Searching for Arthur (The Return to Camelot #1)

by Donna Hosie

  “WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?” I yelled, as I hauled my body out onto a rock formation that was shaped like stacked pancakes. “Why can’t you give me a warning when you’re about to appear? Ring a bell or something?”

  Nimue laughed, and stepped out from behind the same tree the squirrel had clambered up. My fear had amused her.

  “There is only one bell of note in Logres, Natasha, and you have already rung it.”

  “Yeah, thanks for mentioning that it would collapse our way back,” I replied sarcastically, wringing my hair like a towel. “I can now add Robert of Dawes to the long list of people who will want to kill me before this ends.”

  “This will never end, Natasha,” said Nimue. “Not for you or Arthur – not now.” Her wavy golden hair glowed like fire. I was hit by the thought that if I got too close, I would end up burnt.

  “I found Bedivere,” I replied, shivering. “I did what you asked, but I’m no closer to finding my brother.”

  Nimue waved her hand over a large boulder, and a pile of clothes materialised.

  “You are closer than you think, Natasha.”

  “Are they for me?”

  Nimue nodded and I bounded forward, throwing off my tunic in the process.

  “Look into the pool, Natasha,” ordered Nimue, as I dressed in the clothes she had magically provided: tight black trousers, and a moss green tunic that was like a warm fleecy sweater. Underneath that was a long downy strapping, which brought immediate relief to my aching ribs.

  “Why should I look in the water?” I replied, knowing that with my coordination and luck I was liable to end up back in it again. I was clean and dry, and intended to stay that way for at least an hour before Armageddon erupted around me once more.

  “Look into the pool, Natasha,” instructed Nimue again. Her voice was harsher. “I want to show you how close you are to Arthur.”

  She had provided me with clothes and so I felt obligated. I peered over a rock and gazed down. The craggy rock face reflected back at me, then, as I inched closer, my own unrecognisable face came into view. Slurpy was right, I looked hideous. While it was my nose that was still aching, my eyes had taken the brunt of the bruising. Long streaks of purple swelling covered my skin. Another black shadow marked the spot where I had been punched by one of the druids at the monastery.

  There was no Arthur. I pulled away from the nightmare in front of me.

  “You aren’t trying hard enough. Look again, Natasha.”

  Intimidated, I leant over again, but this time I closed my eyes. In my head I willed all my thoughts towards my brother. There were no images, just words. Written in Times New Roman and printed across the black screen of my eyelids.

  ARTHUR. ARTHUR. ARTHUR. ARTHUR…

  I opened one eye, and then the other. The sight that greeted me made me cry out with happiness and relief. I wanted to touch the pool, to grab him, pull him out and back to me where he belonged.

  My brother, with his scruffy blonde hair even longer and stragglier than I remembered, gazed back at me with tired eyes. He knew I was looking at him. He smiled without showing any teeth. It was his knowing smirk. A way to show he was still on top of things. I couldn’t see whether he was chained or hurt in any way. The image beaming back at me was just a profile.

  “Can I see more of him? Can you show me where he is?”

  Her hand rippled through the air, and the image in the pool retracted back. Now I could see the dungeon in its entirety. Arthur was sitting on a straw-strewn floor. He didn’t appear to be chained. I quickly checked him for blood or swellings that could be hidden bandages, but saw none. He had been missing for a week, and yet the lucky bastard was in better shape than I was.

  And he wasn’t alone. There was another guy with him. He was wearing a tunic with a red dragon on the chest, and his face was scarred just above the left eyebrow.

  “Who’s that with Arthur?”

  “Sir Gaheris of Orkney,” replied Nimue softly. “A knight and kin to one you already know.”

  “Gareth’s brother.”

  “Camelot is less than two moons away, Natasha,” said Nimue, “and help is coming. Stay strong and hold fast. The most important part of your quest will soon be upon you. Remember, Arthur is all that matters.”

  “When you say help is coming, do you mean the knights?” I asked, breathing heavily. I said the plural, but what I was really asking involved just the one.

  Nimue started to step back away from the waterfall; her bare feet were silent on the ground.

  “Mordred is coming, Natasha. Do not tell him of what you saw. He knows not of the power of this sacred place, and one day that will be his downfall. Morgana’s too, if she fails to release that which is not hers before the end.”

  I looked back into the pool. Arthur was slipping away from me. I bit my bottom lip as tears started to fill my eyes, then laughed as Arthur winked at me. He definitely knew I was watching him.

  My fingertips reached out and touched the water where Arthur’s hand was. A ripple broke out where I broke the surface. Arthur was gone. I looked back, and saw that Nimue had disappeared too. In her place was the bearded squirrel. He had wound back down the tree and was nibbling on an acorn nut. He looked straight at me, dropped the nut and disappeared into the long undergrowth.

  I wiped my eyes, got to my feet and pocketed the acorn. It would be a reminder that this hadn’t been a dream.

  Seconds later there was a crashing through the undergrowth. Two hooded men, Byron, and a furious-looking Mordred broke through the trees. I didn’t try to run. There was no point. They had magic at their fingertips that I couldn’t comprehend.

  “You were wise to forsake escape, Lady Natasha,” said Mordred knowingly, striding towards me as I leant back against a boulder. “You would not have gone far.”

  “I wanted to have a bath, Mordred. Where I come from, people wash occasionally. You should try it.”

  “Ow.”

  Byron had kicked a rock - I presumed in anger at my rudeness to his master. He wanted to say something, but was holding his tongue. He was hopping with a constipated look on his squirming face.

  “I see you changed your cloth,” said Mordred, narrowing his eyes. “Pray, where did you get such garments?”

  “On that rock there,” I replied, pointing. I held his gaze, proud at the way I was handling the situation without deliberately lying. If Arthur could be held captive and still keep the upper hand, then so would I.

  “Check the glade,” ordered Mordred to his two henchmen, “but make haste. Something ominous sleeps here. I can feel it.”

  Scowling, the two druids parted and drifted off in opposite directions. I noticed that neither was keen on getting too close to the waterfall.

  “M’lady,” said Mordred, offering his arm.

  I walked past him and Byron without taking it. If I had had a sword, I would have chopped his arm off.

  “Where have you been?” snapped Slurpy, as Mordred and I entered the druid camp. The tepees had been packed away on carts, and the hooded Gorians were gliding away on the morning mist.

  “Can you ride?” asked Mordred, ignoring my brother’s witch girlfriend.

  “On what?” I replied. “A goat?”

  Mordred laughed and put his arm around me.

  “My steed is strong and can bear the two of us today,” he murmured into my ear.

  “I’m perfectly capable of riding by myself.” I pulled away from his mouth, which was way too close to my earlobe.

  “Lady Natasha, you ride with me, or you ride with Morgana. Count your blessings I have given you the choice. Others would not be so accommodating.”

  Brilliant, I thought. Other seventeen-year-old girls get to choose what car they want mummy and daddy to buy them for Christmas. I fall into a tomb, go back in time, and get to choose my very own psycho.

  Ten minutes later I was being manhandled onto Mordred’s glossy black horse. I chose to ride behind him; I didn’t want his hands to go wandering. Before w
e left, I dropped one of my diamond earrings onto the ground.

  I knew the odds were against Bedivere finding it, but I had to do something.

  I’m coming, Arthur. I’m coming.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Look After Your Brother

  Guilt is an emotion that breeds with time. It slowly inches its way through your soul, devouring every scrap of conscience, until - eventually - there’s nothing left.

  You become hollow. A shell.

  Nine years ago, my brother Patrick drowned on a camping holiday. In many ways I can say that’s when my life started, but not in a good way. I can’t remember anything before that day anymore. Guilt ate the happy stuff away. And yet I can’t forget anything that has happened since.

  I was eight years old when it happened. Arthur was a year older, and Patrick was in second grade. We were living in America – Washington to be exact, although that wasn’t where Patrick died.

  My dad had taken us on a weekend camping holiday with our cousins and my uncle. My mother hadn’t wanted to go. She isn’t an outdoors type of person. She has phobias about snakes and spiders and heights and men with beards - although thinking about it, she was always okay about things that flap.

  Anyway, mum stayed behind.

  My earliest memory is of her and the words she said to me as we were packing up the car.

  “Look after your brother.”

  Six hours later, Patrick was dead.

  And it was my fault.

  Me, Arthur and Patrick had been playing hide and seek with our cousins. We were hiding and Amy and Robert were seeking. It was competitive in the way blood rivalry always is between relations. Patrick was giggling and whispering and I thought he would give away our hiding place. I got really angry with him and put my hand over his mouth, so the little terror bit me.

  Baby teeth aren’t soft. They are hard and sharp like fangs.

  That isn’t an excuse for what I did, but it’s the reason.

  I pushed him away from me. My baby brother. The one I was supposed to be looking after.

  Our hiding place was behind a shield of rocks on the edge of a fast-flowing river. Patrick stumbled back and fell. In my nightmares I still see the splash, as his little body fell in; he didn’t have time to scream. Out of the corner of my eye, in that blurry crevice between reality and imagination, I still see his electric blue t-shirt bubbling under the water.

  Blue has always been the colour of pain.

  My world froze, and so Arthur was the first to react. He ran screaming for our father and uncle, who both dived into the river fully clothed. Several others at the camp site threw themselves into the water as well. They were like salmon, jumping about in the river in a frenzy of panic.

  It was my uncle who dragged Patrick out apparently, but I never saw it. Two women had herded me, Arthur and my cousins into their tent. I heard the sirens, and I remember five-year-old Robert throwing a tantrum because he wanted to ride in the emergency vehicle with Patrick, but the medics wouldn’t even let my father travel in it.

  That was the day my life started, and it began with a lie. I told everyone that Patrick had slipped and fallen, and Arthur - the only witness still breathing - backed me up.

  People knew though. Perhaps not my father, who was too consumed by his own guilt to notice mine, but my mother certainly did. She was never the same around me after that.

  Look after your brother, she said to me, but instead I pushed him away.

  I’ve never been a deluded person. I’ve always understood my own limitations, and I know I was only eight when it happened. I may live in my own little bubble and have conversations with a voice in my head, but that doesn’t make me crazy. Slurpy Morgana can bounce up and down on her horse and jiggle her bits at every druid that passes all she likes, but I’m still a better person than she is. I don’t care if she thinks I’m a freak. I defy anyone to live with the guilt that has been eating me for nine years, and not turn out a little strange.

  So I’ll never, ever make it up to Patrick, but I could sure as hell try with Arthur because, if I was honest, when I tried to dissect the insanity that has shadowed my every move since I fell in that grave, it wasn’t even Arthur I was trying to help.

  I had been trying to help the ghost of the brother who never leaves me, because while Patrick’s headstone reads Rest in Peace, he doesn’t.

  He can’t. I won’t let him.

  The family never talk about Patrick, and we don’t have photographs of him in whatever house we are supposed to call home. Guilt whitewashed him away. My father was drinking beer with his brother when it happened. He wasn’t drunk or anything, but he has never touched a drop since. Working all hours was his self-imposed punishment. Must keep busy, then I don’t remember. That verse is tattooed onto his hollow heart.

  My mother flagellates by depriving herself of food. Her stomach must be the size of a walnut now. Her guilt was spread around more evenly. She blamed me, Arthur and dad of course, as well as the medics who got there too late, my uncle for distracting my father, the emergency doctors for not trying to restart my brother’s heart for longer…

  But I think she moved to the middle of nowhere to try and run away from her own guilt for not being there. Her guilt is tattooed into her very existence.

  Guilt was beached on my shoulders as I sat behind Mordred. I was in awe of its colossal power. Guilt was able to shame me because of the past, but it also had the unique gift of forcing me to be frightened of what was still to come. I felt guilty about things that hadn’t even happened yet, because - somehow - I knew I would be the cause of more pain.

  Mordred and Slurpy Morgana wouldn’t understand guilt if it sat on their faces. I couldn’t comprehend how either of them could sit on a horse and ride along, all the while knowing what they had done to others back at the Solsbury Hill monastery. I wasn’t even certain that Slurpy had even been there, but I decided to lay guilt on her by association. She had abandoned me, and run off into the arms of the first madman that had shown her a flicker of interest. The fact we hated each other’s guts was irrelevant. I had still shown her a sliver of loyalty when questioned by Percivale in the hall of Caerleon.

  All she had shown me were the whites of her eyes.

  I wouldn’t feel guilty if something bad happened to her now. Not anymore. She had crossed a line, gone over to the dark side as they say in sci-fi movies. You don’t pull that kind of crap and expect to carry on as normal.

  Guilt now had another power over me. It was hardening me up. I really was a shell and little more. Bedivere had been the first person to really make me feel special. Unique. Then Lady Puke arrived on the scene and ruined it all.

  So, as we rode on towards Camelot, I retreated into my own little world. It was the only place where I was really safe. Mordred attempted to engage me in passive aggressive conversation about Arthur, while Slurpy Morgana threw nasty little comments in my direction, but I blocked them both out. This infuriated Slurpy who didn’t like being ignored by anyone, but it made my resolve even stronger. Riding behind Mordred for hours had given me the one luxury that was in heavy supply here.

  Time.

  Time to think, time to plan. People and places criss-crossed in my mind as I mentally plotted a way to save Arthur. I wanted to get the upper hand on Slurpy. She was so busy trying to impress those around her that I knew she would be reacting once we got to Camelot, instead of being pro-active when it mattered. The travelling court of Caerleon, Mordred and the Gorians, and even Bedivere and his friends, would all be in for the fight. It’s what boys and men do. I would use the one skill I really did have: I was a runner. While everyone else was fighting, I would just run. Straight into the castle, down to its dungeons and I would find Arthur.

  Perhaps I was finally ready to look after my brother? Then again, the reality was it was just another situation I could totally screw up by just existing.

  After a full day of riding, and way too much thinking, we settled down for the night in
a blackened forest, which had barely survived a fire at some point. Many of the larger trees were scorched and bare, although there were green saplings rising up along the forest floor. I looked at my watch, but it had finally stopped working. I made a quick calculation that this was my sixth night away from my parents and my own time. I knew it would not be the last.

  A chill quickly fell over the druid camp as the sun set. The sky turned a pretty shade of indigo. It reminded me of a camisole top I had bought the day before I fell into the tomb. It was still in a shopping bag with the tags on. Would I ever get the chance to wear it? Did I care?

  Mordred and Slurpy went for a walk and left me with Byron. The dwarf didn’t say a word, he just scowled, but he made a funny little growl when he wanted my attention. I wasn’t even sure he was capable of coherent speech. Byron skewered shrivelled root vegetables on a stick, and once cooked on a normal fire, he would bark at me to take them. I didn’t want to offend him, figuring his lack of height probably made him feel inadequate enough, and so I ate every root he poked at me. Some of them could have been fossilised horse crap for all I knew. They certainly tasted like it.

  Once fed, he shooed me into a tent, flapping his arms and yapping at me to – presumably – move quicker. I had no idea where M&M were. I didn’t want to be near either of them, but I was also annoyed that they had left me in the protective custody of a demented walking teddy bear with OCD. Byron did nothing but fuss, scowl, and fuss some more. He rearranged the fur pelts on the hard ground at least twenty times before he was happy for me to lie on them; he arranged the sticks on the fire in neat vertical rows before he would let the flames get anywhere near them; and then he poured tiny crystals into his hand and coordinated the stones into colour groups. Once he knew he had my attention, Byron would throw the crystals onto the fire. I think he wanted to amuse me with the rainbow smoke display, but I didn’t know whether to smile at him, thank him, or watch out in case he bit my kneecaps.