Sword Stone Table

by Sword Stone Table- Old Legends, New Voices (retail) (epub)

  Arturo felt his hand grip the bat. He raised it up. But not as a bat, this time—like a weapon, swordlike, the wooden length of the bat almost shining in the dark tunnel as Arturo walked toward the shadowy woman. She seemed to take a cautious step backward—deeper into the darkness of the tunnel, away from Arturo and his bat.

  “Morgan le Fay,” Arturo said, stepping closer. She seemed to pull back as he swung the sword in her direction, almost as if she were frightened of the bat—of the low hum of light that Arturo could see emanating from it now. Was he imagining this, he wondered. The power, the energy he’d felt in his old bat wasn’t there. Or was it just not coming from the bat now? Was it in him? “I’m not afraid of you, woman. I don’t even know you.”

  “It was foolish of Merlin to give that to you now. I thought him neutralized, but it’s of no consequence. It’s too late. The bat is useless, as is the one who wields it. Your father made a bad choice, Arthur—he took the high road when I offered him wealth beyond his wildest dreams. And now, look at you, playing with the same kind of toy he had.” She laughed, but he thought he sensed a tinge of panic in her voice, like a politician caught off guard by a sharp query.

  Then a flicker of memory appeared in Arturo’s mind, a snippet of conversation overheard from the living room. His parents arguing in the kitchen. His father stern and clear. His mother open and curious. An offer had come in. Someone who was vying to buy another team—had it been the Tigers? It was lost to Arturo now, but he remembered the rest so vividly. She’d offered his father a deal, had broken league rules before she’d even bought the team. She wanted Umberto Reyes with her. She was offering more money than he’d ever imagined. Umberto was going to decline—no, had already declined. Arturo’s mother was livid. They hadn’t even discussed it. They never would, Arturo realized. His father would be dead in a few hours.

  The memory dissipated like a cloud of steam rising from a sewer grate. All Arturo could see now was the shadowy woman, this Morgan le Fay.

  “I’ve shaken you to your core, child,” she said, another low laugh following her words. “Even now you don’t believe you can do it. That you can do anything.”

  But that wasn’t true, Arturo realized. He searched himself and knew. He could do this. He could do anything. He’d known it as long as he could remember.

  The ball slapping into his Little League glove as his dad tossed it to him in the park.

  The first crack of the bat as he hit a homer in high school.

  His mother’s eyes bursting with pride and love as his name was announced before each game, the seat next to her occupied by a faded Yankees’ cap.

  The rush of crossing home plate in college to make it into the playoffs.

  The high fives from teammates after a good defensive play in the minors, even when he couldn’t hit a ball to save his life.

  The look of love in his wife’s eyes as he held his newborn daughter, Amara.

  He didn’t know who this Morgan lady was, really. He didn’t have time to interrogate her now. And if he was being truly honest with himself, he didn’t care. Not now. Not ever. The past was gone. He had a team to help.

  He had a game to win.

  He spun around, the bat’s light illuminating his path. Behind him, he could hear the woman’s skittish footsteps following, then he could feel her sharp fingertips clutching at his jersey, her sharp nails clawing his uniform. But he ignored them. He had to.

  “You dare? Face me, boy,” she hissed, angry and defiant. “You dare deny me this moment of victory?”

  Arturo turned around fast, for the last time—he knew. She seemed to hop back, desperate to avoid the bat’s reach.

  “You can watch like everyone else, lady,” Arturo said. “I hope you bought a ticket.”

  With that, he entered the dugout and waited.

  * * *

  —

  The walk from the on-deck circle to the batter’s box felt like a thousand miles to Arturo. If he had been feeling some pressure before, it’d been multiplied many times over in the moments following his confrontation with the shadow creature Morgan le Fay. Mordred and Downer had made it on base. While there were still no outs, and the A’s could theoretically still eke out a win if Arturo bombed, he also knew a thing or two about momentum. You could ride it to victory, or you could falter—and spend the rest of the off-season wondering what went wrong. It was do-or-die time, whether Arturo liked it or not.

  His manager’s words, spoken under his breath as Arturo passed him on his way to prepare, lingered with him.

  “No one’s needed this more than you, kid,” Falco had said. “This is your moment. Believe in yourself.”

  Arturo did. He realized this as he looked at the Red Sox’s gangly pitcher. Caught the subtle nod from Tino at second base, one that said It’s okay, man, you got this. Arturo felt a last, lingering heaviness leave him, an immediate peace he hadn’t known he wanted. He gripped his bat as he set his feet in position. Tilted his head in the direction of the field. It was as if he were looking forward—past everything else. Past the failures and missteps and toward something brighter. Some kind of paradise. A brighter future.

  But first—the pitch.

  The ball came hard and fast, as Arturo had expected—clean through the middle. He braced for a second, felt the tingling hesitation that had dogged him for years, then felt himself expel the doubt with a shrug of his shoulders.

  Arturo swung for his life.

  Flat White

  Jessica Plummer

  Elaine is cleaning the steamer wands on the espresso machine the first time he walks into the coffee shop. Her hand slips on the knob and she accidentally blasts her finger with steam. It’s hot enough to scald, and she yelps and sticks her finger in her mouth. Rosina, the cashier, gives her a weird look.

  He doesn’t seem to notice.

  Face flaming, Elaine takes the cup Rosina hands her and checks the order scribbled on the side. A flat white with almond milk. She splashes the milk on the counter when she tries to pour it, presses the wrong button for the espresso pull, drops a stack of lids on the floor. She’s not paying attention to the drink. She’s looking at him.

  She’s not sure what it is about him. He’s not handsome, exactly. He’s a little short—maybe her height, and she’s not particularly tall for a woman. He has dark hair swept back from a widow’s peak, a nose just a little too big and sharp for classic good looks. Everything about him is sharp, somehow, from the angle of his shoulders to the cut of his dark gaze, or maybe she just thinks that because of the little white scars she can see—there, slicing through his right eyebrow, and another one tugging the left corner of his mouth into something sardonic, even though his facial expression is otherwise neutral as he scrolls through his phone.

  He’s fit, though. Really fit, not an ounce of fat on him and biceps straining the sleeves of his T-shirt as he raises a hand to push his hair back off his brow. Maybe he plays football—or, no, rugby, that seems more the thing.

  Elaine catches the milk just before it bubbles over and swears under her breath, pouring the milk into the cup on top of the espresso. She finds a lid she hasn’t thrown on the floor and fits it to the cup, swaddles the whole thing in a cardboard sleeve, and checks Rosina’s sloppy Sharpie handwriting again for the name.

  “I’ve got a flat white with almond milk for Lance,” she calls, as if there’s anyone else standing there waiting for a drink.

  He looks up from his phone, and something in those dark eyes makes her gasp. “That’s me,” he says, “cheers,” and takes the cup. Even in three syllables his French accent is audible, and somehow it feels obvious in retrospect, that someone so inexplicably striking couldn’t be something as prosaic and uninteresting as British.

  “You’re welcome,” she manages, even though he’s already leaving, dark eyes back on his phone screen. She watches him walk out t
he door: the shift of his muscles through his thin T-shirt as he pushes the door open, his unconscious chivalry as he holds it that way for a mother with a stroller before moving on. His bum in those jeans.

  He passes out of sight beyond the shop window, and Elaine sags back against the counter behind her, nearly knocking over the smoothie blender. Her heart is racing like she’s at one of the spin classes her friend Anisha keeps dragging her to.

  Lance.

  * * *

  —

  She dreams that night that she’s sitting in a big stone hall, the kind they used to have to go stand around in on heritage trips at school. She’s at a banquet table, but she’s not at all hungry. There are people all around her, chatting and laughing and drinking, but she doesn’t notice any of them.

  All she can see is Lance, standing on the other side of the hall. His hair is longer and his clothes are strange, but it’s definitely him, from the bump in his nose where it’s clearly been broken at least once to the way he lifts his hand to push his hair back. He’s talking to a woman with a river of golden hair spilling to her waist, and the way he looks at her makes Elaine want to throw herself out a window.

  She should leave, she thinks. She should claim indigestion or a headache and go up to her room so she doesn’t have to watch.

  She doesn’t move. When she wakes, there are tears dried on her cheeks.

  * * *

  —

  Lance becomes a semi-regular. He’s not there every day, but enough that each morning as Elaine ties on her apron she can feel her heart go rabbit-fast at the thought that she might see him later.

  It’s embarrassing, to be perfectly frank. Yeah, her job is a bit dull, but that’s no reason to get so excited over a break in the routine. She hasn’t been this moony over a boy since she was fourteen and absolutely certain that Harry Styles would marry her someday. Which is all very well and good when you’re a teenager, but she’s an adult now and he’s just an ordinary Frenchman with an aversion to lactose. He’s not even cute.

  And yet.

  She and Rosina alternate shifts at the espresso counter and the till, which means sometimes she’s the one taking his order, which means she gets to talk to him for a longer conversation than just reading out the name on his drink. Not all that much longer, admittedly, despite her best efforts.

  “Good morning. Can I help you?”

  “Good morning. Er, flat white with almond milk, please?” (Always squinting at the menu as if it might have changed. As if he might ever order something different.)

  “Right, that’ll be three pounds twenty.” (As she runs his card.) “Nice day, isn’t it?” (Or, more usually, given that they’re in England: “Dreadful weather, isn’t it?”)

  “Oh. Er, yes, it is.”

  (Handing back his card. Desperately.) “Can I have a name for the order?” (As if she couldn’t have learnt it from running his card. As if she hadn’t committed it to memory the first day she saw him.)

  “Lance.”

  “Right, of course. One flat white with almond milk for Lance, straightaway.” (Smiling, perhaps a touch maniacally. It doesn’t matter. He’s already looking at his phone.)

  And so it goes. Predictable, but somehow never dull. Sometimes she thinks of writing her number on his cup beside his name, but he’s barely seemed to register that she exists as a human person, let alone a woman who has a body and goes on dates and is actually rather intelligent and interesting when he’s not in the room. He’d probably think it was something to do with the coffee order and not a phone number at all.

  Besides, the whole idea is mortifying.

  She will get over this, she tells herself. It’s exposure therapy, like climbing into a tank of snakes to cure yourself of a fear of them.

  (She wouldn’t mind climbing into a tank of Lances.)

  It’s been only a few weeks. She’ll get used to him. Eventually.

  * * *

  —

  But there are the dreams.

  She’s in some kind of tub or pool of boiling water, sulfurous and foul. It’s no deeper than a hot tub, but she can’t seem to climb out, and every second scalds her. Her bare flesh beneath the water is red and angry, and the tears of pain that run down her cheeks are cool by comparison. She prays only for death—and then Lance is reaching for her, helping her out of the pool, unfazed by her nakedness as he wraps her in a cloak and dries her tears.

  Another night: She’s walking in her garden, even though the snow lies heavy on the ground (and even though her ratty little flat barely has a windowsill to boast of, let alone a garden). There’s a dark shape huddled under a bush and her heart leaps into her throat, but she draws closer anyway, heart pounding with fear. A man, asleep, filthy and rank with chilblains peeking out from beneath his wild beard—but it’s Lance, she knows it is from the nose and the scarred eyebrow, and she falls to her knees, weeping and gathering him in her arms and begging him to wake.

  So many nights she’s lost count: She’s in a tower, weaving endlessly (she doesn’t even know how to weave, doesn’t know anyone who does). There’s a mirror above her head that shows the world outside, a world she doesn’t dare join or even turn around to look at directly. And then—Lance, tall and gallant astride a horse as sleek and dark as he is, the sun glinting off his armor, and she turns to stare, unafraid of the consequences so long as she can drink in the sight of him.

  She has never been much of a dreamer before—just vague feelings of being lost or chased by something or not having studied for an exam, the specifics dissipating like morning mist when she wakes. But these linger through her days, like different lives she hasn’t lived. Like they’re trying to tell her something.

  If it’s any message more useful than how very pathetic she is, though, she can’t parse it.

  * * *

  —

  And then one day it changes, because Lance doesn’t come in alone. There’s a girl and a guy with him, both blond, both as palpably English as Lance is palpably not. They’re all laughing and smiling at one another as they walk in, as they order, like a television advert for skin-care brands or those creepy ones they show in America for antidepressants.

  It’s the first time she’s seen Lance smile. It’s heart shattering.

  Rosina’s at the till so Elaine makes the drinks as the three of them take a seat at one of the coffee shop’s few tables. She’s gotten very good at focusing on what she’s doing when Lance is around and not just staring like a Dickensian orphan gazing into a bakery window.

  “Flat white for Lance. Earl Grey for Arthur. Matcha latte for Gwen.”

  Something about the names pings as familiar, but her brain catches on the shift of Lance’s hips as he comes up to fetch the drinks, and she loses whatever it is she’s trying to remember. He fumbles for a second trying to juggle all three cups.

  “You want a tray for those?” Elaine asks.

  “Oh, yeah, thanks,” he says, and he must be in a particularly good mood with his friends here, because he takes that rare and magical smile and gives it to her. To her!

  Before she can shake off the dazzle of it and find a tray for him, though, the girl he was with joins him. “You don’t have to carry everything, Lance,” she teases, bumping him with her hip.

  “I do not mind,” he says, and bumps her back.

  She laughs, and Elaine drops the tray with a clatter. Maybe it’s the musical chime of her laugh or the way she tips her head back or just the sun blazing off her golden hair, but something is suddenly unmistakably familiar. This girl, Gwen, is the woman Lance was talking to in the very first dream Elaine ever had about him, the very first day she met him.

  And Elaine knows for certain that she’s never seen her before.

  * * *

  —

  “She probably came into the coffee shop another time and you just forgot you saw
her,” her best friend, Anisha, says over wine. “Then your subconscious put her in your dream.”

  “How did my subconscious know she was friends with Lance, then?” Elaine asks.

  Anisha waves that away like smoke. “You must have seen them together.”

  “I wouldn’t forget seeing Lance with a girl,” Elaine insists.

  “I mean, you said she’s not even his girlfriend.”

  “She’s not.” Elaine had watched Lance and Gwen bring the drinks back over to their table. Arthur had thanked Gwen with a kiss, and something troubled had flickered over Lance’s face. “But there’s…I don’t know. Something there.”

  “You need a more intellectually stimulating job,” Anisha said. “Or at least a hobby. Weren’t you going to learn to play guitar?”

  “I wasn’t any good at it,” Elaine says, glancing at the guitar gathering dust in the corner of her lounge, along with the other failed experiments—the notebooks of rubbishy poetry, the tubes of oil paint. So much money spent on ways to tell stories and when it came down to it, it turned out she hadn’t got anything worthwhile to say.

  “My point is, you think about your customers too much,” Anisha says, jolting her back to the present.

  “I’d stop thinking about him if I could,” Elaine says, unsure if that’s actually true. “I’m not in control of these dreams. And I’m telling you, I’ve never seen this girl before today, except in a dream. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

  Anisha opens her mouth, then closes it. Elaine narrows her eyes.

  “What?”

  “It’s just, I don’t think that’s the weirdest part of all of this,” Anisha says. She’s not looking at Elaine.