"Yes."
"You were looking for your horse. Did you ever find it?"
"Merlin took him."
"Oh, I'm so sorry. You should see what he does with animals in his workshops; says it's all part of his craft of lifemaking. Cruelty, I call it. Was it a nice horse?" she asked wistfully.
"Not very, but we've been through a lot together."
"That's what you said last time-have we had this conversation before?"
"Part of it."
"You must pardon me, young man; I'm almost completely crazy. What was your name again?"
"Is that part of the antideath spell?"
"Is what? The craziness? Yes, exactly. I'm not all here, in any sense of the words. Merlin cut my selfhood in three parts and hid them from each other."
"Oh?"
"Don't believe me?" She shrugged and reached up both hands to the back of her head. She undid something there, and then abruptly turned her head inside out. There was no skull or apparently any sort of bone or organ inside the empty skin, at least as far as he could see down the fleshy tunnel of her throat. The inner surface of her skin did display a large number of maggots, however.
He was deeply horrified, but he tried not to show it. "No bones, eh?" he remarked.
"No nothing: just my shell," her voice replied, somewhat muffled.
"I suppose some spell transmitting magnified talic impulses provides the equivalent of skeletal support and organic functions?"
"I guess so," she said, refolding her head so that her face reappeared. "He wouldn't tell me about it-I suppose he thought I'd try to counter-inscribe the spell somehow. Which I have, a few times, but nothing seems to work."
"Hm. Er-"
"Oh, for Christ's sake, don't grunt at me. What is it?"
"You seem to have-there's an infestation of…"
"The maggots, you mean? Well, well, quite the observant one, aren't we? Yes, young fellow, one of the hazards of perpetually dying is the occasional infestation, as you so sweetly put it, of maggots."
"If you rinse yourself out with salt water, that may clear them away."
"If it were that easy-Salt water, you say?"
"Yes."
"Sting, won't it?"
"It won't kill you."
"Is that supposed to be funny? Oh, never mind; I guess it is, sort of."
"Where's the rest of you?"
"Which one of us is crazy, anyway? Haven't you been listening? I don't know. I'm just the shell of myself. There are three of me now: my shell, my impulse-cloud, and my core self. If there is a way for me to know where they are, I don't know it. I don't know half of what I used to know, and what I do know I often can't remember."
"But he couldn't have done this unless …" Morlock broke off.
But she had heard. "Unless I consented?" she asked. "Ah, but I did consent. Of course I did. Young man-what's your name?"
"Morlock."
"Morlock. That was my son's name. I haven't seen him since the day he was born, and yet sometimes I feel that I loved him the most of all my children. When-"
"Enough of that. Merlin's not here."
"Yes, perhaps you're right. Anyway, have you ever been in imminent danger of death?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Good. Excellent. Welclass="underline" wouldn't you have done anything, absolutely anything in that moment to go on living?"
"No."
"What? You're lying."
"No."
"I can take your word on that, can I, Epimenides? Well, anyway, I was on the point of death, and he talked nae into it. I was afraid, and he …he said he could cure death and even the common cold if he had enough time-this was just a temporary measure. A temporary measure. Do you know how long it's been since then?"
"If he built the house for this purpose: between one hundred fifty and two hundred years."
Nimue looked at him with somber gray eyes and said in a subdued voice, "That's about right. Say, you sounded a bit like him, just then. You're not him in disguise, are you? What's your name?"
"Morlock."
"Ha. That's a laugh. My son's name is Morlock."
"You mentioned that."
"I tend to repeat myself at times. You'll have to forgive me, young man, but I'm almost completely crazy."
"Because of the antideath spell."
"Yes! He was so clever. And I didn't notice: he never said it was a lifespell or a youth-spell. It prevents death, but doesn't really permit life."
"And you want to break the spell."
The old woman was silent for a time. "Sometimes I do. When I remember. Then I'm desperate to. But. The other parts of me. They drag me back to life. Anyway. I don't want to die. I just want to be. I just want to be nae again, alive, and whole, and in one place, even if I die the next second."
"You probably will."
"Doesn't matter. I don't expect you to understand."
Morlock stared glumly out the window for a moment or two, considering the path that had led him here. At last he said, "I can probably arrange that."
"What?"
"I can bring the separate segments of your self to the same location. They will reunite and I suspect you will die shortly thereafter."
"Heh. He won't love you for it. Merlin, I mean."
"He hates me already."
"Oh? Then we shall be friends. What's your name?"
"Morlock Ambrosius. I'm your son."
"That explains why you'd bother, then. Excuse me, young man, I have to go down to the lake and wash. I've gotten all dirty somehow."
"Don't forget the salt."
"The salt. Oh, that's right. My son was just here telling me about maggot infestations, the insolent son-of-a-bitch, and I should know. Or was that a dream?"
Morlock didn't answer, and Nimue, taking a basin and a block of salt, went down to the lake behind the cottage. Morlock went down to the bridge. As soon as he stepped onto it, the troll appeared again and landed on the bridge ahead of him.
"Now I've got you!" the troll shouted.
"I still haven't crossed the bridge without permission," Morlock pointed out.
"No, but you will."
"I was going to, yes. I wanted to go into the woods and feed deeply and richly on walnuts and acorns until I had swollen up to twice my natural size. Otherwise I'd hardly be worth eating, as you see; I've been living on flatbread and dried meat-and not much of that-for months."
"You might be more worth eating then, but I'd never get the chance. If you get off the island you'll keep on going into the woods and someone else will get to eat you."
"No, I plan to come back and talk with the woman in the cottage."
"You won't be back. She's crazy, you know. I always hide when she comes down by the bridge here. She scares me."
"She's my mother."
"Oh. Sorry." Several of the troll's faces peered at him. "I guess I see the resemblance at that," it admitted. There was a long pause. "Walnuts, eh?" The troll licked several of its lips. "All right. Go on: don't be too long." It jumped off the side of the bridge and disappeared.
Morlock crossed back over the bridge and went off into the woods. He built a potter's wheel, found some clay, and threw a vase. It was long and narrow in external form, about two feet long; he folded the outside through a higher dimension so that the inside was about the size of a small room. He had no kiln, but he took out his choir of flames and explained to them what he needed. They were not very bright, as flames go: the few survivors from the debacle in the winterwood had propagated to fill the nexus, and most of the flames were rather youthful. But Morlock explained to them what he needed and stayed there to keep them on task, and by the following morning the vase was baked and glazed to Morlock's exacting specifications. He stowed the nexus and the jar in his backpack and returned to the wooden bridge leading to the island in the lake.
When he stepped onto the bridge the troll climbed out of the water and drew itself up onto the walkway. The majority of its eyes looked doubtfully at Morlock and it said, "You don't seem to be twice your previous size. What was that? Hyperbole? I dislike rhetorical tropes that verge on dishonesty."