‘And you,’ said my mother, coming towards me, ‘was I such a cruel mother that you hate me so?’

‘Y-Y-Y-Y-Yes, M-M-M-M-Mother,’ I said, my heart pounding. ‘Y-Y-Y-Y-You were.’ In all honesty my feelings were more complex than simple hatred – part of me, even at that moment, longed more than anything for the tiniest hint of my mother’s love – but I had no intention of showing more weakness than she could already see before her.

She stopped in her tracks, and looked between Nerina and me: once, twice, three times. I noted to my surprise that even in my natural form I was now taller than the woman who had always seemed so huge to me.

‘And Neave?’ she asked Nerina. ‘Was I so cruel to Neave that I gave her reason to betray me? That she loved that pretty knight and hid her child from me? Her son?’ She spat the word ‘son’ like it was a dirty word. ‘The son she hides from me even now?’

‘Neave’s gone, Mother,’ said Nerina. ‘The boy-child disappeared, if he ever existed.’

‘Has he now? Has she? Nemone... Nemone is gone. I felt her go. But Neave? The lying, ungrateful, disrespectful, dishonest, spiteful girl.’

‘Merlin told us she was lost at Spar-Longius, Mother,’ said Nerina.

‘That trickster!’ said my mother. She took my chin in her hand and examined my face. I wanted to break and run from her, but knew that would be futile.

‘W-W-W-Where are my friends, M-Mother?’

She laughed cruelly, and didn’t answer. ‘Let us see what you have seen.’

My face become wet as water rushed from her hand.

And she was in my mind.

The Lady Nemue was a more accomplished reader of memories than me. I felt her expertly diving this way and that through the flooded tunnels of my mind. Although I tried to force everything down, to keep my memories away from her gaze, my effort was futile; her water dislodged my thoughts from where they were anchored, floating them hard and fast to the surface. Everything that had happened to me since Dinadan took me away from the Lands of the Lake – everything I’d seen, said and felt – quickly became as much a part of my mother’s memories as they were of mine.

She released me when it was done, and now I staggered to the floor.

‘You little fool,’ she said, wiping her hands as if they were dirty. ‘You spent all that time with the child Galahad and you did not see him. The old druid told you he was our family’s other disappointment, and still you failed to see. Nerina, put him with the other three.’

‘Where are you going, Mother?’ said Nerina. Lady Nemue was at the door.

‘North, to pay King Lot a visit,’ she said. ‘I am going to bring your sister and my grandson home.’

* * *

‘She’s m-m-m-mad,’ I said as Nerina dragged me through the corridors of the castle. ‘L-L-L-Let me g-go, please, N-N-N-Nerina. I-I-I-I’ve n-not seen N-N-Neave, or her s-s-s-s-son. L-Let m-me and m-my friends go. M-M-Merlin is at the g-gates; he’s c-c-c-coming for the L-Lands of the L-Lake.’

‘I’m sure he is,’ said Nerina. Though I was struggling with her, she held me with very little effort. ‘But the only way to ensure Natalie’s safety from Merlin is to bring Neave here, and keep you too. If Mother believes Neave is with King Lot then I bow to that belief. As I said: she is no fool. I will not have my daughter harmed, brother. I would gladly kill you to make her safe if I could, but if we learned one thing from your infancy, it is that our magic cannot end your miserable life. So here you and your portion of our powers stay.’

She had brought me to a large chamber I had never been allowed into before, in the very lowest part of the castle. It was bare apart from a few burning torches, and a well with a low wall in the centre of the room. As we approached, I saw that a thick cap of ice sealed the well’s circular opening. Nerina turned the icecap into a cloud of water vapour with a tap of her finger, and held me over the drop.

I looked down at the black chasm below me in terror.

‘N-Nerina, n-no. Please.’

‘This is our mother’s well,’ she said. ‘You can greet your friends a final time, if they have not already drowned.’ And with that she pushed me over the edge.

I tumbled into the blackness for I don’t know how long. My foot caught on the wall, sending me spinning. I howled in pain and in terror as one of my collisions with the stone bent my arm back into an unnatural position, tearing the shoulder from its socket. My head cracked against the wall, and then I knew nothing until I crashed down into cold water. I plunged very deep into the cold darkness, sobbing over my hurts. I felt the healing watersnakes grow from my fingers and start mending my injuries.

Eventually I managed to identify which way was up and which down by the very faint pinprick of light high above me. I kicked towards the surface, just as something floated across the light. It was a very still something.

I broke into the air and found the thing bobbing against me. I reached out to touch it: deathly cold skin, soaked clothes, and a thin rope. It was definitely a human figure, a girl, but she wasn’t moving at all. I felt along the rope and found that it was tied by one wrist to another, smaller girl, who in turn was tied to a much larger boy. The boy had found some hold which he had used to tie himself to the stone. Although I couldn’t see them in the dark, the three were surely Brunor, Petal and Bellina. They had lashed themselves together so they didn’t drop to the bottom and drown.

But it hadn’t worked. I had felt nothing of them when I crashed into the water, and could feel nothing of them now. They were dead, or so close to death as made no difference.

Nerina stared down at me from one hundred feet above for a moment. Then she held her hand over the opening, and the icecap once more sealed the well. I unhitched Brunor’s dead arm from the wall, and began pouring water out of myself to raise the water-level. It would be a long job, but if I could float the bodies up to the surface, hopefully I would be allowed to give them a proper burial, rather than this watery grave.

To my surprise the watersnakes did not dissipate when my arm was whole again. Instead they jumped from my body to the corpses of the other three. The snakes were searching for flickers of life in them; a search I knew was futile.

The snakes were wiser than me.

After a minute or two I felt a long mental groan through the water, and then another. Then I heard a gasp and a splutter from Bellina’s mouth. The watersnakes were working at three slow pulses of frozen life. We were rising, the four of us, and as the watersnakes did their work my three friends were warming. If they had been wholly dead then I don’t think there was anything I could have done for them, but by keeping themselves afloat they had preserved just enough of themselves to allow the watersnakes to do their work.

As they warmed, their thoughts began to leak into the water. I cried out in happiness, but as I did, and the water levels rose, their thoughts became louder and more confusing. I tried to block them out of my mind, but as they warmed and woke, the dissonant voices of Bellina, Brunor and Petal crowded into my mind, overwhelming my own thoughts. We were rising, rising, but I was losing my grip on myself. The memories of the others were crowding me out of my own mind.

‘Daddy,’ said the first memory. ‘There,’ said the second.‘Ma,’ said the third. They went on all together, speaking and showing all over each other: is is says: unhappy nothing  ‘You with quite haveme. so to He pleasurable besays as respectful I lying to killed here the mummy in masters, and the but must sun. you be I don’t happy love have with my to the dusty love new land, them. mummy with It’she its fine found green tofor vines. have me. I a But love bitI to o’ hate pluck what her, the theI grapes writers really and call hate dash irony her. away in Really, from your really, the dealings hate old with her vintner ’em....

I screamed as their memories surged through me. And then I must have fainted, crushed beneath the tidal waves of their recovering minds.