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IN THE
MERE
Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran,
And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged
Among the bulrush-beds, and clutched the sword,
And strongly wheeled and threw it. The great brand
Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch,
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock
By night, with noises of the northern sea.
So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur:
But ere he dipped the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
And caught him by the hilt, and brandished him
Three times, and drew him under in the mere.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Idylls of the King
XVII THE STAR
The Lady of the Lake
So they rode till they came to a lake, which was a fair water and broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was aware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand. With that they saw a damosel floating upon the lake. What damosel is that? said Arthur. That is the Lady of the Lake, said Merlin; and within that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any on earth, and richly beseen; and this damosel will come to you anon, and then speak ye fair to her that she will give you a sword.
—Sir Thomas Malory
Le Morte d’Arthur
What damosel is this? What damosel is this? Perhaps I am nothing but a white arm. Perhaps the body which is me diffuses at the water’s surface into nothing but light, light and wetness and blue. Maybe I am nothing but samite, pregnant with silver, and out of those sleeves come endless swords, dropping like lakelight from my hems. Will you come down to me and discover if my body continues below the rippling?
I thought not.
Look out: the lake’s edges blur into the sky, blue to blue. All water flows into itself—this is the lake; this is the sea. River and shore and flux, we are all water together, and the moon shows in one just as in the other, a wide white face and a long white arm.
In the quiet of the dark I have lapped milk from the dish of the moon, and thought nothing of swords. In the dark of the quiet I have opened my mouth to let the lake through, and the run-off has been afloat with stars. And I thought nothing of hilts or pommels or earnest young men with unconventional grocery lists. Take your basket through the fields—what does the boy need for his magic kingdom? A magic birth, a magic man, a magic crown, a magic sheath, a magic sword. I am last of all—you stand on my white-sand shore and all you need is the sword to set it all going, like a huge dial in some terrible wind-up clock made of women’s limbs and men’s bones and so much gold, so much gold—lift the samite drop-cloth with a flourish and it all begins, it all goes along as the best of the angels of predestination would have it. All you need is the sword. How fortunate for you that we have one in stock.
The little waves wash over your feet, but they do not anoint them. The foam is sweet, but there is salt in the depths. Salt and me. It was good of you to come so far out of the world, so far across green squares of turnip farms and thorny apple orchards and a bridge whose suspensors are strung with the heads of all the kings who have tried to take the sword before you—covered in a sheen of melted pearl and lit up with fire. Check your map: if there are dragons here, I am a dragon, deep in the creases of my lake. Look at your map, Merlin-blessed, and see how far you have come, where the bridge leads and what it spans—it spans the distance between here and there, the rooted compass and the wheeling north, between Camelot and Faery, between the places you would drape with light until there is nothing but radiance and those places whose darkness you cannot begin to touch. Between yourself and your opposite. Between you and I. It arches through the ether; it goes to Annwn, to Avalon. To the otherworld, the otherplace, the othered place.
It goes to the New World. The place where maps shrivel and sodden, where the earth drops into water and water drops into earth. It goes to the sharp margin of everything that is, and there the knight finds the New World, the farthest west, and learns to whisper a word he has never heard: Cal-i-forni-a. Whisper it, breathe it, drink it from the droplets of the lake. This is the name of Annwn, of Avalon, this is the name of the underworld. It is written over the gates in chalcedony and drywall. On the other side of the bridge there was no fiat lux, only this one word. Say it and it will keep you safe.
I, too, am always at the other side, I and all my brothers and sisters, I and everything which has no place within civilized mortar-and-brick. You must come out to us, again and again, for we are the source of your magic births, your magic men, your magic crowns, your magic sheaths, and your magic swords. It is the chief industry of your reign, the commerce between your world and mine.
