I lay behind the quoit stone—some folk said such stones had a magical power to heal a person who passed through them, but it had done nothing for me. I lay there and after a while I realized I was shaking all over, maybe with cold, and digging my fingers deep into the slaty ground. I sat up and saw that my hands were dirty and bloody red from clawing at the shale.

One hand clutched something, I noticed as if the hand did not belong to me. I willed it to open, and it did. In the palm lay a small something so round it could not have been just a pebble. I stood up and dropped it into the pocket of my brown frock.

Over the sea the sun was setting as red as my blood. As red as the dragon flag. In the waves its reflection shifted like flames.

I knew I had to go home.

Yet I did not see how I could bear to.

Something sniffed at my ankle. I looked down, so stony numb I was not even surprised. A black dog stood there, neither friendly nor fierce, gazing at me with weird white eyes.

“Child,” said a voice behind me.

I turned, and at first I thought it was a giant looming over me. But it was Merlin, hard and dark like a standing stone in the dusk. He wore a coarse cloak, like a shepherd’s mantle, and he carried a thick, knotty walking stick, but I knew him. I could never mistake that voice like winter thistles or those black pits, like tin mines, that were his eyes. It was he.

I had no strength left to scream. I just stared into the midnight of his eyes, and he stared into the green and purple twilight of mine.

“Fay,” he whispered.

I had not yet heard it then, for no one except my father considered me of much account, but my mismatched eyes marked me as one set apart. Morgan le Fay.

“Fate upon fate,” Merlin murmured. “Cycles upon cycles of fate. Who are you, child?”

I could not speak. I tried to back away, but my feet seemed not to work.

“There is the ancient green power here,” he said. “I smell it. What is your name, child? Is it Morrigun?”

At last my panic gave me strength. I ran. Headlong, falling down the slope, cutting my knees on the rocks, I ran back to Tintagel and reached it just as the gates were closing.