Page 65 of The Faerie Morgana

“It is not what you think.” He took off his hat and laid the disreputable thing on the floor at his feet.

He rubbed his hands through his straggling gray locks as if to ease a headache.

“Please do not blame me for keeping this secret. I swore to it when I first saw you, and it has been a hard thing to decide to break my promise.” He fell silent, staring past her as if someone were there looking back.

Impatience made Morgana prompt him. “Sir—”

He sighed and reflexively combed his beard with his fingers. “It is difficult to speak of these things, Morgana. I have held them close for so very long. It has become the habit of a lifetime.”

Morgana leaned toward him. “It is time to lay down that burden, sir. Tell me, and if there are decisions to be made, perhaps we can make them together.”

His beard twitched in what she had always believed passed for a smile. “Thank you, Priestess.”

“I am just Morgana to you, sir. You are the closest thing I have ever had to a family, since you led me away from my mother’s knee.”

The Blackbird said, on a long sigh, “She was not your mother, Morgana.”

She stared at him, sure she must not have heard properly. “What?”

“Ygraine was your foster mother.”

“What?” Morgana repeated. “My foster mother? But then who was my father?”

“I have never known who your father was.”

“Then who— By the hand of the Lady, sir, pray tell me who my mother was!”

The look he gave her was so full of sorrow, of regret, that her heart clenched, and she pressed a hand to her chest. “Morgana,” he said. “You are the daughter of the Lady herself.”

She stared at him, her eyelids stretched so wide they burned. “No. Sir, that cannot be.”

“It is true.” The Blackbird’s voice grew soft. “I am aware that this is a shock.”

“But why did I not know this? I believed I was the daughter of a queen. A daughter she rejected, but still—”

“You are still the daughter of a queen, Morgana. The Lady was a queen among her own people. In her own country.”

Morgana wrapped her arms around herself to stop her shaking. She feared she knew what he meant, but she had to know for certain, to fully grasp the truth. “The Lady—the—the Lady was fae,” she faltered.

“Yes. She was a queen of the fae. She came to offer her service to Lloegyr, but after a time—a very, very long time—she grew weary of the world and returned home to fae country.” In a near whisper, he added, “I met her there, years ago, but I never thought I’d see her again, after I left.

She came to me just once, with you in her arms, before she disappeared beneath the lake.

That is why, when we divined your calling to the priestesshood, the stones told us you were water-born. ”

“But—that would mean—” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

It had been the insult thrown at her by jealous acolytes, girls who barely understood what the word meant.

Fae. She really was fae. She was not a human woman with unusually strong gifts.

She was faerie. It was yet another thing—it was the greatest thing—to make her different.

To set her apart. A wave of loneliness and sorrow gripped her, and it made her voice hoarse. “She did not want me.”

“She did want you,” the Blackbird said. “She wanted you more than you can imagine. She would not have borne you otherwise. But her great plan, her grand design, was for you to take her place. To do the work she no longer had the strength to do.”

“They say she still dwells beneath the lake.”

The Blackbird lifted one palm. “I think her spirit does. She no longer wanted her body.”

“Why—why abandon me?”

“She was the wisest creature I have ever known. She wanted you to be fostered at Camulod, where the true king would be born. She foresaw everything, except…”

Morgana tried to focus on what the Blackbird was telling her, but her mind spun away from the trickle of words, losing itself in the awful realization. Fae. She was fae. How could that be? Why had she never known?

“Do you understand?” he said.

“What? Understand what?”

“What the Lady did not foresee.”

“I—I can’t—” She put her hands over her eyes.

“You need time to take it in.”

She dropped her hands and gazed bleakly at his lined face, at the resignation in his black eyes. “To take it in? Sir, I am not certain I even believe it.”

“You will, once you accept it.”

“But—am I fully fae? Or was my father human, and I—I am hybrid, half-caste, neither one nor the other?”

“The Lady never spoke of who fathered you, Morgana. I wondered myself if you would be fully faerie. Knowing that you shapeshift at will answers that question. I have always believed your mother chose your father in fae country, and now I know I was right. It was the way she did things. Nothing in her actions was ever accidental.”

Morgana let her gaze wander over the divination tools on the table, brush across the high-backed, magically carved chairs, linger on the one that belonged to her. She asked dully, hardly caring, “And what was it that the Lady—my mother—did not foresee?”

“That even her most devoted servant might make a mistake that would undo everything.”

“And what was that?”

“I should have told you the truth about your birth long ago. She felt it should be kept secret, that you would allow me to guide you, that you would be ruled by the compulsion to protect the true king.”

“All of that happened.”

“Except for Uther’s flawed charm.”

“Would you have allowed him to betray Lloegyr?”

“I believe his knights would not have allowed it.”

“You do realize that I could not count on that, sir,” Morgana said bitterly, fresh resentment tightening her throat.

“I do now. I was afraid, Morgana, and that made me angry.”

“Are you still afraid?”

“Very.”

“And angry?”

“No. No longer angry. I am sorry I hurt you. I am trying to set things right.”

“Tell me why the Lady, if she is truly my mother, did not raise me herself.”

“Because she thought you could not learn from her how best to serve the people of Lloegyr. She didn’t want you raised among the fae, because they are unpredictable and capricious, often cruel.

She was the last of a great line of the fae who treasured wisdom and service and imagined great things for both their world and that of humans, but in the latter days, few ordinary fae put store in honor and loyalty.

They hated your mother because she banished them from Lloegyr for their offenses against the people she loved.

They would not heed her warnings, and they have not forgotten. ”

“Still…”

“Your mother wanted you brought up among the Lloegyrians, in the Temple she had built. It was a great sacrifice for her, her final sacrifice, indeed, but she was right. You learned very well. You have earned the honor in which they hold you.”

“They call me fae out of their envy.”

“Envy, yes, and ignorance. But they need not know the truth.” He reached into one of the capacious pockets of his robe and took out a small object.

He held it out on his palm. It was slender and short, barely as long as one of Morgana’s fingers, and carved with tiny leaves and flowers. “Your mother wanted you to have this.”

Morgana looked at it curiously. “What is it?”

“It is a wand. It has certain powers of its own, mostly to enhance the ones the holder already has, but it is a symbol.”

“Of what?”

“Of your authority. Your status.”

“My status as…?”

“As her heir.”

“And if I choose not to be her heir? If I just want to—just want to be me?”

“That is a hard question,” he said bleakly. “And the answer is not mine to give.”

Morgana pushed herself to her feet. She needed to walk, to think. To decide.

“Are you fully recovered, Priestess Morgana?” the Blackbird asked.

“Yes, sir. I am.”

“And what will you do now?”

“I do not know.” She stood looking down at him, a crumpled old man leaning on his staff as if it was all that kept him from falling over.

“One thing has not changed,” she said, her voice deep and steady now.

“I am still committed to protecting the true king. His queen is a danger to him, and to all of Lloegyr. I think she came here as a destroyer, and I must do all I can to convince him of that.”