Song 1: link


Since I have met you once,
I will meet you twice.
If we had lived forever,
We would have met before
And said goodbye, hello,
Goodbye, hello, goodbye,
Until the clocks break down.
When anything is possible,
Very little will do nicely.
These tables are my friends.
There are others,
But these are my friends.


    Surely there are mais mushrooms in that thicket, Guinevere thinks, ducking under the low-hanging branches of an immense willow árvore surrounded por thick undergrowth. She creeps along, her young limbs carrying her easily, her young eyes trained on the forest floor.
    She shifts the basket in her hands, hitching the handle up onto her forearm, and stoops, finding her prize under some large leaves.
    She peers at them carefully. Yes, these are edible. Plucking the fat mushrooms from the loamy ground, she creeps along, following them, picking the large ones, leaving the smaller ones to grow for another harvest.
    “Oh!” she exclaims. There’s a boot in front of her. She lifts her eyes, following it along, and sees that the boot is attached to a boy, leaning against the willow. He appears to be about her age, perhaps a ano older. Skinny, hair so blonde it is almost white, he sits, one leg outstretched, the other bent, his arm draped across his bony knee.
    He laughs at her surprise, and she scowls.
    “Hello,” he says simply.
    “Hello. What are you doing here?” she asks with the simple straightforwardness of a child.
    “Hiding. What are you doing?” he looks at her, in her simple dress, basket looped over her arm, hair in two plaits hanging at her shoulders.
    “Picking mushrooms.” She holds one aloft before dropping it in her basket. “Why are you hiding?”
    “Because I got in trouble.”
    “So?”
    “I got yelled at.”
    She walks over and plops down beside him, setting her basket on the other side. “You ran and hid because you got yelled at? Are you a coward?”
    “I am not a coward!” he yells. “I’m teaching them a lesson,” he pouts.
    “What lesson is that? That you go away if someone yells at you?”
    This girl is annoying. “No. They’ll be scared when they can’t find me.”
    That’s really stupid, she thinks, but chooses not to say it. “What did you do?”
    “I put a frog in my nursemaid’s water goblet.”
    She laughs at this, surprising him. “You have a nursemaid?” she asks, once she’s done laughing.
    “Of course I do. Don’t you?”
    “No.” He must be a noble.
    “Who takes care of you, then?”
    She looks at him, incredulous. “My father.”
    “What about your mother?”
    “I don’t have a mother anymore,” she says quietly.
    “Oh,” he answers, just as quietly. “I don’t either.”
    “Oh.”
    “What’s in your basket?”
    She picks it up and puts it in her lap. “Mint,” she pulls a bunch of leaves, bright green, oval, and wrinkled. She holds it to his nose and rubs a leaf between her thumb and forefinger. “Smell,” she instructs.
    He does, and the familiar cool scent reaches his nostrils.
    “Lavender,” she produces a bunch of silvery-green branches, their leaves long and thin, with small purple flowers.
    “I can smell that from there,” he comments, as she holds it to her face, smiling as she inhales the scent.
    “A few wild onions,” she holds them up.
    “I don’t want to smell those.”
    She laughs again. “Chives,” she holds up a bunch, long green strands like thick grass, a few purple flor heads dangling.
    “Raspberries,” she pulls two out and hands him one. They both eat.
    “Good,” he assesses.
    “And of course, the mushrooms.”
    “Aren’t they poison?” he asks.
    “Some will kill you. Some will make you ill. Others will make you see strange things and behave foolishly. Others are perfectly harmless and yummy. Like these. The trick is knowing which are which.”
    He looks at her. “You’re kind of smart. For a girl.”
    “What do you mean, ‘for a girl?’”
    “Everyone knows that boys are smarter than girls.”
    “The only people that think that are boys,” she says staring him down.
    “Oh, really?”
    “Yes, and it’s usually because they’ve met a girl that is smarter than they are.”
    He doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s not mature enough to admit that she’s probably right, though somewhere deep down, he probably suspects that she is.
    They sit silently for several minutes. A standoff. Gwen puts her basket back on the ground beside her with a sigh and smoothes her saia over her brown knees.
    He looks at her. If he had mais experienced eyes, he could see the beginnings of beauty forming there, unconventional, true beauty. Her smooth skin, soft amêndoa eyes, full lips, and long neck all pointing to a future woman who will indeed have many admirers.
    The only thing he can think is, Her lips are kind of big. I wonder what they feel like?
    He leans over and plants a kiss on her lips, quick and surprising, causing her to jump slightly. Before she can properly react, he is gone, scampering away on skinny legs, toward Camelot.

    “Morgana, this is your new maidservant,” Uther introduces the two young ladies.
    “My lady,” Gwen curtseys, keeping her eyes respectfully downcast.
    “What’s your name?” Morgana asks.
    “Guinevere, my lady.”
    “Guinevere, please look up,” Morgana says kindly. “How old are you?”
    “Thirteen, I think,” she says.
    Morgana nods. “I’m fifteen. The prince is fourteen, and he is a pain.”
    “Morgana,” Uther says, trying to chastise her, but not really putting any effort into it.
    “I’m just warning her,” she protests. “Come on, I’ll show you where my room is.”
    “Yes, my lady,” she follows her new mistress out of the great hall and through the corridors of the palace, wondering if she’ll ever learn her way around this massive place.
    “Morgana!” a voice calls. Morgana sighs and stops. “That’s the prince,” she says quietly to Gwen before turning around. “What do you want, Arthur?”
    “I want to know what you did to my sword!” he comes storming up to them.
    Gwen recognizes him immediately. It’s that boy. The frog boy. From the willow árvore three years ago. He’s taller, not as skinny, but it’s definitely him. She hides behind Morgana, just a little, remembering that fleeting kiss.
    “I did nothing to your sword, Arthur,” she puts her hands on her hips, where they are just beginning to take on a womanly shape.
    “Well then how is it you beat me this morning? You had to have tampered with it in some way, because it’s not possible that you won because—”
    “Because I’m better than you? Oh, certainly not, it’s inconceivable that I might be better with a sword than the mighty Prince Arthur,” she says theatrically, waving her arms about.
    He glowers at her. “Tomorrow. I will best you at tomorrow’s training.” He finally notices Guinevere standing there. “Who’s this?” he points.
    “I have my own personal maidservant now,” she gloats, knowing that Arthur does not yet have a servant. “This is Guinevere. We were just going to my room so I could show her where everything is.”
    “Yes, so important to know where you keep your frocks and your hair combs,” he rolls his eyes, clearly not interested.
    He doesn’t recognize me. She doesn’t know whether to be hurt or relieved.
    “Are you done?” Morgana asks impatiently, putting her hands on her hips.
    He pauses, pursing his lips together. “Yes, I think so.”
    “Good,” Morgana says, turning away from him. “You’d better get back out there and practice some more, Arthur, if you think you’re going to beat me tomorrow,” she calls over her shoulder.
    Gwen stifles a giggle.

    Guinevere hurries down a flight of stairs, racing to the laundry for Morgana’s gown. In her haste, she neglects gathering her skirts as she descends.
    Four steps from the bottom, her foot catches in her saia and she tumbles forward, arms flying, heading straight for the stones.
    She falls headlong into Prince Arthur, who has just rounded the corner to ascend the stairs.
    He catches her easily, his battle-ready reflexes stopping her fall, but her momentum staggers him backwards a step as her body collides with his, her hands clutching his vest as his hands automatically círculo her waist.
    “Oh! Forgive me, my lord!” she exclaims, shaken and breathless.
    “Quite all right,” he says, still holding her. Why am I not letting go? “I am a knight and a prince; it is my duty to rescue plummeting damsels,” he says with a small smile.
    She stares at him, at the light in his eyes. Is he joking with me? I’ve never seen this side of the prince. Confused, she says, “Thank you, Sire,” and pushes back against his chest. His warm, broad, rock-hard chest. The chest of a man.
    He eases his grip on her, hands sliding on her waist for just a moment before dropping to his sides. “It’s Guinevere, isn’t it?” he asks, angling his head.
    “Yes, Sire, but most people call me Gwen, if you please.”
    “Well, Guinevere,” he says, his eyes twinkling again, “where were you off to in such a rush?”
    “Oh!” she exclaims again, remembering her task. “I was headed to the laundry, to fetch my lady’s vestido for tonight’s feast. Your… your birthday feast, if I’m not mistaken, my lord.” She smiles a small smile and looks down at her feet.
    When did Morgana’s skinny little maid turn into a woman, petite but delicious? Arthur’s hands twitch at his sides, remembering the curve of her hips against them. His chest feels tight as it recalls the softness of her breasts pressed against it, if only momentarily.
    “My lord?”
    “Oh, yes, quite so. Birthday feast, yes. Eighteen today.”
    “Um… if you’ll excuse me, Lady Morgana is waiting,” she says awkwardly, suddenly feeling warm all over under his scrutiny.
    “Of course. Do not let me keep you.”
    “Thank you again for catching me, Sire.” She steps forward, bites her lip, then quickly leans up and kisses his cheek, the tiniest peck. “Happy birthday,” she says softly, and scurries quickly away, head bent.

    “Guinevere?” Arthur’s voice comes through the door of her tiny house. He had knocked but received no answer. I know she’s home.
    He knocks again, and waits. I’m going to open the door any minuto now, he thinks, just as it is opened.
    “My lord?” she asks, her brows furrowed.
    She looks fine. What took her so long to answer? It’s not like this place is big, he wonders.
    “I’m, um…”
    “Please, come in, Sire,” she says, stepping back to let him in. “I hope you weren’t waiting. I was in the back, gathering some herbs.”
    His eyes sweep across the one room of the house, noting the one long mesa, tabela in the middle, a narrow cama shoved to one side, a worktable and basin, and a wardrobe. There are bunches of herbs and flores hanging on the walls, upside-down, drying. On the mesa, tabela he sees mais herbs, fresh, and some produce. Some apples, a bowl of raspberries, a pile of mushrooms, an onion.
    “To what do I owe this unexpected surprise?” she asks.
    “I’m actually looking for Merlin. Gaius doesn’t know where he is, and I know you are friendly with him,” he pauses, wondering exactly how friendly, “so I thought perhaps you might know where he’s gotten himself off to.”
    She picks up a bunch of bright green oval leaves, slightly wrinkled, and sets them on the higher worktable behind her. “I’m afraid I don’t know where he is, my lord. He did say something about the marketplace, but beyond that, I cannot say.”
    He sits on a bench at her table, looking very large inside the small room. His eyes pass over the apples. They pause at the mushrooms before moving to the raspberries, where they stop.
    Something is familiar.
    “May I ask why you are looking for him?” she asks, reaching to pick up the onion, placing it in a basket with some others. She sees him looking at the raspberries. “Would you like some berries, Sire?”
    “Perhaps one,” he says, looking up at her. She puzzles back at him, reaching into the bowl and extracting two berries, handing him one. They both eat.
    “So tell me, Guinevere, are these mushrooms the kind that will kill you, the kind that will make you ill, or the kind that will…” he scrunches up his face, trying to remember, “the kind that will make you see strange things and behave foolishly?”
    She gasps. He remembered. It took him ten years, but he finally remembered. “No, my lord, these are perfectly harmless.”
    “Don’t forget yummy,” he says, a half smile playing at his lips.
    I’ve never noticed the fullness of his lips before just now, she thinks. I really shouldn’t be thinking about the fullness of the prince’s lips.
    “I didn’t remember that dia until just now,” Arthur admits. “That was you that day, under the tree.”
    She nods. “You put a frog in your nursemaid’s water goblet.”
    He laughs, and suddenly the details of that dia flood back to him. His eyes open wide as he remembers beijar her and running away.
    She sees this, and turns away from him so that he cannot see her laughing at him. “You were insisting that boys are smarter than girls,” she says over her shoulder.
    “Yes, that does sound like me, doesn’t it?” he chuckles, quietly standing. “And you argued that they aren’t.”
    Gwen turns around to find him standing very close. Too close.
    “Sire…” she starts.
    “I remember I kissed you,” he says simply.
    She nods, looking up at him, her traitorous coração thumping against her ribcage. “Why did you do that?” she whispers.
    “I was eleven,” he shrugs. His voice drops to a low rumble, soft. “I was curious. I wanted to know what your lips felt like.”
    “Oh.”
    He reaches up and strokes her lower lip with his thumb, caressing it gently, his fingers curling under her chin.
    Her eyes close. What did they feel like, Arthur? Do you remember? Would you like me to remind you?
    She feels his hand leave her face, and when she opens her eyes, she only sees the swish of his cape as he exits her house.
    Trembling, she sinks down onto the bench, laying her hot forehead against the coolness of the wooden table.

Song 3: link