by John Pirillo
So I stood at the entrance beside the Soldiers, who gazed respectfully at Arthur as he held Merlin's head in his lap, weeping in despair.
Tears wet the eyes of the Soldiers. Merlin was beloved by the entire Kingdom for his good works and deeds. This would not be a glad day for any. Merlin had helped the farmers to gain more yield from their crops, had taught the engineers how to build lasting roads, conduits that would carry water from our lakes to the castle. He had been a master of painting and his artwork graced every major room in the castle, reminding everyone of the promise of man and the good in him.
Merlin would be greatly missed by those he had touched. And that was every one of Camelot and the greater realms around it.
Gallius stood to the side of Arthur and put a hand on his shoulder. His own eyes were red from crying as well, but the tears had dried up and his expression was somber with thought and grief.
He looked up from Arthur to me. I had nodded my head to him. He looked for a long time at the level of Nimue's eyes, then down at my real ones that dangled like mechanical antenna from the top of my head.
I gasped. He knew!
Chapter Six
Hours later we exited the Cave. Merlin was carried in Arthur's arms, cloaked in his regal white cloak with the berries on its lapels. He had always loved nature, even though he lived in a cave. A strange, but wonderful man. It was only at that time I realized how frail he had become. I had been so absorbed in the present; I hadn't seen where it was traveling. His time had been nearing for quite awhile. I and Arthur had both been so lost in rebuilding Camelot and helping those within it and about it, that we had lost track of time and of Merlin's aging.
As we walked into Camelot Morgan Le Fey was being brought forth from the dungeon in chains. She looked like she was ready to explode with anger, but the moment her eyes seized on Gallius, it was as if an ancient spark had reignited. They both froze for a moment.
Before anyone could stop her, she had broken free and thrown herself at Arthur's feet. "I beg forgiveness, Arthur. I repent my thoughtless words and deeds and throw myself on your mercy."
Arthur stopped a moment to look into her eyes, and then looked to me and Gallius. "Bring her to my chambers. I will speak to her later."
Without another thought about it, we took custody of her, and she came with us as meekly as a lamb. Gallius kept sneaking glances to her, and she to him, which totally mystified me. I never could understand this male/female thing. It seemed to me that either one was just so much of the other that it made no difference in the long run.
When we reached Arthur's chambers, we set her down at a humble table. I went to the kitchen below and sought some food for her and Gallius. When I returned with a tray of spring water in a clean clay jug, and a loaf of fresh made wheat bread, and chicken legs, they were both busy talking away. Morgan was even laughing.
I had never seen such a miraculous turn of events.
I begged for Gallius to excuse me telling him that I was going to seek out Arthur to make sure he was alright. Gallius had nodded his head, but a look of doubt touched his eyes.
When I reached the Crystal Caves it was nearing dusk. I approached cautiously, as I didn't want to startle Arthur in his moment of grief. When I came into the main chamber he was just placing Merlin's long fingers over his heart, then pressing his beloved wand between them. Next, he lifted a bouquet of flowers, bright yellow and golden ones, and laid them over the wand.
Through, he turned to exit. He saw me.
"Nimue." He exclaimed.
"I've come to serve his last wish of me." I said calmly, not letting betray anything that might create doubt in Arthur's mind.
"Very well. See to it. I will return on the morrow to take him for a proper burial."
"Yes, My Lord." I answered with a curtsey. He again gave me a strange look, but exited.
I turned to the body of Merlin where he lay so quietly. "Okay. You can stop playing games now. I know you're awake."
Merlin's body didn't move, but a light body rose forth from the solid one, and walked towards me, smiling. "My dear Binky, I am so glad we are at last through with the games."
I smiled and returned to my normal mechanical dog look. He leaned down and put a hand on my nose, which I felt, even though it was made of light. "You have been a good companion through the years. Had you been another more human creature...." He left the rest unsaid.
I made a mechanical bark. "Just keep on holding that thought, you silly Old Man."
He smiled at me, and then turned to look at his body. "You
must seal my body in for the future times when I am needed
again."
"You are returning." I asked. Surprised.
His eyes rested on mine a long time as he began to fade away. "When has mankind not needed help such as mine?" He answered my question, but with yet another question, which to this day I ponder the meaning of.
I nodded my head. After he vanished, I backed up, then raised the vibration of my antenna and focused them on the mighty overhead crystals. They began humming softly at first, as if singing, and then they began to expand and lower. As they did they turned into a light mist-like substance that surrounded Merlin's body, and then reformed into solid crystal, with his body encased within.
I bowed my head to him. "The King is dead. Long live the King."
I left the Crystal Caves and as I did, I heard Merlin's Voice. "Do not turn or look back, my friend."
A flood of brilliant light washed across my back sensors, and a high pitched sound filled the air, causing thousands of birds to explode into the air, seeking safety elsewhere. I never turned back to look.
Chapter Seven
I caught up with Arthur at the gates of Camelot and we went to his chambers together. He never said a word. He knew instinctively not to ask, as Merlin had been as much his teacher as mine. We had an unspoken knowledge of what could be discussed and what not.
As we entered his chambers Morgana rose from her seat opposite Gallius, and dropped to a knee before Arthur. "Your majesty."
He froze midstep, startled again by her actions. "What is going on, Morgana? I will not tolerate any further chicanery by you!"
She looked down at her feet, her face solemn. Not an ounce of darkness in it or her eyes. "Sire, I only wish to serve the greater good of Camelot..." Looks up. "And you."
He looked into her eyes for a long time, and she didn't look away. He nods his head, and from that day forth, Morgan Le Fey took up Merlin's healing practice and went from household to household, healing the sick and comforting the dying. In time the peoples of Camelot came to forgive her evil past, and they seemed gone forever, as if they had never been. It's as if, as Merlin would often speak to me, she had been born again into a new life with a clean slate to get everything right that had been wrong. Reincarnated, that was the word he had used. Reincarnated.
Another thing that happened was that she and Gallius became closer and closer, and I never realized how close until one day I realized she was pregnant. When I made a note of it, Gallius had come over and put an arm around my shoulders. "I want you to be the bridesmaid for our wedding, good Nimue."
I was so stunned; all I could do was nod my head. Gallius whispered in my right ear, while looking down into my real eyes. "Don't act so surprised, old friend, you as well as I know there is more in heaven and earth than meets the eye."
Again, I was startled and stunned. He most definitely knew who I was. Only Morgana never knew. He never revealed my true nature to her, nor did she ever suspect. Whatever magical powers she had claim of before, seemed to have died with the birth of her child.
Being a fairy, Morgana would pass onto her child a gift greater than many could ever have. Immortality. Even the ever, humble Arthur had the breath of Immortality to him, but was never one to brag of it, nor boast of it as a prize of any kind. He went about his duties of managing the Kingdom, administering to the poor, the sick and the needy and to uplifting all of England a
s best one man can.
Eventually, he disbanded his Round Table. Even though many of his famous knights had perished in the final battle with Mordred, still others had come forward from around the world to join it, so the table never wanted for twelve brave and noble hearts to be seated around it.
On the day he disbanded the table I knew something was coming to an end for Camelot and for Britain.
Gallius had told Binky about that incident. "Merlin was not an old, old man with a long, long beard as so many think in later times. He was quite trim, not a wasted pound on him. He was actually quite tall, almost six and a half feet tall. Towering over even Arthur, who was tall for the times. Both were of Elf blood, which would explain the height, but their blood was also of mankind. The magical and the root bloods intermingled.
Chapter Eight
Merlin was not a snooty man. He hadn't an ounce of pride in him, nor did Arthur, as Merlin had fathered him from a small child. A small tyke, barely able to walk on his own, as a matter of fact. His father had not been Pendragon, but a lowly servant maid and shepherd, who had found a stable in a pouring English rain, and had him there. The shepherd had been killed by wild wolves when hunting for food that night, and Arthur never met him, but his mother was close to him and Pendragon, who later raised her to nobility and married, taking on Arthur as his rightful heir, despite the lack of true blood.
When he was seven, she had died of fever, as many had during those times, because of lack of cleanliness and good sanitation. If Arthur once king had done nothing else for his people of the lower and highlands of the Brits and Scots, he had made sure they were clean and kept close tabs on their sanitation. The true golden age of Camelot had not been Knights versus Knights, or ogres and dragons, but good doctors born from the medicinal and herbal knowledges Merlin had brought with him from the Americas and the Indies.
Merlin would have none of that. "I'm no saffron robed guru, who will beg for rice, nor stomp the Eternal heights of the Himalayas. I am just a humble man, striving to know all that there is of Truth and of the Light. If you want to help me, then marry that rascal Gallius off to Morgana and get him out of my hair. The young tramp is spilling half my magicals, and driving Arthur mad with questions about time and space."
Chapter Nine
And so it was that Gallius and Morgan Le Fey got married. The union of the two created the second Lord When, who gave Gallius the final clue he was seeking. So hailing goodbye to his stalwart friends, he and Morgana had built a simple time traveling device they called the "Time Boat." And boat it was. Made of Elven iron and rare goblin coppers from India, they managed to rascal some magnetic flux lines through a rare combination of magic and electricity and send themselves forward into the future.
Unfortunately for them, and for the world of that time stream, they were separated forever from that time and space. They landed instead in the world of the King Arthur who never knew magic in his life, never knew me, and never knew a Morgana who was kind and generous. From their time boat they witnessed their beloved King assailed by his bastard son, and struck down in anger and bitterness by the son he was never able to love.
Morgana had wept at that moment. "That could have been me, if not for you, Gallius."
He had said nothing, but instead put his arms around her and held her close. "This new world needs us more than the last. Let us focus on what good we can do now, rather than on what has been."
Chapter Ten
And so it was that Binky first became aware of the Lord When of that time and space. He had sensed him as he was foraging on a very gray old planet called the Moon by modern man. It had once been a resplendent planet filled with golden forests, green dunes, flowers and flowing rivers, but a great war between those who were right, and those who could not be wrong, caused its destruction, flinging a great portion of the planet into the sun and another portion into orbit between Mars and Jupiter, there to join the remains of Maldek.
Yes. There were two Binkys. I of the first story and I telling this story. Both the same and yet different. Our memories were linked somehow, so that even though I was still in the alternate reality with the Camelot that still existed, they and I were also here on a more barbaric Earth, where Arthur died horribly, struck down by his own son.
What a mystical, mysterious and wondrous galaxy of galaxies there are. Trillions upon trillions of galaxies and stars as far as the mind could reach. A wonder that surpassed all wonders. A mystery so deep that even in all the thousands of lifetimes Binky had lived through, he was barely on the edge of comprehending it.
Yes, the Universe was alive, alive and deep with feeling and awareness, even as were all things created within its infinite and unending structures. Bink, as Lord When would sometimes call him in a moment of passion, savored the immensity of it all. Even in his robotic form he still knew the depths of wonderment that came with the knowledge that life was unending and ever expanding in its complexity and depth.
Chapter Eleven
"Whoa!" Lord When cried out as the Time Boat gave a slight lurch. He dipped two fingers into a side dish on his dashboard and popped a peanut butter pretzel, no salt, organic peanuts, into his mouth. He mumbled a sound of relief, savoring the peanut butter essence as it coated his parched throat.
"Bink! Spread the threads!" He ordered.
Binky nodded his antenna and activated the Spread. Immediately threads began expanding from the Swirlers above the Time Boat, reaching into infinity, bending time and space. Einstein would have felt like he was in the Disneyland of Quantum Physics, had he been alive to see the reality he had perceived through his great mind.
Lord When nodded his head. He concurred. Binky looked at him. The two shared thoughts from time to time, without even trying to. They were bonded to each other in ways that would be incomprehensible to anyone else.
"Aye Binky! He would have been like the proverbial child let loose in the candy store, not knowing where or when to stop eating.
Lord When eyed his dashboard. The levels were coming up nicely on the Spread meters. "Soon." He muttered to himself.
Binky nodded his head. He made his usual melodic reply, which was sort of a cross between R2-D2 from Star Wars, and the Tooth Fairy's cry of delight when it found a new tooth. And oh yes, the Tooth Fairy is real. Binky thought to himself. Just not in the Earth Dimension. All the positive forces tended to work in the non-physical, taking their cues from the Infinite when needed, so that their help and application was always precise, and exactly what was needed.
That's why Binky was with the Lord When now. Because the Infinite had led him to the young boy when he was growing up and needed a friend. The old Lord had found Binky when he was still a pup in relativistic terms, even though he was ancient in terms of the Infinite. Binky had lived through numerous epics of time and space, surviving them because of his kind heart and generous nature. The Infinite had always steered him into remarkably perilous and admirably challenging situations, true, but he had always come out of them leaner and stronger. Well, leaner in the sense of having less mental baggage.
Binky had once had a body like everyone else. Just not the kind most Earth people would recognize. But a body. But as time wore on, and his aspirations to serve had grown, he had eventually been forced into a melding of electronics and consciousness, dropping his mortal frame aside. While he could probably have lived forever in his original form, he would not have been able to be the angel of relief that the Infinite had desired for him to be. His people had no need for companionship like Earth people, because they were whole within themselves, complete. They reproduced as the Infinite desired, and then only to carry on the good work given to them to do.
Lord When grinned and patted Binky on his metallic head, making a kind of tunk-clink sound. Binky wagged his metallic Nano-fiber tail as he was expected to do. He had to humor the master, even though he wasn't a dog in any real sense, Lord When expected a kind of dog-like nature about him, because of his shape, which while somewhat canine
appearing, was actually based on a Sirian-Polaris Double Star creature that had roamed the double star's only inhabitable planet many centuries ago.
If anyone had looked at him and called him spiritual in any sense of the word, he would have barked like a dog, because he knew they wouldn't. Most sentients automatically assumed that beings that were smaller than themselves just didn't have the same spiritual essence and capabilities of a taller one. Wrong. Size and spirit are not linked, only heart and soul. Even if the heart was now a bionic one.
Lord When paused to reach for another peanut butter pretzel, popped it into his mouth, and then lightly touched the spread controls. Immediately the Time Boat made a loud humming sound, like a swarm of bees singing like angels, then it began to spin faster and faster, its form appearing to grow longer and wider, until it spread beyond the stars and space itself.
Lord When grinned at Binky. "Now I know how the gods must have felt when they began creating some of the galaxies in our dimension."
Binky blinked his eyes in acknowledgement, and barked.
Lord When grinned like a Cheshire cat, his boots clicking merrily together on the floor plate below, while he clapped his hands like a child. "Get ready, Binky." Anyone outside the Time Boat would've thought it was still there, and then suddenly it compressed into nothing and vanished. But they would have been wrong. Lord When's voice hollered into the void, "TIME SWIRL!"
And it did.
SOME NEWS
If you enjoyed this small adventure with Binky, then look to the Lord When series, Chapter One: The Lost Child. Discover how the 2nd Lord When came into being and how Binky becomes his constant companion, even as he did the 1st. Discover new worlds, more time and space, new characters.
Also check out my website at: www.goldenstories.com.
Back Cover:
John Pirillo is a prolific writer born in the coal country of Pennsylvania to a coal miner and later on engineer in the aerospace industry.
John learned to use his imagination early on in his childhood when he discovered an oil well in the back runoff of his uncle's gutter. Undeterred by the kindly corrections of his father and uncle, he went on to become a confirmed adventurer, exploring the backwoods and beneath train track bridges.
