Fairy Tale | tjlaverne

Fairy Tale from The Drupe of Immortality

© Copyright T.J. Laverne

Cadoc of the Lake

It was midnight, and the lake in which the lady resided at the foot of the mountains was as silent and still as the forest surrounding it. Until, of course, the newborn infant emerged from the glassy surface of the water and was set upon the shore, and then its deafening wails broke through the peaceful slumber of every squirrel, rabbit and deer, who all arose with squeaks and chirps of indignation. Just as the friendly forest creatures had joined ranks against the pesky infant, a bearded man in long underwear ran up to the scene and rescued the poor infant from the cold night air, carrying him away to his little cottage in the woods.

Years later, the infant was a boy on the brink of manhood, and was just at the point in a boy’s life when, if adventure didn’t find him soon, he would run off to find it for himself. For most boys, this adventure came in the shape of a narrow waist and long, golden hair, but for Cadoc (for that was his name), there was another adventure in store.

Cadoc’s life was just as any other boy’s in that particular time and place. Every morning he was forcibly dragged from his warm bed so that he could walk several miles, uphill, to a drafty, yet equally stuffy room, in which he would drift in and out of consciousness while a woman (or a man) droned on for the next several hours about Kings and Queens, and the proper structure of a sentence. And then he would walk several miles back home, uphill, only to fall asleep, wake up, and do the whole thing all over again.

And yet Cadoc was also quite different from other boys of that time and place, in that which he dreamt of in his many hours of unconsciousness. Whereas Timothy and Joseph dreamt about Susan and Mary and a veritable smorgasbord of meats and pies, Cadoc also dreamt about Susan and Mary, but in a much different setting. For he also dreamt of mermaids and fairies, and ogres and giants, and, on more nights than he could count, of a sword in a stone, and knights in silver armor sitting around a round table in a large castle.

As the young boy grew into a young man, the dreams grew more frequent, and the waking hours more discontent. For though Cadoc dozed more often during his lessons of history and politics and the dealings of Kings and Queens, he listened all the more intently when he did not. The more he discovered and learned of the evils and the injustices of the world, the more he yearned for the paradise and chivalry of Camelot.

Needless to say, the evils of the world reached a peak on the day he learned of his obscure beginnings. Yes . . . Cadoc was not the son of the bearded goon and the plump shrieker who had raised him, but a son of no-one-knows-who. He was an orphan — an abandoned child of the forest — with no past, and, if things continued to play out the way they had for the previous 16 years, no future worth mentioning. With tears in his eyes and a heart full of fire and ice, Cadoc ran away from his little cottage, the only home he had known, in search of the mysterious setting of his birth at the foot of the mountains, and immediately got lost. For, of course, he had forgotten to ask for directions.

Cadoc wandered through the same ancient trees of oak and beech for hours, drifting in an endless circle which unknowingly circled round and round the very lake from which he had been delivered. The shadows of night began to fall and his stomach to squeak, when his legs at last surrendered and his will caught in his throat. And then he fell face-first into the hard, cold forest floor, where he remained all that night and the following day.

When the evening shadows fell upon him for the second time, the surrounding oaks loomed ominously in and out of his dreams, and he fancied he heard a quiet stirring in the twisted brambles only feet from where he lay. The stirring grew louder, until Cadoc was quite certain some grizzly creature had come to rip his head from his neck. He lifted from the ground in an attempt to meet the creature with some dignity left, but as he rose to his feet, his heart stopped cold in his chest. Instead of a creature, a ghostly figure in white, much more fearsome than any bear or beast, glided amongst the towering oaks, making its way directly for the weary boy.

Cadoc caught his breath and peered between the spindly branches of the nearest oak, and the ghostly figure in white peered back, its black eyes glittering in the gleam of the moonlight. It was some several minutes before Cadoc took in another breath, when the moonlight at last illuminated two very large, curved antlers and a velvety black nose at the end of a long snout. The large, black eyes blinked, and the snout found its way into the palm of Cadoc’s hand as if in a friendly greeting. Cadoc let out a shaky breath, but the large, white stag at once retreated and bounded majestically into the shadows of the oaks, stopping only briefly for a final glance back at Cadoc.

Cadoc’s smile lowered into a frown, and in the next second a small creature on four legs knocked him straight from his feet and to the ground below, where he landed square upon his back, gasping for his breath.

Cadoc clutched at the leafy forest floor as his lungs struggled to find air, and the small creature jumped upon his stomach, its long tongue wagging an inch from his nose. The air whooshed through his windpipe with an unnerving rattle, and Cadoc grabbed at the neck of the hound upon his stomach, pulling him away with a yelp. The hound rebounded with determination and struck again, this time laying a wet kiss upon the boy’s mouth.

“Get off, you mangy mutt! Get off!” his voice cracked.

The hound did not listen, but continued its assault with the same vigor. As the large, drooling tongue found its way down Cadoc’s neck, Cadoc began, inexplicably, to giggle. As if this had been the hound’s intention all along, it jumped from Cadoc’s stomach and ran to the nearest oak tree. With a spirited glance back in Cadoc’s direction, the hound gave a high yip and a wag of his tail, and sprinted after the ghostly stag.

Cadoc hesitated for all of one second, then, with a smirk of happy mischief, he bounded after the hound and the stag.

Meandering his way around birch and pine trees, he followed the yips of the hound, giggling and panting heavily in his excitement. Before the yips had stopped, Cadoc entered a wide clearing at the foot of the snowy mountains, and nearly plummeted head-first into a lake of still glass. His last giggle caught in the air in a cloud of frost, and the lake and the surrounding woods echoed in the eerie silence which followed. The hound and the stag were nowhere to be seen; not even the wind stirred a breath. Cadoc stared gape-mouthed at the still surface of the clear lake, and the moonlight reflected easily off the flat, sandy bottom some several feet below.

Looking up, Cadoc once again spotted the ghostly stag and the hound, trailing off into the foot of the mountains on the opposite shore of the glassy lake. Cadoc shook his head. It was impossible. The lake was several thousand feet around — even a boat ride across would take some ten minutes — and yet the stag and the hound had breached it in a matter of seconds. His indignation drove him to extremes (he was just a boy after all), and he bounded at once into the deep waters of the glassy lake.

Yet his foot did not sink, but instead touched solid ground. Cadoc looked down and saw that the glassy lake had miraculously vanished, and he stood, instead, upon the same forest floor upon which he had slept and walked the previous night and day. The barks of the hound rang crystal clear in his ears, and his feet carried him, as if by their own will, after the sound. Within minutes he was in the very center of the snowy mountains, and then the whole earth beneath him began to quake.

Cadoc cowered to the ground, shuddering in the fear he should have felt moments before. He watched in awe as the mountains around him began to break and move apart, as if to allow some invisible, colossal figure through its depths. But Cadoc saw that it was not a colossal figure, but an entire village. Houses of stone and wood emerged from the ground by the hundred, until the village became a city. But it was unlike any city Cadoc had ever seen. It was both ancient and peaceful, as if it had been preserved from some far and distant past, in a time when life moved more slowly, and men were courtly and chivalrous.

A sparkling river wound its way through forests and around green hillocks like a silver ribbon; and last but not least, high above the rest, a magnificent castle of stone towers and pointed turrets, and more than one drawbridge, rose as if to reach the clouds of the heavens, as the pinnacle of the shining village surrounding it.

Cadoc fell to his knees at the mercy of the vision before him, and stared for what seemed hours. It was the echoing bark of his hound which at last roused him from his meditations, and it was only in that moment that he registered the complete and consuming silence which hung over the blissful city before him. Rising instantly to his feet, he once again chased the sounds of the yips. The white stag and the spirited hound leapt with striking agility across green hills and ancient forests, but Cadoc was obliged to stop his pursuit when he reached a square meadow just outside the city.

There, in the center of the green meadow, was a spectacle like none Cadoc had yet imagined, even in his deepest of dreams. A crowd of medieval spectators, in doublets and tunics and hose, encircled a pair of magnificent knights in shining armor upon equally shiny horses, as they squared against one another in a tournament of jousting. And yet more miraculous than this was that the knights and the medieval spectators were utterly frozen amidst their acts of cheering and rearing, as if time itself had stopped moving, for them and for no one else.

Cadoc approached the nearest knight on his tip-toes, at first awe-struck by his majesty, and then he brushed lightly upon the flanks of the horse. It felt real enough, but neither the horse nor the knight made a movement. He grazed a finger upon the shiny metal of the knight’s armor, and then waved a hand before the man’s glassy, unseeing blue eyes. The blue eyes continued to stare without seeing, and the man continued to rear his horse without rearing. Letting out an exasperated sigh, Cadoc once again heard the beckoning bark of his hound. With a final glance at the frozen knight, Cadoc followed.

Trailing now down a dirt path through the center of the city, Cadoc passed by silent houses of wood and equally silent churches of stone. Stopping to peek through the window of a particularly cheerful wooden cottage, Cadoc’s eyes fell upon a frozen family of five in the middle of supper, their smiles forever etched upon their faces. Cadoc cringed and moved on.

The hound and the stag seemed to be leading him toward the glorious castle in the center of the city, and Cadoc’s heart began to race in anticipation. When he reached it, the castle loomed higher, it seemed to him, than the surrounding snow-capped mountains. Happily, he discovered that one of the twelve drawbridges had been let down to allow a carriage and a procession of servants through, and the stag, the hound and Cadoc all passed by them easily. Passing through a wooden door tall enough to fit two of the tallest men standing one on top of the other, Cadoc entered a great, empty hall, as silent as it was magnificent.

Down the empty hall, lined with torches of roaring flames, Cadoc passed tapestries depicting tournaments, crusades, and resplendent acts of honor and nobility, and furniture so old that he was afraid they would break into a million pieces if touched. Cadoc restrained himself and followed the hound, past several closed doors and darkened rooms, and towards the central chamber.

And then, there it was, just as he had dreamt it for 16 years. High above him, the vaulted ceiling loomed almost beyond sight in a room that was indescribably large. Around him, stained glass windows painted the room with reds and blues and greens and yellows, as they depicted figures of knights and ladies of the court. And in front of him, in the center of it all, was the legendary Round Table, around which sat twelve of the highest order of knights, frozen amidst their chivalric meeting.

Cadoc ceased breathing, and the thuds of his boots echoed in the enormous vaulted ceiling as his feet brought him towards the fabled vision, preserved through the storybooks of time. He looked into the noble faces around the table, and named them one by one: Galahad, Percival, Gawain, Lancelot . . . and then, sitting upon a high-backed wooden chair of carved oak, Arthur. Cadoc fell to the floor beside the frozen king and wept, glad that there was no one present to witness such an embarrassing display of emotion.

After he had looked long into the face of his favorite king, a familiar yip echoed off every surface of wood and stone. Cadoc jerked out of his reverie almost unpleasantly. The hound yipped a second time, and Cadoc jumped from his station beside the Round Table and bound from the enormous chamber, back out to the hall of tapestries. Following the barks through the massive wooden door of the front entrance, he flew down the drawbridge, down the dirt path through the center of the city, and came upon a wooded forest. He skidded to a halt at the edge of the wood, and the barks once again grew silent.

Cadoc was now thoroughly agitated. Why, oh why had his pesky hound brought him out to this dreary wood, when he could be mingling still with his frozen knights? His question was answered by a quiet moan of the utmost suffering. Cadoc looked down to an innocent-looking rock and cocked a suspicious eyebrow. Why should a rock have reason to moan and suffer? He stared at the innocent rock for all of ten more minutes before it decided to moan a second time. Cadoc was now quite certain the rock was in the severest of pain. Kneeling down to his knees, he placed a consoling hand upon the smooth, curved surface, turned it over on its side, and jumped back at least ten feet.

Beneath the rock lay the squashed figure of a man. In the second in which Cadoc gaped at him, the squashed man slowly unfolded with many a snap and a painful groan, until a full-grown man in a blue cloak, a pointed hat and a long gray beard stood smiling at the boy.

“I thank you, son,” the bearded man held out his arms. He stopped almost at once and put a hand to his back with a pained groan. “That damned rock has not done much for my rheumatism!”

Cadoc stuttered and stammered for quite some time before anything intelligible came out. “Are you — are you Merlin?”

Merlin gave a great smile and attempted to straighten, though he was mostly unsuccessful. “I am. I see my reputation has preceded me. But before we get carried away with pleasantries, I believe I have a city to tend to.”

With a quick wink, the old man stepped forward, raised his palms to the heavens, and began, inexplicably, to sing. Cadoc could not deny that it was a rather catchy tune, and Merlin’s voice proved to be quite intoxicating to the ear. As he listened, Cadoc soon forgot his confusion and alarm, and had fallen completely under the spell of Merlin’s music. And then the song ended and the cloud lifted, and Cadoc watched in wonder as the city of Camelot teemed with renewed life, freed at last from the bonds of time.

“Your mother has done it again,” Merlin grumbled irritably. “First she banishes me to a godforsaken rock, then she places all of Camelot under her confounded spell for 700 years! What will she think of next?”

“I beg your pardon? My mother?” Cadoc’s voice cracked in a high-pitched squeak.

Merlin cocked a quizzical eyebrow and appeared slightly disturbed. “I beg your pardon. Am I to understand you are unfamiliar with your own heritage, young Cadoc? Tell me,” he hesitated with considerable awkwardness. “Do you know the identity of your own parents?”

Cadoc shook his head. He shifted uncomfortably and his chest began to burn as he waited in fearful agony for Merlin to continue. He did not for some time.

“Well . . . you are looking at one of them,” Merlin opened his arms quite sheepishly with a hesitant smile.

“You?” Cadoc breathed. Merlin gave a significant nod. “And — and my mother?”

“I believe you crossed over her lake upon entering Camelot. Her name is Niniane: the Lady of the Lake. Don’t ask me how such a union transpired,” he added brusquely, his face reddening to a beautiful shade of crimson. “It’s not a particularly appropriate yarn for such a young lad.” He gave a whimsical sort of smile, and appeared as if he were intoxicated for several seconds.

“I am sorry, Merlin,” Cadoc looked down to the ground in anguish, “I would love to believe what you say, but you have the wrong boy. I was born only 16 years ago, while you have been under that rock for 700 years.”

Merlin took out a strange-looking pipe and was distracted for several minutes as he tried to light it. He shook his head. “Yes, you were born 16 years ago, but you were conceived 700 years ago.” When Cadoc made a face, he continued. “Time passes more slowly in the Otherworld, my boy. That is where your mother resides, see? What was 700 years to us, was nine months to her.”

Cadoc fell to his knees before Merlin and lowered his head with more yearning in his heart than he could bear. “But can I not see her? What was she like? Is she pretty?” He stopped and shook his head. “Is she kind?” he modified.“

All in good time, son,” Merlin placed a hand upon the boy’s head. “You will meet her soon enough, and then you may wish you hadn’t,” he scoffed, though his beard twitched with a smile. “But for now, young Cadoc, it is time for you to take your rightful place among the Knights of the Round Table.”

Cadoc lifted his head to the wizard, feeling a weakness in his brain. “Am I a knight?”

“Most certainly you are,” Merlin scowled as if in offence. “You are the son of Merlin, are you not?”

Though Cadoc rose again to his feet, he was not aware of having done so. He found himself blindly following Merlin through the forests and hillocks of Camelot, and was only aware of himself again once he had reached the hillock upon which the jousting tournament was in full roar. Standing a distance away, Cadoc watched the silver knights gleam in the morning sun as the crowd cheered and the lances soared. He thought of Arthur and Lancelot, and of sitting at last beside them at their round table, as he had dreamt for so many years, and tears filled his eyes.

“If it’s all the same, sir, I think I will turn back.”

“Turn back?” Merlin said sharply.

Cadoc swallowed heavily as his eyes turned to the shining castle of Camelot. “My . . . mother and father will be waiting for me. You see, they raised me since birth, and . . . I will always love them for that. No offense, sir.” Merlin’s white beard twitched, but then he gave a sympathetic nod. “If I keep following you, I know I will never turn back. I cannot simply run away from my problems and abandon everything I have ever known, all for the sake of a . . . of a fantasy. I have to finish school, and . . . my friends. . . .” He could say no more.

Merlin contemplated. “You will always be a Knight of the Round Table, my son.”

“I know that,” Cadoc nodded. “But Camelot already has twelve. And the rest of the world has none. They have a greater need for me. Don’t you agree, sir?”

Merlin’s beard twitched again, but then he smiled. “You’re a clever boy. You get that from me.” Merlin pulled Cadoc into a forceful hug, then coughed upon his shoulder and pushed him away. “Come back whenever you wish, young Cadoc.”

But Cadoc did not return for some 71 years. For a long while, through his young adult years, Cadoc clung desperately to the tale of his adventures in Camelot; but over the years, through the snide comments and the skepticism of others, he began to doubt it had been anything more than a creation of his imagination.

Only when Cadoc was 87 years old and lying on his death bed did his sons, Evan and Iago, begin to listen to their father. On his final day of life, they carried him through the forest of his birth, across the lake of the lady and into the mountains, through forests and fields and down the dirt streets of the city which never changed, and placed him for the very first time in his rightful seat at the Round Table, where he thereafter died, an hour later. He was placed in the tombs of St. Stephen’s, beside his brothers in arms — a true knight to the very end.