybe even dead, and with him any hope of a love filled life. No sane man would want a pregnant, penniless woman. (She also doesn't want just any man. She wants Balinor.) Less than a week later, Uther's men show up in their home, and she knows why Balinor ran. (Why didn't he tell her? She would've left Ealdor if he'd only asked... A complete family, even displaced, is better than a broken one.)
She doesn't know what she'll do without Balinore. She has no money, no dowry, and no prospect of a future. Moreso even now that she's eating for two.
Her child will grow up fatherless, ostracized and alone while they struggle to survive in a land where even intact families struggle.
Months pass and the child in her womb grows.
Rumors of Uther's men still circle the little village like bandits surrounding a camp.
And Balinore is nowhere to be found.
The child is born on a dreary day without fuss or fanfare.
And Balinore, her beloved Balinore, has never returned. (She can only assume from this he must be- must be...)
She sees only one, grim way out of the whole situation. (And she'd see Balinore again.)
She's picked out the foot of a beautiful tree overlooking a quiet bend in the river, where she's going to lay to rest her child. The same tree under which Balinor made love to her for the first time. The same tree where Balinor asked to spend the rest of their lives together.
After she buries the child, she's going to take a long walk over the bridge. She'll wear her nicest dress, and let the spring water take her.
She hopes it'll be quick.
She lifts the babe and makes quick work of his neck, like she was dispatching an animal.
But he doesn't go limp and glassy eyed. Instead he wails and squirms, tiny fists beating the air and chubby legs kicking, even while his neck is bent at an impossible, lethal angle.
She stares at what she's done, horrified for more than one reason before sense grabs hold of her like a knife.
"Shh, shh, little one... Hush now..." She coos, picking him up. She cradle's his head, realigning it with his tiny body.
He settles into her arms and falls asleep.
To the east a bird calls, a high pitched warble piercing the sky. A small bird of prey circles overhead.
She decides to call her son Merlin.
The second time something strange happens with Merlin's not even a year old.
During one of the coldest years anyone can remember, a deep cough rages through the village, killing many.
Merlin catches it. The illness settles in his tiny lungs and he becomes sicker, and sicker, unable to even suckle. Too weak to even cry. She prays for his life to any gods or deities still listening, but to no avail.
Merlin's raspy breaths cease during the twilight moments between sundown and true night.
She cries herself to sleep, clutching the cooling body of her infant son.
Shortly before dawn she wakes to Merlin pawing at her breast, warm and hungry.
The third time Merlin almost dies, it's spring, and Hunith is out working the fields.
He and Will are out playing, too young to be of any real help and more underfoot than anything. Like most of the mothers of young children, they're sent out to play.
Unlike most mothers, her child seems to have a death wish. (If Balinor were still around, would he be as reckless? Would he temper Merlin's recklessness?)
Will comes running, babbling that Merlin's fallen in the river. Almost half the village searches for him, but the river is swollen with meltwater, broiling and frothing like a ravening beast. Not even the strongest of men can swim against the current. There's no hope for a child not even six summers old.
He's given up for dead after an hour of searching the bank.
(She pretends not to hear the quiet utterances about "Hunith's strange boy" and speculations about the meaning of such a grim omen.)
Inevitably, Merlin shows up near dinner time, dripping wet and covered in mud.
When she asks "Merlin, what happened?"
His reply scares her. "A pretty wild horse helped me! It's fur was moss and it's mane looked like river grass! It lifted me up by my shirt and helped me get on it's back and we galloped up the river."
He sheds his shirt and shows her the holes. Sure enough, the punctures are unlike anything she's ever seen; the sharp incisors more reminiscent of a wolf than any horse.
She never tells him the tales her mother told her, of malevolent water spirits called kelpies which take the form of beautiful horses and lure people to their deaths in rivers and lakes.
She's long since learned normal doesn't apply to Merlin.
Merlin is little over eight summers old the next time he nearly dies.
He comes back with a basket full of small puffballs and other mushrooms, which she chops up and adds to the stock. It would've been a normal supper until Merlin tugs on her skirts while she's standing over the pottage.
"Mum? Mum, my tummy hurts." Merlin says, clutching his belly.
Hunith turns from the pot to see Merlin, pale and sweating.
"Merlin! Merlin, you must tell me, what did you eat?" She grills fear gripping her heart. He hadn't been learning about mushrooms long,
"Just- just some mushrooms mum, like the ones you showed me!"
Looking closer at the cutting board she notices white spores on the dark grains of wood.
Horrified, she dumps the stew and throws the pot into the corner.
Merlin's doubled over in pain. Rushing to get the chamberpot she deposits it in front of Merlin as he begins to wretch.
Hunith rubs circles on Merlin's back as he vomits. "Mum," Merlin gasps between upheavals. "Mum..!" he wheezes eyes wide and squirming weakly. A foul smell permeates the air, and brown sludge dribbles from Merlin's oversized trouser legs.
He starts to cry.
"Hush, Merlin. It's okay, just a bit of a mess.." If he's eaten what she fears, ruined pants are the least of her worries.
Helping him from the soiled trousers she does her best to clean him up with the rags she has. Cool water from the basin rids most of it, but he's still pink with shame and fever. He spends the remainder of the night in a restless sleep, interrupted every so often by bouts of vomiting and other accidents. She stokes the fire with all the wood she can spare, and then dips into the emergency supply to keep her son warm.
Between tending her son and tending the fire she's exhausted, sweaty and shivering with fear.
Eventually, there's nothing left for him to throw up and he's dry heaving painfully. His bottom is red and raw and she knows her baby is miserable.
The bleak dawn breaks coldy over their little hut. Merlin's skin has turned sickly yellow. Hunith tries to wake him, only to hear Merlin mumble in a language she doesn't recognize. It is neither the language spoken in Ealdor and surrounding areas, nor the guttural dragon tongue Bal sometimes spoke in. Instead it is lyrical, simultaneously light and heavy at the same time. She doesn't understand the words but the very air seems to resonate with... whatever he's saying.
Every once in a while a word or phrase she can understand filters through, often "no, don't, please!" and "hurts, mum, burns!"
When his eyes flutter open, unseeing, they too are sickly yellow, not the natural blue nor golden glimmer of power.
She wets a clean cloth in a fresh bowl of water, dripping some into parched lips, then draping it over his brow. He shivers and stills, only to continue mumbling in that unrecognizable tongue.
Hours pass like a fever dream, until his limbs begin jerking, head whipping rapidly from side to side, muscles taught. He shakes and shakes and shakes, then the fit slows, then stops.
"Merlin? Merlin, love, what's wrong?" (She knows it's useless, that he's probably too far gone to understand anything, but it doesn't matter. He's her boy, her whole world, and no one is there to judge her.)
His eyes flutter focusing on something in the distance.
"Merlin?!" She repeats louder, voice climbing in pitch, wondering if this will be the last time she sees her boy alive.
Merlin, predictably, doesn't respond.
After he wakes up he refuses to eat mushrooms for months afterward.
When Merlin is almost fifteen, he decides on rethatching the roof of their little hut.
If Hunith had known his plans beforehand, she would've expressly forbidden it. The roof still kept the house dry in the rain, cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
It just didn't look as nice since the windstorm several weeks ago.
But Merlin, bless his heart, was only trying to help his mum out.
She's working inside darning some socks when a yelp and a cacophonous THUMP rattle the ground.
"Merlin?!"
She drops her mending and sprints out of their tiny house to find Merlin in a heap.
The back of his head is a concave mess of blood and bone and when she peels open his eyelids his pupils are different sizes. As he exhales, crimson bubbles out of his ashen lips.
With desperation driven strength she heaves Merlin's limp form into her arms and inside their house. Blood stains her bosom, dripping from Merlin's head and plastering the cloth to her skin. Her dress will undoubtedly be ruined but she can't find it in herself to care. Her boy, the light of her life is hurting and she is helpless.
Depositing him on her bed she quickly returns with a wash bin, rags and her best needle and thread. Parting his sticky dark hair she finds the injury, a massive gash with the sharp bloody white edge of a bone jutting from the mess. Even some squishy grey-pink flesh that should never see the light of day is visible.
She uses some of the water boiled earlier in the day to rinse away the dirt and straw. Hands trembling, she slots the bone fragments in place, only to find a hole.
Resting Merlin as carefully as possible she leaves him in her bed, and returns outside to search the grass for any bloodied fragments.
She returns some minutes later, triumphant with a bone no larger than a coin in her hand. She rinses it in the water, and carefully places it back. Only a small thumbnail sized fragment is missing. It might be for the better, too, leaving room for fluid to drain.
The thought of hurting her boy, even to help him, makes her ill. But blood is dripping down his head, down her bed, and onto the floor. Head injuries bleed, and he could easily die from exsanguination alone given the severity of the injury. Determined, she takes out her needle and thread to mend the torn skin like a rip in cloth.
The first puncture is the hardest, and as she stitches, each one becomes easier. With practiced ease born of years of repair, Hunith ties the thread into a knot and pierces the ragged skin of Merlin's scalp. She sews him shut with short, precise stitches which hold in place the bone pieces.
Hunith pulls up a chair and takes his hand in hers.
More blood than anyone had any right to lose coagulates on the dusty floor of their hut. Blood like an eight point heart had been slaughtered, strung up and drained from her rafters. Oozing and flecked with bits of grey goop that she fears the origin of.
She can't find it in herself to care though.
Not with her boy on death's door.
Hours pass, and Hunith stands vigil by his bedside, anxiously waiting and watching. The wound on his head still leaks blood, but it's slowed nearly to a stop.
The eye closest to the wound has blackened and swollen shut, the other dark and bruised. He barely even looked human anymore, more like a body left to rot and bloat in water.
Even with.. whatever it is that has brought Merlin back, time and time again, is it enough for such severe damage?
Cledwyn was never quite the same after taking that kick in the head from the old nag. She's never even heard of someone surviving a head injury this bad. Not from Gaius, not from Alice, not from anyone.
And so when all the breath leaves his breast and the steady th-thump stops, she cries. (Though she's not sure if it's in relief or sorrow.)
However, like an old friend, gold glows behind his eyes, then slowly envelops his whole body.
The glow fades, and Merlin starts to breathe again.
In the predawn hours he awakes.
"...Mum?" He asks, "wh'appnd?"
"You fell." Hunith explains.
"Hurts." Merlin mumbles.
"I know my boy, I know." She runs her thumb along his cheek, and he leans into the gentle touch.
It takes well over a month for him to come completely back to himself. Had she not seen his broken bones and brain and blood, felt his heart stop beating and his chest fall still, she never would've thought anything strange had happened to her boy. He was the same bright eyed, optimistic, kind, generous soul he'd always been.
But she had. And some things were impossible to keep secret in such a small community. (They had been tempting fate for several years anyway.)
Ealdor was not safe for him anymore, and she knew of only one person who could possibly help. Merlin was a smart boy, destined for greater things than this tiny village could ever offer him.
So Hunith sends Merlin to Camelot.