And sometimes it seemed to her that the lady was Viviane, and she wondered: Have I fallen sick, am I lying in a fever and dreaming all these curious things? She went out with the lady's maidens and searched with them for root and herb, and the season seemed not to matter. And at the festival- was it that same night or another?-she danced to the harps, and again she took a turn at the harps for the dancing, and the music she made sounded both melancholy and merry.

Once when she was searching for berries and flowers for garlands, her feet stumbled over something: the white bleached bones of some animal. And round its neck was a fragment of leather, and on that a scrap of red cloth-it was something like to the bag in which she had borne her gear when she rode from Caerleon. What, she wondered, had happened to her own horse, was it safe in the stables here? She had not seen stables at all in the fairy castle, but she supposed they were somewhere. For now it was enough to dance, to sing, to let time pass, enchanted ... .

Once the man who had brought her there led her aside from the dancing ring. She was never to know his name. How, when she could see neither sun nor moon, could the tides of moon and sun beat in her so fiercely?

"You have a dagger about you," he said, "you must put it from you, I cannot bear it near."

She unfastened the leather thongs that bound it to her waist and cast it away, not knowing where it fell. Then he came to her, his dark hair falling about hers; his mouth tasted sweet, of berries and of the strong heather drink. He undid her clothing. She had grown used to the cold-it did not matter to her that it was cold on the grass here, that she was naked under his body. She touched him; he was warm, his body warm, his strong male member hot and strong, his hands opening her thighs were strong and eager. Her whole body welcomed him as hungrily as a virgin; she moved with him and she felt the rhythm of the pulsing tides of the earth around her.

Then she was afraid ... she did not want him to get her with child, it had gone so ill with her when Gwydion was born, another child would surely kill her. But when she would have spoken, he laid a hand gently over her lips and she knew he could read her thoughts.

"No fear of that, sweet lady, the tides are not right for that ... this is the time for pleasure and not for ripening," he said softly, and she gave herself up to it, and yes, there were antlers shadowing his brow, she lay again with the Horned One, and it was as if stars were falling in the wood all round them, or was it but fireflies and glowworms?

Once she was wandering in the woods with the maidens and she came to a pool and bent over it, and looking deep there, she saw Viviane's face looking out at her from the waters. Her hair was greying now, strands of white all through it, and there were lines she had never seen before. Her lips opened; it seemed she was calling, and Morgaine wondered, How long have I been here? Surely, I have been here four or Jive days, maybe even a week. I must surely go. The lady said one would guide me to the shores of Avalon ... .

And she made her way to the lady and told her that she must surely go. But night was falling-surely tomorrow would be time enough ... .

Once again, in the water, it seemed she saw Arthur, his armies massing ... . Gwenhwyfar looked weary and somehow older; she held Lancelet by the hand as he bade them farewell, and he kissed her lips. Yes, Morgaine thought in bitterness, such games as he likes well to play. Gwenhwyfar would wish it so, to have all his love and devotion and never endanger her honor ... . But it was easy to put them away from her, too.

And then one night she woke with a start, hearing from somewhere a great cry, and for a moment, it seemed to her as if she stood on the Tor at the center of the ring stones, hearing the terrifying cry ringing through the worlds-the voice she had heard but once since she grew to womanhood, that harsh rusty voice, grown dull with unuse, the voice of Raven, who broke her silence only when the Gods had a message they dared not leave to any other ... .

Ah, the Pendragon has betrayed Avalon, the dragon has flown ... the banner of the dragon flies no more against the Saxon warriors ... weep, weep, if the Lady should set foot from Avalon, for surely she will return no more ... and a sound of weeping, of sobbing in the sudden darkness ...

And silence. Morgaine sat upright in the greyish light, her mind suddenly clear for the first time since she had come into this country.

I have been here all too long, she thought, winter has come. Now I must depart, now, before this day is over ... no, I cannot even say so, the sun does not rise or set here ... I must go now, at once. She knew she should call for her horse, and then, remembering, she knew: her horse was long since dead in these woods. In a sudden fright, she thought, How long have I been here?

She searched for her dagger, and remembered that she had cast it away. She bound her dress about her-it seemed faded. She could not remember washing it, nor her underlinen, yet they seemed not dirtied much. She wondered suddenly if she were mad.

If I speak to the lady, she will beseech me again not to go ... .

Morgaine tied her hair up in plaits ... why had she let it hang free, she, a grown woman? And she set off down the path which, she knew, would bring her to Avalon.

MORGAINE SPEAKS ...

To this very day I have never known how many nights and days I spent in the fairy country-even now my mind blurs when I try to reckon it up. Try as I may I can make it no fewer than five and no more than thirteen. Nor am I certain how much time passed in the world outside, nor in Avalon, while I was there, but because mankind keeps better records of time than the fairy folk, I know that some five years passed.

Perhaps, and I think this more as I grow older, what we speak of as time passing happens only because we have made it a habit, in our very blood and bones, to count things-the fingers of a newborn child, the rising and returning of the sun, we think so often of how many days must pass or how many seasons before our corn will ripen or our child grow in the womb and come to birth or some longed-for meeting take place; and we watch these by the turning of the year and the sun, as the first of the priestly secrets. Within the fairy country I knew nothing of the passing of time, and so for me it did not pass. For when I came out of the country I found that already there were more lines in Gwenhwyfar's face, and Elaine's exquisite youthfulness had begun to blur a little; but my own hands were no thinner, my face was untouched by line or wrinkle, and though in our family white comes early to the hair-in his nineteenth year Lancelet had had already a few grey strands-my hair was black and untouched by time as the wing of a crow.

I have come to think that once the Druids had taken Avalon away from the world of constant counting and reckoning it began to happen there, too. Time does not flow in Avalon unreckoned like the passing of a dream, as it does in the fairy country. Yet truly time has begun to drift a little. We see the moon and sun of the Goddess there, and reckon the rites within the ring stones, and so time never wholly leaves us. But it runs not even with time elsewhere, though one would think that if the motion of sun and moon were known at all, it would move like to that in the world outside ... yet it is not so. Toward these last years I could bide a month in Avalon and discover when I came away that an entire season had sped by outside. And often, toward the end of those years, I did so, for I had no patience to see what happened in the world outside; and when folk marked that I stayed ever young, then more than ever did they call me fairy or witch.