It was still a wound.
“Oh, yes,” the Lady of the Lake simpered. “I always forget how hard it is for mortals to know their own demise. You’re going to end very young. Not much time left, I’m afraid. Best go kiss that girl while you’ve got her.”
The boat to Avalon was more than halfway across the lake, and Merlin was surprised that he’d made it so far without Nin smacking him overboard. She must have been satisfied with the amount of misery in the universe, for once.
He wished that he could enjoy the self-propelled boat ride after a vicious battle and a heart-wearying farewell. But even without the lapping worry of Nin’s waters, Morgause kept staring at him from the other side of the little craft. She didn’t force small talk—she was an enchantress, after all—but she did make him squirm, and then of course Kairos squirmed, and soon they were just one squirmy unit, making the boat rock.
As the famed mists of Avalon dropped around them like a wet, heavy curtain, Morgause’s voice finally reached out. “Why did you not tell the others that you and the child are the same?”
Merlin nearly dropped the baby.
“How did you figure that out?” he piped. And then glumly added, “It’s a magical lady thing, isn’t it?”
“That is one way of saying it. And the question remains.”
Why hadn’t he told Ari and Gwen that he was Kairos? Oh, let’s see. He didn’t want to make it harder for them to leave. Besides, how did you tell people you’d befriended and fought beside that you were also, secretly, their child?
When he opened his mouth to explain, it felt like the bridge between his feelings and his tongue hadn’t been built. Was this one more thing he’d lost as he got younger? “I’ve been looking for about a billion years for my parents and now that I know who they are it’s just so… weird.” Oh, how blazingly eloquent. Good job, tiny Merlin.
“Your friends do not yet see how powerful the baby is,” Morgause intoned as the boat rocked. “How powerful you are.”
Merlin shivered as the mists wrapped him in foreboding. And wetness. Worse than Kairos peeing himself again. “What do you mean?”
“It has long been foretold that a second child will be born in the lake of time. We’ve been waiting for you.”
“A second child?”
“Nimue was also born in the waters of time. Long ago.” Well, that explained why they had so much in common. Merlin couldn’t wait to inform Val—if he ever saw him again. “She once lived among us as a mortal with powers much like yours. How she became what she is now remains a great mystery. But she fears one thing, and one alone. The other time child.”
Merlin didn’t feel empowered by this, ready to break the cycle once and for all. Instead, it felt like he was choking on a dark destiny. He had a sudden new empathy for his Arthurs.
“I can’t be the hero! That’s not my part to play. I’m the magical sidekick who is much more powerful and yet somehow much less important!”
Morgause didn’t even dignify that with a response.
Merlin tried again. “I can’t stand up to Nin before I stop myself from aging backward. I’m almost out of magic and time.” He held up the baby. “Maybe Kairos is the one who’ll save everybody. Kairos is our perfect moment.”
Morgause gave him a look that rivaled Morgana’s best acid stares, eating through his hope. “You are the one who knows how to fear Nin. You are the one who carries centuries of knowledge and mistakes from which you might learn.”
“How do you know about my centuries of mistakes?” Merlin cried into the night. “Is this another Avalon thing?”
“Lamarack told me.”
“While you were mushing your faces together?” Merlin really hadn’t meant to say it like that. “Sorry. Sorry.” The harsh truth was that Merlin knew he couldn’t wave off this destiny and pass the buck to a baby. That would be nearly as bad as trying to steal one.
“There might be a way to stop me from aging backward,” he said, remembering how close he and Old Merlin had come in the tower. “But I need help.” When his magic had unlocked itself, so much had become clear, emerging like Avalon from the mists. His backward aging was just another form of time magic, and whoever had set it in motion hadn’t given him the means to fix it alone. He could only do it with help from another lake-powered mage. Another Merlin. The mean pinch of irony came as he realized there were two in Camelot, but one had just been forced to forget him, and the other lacked motor skills.
“Kai, can you spark me?” he asked.
Kairos’s eyes were shut tight, his tongue poking out of his tiny mouth.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Merlin said. Whined, really. “I don’t have what I need here.”
“You have all of time at your fingertips,” Morgause countered.
Merlin breathed deeply and tried to think like a proper time baby. To be strategic, like Val would want. It was true: he could create portals. But he would have to make the jump carefully. If he aged beneath five or so, there would be no breaking this cycle. Ari and Gwen and Val would be left to deal with Nin alone.
Merlin stood up carefully in the boat. The closer they got to Avalon, the more details he could see. The gorgeous caves, the windswept cliffs, the humble homes filled with hearth fires and magic. “I thought you didn’t let men into Avalon.”
“We don’t,” Morgause said, with two meaningfully arched brows.
“Oh,” he said. “Right.” It would take Merlin years to get back to the threshold of manhood—if he ever made it back at all. He would have liked to spend his childhood running wild with the enchantresses. Finally getting to know and understand them. Reuniting with Morgana—definitely using the name Kairos, since she wasn’t Merlin’s biggest fan.
But it wasn’t meant to be. Another life, perhaps.
“I’m low on power,” Merlin admitted. “Would you mind helping me?”
With Morgause’s magic added to his, he could make it a little farther and hopefully not vanish into babyhood in the process.
Morgause pulled out the same ceremonial dagger that all Avalon enchantresses kept strapped to their thighs, and drew a diagonal slash across her palm. Blood already dripping, she looked at the child in the crook of Merlin’s arm. “The time child must be kept safe at all costs,” she said. “Are you sure you do not wish to leave Kairos in Avalon?”
Merlin couldn’t hand off Gwen and Ari’s baby. He couldn’t give away the last trace of Kay on this or any world.
Oh, celestial gods. Kay was his dad.
And on that ridiculous note, Merlin took Morgause’s bleeding hand, and hummed. His skin started at the barest shine, and then built to a vivid beacon. The last shreds of Avalon mist parted around him. The lake below them shivered.
And a doorway carved of dark matter appeared.
Merlin didn’t have much time in the portal to decide exactly when he was going. He emerged dizzied and still clutching Kairos. They were surrounded by smoke, bodily odors, and figures clad in rags. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was still in medieval Europe. But then he heard the buzzy pluck of an electric guitar and saw the stages and tents beyond the freely ranging crowds.
“We made it,” Merlin whispered to Kai. “This is Coachella. There’s someone here who can help us.”
Kairos seemed blissfully uninterested in the chaos. Merlin pushed through the crowds, already on the hunt. Arthur 37 was set to play today. That particular Arthur—wasn’t his name Dan?—would become so famous that even stadiums couldn’t contain the messages of hope and love that humanity so craved, set to addictive beats. But right now, today, there was a thirty-ish Merlin around here with time and magic to spare.
He staggered around, garnering a few strange looks. Fortunately, another silver lining of being a small child carrying a baby was that people seemed determined to help him.
“Where are your parents, little guy?” a man with a monstrous mustache asked, crouching down. Merlin bubbled with frantic laughter. He couldn’t begin to explain how
hilariously complex the answer was. “All right, then,” Sir Mustache said. “What’s your name?”
“Merlin.”
He nodded as if that was a fairly common name for a little kid who’d gotten dragged to Coachella. “Let’s go find security, okay?”
“No, thank you.” Goodness, Merlin’s voice was sweet. “I just need the performers’ tent.”
Sir Mustache pointed him in the right direction, and Merlin headed there on swiftly pumping legs. He kept wandering off, though. It was absurdly hard not to get distracted at six. He wanted to play in those mud pits. He wanted to breathe in this good Earth air before the planet was hurt beyond repair. He desperately needed a snack.
Then—at the back of a tent, among the roadies and managers, Merlin got a glimpse of something silvery-white and flowing and unmistakable.
“Merlin’s beard!” he whispered. “Kairos, it’s our storied facial hair. That’s going to be important to you someday.”
He ducked under the tent flap, so short that nobody noticed his presence at first. Merlin’s beard was… well, it wasn’t quite as grand as he remembered it. But it was there, hanging over a robe that didn’t look too out of place at a hipster festival, stuck atop a frowning face that could belong to no one else.
“We really did go gray shockingly young,” Merlin whispered to Kai as they grew closer. “Is that Kay’s fault? I blame Kay.”
“Are you here to ask for an autograph?” Thirties Merlin asked grumpily. “I’m afraid they’re about to go onstage.”
“I’m here for you,” Merlin said, holding out Kairos. “We both are.”
Thirties Merlin badgered them back toward the entrance. “Children at a rock concert. What kind of tomfoolery is this?”
“The kind where I tell you that I’m you, and I need your help.”
“Ah, you’re me. And who is that then?” he asked, pointing at the baby.
“Also us.” Merlin snapped. “Honestly, keep up.”
Thirties Merlin pushed him out of the tent just as the band started to play, the air reverberating with drums. Merlin expected the same disbelief that Old Merlin had thrown at him. But this version of him was no longer a crabby, lonely, obtuse old man. He’d had enough time to change. To shake off the effects of the mind-breaking magic that had saved Kai’s life. Over the music, Thirties Merlin yelled, “And how are there so many of us?”
“We’re not really different Merlins!” he shouted. “We’re all the same Merlin at different points along the time line!”
“Can you prove it?”
Merlin opened his mouth and then closed it. He held up one small hand, all five fingertips glowing. Then he danced Kai’s falcon into the baby’s mouth, causing the little one to also glow.
“Believe me now?”
“Yes, but… Neither of you should be here,” the somber, unamused mage said, crossing his arms. “It’s against the laws of—”
“Time and space?” Merlin cut in. “We’ve never really obeyed those, have we?”
“Time and space can suck it!” someone cried out as they passed, holding up a cup filled with an anonymous brew.
“I only need one thing, and I need it fast,” Merlin shouted. “If you spark me at full strength, I believe it can set me aging in the right direction.”
“Then… we’ve found a way to stop it!” Thirties Merlin blinked away his shock. He looked so hopeful that Merlin didn’t have the heart to add that he would also take away all memory of this. It was such a quick, isolated moment that magically removing it shouldn’t cause any harm, and Merlin couldn’t risk derailing the future—even if it meant that this version of him would have to go through several more centuries of pain to get there.
It was worth it. Every time he thought of Ari and Gwen fighting the future, he knew how much this would all be worth it.
“Hit me,” he said.
And just as the song reached an epic chorus, Thirties Merlin joined in at full volume, his hands rife with so much white fire that he nearly set his own beard aflame.
Merlin set down Kairos. Gently. And held his arms out just as sparks flew at him, so many that his chest sizzled and his vision whited out.
When he came to, he was lying on the ground. He popped up to sitting. Kairos stared at him, looking wise and impassive in the way that only babies could manage. Strangers were watching, but Thirties Merlin didn’t look worried. Everyone crowded around as if this was part of the show.
“How do you feel?” Thirties Merlin asked. “Did… did it work?”
Merlin added his voice to the song. Sparks leaped out of his hands, bright and lively, but he didn’t feel the years draining with them. “I’m not getting younger!”
As the notion of finally being able to fight back against Nin grew, his sparks went mad. People clapped for his homemade light show, until the scent of smoke reached Merlin’s nostrils. He’d accidentally set the tent on fire. Oh, dear. He’d have to make this other Merlin forget that bit, too.
“You’re going to love it here, Kai,” Merlin said.
They’d left the wilds of Coachella behind for the calm of Merlin’s crystal cave.
Morgause had said the time child must be kept safe at all costs. There was only one place that Merlin could keep Kairos truly safe—where he could promise that, no matter what happened, he would survive it.
What he’d said outside the tent was true. Every Merlin was really the same person at different points in a long, wild story.
And it had to start somewhere.
He found the slab of crystal he’d always used as a bed and set Kairos down. The baby writhed and wailed, as if he could see the ages of pain and heartbreak that Merlin was about to cast him into. Would Gwen and Ari ever forgive him for doing this to their baby? Would he get a chance to tell them who he really was… or was he making one more hapless sacrifice for the slimmest chance at a broken cycle, a brighter hope? A better future?
Feelings fought their way up his throat, and soon he and Kairos were both crying. Kairos didn’t know what was coming next. And truthfully, neither did Merlin. What if he gave up Kairos and still failed to stop Nin?
“This is not an easy thing to do, little me.” He’d always wondered who had given him up, left him to face so much alone.
Now he knew he’d done it himself.
“You’ll wake up here in a little while. And you’ll go through this doorway to Camelot, and you’ll befriend a small boy who needs you. His name is Arthur. And it won’t be all bad. No, not all bad at all.” Merlin tucked the falcon into Kai’s fisted hand and stepped back behind a crystal column, hidden from sight. He hummed a lullaby and hit the baby with soft blue sparks. Kai’s body spread larger and larger, filling up the slab. His baby wrinkles stretched into the wrinkles of an old man. A beard shot out from his chin and grew until it reached nearly his knees.
As the figure started to snore, Merlin’s song faltered. In front of him was the oldest version of himself—weathered as a crabapple, abandoned before the first hope of Camelot with nothing but a little wooden falcon clutched in his gnarled hand.
All of the disgust he’d felt for his old self melted away when he saw his true beginnings. He’d started out on a path that was as lonely as any he could imagine. Yes, there had been dark patches. True, he’d made as many mistakes as there were stars in the cosmos. But he’d fought to the other side of it—hadn’t he? Merlin had never stopped fighting the misery of Nin’s cycle. And now he had so many people who cared for him.
Who believed in him.
Who needed him to play the hero, this time.
The future where his parents were putting up one last, epic fight beckoned from the end of the portal.
Merlin had never traveled this far through spacetime by himself. But he’d revisited the pain of his past and unlocked his powers. He’d stopped his backward aging, so he wouldn’t slide out of existence. Now the only thing holding him back was his own fear—which was no small dragon.
Merlin kept his mind f
irmly on Ari and Gwen and Val as he was sucked along through the dark. Maybe it had been the influence of Nin’s magic, but the portal to Camelot had felt like a ferocious, nauseating carnival ride. This was more like the little portals Merlin had created, softly dark as a night without stars.
Just as Merlin was getting used to the feeling, a clammy hand pulled him out of the darkness. When he blinked his eyes open, he was in Nin’s cave.
“No!” he cried, stamping his feet. “No, no, no.”
“I see you’re in a hurry,” Nin told him as she wisped into existence. She looked the way she always had to him—long, flowing hair to match her gown, a pleasant softness to her smile. “I won’t keep you long.”
She pointed to a bier that arose from the center of the lake, streaming water from the rock, a ghostly figure atop it.
“Oh, you want me to see Arthur’s body so you can gloat?” Merlin cried.
“I had Arthur for centuries and you never so much as guessed it,” she answered matter-of-factly. “But this is too good to hide.”
She gestured to the body again, and somehow Merlin was transported onto the rocky little island, right at the side of the dimly glowing spirit. He knew this girl’s scowl and dark hair better than he knew the inner workings of his own magic.
“Ari.” The name squeezed out of his throat before he could stop himself.
Nin laughed deeply. “Arthur’s spirit was exhausted by his failures. I do wonder how long Ari will last before giving out.”
“Is she…”
“Dead?” Nin asked, stroking Ari’s incorporeal cheek. “Yes, and also not quite.” The Lady of the Lake was taunting him. She fed off his terror, his anticipation of fresh hurt.
“I won’t let you begin another cycle,” he shouted, filling every crack of her cave with strangled hope. He roared out magic, a fire-dragon like the one he’d pointed at Old Merlin. Nin sighed, batting it away with one finger. The movement sent Merlin flying backward as if he, too, had been struck.
He landed in the cold water. Nin had extinguished his best magic without even trying.
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