Out of breath, she placed her hands on her knees to calm her lungs. Anne saw Arthur and all the knights, except for Lancelot, right outside of the circle.
Instead of falling in line with other knights, Lancelot was running toward Arthur screaming, “You promised me Guinevere back. You can’t have her until I have Gwenie…” Arthur turned toward Lancelot with a furious look on his face. He didn’t turn fast enough, because Lancelot had Arthur tackled to the ground.
When Arthur fell, the little black blade slid to Anne’s feet. She fell to her knees and picked up the blade. The moment the blade came in contact with her hand, a shield circled the stones. Anne couldn’t hear, but she could see Arthur’s men pounding on an invisible wall, and she saw Arthur rip the head off of Lancelot with his bare hands. Anne was positive that that wasn’t an illusion. He stood up and dusted his pants like what he had just done was just another day. On the other side of the circle was Merlin, looking at her, but not stepping through the boundary.
Anne looked down at the knife. It wasn’t much bigger than the palm of her hand. This little tiny thing had changed history. This little tiny thing held so much magic that Arthur had spent fifteen hundred years to figure out how to manipulate it to its full potential.
She must have been looking at the blade for longer than she thought, because when she looked back up three of Arthur’s men were holding Merlin down on the ground. He wasn’t struggling. Merlin just kept that same tranquil look, staring at her.
Arthur was walking up behind him and pulled a longer knife that the blade in her hand out of a holster on the side of pants. With the other men holding a calm Merlin down, it didn’t take much for Arthur to grab Merlin’s head and put the knife to Merlin’s throat. He still wasn’t fighting back. The only movement from Merlin was a small smile forming on his lips.
Anne’s hands started burning, and she looked down at the knife. The black blade started to turn red and blue with heat. Anne threw the blade on the ground. The moment it touched the dirt, the blade started spinning in a circular motion. With centrifugal force, the faster it spun, the higher it lifted off the ground. When the blade reached chest level, it stopped spinning with the tip of the blade pointed to Anne. Just as suddenly as it started spinning, it dropped down to the dirt floor.
Anne looked at the blade then up to Merlin, who now had droplets of blood dripping down his neck. “Oh. My. God!” Anne broke each word into a sentence when she realized what had happened to the stone. The stone was in front them the whole time.
Anne could fix everything. She could give Avalon back to Merlin. In one move, she could easily take Arthur out of the equation. Her whole body starting to shake. If she looked back up to Merlin, she would change her mind. Instead, she just stared at the knife.
Still on her knees, she picked up the knife and took several deep breaths. She pointed the knife to her and like a guided missile, the tiny blade easily found its way to her heart.
She fell onto her back, waiting to bleed out. It didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. Anne turned her head and watched as Merlin use his magic to lift Arthur and his knights up off the ground and throw them in the air. When they landed, each of their bodies was mutilated like they had fallen out of a sky scraper. Just as surely as she knew she was dying, the moment the men hit the ground, she knew they were already dead.
Merlin easily stepped through the wall that Anne had created and dropped to his knees beside her. She was losing her vision. Every other blink, she could blurrily make out his face. She hissed when he touched her wound. She could feel him pour magic into her, trying to mend the opening from the knife. Just as fast as he was healing her, she felt the knife open more of her skin.
“I figured it out. Viviane made all her descendants the stone. I am the last one. I am the stone. You can go back to Avalon now,” she whispered with the last bit of energy she had left.
Anne didn’t feel like breathing anymore; it hurt too much. She focused on him one more time, hoping she would remember his face in the afterlife.
“Nnnooo,” Merlin shouted.
He had just found Anne, and now she was gone. He had never gotten the chance to tell her that he didn’t care about Avalon anymore. He would have given it up for her.
He put his head on her still chest and sobbed. Merlin rested his check on Anne’s body and just stared at her beautiful face. He would never again be able to make her laugh. He would never be able to soothe away her bad dreams or watch her beautiful face as she climaxes.
He would never be able to tell her how much he loves her.
Viviane was right; he had found someone more important than Avalon. He had just let her life slip right through his hands.
Chapter 8
White.
Floors, wall, and ceiling made of white marble. Even the dainty little doorknob was colored white.
Anne’s tennis shoes made soft sounds as she walked down the hallway. Her hand was curled around a hard object. She looked down and saw that she was still holding the blade. There was no blood on the blade and no blood on her chest. In fact, she felt no pain at all.
Once she made it to the end of the monotonous hallway, she heard voices.
She turned toward the voices, and they all stopped talking. They were about twenty men and women total of all different nationalities. This room had a little more color, with the addition of medieval shields of armor hanging on the wall. Each one of them stood up as she walked closer. A normal person wouldn’t want to be in the center of attention. For Anne, however, being the center of attention was nothing, considering that she was used to teaching classes. It was her day and her possible death that made her nervous. What did she have left to lose? She shrugged her shoulders and projected her voice like she was in a lecture hall, “Am I dead?”
One of them stepped forward. He had on more modern clothes than all of them, but he wore moccasins. It made sense, considering his dark hair was in a long braid down his back, and there was no doubt that he was Native American. “Do you want to be?”
Whether he was or not, that sounded like a threat. Anne responded as such and lifted small blade in an attempt to defend herself. A beautiful, petite, Asian-looking female in the back asked, “Is that it?”
The native man walked closer− close enough for Anne to defend herself if she needed. “How are you in possession of that?” She didn’t answer him, so he asked instead, “Where’s Merlin?”
She was good if the questions remained on her, on her family, or even what she thought was her death. The moment Merlin’s name was mentioned, tears fell out of her eyes. A tall, darker-skinned man with a shaved head and too many piercings to count moved beside the native guy. His dark eyes rolled up behind his eyelids, leaving the white of his eyes to look at Anne. With a heavy African accent, he said, “He’s not dead. He’s mad as hell, but he’s not dead.”
They all stepped back to sit around the various chairs and couches in the room. Anne didn’t know what to do, so she decided to start walking out, “We need to talk. Are you going to join us?” The situation was not any less uncomfortable with them sitting down. Every last one of them was still staring at her.
With the blade still clutched in her hand, she looked around the room and found the chair furthest away from them all, but it was still a good vantage point from which to make eye contact with them. Even sitting down, they were still staring at Anne. She took a deep breath, and with a slow blink, she finally answered them, “So…talk.”
Native guy must be the leader, because he spoke first, “We are the elders of the Kingdom of Camelot in the Land of Avalon…” She held up her hands to silence him and digest what he just said.
He obviously didn’t know that that was a universal sign to stop, because he barely took a breath before continuing, “We all believed Merlin would be the one to find the stone. He would take his kingdom back. How did you do it?”
Anne shrugged, and didn’t really have an answer, “The stone was in front of us the
whole time.”
When native guy nodded in agreement, they all started nodding. He stopped nodding as soon as he started and broke into a big smile on his face, “Viviane was brilliant. We all underestimated her.”
He stood up and walked over to Anne. He stopped just short of her and dropped to his knees. “You are the stone.”
“Merlin found the stone and his way back to Avalon. He just wasn’t expecting it to be me,” Anne answered, but what she said was more for her than for any of the elders in the room.
“What are you going to do about it?” the petite woman on the couch asked.
“What do you mean?” Anne’s heart started beating so fast that her chest was hurting.
Native guy stood up, “She means that you now control the magic of the blade and the stone. You can do what you want with it. Arthur only controlled half of the magic, and look at the evil he let loose in your world. You can take out his destruction. Merlin interfered by killing Arthur. He will be punished. You can reset time to the way it was meant to be. You can save Merlin and give him back his friend.”
“She will do no such thing…” Anne stood up as Merlin strolled into the room. His face was red, and his jaw was tense. He still had her blood all over his clothes. There was no doubt that he was madder than hell.
He stopped walking right in front of her, between her and native guy, “If you reset time, then you will never have existed. The time happened for a reason, and I just found you…again…. I don’t ever want to experience you not being in my life…again….”
Anne ran to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. When she laid her head on his chest, he finally wrapped his arms around her in an embrace. His heart was pounding just as heavily against her cheek as Anne’s was in her chest. “Dying sucked,” she whispered to him.
She relaxed more against him when she heard him softly laugh.
Anne popped her head up to look into Merlin’s eyes, “I can fix this. You won’t have to be punished. I know exactly what to do.”
Epilogue
“Arthur Pendragon was the cause of all the strife in modern history. There are direct links to him influencing Hitler, Napoleon…even Jim Jones. There are also rumors that he somehow spread the plague. Since his death fifty years ago, the world has been restored to how it should have been in the first place.” Anne stepped back from the podium, showing slides of Arthur with historical figures. Then the slides showed how the world has changed. There had been no major war in fifty years since his death. Weather had stabilized. Crime was at an all time low. The people of the world, for the most part, were at peace.
Anne had the magic in her. Merlin was right. She spent her years tapping into Viviane’s magic, and along the way, discovered that she became much harder to kill. After learning Viviane’s magic, she spent the rest of her time correcting history so that future generations would understand the impact of what Arthur and his men did. Fifty years later, the students had finally become receptive of the truth. These students, who are now the grandchildren of her original audience, finally have accepted the truth and want to keep the peace, as they understand what the world could be like. They don’t want to have a repeat of Arthurian history.
Merlin walked out and helped her pack up her stuff. Anne smiled at the whispers that happened every time he shows up, “That’s him…that’s King Merlin….”
It never got old. She was so proud of him, because he had paved the way to reopen all of the entrances to Avalon all over the world. The citizens of Avalon were respected and were treated as equals. The two worlds were finally working together as a cohesive unit.
Merlin carried her bag for her, and with his free hand guided her to their house− the same house in which she had hidden from Arthur all those years ago. The same house in which she is just about to irrevocably change Merlin’s life− again.
He already made supper and had the table set. She tried not to gag as she ate the delicious food. He’s going to know soon enough, so she might as well as just tell him, “Merlin…” He snapped his head up giving her his full attention, “I know we never talked about this, and things like this happen. I am surprised it didn’t happen sooner. We are expecting…” Anne left him hanging on the last sentence to come to his own conclusion.
“Expecting what Anne?”
Anne, extremely hormonal at the moment, couldn’t help herself, “You are the world’s greatest wizard, but sometimes you don’t see the obvious.” She took a deep breath, but did not feel any less calm. She slammed her fist on the table and said through clenched teeth, “Damn it. I am pregnant.”
Merlin started laughing, “It took fifty years to get you to say the real word. All I had to do is pretend to be dumb.” He scooted to a closer chair, “My magic felt the new lives inside of you the moment it happened. I have just been waiting for you to tell me. I love you. And, besides, it is time for a new adventure.” He put his hands on her stomach.
Anne, digesting what he just said, gasped, “Lives? Meaning more than one?”
Merlin kept that big goofy grin, “Try three.”
Ann took a big swallow of her drink and laid her head on his shoulder. She knew that Merlin would be there for her to the end of her days, but three kids at once. She took his hand in hers to kiss the top of his knuckle and then placed it back on her stomach. We got this, she thought to herself. He had proved to her over the last fifty years that she will never be alone again. All of her doubts disappeared. She lifted her head off his shoulder and met his smile. They shared the same look of love that only soon-to-be parents understood.
“Let our new adventure begin.…”
Thank You for Reading!
Promise Forever: Fairy Tales with a Modern Twist Page 60
