Page 22 of The Bear's Heart

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“Yes.” Merlin needed dropping in it.

The frown returned. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” He paused. “How far into the future? Fifty years? Not…a hundred?”

It was now or never. I took a deep breath. “Fifteen hundred. And I didn’t tell you before because I was afraid of how you’d react.”

There was only shock on his face now, deep, unmistakable shock. The seconds ticked past before he found the words to speak.

“But…that’s forever.” It was a plea of desperation, him begging me to say that it couldn’t be true. Fifteen hundred years was too far into the future for him to comprehend. Was telling him a big mistake?

“I know. It feels like forever to me as well. Everything that made up my world for the first twenty-four years of my life is so far away it’s like it never existed. I left behind a boyfriend, my twin brother, all my friends, a job, a house…my whole life. When I chose to stay here with you that day on the Tor, I left behind the world I knew, a world of good things, and of bad things too.”

He seemed to realize I still had his hand in mine, and raised it, clasping his other hand around it as well and cradling it to his chest. “And your world is one where midwives have clean hands, and women have their babies when they’re over thirty?” He put his lips to my fingers. “What else can you tell me of your world? Am I– do they know of me?”

I was at a loss what to say. I had a very strong instinct not to tell him anything, for fear that my butterfly wings of knowledge, scant as they were, might change the course of history. I chose my words carefully. “You’re not in our history books. There are stories– legends– about you, but scholars think you’re just that…simply a story. Not a real person. The truth has been lost down the years. They call the time you live in– no, the timewelive in, the Dark Ages, because so little is known about it.”

“And what do the stories say?”

What to tell him? Platitudes would have to do. “That you were a great king who once fought the Saxons and drove them back to the sea.” That was pretty much what the prophecy said, so it couldn’t harm to tell him that.

His eyes crinkled as a tiny smile curved his mouth. “And my queen? Does history name her?”

I smiled back in relief. It was in my power to tell him that. “It does indeed. Her name was Guinevere.”

He rubbed his stubbly chin. “What about your brother? You told me once his name was Arthur. The two of you were named Arthur and Guinevere– why?”

I’d thought before how quick on the uptake he was, and now was no exception. It had been long ago that I’d told him my brother was named Arthur, like him, but he’d not forgotten. “We were named after you and your queen by our father. He was an Arthurian scholar.”

“Arthurian.” He rolled the word off his tongue, deep in thought. “There are men in your world– scholars– who studyme?”

I hadn’t meant for him to jump to that conclusion. I was getting in too deep. I needed to watch my words more closely. “A few,” I said, feeling awkward.

A smile flashed across his face. “And your father was one of them. I like that.”

I kept my face serious. “But there’s one thing you have to understand. I can’t tell you anything about the future– nothing that can affect what you do here. Because I might inadvertently change history, and the future would be different because of something you or I did here. It’s bad enough me knowing things, without you knowing too.”

“I don’t understand.” His brows knit in a frown. “Surely it would be a good thing for you to use your knowledge and help us defeat the Saxons.”

I shook my head, my heart heavy. “That’s just it. If I tell you about the Saxons, if things happen…I mean, if I make things happen here, then we might just change things too much. Things that are meant to happen might never occur. People who are meant to die might live. People who are meant to live might die. I might even cause the death of my own ancestors, and then I might not exist. And if I didn’t exist what would happen then? Would I still be here helping you?” It was so hard to explain when I didn’t really understand it myself. “And Merlin says I have to be here. He says I’m essential to your success.”

He ran his hand through his hair in what looked like exasperation. “It’s a paradox.”

I nodded, seizing on his conclusion. “You’re right. A paradox no one can begin to understand, because as far as I know no one else has done what I’m doing. I think you have to believe me when I say I can’t tell you anything that might change the future…change what’s history in my old world. We just don’t know what harm we might do.”

With reluctance, he nodded. “I think I understand. It would be the same as if I were to go back to when the Roman legions first came to our shores to tell the tribes who met them what was going to happen. That the legions were going to invade and be here for four centuries, oppressing the British tribes, and then leave us in the lurch and ignore our pleas for help. Nothing might change, and yet there is a possibility it could– that when I returned here, to my time, it would be to a changed world. A world which the Romans never came to. We’d not be speaking Latin as we are now.” He paused. “I might not even exist.”

It never ceased to surprise me that we were speaking a language that was so foreign to me, because my words, and everyone else’s, always sounded just like English to my own ears. The discovery that I’d been speaking and understanding these languages with Abbot Jerome had been the first thing that had alerted me to the part magic had played in my arrival here.

I drew his hands toward me and kissed them in relief. I hadn’t expected him to be so easy to win around. “There isn’t much to tell you, anyway. I only know a few legends that probably aren’t even true. Like I said– this is the Dark Ages.”

He sat down on the bed, pulling me down beside him, his face alight with curiosity. “I understand that you can’t tell me anything that might change things, but could you tell me some things about your world that don’t matter? Is it very different from here?”

I thought hard. I didn’t want to shock him too much, but on the other hand I had an overwhelming inclination to have a bit of a boast and not just tell him about everyday life. “Men have walked on the moon,” I said.

His eyes opened very wide at that. “On the moon? How? It hangs in the sky and lights us at night, like a great lantern. You can’t reach and touch it, still less walk on it. And it’s very small. Sometimes just a sliver.”

“Well, some people did,” I said, glad I’d picked something so strange it would fascinate him. “It’s a long way away and much bigger than it looks. Men went up in a rocket– a sort of flying machine– and they landed right up there on the moon, which is like here, only there’s just rocks and no air to breathe. And they brought bits of it back with them.”

“A flying machine? A machine? What’s that?”