This page contains an animated cinematic that is largely decorative. A full prose retelling is available at the link titled "Full story." What follows is the same narrative, embedded for screen readers.
Before Arthur is a king he is a boy with a sword that breaks. The Matter of Britain hinges on what happens next — not on the pulling of one blade from a stone, but on the giving of another, by a hand that comes up out of water. This piece is an eight-beat cinematic of that meeting at the lake: Arthur, his broken first sword, the wizard Merlin, the still water, the Lady, and the blade with two commands cut into its edges. Drawn from Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Vulgate Cycle, and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.
Arthur came to the still water at dusk, his first sword broken on a giant's shield. The hilt is in his hand; half the blade is in the mud at Bedegraine.
Beside him rode Merlin, who said only: "Wait. The lake will answer." There is another sword, older than the churchyard one, kept for a king who would need it on a day exactly like this one.
A mist parted on the surface, and a hand rose from the deep, white as river-ice. The Lady of the Lake walked toward the shore without disturbing the water.
In its grasp, a blade the colour of the sun, runes burning along its edge: TAKE ME UP. The pommel is a knot of gold worked with no beginning and no end.
Arthur knelt and rose with the sword above him. Excalibur, at last, in the hand it was forged for. The cloud above the lake parted for an instant and laid a single shaft of late sun along the blade.
On the other edge a second word was cut: CAST ME AWAY. All things lent must one day be returned. The Lady reminded him that no thing of hers stays out of the water long.
The scabbard, the Lady said, was the better gift — while he wore it, no wound would bleed him dry. Arthur thought she meant a courtesy. He was wrong.
And so Britain found its king, and the king his sword. Years later, dying on the field at Camlann without the scabbard, Arthur sent Bedivere to throw Excalibur back. The hand rose again, brandished the blade three times, and drew it under. Take me up. Cast me away. Arthur was the only person who ever kept both halves of that promise.
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