ABSTRACT
Nearly two-thirds of the way into Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, the central character, Morgaine of the Fairies, now an old woman, returns to her home in Avalon after years of exile. She brings with her a younger self, Lancelot and Elaine’s child, Nimue, to become a priestess of the goddess, and she encounters a former self in Raven, the woman sworn to serve the goddess with her silence. In the dark of the night, Raven enters Morgaine’s sleeping quarters and awakens her. With ritualistic fervor, Raven removes her own cloak, takes Morgaine in her arms and touches “her slowly, with ritual silence and significance” (639). Raven quietly gives Morgaine the silver crescent, the ritual ornament of the priestess, and Viviane’s ritual knife, items that Morgaine left behind when she fled in anger from Avalon and her Aunt Viviane’s control. Then, in an act of bonding, each pierces herself: “from the breastbone she [Raven] pricked a single drop of blood, and Morgaine, bowing her head, took the knife and made a slight cut over her heart” (639). In an already sexually charged scene, the tension becomes stronger in their next exchange: “Raven bent to her and licked the blood away from the small cut; Morgaine bent and touched her lips to the small, welling stain at Raven’s breast, knowing that this was a sealing long past the vows she had taken when she came to womanhood. Then Raven drew her again into her arms” (639-40). In the italicized words in this passage, which indicate her thoughts as they often do throughout the book, Morgaine recounts her heterosexual passions, Lancelot and Accolon, “Yet Never;” she says of this reunion with Raven, uhave I known what it was to be received simply in love” (639-40).
