The Secret of Excalibur

by Sahara Foley

  As they steer off, Ruth asks, “What the hell is going on, Arthur?” She pats my arm.

  Striding to the fire-pit, I sit in my chair, then pour half a cup of hot water, more instant coffee, then fill the rest with Amaretto. Looking sideways at Ruth, I ask, “Have you ever wanted to go on an adventure?” I slowly sip my coffee, enjoying the flavor.

  In deep thought, she sits, staring at me. “Of course, everyone does. Then we grow up.”

  “Well, we're about to go on an adventure, but this one will be an adult adventure. And if I'm right, one you'll never forget. You might even be made whatever's the female equivalent of a Knight.”

  “She's called a Dame, and you aren't making any sense.”

  Of course, Dame Doctor Ruth Judith Burns, she'll have to have the monogram on her checks changed.

  “C'mon, kid, I'll explain everything to you.”

  I saunter towards the boat then climb in, Ruth right behind me. Turning the key, I start the engine and let it idle. She stares at me, but doesn't ask why. I concentrate on two cans of cold Pabst Blue Ribbon, and two cans of beer show up. Coors. I shake my head in annoyance. I'm really having problems when I can't zap the beer I want.

  Handing her a can, I lean forward and tell her the whole story. More than what I'd told Dobie, my impressions about the sword, and what had focused on me. Alive. Metal. Not moving. I leave nothing out, but don't include my theory.

  Ruth's silent, fingering her necklace, biting her lower lip. Finally, she says, “You're frightening the hell out of me. Maybe we should leave, let Dobie and his people discover what it is.”

  “No way, Ruth, it focused on me, not Dobie. And I sure as hell want to know what it is.”

  She sure doesn't look happy, with creased brows and the beer can clenched in her hand.

  “Okay, kid, there's something I want to do, it won't hurt, just close your eyes and relax.” Her eyes get bigger. “C'mon, close your eyes and relax.”

  I gently lay my hands on her shoulders, and she doesn't even flinch. Taking several deep breaths, I clear my mind, focusing all my concentration into the task I'm trying to perform. This is more difficult than I remembered, but I've never done this to anyone else. By the time I'm finished, sweats beading on my forehead and upper lip.

  Leaning back, I ask, “How do you feel, kid?”

  “Uh, funny,” she replies with a puzzled frown. “Sort of like I'm wearing a fur coat, warm, but not really warm. Almost like a hug from your mother when you're little.”

  I'll have to take your word on that, kid, I think bitterly, not being able to remember anything but foster homes, and that damn orphanage. I pick up a fishing lure and hand it to her. “Here, push one of these hooks in to your finger, just enough for a drop of blood.”

  Now that's a queer look if I ever saw one, and I've seen a few. But she delicately pushes the hook into her finger. “Arthur, the hook won't go in.” She looks as if she saw her fairy godmother.

  “Try it again, harder,” I encourage.

  Thank goodness I was successful with my first attempt; otherwise the amount of pressure she's applying, the hook would've been shoved clear through her finger and into her knee.

  She looks at me with wonder. “Your force-field, right?”

  “You got it, kid. Now, whatever can't hurt me, won't hurt you. Pretty neat, huh?”

  Ruth starts to sob quietly. Women are weird.

  “Hey, Ruth, don't cry,” I say, rubbing her back, feeling helpless. Really slick, Arthur, I tell myself. But I don't know what else to say.

  Wiping her eyes, taking a breath, Ruth says tearfully, “I'm sorry for crying. But, you just gave me a force-field like yours. It's quite remarkable and overwhelming.”

  “You can't even catch a cold now. Nothing, including germs, can penetrate over one-thirty-second inch of your skin.”

  She looks at me with tears in her eyes, then her eyes become wider. “Uh, Arthur, uh, what about, oh you know?” She moves her hand down by her crotch, face red with embarrassment.

  “Heh, heh, no, kid, that's normal. You can make love all you want and you very soon shall, I imagine. You can even get pregnant. Everything that's natural. But nothing unnatural can hurt you, not even a bolt of lightning.”

  “But lightning is natural,” she informs me with a straight face, blinking her green eyes at me.

  “Not when it comes down on your head it's not. Over in the distance, lightning is natural.” She laughs at me, then hugs me. “Okay, let's get the scuba tanks out and go diving. I want to see the cave up close.”

  Ruth starts to climb out of the boat.

  “Hey, where you going? The tanks are right here.”

  “To get my suit, silly,” she says over her shoulder.

  “Oh no, we're diving naked. I want to see you forty-feet down, bare-ass naked as the day you were born.”

  Ruth is straddling the side of the boat, biting her lip, nervously glancing around, then asks, “No one's around now?”

  “Nope, not 'till later, c'mon.”

  By the time I pull the scuba tanks out, she's naked. I begin to have second thoughts about the dive. Maybe we'll put the dive off 'till later.

  Hands on hips, she glares at me. “Arthur, either we go now, or I'm getting dressed again.”

  Damn, she can read my mind, I'm sure of it.

  I quickly undress, then we strap on the tanks. They aren't heavy, and the leg straps hang slack as we flipper-walk towards the edge of the water. But once we're in the deeper water, we receive an unpleasant surprise. The tanks become buoyant and those damn groin straps snap up fast, tight and hard. We have pubic areas being assaulted by nylon straps; mine a bit worse than hers.

  Telepathically I say, *Bad idea, huh?*

  She violently nods, YESYESYES. But we proceed downwards. That isn't bad, so long as we stay facing down, the tanks pull on the shoulder straps and nowhere else.

  All the way to the bottom, forty-seven feet, no cave. Ruth looks over at me, hair floating out from around her head, spreads her arms and shrugs.

  In her mind, I say, *The cave is here, keep searching.*

  I hear the boat motor kachugging away on the surface. We left the motor on in case we became lost in the cave and needed a reference to find our way back out. I slowly swim along the bank, losing sight of Ruth, finding nothing but weeds, just as I saw the other night. Weeds, weeds and more weeds, but wait, different looking weeds.

  Well, well, look at this, smaller than the rest of them, and as I pull one out, plastic. A whole bank of plastic weeds, roots, and a type of cloth, no, not cloth. It's nylon. And behind the cloth is a grate of some metal. No, not metal, plastic. A plastic grate, about two inches thick covered with plastic plants and nylon. The square holes in the grate aren't large enough for me to swim through, but big enough for the fish to swim in and out.

  I point out the grate to Ruth, she freaks. She's frantically pointing up, up, up. I firmly shake no.

  I check the grate more carefully, thick plastic, and there, at the top, a cable, one cable on each upper side. The grate can be opened, or closed quickly from within. I grab the plastic mount the cable is attached to, and mentally focus, heat, bubbles, but not enough to do any damage to the plastic. It's either made of super plastic, or whatever is bothering my powers around here isn't letting me get the full effect.

  I suddenly worry about Ruth's force-field. What if? No sense staying here any longer. I can't do any damage to the grate that won't alert whoever's inside that we found them. And even from here, up against the grate, I can't scan more than twenty-feet in. So much for my super scanning ability. I point up and Ruth shoots off.

  Starting to ascend, I'm painfully reminded of those damn straps. I glance up and right above me a few feet is Ruth's bare foot, her bare butt, with pubic hair sticking out from the straps: breasts bobbing free and hair floating around her head. We can't be more than five or six feet off the bottom when I unfasten my leg straps. Ahhh. My tanks rise, held by the shoulder straps. Hell of
an improvement. I look up again.

  Watching a naked female body in the water is very inspiring. Suddenly, I'm overwhelmed with head-throbbing lust. I grip Ruth's bare ankle and pull her down towards me. She freaks out, thrashing around, trying to break free from my grasp. Her eyes are wild until she realizes it's me. I unfasten her leg straps and her tanks float up like mine. Pulling her closer to me, she keeps pointing to the grate and shaking no, no, no. Her eyes are big as saucers, trying to wildly push away. I grab her again, pulling her down onto my engorged member, and her legs wrap around me as she guides me in and holds on. But I know she has those big, frightened eyes glued to the grate as we slowly ascend.

  As she settles on me all the way, I say into her mind, *Relax, kid. Whatever put that grate there isn't coming out now, and whether it did, I doubt we could do anything about it anyhow.*

  That doesn't seem to calm her any, so as I slowly start thrusting inside her, I do some extra, extra light mental strokes of her pleasure center.

  The sensation of cold lake water caressing my naked flesh along with the sliding of warm, wet bodies against each other is physically stimulating. We're rising slowly with our bubbles, the only sounds the blurping from our regulators, the steady chug, chug from the idling engine, then the faster blurb, blurb of our released air as we pump together faster and faster, then the louder bluurrp, as she climaxes first, then me, and finally a loud splashing sound as we break the surface.

  We bob around in the calm waters, holding tightly to each other. As we remove our regulators, she pants into my ear, “Ooooh. You are totally insane, but God, do I love you.”

  “Thank you, ma'am. Now, get out of the water and hand me one of the reels, I don't care which one. Go.”

  Ruth wades to shore, drops her tanks, then climbs into the boat. She hands me a spinning reel, I cut the line and open the bail.

  “Stand still, don't touch the reel.”

  I dive back down, swimming against my loose tanks, but I don't have far to swim. I tie the line to the top of the grate. When I break the surface, Ruth is standing along the shore, loose fishing line lying around. I wade to her and take the reel, drop my tanks then climb into the boat. I reel in the slack leaving four inches, then cut the line, and tie it to the railing by the live-well. From Ron's tackle box, I remove a night-line cowbell and clip it on the slack line. If the line is moved by more than four inches, the bell will ring, and I'll go see what the hell is causing it.

  Jumping off the boat, I notice Ruth leaning over the side of the boat to see what I've been doing. She's standing on the tiptoes of one foot, her other out to the side as she leans way over the side to look, and that head-throbbing lust consumes me again. I sneak up behind her, placing my hands on her waist.

  She turns her head. “What's the, uh, ooh.”

  I pull her sexy, naked backside around towards me, then push her down on her knees. I slide behind her, mount her, and we're off again, doggy style, kaslap, kaslap, kaslap. When we're finished, I lie over her back, catching my breath.

  What's wrong with me? I've never been obsessed with sex, but I feel as though I'm a rutting bull in a pasture of breeding cows. Not that the sex isn't great, but it's not me. What about Ruth, am I sexually abusing her? Not considering her needs? I tenderly kiss her sweaty neck, confused and ashamed at my loss of self-control.

  Looking over her shoulder, she says, “You've become an animal, do you know that? We could be killed here, and all you want to do is screw and screw. You're insane.”

  Contritely, I mumble softly into her neck, “Then, why didn't you just say no, kid?”

  With a sheepish laugh, she says, “Okay, I'm insane too.”

  “And you love me, right, lady?” I ask, needing absolution.

  “Umm, yes, yes, Arthur, I do.”

  Feeling some redemption about our relationship, we rinse off in the water, and while I'm pulling on my shorts, watching her dry off, I joke, “If you don't hurry, kid, I'm gonna start again.”

  By the time I turn the key to shut off the big motor, she's dressed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lounging by the fire-pit, reflecting on my next course of action, Ruth wanders over, plopping into her chair. She's barefoot, brushing the sand from between her coral pink-tipped toes, asking, “What now?”

  Concentrating hard for a few seconds, two cans of cold Pabst appear in my hands. Perfect. Taking a refreshing cold sip, I study the surface and underwater maps of the lake. There isn't anything on the maps to draw attention to this area, just smooth sand, and weeds. Not even a shipwreck nearby.

  The biggest map is from the Historical Society of England, and it documents every rock, depression, hump, channel, gully, shipwreck, or piece of shipwreck, even debris that washed into the lake from the shore, and each detail has its own classification number. The map's five years old, and Ruth told me some details were copied from previous maps. Sipping my beer, I scrutinize and compare the various maps. Something's very wrong.

  “Look, kid, here,” I say, pointing at the map. “And now, the newer map, remembering what we saw when we were down there, nothing. So tell me, where the hell is the shipwreck titled WS 3461? See, it's here on the older map, but missing on the newer one.”

  “Yes, five years ago, they recorded the shipwreck, but a half hour ago, it wasn't there. But it could be a copying error, couldn't it?” Ruth asks with a dubious look.

  According to the older map, WS 3461 should be ten feet from where the cavern is located. However, it's not there on the new map.

  Studying the newer map again, I exclaim, “Hey, look, Ruth. Here's the shipwreck, about a mile down the shoreline. How do you suppose an old, Italian ship moved after, uh, let's see, after more than a hundred years? The old map shows it half buried in sand right here, but the new map shows it's over there, unburied.”

  I glance up, looking out over the sparkling water, thinking. Unless someone really messed-up the copying of the shipwrecks from one map to another, then the ship moved itself over a mile away. Or, someone moved it in the last five years, to keep attention away from the cavern entrance.

  “I still don't understand how anyone could've missed the cavern. I mean it's so big, and after God only knows how many dives over the years to classify the shipwrecks, and document the whole bottom of the lake. It doesn't seem possible.” She's chewing her bottom lip again.

  “Well, you didn't find the cavern,” I remind her, “and you were right on top of it, specifically looking for it. The other divers didn't know the cave was there, and there's nothing around it to attract anyone's attention.”

  “How long do you suppose the grates been there?”

  Good question, kid. I've been wondering the same thing.

  “Well, let's see. Plastic like that's been around for at least twenty-five years, but the plastic seems reinforced, or else my abilities are weaker than I thought, because I couldn't generate enough heat to melt it.” As I'm talking, Ruth is digging sand out from beneath her coral-colored toenails.

  “You mean the grate could've been there that long? Impossible.” The sand is forgotten.

  “Whatever type of grate they have, it could've been there more than twenty-five years.” She glares at me from under her eyebrows. That remark doesn't set well with her, not on her precious lake.

  “God, Arthur,” she sighs in exasperation, “can't you feel what's down there at all?”

  “No, I can't,” I retort, just as exasperated. “The magnetic influx overpowers my scanning ability. And there might be something else affecting me, but I don't know what it is yet. It could be a combination of elements I've never felt before. I hope to understand more when Dobie calls back.”

  Lots of wrinkles on her forehead. “So what do we do until then?” she asks, nervously staring at the trees.

  “Oh, relax, have another beer or two, maybe neck a little, eat dinner, neck some more.”

  With a loud sigh, she says with irritation, “How can you stay so calm, not knowing who or what may
be down in the cavern?” Yup, she's upset.

  “Listen, they won't come out until dark, after they know we're asleep. Then, they'll only be checking what the commotion up here was about. From a security standpoint, it's what I would do. So, until then, relax. Let's just be on that holiday you mentioned before. But me, I like honeymooning better,” I say, fluttering my eyebrows at her, squeezing her firm, upper thigh.

  “How can you be horny?” she asks with a trace of annoyance. “I thought men need more time to recover after sex?”

  “Umm, right, well it seems you brought out the sleeping animal in me, Doctor,” I lamely answer.

  “I did?” she asks with a quirked brow. “Or that thing in the cavern? You seem constantly excited now, overstimulated, as if you're watching triple X-rated movies in your head.”

  “Good comparison. That's from being around you,” I tease, trying not to show my concern over the changes going on inside me. If I don't understand what's happening to me, how can I explain my behavioral changes to her? Plus, I don't want to frighten her.

  “Oh, you,” she replies, kicking sand at me. “Well, I'm not ashamed to say that I'm one sore girl, inside and out.”

  Is that a compliment? I decide not to ask.

  “Don't worry, you'll have all the time you need to rest and recuperate, oh, at least as long as it takes you to cook us some dinner.”

  “Oh, you,” she says, throwing a handful of sand this time. “And what will you be doing, while I rest?” she asks with a smirk.

  “I'm going do something sneaky, kid. I want you to sing or talk to yourself, anything to make it seem as though the two of us are together. I'm going into the tent and teleport back into the trees. The two sets of footprints headed into the tree line somewhere, and I want to know where they went.”

  Her face turns a shade darker with concern. “Uh, whatever's affecting your powers might also affect your ability to teleport. I mean, you could be teleporting somewhere you never intended, couldn't you?”