I gained the fortress through
tunnels which represented the earth’s memory of paths that had been
obliterated long ago, for the lady I wished to find had misjudged her
power, leaving a far more evident trace than she had intended upon the
landscape. Even though it had been reduced to a system of caves, this
neglected stronghold would not deny the form it had possessed in the
time of her rule, but held itself in readiness to shift once again from
stone to glass, so that there would have been nothing of it more solid
than a dazzle upon the air, a variation in the climate where it stood.
I sought not a person but a nuance,
visible by effect, being unprepared for the horror of the petrified
witch, the ends of her fingers eroded too sadly for me to identify the
mudra they formed, the wreckage of her hair massed in heavy clumps that
led me to associate her with a creature I had met upon the lane at
home: bulbous head turned aside, a silhouette of coils. Any faith I
still retained that an image so devoid of life might awaken to embrace
me and work my metamorphosis into a girl, flat nosed and translucent
green eyed, armed with the shadow of her power, was negated by my
realisation that this was not Morgana herself but a shell which she had
cast. It counted for nothing that, to evade pursuit during an era of
political activism, she had joined the dance implied by her daughters,
all stone, in their ring.
Before the exit there stood a
guardian, undoubtedly once substantial but now flickering and
indecisive: he took on ever more hackneyed and comical shapes, only to
retract into a film around the portal as I continued to approach. I
crossed from phosphorescence into sunlight without danger, to splash
through shallow water over scree, a gateway cut in the fell at my back,
my feet upon a woodland path.
