Page 105 of The Road to Avalon
The man turned around.
My mouth fell open. I’d have known him anywhere, even in jeans and with short spiky hair.
Merlin.
The shock would have knocked me over if I’d been standing up. I couldn’t find a thing to say, but sat staring at him, unable to close my gaping mouth.
He smiled. “Good evening, Gwen.” Perfect English too. Not even the smallest hint of any accent.
“What on earth areyoudoing here?” I managed, at last.
“Waiting for you.”
“For me?” I kept on staring, my brain a blank, struggling to process that the man I’d last seen lying unconscious on the floor of Morgawse’s house, fifteen hundred years ago, was standing here, in jeans and a black Motorhead T-shirt, and smiling at me as though he’d just popped in for a cup of tea on a Sunday afternoon.
What I really needed was a stiff whisky, and I didn’t evenlikewhisky.
“Howcanyou be here?” I finally managed to stutter out. “Am Ihallucinating? Did you follow us through the doorway on the Tor?” Of course, I’d seen him before in my world as a child, although then he’d been wearing clothes that had made me christen him “the Fancy-Dress-Man.” Not jeans.
He shook his head. “I’m afraid I had to get here by the slightly slower route. You and Arthur took the quick one, but I couldn’t.”
That totally lost me. I blinked at him; a rabbit mesmerized in the headlights.
He crossed the room to stand in front of me. “It’s taken me a while, but I’m here now.”
I put out a hand and touched his leg. How weird to see him in jeans. Skinny jeans as well. A hole in one knee. And trainers on his feet. I couldn’t get my head around him wearing clothes like this.
Yes. He was real. The suspicion that he was a figment of my imagination hadn’t wanted to go away.
He sat down next to me. Was thataftershaveI could smell? This short-haired, fragrant, jean-clad man wasnotthe Merlin I knew.
“Where’smyMerlin?” I asked, without thinking. “What have you done with him?”
He took one of my hands. “Your Merlin has had hundreds of years to get used to living in your world. That’s what. You made me wait a long time before you and Arthur finally turned up. When you told me your time was fifteen hundred years in the future, I had no idea how long it would take me to get there.”
“YouknewI’d be coming?”
He nodded. “Of course. I now have all the same privileges you had back in my old world. I liveherenow.Thisis my present. I found out what happened to you both after Camlann– the popular story of how three queens had taken Arthur to Avalon and that he was sleeping still, waiting to come to Britain’s aid in her hour of need. You think I believed that?”
He laughed. “However, the truth of it was that both of you had just vanished off the face of the earth. Your people came back the next morning and both of you had gone. Everyone assumed you’d gone to Annwfn. I had to do a bit of guesswork, of course, as to what had really happened, but don’t forget, I have the Sight. Comes in very useful for doing the National Lottery.”
“But how? Where did you come from? You weren’t there when we needed you. You were lost. We searched but we couldn’t find you. Nimuë took you.” I shook my head. His hand was warm enough, his body felt real under my touch– I dismissed the continuing worry that he might be a figment of my fevered imagination.
He tapped his nose, looking smug. He hadn’t lost any of his annoying traits. “Took me rather a long time to escape the prison Nimuë locked me up for killing her mother, but I did it. Made it out in time for the Renaissance. Very interesting time period. Had to keep a low profile for quite a while in case I ended up being burned as a witch.”
“You mean you’ve been living… been alive… for all the time since we lost you back in the Dark Ages?” I paused, scrabbling for understanding. “How did you do that? Are you… are you really what they said? The son of a demon?”
“Don’t call them the Dark Ages,” he said, side-stepping my second question. “Not a nice name. I believe the preferred title now is the Late Antiquity or the Early Medieval Period. Did they feel dark to you? Wonderful time, and I’d go back if I could.” He wrinkled his nose. “They smelled a lot better than this world does, for a start.”
“Late Antiquity then,” I said. “Stop being pedantic and tell me the truth. How can you still be alive fifteen hundred years after everyone else?”
He squeezed my hand. “When I got out of Nimuë’s prison, it was a bit of a shock to find history had passed me by, I can tell you. I’d missed a lot. And the only person who could tell me what I’d missed was her. She was still about, and she’d calmed down a bit by then, so we had a bit of a father-daughter chat, and she told me all about Camlann.”
Camlann. Fifteen hundred years before today, probably eight or nine hundred years before Merlin woke up. Everyone involved in it long gone, except for us. All of them just dry bones or dust: Cei, Archfedd, Reaghan, Coventina, Llawfrodedd. All swept away by the tide of time. I swallowed down a lump as tears welled. I had to find out the truth. “But you’re like me. You’re human. No one can live forever like you have. No one.”
He tapped his nose again. “Why have magic and not use it? And I had a reason to survive. I knew you’d be returning. Nimuë told me all about what happened with Medraut. That he turned out just as you and I had always feared. She seemed quite pleased about it. Didn’t take much for me to work out where you’d gone. All I had to do after that was wait and listen out for you. Breaking through the portal together like that created enormous waves. I came straight here. You drew me like a magnet.”
I stared at him. “You reallyaremy Merlin?”
