by Donna Hosie
Slurpy was just staring at the ring on her finger. Before it had been a clear diamond, but now it was a deep sapphire.
“Don’t ever lose that ring,” I said to her. “Put it in a safety deposit box or something when you get back.”
“I did this for Arthur, not you. You do know that, don’t you?” she replied. “I don’t want you thinking that this changes anything. You’re still a freak, even if Gwenddydd is gone.”
“When did you know she was in my head?”
“There was always something weird about you; I knew it from the first moment I met you. Then Morgana started to take over me, and the day of the feast was when it all started to hurt. I remembered Gwenddydd, that day in my room. I wish I’d never come here. I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“It was you, wasn’t it? It was you that let Mordred out of the dungeon.”
“It wasn’t me. It was Morgana. Don’t you get it, freak? You like books, don’t you? We’re like that Jekyll and Hyde monster, but I’m not a monster. You want this – I don’t. You want to be something you’re not. They can screw their crowns and their magic – I don’t want any of it anymore. It hurts too much. It’s like being stabbed with a million knives, only it bleeds inside my head, not on the outside. I only ever wanted Arthur, my Arthur, not their Arthur.”
So it had been Slurpy Morgana who released Mordred. Part of me wanted to wrestle her to the ground and smash her face until nothing was left, but I also knew it would give me no satisfaction at all. The only thing that would was getting her away from here, from Logres, from me, for the rest of time.
“Do you love my brother?”
“More than anything.”
“Then don’t let Arthur forget what he has to do.”
Slurpy took a step back and tilted her head slightly, like a dog. She understood.
“You aren’t coming with us.” It wasn’t a question.
“I can’t – I have to stay here. I have to put all of this right, somehow.”
“You can’t leave Bedivere. You’re choosing the knight over your brother.”
Another waterfall cracked and collapsed with a roar. The spray and rock that exploded into the air looked like the remains of a tower being demolished by explosives, and was just as loud.
“Arthur is going to get you and Mila back to where you belong, Sam. You don’t belong here. Not any more. Morgana’s time is finished.”
“TITCH, SAM,” cried Arthur. “MOVE IT, NOW.”
“But that means he’ll come back. You know Arthur will come looking for you.”
We were both knocked off balance as the earth beneath our feet dropped. The cliff was starting to break up. A jagged fault line ran across the ground near to where Tristram and Guinevere were. They jumped across a gap towards the path, just as the earth split apart.
“TITCH, SAM.”
Slurpy started to step back away from me. Then she turned and ran towards my brother and Mila. Talan was dragging Arthur towards the trees.
“Tristram, we have to get to the bottom of the cliff before the path collapses,” I yelled.
“TITCH!”
“GET THEM OUT OF HERE, ARTHUR.”
“Will the tunnel endure the collapse?” asked Guinevere. She was the one dragging Tristram now. He was limping.
“I think so,” I replied. Slurpy had reached Talan and Arthur. All three were staring at us.
Talan raised his arm in salute and nodded to each of us. Arthur mouthed I love you. See you soon, sis.
But as I was about to mouth the same, I was distracted by Slurpy. She was mouthing I’m sorry.
Then they were gone into the darkness of the trees that led to the vine bridge and the way back.
Guinevere now had Tristram jammed between the two of us.
“Leave me, Lady Knights of the Round Table. Save yourselves,” he protested. “Sir Talan will come for me once he has shown Arthur the way.”
“Hush your tongue, Sir Tristram,” snapped Guinevere, as we reached the path that led down and away from the falls. “The water is flooding eastwards, our direction is westerly. We may still make it, and if we do, it will be together.”
But I pulled back. Why had Slurpy said that she was sorry? I should have been pleased that she had finally acknowledged what a horror she had been, but a cold sense of dread had gripped my insides. Was she sorry for the past, or the future?
And why hadn’t I told Arthur that I loved him? I waited for my inner voice to answer, but of course it was gone. There was just me left.
“Where will the sorcerer have gone?” asked Guinevere. “Can he stop this?”
“I’ve no idea,” I replied, “but hopefully he’s too busy to realise that Arthur is leaving with...”
NO! No, no, no. I came to a sudden stop on the path and let go of Tristram.
“She’s going to destroy the tunnel,” I cried. “Slurpy...Sammy...Morgana...she has Nimue’s powers trapped in a ring. While she’s in Logres, she can use the blue flame.”
“But Arthur...Sir Talan...”
“We have to stop her. If she collapses that tunnel, then Arthur will never get back again. She’s going to stop him from ever coming home to us.”
The three of us started sprinting back up the path. Tristram cried out in pain every time his right foot hit the shaking ground, but it didn’t stop him from running.
The air was now thick with dust and water. The blue sky had been completely covered by a film of gritty grey cloud.
How could I have been so stupid? Slurpy would never have apologised for the past, or even the future – she was saying sorry for what she was about to do in the present. She was going to stop Arthur from ever getting back to Logres, to Camelot, to the knights...
To me.
We reached the trees as the edge of the cliff started to crumble away. I couldn’t hear bells or wind chimes or anything other than the deafening roar of the Falls of Merlin.
Tristram wound us through ivy-covered trunks. Guinevere and I hacked at the undergrowth with our swords, as our ripped clothes caught on roots and brambles.
I could see the vine bridge stretching out over a dark abyss below. The birds were long gone, scared no doubt by the destruction of the waterfalls, but I could hear the high-pitched wailing of a baby. It was Mila. We were getting close.
Without a glance down, the three of us crossed the vine bridge. It swung violently, but we didn’t have time to be scared.
“Sir Talan,” yelled Tristram. “Can you hear me, my friend?”
“Arthur,” yelled Guinevere. “Sire, you are heading into a trap.”
But I couldn’t shout or scream or even whisper. My final words to my brother were not going to be forced on me like this.
And then we saw the opening to the tunnel. Arthur looked around, just long enough to see me, and the look on his face was the image that tattooed itself on my memory, because he smirked his know-it-all-jackass-big-brother grin.
Then Slurpy pushed him and Mila into the tunnel. Talan disappeared from view as well, buffeted forward by Arthur. I saw Slurpy kneel down and place something small on the ground.
An acorn. Her link to Merlin.
MY link to everything.
Her eyes didn’t turn white. They didn’t need to. Slurpy probably had enough magic in her now to do anything in Logres. A massive ball of blue flame erupted from her hands, and the acorn exploded into a mushroom cloud of blazing azure fire.
The tunnel entrance collapsed. We could hear the deafening implosion in front of us. Then an explosion sounded behind, as the final waterfall died.
I started running.
I started screaming.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Time of Death
“ARTHUR…OH GOD NO…ARTHUR.”
“SIR TALAN.”
I reached the collapsed entrance before Tristram. My blistered hands scraped across stone as I frantically started digging through the earth, but for every handful I scooped away, more rock and earth fell down to
replace it. Tears and sweat and dirt. I was covered. All three of us were as we tried to find a way through. I didn’t care what was now happening behind me. The waterfalls and cliffs had gone, but all I cared about was getting to my brother.
We dug until our hands bled. My nails were gone. Torn off by stone. Every muscle burned, pulled and splintered apart in our desperation to find even the smallest gap in the collapsed entrance. A hole that would give us the briefest glimmer of hope that we would see Arthur and Talan again.
But the longer and deeper we dug, the more our hope was snuffed out. Slurpy hadn’t just destroyed the acorn and the entrance – she had collapsed the entire tunnel.
“We cannot do this by ourselves,” cried Guinevere, collapsing onto the dirt. Filthy long streaks had covered her face. Her hair was no longer blonde. It was black and matted, and I knew that even though I was looking at her, I was looking at a mirror image of myself, and still I didn’t care because I needed to get to Arthur.
I started hitting and kicking and punching the rock and earth. It just compacted beneath my anger. I started to scream. It wasn’t with anger or fright – it was sheer desperate hopelessness.
Arthur was gone.
And he wasn’t coming back.
I couldn’t remember falling asleep. I just woke up. Guinevere was curled up in a little ball, like a cat. Tristram was still digging with his bare hands. I was pretty sure he hadn’t stopped.
“I will…not give up, Lady Natasha.” His voice cracked, but I didn’t have to hear it to know he was broken. The disbelieving shock on his face said it all. I had lost my brother, and Tristram had lost one of his best friends.
“I thought…I thought I heard singing,” sobbed Tristram. “But when I stopped and pressed my ear to the earth, I could hear nothing.”
And he fell forward and collapsed onto my shoulder. Guinevere woke up and took his place in the dirt without a word. What was there to say?
Shock and hopelessness turned to anger. Absolute raging hatred. The kind of burning, pit-of-your-stomach, kill-something fury that was physical, all consuming.
I had kept my side of the bargain. I had released Gwenddydd and helped remove the spirit of Nimue from Logres. But at what cost?
AT WHAT COST?
My brother was gone. Bedivere was gone. There was no way anyone, or anything, survived the flood as the waterfalls collapsed.
I pushed Tristram away, and stumbled towards a curve in the entrance, where the three of us had excavated away a fraction of the rock and earth that had collapsed.
I wanted my brother and my boyfriend back. I had searched and found them before. I would do it again. And then I would pummel the blue flame - and the life - out of the person that had ruined my world.
Tristram and Guinevere left me to my murderous intent. There wasn’t space on the only narrow strip of stone that was left, but they gave it to me anyway.
Night fell over the falls. My stomach ached from crying. Painful spasms, more violent than hiccups, ricocheted through my chest. I wanted to sleep and never wake up. I wanted to sleep and wake up to realise the nightmare was over.
I wanted to sleep and wake up back home. With Arthur and Bedivere.
I woke up to tears and sweat and dirt, and the living nightmare began again.
When do doctors call time of death? You see it on television shows and in the movies. Who decides to give up? Would they give up so easily if it was their brother, friend, love? Would they keep on resuscitating, or would other people have to drag them away, kicking and screaming and fighting, because reality and truth is shit and all you want to do is keep on trying?
Well, I wasn’t going to call it yet.
All three of us heard them calling. I was so proud that neither Tristram nor Guinevere stopped. We were on our hands and knees. A glimmer of reckless hope had been lit when we combined to pull out several rocks the size of large pumpkins, but it had been immediately extinguished as we dislodged more rock and dirt, which filled up in seconds the hole we had spent hours digging.
Logres was mocking us for not having the guts to call a time of death.
“Lady Natasha…Sir Tristram…Lady Guinevere…”
The calls were hopeful. Nothing like the desperate screams that the three of us had cried until our throats bled.
My heart should have soared. Days ago it would have. The knights were alive and safe, and they were looking for us because they cared.
I saw David first. His long shadow loomed over Tristram, as the knight who was younger than me ran with a burning branch towards his mentor, guardian, and best friend.
“The king and Sir Talan are behind the wall of rock,” said Tristram dully. No intonation whatsoever. I don’t think he had the energy or capacity for emotion anymore. None of us did.
David screamed out, too high-pitched for someone whose voice had broken. I could feel the heat from the fire as he waved the branch above his head. But fire just reminded me of Gwenddydd and how she had tricked me into helping her.
My head was silent. And so was my soul.
Gawain and Agravaine appeared next. Then more knights whose names I couldn’t remember. Nameless heroes who dived into the earth to take over where Tristram, Guinevere and I had failed.
“Where are Sirs Bedivere, Gareth and Lucan?” asked Guinevere. She was trying to find a clean section on her tunic to wipe her face with. She failed.
I crawled away. I didn’t want to hear. Murdered by Saxons? Drowned after the destruction of the falls? It didn’t matter. A doctor doesn’t take into consideration the manner of death when he or she calls it. When someone is gone, then they’re gone.
A body collapsed into mine, forcing both into the long grass, further away from the collapsed tunnel. It was Guinevere.
“They are alive, Lady Natasha. Sir Bedivere is alive.”
“How? But the Saxons…the water?”
“My brother…it was Byron…tell Lady Natasha, Sir Agravaine. Tell her what you just told me.”
Gareth’s tall brother loomed over me. He held out a gloved hand and pulled me into a sitting position.
“My brothers and I gave word to the king as you had asked, Lady Natasha. Arthur immediately left the court under the protection of Merlin. The king, Lady Samantha and the bairn left with my noble brother, Sir Gawain, to meet you. The sorcerer was troubled though, and he went into a waking dream. He saw the infidels - the Saxons - approaching from the eastern shores, and so the Knights of the Round Table set out to meet them. The Battle of the Falls was brief. Sir Lucan was injured, but not grievously.”
“What about Bedivere?” I interrupted.
“The pride of Sir Bedivere was more wounded than anything. Sir Gareth and Sir Lucan would not let a Saxon within a stride of him. Why, even Taliesin picked up a blade to protect his lord.”
Warmth was returning to my body. I felt guilty for being happy, but I was. It started to spread out through my veins, awakening my heart – not with a sudden jolt, but I could feel it beating again.
“But then the cliffs started to crumble, and then the water came,” continued Agravaine in his strong Scottish voice. “We knew we could not outrun such ferocity, and I saw several knights fall to their knees, ready to meet with their Maker.”
“And tell Lady Natasha what happened next,” cried Guinevere.
“I did not see Bryon, son of Leodegrance, but Sir Bedivere and Sir Gareth did, and their word is as truthful as any noble knight,” said Agravaine. “I am told that Byron diverted most of the flood away from those who were with the court of Camelot by bringing down more rocks to create a blockade. The Saxons were washed away like filth, but the knights endured.”
“We must find my brother, Lady Natasha,” said Guinevere. “I must see him one last time.”
I looked over to the mass of rock and earth that had once been a connection between a muddy field outside of Winchester and medieval Logres. Arthur was now somewhere I couldn’t find him, and Bedivere wasn’t allowed to climb the falls,
or the ruin that was left, to find me until he was knighted again.
I had to choose: Arthur or Bedivere?
Agravaine showed me and Guinevere a way down the cliff. I slid down on my ass most of the way, tearing what was left of my clothes to shreds. Both of us had to use our swords as makeshift handbrakes to stop gravity and momentum from pulling us down too quickly. By the time the three of us reached the travelling court, we were a mess. Jigsaw pieces of skin grazed off bare arms and legs, and Guinevere had nearly scalped herself after her long hair caught on a tree root.
Guinevere was muttering under her breath. I knew she was whispering for her brother. I had screamed for hours for mine.
I thought Agravaine would take me straight to Bedivere. He didn’t. We walked through knights and guards and servants and cooks, and the silence was deafening. I had never known this place to be quiet. There was always noise.
But even the children didn’t move, as Agravaine, Guinevere and I walked through the crowds. Everyone just stared at us. I tried not to look back. I fixed my line of sight on Agravaine’s blood red cloak as he strode into a black square tent.
Merlin was the only person in it.
“Thank you, Sir Agravaine,” said the wizard softly.
The knight bowed and walked back out into the silence. Merlin studied us carefully, lowering his face, as if looking over invisible glasses.
“Where’s my brother?”
Guinevere had asked the question, but it was to me he directed his response.
“Arthur is alive, Natasha, Lady Knight of the Round Table.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because Lady Morgana would not have brought down any part of the tunnel until they were safely through. She is a mother and a lover, and her thoughts, her instincts, for her own self-preservation and for those around her would have been all that mattered.”
