He didn’t care. He rushed on. “Did you touch it? Did you touch the Grail?”

“I—no. Did you?”

“No. I only saw. Oh, so beautiful.” His rapt gaze wandered back to the sky.

“What did it show you?” Somehow, once upon a time, the mere sight of the Grail in a vision had brought forth all that was brave and good and pure in me. My dream of the Grail had made a knight of me and given to me my quest. But somehow, since the quest had failed, I could not think what I had seen in the Grail except for blood.

“Why—I’m not sure.” He focused on me for a moment, puzzled yet unclouded. “It was glorious, that’s all. You were there. And I saw—” His head lifted. His sunrise smile widened. His hands drifted up like leaves on a breeze, like wings. “I saw my soul fly up.”

“Your . . . your soul?”

“Like a white butterfly.” His arms spread, but not as if he were showing me; he seemed no longer aware of me at all. He looked to the sky.

I said softly, “My soul is more like a moth that’s been through the fire.” Tattered, blackened, beaten down by fate. Barely alive.

I left Pelleas. He did not see me go.

From time to time throughout the dark winter days, I thought of him as my sluggish, miserable battle ground on, as the invisible serpent around me coiled tighter, as I felt a tiny, struggling self fluttering more and more weakly in my chest.

Slowly I came to shape a desperate plan.

Spring came, but it made no difference to me. I had hoped I would feel better when the grass turned green again, but I did not. I was soul weary and suffering. Birdsong and violets could not help me.

With spring, the blind harper came back to Camelot.

It seemed that nothing could stop my pain; each day I felt more tormented. But I wondered whether the blind harper might help me. Although I had reason to be wary of harping, something in his music spoke to me. And his harp—it was richly carved with druid vine work, very old. I sensed that this blind bard might see more clearly than people with eyes.

As I walked out one morning, there he sat in the sun of the courtyard, all alone except for the raven on his shoulder. Strumming his harp, he sang to the bird with bleak affection in his voice:

Three ravens sat on a tree

And they were black as destiny.

One of them said to his mate,

“I’m hungry. What is there to eat?”

“On Glastonbury field,” she said,

“Many and many a knight lies dead . . .”