Chapter Text
“You can’t follow me home, my father will kill you,” Arthur rather callously informs the bird. It’s been following him for a full afternoon now, ever since, well—ever since Arthur changed it into a boy. “Go on,” he tries again. “Go back into the forest, daft thing. It’s where birds belong!”
The bird does no such thing.
Arthur groans, and it bounces off of the trees. When no more echos come, and the bird is still standing there—on two feet, and wingless, mind, as though it is not a bird at all—Arthur buries his face into his hands.
His lungs give heaving lurches in his chest, one after another. Sweat from the summer sun cools along his back, and his hair is stiff with it. He’d run long and hard today, and his knees seem to want to shake out of their skin. Above them, the leaves rustle, shades of green so rich and dark they look blue in the shadows.
“I don’t suppose you know the way to Camelot, bird?” Arthur asks hopelessly, picking up a stick that looks remarkably like a sword. Maybe he’s going mad.
He wields the sword at the bird, heart heavy. Camelot will never welcome him home again should anyone learn of what he has done, prince or no. If he were a more dutiful son he would slay the bird right here and now—but it is of Arthur’s making, and he is too soft-hearted. It is not the bird’s fault.
“I don’t think I do,” the bird considers, combing fruitlessly at its long, dark hair. It is ragged, and only good for cutting off; more tangles and filth than hair. “I don’t remember, if I did.”
“Bird! You can talk!” Arthur exclaims, dropping his stick.
“I can, boy!” the bird mocks, rolling its eyes.
“Well I’ve never met a bird before, how was I supposed to know?” Arthur wonders if all birds are so tempestuous or if it’s only this one. “Have you a name, then?”
“Merlin,” the bird says, which seems self-evident, once it’s been spoken.
“I suppose birds aren’t very creative,” Arthur thinks aloud, picking up the stick once more. Should any bandits return to waylay them again, he will have to defend them. Merlin’s arms are so pale and skinny it seems likely he could not lift even the stick, let alone an actual sword.
Ser Ector is to teach him—
Ser Ector is dead.
Dead in the forest, from an arrow to the neck. The blood had been warm where it splashed Arthur’s face, and Ser Ector had been heavy from where he had fallen. Down into the bracken and taking Arthur with him, his body a shield for his charge to the last.
Arthur wipes furiously at his face with shaking hands and a stinging in his eyes. Years ago, when he’d first started riding anything taller than a pony, he had fallen. The air had been knocked clean out of his lungs, and his ribs had been a mottled green and purple for weeks—it feels much the same, now. The pressure. The ringing in his ears. This time Ser Ector will not lift him up and tell him to ‘ be brave, little prince’, though, for Ser Ector shall never again do anything.
How can Arthur ever face Kay?
“There there,” the bird makes a pitiful attempt at comfort. Its hands are cold and bony.
“I want a wash,” Arthur gasps. He wants this blood off of his face. No. He wants to turn around and run back to Ser Ector, that is what he wants. To find out it was all a cruel test. A jape, a lie. He doesn’t care what reason there is, only that there is one.
The bird looks about, cocking its head to and fro. “I think there’s a river. Come on!”
It trots on without waiting and without looking back. Arthur has no choice but to follow. Days from Camelot already, the path is long forgotten behind them, lost after their mad run from the bandits. Arthur… had never known such fear. His eyes scan the treeline, but he sees no-one following. They’d been—well, nothing like when he played knights and bandits. He’s too old for such things, now, a squire in his own right. He remembers laughing, though, and victory.
Victory, he thinks with a scoff. Over pageboys and stableboys playing pretend.
These bandits, though, they’d been fierce. Desperate, and unaware of their prey, for no attempt at ransom had been made. But Arthur had been desperate too, and just look at what he had done.
Magic.
And no mere hedgewitchery. Arthur had changed a bird into a boy—he’s never even heard of such a feat before. His father…well. All of Albion knows just what his father would think.
It’s a long, quiet walk, and despite Arthur’s mind overflowing with questions, he cannot muster up the energy to speak. He drops his sword into the dark brush of the forest. It’s just a stick, anyway.
“Told you,” chirps the bird. Merlin, Arthur reminds himself.
He croaks what could be an agreement, half-tripping over his own feet in order to dunk his head into the river. It’s a shock of cold water, tugging at his hair, pulling at the blood and the salt of tears and sweat, spiriting it somewhere far away. Sound is muffled, and for a moment he is not here at all. Maybe this river will carry him all the way to the sea. His shoulders hunch and his knees give way at last. On the shore of the river, among the smooth dark stones, he curls up like a bug and sobs.
Time passes, shadows moving across the water, and his wet tunic clings fast to his skin. Even in summer, the stream is cool, and the sun has all but vanished. He’s stopped shaking, which he remembers from lessons is bad, but he cannot seem to find his feet to stand.
“Here,” Merlin says, holding out his hands. Blackberries pile within them so high that some roll through his pale fingers and catch among the riverstones. “They’re good! Sweet!”
When Arthur fails to rise and take one for himself, Merlin does the job for him, stuffing one, then two, then three past his lips—until Arthur is forced to move or choke. He chews, the startling sweetness upsetting, for he does not wish to enjoy anything ever again.
“They’re good, right?” Merlin beams at him. “Are you cold? I’ll make a fire!”
And he does so, conjuring one into being; hovering right in the air like a will-o'-the-wisp. Arthur nearly inhales the blackberries, choking roughly. “That’s magic!” he exclaims, wheezing. He wishes he hadn’t dropped his stick earlier.
“Is it?” asks Merlin. He blinks, wide blue eyes taking in the fire with bland understanding.
Arthur swallows, the blackberries sinking like stones. “It is,” he croaks. Of course a bird wouldn’t have the teachings of a civilized man. They’ve no books in the forest, and no preceptors. No nannies or fathers. “You shouldn’t do that,” Arthur says, summoning up a bit of patience from his usually shallow well of it. Merlin is relying on him.
This is his own fault, after all. He’s given the bird a new form, and magic along with it but no greater understanding.
“Why not?” Merlin asks, wrinkling his nose. He twists his hand, and the warm light jumps around and about like a playful sprite. Golden rays cut lines through the trees, casting wild shadows that reach and stretch and strain to join in the dance.
“It’s wicked,” Arthur says, although mostly he thinks it’s just warm.
“Isn’t,” Merlin denies with an animal’s simplicity, “look.”
Arthur’s hands are taken and held, the remaining blackberries scattering around their feet and bruising as the last of them fall. The light weaves around their hands, and nothing much happens at all. Gold as honey, or the dragon banners of his home—it doesn’t feel wicked.
“Maybe just for the night,” Arthur says, in a rare capitulation. Hollowed out, and tired of fighting, his voice is barely a whisper. It’s certainly no greater magic than Arthur has already done. They wander downriver, Merlin running ahead and back so much that Arthur is exhausted just looking at him, until they come across a massive old oak. The roots sprawl far and wide like fat, twisting snakes, with a wide enough gap for two to hide, if the two are careful.
“Goodnight, bird,” Arthur says, listening for the footfalls of bandits. He will keep the night’s watch, as is his duty.
“Goodnight, boy,” Merlin replies, yawning and lying back into the leaves and the tree bark without a care in the world.
“My name’s Arthur, not boy,” Arthur says, elbowing Merlin in a futile attempt to get him to budge over. Sleep must come to birds quickly, though, for he doesn’t so much as twitch, only lolling his head closer to Arthur. He smells of the forest, like living things.
Arthur lets his eyes close, finding a bit of comfort, just for a moment.
***
He wakes, still tucked into the safe cradle of the oak tree—but Merlin is gone.
“Bird?” Arthur calls, voice cracking. “Merlin?”
An answering call rises up from the river, and he forces himself up and out of the shelter. In the light of the morning the forest seems different, although it cannot be. The moss is soft and wet with dew, and the shadows of the trees do not seem so endlessly deep. The river bubbles, and the blood is long since washed away.
“Fish,” Merlin says, pointing to the two that are already dead on the shore. Another leaps up out of the water, unnatural, to join them.
“Stop it!” Arthur orders, watching the thing flop about. Scales shimmering in the sunlight, it is radiant and gasping, beautiful and ghastly.
Merlin turns to watch him, eyes golden—dangerous—only to fade to a deep blue once more. They look human, now. “Why?” he asks, blinking. “You’re hungry.”
“It’s,” Arthur begins, not sure. “It’s not right. Magic isn’t allowed in Camelot. It’s the law.” It’s more than that, though. He doesn’t want to watch the hopeless thing writhe about. Ravenous as he is, it still makes him feel ill. He looks away, stomach squirming and remembering red cloaks blooming across the grass like poppy flowers.
“Is this Camelot?” It could sound mocking, Arthur thinks, if it were not so very earnest. Merlin truly doesn’t know any better.
“It’s not,” Arthur sighs. “It just… doesn't seem fair to the fish. They haven’t got a chance against magic.” It’s not like they would have much of a chance against a bear, or a fishing net, either, the bleak hunger in his gut tells him. Maybe it’s different for animals than for men. The fish has stopped struggling, and thus stopped suffering.
It makes him ache, though, with something he lacks a name for.
“But you’re hungry?” Merlin asks, looking between Arthur and the fish, confusion plain on his face. It is a long face, and a sharp one, with nothing extra for overbearing courtly ladies to pinch, even though he seems younger than Arthur himself. His stomach answers for him, growling in demand. For years now he has hunted, tracking and cleaning and skinning his own kills. Is it truly so different?
“I am,” he admits, still somehow feeling a coil of disquiet. He doesn’t have his knife, but between the two of them they get the fish roasting—Merlin can start a fire, but doesn’t know a thing about cooking food. Arthur knows more, merely by the virtue of knowing one should cook their food.
“I suppose birds eat things raw,” he says, scattering the remains of the fish back into the water to be picked clean by other, luckier fish. Do they have souls? Arthur would not have thought a bird had a soul like a man, either, once.
“Usually,” Merlin agrees.
“The forest is very different from Camelot,” Arthur sighs, washing his hands in the river and insisting Merlin do the same. They really should do something about the rest of Merlin, but Arthur has no comb or knife, and there is nothing they can do to tend to the bird’s clothes, which are mostly tatters. In the castle they would not even be suitable for rags.
“Magic is allowed in the forest,” Merlin says, sudden and insistent. “There aren’t any laws.” He looks over at Arthur, leaning in so closely Arthur can see every different speckle of blue in his eyes, and the gold that swims underneath it.
Despite himself, a sizzle of fear licks up Arthur’s spine.
“I suppose that’s true,” he agrees, swallowing. The fish sits heavy in his belly. He agrees somewhat for the bird’s sake, but mostly for his own. What he does to survive here does not have to stain Camelot—all will be well, and the same as it was, once they are back home. All of Arthur’s most miserable sins will be left behind in the forest to be forgotten. He cannot bring himself to consider leaving the bird behind.
Merlin relaxes, the wings of his sharp shoulders loosening.
“Come on,” Arthur says, ready to leave the river.
“Where are we going?” Merlin asks, bounding to Arthur’s side with a grin. It softens his cheeks, and his eyes do not seem so frightening when they glint with happiness instead of wild-gold.
“Home,” Arthur answers, allowing it when Merlin takes his hand and swings it between them. Were they within Camelot Arthur might be too old for such a thing, but this is the forest.
***
They are deep enough into the wood that It is another full day and a night before they see another person at all.
He wears a cloak of Camelot, but Arthur does not know his face, and such gives him pause. None dispatched from the castle could possibly be so close yet—if indeed they even knew of the attack at all—for Arthur’s caravan had travelled for days before the ambush. They are closer to his uncle’s lands and his mother’s birthplace of Tintagel than his father’s; not a distance even a single rider could cross so swiftly.
“Arthur,” the man calls out, familiarly. Overly so. His smile reveals his rotten teeth, and under the cloak he wears leather armour, not castle mail.
Arthur throws an arm out, stopping Merlin in his tracks when he begins to walk towards the stranger. “No, bird,” he whispers, cold with a now familiar fear. Merlin shall not become another Ser Ector.
“Leave us alone,” he bellows to the bandit. Arthur’s heart seems to beat triple-time. He has no weapon, and Merlin is so terribly small. “Fly away,” he mutters to Merlin, shaking his grip off where he has held fast to Arthur’s shirt. He pushes Merlin hard, so that he stumbles back in betrayed shock. His eyes are wide, and heartbreakingly human. “He’s a bandit, you idiot! Go!”
Arthur looks upon Merlin, and the set of his chin, and knows he will not be heeded. Instead he tries to think very hard about the shape of Merlin, before he was a boy. Speckled feathers, all pretty blue-grey and rusty, with a squared off tail. Still tufty and soft with youth. Barely the size of a common blackbird. With every shred of willpower he can summon, Arthur tries to magic him back into a bird again, this time for good, so Merlin might live on.
He did not ask to be changed. Arthur has been selfish enough.
“Please,” he begs. A rare enough word that it is foreign on his lips—and in a blur of feathers, the boy becomes a bird once more, taking up into the canopy with an indignant screech. It is fascinating to watch; a strange twisting of the world that makes his head ache and eyes swim.
Doing magic is hard.
He is glad, although the empty space at his side makes him afraid.
“Arthur,” the man says again, no longer smiling. He watches Merlin vanish into the leaves, and makes a warding against evil with his hands. There is a wariness about him now, having seen the powerful magic, but still he takes a step forward. Leaves crunch under his feet. “Come here, lad.”
They do know who he is, Arthur finally realises. But they had sought no ransom—the only thing they had sought was to cull the entire party. Not bandits at all, he thinks, but hired mercenaries. Assassins, or enemies of his father.
Arthur slowly bends to pick up a rock, prying it up out of the dark growth and earth, keeping his eyes on the man all the while. The mercenary must figure better than to try and lure Arthur closer again, for he does not attempt it. He only comes yet another step forward, drawing a short sword from its sheath at his hip as he does.
Arthur dislikes being a coward, but he wants to live.
Like an arrow loosed from a bow, he bolts into the forest, rock clenched tightly in his hand. Legs and lungs pumping. Behind him he can hear the man bulling through the underbrush, tearing through it like wet parchment. Arthur ducks under a branch, and tries to make a path that the larger man cannot follow, weaving and leaping away from grabbing hands—but in the end it is all for naught.
A short, sharp yank pulls him backwards and up, his tunic seizing tight around his throat. All of his air leaves him in a gasp, feet dangling uselessly above the roots below.
He struggles. Battering at the closed fists, Arthur twists, hitting the man across the elbow with the rock, the only vulnerable point in reach. Again and again as he hears the man swear. Arthur feels the grip loosen, and so he kicks and kicks, until the edges of his vision go dark, spots swimming in front of his eyes, bright like Merlin’s will-o'-the-wisp.
His own hitching breaths ring in his ears, dry and faint.
And then he is let go.
Arthur falls down into the roots, so dizzy he cannot tell which way is up. Merlin’s cries are fierce, and so must be his talons—the mercenary is screaming, a horrible sound, as Merlin dives at his face, wings beating madly. Blood runs from the man’s eyes like twin rivers. His sword slashes through the air, useless for now; though even Merlin’s luck is bound to run out.
“Merlin,” Arthur rasps, barely a noise at all. He hauls himself up, wobbling like a newborn colt, and throws himself at the man’s knees, toppling them both into the brush. It’s nothing like watching a tourney, he thinks, stars spinning in his vision.
It’s a lucky shot, in the end, that Arthur manages to crack the rock over the man’s temple. He’s no eyes left to shut, but he grows still, a sputtering kind of wheeze coming from his open mouth.
Arthur feels his grip loosen at last, the stone falling to lie side by side next to the man.
“He’s dead,” he tells the bird, who is suddenly a boy again, even though Arthur hadn’t done anything at all. His pulse thunders in his ears with each gasping breath.
“Seems so,” Merlin agrees, wiping his bloody hands on some leaves, largely unbothered.
“There were more of them, before,” Arthur remembers, rubbing at his throat. It hurts. “He might have friends.” The sword is a slice of silver in the green, half buried among the ferns—Arthur takes it, regaining some nerve with a weapon in hand.
Things will not be so difficult, next time. He works loose the sheathe as well, and ties it about his belt.
“What are you doing?” Merlin asks as Arthur rifles through the man’s few belongings.
“He might have an insignia, or a letter, or something.” But no, there is nothing to give him away. A little pouch of coin and a dagger in his boot, both of which Arthur takes. A leather bag, worn across his chest, that has cakes of dried flatbread, crumbled mostly to pieces even in their cloth, and a hard wedge of cheese. It unsettles him to steal from the dead, but needs must. “We should take his shirt,” Arthur thinks aloud. “Yours has more holes than shirt, and you haven’t got any shoes.”
Merlin makes a face as though he might disagree, but in the end practicality wins over and he gains a new tunic. It nearly touches his knees, and the man’s belt wraps around his waist twice over.
“Smells,” Merlin complains, raising his arm and making a face. It becomes clean as the day it was sewn with a wave of his hand and flashing eyes.
Arthur doesn’t have the heart to reprimand him—he wouldn’t like to wear the dead man’s shirt, either. He kneels to wrap the scraps of Merlin’s old rags around his feet, and tries not to look over into the brush where a hand pokes out, open and unmoving.
***
After another day and long, dark night, the trees grow thinner, the forest beginning to fade into rolling fields—and most importantly of all, a road.
“Look!” Arthur cries out, the relief crashing over him. “A road! That means there will be people, and wagons, and food–”
“Nice people, though,” Merlin hedges, hanging back amongst the trees and playing with his sleeves. They cover his hands entirely, even rolled up as they are. His matted mane of black hair falls down his back, and in their wrappings his toes curl with nerves; and Arthur feels a fool. Of course Merlin is afraid. He’s likely never even seen a village before.
“Nice people,” Arthur promises, offering his hand. Merlin takes one step towards him, slowly, as though he’s considering darting back into the forest and living out his life as a bird after all. Arthur finds that although their time together has been short, he would miss his bird terribly, and so he stretches out his hand a little further. “I’ll protect you.”
Their fingers slot together, and even though Arthur’s feet hurt and his back hurts and his everything hurts, they go forth with a renewed spirit.
“I’ll show you my rooms when we go home,” he rambles, treasuring the soft grass and the open sky after days among the roots and the heavy canopy of the trees. “Cook will make dumplings, and cakes. Birds don’t have cakes,” he says with authority, “so you don’t know, but you’ll see. They’re my favourite when they have spices and hazelnuts on top, in autumn.”
Merlin nods along, quite happy to be pulled along, or at least not putting up a fuss about it.
“I’ve got three horses,” Arthur says, some feeling inside making him want to show off, to prove that Camelot is finer than any forest. “There’s the training yard, and the kennels. Tournaments,” he emphasises, “and there are towers so tall you can see forever and ever.” It strikes him that even the tallest tower might not be particularly impressive, to a bird. “And there are gardens,” he says in a rush, “if you should miss your forest.”
“I want to eat cake,” Merlin demands, practically salivating. He tilts his face up into the sun with a grin that shows his dimples. Arthur’s own returning smile takes him by surprise.
It’s still hours following the merchant road south before they come across a village. It’s a small one, barely a waypoint between the places people actually want to go to. Only a handful of farmsteads and a public house—and a cheap toll to enter in through the gates, for the upkeep. Arthur pays it with a pair of the mercenaries' copper coins, ignoring the way that Merlin hides behind him, knees practically knocking together. While he was perhaps overly brave in the forest, he seems overwhelmed to stand among so many people all at once.
“It’s alright,” Arthur assures him, dragging him towards the public house all the while. There is no market square like in the lower town beneath the citadel, only a well and a couple of old men keeping a watch on things from a bench. “Just don’t do any magic. It’s dangerous around other people.”
Merlin swallows, and nods feverishly in agreement. “Only around you,” he promises.
Which is not ideal, but better than one can hope, by Arthur's reckoning, considering Merlin has only been human for a few days.
The public house is less of a house and more of one long room, and they do not have a bath.
They are tossed out the back with the chickens and a bucket that the kindly, but brusque, matron has lent them, doing their level best to wash out Merlin’s horrible mass of hair and dirt-caked feet. Arthur only has the bandit’s sword, and Merlin refuses to let Arthur cut his hair with a sword, when he asks. After nearly an hour, with tears brimming in his eyes and hands clasped to his abused scalp, Merlin insists that Arthur keep watch.
“It’s just chickens,” Merlin whinges, frustration dripping off of every word. “Chickens don’t care about magic.”
Arthur supposes that of the two of them, Merlin is their closer cousin, and thus must know better. “Alright,” he reluctantly agrees, making sure the matron does not come to check on them. Merlin scrunches up his face with effort, and beneath his closed eyes, Arthur sees the simmering gold. Molten.
He whips his head back to the door, and doesn’t look again.
“I think it’s done,” Merlin sniffs, sounding much less tormented now that his ordeal has finally passed.
“Your hair isn’t black!” Arthur marvels. Clean, it’s dark as sable, and just as shining—as smooth as Morgana’s is, once all of the knots are out, and hanging almost halfway down his back.
“It isn’t?” Merlin draws some in front of his eyes in order to squint at it.
“You look like a girl,” Arthur informs him, since Merlin clearly has never seen a mirror.
“What’s a girl?” Merlin asks, dropping his lock of hair to peek over at Arthur instead—but there is some sense of mischief about him that makes Arthur feel as though he is the one being teased.
“There are girl birds, shut up.”
Merlin laughs more like a crow than a hawk. The chickens scatter, and Merlin gives them chase until even he is tired, coming to sit by Arthur once more.
He draws idly in the packed dirt as Merlin runs about, using a stick to carve out the outline of a hawk. It is clumsily done, but he is distracted, thoughts scattering every which way. “You do want to come with me, don’t you, bird?” he asks, quiet.
Merlin answers by pressing their shoulders together, a smile on his face.
“Do you have a mother?” Arthur realises he has been assuming Merlin was alone in the forest, all of this time.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“I guess,” Arthur says, drawing another bird next to the first, a little bigger. He’s not sure if he means it to be Merlin’s mother or his own. In his locked chest, all the way back in Camelot, sits a sigil of a dove, one of the only things he has of hers. “I had a mother. She died, but I look like her. Everyone says so.”
Merlin hums, looking at the shade and shape of his own hair again for a moment, considering the soft waves of it. It has already begun to tangle again. “What colour are my eyes?” he asks, turning to the pair of drawings.
“Blue.” Arthur answers, not needing to check.
“My mother,” Merlin says carefully, “I think I look like her, too.”
Arthur looks at the wobbly lines of the two birds in the dirt, and presses his shoulder into Merlin’s even harder, feeling a swell of guilt. “Is she waiting for you, do you think, in the forest?”
“She’s not,” Merlin says, matter of fact. “She’s dead, too.”
There is a silence, between them, for a while. It is not a horrible silence, though, just the silence that comes from understanding so well there is nothing left to say about it.
This time when they go into the public house the matron coos over them and lets them dry Merlin’s tunic out, sitting together by the kitchen fire. It smells of smoke and spices, and Arthur pays over another of their precious coins for two trenchers of bread and potage. It’s the best thing he’s ever tasted, even more than Cook’s cakes.
They sleep on borrowed blankets in the long room, and wake to horns sounding in the distance.
There is a clatter from up the stairs, like feet hitting the ground running. “Wake up, wake up! Lord Agravaine approaches,” shouts the matron from the floor above, rousing the rest of her house. “Up, damn you!”
Arthur wipes the sleep dust from his eyes, grinning over at Merlin, who is sprawled out in a loose pile of limbs, blinking at the ceiling beams. “My uncle,” Arthur whispers, for they had not dared share with anyone, even the kindly matron, that Arthur is a prince. Not while danger lurked so near.
Not that Merlin really understands what being a prince even means, anyway.
He rolls his head to look over, a lock of his dark hair having pulled free from his long braid in the night, now plastered to his face with drool. The bridge of his pale nose is peeling from walking under the summer sun all day with no feathers or leaves to shade him.
He gives Arthur a sleepy, trusting smile.
“Everything will be alright now, you’ll see,” Arthur promises, feeling the full weight of the magic he has wrought, when he made Merlin. “I’ll take care of you.”