The Third Magic

by Molly Cochran

  "Get in," Hal said. "People are getting interested in us."

  The old man scowled at the onlookers. "Haven't they anything else to do?"

  "Well, I did almost kill you," Hal said, getting into the truck.

  "Nonsense. I just materialized in the wrong place."

  Hal glanced at him sideways. "Materialized?"

  "The old term is 'walking through the rock.' The first of the great lessons of magic. It's based on the theory that most of what you'd call matter is really empty space—"

  "I don't know what in hell you're talking about."

  "Walking through..." Taliesin waved him away irritably. "Oh, never mind. You wouldn't understand, anyway."

  "Are you saying you just..." He gestured toward the hood of the car. "...materialized?"

  "That's exactly what I said," the old man snapped.

  "Why?" Hal was bellicose. "Why would you materialize in front of my truck?"

  "Miscalculation. Theoretically, one should be able to will oneself to the middle of Picadilly Circus. Of course, one might end up in front of a truck there, too. Or even in the truck's engine." He chortled. "A little wizard humor," he said, poking Hal in the arm with a bony finger. "Ah, well, we all have things to learn."

  "I wish you'd learn them someplace besides the parking lot of the Seven-Eleven," Hal said.

  For the hundredth time that week, he wondered if it was time to get Arthur out of Jones County. The locals had begun to take an unhealthy interest in Hal and the gang of odd Englishmen who occupied the old rambling farmhouse on Black River Road. Several of them, on behalf of one church or another, had come visiting, "to see about the boy."

  It was all about Arthur, of course. Arthur was the reason for them all being there, their reason for being, period.

  Two weeks before, a delegation from the local school board had come to check on Arthur's progress with home schooling. It had been an unnecessary visit, and perhaps an illegal one, but Hal had let them in nevertheless. He had shown them Arthur's textbooks and papers, and explained the computer program which Arthur himself had devised to provide a structured school day. Then they had spoken with Arthur. When they left, they were convinced that the boy was unusually bright and being taught at a pace in keeping with his abilities.

  The board members were convinced, but Hal knew that others would be coming. After four years, people were beginning to recognize that a celebrity was living in their midst. A celebrity or a renegade.

  Arthur's unsought fame was based on an incident that had occurred some four years before, at the scene of a freak accident in New York City in which an entire apartment building collapsed into a sinkhole. Standing in the wreckage, with television cameras from every station in the city trained on him, Arthur had made a speech announcing the dawn of a new era in which people's fears would be eradicated by a level of spiritual understanding previously unknown on earth.

  Hal winced even now to think of it. What had possessed the boy to say such a thing? He was sure that Arthur had not planned it, probably hadn't thought about it at all. The words had just come tumbling out of his mouth while the cameras rolled and Hal plotted a quick route out of the city.

  It was funny, Hal thought now. Four years ago, when September 11th was only a date and not a synonym for world-scale panic, you could get away with something like that. A fourteen-year-old kid with an entourage of twelve mystery men could tell the world that a new day was dawning, and then they could all leave the city without being arrested, or worse.

  Four years ago, the world had been a much younger place. Arthur's impromptu television appearance had not sparked feelings of fear or danger: On the contrary, his message of peace and hope—a message which Arthur himself could no longer remember—began an underground ripple among the city's youth that grew, in the unique way of teenage fads, into a nationwide phenomenon.

  By the time of the Jones County school board's visit to the farm, the phenomenon was just beginning to come to the attention of adults, and then only because their children were thoroughly conversant about Arthur. That is, Arthur, which was to say their Arthur, the secret herald of a new time whose speech delivered on that summer night was played and replayed on computers set up in bedrooms covered with posters of Britney Spears or Korn. For them, Arthur was the messenger of the New Age, or perhaps the emissary of an ancient one.

  Arthur? their parents would ask, smiling indulgently. That doesn't sound like a very macho name, does it? Sort of like Microsoft, ha ha.

  And their kids would look at them blank-faced, inwardly enraged, frustrated, knowing. Because Arthur was the perfect name for him, the only name, Arthur, King Arthur, come back to fulfill the legend that he would return to finish out his reign.

  And he had come back as one of them.

  The photograph of him that appeared in Teen People magazine graced the schoolbooks and lockers of girls from every region of the United States. Hundreds of web sites were devoted to what little was known about his mysterious life. His short speech was broken into sound bites that were printed and published as pocket-sized books that young people carried around and quoted from. Stores were bombarded with demands for all things medieval, from fantasy clothing to replica shields and swords. "Celtic" became the buzzword from which whole new industries grew.

  Psychologists passed this off as another fad, a momentary—if widespread—infatuation like poodle skirts, Mohawk haircuts, or pierced navels. What made the infatuation so persistent was the fact that the subject of it seemed to appear and vanish within the same instant. One Arthur Blessing, whose school pictures matched the image of the person who had spoken so meaningfully on television, had gone to public school in Chicago until the fifth grade, when he and his aunt, who was his legal guardian, both disappeared inexplicably.

  According to the media, which went on an immediate feeding frenzy after the boy's appearance on television, no records existed for either of his parents. And, as anyone under the age of twenty well knew, Arthur vanished from the face of the earth immediately after his stunning speech. Gone without a trace in the midst of a gang of twelve motorcyclists. ("The knights," wrote one keen-eyed observer. "The apostles," wrote another.)

  Although Arthur was not aware of the extent of this blossoming underground publicity, Hal was, and took on the preservation of the boy's anonymity as his mission. Arthur never left the farm. On the home-schooling documents, Hal had identified him as Arthur Woczniak, his son.

  Still, people talked. In the past year, young people had begun to congregate at the driveway leading to the farmhouse. Occasionally a bold one even came to the door, requesting Arthur's autograph, which was always declined. Once a girl named Cecilia Marks, who was the daughter of the mayor of Seidersville, South Dakota, ten miles to the north of Munro, actually broke in through Arthur's bedroom window and kissed him full on the mouth.

  After the girl was sent home, her father looked mightily for grounds upon which to sue Arthur and his uncles, but since his daughter had admitted freely to the break-in (and had rhapsodized to the entire student body at Jones County Senior High about her success in kissing the boy), the mayor was forced to drop whatever charges he had planned to press.

  "King Arthur," he shouted to his wife as he threw down a double martini. "Cecilia thinks she kissed King fricking Arthur!"

  The mayor had no idea that he was telling the truth, that the country's teenagers were right, or that his daughter had just become the most popular girl in the county.

  "So where were you trying to materialize?" Hal asked.

  "When? Oh, just now? I was hoping for your house. I got fairly close on one of my tries—made it to the field—Arthur was there, by the way. And just before I landed on your lorry, I'd almost made it into your kitchen. Unfortunate, that. I was hoping to join in the merrymaking."

  "Instead, you got me," Hal said.

  "Quite. Oh, well, we'll be there soon enough. I presume you are merrymaking? Er, not you, of course," he said offhandedly. "You never do. I mea
nt the knights. Because of the boy's coming of age."

  'They're always merrymaking," Hal said glumly, remembering an incident two weeks before when Dry Lips and MacDaire were arrested for engaging in swordplay on the loading dock at the local Wal-Mart. A month before that, a neighboring farmer nearly shot Lugh for swinging a fifty-pound mace at his prize Holstein. "They've been so merry, we're on the verge of getting evicted."

  "Ah. High-spirited lads, eh?"

  "They're idiots. Trying to pass them off as South Dakota farmers is like pretending that Attila the Hun is the Tooth Fairy. And don't call them knights. It took me three months to get them to refer to themselves as uncles."

  "Oh, yes. Uncles. You see, you're training them marvelously."

  Actually, the uncles were rather good farmers, not that it mattered. Taliesin had given Hal enough money for them all to live on for several more years, whether they worked the farm or not.

  "But I hate it!" Hal cried. "Do you understand? I'm from New York City, for crying out loud! I don't know beans about farming. I trained to be an FBI agent—"

  "And nearly committed suicide." The old man patted Hal's shoulder. "Believe me, Hal, this is a better life for you."

  "Bullshit! I didn't sign on to baby-sit eleven ghosts—"

  "Ah-ah," Taliesin said, wagging his linger. Uncles."

  "Whatever," Hal roared.

  "Yes." The old man met Hal's eyes. "Whatever they are, my friend, Arthur needs them." He put his hand on Hal's shoulder. "And you. You know that, don't you?"

  Hal was silent. He still often woke in the night thinking that what he believed to be reality was in fact only a dream from which he was just then waking. For a few groggy, confused moments, he could believe that he was an automobile mechanic in the Inwood section of Manhattan or, better yet, still with the FBI in the days before his slow descent into ruin.

  But then the confusion would clear, and the truth would fall on him like cold snow. He was not a mechanic; he was not a federal agent; he was no longer even a drunk. What he was, in fact, was the caretaker of eleven souls from the fifth century who had been brought into being to serve a young boy who once, lifetimes ago, had been their King.

  "Yes, I know," Hal said finally.

  "It won't be for much longer." Taliesin's voice was gentle. "It's almost time."

  Hal turned sharply to face him. "Arthur just turned eighteen today."

  "Yes, I know. That's old enough."

  "For what? He doesn't know how to do anything yet."

  "He'll remember."

  "I meant in this world," Hal said roughly. "He needs to go to college, learn a trade, meet a girl, have some kind of a life—"

  "No time for that, I'm afraid," Taliesin said crisply. "Too much work to be done."

  "Such as what?"

  "Well, I couldn't say, old chap. I'm not a fortune-teller, you know."

  Chapter Three

  THE JOURNEY BEGINS

  The old man entered in spectacular fashion, beginning as a vapor curling languorously through the floorboards of the farmhouse and finishing by standing, fully formed, on top of the dining room table as the knights shouted their approval.

  "I say!" Fairhands said, beaming. He poked Launcelot in the ribs. "You see? The greatest magician in the world."

  "He's standing in the cake," Launcelot said dryly.

  The old man looked down. Beneath his wizard s robe adorned with stars and crescent moons, his mud-caked work boots grew out of what had once been a whipped cream cake inscribed with a birthday greeting in red gel.

  "Dash it all," Taliesin mumbled.

  Hal sighed. The ice cream was leaking through the paper bag onto his arms.

  "Did you get it?" Bedwyr asked, tossing his bowl-cut blond hair. He was the only one in the room who had noticed Hal.

  "Yeah. Relax." Hal took a magazine out of the bag and tossed it to him.

  Bedwyr retired with it immediately to an armchair in the far corner of the living room and opened it to the stapled section in the middle. On its glossy cover was the title Vintage Motorcycle superimposed over the image of a 1971 Hurley FX Superglide Night Train.

  Although the young man's official capacity was that of Master of Horse, Hal had persuaded Bedwyr to change his allegiance to motorcycles upon the knights' arrival in the New World. Given the young man's natural understanding of things mechanical, he had fallen utterly in love with the first Harley whose engine he exposed, and had carried on an affaire du coeur with the species ever since.

  "Hi, Hal." Arthur walked over to him as the others helped Taliesin down off the table. "Are you all right?"

  He tried to sound casual, but Hal knew that the boy was worried.

  In the years since he and Hal had gone into hiding, Arthur had begun to exhibit a sixth sense about danger. Perhaps it was because they had encountered it so often; or maybe it was only the natural development of a talent the boy had been born with. Either way, the sense, Arthur's "knowing," as he called it, had been growing more acute.

  "One of the old man's stunts, that's all," Hal said reassuringly. "I thought I'd hit him with the truck, but… well, there he is, stepping out of your cake." He inclined his head toward Taliesin, ringed by men who had once been the Knights of the Round Table.

  Arthur laughed. "It looked like a pretty disgusting cake, anyway."

  While he was helping Hal dish out the ice cream (the knights, who had never tasted such a thing during their previous incarnation, could not get enough of it), he watched the old man in the next room. It was a great relief that Taliesin had actually come, and had not been, after all, a figment of Arthur's imagination.

  "This is all hard for you, isn't it," Hal said quietly.

  Arthur looked up. "What? What do you mean?"

  "This." Hal gestured with the ice cream scoop. "The guys, the old man... The cup."

  "We got rid of the cup."

  "That doesn't mean it never existed."

  Arthur bent over his ice cream again. "I kind of wish none of it had ever existed," he said.

  "You and me both."

  "I mean, it's not that I'm not grateful to you…"

  "Cut the crap, Arthur. Most of your life has been spent trying not to get killed. It's been lousy, and we both know it."

  "It would have been lousy if you hadn't been there," Arthur said, acknowledging Hal's sacrifice in staying with him as his guardian and protector for the better part of a decade.

  Hal waved him away. Sentiment made him uncomfortable. "I just wish there'd been another way," he said lamely. "I've tried to write to your aunt Emily, but all the letters came back. I just don't know where she is."

  "She may not be alive." Arthur did not look up from his task. The last time they had seen Emily Blessing was in the dining room of a hotel in Tangier, Morocco nearly four years before. He had seen only the barest glimpse of his aunt—his only living relative—before a fire and its aftermath of pandemonium broke out. The three of them had become separated then, and by the time Hal and Arthur found one another, Emily had disappeared. "It was a pretty bad fire."

  Hal didn't answer. He had loved Emily Blessing. It was for her—and Arthur, and himself—that he had stopped drinking, brought a halt to the self-destructive lifestyle of a man who'd had nothing left to live for. He had saved their lives, and they, in turn, had saved his.

  Had Emily ever known that? he wondered. Had she ever believed that their one night of love had changed Hal forever, that he hadn't intended to leave her, that he had taken her nephew away because the boy was in danger, that he hadn't told her about it so that the danger would not spread to her?

  No. No, of course she wouldn't believe that. All Emily would know was that she had given herself to a man who had left her without a word, and in the process abducted the child she had raised from infancy.

  "What do you think will happen to us, Hal?" Arthur asked so quietly that he was barely audible.

  After a long pause, Hal answered, "I don't know."

  "Taliesin
wants to take me on a vision quest."

  "What for?"

  Arthur shrugged. "I suppose he wants me to see for myself."

  "See what?"

  "Who I was. Or will be. He says I need to know about my future." The ice cream in the dishes arrayed before them was melting rapidly in the August heat. "Hal?"

  Hal looked up.

  "If I... left…" Shyly he looked over to Hal to see his reaction, but the older man's face was carefully blank. "Not that I would, but if I did..."

  "Go on."

  "Could I change the way things are supposed to turn out?"

  Hal looked away. "Maybe," he said.

  "Is there such a thing as destiny?"

  "I'm not the guy to ask things like that."

  "Other people ... other people's lives turn out the way they do because of their own decisions."

  Hal nodded slightly. "I guess."

  "Then why don't I have any say about my own life?"

  Because we're special, Hal wanted to say. Because we came from another time, cryogenic masterpieces, except that it was our souls that got preserved, not our bodies. You were born to be King, and I was born to protect you, and that's all been decided by forces way beyond anything we can control. "Eat your ice cream," Hal said.

  Arthur ignored him, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. "I don't even know if it's real anymore."

  "What do you mean?"

  "All of it. This." He opened his hands. "I mean, sometimes I just don't know. It's all so weird that I wonder if the uncles even exist. If Taliesin exists. Even you. Maybe this is just some delusion of mine, and I've made you all up."

  "You wish," Hal said.

  Arthur tried to smile. "Yeah."

  He looked so fragile, Hal thought, as if he could fly apart into pieces like confetti. "Oh, Christ," he said, throwing down the ice cream scoop. He hugged the boy fiercely. "Nobody should have to live like this."

  "Just tell me it's real, and I'll believe you."

  "No," Hal said. "Because that won't mean anything." He held him at arm's length. "And don't ever believe anything just because someone tells you." He handed Arthur a spoon and a dish of ice cream and propelled him out of the kitchen. "Do what you've got to do, and don't tell me or anyone else," he said.