I learned to hate my father from my cradle. It was my mother, Morgan, who taught me that. I have only realized that I never thought of her as my mother. She ceased to be like other women long before I was born.

      She sang to me. I don’t know why she sang, but it is the one thing impossible to forget. She sang me no lullabies, but faery-songs. I can still heard them, thrumming, full of eldritch beauty, and the starless darkness that curses are made of.

     At times she could be lovely, more like a vision than a real woman. But at other she could be quite mad, insane even. I learned when it was best not to be underfoot.

    I am not surprised she was that way, after years spent with her bitter ambitions, and enchantments as sole company.

     Uther never trusted her. Perhaps even then, there was that curious gleam in her eyes. He banished her to a nunnery for fifteen years, where she managed to learn sorcery under the nun’s noses.

   Of course, all this happened long before I was born, but she still talked about it, to no one in particular, when she was not entirely sane.

   From the beginning I knew that there was too much of Morgan in me, and not enough of Arthur. I was born under a malediction, a dark prophecy, one that would bring down a kingdom.

    I remember Morgan’s Seeing Bowl. It looked ordinary enough. It was dark blue, and rimmed with gold. It was studded with rubies. It was always filled with water. But Morgan could see things within the bowl.

   One day she showed me my father. I was only a child. ‘’ Come, Mordred, look into the bowl with me.’’ I was mildly interested. I had seen into Morgan’s bowl before. Some of the things I saw I liked, and others I didn’t understand.

   A man and a woman walked together in a garden. The woman was Guinevere, though I didn’t know that then. She held herself with a gentle nobleness, and had a kind of beauty that Morgan with all her powers, could not conjure. The woman listened. The man was talking.

   ‘’ A new land,’’ I heard him say. ‘’ a kingdom of peace, and order.’’ His brilliant red hair gleamed in the sun. But it was his hazel eyes that I noticed. I noticed them because they were good, honest, and full of hope. The sight pained me.

  ‘’ Take it away! I don’t want it!’’

     I didn’t know what I wanted then. I was a child-too young to understand. I did want him, but not enough. I began to cry.

  Morgan looked down at me, and seemed frightened, something that rarely happened. She knelt and cupped my face with her hands.

‘’ You must never cry, Mordred,’’ she said. ‘’ Do you understand? You must never cry.’’ And from that day, I never did.