Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s usually balls of fishing line in the water. Nests of the stuff, clear and stiff, and left behind entangled with crushed, scraped aluminum cans. Sometimes, its bags of dog shit—an unfortunately soft surprise to searching hands. 

There are other things, too. Little plastic toys. Abandoned socks, the occasional glove and broken button and, one memorable time, a full, undamaged green Wellington boot filled with a whole world of algae and duckweed and murky-colored fish the length of one of Merlin’s knuckles. 

He finds a lot of that stuff digging around in the reeds on the edges of the lake with his feet trudging along its soft bottom. 

One time, he found a mobile phone. One time he found a heavy, heavy bin bag filled with other bin bags and the sickly sweet smell of rotting meat.

He couldn’t lift it out of the lake. It was too heavy and the water and sky too dark to dig around inside the bag to make it lighter.

He dragged it as far as he could to the shoreline and waited for Mum to come by in the car. She found him then as she always does, by shining the headlights towards the lake until the reflective stripes on his life jacket gleam back at her. 

He showed her the bag.

She pulled him away from it with both arms and a gasp that made the bushes all around shiver. She told him to sit in the car and took off his boots and helped him shuck his waders.

There came afterwards a policeman and the boots and the waders went away with him and the bin bags, never to be seen again. 

A different policeman argued with Mum for ages, saying that she was to keep Merlin out of the lake, but Merlin had permission. He had a badge with his name on it and ‘researcher’ printed underneath. He’d filled out all the right forms and the Ethics Board told him in writing that he could do what he was doing, so long as he was supervised by the Conservancy and a legal guardian. 

He’s allowed to be at the lake, in fact it is his only job to be at the lake, at least until his thesis is done, and even then, the Conservancy wants to hire him on full time because the lake is so delicate and people aren’t bothered about it and he knows everything there is to know about all that lives in and around it.

He can feel the silt particles as they settle on the bottom. He can feel the glowing eyes of its owls and the slow walk of  its snails and the whip-quick scattering of its innumerable fish bodies. He feels them the way that people feel heartbeats, day and night, night and day. 

He knows every time something new appears inside the lake. 

That morning when he woke up, he already knew that something that shouldn’t be in the water was in there. He’d washed his face and gagged from the wrongness. He’d brushed his teeth and gagged from it again, and Mum asked from the other room if he wasn’t feeling well. But she knows as he knows that not-feeling well, just like feeling well, is a state of being made by the lake. 

She brought him early as he requested and left him be for the day with his waders and boots and a lunch wrapped in paper and foil. 

The lunch is half-eaten, still wrapped in foil on the dock. 

Merlin’s stomach convulsed after taking three bites of it; he is too close to the lake now, too close to the wrongness to do anything besides walk wide, careful circles from the reeds on the outskirts towards the sloping shallows and slowly, tenderly, closer towards the center where the water is too deep for him to stand in. 

He won’t go that far today. The last of summer has left; the water is colder every morning, and he’s only wearing waders that come up to his chest. 

It takes hours. 

The lake gets colder as the light begins to die overhead, and still Merlin wades deeper and deeper towards the wrongness, so preoccupied with the thick saliva building along the sides of his tongue and the debris bumping against his boots that he doesn’t expect the give of the thing when he gets ahold of it. 

It’s thick and slick, too wide for his hand to wrap around, and solid and big. 

It feels like Mum. Like when Merlin’s had a bad dream and pushed open the door to her and Dad’s room, holding a torch in one hand and reaching for her sleeping arm with the other. 

It feels like Mum, and for a terrifying moment, he imagines that it is. His stomach swoops and his heart explodes into beating and before he knows it, he’s crying and shouting at the water and splashing away. 

And the thing, whatever it is, vanishes again into the cool darkness.. 

Merlin stumbles back to shore. He calls the Conservancy on the emergency handheld GPS Mum attached to his daypack’s shoulder strap. Sharon answers. She makes him breathe until he can get the words out and tells him to stay where he is and not to get back into the lake, and he does, but he also shakily taps out a message to Mum on his mobile. 

Within moments, a typing bubble appears at the bottom of the screen. He cries then again, from what? He doesn’t know. 

Relief maybe. 

Fear. 

He knows what’s in the lake better than he knows what’s in his own heart. It is part of him, and like an eel in the back of his brain, he knows he’s been waiting for something to appear in it, just like that thing. 

But not that one.

It’s the wrong body. 

And it’s dead. 

Ten minutes pass filled with the terrifying rattle of reeds and the heart-stopping croak of frogs. Merlin sits alone, as far from the shore as he can manage, nearly on the trail, but not quite because Sharon told him not to run away, to stay where he is. She told him to get out his safety lantern and turn it on just in case the sun sets faster than it takes George and Mum to get to the side of the lake. 

It doesn’t take that long. 

He feels like a baby reaching for Mum when she arrives. She’s barely slammed the car door when he’s up and moving towards her. She meets him halfway and crushes him into her chest. 

George shines a light across the lake. In the dark, its beam is flecked with gnats and water bugs. He squints and shines it back and forth across the surface of the water until he lands on something smooth out there that looks, from the distance, like a piece of pale wood.

“It’s not wood,” Merlin whispers, clutching at Mum’s sleeves.

George radios into the Conservancy and tells Sharon to call the police. 

The police arrive when it’s totally dark and Merlin is asleep in the front seat of the car.

When he wakes, he is still wearing his boots and waders.

The policeman asks him if he can explain what he felt and what he saw and he does, but before he knows it, all these other people in nearby cars and checkered, hi-vis vests start hissing. 

He looks over to the far side of the lake and finds another gaggle of policemen in a boat, these wearing different color suits and reeling in a hammock of some sort with something big and pale inside it.

Someone says ‘“my god.” 

Someone tells Merlin not to look, but it’s too late. 

It’s a lady they’re pulling out of the lake. 

Merlin was right. She’s a lot like Mum. Paler, of course, and monstrous in the bright beams of headlights and headlamps. 

Her eyes are wide open still, just as they were when Merlin pushed her shoulder back underwater.

“Jesus Christ,” the policeman talking to Merlin says. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ. This kid’s two for two.” 

Somehow, him saying that brings a flood of relief. 

The body is wrong, much like the bin bags before it, but with it hauled up into the policemen’s boat, the writhing wrongness that forced Merlin’s feet deeper and deeper into the lake fades away. 

His eyes are pulled downward. Mum reaches over him to buckle the seatbelt over him. 

As Merlin has told Mum time and time again—and Dad when Dad finds it in himself to come out of the woods for a spell—there is supposed to be a body in the lake. 

King Arthur’s body. 

It’s down there at the very bottom somewhere, and it’s Merlin’s job to keep mucking around until he finds it or the sword he’s meant to be carrying. 

The difference between King Arthur’s body and the one Merlin has most recently found is that King Arthur’s body is going to be living. It’s going to be warm, and it’s trapped really deep down there in the water, under layers and layers of rocks and silt and woody debris, so it’ll be a while yet before it makes its way up to the point that Merlin can get ahold of it and help it up the final few feet to the surface.

But when he does, well, that’ll be it for everyone. 

King Arthur will return and Merlin will stand at his side, as his loyal…hydrologist? Biologist? 

It doesn’t matter. 

The point is that Arthur will fix the lake. He’ll fix all the lakes in Wales and keep them from going dry and scummy and the public from throwing beer cans and unwanted goldfish into them. He’ll make every shitty, money-grabbing politician and corporation trying to fill in the land to build petrol stations and carparks and luxury apartments fall to their knees. They’ll beg his forgiveness as he asks them what drove them, besides greed, to ruin the lakes and forests of their ancestors and his. 

Merlin has told Sharon and George at the Conservancy as much, and they asked him how he reconciles that with the king-less scans he’s had done of the lake’s bottom, and frankly, he doesn’t see why he needs to reconcile it at all.

Two things can be true at once; he’s seen it himself. The head of his thesis committee goes to church every Sunday to ring the bells, and the same man goes into a lecture hall the next day with his computer and modeling software to talk about atoms and mercury and fish populations. 

If a man can believe in God and science at the same time, then Merlin can know a lake to be a complex system of biodiversity as well as the resting and rising place of  King Arthur. 

George says, ‘that checks out.’ 

George is American—though he says he’s Welsh on his grandmother’s side. 

He thinks it’s rather amusing that Merlin is named Merlin, as if people the whole world over don’t name themselves ‘Merlin’ on the daily. 

Merlin finds George a little exasperating, if he’s honest. But he tries not to hold that against him. Merlin has to stay in the Conservancy’s good graces if he wants a job with them by the time he’s 18.

When George or Sharon or Roxie or Pip comes by the lakeside and asks Merlin if he’s found Arthur today, Merlin makes sure to have some pithy remark for them. It makes them chuckle and feel secure in their adult-ness. They let him slosh around more than they let other researchers. 

Pip and Sharon ask him, when he returns to the lake after finding its lady, to try not to find anyone in there that’s not royalty, please. 

Merlin says he’ll do his best but can make no promises, and they laugh while he keeps looking. 

They head back to the Conservancy.

He makes his usual rounds, unearthing cans and throwing them at the dock where he can pick them up later and hunting for the usual schools of fish to see if they’ve entertained any of the small, above-water tanks he’s installed for them. A few have, but not the native fish, mostly the now-feral goldfish. Their scales flash gold in the morning light.

There is a big fish that he’s been hunting for lately: a released koi fish that’s been swanning through the water, bullying the native school. It snatches dragonflies and gnats out the air and devours every egg it sees. The tiny snails walking along the reeds aren’t spared its wrath, nor the scummy algae under the surface.

It is a beautiful fish with gleaming white and red scales, but every time Merlin gets close to it, it spies him and takes off lightning-quick into the depths. 

He barely notices when a policeman in normal clothes shows up on the side of the lake and asks him if his name is Merlin. 

Merlin says yes while crouching over a cluster of twigs in the middle of which appear to be a few single, round eggs. He can’t decide if they’re frog spawn broken up by a bird or an incoming generation of newts unwittingly introduced into the lake by yet another unhelpful local enthusiast. 

They sure look like newt eggs, all on their lonesome as they are and surrounded by all these sticks and leaves. 

If the koi sees them, they’re goners.

“Do you have a second to talk, Merlin?” The policeman in normal clothes asks. “It’s not every day a man like me meets a boy prodigy.” 

Merlin is twelve, not stupid. He’s watched enough television to know that a policeman only wants to talk to kids if it’s about a dead lady they unwittingly found in a pond. 

“I’m kind of busy,” he says at the eggs. 

“I don’t think you’re that busy,” the policeman says. 

He’s rude and wrong. 

“I’m busy,” Merlin says again, because sometimes adults need to feel like they’re interrupting a serious brain-game of his in order to leave him alone. 

“Hi.” 

Merlin looks up to see an egret, as bright as new snow, giving the policeman a warning stare from the reeds next to the dock. 

“Carry on,” the policeman tells the bird. 

She, obviously, has other plans and begins advancing.

“Hey, hey, hey, now,” the policeman says. 

“She’s got a nest over there,” Merlin says. 

He watches the policeman stagger backwards towards the end of the dock.

He’s going to fall. 

Well, let that be a lesson to him. 

Merlin goes back to the newt eggs and pretends not to notice when the water suddenly laps higher on his waders than just a few seconds ago. 

His eye catches on a dull round, knobbly bit of plastic beneath the twig the newt eggs are on and he plunges a hand into the water to grab it before he loses sight of it. 

He brings it up into the air and holds it up in the light. It looks like a plastic cog. He flips it over and smears his thumbs across the scummy backside until the bumpy brand name appears. 

He lost a knob on his total station the other day in this area, but this piece is too flimsy to be that. The brand is different, too. 

He frowns at it as he turns it over in his fingers. 

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” the policeman says as he pulls himself out of the water. He fishes his mobile phone out of his pocket and frantically starts shaking it. 

Merlin sloshes over his way and holds up the cog-gasket-knob-thing. 

“Does this look like a drone attachment to you?” he asks. 

The policeman shakes himself and scrunches his face up as he looks down at Merlin. He reaches as if to take the knob and Merlin rips his hand back. 

“Just look,” he says. 

“Looks like rubbish,” the policeman says. 

“Hmmm,” Merlin says, turning away to look at the knob again. 

He wades back the way he came. 

“Woah there, where’re you going?” the policeman says. 

If the knob is in the water and it came from a drone, then there should be other drone-parts around the area. 

There’s only one researcher that he knows of who’s been cleared to fly drones in this area, and Merlin is fairly sure that she’s busy having her baby at the moment in a plastic, blow-up pool in her kitchen.

“WOAH. HEY. Kid–Merlin. Don’t go–HEY. Stay right where you are.” 

Merlin looks over his shoulder with a frown. The policeman, soaked all the way up to his waist, flails as he splashes inexpertly over, disturbing who knows how many habitats. 

“Stop that,” he says. 

The man fumbles his way right in front of him and holds out his arms. 

“This is a crime scene,” he says. 

Merlin frowns as hard as he can up at him. He reaches into the front pocket of his waders and produces his ID card. He holds it out to the policeman and waits. 

After a beat, the policeman takes it. 

“You’re disturbing a sensitive and protected environment. If you keep goin’ on like that, I’ll tell the guys to fine you,” Merlin says. 

The policeman clears his throat and hands Merlin back his card. 

“I just have some questions,” he says. “Can we talk?” 

Merlin eats lunch while the policeman talks at him. It’s as good a time for a snack as any.

The policeman seems put off by that, but that’s his problem. 

“How old are you, Merlin?” he finally asks. 

“Twelve,” Merlin says. 

“Almost thirteen?” 

“Not really.” 

“Don’t you want to be with other kids?” 

“No. I’ve got things to do.” 

“Like finding dead women in water?” 

“I was here first,” Merlin says. “I dunno where she came from, unless she’s the lady of the lake.” 

The policeman swallows and looks out across the water’s bright surface. 

“That’s, yeah. That’s what they’re calling her,” he says. “You didn’t see anyone poking around here the day you found her, did you? Did anyone come this way and talk to you? Anyone you didn’t already know?” 

“No,” Merlin says. “It was just me.” 

“You’re sure?” 

Yes, Merlin is sure. He can feel when other people get close to the lake who shouldn’t be–so long as he’s awake. He can’t do too much when he’s sleeping.

He tells the policeman this and receives a raised eyebrow in response. 

“The, uh, Conservancy people said you’d say something like that,” he says. 

“I’ve trained them,” Merlin says. 

“Have you?” 

“Yeah.” 

“They say you’ve been interested in this place for a while. For a few years or something like that?” 

“I don’t think she’s the Lady of the Lake,” Merlin says. “She didn’t have a sword or anything on her, did she?” 

The policeman makes a weird face again and taps at his miraculously-unharmed mobile’s screen. 

“Is your name actually Merlin?” he asks after a while. 

“Yes.” 

“Your mum named you that?” 

“Yes.” 

“And you’re looking for…King Arthur? In this, er, pond?” 

“And writing my thesis on it,” Merlin says. “He’s not in it–my thesis, I mean.” 

“Arthur isn’t?” the policeman repeats. 

“No. My supervisor told me to leave him out.”

“Because?” 

“Because he’s not contributing much to the science,” Merlin says. “He’s allowed to be in the lit review a little. What’s your name?” 

The policeman blinks. 

“Detective Morgan,” he says. 

“No, what’s your name-name?” 

“My first name?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Gwaine.” 

“See,” Merlin says, “That’s what the lake does. You’re supposed to be here, too. Gwaine is King Arthur’s knight. I can tell you now, though, it’s going to be a while before he’s ready to go with you. He’s in the middle, I think.” 

Knight Gwaine sits quietly for a few seconds in response. 

“You’re sure it was just you out here that day you found the woman?” he asks.  

“I’m sure,” Merlin says. 

“Were you here by yourself?” 

“There aren’t any more ladies in there,” Merlin assures him. “Charlotte’s having her baby right now. Her dive equipment is back at the Conservancy if you want to be sure.” 

“Merlin, can I ask you something?” Knight Gwaine says. 

“You’re going to anyways,” Merlin says. 

“You’ve found two bodies in a year in that water. Doesn’t that make you nervous?” 

Yes. But what else is there to do? Merlin has to wait for King Arthur. He has to stay by this lake, no matter who goes into it and who comes out. 

“My uncle says death is just another part of life,” Merlin says.

Knight Gwaine seems to be holding his breath. 

“It’s not really safe for you to be out here by yourself anymore,” he says all in a rush.

“It’s my thesis-site.” 

“I know. I hear you.” 

“I have to be here.” 

“People know that you’re out here. People know who you are. Not just people from town.” 

“I know. It’s because me and Mum and Dad and the Conservancy laid down in front of the bulldozers and stuff last year.”

“And chained yourselves to the gates in front of the estate’s office.” 

“Like the suffragettes.” 

“You covered the park in missing posters.” 

“Mr. Draig lost his spine. I was just helping him find it.” 

Knight Gwaine rests his cheek on his knuckles. 

“I’m an activist, Mr. Morgan,” Merlin explains to him. 

“I see that.” 

“I want this place to exist here forever. Forever and ever and ever.” 

“You mean until King Arthur climbs out of it?” 

“Yes,” Merlin says. “But after that, too, since I’m not like, 100% positive that he’s going to know what a fish ladder is. I figure we’ve got to do some work on that and probably his English before we let him go off into the wild.” 

“Right. Obviously, the English. But what happens if someone tries to put another body in the lake while you’re here?” 

Merlin doesn’t have an answer to that. It’s not really been a thought he’s given much time to. 

“Exactly,” Knight Gwaine says. “If whoever is doing this sees you seeing him doing what he’s doing, he might try to hurt you.” 

Well. Merlin’s pretty sure he’s died a few times before, so he’ll just die then, right? 

He watches Knight Gwaine stand up. 

Mum says that Merlin has a right to be at the lake and Knight Gwaine tries to tell her the same thing he told Merlin about serial killers and witnesses and whatnot. 

Mum asks who died and made him King. Knight Gwaine asks to speak to Dad–as if Dad is the reasonable one of the family or something. 

Mum calls him on his emergency GPS and hands it over to Knight Gwaine who explains the situation. 

Dad says he can’t hear anything anyone is saying but he’s safe and will be home in about two weeks and he’s got to let them go for now because he’s about to cross through a river. 

Knight Gwaine asks Mum very nicely to keep Merlin home until they find whoever it is that is putting dead ladies in the lake. Mum says that she will go with Merlin to the lake when she’s not working and otherwise, a member from the Conservancy can go with him, but he has a right to his research and his data collection and as long as he’s not interfering with police evidence–which he isn’t–she isn’t going to stop him from finishing his fieldwork. 

Knight Gwaine asks if everyone in the family is like this or if it’s just her generation. Mum asks him to leave and he lingers, looking for a long time into her eyes. 

He says if Merlin has constant adult supervision from someone trained in outdoor search and rescue, then he will compromise. 

“So my husband,” Mum says. 

“Or someone we know from the volunteers,” Knight Gwaine says. 

“Oh, great detective, do give us a volunteer,” Mum says. 

“Ma’am, are you upset with me?” 

“Me? No, sir. Never, sir. I’m only looking out for my boy,” Mum says. 

Merlin clings to her side for dramatic effect. She squeezes back and pets his hair. 

Knight Gwaine doesn’t look very amused. 

“I’ve got just the person,” he says. 

Knight Gwaine knows a volunteer in the local Search and Rescue organization who works as a firefighter most of the time, but spends his days off doing even more work in the woods and along trails. 

His name is Leon. 

He does not like Knight Gwaine. He and Knight Gwaine talk to each other inches from the others’ face like they’re television rivals passing each other in a hallway. 

A few days after Merlin and Mum work out a weekly schedule with Mr. Leon, Merlin discovers a whole box of newts half-sunken between the egret’s nest and a log claimed by the lake’s sleepy population of turtles for sunning. The box with its scummy plastic walls appears to be an abandoned aquarium filled with egg sacks and weird water dishes and aaaaaugh. 

He knew those eggs were newt eggs. He knew it. 

Native newts haven’t made it to this lake yet. 

He goes newt hunting and after a few minutes, Mr. Leon joins him. Merlin shows him what to look for and together they wade deeper and deeper into the cold water. 

Mr. Leon is nice, though Knight Gwaine is more fun to watch. They square off every time Knight Gwaine comes to the lake to make sure Merlin is abiding by the new rules they set up. 

Merlin shows Knight Gwaine the newts. He is grossed out at first, but the next day comes back and holds a few of them in his bare hands. He does the same with the snake Merlin finds and hands to him. And the beetles. And the spider Leon told them both not to touch. 

They’re both there when Merlin slips and goes under in a sudden cloud of bubbles and rushing water.

Water rushes into Merlin’s mouth from his nostrils. His senses are overtaken by the sensation of burning, burning, burning and the wavering chaos of swirling lake water and bubbles rushing against his ears. In a sudden bolt of awareness, he realizes that he’s being dragged towards the cold center of the lake. There is tightness around his boot and he fights with all his might, kicking as his lungs crush in on themselves. 

The world gets darker and colder by the second. 

The pressure around his ankle loosens, but there’s no relief in it. The swooping, stomach-dropping panic that’s overtaken him has nowhere to go. 

There’s no air. 

He’s trapped down here, floating, surrounded by green water flecked with broken bark and the roots of water plants, and bizarrely all he wants to do is close his eyes. 

He’s so sleepy now. 

And sinking. 

Sinking. 

He’s been here before, he thinks.

Maybe the body–maybe the body he’s dreamt about at the bottom of the lake is meant to be his? 

Maybe–no. 

No, it’s not meant to be his because when he opens his eyes one last time, to at least see where he will lie forever, there’s someone else already there, someone so pale that her limbs glow in the water like the koi fish’s white scales. Her hair is dark and so long that it sways around her body like ocean kelp. 

She is naked, but across her body, cradled in one arm, she holds a sword with a grime-covered blade. 

She’s real. 

Which means that Merlin was right. They’re so close to King Arthur. They’re so close and yet here he is, dying on account of some metal wire wrapped around his ankle. 

He reaches for her and her eyes widen. She drops the sword and throws her arms out. 

That’s all Merlin knows.