Once & Future

by Cori McCarthy

  Merlin stood on a ruined planet, under a tetchy gray sky. As he turned in a slow circle, the tang of smoke filled his mouth. He remembered the earlier glories of this place, a time when everything was green, and a young Arthur—the first Arthur—climbed trees and learned the names of plants, becoming a squirrel with a little help from Merlin’s magic. It had been the happiest time in Merlin’s absurdly long life.

  Fire tore through those memories as a spaceship shot away from the ground, rising through the atmosphere in a hurry. Merlin hummed so frantically it felt like a bee had gotten trapped in his mouth. A few moments later, the sword hummed back, confirming what Merlin feared. Excalibur was in that spaceship.

  Headed away from Earth.

  Stranger things had not happened.

  When the hum of the sword and the roar of the spaceship had faded, Merlin heard something else. What could only be mechanical destruction.

  A machine rolled in, looming above the stone wall as large as a building. He searched for windows in its face. A control room, perhaps. There were no humans to be seen. They had disappeared from the landscape, leaving behind machines programmed to devour mindlessly.

  As if on cue, the mechanical jaws opened wide and bit down on the stone wall. Merlin wondered if it would crumble, but instead it disappeared, swallowed by the beast.

  He ducked as the machine took out another bite and another. Next, its armlike protrusions aimed thin cannons and rapidly fired into the graveyard.

  Bullets!

  Merlin thought he would catch one in the chest or the shoulder, and braced for impact. But the bullets lodged in the trees around him, and each went down with a splitting crack.

  “Interesting,” Merlin said. The only bullets he’d ever seen killed creatures of the breathing, fleshy type. Was this some kind of fast-acting poison released on impact? A vibration that interfered with the tree on a molecular level?

  What would it do to a few-thousand-year-old magician?

  As if ready to find the answer to that question, the machine fired at him. Merlin hummed a frantic bit of magic. He split his hands apart and the bullet that was headed for his face broke into a hundred shards, which all flew wide. To prove that he still could, he wove his fingers back together and the bullet reformed behind him, hitting another trunk with a righteous thump. He neatly sidestepped the falling tree. It landed with a crash.

  “I don’t have time to be shot at right now,” Merlin said to the machine. “Now would you please point me toward the nearest spaceship? I need to get off this, as they said in the last age I lived through, hot mess of a planet.”

  The machine had no answer, and he wasted no time slipping through the hole in the stone wall, and searching the skies for the remains of that spaceship. If only he could chase after it. His brain flicked through the steps of the cycle in a panicking rhythm.

  Find Arthur

  Train Arthur

  Nudge Arthur onto the nearest throne

  Defeat the greatest evil in the world

  Unite all of mankind

  It was one thing to be stuck on that last bit, but he had never had trouble getting past the first step. Usually Arthur was more or less waiting for him when he stepped out of the crystal cave. It looked like this new Arthur would be a different sort of fellow, harder to pin down. A gust of irritation moved through him. Could he make a spaceship? That’d take too much magic and far too much time. If only he didn’t need one. If only he could…

  “Fly,” Merlin muttered. “I can fly.”

  It felt like the sort of thing a person should remember, but to be fair, he hadn’t flown in centuries. Medieval societies would have pestered him with witchcraft charges and modern ones would have simply shot him out of the sky. But ages ago he’d loved taking off like a roman candle. He had never left Earth’s atmosphere, but if he had the chance to end the cycle, it was worth any risk.

  Merlin felt himself heating, sparks gathering at his feet. His body became an engine, burning itself up. He rose at a speed that was equal parts thrilling and terrifying.

  He passed through a layer of mean gray clouds and emerged, damp as a trout. He opened his mouth and could only manage a gasp. The atmosphere was growing thin; soon his breath would give out. He couldn’t die—the cycle had proven that more than once when he’d been skewered or burnt or thrown out a window—but he could spend the rest of eternity spinning in space like a broken top.

  “Not ideal,” he muttered.

  He flicked the moisture off his fingers and hummed a bit of an old ragtime song. A second spell formed a protective layer around him, sealing him into a sort of invisible spacesuit. Ice skittered off of it as he passed the highest, coldest reaches of the sky.

  With a violent pop of the ears, he breached the atmosphere. He spun around, still hurtling backward, to say good-bye to the planet where he had spent so many ages. “You gave me toast slathered with jam,” he said, starting with the best things. “You gave me magic, and some very nice views.” He probably should have kept it to happy memories, but the not-so-happy ones elbowed their way in. “You let Morgana exist. You let Arthur die. Forty-one times.”

  Earth stared at him, unapologetic.

  “I’m not going to miss you very much, either.”

  He turned, moving toward a gray fingernail in the distance. The moon grew larger and brighter as he approached, and though he didn’t see the spaceship that took Excalibur, he hummed and felt that the sword was close. He saw long-dead seas and the skeletal remains of a rover that had landed on the moon. The flag with its faded stars and proud stripes, which made him think of Arthur 37.

  Glass domes stood across the landscape, drawing him in. There were lights and sounds—civilization, even if it looked a bit crude at the edges. The new Arthur was down there waiting, whether he knew it or not. It was time for him to find the greatest hero that ever lived.

  Again.

  He landed in the chalky dust outside of one of the moon’s many domes. He didn’t see a way in, and the bit of Earth’s atmosphere he’d brought along was all used up. Merlin wheezed the last of his exhausted magic to create a door through the glass, which dissolved the second after he’d walked through it. He got a few wide-eyed stares from people walking past, but they blinked the strangeness away and kept moving.

  That told him a great deal. These people weren’t necessarily used to magic, but they were willing to accept it as long as they didn’t have to move their mental furniture around too much. He wondered if this was a side effect of leaving Earth: humans also had to leave behind the certainty that they understood the universe.

  He left the spaceport and entered the moon proper, which was like a dusty version of Las Vegas in its heyday, sealed under a glass dome. Bright lights, big city, terrible music. He found himself drawn by the temptations of several diners, all of which claimed to serve the best and truest versions of Earth’s comfort food. Tacos. Cheese fries. Pork buns. But not even the promise of a club sandwich with slightly burnt toast and actual bacon was stronger than the hum of Excalibur. He was getting close, and his excitement hummed to match.

  It came to a fever pitch in front of a black-painted building with a sign that rose from the door in black letters. DARK MATTER. When the door opened, people in skimpy outfits stumbled out, releasing the thump of too-loud bass. His Arthur had taken refuge in a nightclub. Was he apprentice to the owner? Being made to wash dishes and sticky floors? Perhaps Arthur had been adopted by someone on the moon. Was Kay—Arthur’s boorish brother—here, too? The cycle did vary things up a bit, just to keep Merlin on his toes.

  He walked in and found people of all descriptions huddled at a bar. It was a familiar sight, rows of shiny bottles gleaming down, though nobody seemed to be drinking. They all had tubes up their noses. He noticed a neon sign that declared PREMIUM OXYGEN.

  Come to think of it, Merlin wasn’t breathing much better than he had been outside of the glass dome. He thought about trying the wares but had more important matters to attend
to. Looking over the dance floor, he hoped to find Arthur and get out as quickly as possible. His eyes met a veritable orgy, people wearing little more than a few atoms stitched together, pressing up against each other in twos, threes, and larger clusters.

  In the center of it all, swinging dark hair like a mace, dancing with the fervor of a dying sun, was a teenage girl. Merlin wouldn’t have noticed her, except that she was gyrating near a sword that had been stabbed into the heart of the dance floor. A sword that he would have recognized on any planet. He looked around for a smaller person in her company. Eight to twelve years old was the normal range for a new Arthur. And definitely, always, a boy. Merlin waited as patiently as he could, but no one fitting the description materialized. Arthur couldn’t have gone far. Only he could lift the sword; certainly he would come back.

  Merlin took off his glasses, rubbed them against his robe, and shoved them back up his nose. Everything danced into focus—and the girl was staring him down with dark-browed eyes.

  Perhaps he should just ask her where Arthur was hiding.

  He dance-walked toward the girl. His body felt different than the last time he’d been awake, which made dancing a minefield of new sensations. His limbs were looser, and not in a helpful sort of way. His hips jerked more than he would have liked. For some reason, he kept fist-pumping the air. It felt like stuttering the same word over and over.

  Nervous. He was nervous. There was far too much riding on this cycle.

  The girl had gone back to twisting her long dark hair in a rope, closing her eyes and murmuring the lyrics to a high-paced, techno abomination. Once he reached her, she turned her back, showing him the sweaty line that ran down her spine. He thought about using magic to get her attention, but he didn’t want to startle her. Besides, he was spent from the act of getting here. He tapped her shoulder.

  She flicked her eyes open. “Nope.”

  “Beg pardon?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for someone to make out with,” she yelled over the heart-grabbing beat. “It isn’t you, pal.”

  Merlin stumbled. He didn’t want to make out with her. His hands went up in a kind of surrender, and he backed right into Excalibur.

  “Watch it,” she said, sweeping him aside and lofting the sword out of the dance floor.

  She.

  She lofted the sword.

  “Arthur!” he cried, his teenage voice jerking around as much as his teenage hips.

  “Still not interested,” the girl called out, her rejection saltier.

  Merlin watched her tuck the long blade over her shoulder and inside the back of her shirt. “It really is different this time,” Merlin announced blankly. He held out his arm to her. “Would you mind pinching me? I do believe I’m stuck in a very troubling dream.”

  She pinched him—hard—and his nerves forced him onto his tiptoes. “All right, I’m awake!” he shouted. “I’m awake!”

  Dark Matter was swollen with music and shadows. The beat raged. The combination of sweat and perfume was intoxicating, and Ari’s body ached from too many days pent up on Error over the last three years.

  Ordinarily, sneaking into a seedy club on a wayward moon would have been the highlight of her month, but Ari didn’t have enough credits to get even a minute of 60 percent oxygen, Mercer was infiltrating this colony in droves, and to be plain honest, she was furious with Kay. She might have risked too much on Heritage—and crashed them on Old Earth—but their parents were alive. Alive. And her brother didn’t want to even talk about finding a way to help them.

  “It’s impossible,” he’d said. “Case closed.”

  The last straw, however, was the squirmy, skinny boy yelling odd things at her.

  “You’ve grown breasts!” he shouted, staring at her chest openly. His hair was a floppy, reddish mess, and his robe smacked of a religious affiliation or the worst hangover imaginable. He didn’t even seem worried that she was packing a sword.

  “Not cool, friend. Move along.” She shoved past him at the same moment that half a dozen Mercer associates slunk through the doorway. Ari had to hand it to the people who hacked out an existence on this colony; they didn’t bow out of the way of the uniforms or the riot sticks. The associates, on the other hand, glanced around in a strict pattern—searching for Ari.

  Did they know what she looked like? Or were they simply profiling for Ketchans? She’d been ducking cameras and keeping her face hidden her whole life, but it was no secret that Mercer had unorthodox ways to track people. When they grabbed the elbow of a brown-skinned, tall girl with dark hair and took a picture of her features to run facial recognition, Ari had to accept that Mercer knew more about her than a rubber knight suit could cover.

  She ducked along the shadows of the wall and pointed at the first decent-looking human in sight, a dark-haired, razor-edged fluid by the alleyway exit. The one who had tried hitting on her earlier. “You,” she hollered over the music. “Come with me.”

  The fluid pushed off the wall and shoved a triumphant thumbs-up at the person standing next to them. They left the club, entering the alley together, and Ari inhaled the cool, yet too thin, air and dropped the sword point-down in the gravel. She grabbed the pretty fluid and hauled them against the wall, mouth to mouth.

  Interesting. They had a piercing on their lip she hadn’t noticed in the club.

  Oh, and there was a second one on their tongue. Excellent.

  In her mind, this person was also Ketchan. And they weren’t kissing beneath the thermal shades of a lunar colony dome, which blocked out the searing sunlight of the day and the solid freeze of night. They were on the red sands of Ketch, buffeted by sweet, dry winds while the siren birds wrote a melody for the sunset.

  It was her usual daydream, her happy place.

  The fluid’s hands roved down her chest, her belly, hooking into the lip of her pants just as someone entered the alleyway. Ari steeled herself for the congenial threat of a Mercer associate.

  “I bet you think this is terribly clever, don’t you?”

  Oh, gods, her gangly stalker was back.

  “You have no idea what ‘no’ means, huh?” She turned around and was only surprised to find him staring at the sword.

  “I wasn’t speaking to you. I was talking to Excalibur, but now that we’re on the subject of you, how did you come by it?”

  “Found it.” Ari deflated. This guy had clearly come looking for his property, although how he was storing things on Old Earth was beside her. At least it seemed like she could beat him in a chase. He couldn’t have been older than her, and Ari’s legs were far longer. “Finders keepers,” she said, lifting the sword and her leg at the same time, about to make a sprint for it. But Ari froze on the spot. One knee hitched in the air. Looking as ridiculous as she felt.

  Frozen. As if by magic. Which was ridiculous.

  The pretty fluid took off, and she didn’t blame them. In the meantime, the scrawny guy had started talking and talking, but the only word that chimed in Ari’s mind was, Magic?

  “Oh, I’m being rude.” He waved his hand and Ari unfroze.

  She fell to one knee, her hand wrapping around Excalibur’s handle for support. At that moment, the alley door whipped open and two Mercer associates stepped out. Ari grabbed the skinny guy and tossed him up against the wall—which was as dissatisfying as the previous time had been satisfying. He squirmed like Ari’s body was the worst thing he’d ever touched, and she hissed in his ear, “They can’t see me.” She hoped this weirdo had enough sense to play along. “They’ll arrest you simply for being with me as well.”

  “They can’t see you? Oh, you don’t want them to see you.” He whistled three fine notes. Ari felt a stiffening in the air as if something between them and the associates had hardened. They passed by without so much as glancing at Ari.

  Ari stared at the skinny stranger anew. “Who are you?”

  “Merlin the magician. We’ve met. Forty-one times already. I’ve been hoping one of these days you’ll remember
me, but alas. Perhaps I look so different now that—”

  “I’ve met you forty-one times?”

  “Not you, per se, but Arthur has. The you that’s inside of… you.”

  Ari stepped close to him again, gripping the sword and squinting. She wasn’t going to run him through, but the temptation to pin his hideous robe to the brick was overwhelming. “Is there something different about you? I mean, are you translating from another language or are you part android or heavily medicated? Maybe you should be heavily medicated?”

  The question folded his expression into a tight knot. “I’m Merlin. It’s not easy to explain, but I’m here, Excalibur has chosen you, and we must get acquainted before…” His pale skin tinged with an almost blue shade of terror. “Before we meet the third wheel in the cycle,” he finished icily, eyeing someone behind her.

  Ari twisted around, immediately backing up, pressing both of them against the wall.

  A slight woman was watching from the shadows—or perhaps her dress was made from shadows. She seemed wrong in some indefinable way. Even more, she seemed familiar. And slightly transparent. Merlin stepped around her in all of his bathrobed glory. His lips twisted, not a smile. More of a knowing grimace. “Hello darkness, my old friend.”

  “Merlin,” the woman said, her voice a wisp of smoke, her body just as intangible. “Look at you! You’re practically a child. Not a day older than your ill-fated little girl Arthur.”

  Merlin tsked. “You will let me train her first, Morgana. You’ve never jumped the gun before. It isn’t your style.”

  “Haven’t you noticed that nothing is the same this time?” She glanced around at the moon colony and smiled. “I think you’ve been away too long. Too much has changed, old wizard.”

  “You’ll find, strangely enough, that I am in my prime,” Merlin said.