If I Could Tell It

Central British Battle Camp, 647

Four months.

Four months of the infinite doldrums of battle. Four months of killing. One month of my knowing of Lancelot’s and Elaine’s escapades into the forest. One month of Ellion’s ignorance.

It felt like longer, much longer. October was so cold that year it practically felt like winter had come early too. The first snow fell on our camp on October twenty-third, and even though it was only a half an inch of powdery dust it still meant trouble. Trouble meaning that we were in for a long, cold winter of frost and deep snow.

Colorado Springs, America, 2010

Homecoming was terribly American.

So revoltingly superficial and bright, while still charming in an egocentric and disgustingly unregimented way. That was America. And that was the homecoming dance.

Two weeks before the weekend of the game and the dance, Miss Marion took me to be fitted for a tuxedo.

I very much did not enjoy that experience.

Once we entered the shop, which was filled with shirts and pants and jackets all on matching metal racks, a short, skinny woman came up to Miss Marion and I to help us. A musty smell haunted the entire place and it made me feel like I was about to sneeze at any second.

The small woman lead us to the back of the shop to a small room then and told me to take off my sweatshirt, which I did uncomfortably because I did not have a T shirt under it. Then, the woman proceeded to measure me seemingly everywhere, my waist, my hips, around my thighs, my shoulders, even my neck. It was incredibly uncomfortable for me because, as I have already expressed upon, I hate it when strangers touch me.

After the woman, whose name had turned out to be Mrs. Gaffer, had measured me, she made me try on several white shirts, pairs of black slacks, and black jackets. Once she was satisfied with my opinion, she brought me a black vest and a bow tie and put those on my too. Miss Marion fawned over my appearance at that point and she and Mrs. Gaffer pushed me out into a hall full of mirrors so I could look at myself.

I pushed my glasses up on my nose and stared at myself.

In my opinion, I looked ridiculous, and I felt uncomfortable. Neither being things that I enjoyed. I would have much preferred to even wear the gaudy tunics that I sometimes wore for festivals and feasts in Britain. However, this was the normal attire for these kinds of things in America and I knew that I needed to wear it in order to successfully fit in so I did.

On the night of the homecoming dance Ty’s mother came to my house to pick me up before we went to get the girls we were going with.

I had on the tuxedo that Mrs. Marion had rented me and shiny black shoes. My hair was slicked back with gel so it stayed out of my face and my glasses sat on my ears in between strands of hair strategically. I had a box holding the white and silver corsage for Katie on my lap.

“Thank you for driving us Miss Theresa,” I said respectively to Ty’s mother.

“’Course Arthur,” She replied and looked back at us. “I’m happy to.”

“They better look hot tonight.” Ty whispered to me from across the street. “Especially yours, with boobs like that, you’re a lucky man.”

I smirked at him and thought about telling him not to talk like that but instead I just went along with it. I had learned that sometimes it was better to do that than argue.

“We’re here.” Miss Theresa said and pulled into Katie’s driveway.

Ty and I got out of the back seat of the car and meandered up to the front door where we rang the doorbell. Katie and Jeanette answered the door together.

If there was one word to describe the two girls tonight, it was bright.

Katie’s dress was a strapless turquoise, with diamond-like gemstones covering her chest and back. It was positively stunning to me.

The impression that the dress gave me was positively overwhelming to my young male system. I almost entirely forgot about everything for a moment, completely caught up in the looks of a girl I was not even attracted to.

“Arthur?” Ty asked, snapping me out of staring up and down Katie. “You good?”

“Yes!” I said quickly, then to Jeanette and Katie. “Both of you look very nice tonight.”

“Thanks.” Katie said, grinning. She moved her curled hair out of her face and we watched Ty take Jeanette’s hand and walk to the car that way. “You look nice too Arthur.”

I smiled cautiously and watched her look at me hopefully. She was waiting for me to hold her hand. I took a breath and blinked my eyes for a bit longer than normal. I told myself that everything was alright and that even if I did not like Katie I could still hold her hand, it was not harming anyone. It might even feel good.

I took her hand and she looked up at me flirtatiously through her eyelashes. I ignored it, and lead her to the car.

I had never really had a problem with dancing in the past-the past meaning Britain.

My mother had all of the boys learn some of the traditional dances during our training, and the girls all learned from their mothers. She had us do this because before feasts we used to have a few musicians play in the banquet hall and there would be dancing. It was really quite fun, while it lasted. The steps were easy to learn and I always found that I could handle it with ease. After my mother died, however, we stopped having those dances and we barely ever even had feasts either.

If I am king when the war is over I plan to have feasts all the time, and dancing before them too. Everyone just seemed so much happier during feasts, and even the day after. Maybe it was because people could enjoy themselves and not worry about other things, or maybe it was because of the excessive drinking. Either way, I do feel like it is beneficial to the entire kingdom to have social fests such as that.

However, those dances will not be like the homecoming dance.

I expected some sort of tradition, or even one organized dance. That was not the case at all.

All it really was was a large dark room with blaring music that was filled with elegantly dressed high schoolers all trying to do highly inelegant things to one another.

“Are you having fun?!” Katie practically shouted at me over the roar of blasting rap music and obnoxiously singing teenagers.

“Um…” I trailed off for a moment, she probably did not even hear me begin to answer her. Of course I was not having fun. I was miserably pressed up against the warm bodies of strangers who seemed to be controlled by the overwhelming beat of the music. I could barely make out anything because of the darkness and the flashing lights. It was literally one of the worst positions I think I have ever been in. “I guess so!”

Katie just nodded silently and gave me a half-hearted smile. I returned it and shut my eyes for a brief amount of time, trying to find a fleeting moment of peace in the chaos that surrounded me. Then I opened my eyes again to find that the music had switched to a slower pace. Boys and girls began to press their bodies close to each other, swaying softly to the music. Katie looked at the floor and then up at me expectantly.

I looked at Ty who was practically pressed against my backside. Jeanette was holding onto him tightly and he set his chin on her head and held her to his chest.

Katie took my looking at Ty and her friend as an opportunity to attach herself to me. She leaned her head of soft curls onto the front of my pleated shirt and I cringed when I saw her face smudge a bit of tan makeup onto the pristine white fabric. The soft turquoise skirt of her dress flowed around my legs and my feet and I had to make an effort not to step on it. I put my hands on her waist and gritted my teeth together as we moved back and forth.

I was miserable.

Central British Battle Camp, Britain, 647

Five months.

At the end of the fifth month, November, I was stabbed in the gut by a man in a black cloak with two long, curved knives. I had to miss a battle because Merlin said the wound was too deep for me too fight with. He insisted on staying with me to take care of the wound and we sat alone in my tent while the snow came down outside.

I laid in my cot with bandages and poultices in a menagerie over my abdomen while Merlin sat in a chair above me. He watched me while I slept and he fed me and talked to me while I was awake, changing the dressing on my wound every so often.

“Merlin?” I asked him while he mashed some combination of leaves in a wooden bowl. I tried to prop myself up on my elbows and cringed from the pain that shot through me.

“Do not try to get up.” He commanded me and gently pressed my chest down with his hand. “What is it you want?”

“Why are you here?” I croaked.

“I suppose now is as good of time as any.” Merlin muttered. “Do you remember what I said when you took Caliburnus from the stone?”

“You called me a dirty blooded Roman and insisted that Lancelot had done it instead of me.” I recalled. I added, “And I am only a quarter Roman, I am Pictish and my mother was Druid and highlanderish.”

Merlin just looked at me for a moment and proceeded to spread the mashed leaves on the open wound. It stung and made my stomach pulsate in pain and I felt a quiet strangling noise erupt from my throat. “I said that I was meant to guide you, and to protect you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked and he slapped my hand away when I tried to touch my stomach.

“For as long as I lived on Avalon, which is as long as I can remember, I have been groomed to be our protector’s guide, the guide to whoever could pull Caliburnus from the stone.” Merlin explained. “Your guide.”

“Guide to what?” I asked, confused.

“I am not sure yet.” He said quietly. “To being king I presume.”

“Like an advisor?”

He wrapped me in the cloth bandage again and secured it with a pin he had made from a twig. “I do not know Arthur.”

I just laid back and stared at the red tent ceiling. I could hear the softest drifting of snow flakes on and around it. Merlin took the wine skin and poured water into my mouth. I drank and then settled into the cushion that my head was on.

“Did you love her?” I asked finally after a veil of silence.”Viviane?”

I expected him to question my statement or ask what I was talking about but he did not. He merely said, “We are too young to find love Arthur.”

Arthur

Merlin was right. We were too young to find love.

But then, at what age can we truly determine when we are old enough? Love blinds us, or rather, likeness blinds us. I really did believe that I loved Viviane for a while, and then I realized that it was only desperation. The problem is that we cannot realize we have not fallen in love until we have fallen out of it.

However, can age bring us this wisdom? This knowledge of whether we are in love or not? Would I have felt any different about Viviane if I was in the same position I was when I was twenty?

In America, it almost feels like navigating courtship and girls is easier because how much more accessible it was. In America, we were encouraged to form temporary relationships with the purpose of abolishing them within a short period of time. And, while this did seem rather silly, it made everything less permanent. The short relationship I had with Katie seemed fake, like a page from the book of somebody else’s life. The time I spent with Viviane felt explicit, certain, and most of all; real.

Central British Battle Camp, Britain, 647

Six months.

I healed and fought in three battles in December. We fought them knee deep in snow which was rather difficult. Not as many were hurt because it was so hard to fight effectively.

Winter Solstice came and went. There was no tournament in Camelot. There was not enough men to compete because of the war.

Lionel and one of the other older men went to one of the nearby villages and bought two barrels of wassail for us to drink because of the occasion. That was the first time I think I was truly drunk. In Britain, everyone drank some kind of alcohol at supper, unlike in America, but never before had I just continued to consume the warm liquid until I felt my senses droop into a rather sedentary state and I did not feel like I had to think about the war, or anything of importance.

The next morning I felt terrible, but it was almost worth it to forget everything for the night.

Colorado Springs, America, 2010

It was my third Christmas in America, and I had most certainly developed the warm and superficial love of the sweet, plasticky holiday that was so prominent in the minds of Americans.

I remember that one day Miss Marion drove me home from club football practice near the beginning of december and the entire house smelled like the cinnamon candles she had set all about the house. It was a comforting smell, warm, however, at the same time it reminded of winter solstice feast there, like we used to have when my mother was still alive and I lived in Camelot. Cinnamon, and other nice spices such as that were sort of a status symbol there, so my family always had quite an excessive amount of it, especially around winter solstice. In our food, our ale, our candles, even our perfumes reeked of spices. I reminisced for a moment about when my mother used to embrace me and cover me with her cloak when it snowed. She smelled just like the Ectors’ house did now. Instead of feeling happy for the warm, Christmassy smell, I simply felt tears begin to well in my eyes for my mother. I shook my head out for a second and then let my familiar glare take over my face, I could not afford feel sad about anything, neither here nor there. I could not afford weakness.

“Are you okay Arthur?” Miss Marion asked me as she caught me glaring at a red candle as if it was the object of all my woes.

“I’m fine.” I said quickly. “...just tired.”

She gave me half a smile. “We’re going Christmas tree shopping tomorrow.”

“Fun.” I tried to smile back at her but I assumed it appeared just as weak as it felt. Decorating trees was also just a Winter Solstice that the British and the Germans had adopted as a Christian tradition. When I was nine my mother, Lancelot, and I, had gone out to the roads with some strands of preserved flowers and strung them over the bare branches of the weeping willows at Avalon. Part of the lake had frozen over that winter and he and I had quite a time experiencing ice skating for the first time in history. My mother had just sat on the bank and applauded us as we fell on our tailbones time after time again.

I missed those days.