THE MAIDENS WERE LAUGHING AT ME, SPLASHES OF LAUGHTER, melodious, like the giggling of a fountain. “You must trust us,” said the maiden at my head, her words a warm breath in my ear. “Look, you lie as rigid as a sword. Loosen your arms.” But I could not yet loosen my arms, which were crossed on my chest. I lay upon the water of the great lake, on my back, facing the sky, in danger of sinking, and surrounding me head to toe stood the damsels of Avalon, their gowns flowing and floating around them, their faces clustered like lilies, their arms supporting me. I was to sleep this night on a limpid, rippling, insubstantial bed. Like Fisherfather’s frail coracle bobbing on the vast chest of old Lyr, I lay on the warm bosom of ladywater—warm and pleasant and terrifying. If I wished to speak with the Lady, I had to do this thing, and if her damsels betrayed me, I would drown.

“Trust us,” said the maiden softly again.

But—what if they got tired and let me go? What if they talked with one another and forgot to watch my breathing? What if I rolled over in my sleep and they were not strong enough to stop me? Trust them? This was the most difficult of all tasks the Lady could have given me.

I closed my eyes against the brightness of the sky and decided to get through it as quickly as I could.

Nevertheless, it took hours. I tried not to think of how it had felt to breathe water, to gasp and choke and nearly drown in water stronger than a giant’s fist. I thought about it anyway. I opened my eyes to look straight up at a sky tawny with sundown, and again to look up at stars. I began to grow so weary of my own fear that I relaxed. After that—it seemed to me that I opened my eyes again and looked, but at last I must have been asleep, for I was looking into a darkly sparkling indigo-green face, a lovely, maidenly face with great eyes that opened and opened and swirled and swam and floated like water lilies.

It was Nyneve—yet it was not Nyneve; it was more than Nyneve. It was Guinevere before she met Arthur or Lancelot, it was Lynette, it was every white-armed damsel anywhere, it was Morgan le Fay before she learned to hate, it was my mother Morgause when she was a fair young woman setting off to Camelot. She, the one I faced, she was the maiden of all maidens. Yet she was more than that. I do not know how to say what she was, the Lady of the Lake.

“Lady Vivien,” I whispered. Lady of life.