Every Time

The first time I met Arthur, we were both young and stupid. I was younger than him, actually—by about two years; not a lot of people know that. To be honest, I don’t think I could have existed without him. Gods know I don’t do a very good job of it now.

I moved to Camelot at eighteen years old with the intention of studying to become a bard—and of studying magic. I had no idea how much my life was about to change. I didn’t plan on staying any longer than it took to complete my studies. I was certain my destiny lay elsewhere.

And then I saw him, and everything did and didn’t make sense.

He was an ass; not a lot of people know that either. Perhaps one could forgive him on the basis that every twenty-year-old is a bit of an ass, but being younger than him and infinitely more mature (in my own opinion) was unbearably frustrating. Granted, being older than him hasn’t made it any less frustrating. Across lifetimes, Arthur usually only becomes tolerable some time in his late twenties or early thirties—quite a shame for someone who has very few times lived to see forty.

People sometimes speak of Arthur’s reign as a Golden Age in Britain’s history, but those “ages” have never lasted more than a decade. And every one has ended exactly the same: with Arthur dead at the hands of someone he dared to trust. A friend, a lover, a sister, a son, a brother-in-arms. It wasn’t always the same person—no, that would make things too easy—but betrayal seems to be an essential part of the equation.

The cruelty of the gods can be matched by no mortal man. There’s a reason we’re not on speaking terms any more.

If you’ve ever lost someone you love, you know how hard it was. Imagine just as you start to think maybe you might possibly be able to begin moving on, he comes back. And he has no idea who you are. And then a day or a year or a decade later, you’re forced to watch him die, his last moments bathed in blood and betrayal. And then it happens again. And again. And again…

But before I knew any of that, Arthur was simply a prince—and a pompous, patronizing, pretentious prat. Actually, in our first meeting, I didn’t know the first part. Not until he was having me arrested for trying to punch him in the face. Only then did I learn he was the son of the King of Camelot.

Yes, that Arthur didn’t earn his throne through conquest or even by pulling a sword from a stone; he inherited it from his father, along with his anger, arrogance, and—at times—cruelty. Being raised by a tyrant like Uthyr Pendragon is perhaps a better reason to forgive him of his flaws than his age, but what do I know? I never needed a reason to forgive Arthur in the first place. Because unfortunately, I was hopelessly, helplessly in love with the idiot.

I still am, fifteen centuries later. I’ve never figured out how to fall out of love with someone, and I’m sure him popping up again every hundred years or so hasn’t helped at all.

Every Arthur is different, of course, as is my relationship with him. I’ve loved every version of him, but I’ve only been in love with a couple, and none so intensely as the first. I don’t think any will ever compare to that Arthur—as shocking as it may have sounded to me when I was sitting in a dungeon cell for daring to stand up to a bully. But a lot happened in the twenty years between that day and the day he bled out in my arms in the middle of a battlefield, my magic useless, my pleas to the gods unanswered. That day, my rage brought down every soldier still standing—on the enemy’s side and our own. My despair shook the Earth itself. My tears flooded the lands. If Arthur didn’t get to live, why should anyone?

And after throwing the world’s biggest tantrum, what did I do? I ran. I hid. I walked into the woods and found myself a nice cave to live out the rest of my days.

It actually ended up being about fifty years. I had a vision one day that a descendant of Arthur’s would soon be born and would bear his name. I’d already spurned all the gods and humans alike, so at first I ignored it.

The gods don’t like being ignored. Hypocrites.

I was annoyed out of my cave and arrived back in Camelot the same day the baby was born. I knew instantly upon seeing him that this Arthur and mine shared more than a name; they shared a soul. Arthur had been reborn.

In those first few moments that I held the baby Arthur in my arms, my mind worked very quickly.

Arthur was back. He had a second chance—I had a second chance.

I couldn’t fuck it up this time.

In my years of solitude, I’d done almost nothing but think, my mind turning over the events of the previous twenty years—and the twenty before I even met Arthur. There was endless number of mistakes—mine and others’—I could point to that led to Arthur’s death.

Right now, the only thing I could change was how he was raised.

This Arthur’s parents were nothing like Uthyr. One of them was even a descendant of my own. I had no reason not to trust them. I knew they could provide him a perfectly happy childhood, one where he would want for nothing; he would be loved, adored, protected, pampered, spoiled…

I saw his whole future laid out in my mind already, and I didn’t like what I saw.

It wasn’t easy to convince the King and Queen, but I took Arthur to be raised by a knight. He would still be raised as a noble, but he would have no reason to believe he was better than the son of any other knight—and if his father couldn’t keep him humble, his older brother Kay certainly would. I’ve heard siblings are good for that sort of thing.

Figuring he was perfectly safe where he was, and my services wouldn’t be needed again until Arthur was King, I went back to my cave to wait.

And then the King and Queen both died long before Arthur was ready to be King, and I had to act fast before the kingdom tore itself apart trying to decide who should inherit the throne.

I’ll admit the whole ‘sword in the stone’ thing was a bit over the top—especially considering my previous goal of keeping Arthur humble—but the people needed proof that Arthur really was who I said he was, and nothing less than a miracle would suffice.

In the end, it didn’t matter. I tried my best to help and advise the boy, but he was still a child sitting on a throne that was much too big for him wearing a crown that was much too heavy. He had too many people around him who envied his power, and he didn’t know who to trust.

He didn’t make it to adulthood, and Camelot didn’t last much longer after that.

It was a while before Arthur returned again, and he didn’t have a kingdom to inherit, only a name and a destiny. Raised on stories of his own past life, he was determined to rebuild Camelot from the ground up. He gathered his own knights and formed his own Round Table. He built his own castle, his own kingdom.

And he did it without my help.

Perhaps he never needed my help in the first place. Perhaps I was the one who’d doomed him from the beginning. I checked in on him every once in a while, but he seemed to be doing fine. A little overwhelmed with responsibilities he’d never learned how to manage, but he was doing alright.

He even lived long enough to not only have a son but to see his son become a Knight of the Round Table.

A son who turned out to be impatient to take the throne for himself.

Arthur often had siblings, but most of them were younger or bastards or both, so their claim to the throne was tenuous at best, so they were rarely my biggest concern. The tended to fall somewhere between supportive and indifferent.

And then he was born to parents who already had a daughter—and a legitimate one this time. The way the laws of inheritance were set up in Camelot at this time, he was still placed above his sister in line just by virtue of his sex, but if Morgen grew up to be anything like her past selves I’d met, there was no way she would stand for that.

And yes, I know she would be right, but my judgment has always been clouded where Arthur is involved. It was his destiny I cared about, not hers. I wasn’t cruel enough to kill her—despite what some of the stories may imply about me—but I still needed her out of the way.

At the time, I thought my solution was quite clever. I wouldn’t have to worry about her fighting for her place on the throne if she simply had no interest in being Queen.

Even at a young age, Morgen showed great potential with magic, and as I said, I’d known her in past lives as well, so I knew how powerful she could be if her gifts were nurtured properly. I could have, and had previously, taught her myself, but I was not suited to raise her. No, I brought her to the Isle of Avalon, where she would grow up among other girls like herself, completely safe from the world of mortal men. She would become a High Priestess, far more powerful than a queen of a small human kingdom.

For years, Morgen seemed content with this life, studying magic, making friends, communing with the gods, growing more powerful by the day. But as I’m sure the Lady of the Lake would tell you, I apparently know nothing about humans. I’ve spent too much time away from them, I suppose. I missed signs that in retrospect should have been obvious.

Encouraging Morgen to learn magic did not dispel her desire for her brother’s throne in the least; it gave her exactly the tools she needed to take it.

After that, I ensured that Arthur and any siblings he had were raised together, fostering a bond between them that they wouldn’t even consider breaking. (And hopefully reducing the risk of them… forming a different kind of bond.) For the most part, this strategy proved more successful than the other. Unfortunately, betrayal didn’t only come from family.

The most famous betrayal in all of King Arthur’s lives is that of Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot. It’s one of my least favorite stories. In ninety percent of the lives where the three of them met, there was no betrayal at all. But of course, happy relationships don’t make for good stories.

I confess I discovered the affair between Guinevere and Lancelot very early on, but I didn’t think anything of it. Arthur and Lancelot had always loved each other as much as either of them loved Guinevere, and despite Arthur’s tendency toward jealousy and possessiveness, the three of them were usually able to work things out. In their first life, pretty much the entire Round Table were together in some form or another, and while I won’t pretend things were perfect, I can assure you no wars were started over who was sleeping with whom.

I assumed this was no different, that Arthur knew, that he and Lancelot were also together—just more subtle about it. They were as close as ever, and I could tell they loved each other. My mistake was assuming the two men were aware of their own feelings and had acted on them.

There wasn’t a war—that story was greatly exaggerated—but things did end in tragedy.

To say Arthur was angry when he caught Lancelot and Guinevere together would be the world’s biggest understatement. He instantly drew his sword and challenged Lancelot to a duel.

It was the middle of the night, they were in some otherwise insignificant corridor of the palace, and neither man wore armor. The duel was messy, ignored all the typical standards, and ended as suddenly as it began.

It was a duel that had no victor.

As was often the case, I arrived too late to save either of them, even with my most powerful healing spells.

I have watched Arthur die thirteen times now. I won’t bore you with the details of every story; I’m sure they’re already getting repetitive, but I’ll leave you with one more, the last time I saw Arthur.

There was a war on. The Great War, I think, but it might have been the second one. There are so many wars, they all blur together after a while. I remember finding the title “The War to End All Wars” rather presumptuous and arrogant when I first heard it. I remember being unsurprised when it so quickly proved untrue. I’m fairly certain I participated in both World Wars, but I only saw Arthur during one of them; there wasn’t enough time for him to be reborn again between them.

I try not to interfere too much in human affairs these days, or even to seek Arthur out, but sometimes when things get particularly bad (or I’m feeling particularly bored), I feel the need to help out a little. I won’t fight anymore. I haven’t since the first time Arthur died. But over the centuries, I’ve accumulated a few medical degrees, so even though they were probably out of date and definitely not connected to the identity I was using at the time, I was able to get myself a job as a medic in the army. Only partially because it was where I had a feeling Arthur would be if he was back, I got myself sent to where the fighting was the absolute worst. Even with my magic, I could only do so much, but it was more than anyone else would be able to do, and even though most of me felt like giving up on humanity altogether, there was a little voice in my head—that sounded annoyingly like Arthur—that wouldn’t let me.

And then I saw him.

He was young, about twenty, the same age I was for the time being. He was a soldier, obviously, not very high ranking yet, but he carried himself like he was. (And to his credit, the other men listened to him like he was as well.)

He was almost identical to the Arthur I first met.

His appearance didn’t usually change that much, but there were always differences, some more prominent that others. This time, I would have to get his clothes off before I could see most of them—something I was more than happy to do.

It happens in every military. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t at least a factor in why I ever joined any. You put a bunch of young, physically fit men in close quarters, in one of the most stressful situations a human can be in—one where they know any night could be their last—and there are very few (if any) women around for miles. What do you expect to happen?

You drop the man I’ve been in love with for over a millennia right in front of me, and for the first time in a very long time, we’re the same age. What do you expect to happen?

The first Arthur I met, I got to know very well—so well that I could pinpoint every single difference between that Arthur and this one, down to the last freckle. And I had a lot of fun doing so. He was so familiar but brand new all at once. It was exhilarating. It was overwhelming. It was perfect.

It was… short-lived.

Or more accurately, Arthur was short-lived.

I don’t think I need to tell you how it ended, and quite frankly, I don’t want to. I don’t want to remember him bleeding out in my arms for the dozenth time. I don’t want to remember the sounds of bombs and gunshots and planes and men screaming in pain.

I want to remember the feeling of holding each other at night, the sound of his heartbeat under my ear, the smell of his sweat, the taste of his lips; I want to remember looking into his deep blue eyes—the same eyes I’d been looking into for centuries—and thinking about how lucky I was to have this, to have him. How we had this one beautiful, golden moment of happiness in the middle of one of the worst wars the world has ever seen.

He’ll be back soon. Maybe he’s already out there somewhere. Maybe we’ll run into each other tomorrow. I don’t know if he’ll look the same, if he’ll still be called Arthur, how he’ll be a king in world that’s moved past the need for kings, how long he’ll be around, how close he’ll get to fulfilling his destiny.

I know he’ll try to save the world. I know I’ll try to save him. I know we’ll both fail. I know we’ll never stop trying.