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Leon stood before the flames a thousand feet high and thought Camelot will be its own undoing.
The fire was scalding. Smoke burned in his lungs; his eyes watered. Overhead, the night sky was choked with black smoke. Leon’s face was sallow in the unearthly glow. His armor reflected the writhing, twisting flames, and the entire world was overcome with shades of violent orange and blood red. It was suffocating.
A giant, shuddering, cracking noise like a house coming apart at the seams, then a massive boom. The fire roared and the ground shook.
One of the great oaks had fallen. Leon swore. These trees had stood for longer than Christianity had been in Britain, and in a matter of minutes they were gone.
Leon had grown up in this area, and in the summer he bit into a crisp apple from here. The oaks and yews were wider than three people and stretched to the sky. They had been there in his great-grandfather’s grandfather’s day, and his paternal grandmother told him in the days when people followed the old gods, this place was sacred. Now, Easter services are—were—held here.
The dead body of a tree was being ravaged by the fire, made into a black formless lump, and the leaves were burning dots on the branches stretching like arms for help. The leaves whistled as they burned.
Fire was killing what had been a grove of nourishment, peace, and refuge for years.
Leon clenched his fists and breathed in deeply. He was a kettle about to boil over. He turned to his side and addressed the king, “By what authority, did you order this?”
The other knights muttered in surprise. Sir Palomides said “Did Leon just raise his voice?”
King Pendragon tilted his head. The gold crown on his head looked like it was dripping blood in the firelight. “The Lord gave me this crown, did he not?” He had a melodious voice.
“What reason did the Father give you to have the Grove of Doelena burned?” Leon’s fingernails cut half-moons into his palms.
“Did you not hear me the first time? Because the Lord made me the king.”
From far off there was a hissing, then a sound like a thousand papers crumpling.
A gigantic, burning tree crashed to the ground.
It made a sound like a blacksmith striking an avail.
The world shook.
Flames flew a thousand feet high.
Screams.
The world shook again. More noise that scraped his eardrums.
An explosion.
No.
Another tree had fallen.
The trees on fire separated him from the other knights and the king.
It intersected the other tree, so that together they formed a cross.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. A hysterical laugh bubbled up inside him. There had been a silver cross on the wall of his childhood church. Twelve-year-old Leon had figured out that the sunlight would reflect on the top of the silver cross when church service was almost over, and he checked the cross like it was a hourglass. But his younger self had quickly realized that when other people looked at the cross……they looked reverent. Worshipful. People enjoyed church, received peace from it. No one else hoped the minutes would pass faster. They did not go because their parents said they had to. He was the only one. Why was he different?
By the time he was thirteen and a half, Leon was pretty sure he knew the answer.
At the age of fourteen, Leon had been Confirmed, but it had not been his choice as his mother had forced him to stand up in front of the church and declare his belief in a God that he had never cared for. He hated her for it for years. He did not excuse what she did, and he would forever be angry over it, but she talked of hellfire and brimstone with a bone-weary, tired fear. She believed with her whole heart, soul, and mind that she was condemned to burn, to be watched by God with every step like a wolf waiting to pounce on a rabbit, to send gnats and frogs and flies and boils and hail and locusts at the slightest sin. She lived in fear every waking moment. Leon pitied her, and maybe he shouldn’t, but when he was Confirmed the priest announced that he was the seventh generation to join this specific church. Seven generations. Seven generations. Seven generations of his family being watched by Jesus on the aforementioned silver cross that hung on the back of the church. His mother had not been born scared and afraid. Leon met his grandmother once. He broke a cheap pot and his grandmother screamed at him until she turned red in the face. He was six. His mother’s mother had taught her to hate herself.
His mother, for all her flaws, had encouraged Leon to follow his dreams and be confident. If it wasn’t for her, Leon would not be a knight.
Leon shook his head, clearing his thoughts. Now wasn’t the time for introspection if he wanted to live. He shucked his armor off so he wouldn’t be cooked like a pig in an oven. Leon heaved himself off the forest floor. Oh God. He swayed on his feet; his head pounded. Flames roared all around. A bird’s nest with eggs melted into ashes as he watched. A branch slammed into the ground, sending up a shower of sparks. He was going to die. He was never going to do anything he loved ever again. He was going to die, scared and alone. Leon slapped himself lightly. Think. Think.
To the right, there was a small path clear of fire. His sword was in his armor. He fetched it because it was expensive and set off down the path.
The sky was completely black now, either from the smoke or from Leon hallucinating from smoke inhalation. Words from a half-forgotten hymn, a Christian song of worship, came back to him: “I danced in the morning when the sky turned black.” His mother’s favorite hymn. Leon’s mother had been fond of saying “God will always help you in your time of trouble!” The priest had been fond of saying “God helps those who help themselves”. Lungs burning, he tugged his wool shirt over his nose and mouth. Leon tripped over a rock, almost regained his footing, and stumbled into a clearing.
The fire raged, but not as bad as before. He could breathe easier, and some of the trees were not in flames.
“Leon!” Margaret stood in the middle of the clearing. Sir Palomides stood on the far edge of the clearing.
Margaret stared, slack-jawed, like she could not believe Leon was real.
Then, Margaret walked over and hugged Leon. “I am glad you are alive. You are a good person and a good friend.”
Leon’s eyes prickled. “You are, too, ” He hid his face in her shoulder. Margaret was taller than Leon.
Sir Palomides arrived from the edge of the clearing and shook Leon’s hand. Sir Palomides’s dark brown eyes were shiny with unshed tears. What should he do? Say something, idiot. Leon clasped Palomides’s calloused hand before dropping it.
“Should have just left me behind, old man.” Leon said with a mischievous smile.
“Oh, my wife would never forgive me if I were to leave a kid to die,” Sir Palomides grinned.
The three had known each other for years. Once when he was but a new knight, Leon had been cut on his cheekbone during a fight with a dragon. Afterward, he, Palomides, and Margaret had taken shelter in a church. The cut burned, and it felt like spikes of pain were being driven into his face, a sharp stabbing hurt. Even though he wasn’t sure his shaky legs would hold him, Leon stood at the door of the church, ready to go. He did not want to look weak. Leon wanted—needed—to prove himself worthy of his title.
Sir Palomides, portly and middle-aged, marched towards him.
“Child.” He took Leon’s muscular arm and led him to a pew. He patted the top of Leon’s broad shoulders with his brown hands. “Sit down.”
Leon did, more out of shock than anything else.
Sir Palomides looked at Leon’s cut, shook his head sympathetically, and grunted “Medical treatment?”
Margaret, the other knight in everything but title, nodded and walked over in front of Leon. Female knights were not allowed, but women were allowed to be “warriors’ assistants,” whatever that meant. It was unfair and unjust.
Sir Palomides gave her the medicine bag.
“This is to keep it from getting infected, but it is going to hurt.”
She pressed it to his face gently and slowly. Leon blinked. When he was a page, the irate castle doctor would do it all at once, and then when Leon squirmed from the pain, the doctor would bark at him to suck it up. This was….different. Good different. He felt the warmth of her stubby fingers through the washcloth. Tension seeped out of his shoulders. Light streamed through the stained glass windows, cherry red and cheerful orange light dancing on the yellow wood floor. A painting of Jesus breaking bread with the disciples and giving them tender smiles was hanging behind the pulpit, the stand where the minister gives their speech to the people of the church. The white walls seemed to be glowing in the morning light.
Margaret began to sing; she always did multiple things at once. “Oh, what a friend we have in Jesus….”
To Leon’s surprise, Sir Palomides’s gruff voice joined in.
“What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer….”
As Leon let the hymn wash over him, he knew he was loved.
Maybe there was a God, and He was merciful. But so many people used Christianity as a tool to solidify their power. Like King Pendragon. Like the Crusades. Like prejudice against those who preferred the same gender. How could Leon stay believing when atrocities were committed in the “name of God?”
Something bumped into his arm. Leon’s hand flew to his sword.
Sir Palomides had touched his elbow. “We need to get out of here.”
Leon nodded.
There was a gap free of fire in between two weeping willows. Leon’s paternal grandmother would have called it a fairy gate. He ducked his head to prevent getting hit by a branch.The three advanced upon the breach together, their shoulders touching. Leon, Palomides, and Margaret hiked upward. They came to the crest of a hill and stopped.
Beneath them was a destroyed valley. Fire had reduced most of the trees to ashes. Black, gray, and dark purple ashes all mingled together in a horrible sort of mosaic; a few black and white burnt-out trees laid like corpses. A deer had left only its white two-pointed antlers behind. Leon was never going to be rid of the smell of smoke.
It began to rain.
The fire died without even a hiss.
Leon breathed in clean air for the first time in hours.
A cold droplet hit his arm. Leon tilted his head back, and let the cold, refreshing droplets run down his hot, sweaty face. Daisies decorated the bright green hill. Ignoring them, a stately brown cow grazed. There was a beautiful blooming dogwood, untouched by fire. Leon rubbed his face and laughed, laughed because he was alive and with his friends, laughed because he was no longer in danger, laughed because he had lived to see one more day on God’s green Earth, laughed because the nightmare was over.
Dawn was on the horizon, pinking the sky. It was a new day.