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They say that the cook is magic, but back in those days, that was not anything to be fearful of, nothing to raise alarm over — for magic could be innate and earned, learned and tempered and mastered, and magic had swept its broad cloak over the pastures and fields and forests and hills, an invisible web so thick and gnarled into the earth that to taste the root vegetables from the ground was to eat magic itself, and to breathe in the scent of flowers was to breathe in the aroma of magic, and magic, was a very dear friend, as dear and deadly as any blade or vial of poison.
The cook is magic but no one pays that any mind, and Elaine, precocious in the way that children can only be, had often spent her days hiding from her mother and the other ladies-in-waiting or from Lavaine who had grown a bit too rowdy and would often pull at her hair and tug at her dress, sitting by a stool and swinging her legs as the cook would recount tales. Occasionally, the cook would tell fortunes.
“Can you tell me my fortune?” Elaine had asked one too many times, and on this day, she asks again, a ritual of sorts.
“A fortune is a heavy thing.” The cook responds, stirring the pot. “It’s not for fun nor is it something to be taken lightly. Fortunes are a burden and to know yours is a curse.”
“But you tell it to the maids and the stablehands and that one Duke’s son and — ”
“They pay me.” The cook turns and barks a brief order to one of the kitchen boys and they scuttle about the space, dancing and weaving between the throngs of people slicing and dicing. One narrowly trips over Elaine’s feet.
“I can pay you,” Elaine says with childish seriousness, too young to comprehend just the gravity of the statement, the weight that her words carry even now.
The cook snorts. “There is more payment in the world than just coin and a soul, my lady. And yours, I will not read. Not now.”
Elaine visibly perks up at the statement. “Soon then?”
“Not ever.”
A retort is ready to spill from Elaine’s lips, but Lavaine bursts in, a wooden sword swinging wildly in his hands shouting at Elaine, and Elaine, never one to back down, jumps to her feet and promptly bursts out in tears as she screams.
Sir Lancelot du Lac is not who she thought he would be like — in fact, Sir Lancelot du Lac is unlike any other man or knight Elaine has ever met.
And there have been many men, a countless parade strewn before her once she had turned of age. Her father was desperate for her to marry and marry well, but Torre and Lavaine had insisted that no man despite his status or wealth or skill with the sword was good enough, had proven himself to be worthy of her hand and favour.
(Secretly, Elaine rejoiced. No man had ever made her heart leap and stutter, had made her blood boil and fizzle, flushed her cheeks a violent red, had sent her stammering and a loss for words, devoted and heartsick and hellbent, and irrevocably under his spell.)
(But Sir Lancelot du Lac is different — )
( — Sir Lancelot du Lac — )
“You are to fight in the tournament?” It is an unnecessary question, more filler to buff the space between them, Elaine’s conquest of a chasm so wide and deep and dolorous that she fears a misstep will cause her plunge into the icy depths, tendrils and claws of unbidden things that live deep down to curl around her ankles and tug her down, down, down. “Even now?”
“Yes.” The answer is swift and decisive, so at odds with the clumsy, stilted words Sir Lancelot had spoken earlier during dinner. Elaine is no less enraptured. “I’ll be accompanying one of your brothers, my Lady, and making sure that he returns safe to both you and your father, free from harm.”
“And you?” Elaine blurts out, her voice too loud and piercing against the slick quiet of the room.
“Me?” Lancelot blinks at her, befuddlement crossing his features.
“I mean, I,” Elaine stutters mortified to see her own fingers are trembling. She quickly hides them behind her back, but she knows that Sir Lancelot must have seen, must have noticed, must be charting the stars and the heavens to unfurl the constellations of her love. “Will I see you again?”
Lancelot does not answer.
“Sir Lancelot.” Elaine pleads.
“I apologize for any impertinence,” Lancelot says, slowly. “But, I do not know when I will return, surely sometime in the future, but that time is unknown to me and will remain unknown until it comes upon me.”
Elaine wishes desperately to reach out and clutch at his arm, to bring him close, to rest her head against his chest, to feel his soft breath against her hair.
“I see,” Elaine says for there is nothing she knows that will dissuade him.
Lancelot gets up to leave and panic bubbles within, sparks of anxiety dancing against the walls of her stomach, drumming against her lungs, a kaleidoscope of a meteor shower battering at the ventricles of her heart. Without thinking, she calls to him, and Sir Lancelot turns, framed in the doorway, half of his face in shadow.
“Will you at least indulge me this, Sir Lancelot, and wear my favour?”
(Sir Lancelot doesn’t wear favours or tokens, even Elaine of Shalott knows this.)
Lancelot nods and quickly, as if afraid to burst this little dream, this fantasy, Elaine tears at her sleeve.
(The stars finally eclipse the moon in their brilliance.)
The favour is green.
Lancelot takes it from her, fingers careful not to brush against hers. “Thank you. It’s my favorite color.”
(Even Elaine of Shalott knows that Sir Lancelot du Lac does not wear green.)
Sir Lancelot du Lac is wrong. He returns sooner than expected. He is wounded and Elaine has never seen so much blood, has never seen such a wound up close, and her bile is bitter and seeps between her gums — Sir Lancelot is so pale, a star past its supernova.
“Sir Lancelot is to die.” The cook explains, not for the first time. “Infection has set into his wound. He is to die and there is nothing more that you can do for him, my lady.”
Elaine weeps and weeps and weeps so much so that she fears that she may die from it. The cook says she will not.
“Can you not do anything to help him?”
“I have been making him broth, my Lady, you have seen me — ”
“No, not that.”
The cook flinches back as if she was struck. “You don’t know what you ask for. Magic doesn’t work like that. You cannot trade one thing for another, there is value, life and death hold weight.”
“Please.” Elaine begs and wrings her hands, resisting the urge the shout for her voice is already hoarse. She is sure that if she looks in the mirror that she will not recognize herself for Torre and Lavaine had reacted with twin looks of horror at the sight of her. “Sir Lancelot is a great man and he cannot die, not from this.”
“Many great men have lived,” the cook says gently as if she is speaking to a spooked animal. “And many have died much less dignified deaths.”
Elaine resists the urge to fall to the ground, to tangle her fingers in the cook’s shabby robes, and to prostrate herself. She lifts her chin high. “A trade then, my fortune for his.”
“You, you don’t know what you’re asking for, my Lady, you don’t — ”
(Elaine hates those words, hates them — the words flung into her face time and time again by her father, by her brothers, by the cook, by even Sir Lancelot himself — )
(Elaine knows what she wants, she’s known since she was small, since the first time the cook denied her.)
“To love is a vicious thing.” Elaine says. “And to love is to fall. I will gladly take the burden if Sir Lancelot will live.”
The cook’s eyes are very wet and she bows her head low and whispers in Elaine’s ear something so very ancient, something unspeakably fragile, and unbearably alive —
Sir Lancelot du Lac has left and he has taken far more than just her heart with him.
(The mirror crumbles underneath her fist and she howls at the emptiness that tears at her soul, cold and horrifically lonely.)
Sir Gawain is nothing like she expected — he is like no one she has ever met before.
(But he is not Sir Lancelot.)
(For that, Elaine is eternally grateful.)
Gawain talks to her, speaks to her, looks at her like she’s a real person, not a shadow, not a wisp of a thing, not like she’s a mere extension of her father and his power nor a pawn to use to become close to her brothers and learn their secrets — sitting together in the garden, underneath the cool canopy of the trees, the wind fresh and sharp upon their faces, the jovial sing-song of Gawain’s vowels and consonants as he teases her, Elaine feels —
( — Elaine feels.)
“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” Gawain says and then instantly his face scrunches upon itself, an ugly gesture that makes Elaine laugh helplessly. “That was rude, forgive me.”
“I am,” Elaine says because there is nothing to deny, because Gawain had been able to pin her down from the first moment his eyes had met hers, awareness and acceptance in his hands when he had touched the ridges on Lancelot’s shield, mouth tight and lips wobbling as his fingertips kissed the grooves upon its surface in a way that Elaine herself had dared not do.
(Because Elaine can see herself reflected back in Gawain, and Gawain knows this too. Because enchantment rests heavy on Gawain’s shoulders and Gawain had known of the aura of wrong that now cloaks Elaine.)
(Elaine has paid her price, Gawain has still yet to — an imbalance hangs between them but it is friendly and sure and constant, and Elaine knows that Gawain will cry for her just like she too has already shed tears for him.)
(Elaine and Gawain, the ground leveled at their feet, and they face each other, smiling and reaching out.)
“I am,” Elaine repeats. “And I know you are too.”
Gawain laughs. “Maybe.”
(His hand on hers is impossible warm, like sunlight diffused upon linen.)
(The stars continue to burn brighter and brighter and brighter, until they eclipse the sun itself.)
Lavaine’s love is an unlucky one, he thinks ruefully, ruminating as he watches Lancelot swirl and dance, deadlier than the blade in his hands.
Yes, his love is an unlucky one. But Lavaine has respite and relief — he can stay by Lancelot’s side while his sister, Elaine, cannot.
(Lavaine dreams of drowning, of water fiery cold in his throat and lungs and his tears are so very warm against the onslaught of the current.)
It is Gawain and Arthur who find her and after Arthur has turned and walked away, Gawain stares and stares and stares, the letter tucked into his pocket, carefully folded just like how Elaine lies now, carefully arranged in her watery grave.
Her hands are still stained with ink, traces of it on her nail beds and the tips of her fingers, and Gawain reaches out, caresses her cheek, and clutches at her hand, so very small and still and dreadfully cold.
(“Do you know your fortune, Sir Gawain?” Elaine had asked.
“Yes,” Gawain had replied, smiling crookedly. “And I am all the more damned for it.”)
The miasma clings to the air and Gawain chokes from it and closes his eyes and tries to ignore the whispers and murmurs, the brush of a wet hand tucking his hair back, and of Elaine’s voice.
(Arthur returns and he stares oddly at Gawain.
“There’s ink on your cheek.” Arthur says quizzically. “Gawain?”)
“ — your fortune was to love and be loved, beloved till the end of your days, will you still make this trade, Elaine of Shallot? Maid of Astolat?”