He stopped breathing. This couldn’t be real. He hadn’t looked at that face since Viviane’s death. Instead of wearing her long, blonde hair in a thick braid, like he remembered, she now had it piled high on her head in a twist. She looked the same as he remembered, but more modern, like what he had seen on television with her black pantsuit, red flats, and thick, black glasses. She made it to the podium, and the others in the lecture hall were quiet, looking at her. She captivated everyone. Anne finally looked straight out into the room and made eye contact with him. It was those green eyes, the color he thought he would never see again, that took him back to the memories he swore to never relive.
…even if the deep red blood seeping on her dress wasn’t an indication of her impending death, the pain on her face would have told him everything. He heard laughter behind him. Lost in too much grief with Viviane, he didn’t bother turning around. He knew it was Arthur and his Knights. They had already done the damage.
“Look at how the mighty wizard has fallen.” He was surrounded by laughter, but he didn’t care.
He looked down at Viviane. She reached up and touched his cheek, leaving a sticky bloody handprint. Her light green eyes stared up at him. “Watch after my family,” she whispered. She took a few more raspy breaths and then stopped moving altogether. After a few moments, her body disappeared in a white show of light. The intense feeling of the stone that was radiating from her scattered to feelings of the stone everywhere when her body disappeared.
He stood up and turned around to face Arthur. Arthur stood in the middle of the stone temple and held the blade up, and a look of confusion passed over his face. Arthur frowned.
“What did she do?” Arthur asked furiously, spitting with each word.
Even though he was consumed with grief from the death of his friend, Viviane, he responded to Arthur the only way he could− by shrugging.
Arthur shouted, “This isn’t the end. I will figure out what she did, and I will make Avalon mine!”
“Sir?” He realized that while he was in a long-ago memory, Anne had asked him a question.
He shook his head in the universal gesture for her to repeat her question.
She took a deep breath and repeated her question, “What do you think is the importance of the use of a wizard in Arthurian tales? We just discussed how even though King Arthur has not been proven as a legitimate person in history, there are some parallels to early British Kings. So the question posed is, if there is some truth to Arthur stories, then why does a magical wizard remain a constant in his stories? Why do you think he is important?” She raised her eyebrow, waiting for him to answer.
He smiled. Although it was a very well posed question, her whole theory was based off the fact Arthur was as history twisted him to be− innocent. He decided that was going to challenge her, “Divine intervention made it so.”
Her eyes lit up, like she wasn’t expecting a response, “Go on…”
“At the time Arthur ‘supposedly’ took over Avalon,” he surrounded the words supposedly with air quotes, “Avalon, or the kingdom of Camelot, was the last stronghold of the old world. A man, Arthur, with no real claim to the kingdom, other than being born a bastard to an Avalon Knight…which no one has found any proof of…would have to create some real claim to said kingdom. Arthur and his group of misfits, the Knights of the Round Table, weaved such a believable tale that this same tale is still being told today. To make the whole claim work, he had to add divine intervention to the claim. The gods wanted it so. The pharaohs did it, the Greeks did it, Constantine did it, and the entire early Catholic Church did it. What’s the difference with Arthur making the same claims?”
She shook her head, yes. He wasn’t sure if this was in agreement, or if she was just listening. She started to write down something on the podium and then popped her head to look back up at him. “All right, I will bite. If what you say is true, and he created this story of the ‘intervention’,” she threw the air quotes back at him, “why was having the last stronghold of the old world more important than pushing out to the Roman Empire? If Arthur was a real person, wouldn’t controlling the stronger kingdom be more advantageous than holding onto the very last strong hold of the old world. If it were truly the last stronghold, wouldn’t that mean that the old world had already fallen?”
He didn’t speak for a moment. Not because he didn’t have the answer, but because of how brilliantly she had just posed that response. Granted, she didn’t know the truth behind Avalon. She did, however, know the right argument to pick. For just one moment, he felt his heart beat. In that moment, he felt. He smiled.
She lifted her eyebrows, “No response?”
“It was the last strong hold of the Druid world.”
She smiled brilliantly, “May I ask your name, so I can give credit to your theory?”
Dropping his smile and keeping eye contact, he answered, “Merlinus Ambrosious.”
She started laughing and clapping her hands. When she calmed down, she wiped the corner of her eyes with a tissue provided by the bald man. With a big smile, she pointed in his direction, “You really had me. Class, I would like to introduce you to the man who calls himself Merlin.” She rolled her eyes and continued, “My time has run out, and I thank all of you for attending today.” She grabbed her notes and all but ran out of the lecture room.
Chapter 2
Her heart was pounding from that man in the classroom. She had had a hard time concentrating from the moment she looked at him in the back from peeping through the window in the door at the front of the lecture hall. Curiosity had made her look out to see how many people showed up. She had scanned the whole room and stopped the minute he walked in. He sat down and read the card that she created for lecture. She rarely went out for these things, but her colleague had convinced her that giving these lectures would be good for her career.
She couldn’t get past the man in the back. He was tall, so tall that he made the chair provided for the room look liked a child’s chair. His dark hair was cut short, and when he talked about Arthur, his light blue eyes shone with intelligence. She had seen him before. She couldn’t place where, but she definitely recognized him.
Gone was her concentration. This was the moment of nightmares. She might as well have been naked in front of everyone. That may have been better than forgetting what she planned to talk about. She couldn’t form a cohesive thought on the subject. Anne hoped when she left the lecture hall, that she had spoken clearly and didn’t look like a bumbling idiot. She grabbed her briefcase, threw her reading glasses in the bottom, not bothering with a case, and crammed her notes in on top of everything else, probably wrinkling the papers. She had to get out of here.
The moment she stepped out of the building, she walked as fast as she could to her car.
“Anne, wait…” she heard behind her. She didn’t bother looking; she knew who that voice belonged to− that big liar who called himself Merlin.
She made it to her car, without turning around. She prayed he took the hint and left.
“Run, Anne…” she heard him yell to her. Confused, she turned around and saw him a few car lengths behind her. He didn’t say anything, but just shook his head ‘no’. The moment she made eye contact with him, an arm reached around her stomach and roughly pulled Anne’s back against a stomach. If she wasn’t so terrified, the nasty smell of that person would make her gag.
Anne started kicking at her abductor’s leg. She proceeded to yell at the top of her lungs. She’d watched enough television to understand that the girl who fights the loudest is the least likely to be taken. Anne was determined that she was going to be the loudest. She only calmed down when her neck stung from a sharp object pressed to her throat. She instantly stilled, afraid that even a breath would cause the blade to slip and make the cut deeper.
She never saw Merlin move, but when he spoke again, he was only a few feet away. “Put the blade down, Lancelot.”
The man, she assumed was Lancelot,
kept slowly walking the two of them backward. Lancelot abruptly stopped and softly dragged the tip of the blade down her cheek, not breaking skin. “She looks like her.” The man behind Anne leaned in close to her head and took an audible deep breath, “She smells like her. I wonder if she screws like her, too.”
At the mention of her, Anne saw a twitch in Merlin’s jaw. The movement looked like he clenched his teeth together. Whoever this ‘her’ was, upset the two of them somehow.
Merlin stepped a little closer to the two of them, “I don’t really care what you do to her. But think before you do this. She has to be the last of her descendants. Why do you think the blade scryed one object after all this time? How you think you found her so quickly?”
Lancelot had starting slowly walking back again, but he stopped when Merlin spoke again, “What are you going to do when you kill the last descendent without the answer to the missing stone? You, the Knights, Arthur…will all be stuck. You will never get Guinevere back. Have you all thought about that?”
“You have no right to mention her name,” he shouted in Anne’s ear. He was close enough that his foul breath was the only thing she could smell, and his spit landed all over her check. As he was talking, Lancelot dropped the arm holding the blade. Anne took that as the opportunity to escape. She relaxed all of her weight, knocking Lancelot off balance. Merlin pulled her out from under Lancelot before they both fell to the ground. On his hands and knees, Lancelot looked up to the both of them, “Arthur will find out about this, and both of you better produce the stone.”
Merlin pushed Anne behind his back. He was so tall that she couldn’t see over his shoulders. He shrugged at Lancelot’s statement, “No matter what he is telling you, he will never be able to bring Guinevere back. The magic from the stone does not bring back the dead. I would know; he is pulling my magic from the stone.”
Anne glanced around Merlin’s back in time to see Lancelot stand up. He just stood there. He didn’t fight back with Merlin, but just stood there looking like he was lost in his own grief somehow.
Merlin started to push Anne back, away from her car and her bag. He never let Lancelot out of his site when he continued talking, “…besides, I would be more worried about what Arthur would do to you for having the answer to the stone in your hand and letting it get away.”
Merlin threw Anne over his shoulder and started moving. She didn’t get a chance to grab her stuff or look back at Lancelot to see if he was following. He was moving so fast that Anne didn’t have time to scream. It was so fast that she could feel the temperature changing to a progressively cooler one when they finally stopped. It couldn’t have been more than a minute. Merlin dropped her on a couch and walked out of the room.
It took Anne a few minutes of getting her head in order before she could even stand. With shaky legs, she opened the door had Merlin disappeared through. She found him sitting on a bed, just staring at his hands that were resting on his thighs. He looked up at Anne, but his eyes were lost in memories. “You have some explaining to do. It better be good, or I will call the cops, the FBI, the CIA, Interpol… Heck, I will call everyone. You are just as bad as that man out there, abducting me like you did.”
The only thing that brought any form of recognition in his eyes was the last statement she made, “I just saved you your final death. You should be thanking me.”
Still with no answers, she raised her eyebrows, “Explain.”
He patted the bed next to him.
Anne looked around furnished room and found a rocking chair in the corner. She scooted the chair closer to him.
“I want to start with your name,” Anne was the first to make conversation.
Merlin tilted his head to the side, studying Anne, “You are not asking the right questions. Besides, I already told you.”
Anne stood up, “That’s it, I am out of here.”
Merlin let her go. It took her a few minutes to find the door that led outside. It took even a few more minutes to find her way back to the bedroom that Merlin was still sitting in.
“Where are we?” Anne asked, out of breath like she had run five miles.
“Near what is known as Salisbury.” He didn’t bother looking up from his hands.
“Doesn’t answer my question…where are we?” She loudly sat down on the chair from earlier.
“If you don’t believe I am Merlin, then you definitely won’t believe our current location.” He finally looked up. Anne found it hard to gauge his emotions. His eyes almost looked flat. She, on the other hand, was absolutely terrified. Anne was sure her face portrayed as much. One minute she was giving a lecture in Atlanta, Georgia, and the next, they were somewhere with a rolling green landscape, no Atlanta in sight. Even if she wanted to leave, she would have no idea where to go.
He stood up and walked over to the dresser on the far side of the room. With his back to her, he put both hands on the top of the dresser he spoke, “We are close to what you call Stonehenge. This is my home. We are surrounded by magic. No one can see us. Arthur and his crew can’t even find us here. As long as you don’t leave the magic, no one will ever know you are here.”
He knocked his knuckles on the top of the dresser and walked out of the room.
Anne followed after him, “Wait. I want to know what is going on.”
She stepped in the hallway to follow him, and there was no trace that he was even here. He was gone. She mumbled under her breath in her worst language, “Mother-trucker trying to avoid conversation.”
She heard him laughing somewhere in the house, a clear indication that he can still hear her. His voice radiated throughout the house like on an intercom system, “Make yourself comfortable. I am just researching, trying to get some answers. If you need me, just say my name. My magic will find me.”
When she had tried to leave earlier, she had unintentionally explored the house. Anne was pretty terrified of how her day had turned out, so she decided to barricade herself in the bedroom. She shut and locked the door. She looked around the room. Anne found a bathroom and a closet full of his clothes. She intended to make an escape plan to try and figure out how to get back home. She stretched out on his bed to think, but instead of planning an amazing escape that would make it into the history books, she fell asleep.
Chapter 3
Anne looked down, trying not to get tangled in the long light blue gown as she was running. She was happy. She was free.
“Viviane, you are close to the boundary.” She turned around and laughed at Merlin as he was catching up. She knew that he could keep up with her running, but to make her happy, he was pretending that she was too fast for him.
She didn’t understand. The clothing and the familiarity with Merlin was comforting. Last time she had spoken to him, he had confused and frustrated her. She wasn’t herself at this moment and had no control over her actions. She was along for the ride, like she was in a movie, with her as the main character.
Her mouth spoke, but the sound coming out was not her own, “How many times do I have to tell you that they won’t hurt me.” Her hand reached up to pat Merlin’s cheek.
Merlin clenched his jaw, his sign that he wants to say more but chooses to keep his mouth shut.
She started laughing again, “I know they told you that you can’t interfere, but they never said anything about me. Soon, I will have all of my magic…I will do as I please.”
He grabbed her arm and turned her around, forcing her away from the magic boundary, “I know you think you love him. He is something not to mess with. He will destroy us all.”
“He said you would tell me that.” She realized her mistake and threw her hands over her mouth.
Merlin dropped her arm, “You have been seeing him again?”
“It’s going to be alright. We just talked.” She took another step toward the boundary.
Merlin was obviously angry now, judging by how tightly his jaw was clenched. “I don’t understand you. You have loved and lost several times. You have li
ving descendants out there right now.” He pointed to the boundary. “Yet you still believe in love. Can’t you see that this man…this…Arthur Pendragon does not have your best interest in mind?”
Her body walked back to Merlin, to comfort him in an embrace, “Your love is Avalon, I will never hold that against you. You take care of the people, you love them all. Yet, you have never loved. Have never felt what it means to be ‘in-love.’ It’s bigger than this,” she pointed to the kingdom behind them. “It’s bigger than you and me. One day, you will experience how I feel. You would be willing to give up all of this to spend as much time with her as possible. Then you would know why I do what I do. For now, though, don’t judge my actions because you have no comparison to my feelings.”
She walked out of the boundary, knowing that she would not be allowed back in. The elders have had enough of her risking their life and land for her idea of love. She had given up this land for the thought of finding love once more. It mattered not, for when the magical binding of her powers was released in a few days, she could make this new world her home.
She was expecting to feel remorse at the thought of never seeing Avalon again, but she finally felt free. Just like he had promised, when she stepped out of the stone circle, Arthur was there waiting for her. He took her breath away with his shoulder length blonde hair and brown eyes. Arthur was a little rough around the edges, with a few scars from fights marking his face. He was becoming infamous along the way with his temper. He had picked up rank fast in this worlds’ movement against the Saxon’s. He was gaining ground, and that is how she had found him. One day as she was checking on her descendants, Viviane found him around the stone circle. He captivated her and visited her regularly.
Promise Forever: Fairy Tales with a Modern Twist Page 56
