The Western Gate

The place is a ruined cloister, roofless, open to the stars. The hour is neither night nor dawn. Merlin stands with a staff of ash. Morgan le Fay sits upon the fallen altar, bare-headed, a sprig of apple blossom woven through her dark hair.

---

They stand together at the broken edge of the cloister, looking south. No gate. No guardian. Only heat, breath, and the unbearable immediacy of being alive.

The wheel turns. Curtain.

MERLIN
Thou hast been consorting with the stars in’heaven, sister.
To illuminate the design of each slice?
Each time I seek thee here, the canopy wears new visages,
as stage set, and theatre,
Your crossroad each quarter in turn divided thrice

MORGAN
Not new, but recollected.
The stars change not their nature — only the questions we dare demand against their silence.
And of demand, Tell me then, old crow of the scales:
if Libra be the philosopher,
what say you of the rest o’ the turning wheel?

MERLIN
Thou dost provoke me with thy parlour sport.

MORGAN
Nay, I provoke thee with a method.
Thou speak’st of signs as masquing robes,
stitched to feast-days and for idle pageantry.
I say they are humours steeped in milk and weather.
A babe born ’midst frost dreams not as one
that draws its first breath beneath a harvest moon —
wouldst thou not so conclude?
each ‘slice, a sthou so say,
in part reflects its nature?

MERLIN
Seasoning, then mayhaps.
Thou wouldst have fate brewed and simmered in the marrow.

MORGAN
I would have it earned.
The spring-born learns of budding ere of blight.
The winter-born finds want before it finds a tongue.
And the Libran — ah — born upon the hinge of light,
fed in abundance, roused by the scent of rot —
is’t marvel then they weigh all things in trembling scales?

MERLIN
Thou turn’st astrologie to anatomy.

MORGAN
I restore it to the cradle and the furrow.
Symbols grow rank and sour when cut from wind and weather.

(Merlin studies her. The stars wheel slowly above.)

MERLIN
Then clothe my curiosity, I pray thee.
Wouldst make of them born Scorpio, what?
— Surgeons of the soul?

MORGAN
The wanton, the unbridled — ay, licentious —
these care not what is true, but what survives the crucible.
They are born knowing this:
to lay one’s hand upon power is to be unmade by it,
and yet the flame allures, the lust devours.

MERLIN
And what then saith its neighbour, Sagittarius?

MORGAN
Hunters — or else the sacrifice itself.
Souls that believe meaning dwells just yonder, past the ridge.
They chase not answers, but the hazard of the chase.

(A pause. Wind threads through the broken arches.)

MERLIN
Thou build’st a wheel that offers little comfort.

MORGAN
Nor should it.
Witchcraft that soothes is but a painted play.
A theatre for the dreamer.

MERLIN
Then let us leave the stars awhile.
Thou grow’st ever restless when systems hold their ground.

MORGAN
Because such systems feign a knowledge of what consciousness be.

MERLIN
And thou, dost thou claim that sceptre?

Does thou know what thou art?
hast thy slippers attended through the Temple of Delphi?

MORGAN
I know but this:
awareness stirs the very hour one doth refuse the given.
The beast receives the world.
The human questions it.
The witch chooses not to know —
and yet walks on, into the path of wisdom,
that wends and sways like a bough in storm.

MERLIN
Chosen ignorance is a perilous virtue.

MORGAN
All virtues are perilous, when pursued in earnest.

(She rises, drawing nearer.)

Thou art a tree of memory, Merlin.
Thou catalogu’st, thou keep’st, thou bind’st.
But tell me — where, in all thy hoarding of the known,
hast thou permitted thyself to wander?

MERLIN
Wandering is for those who hunger to be lost.

MORGAN
No.
Wandering is for those who will not let truth congeal.

MERLIN
Thou wouldst have me cast off discernment.

MORGAN
I would have thee cast off certainty.
There lies the difference —
though kings and priests do conspire to blur that line.
They name heresy madness,
they christen vision a disease.
Yet every age, when danger’s ghost hath fled,
anoints the very truths it once condemned.

MERLIN
And who, then, sits judge o’er what is dangerous?

MORGAN
Still the same few:
such as whose power leans upon a world kept legible.
They cry the mavericks mad,
drive out the thinkers, the rogue philosophers.

(Merlin turns away, troubled.)

MERLIN
Thou speak’st as though the gates stood unguarded.

MORGAN
A question for thee, then:
If Hecate stand watch in West, and North, and East,
what spirit keeps the South?

MERLIN
Fire. High noon. The quick and breathing.

MORGAN
Persephone waits there.
Comes she to be stolen,
or steps she forth herself,
knowing full well the cost of her descent?

MERLIN
Thou dost imply consent, where the old tale speaks of force.

MORGAN
I imply recognition.
The flower glows. The gaze contracts.
The world inclines upon its unseen axis.
Initiation is neither conquest nor surrender —
’tis consent to the inescapable,
stripped of the dream of mastery.

MERLIN
And if one mis-hear the call?

MORGAN
Then down they plunge.
That is not failing — that is lesson.

MERLIN
Thou flirt’st with annihilation,
decked in pretty words.

MORGAN
No, Merlin. I flirt with motion.
Persephone melts not into the dark beneath.
She learns the art of walking in between.

(She smiles, faintly.)

Is that not thy craft as well —
to haunt thresholds,
yet never wholly cross?

MERLIN
Thou wouldst have me rise against the very order I serve.

MORGAN
I would have thee remember:
order itself was once rebellion’s child.
Tell me — when knowledge speaks with too smooth a tongue,
when answers come unsullied by all hazard,
dost thou not feel that something vital has been cut away?

MERLIN
Wisdom requires a bridle.

MORGAN
And wisdom withers when the bridle is made law.
Knowledge and understanding are but the fixed Stone,
the codified decree — as thou well know’st.
Un-sheath the sword, double-edged, Merlin.

(Silence. The stars drift. A lone owl calls afar.)

The sword is played Old Man,
it is wielded and directed.
the Stone is fixed alike the books,
Art wisdom ever flowing,
the wanderers do climb the ascent not to shun the stone,
but to re carve in nature’s song.

MERLIN
Thou art dangerous.

MORGAN
Only to cages.
I ask not that thou leap into the blind abyss.
I ask but this:
mark well where the torchlight dies —
and ask thyself if the night beyond
be truly void, or only unexplored.

MERLIN
In the Light there are always shadows,
to bear all forms reconcileld,
In the darkness,
there is no light.

(to be continued)