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He floats in a sea of gold, tumbling forever through currents and tides and reefs. Sometimes he thinks he sees a glimpse of a soul drift past, grey and as insubstantial as smoke.
And then the ocean recedes, and he's left to whirl in the wind.
(Nobody knows where the wind blows, where it comes from and to where it goes.)
I do.
Shall I tell you?
The winds are the souls of the restless dead, not here, not there, sleeping but not awake. It is the ultimate gift, and the ultimate punishment. Winds are ghosts, and the souls of the restless dead ride among them forever.
(Sometimes, the wind dies, or blows itself to pieces. I need not tell you what happens then.)
The wind is quick, spinning and jolting and rattling until he can barely think. He catches but faint wisps of things that can only be called memories, happening in the here and now. A red cloak. A mother's smock. The coloured rags of a Druid shrine. Red hair, brown hair, green eyes blue, pale and fair and dark, sorrow and anger and grief.
But the wind slows down, sometimes, when his will is strongest. He can rein it back, allow himself to drift more sedately over endless fields of wheat and houses and the citadel of Camelot.
He breezes through where he once lived with his uncle, and the wind speaks of his demise, spinning around the old man - Gaius- as a man tells him of someone's death.
Gaius dies, and he sees something pale and shimmery and as insubstantial as smoke stand from the flesh. He nods his head at the wind and fades. He tears at Gaius' hair, his clothes, as the man backs away, shouting words he can't hear over the fury of the wind.
Once, he ventures home, although the word doesn't quite fit in his barely-there mind. There is hooves and mud, and golden hair, and grief and tears and sorrow and anger.
And a name.
Merlin.
The wind stills, coming to a gentle almost-stop.
Not my son. Not Merlin. Please.
The wind - Merlin, already picking up speed, slows again. Golden hair and red cape enters the space of dead trees and cooled magma. Wood and stone, and wind, banging shutters and rattling doors.
Finally he leaves them, and the ghost of the thought drops what might've been a kiss in another time and place it upon Mother's cheek. She shivers.
Mother, the wind - Merlin thinks. What is a Mother? And to him the answer comes. Baked bannocks and smiles and whispers of courage, tales of dragons and knights and boys who use magic and who die, warm and soft like dough, and love. An all-encompassing love. Is Mother like home? The wind doesn't understand, and this makes it furious.
(It contents itself with wrecking a ship off a coast in a shoal of rocks. There are no survivors.)
Golden hair and red cape stands on the battlements, looking over his kingdom. (Well, the very small part of his kingdom that can be seen from the battlements, anyway. Merlin can see all of Camelot at once, if he so chooses, can see the whole world, can see all of time and space.
Here two boys that were barely men stood, jesting as though they had all the time... well. You know what I mean.
Here they watched, waiting for judgement as Dorocha, the sleeping dead awakened, ravaged the living, stealing souls that were not theirs to take.
To here they return, one in life, and one in not-quite death.)
Merlin curls himself around golden hair and red cape, and thinks, Arthur. He rested his phantom hand on a shoulder, a cheek. Arthur shivers like Mother did, and brushes his cheek with his knuckles.
I am to take a wife, Merlin, he says softly, and the wind tears the words from his mouth, devouring them hungrily. You'd remember her. Mithian. And somehow, Merlin does, the memory of a smiling face and kind words in a world of doom and despair.
And in Arthur's fist tightly clenched, a red piece of cloth flutters in the wind's agitated dance. Merlin recognises it, but the wind tries to wrest it from Arthur's grip. It sails high in the air, borne on the anguished cry of a king. Merlin tumbles away in a rush of a breeze, circling high over the citadel.
The wind takes him through a forest, through snowy lands, through the open windows of a fortress, to the mockery of a court-room, filled only with dust and shadows.
A woman sits on a throne of basalt, and he whistles in her ears, pulling at her filthy, matted hair. She stares straight through him and she looks broken, and Merlin thinks, Morgana, and the ghost of a heart fills with sorrow and pity and rage and self-loathing.
A strange creature pads into the light, and Morgana pets it, muttering nonsensical hopes and half-forgotten promises. It is white, like the sun. I named you, Merlin thinks. I named you, Aithusa, light of the sun. The wind tries to pull away, eager to move on, but Merlin clings to the room with all his might. It is not enough, and he is whisked away once again.
Merlin travels around the world, through the world, until the wind takes him back to Camelot, until the cycle begins again. The wind plays in the leaves of an oak as two people stand side-by-side in front of a cairn of stones. Their faces more lined than Merlin remembers. Two figures, bowed with the weight of the years, all that remains of Camelot as Merlin left it.
Arthur.
Gwen.
Gwen has a stick in one hand, her silvery curls hanging loosely down her back. She is wearing grey for mourning, for rememberance, a gown of fine spun wool that fits her far more snugly than her serving dresses ever did.
Arthur has his crown and his armour on, and Merlin reaches out and tries to pull at a loose strap as he spins past. The king stares into the middle distance resolutely, a track of tears forty, fifty, sixty years old dried on his face. Half of a blue neckerchief, faded and worn with time, is fastened around each of their necks. A memorial, a tribute, to a friend, a love long gone. Grief may not be dulled by the years, striking sharp and hot as it did at first in the most unexpected of places.
Merlin stops, really stops, dragging the wind to a halt. It simmers around him, ready to pull away in another frenzied twirl.
Sometimes, the wind dies, too worn out to blow any more. (Well, I say sometimes. It is an inevitability, nothing more.) Sometimes the wind tears itself to pieces. Sometimes the very spirit of the wind... well. You know what I mean.
And so finally, Merlin is laid to rest.