Avalon, The Isle of Apples

I. The Isle That Was

There are places that live only in memory, or myth, or in the silvered pages of books so old they crack when opened. Avalon was such a place. The Isle of Apples. The sanctuary of kings. The cradle of enchantment.

But before it vanished, it was.

Avalon floated like a dream in the western sea, hidden by mists not of weather but of will. An island of soft hills and silver rivers, where the air tasted of honey and wind, and the trees bore fruit in every season. The apples were not just sweet—they healed. They sang. Some said they whispered truths no mortal was meant to know. On Avalon, time curled in spirals, and the moon never waned.

But it is gone now. All that remains is the memory. And memories, like mist, are easily scattered.

II. The Queen Without a Throne

Morgaine walked barefoot across the damp grass of the Tor, the high green hill at Avalon’s heart. Her black hair hung long, streaked now with silver, like moonlight through raven’s wing. She wore no crown—those days were done—but still she bore herself like a queen.

She had lived longer than she could measure, for time in Avalon was different. Not slower. Not faster. Just… other. On the mainland, kings rose and fell, wars were waged, the old gods were forgotten. But Avalon remained, untouched.

Until it wasn’t.

“Mother,” said a voice behind her.

She turned. It was Nimue, the Lady of the Lake. Or rather, a Lady. There had been many over the centuries. The title passed like a flame from candle to candle. Nimue’s face was youthful, but her eyes were ancient.

“They’re weakening,” Nimue said. “The wards are fading.”

Morgaine looked past her, to the rim of the island where the waters shimmered silver-blue. A ripple ran through the air, and for a moment, the mainland was visible—a gray smudge of stone and smoke.

“They no longer believe in us,” Morgaine said softly.

III. The Once and Future

Avalon had been born of belief. When the world was young, it hummed with magic, and Avalon was its heart. Not just a place, but a possibility. A promise.

The priests of the old ways—druids and priestesses alike—had brought their wounded to the isle. Most remembered the story of Arthur, the king who fell in battle and was borne by barge across the waters. But Arthur was not the only one. Others came. Warriors. Dreamers. Broken men and women who needed healing of more than the body.

Avalon took them in. It healed. It taught.

But it did not last.

When the Romans came, Avalon hid. When the Christians burned the groves and temples, Avalon trembled. When the world chose iron over wonder, war over wisdom, Avalon wept.

Still, it endured. For centuries, hidden in the mists.

But belief is a fragile thing.

IV. The Last Pilgrim

His name was Rhys. A Welshman by birth. He came not by boat, but by blood.

The bloodline of the old kings still ran through some veins, faint as a pulse in slumber. Rhys was descended from a line of keepers—guardians of stories, of rites, of songs half-remembered. His grandmother had told him the tales by firelight, her voice hushed, her eyes far away.

When Rhys was a child, he’d seen Avalon in a dream. The hill. The trees. A woman in blue robes standing at the shore.

And now, in the year of our Lord 1649, with England in turmoil and the world grown colder, he followed that dream. Across moor and meadow, across marshes where will-o’-the-wisps flickered and bogs whispered names of the dead.

He sang the old chant at the lakeshore. The wind rose. The water shimmered.

And Avalon let him in.

V. The Breaking of the Veil

Rhys awoke on a bed of moss. The air smelled of apples and myrrh.

Morgaine stood over him.

“You are the last,” she said, not unkindly.

“The last what?” he asked, though his heart already knew.

“The last to believe.”

Rhys stayed on the island for seven days and seven nights. He drank from the silver spring. He sat beneath the Tree of Memory, where the leaves whispered the names of every soul who had ever walked the isle. He saw the wounded king—not Arthur, but others like him—resting in crystal sleep.

He asked Morgaine, “Why did you bring me?”

“Because belief dies last,” she said. “And when it dies, so do we.”

And on the eighth day, the sky cracked.

The mists that had protected Avalon for centuries began to thin. A cold wind blew from the world beyond. The air stung with iron.

The mainland had forgotten magic. But it had not forgotten conquest.

VI. The Coming of Men

They came in black boats, flying red flags. Soldiers of Cromwell’s Puritan army, armed with guns and God. They’d found the lake by accident—or fate.

The chant no longer held. The veil had thinned too far.

They saw Avalon for what it was.

“A nest of witches,” their captain declared.

The trees were burned. The springs were salted. The Lady of the Lake fought them with storms and fire, but belief was already unraveling. And magic, once unmoored, grows wild and cruel.

Morgaine stood at the Tor as the sky blackened. Rhys stood beside her, weeping.

“They can’t destroy Avalon,” he said. “It’s eternal.”

“It was,” she whispered.

“But why?” he asked. “Why now?”

“Because the world chose reason over wonder,” she said. “Iron over silver. Memory over mystery.”

VII. The Last Spell

When the fire reached the Tree of Memory, Morgaine knew the time had come.

She climbed the Tor one final time, with Nimue and Rhys beside her.

There, they performed the last rite.

Not a spell of destruction. Not a curse.

A forgetting.

Avalon would not burn. It would vanish.

From memory. From map. From myth.

They spoke the words in the tongue of the Old Earth, a language older than stars. The island groaned. The sea rose. The sky turned gold.

And then—silence.

When the soldiers reached the top of the Tor, they found nothing.

Just a green hill.

No castle. No grove. No lake.

Just fog.

And in the centuries to follow, no one could find Avalon again. Not in books. Not in dreams. Not even in longing.

VIII. The Keeper of the Apples

But stories are stubborn.

Rhys returned to the mainland. He wandered from village to village, telling stories to children for bread. Of a hill that bore silver apples. Of a lake that sang. Of a woman whose eyes held the stars.

Most thought him mad. Others humored him. A few listened, wide-eyed.

And so, the seed remained. A whisper. A flicker.

He never returned to Avalon. He never could.

But sometimes, in autumn, when the apples ripened and the mist hung thick on the moors, he would sit beneath an old tree and sing the chant once more.

And sometimes, just sometimes, he’d see a shimmer on the water.

IX. The Place That No Longer Is

Now, Avalon is a memory of a memory.

It lingers in the curves of old Celtic songs. In the hush of dusk. In the smell of apples on the wind. In the heart of a girl reading by candlelight, or a boy staring into a silver lake, certain—certain—he’s seen something just out of sight.

It exists in the in-between.

Not lost. Not gone.

Just waiting.

Because Avalon, like all true wonders, does not die.

It waits to be remembered.