Page 89 of The Dragon Ring
I looked at the stones, and the knot in my stomach twisted and tightened. My hands trembled. There, between the stones, lay my way home. Perhaps. But did I want it? My heart was ripping down the center.
Arthur held out his hand, lean and brown, the nails short and none too clean, the hand of a man who knows physical work. Instantly, I had an image of Nathan’s hands– the palms soft, nails neatly trimmed and clean, the hands of an intellectual, a man for whom the daily grind is books and lectures, not spears and swords and horses. I put my hand in Arthur’s.
I couldn’t move. Gently, Arthur put his hand in the small of my back and pushed me forwards. I took one step and then another. The stone circle drew closer, every jagged stone pointing to the grey sky, accusing fingers from another age, daring me to enter.
Arthur stopped just outside the circle, dropping his hand from my back to take my hand again. Tension quivered through him. I wanted to ask him to tell me whathewanted. I wanted him to tell me he loved me, and he couldn’t let me go.
He said nothing.
I stood still, as uncertain now as I had been at the foot of the hill. The wind whistled forlornly between the stones. Below us, smoke drifted westwards from the hearth fires of the village and abbey, rising above the trees that embraced the foot of the Tor. My heart thundered in my chest, and my stomach roiled.
“It’s all right,” he said, a tremor in his voice. “Do what you have to. I’ll stay here.”
I looked up at him. “I don’t even know if it’ll work. Merlin said it might not.”
He stared at me out of solemn dark eyes. I couldn’t read his expression. He licked his lips. “I…I need to ask you something. Before you…before you go.” His long hair whipped across his face, and he brushed it aside with an impatient hand.
I nodded. What was he going to say?Please make him ask me to stay. But if he did, would I?
A succession of emotions flitted across his face: confusion, fear, hope, unhappiness. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Are you…? Have you come from…from Annwfn? Are you one of the fairy folk?”
That wasn’t the question I’d been expecting.
I shook my head vehemently, almost relieved. “No. No, I’m not.” Nerves put me on the edge of manic laughter. “I’m a person…like you. I just come from somewhere different. A place Merlin brought me from. These stones are a doorway into my world. At least, I hope they are.”
If I’d tried explaining this to anyone in my time, they would have laughed in my face, but Arthur had grown up here, in a land steeped with tales of magic. And we were standing at the gates to Annwfn. All of this he’d taken in his stride. So much so, he’d suspected he might have married a fairy.
His eyes held mine. “Will I be able to see this doorway?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see it when I came here. I fell through and rolled down the hill, and here I was. It was…terrifying.” How to convey to him the utter confusion and fear I’d felt on finding myself in his world? I couldn’t put it into words.
“And the man you’re going back to; do you love him still?”
I wished I’d never told him about Nathan. Did he think I was going because I preferred Nathan to him? How could I even begin to compare them? They were so different.
Just weeks ago my answer would have been a resounding “yes”, but a lot can change in even so short a time. It was another question I didn’t have the answer to, but this time it was the most important question of all. Because if I loved Arthur more than Nathan, why was I going back? Once through the door, I had no guarantee that if I found I no longer wanted my comfortable modern world, I could just come back and take up my life in Dark Age Britain where I’d left off. I had an awful feeling that this choice might be a final one.
“I did,” I said in a low voice. “I-I loved him…when I was with him.”
“But you’re not with him now.”
“I know.”
He turned my hand over in his, lifting it to his lips. “Does he honor you, as is your right? Will he make you his queen? Would he fight for you to the death– his death, if necessary?”
He kissed my palm. His breath was warm on my skin, his lips soft. For a long moment, he pressed them hard to my hand.
I snatched my hand back. It was unfair. His very touch electrified, sending a current through my body that threatened to overpower me. Every moment longer in Arthur’s company made it harder for me to make this decision. I had to make it for myself. I couldn’t let him make it for me.
He fixed me with his gaze, his eyes refusing to drop. I drank him in. If what I’d long hoped for happened, then I’d never see him again. In the blink of an eye, he’d be dead and buried– long gone, lost, just a myth. Only I would know he’d been real. Only I would know he’d been flesh and blood, a man prepared to fight to save my life from Saxon raiders. A man who’d made me his queen.
“I don’t know.” I could barely get the words out. How could I compare what I’d had with Nathan to what I had with Arthur? Which was more real? Which was the life I wanted?
I’d liked my life until that fateful day on the Tor. I’d been happy working in the library amongst my books, going home to my little modern box of a house, along busy roads in my second-hand car, and cooking dinner with Nathan in our tiny kitchen. Our yearly foreign holiday, my iPhone, Wi-Fi, the NHS, Income Tax, useless political parties, our soldiers fighting in far-off war zones, the BBC, going to the cinema to watch the latest new release… how trivial everything seemed. What, of all that, was truly important?
He took a step back. “If you want to return, then go. I won’t make you stay with me.” He swallowed. “But you need to know one thing, Gwen.” He hesitated as though marshalling some sort of resolution. “I…I care for you.” He paused, and when I remained silent, he hurried on. “I didn’t know it until today. I thought I’d married you to please my father and gain my kingdom. I wasn’t looking for love.” He hesitated. “But now that I have to let you go, I don’t want to. I want you to stay. Because…” He seemed to be struggling to get the words out. “Because I love you.”
My heart was thudding so hard, he must have been able to hear it. “You love me?” He’d never spoken those words before, not once in all our lovemaking. Saving it unfairly for now was something I’d never expected.
