The Bright Sword

by Lev Grossman

Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

his hands and knees combing through the grass

for that damned fastening pin and not finding it.

Adventures were quick and exciting when you heard about them, but when you were inside one they happened very, very slowly.

It was a good story. It made him feel better. Stories were useful that way, they smoothed over the gaps and sharp edges of the world.

“Of all the animals,” she said, “only man can feel a despair that is beyond his power to endure.”

The world was coming undone again, like it had with the knight, just when he’d almost got it back together again. Why couldn’t it behave?

He swore a solemn vow that if he survived this he would always, for the rest of his life, if given the choice, go to bed.

Arthur was a brave knight, and a zealous Christian, and the best of all kings, but he was not without stain, at least as God judged these things. He’d had a child out of wedlock with his own half sister, which seemed like the kind of detail God was unlikely to overlook. For some of the more rigorous adventures you had to be an actual virgin.

happened, did you fall in?” “I did.” What else could he say? “Your Majesty.” More hilarity. He summoned a waterlogged smile.

say what you like about Him, but the Jew-on-a-stick was listening after all.

She loved him more than he loved himself. And was that not the point of a marriage, to love a person more than they can love themselves?

she’s fertile as a dungheap. You could grow mushrooms on her.”

“Morgan!” Collum shouted. “Please! Not now!” “I know, I know,” she said. “Don’t girls just spoil everything?”

He couldn’t remember at first exactly what happened, only that all urgency was gone now. Whatever it was had taken its course. There was peace. But no, that wasn’t it. Not peace. Something else. Despair. The peace of lost hope. Something had been carelessly mislaid, that could never be found again.

He ate barbarians, with pepper and fish sauce, and shat law and order.

But of course it wasn’t over. Why would the future be simpler than the past? Stories never really ended, they just rolled one into the next. The past was never wholly lost, and the future was never quite found. We wander forever in a pathless forest, dropping with weariness, as home draws us back, and the grail draws us on, and we never arrive, and the quest never ends.

and as he died he wondered, not for the first time but for the very last, why it should be that we are made for a bright world, but live in a dark one.