Where should I look for my gift? At which crossroads?
I fear I have no time, lost in the patterns of prophecy.
Ten northern years I have measured out in search of clues,
and mad witches' tales of a warrior of the night.
— Ballad of the Dark Knight
He set out young, in search of the gift he had been promised, and lost his way among prophecies. At every crossroads old women told stories about a warrior of the night, and he never guessed the stories were about him.
At last he met the oldest of them in the heart of the forest. She laughed at him. You are not the first, she said, to kill his own youth. You turned away from living joys and became your own enemy, and now you drag yourself into the deep wood with an old man's face.
He answered that he would pass through the forest as clear as a stream and come out at last to a bright sea of holy light. That was where his hope began.
She only laughed again, with her toothless mouth. These woods have been dark since the beginning of time. You may wander here, but you may not leave.
He was one of many. When the call went out, a whole fellowship of knights rode into the forests in search of the Grail, each by his own road. Most never came back. Some fell to the sword, some to the cold, some to their own pride. He fell to trust.
The witch did not let him go. In a clearing deep in the forest, beside her house, lay a garden overgrown with climbing red roses, and in that garden stood her throne of carved wood. Rest a little, knight, she said; the sea will wait. He was tired from ten years of roads, and he believed her. He sat down. When the weariness became unbearable, he loosened his grip on the sword for a single moment and closed his eyes. A moment was enough.
The throne was enchanted, and around it time lost count. The rose bush went on growing, season after season, until it swallowed the knight whole: armour, throne and years. He never rose again. His flesh withered as she had promised, until his face had dried down to the skull. Only the steel kept its shape, and his hand still rests on the sword it let go of for one moment too long.
Few of the knights who rode out after the Grail found glory in their wanderings. Some were luckier: Holy Grail and The Unsought Blade. This one stayed in the forest.
"The old witch laughs: 'Where would you go?
You came in here, and that's your end: you'll wither on the way.
These woods are deep, and dark here since the dawn of days;
you're free to wander here, but not to find the way out.'
...
And the witch laughed like the devil, fidgeting:
'The water of the sea is bitter, and you cannot drink it.'"
— Konstantin Balmont, The Witch (1903)
Sister frame of Lancelot, made on the same summer night.
(Fine Art Photography. Created in July 2022.)
