Page 90 of The Dragon Ring
He nodded. “With every bone in my body.”
“You never said.” I couldn’t keep the accusation out of my voice. Above our heads a buzzard’s mewing cry rose above the wind, as accusatory as I was.
“I didn’t know it myself. Did you not suspect?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t know.”
He swallowed again; he was still clearly struggling with expressing his emotions. “But because I love you, I know I have to let you go. You love another. Go to him. I won’t stand in the way of your happiness.”
My heart was breaking. I wanted to tell him I loved him, but how cruel would that be, to give with one hand and snatch away with the other? Because I didn’t love only him, did I? I loved Nathan, too. Far-away Nathan, just a distant memory.
He lifted his hand. I thought for a moment he was going to reach out and touch me, snatch me back. But then he let it drop again, his lips closing in a grim line.
I looked at the stones. If the door opened for me, could I step through it and leave him behind?
The world as I’d left it lay on the other side. What difference had my disappearance made to Nathan and my brother Artie, the only two people who would have mourned my loss? Would they cope if I never returned? Perhaps. My loss would fade in their memories and their lives would go on. I’d be just another story, like Arthur. A mystery, forever unsolved.
I choked on a sob. “I need to know. I-I need to know if I can get back. That’s the only way I can choose. D’you understand?”
He shook his head. “You’ve been happy here, haven’t you? I thought you were happy.”
“But I still need to know.”
Tears sparkled in the corners of his eyes. “And if the door opens for you, will you step through it?”
“I won’t know until I try. If I walk away now, never having tried, it’ll be as if I never had the choice. I don’t know how I feel. I– I want to stay with you. I think. Most of me does. But out there…” I gave a great wave of my arms. “Out there is somewhere you could never comprehend. I miss it. The world I come from is so very different, I don’t know if I could be truly happy here without it. And I’m frightened. Frightened I’ll make the wrong choice, and there’ll be no going back.”
For a moment, he stood in silence, absorbing what I’d said, and then he stepped up to me and roughly took me in his arms, pinning my body against his. He bent his head and kissed me on the mouth, hard and long and hungrily. I melted into his arms, my hands coming up to hold his head to mine, fingers deep in his hair, eyes closed.
Never let it end. Let me stay like this forever.
But it ended. He released me, stepping back, panting. Every cell in my body tingled and my heart was hammering. My breath came in gasps.
Unfair.
“I want you to remember what we had.” His voice was rough and choking. “Remember every moment you’ve spent with me. Back in your own world, think of me every day– think of me in your bed at night, when you’re alone, when quiet is upon you. Think of my touch and my voice and my loving. Because that’s what I’ll be doing, here, alone, in Din Cadan.”
I could bear it no longer. I turned away from him and stepped into the circle of stones, the fingers of my left hand tight around the golden dragon ring.
Damp mist rose out of the ground, curling around my feet and swirling about the stones in a silken veil. In moments, the top of the hill was cloaked in dense, grey fog– a fog so thick that when I turned around to look for Arthur, he’d vanished. My heart gave a lurch of searing pain. All around me, the stones rose out of the mist like jagged islands out of a foaming sea, but beyond them, all was a blank curtain.
For a moment, I stood indecisive. Merlin had never said how he’d found me in my world. Maybe there was more to it than standing inside the stones, hoping. Maybe I had to do something with the ring? I turned around slowly on my heel. Only the stones existed. Arthur was wiped away as though he’d never been.
My heart broke in two.
Although it was the middle of the day, darkness was falling fast, the fog shrouding what faint winter sunlight there’d been.
Whispers sibilated in the mist. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
I spun round. Nothing there.
Whispers again, shifting and formless. Was there someone here, in the fog, with me?
“Show me the way back,” I called out. “Please.” But my voice died on my lips, muted by the fog.
Fear grasped my entrails, an instinctive fear of the unknown, and for a moment blind panic threatened to take me. Then, just as when I’d been here before, a pure musical note seared through the mist. My fear fell away as a light glimmered, faintly illuminating the two biggest stones. It drew me like a magnet, and as I stepped toward it, the note rose and the light grew, burning their way through the mist. I wavered, unsure of what I was being shown, and took another faltering step.
Within the ragged circle of light, a shape took form as the musical note continued to rise, impossibly pure and sweet. I was dazzled for a moment, before beyond the brightness I saw the walls of the ruined church tower that stood on Glastonbury Tor in my time, closing in about me. Through the archway, a grim grey winter sky loomed.
