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The cat had grey fur, the same color as the mice it hunted, and it wound its way around his legs, purring. Merlin reached down and rubbed under its chin.
“Tchah! You should be in the barn,” the woman of the house exclaimed, waving a broom at the cat. She swept distractedly at the worn floorboards for a moment, eyes fixed on the bed and the small shape bundled in the blankets.
“The sickness leaves her,” Merlin said, laying a hand on the little girl’s brow.
“You are certain?” the woman asked.
He nodded. “She will be weak for many days, but the worst is over. I will leave some medicine with you—see to it that she drinks it each morning. Keep her warm and feed her a thin broth.”
The cat fled to the hearth when he stood, and he straightened with a wince, muscles stiff from sitting in one place for so long. The woman pressed a loaf of bread into his hands, and some small coin. He took the bread, but left the coin on the table. Unnoticed, for she had already returned to her daughter, smoothing back mussed hair and bending low, murmuring soft words.
When he stepped out of the cottage, his breath seized in the cold air. It had snowed overnight. While he ground herbs and whispered spells, the snow had fallen, overpowering the bent grasses and sending the boughs of the trees bending towards the earth.
He walked to the edge of the clearing and looked into the forest. The first shadows of the day stretched themselves across the white, icy parchment of the ground. A rabbit had passed by some hours or minutes past, leaving a meandering trail of paw prints in the snow. Fragile reminders of warm blood and a beating heart.
For a brief, yearning moment, he thought he caught a glimpse of red out of the corner of his eye. The red of a cloak that hid a golden dragon in its swirling folds.
But the space next to him was empty and the snow untouched.
He blamed the spill of tears on a long, weary night. A long night and the unexpectedness of the snow, springing upon him when he stepped out the door, unprepared and defenseless.
For the snow called to mind the taste of a hurried meat pie, snatched out of the ovens in the gloom of dawn; the smell of woodsmoke, lingering even as they passed through the gates and galloped towards the forest; the sound of a voice, exasperated, eager—
Come on, Merlin, it will be spring by the time we get there if you don’t hurry up.
The first snow of the year had always meant a hunt. Anticipated through the muddy, tail-end of autumn until the day when they awoke to a skim of ice on the wash water and unlatched the window to find the gargoyles all sporting a snowy cap on their heads.
Get the horses ready, Merlin. And see if you can’t find some gingerbread in the kitchens to take along with us. Mind that you don’t eat it all this time!
The forest stretched around him, filled with such a deep silence that he couldn’t help but think that if he only listened hard enough, if he only tilted his ear just so, he might hear that voice once more, echoing down the years that had come between them.
“Will you not stay until the sun rises higher? I’ve built up the fire.”
It was the woman, standing in the doorway, a smile easing the angled planes of her face.
He blinked, hesitating, and then moved slowly towards her, stumbling back into the warmth of the cottage, dim and dark now after the bright outdoors.
A cup of barley water, flavored with licorice, in his hands. The cat, sitting in front of him and washing its paws. Wide, delighted eyes when he opened his palm to reveal a strawberry. A kind face, smiling and grateful, blessing him on his way at last.
“Thank you,” he said in reply, holding the woman’s hand. “I had almost forgotten, you see, that we were—are his people. You reminded me of that—of him.”
She patted his arm, not understanding but glad that he was pleased.
And so he walked with swift steps into the forest, letting the memories flood his heart like clear wine, flavored still with grief but not as bitter. In a friendly greeting, in the burst of a hart and a hunting horn, in laughter over a jest and song, in the first quiet fall of snow—in all these, he would forever find his Arthur.