The chapter shifts back in time to a hot summer Sunday at Sir Ector's castle, where a young Arthur, called Art, is briefly unsupervised and anticipating a beating after his foster brother Kay falsely accuses him of pushing him from a tree. Art muses on the strange way time turns futures into fading memories, comparing it to trading real gold for fairy gold.

Drawn to the forbidden Weald and the dangers within it, Art darts into the shadow of the forest to retrieve a perfect aspen stick that resembles a sword. When he returns to the sunlight, three richly dressed girls have appeared from nowhere. They claim to be witches from Camelot and identify themselves as Morgan, Morgause, and Elaine.

Morgause threatens to kill Art and bickers with Elaine about referring to a shared father as "Daddy," while Art obliviously demonstrates his stick-sword by reciting heroic phrases and accidentally hitting himself. Morgan, the most interested in him, lingers with Art and shows him unaccustomed kindness, wiping a smudge from his face and making him cry.

Morgan reveals fragments of Art's hidden identity: that their mother called him Little Bear, that Arthur is a British name meaning bear, and that she is his sister. She presses their mother's old coin into his hand as a keepsake, telling him she both hates and loves him. Overwhelmed, Art runs off, then turns back to give her his prized stick in return, but Morgan, Morgause, and Elaine have already vanished.