Searching for Arthur (The Return to Camelot #1)

by Donna Hosie

  Chapter Thirty

  On The Move Again

  I could feel hands on my ankles. I yelped in fear of the ghosts, and threw myself forward towards the blurred figure in my peripheral vision.

  “Titch, Titch, it’s alright,” cried a familiar voice. “You’re safe now.”

  A thin beam of light shone directly overhead. I became aware of the burning smell of bleach and antiseptic in my nostrils.

  No. Not again.

  I forced my eyes to remain shut. Strange, zigzagged shapes floated across the darkness. Blankets were tucked in around my body, but I still managed to click my bare heels together.

  There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.

  “Natasha, open your eyes sweetheart. You’re safe now.”

  It was my mother’s voice. My father was there too; I could hear him breathing – snorting – through his nose. I was used to people telling me I had inherited it. That was why I snored.

  Snoring and running – such gifts to bestow.

  Arthur had told Bedivere I snored.

  The tears forced my eyes to open. I was going to drown in them if they remained shut.

  Arthur was there. My tall, gangly brother. He was standing at the end of the bed. It had been his cold hands on my ankles. He was wearing faded ripped jeans and a white t-shirt. A few bruises and cuts had joined the freckles, but he was clean, even if his hair was still all over the place.

  “Go tell them she’s awake, Arthur,” ordered my mother. Her pale blue eyes were glistening.

  Arthur didn’t move, and so she snapped the request again.

  “Let him stay, Iraine,” said my father, placing a hand on my mother’s bony shoulder. “I’ll go find the doctor.”

  My father’s smile was warm with relief as he left the small box-like hospital room. The ends of his dark brown moustache flared outwards as his muscles stretched. I knew I was in a private hospital room because I was the only patient in it. Health insurance was essential in the middle of nowhere.

  “Do you know where you are?” asked my mother.

  I nodded.

  “And do you know who we are?”

  I looked at Arthur through the tears. Why was my mother treating me like an imbecile? Why was I here? Why had he taken me away from Bedivere?

  I could hear voices outside in the corridor. The door opened, and in walked three men: my father, a young male dressed in blue scrubs, and the man with a voice that did belong here.

  Robert of Dawes had joined my wake.

  “So, you’re conscious at last, Natasha,” said the young male in blue scrubs. “That’s excellent, excellent. Now, I’m going to take a few vitals, and ask you a couple of questions. Nothing too taxing to begin with. A consultant will be here in a moment, he’s just been paged.”

  He continued to babble on as he checked my pulse, shone a light in my eyes and prodded and poked my stomach.

  I still had a painful stitch from the running.

  “Do you remember Mr. Dawes?” asked my mother. “He was the one who found you all. He saved your lives.”

  “It was nothing,” replied Robert, gazing down at me. He appeared smaller now than in my dream.

  But it wasn’t a dream. It was real.

  “Stop being so modest, Robert,” said my father, slapping him on the shoulder. “Our family will be forever in your debt. If you hadn’t found Arthur and Natty when you did, then we can’t even begin to think what might have happened.”

  When did my father start calling me Natty?

  “Can I speak to Arthur please?”

  My voice sounded like a child’s.

  Not a ripple of movement. I simply didn’t exist. Not in this world, not in this time. Not anymore.

  “I want to speak to Arthur – alone please.”

  But instead of leaving, the crowd around my bed increased as the door was thrown open again. In walked a tall, severe-looking man in a pinstripe suit. His tie, which was thin and knotted tightly against his rash-covered throat, was flung over his shoulder. “And how is our patient this afternoon?” said the man to the doctor in blue scrubs. Clearly I wasn’t capable of answering for myself. He snatched away my medical file and ran a pen across the scribbled notes. Then he repeated the prodding and poking, paying particular attention to my stomach. As he pulled down the bed covers, I realised for the first time my stomach was heavily padded. The pain provided me with my first smile.

  It hadn’t been a dream, and I would have a scar to prove it.

  “Does this hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  “And does it hurt here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And here?”

  “Where are my clothes?”

  “Natty, just answer the specialist,” ordered my father.

  When the hell did I become Natty? It’s Natasha or Titch. I would take freak over a name that sounded like an insect. These people didn’t know me at all.

  “Where are my clothes?” I repeated. “The ones I was wearing.”

  “Those disgusting strange things have been thrown away,” replied my mother impatiently. “Now answer the specialist. Does it hurt where he is pressing?”

  “Arthur.”

  I winced as I pleaded with my brother to help me. He was a king. Couldn’t he order these people to obey him?

  “I have to go pick up Sammy,” mumbled Arthur. My mother and father nodded, giving him permission to leave. He wasn’t a protector of kingdoms anymore. He was a child.

  “Don’t leave me,” I begged.

  Arthur crossed the bleached floor in a couple of strides. The pinstripe specialist was talking to my mother and father; I was happy for him to ignore me. I had more important things to worry about, like how I was going to get back home to Bedivere and the others. Arthur bent down and kissed my forehead.

  “We’ll talk later,” he whispered, pressing something small and hard into my hand. “Just keep quiet for now, even around Robert.”

  Robert Dawes – I assumed he had now lost the of – must have overheard Arthur, because he started to say his own goodbyes in his thick Scouse accent. My mother hurried across the room to him, knocking my notes off the food trolley as she went. She hugged him awkwardly.

  “You must come to dinner. Luther can get a table anywhere in the country with his contacts.”

  Someone take me away from this, I thought, as my fingers closed tightly around the small hard object that Arthur had passed to me. I knew what it was without looking. It was the only physical reminder I now had of Logres and the people in it.

  It hadn’t been a dream.

  Sleep came for me again, and I willingly ran into its arms.

  I had been unconscious for three days, and I was discharged from hospital five days after that. It was almost a month to the hour since I had first been admitted after falling into the grave. The specialist wouldn’t let me leave until the IV was removed from my arm. I tried to take it out myself, but that just gave me another bruise to add to the collection. What a macabre hobby I now had.

  My father was called away to New York. Something to do with the UN Security Council. I was left alone with my mother, Arthur and her.

  Most of the time I remained hidden in my bedroom. Having the box room finally paid off as it was too cramped for visitors. The people of nowhere all called on Avalon Cottage to see how I was, but I left my mother to deal with them. I didn’t want them. I didn’t need them.

  The stab wound inflicted by the treacherous Archibald healed. Inflamed red skin turned to pink. It should have been blue. Lives returned to normal and the press - who had devoured the tale of the three missing teenagers that had returned from the dead in the arms of a rambler - gave up, and went back to their desks.

  I was given another watch to replace the one that had stopped working after the Solsbury Hill attack. The new one was gold. Swiss. Expensive apparently. I didn’t care about time anymore. I gave up caring about anything, as the pain where my heart should have been grew larger
every day. Bedivere was the first person I thought about when I woke up, and the last person I remembered before falling into my nightmares. Every moment of time in between was consumed by him as well. I couldn’t eat; I could barely breathe. Going to school was out of the question, but after a while even my English teachers stopped sending me coursework to read through. I had become a ghostly imprint. Everyone else was moving forward, but I was stuck in the past.

  A thousand years in the past.

  Autumn became winter, and a thick layer of white smothered everything. It didn’t stop Arthur and me from our daily walks, which were getting longer and longer as my strength returned. We were both looking without saying.

  But we couldn’t find the hidden grave. The past had closed itself off to us.

  It was the not knowing that was slowly killing me. Had another enchanted, ageing sleep been placed over the kingdom of Logres? If I did find Bedivere once more, would he be the green-eyed angel of my dreams, or the crumbling blind warrior of my nightmares?

  So we looked for the answers – hour after hour, day after day.

  Our parents freaked out, of course. They tried to ban us from the woods, and when that failed, they did the only thing left open to them. The one thing they were good at.

  I was in my bedroom. Hailstones the size of acorns were bouncing from the sky. I took out my own acorn and held it in my white palm. My skin was loose and puckered.

  What if I plant you? I thought to myself. Would you grow into a beanstalk and take me back to Logres?

  Don’t you think it is time to give up on the fairy tales? It’s been nearly four months.

  “I’ll never give up,” I whispered. “Not on them, not on him.”

  But everyone is starting to give up on you. The concerned mother act lasted less than a week. Your father has abandoned you again. Even Arthur prefers the company of Slurpy.

  “Please leave me alone.”

  I am the only thing that is with you now, and even that is because I can’t get away.

  “Leave me alone.”

  You’re pathetic, is it any wonder you don’t have any friends? You could die tomorrow and no one would come to your funeral. There would be no Facebook tribute page for a psycho loser like you.

  I put my hands over my ears and leant forward. The condensation from the single-glazed window squelched under my forehead. I could smash my head through this window and the pain would be glorious. Anything to remove the agony in my head.

  “SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP,” I cried, smacking my head against the glass.

  There was a gasp behind me, but no exchange of words. What else was there left for my mother to say?

  That moment, though, was the end of Avalon Cottage.

  My mother was still paranoid about terrorists, but now she assumed the threat was closer to home, because it was the terrorists in my head that were going to be the death of us all. And so it was her perception of my sanity – or lack of – which stopped her and my father from telling us we were running away, yet again.

  Arthur and I were out when the removal vans trundled up the snow-covered lane beside Avalon Cottage. We were trying to find the tomb, of course. So we never saw five men jump out with packing boxes and bubble wrap. I never saw them dismantle my bedroom.

  I was too busy looking for my heart.

  Thankfully, the acorn from the Falls of Merlin was in my pocket when my mother cleared out the debris from my room. Otherwise I had no doubt it would have been the first item into the black garbage bag. Arthur had salvaged it from the pocket of my torn and bloodied clothes as we went into the mist. It was my only link to Bedivere. The only proof I had that Logres and he existed outside of the myths and legends.

  Any legend will have its foundations in a truth.

  Bedivere said those words to me before our first kiss. Our first proper kiss. What happened in the hall of Caerleon didn’t really count. My truth remained in my pocket. Magic at my fingertips.

  Slurpy became hysterical when she found out we were moving. She ran up the drive as Arthur’s brass bed frame was carried into one of the removal trucks. Her begging became threatening when it became obvious my parents were not going to back down. Arthur promised to visit her all the time, but it wasn’t enough for the witch. Slurpy turned on me – naturally. It was my fault we were leaving. The freaky little sister that needed locking up.

  Her vicious bitching bounced off me, until she got in my face and told me she was going to find the tomb if it killed her. She was going back to Logres, and she would make Bedivere suffer like she was suffering now.

  We were eventually pulled apart by several of the removal men, who far from being professional packers, were actually Australian back-packers looking to earn enough money to fly home to the sun and surf. They didn’t get paid danger money.

  They wouldn’t have lasted ten seconds in Logres.

  My nineteenth house in seventeen years was a Georgian terrace townhouse in the heart of London. I was given a room on the second floor. The window was locked and barred before we arrived. A new psychiatrist was employed to help rid me of the terrorists in my head. At our first appointment she asked me what I wanted.

  “To go home.”

  No one, other than Arthur, understood that home was a thousand years in the past. I could have unburdened my head and the gaping chasm where my heart once was, but what was the point?

  The psychiatrist would have thought I was lying.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Five Friends

  I had nothing left to cling to. Nothing. Other girls split with their boyfriends and they still have letters, cuddly bears, or images on a cell phone to gaze at.

  I had zilch, zip, nothing.

  I did try to live, I really did. But there’s a difference between living and existing, and I was firmly sucked into the latter. Arthur was the only person I could really talk to, but he was facing his own demons, namely a girlfriend who was a constant presence in our house, whether she was physically there or not. If it wasn’t the never-ending beeping of text messages, it was the Skyping. If it wasn’t the Skyping it was Twitter – 140 characters being all she could coherently manage. Slurpy was on every flat screen in the house and my hatred of her was now at pathological levels. I knew she was trying to recreate the blue flame; I heard her whispering the mumbo-jumbo when she thought she was alone. Perhaps it only worked in Logres, but her emerald eyes stayed the same colour. When I wasn’t thinking about Bedivere, I was having waking nightmares about what I would like to do to her. She had everything she wanted and I had nothing.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Arthur came in from his part-time job one Saturday evening with a plastic bag. Mother and I were attempting to eat dinner. There really is nothing more pathetic than two people who cannot eat for grief.

  The bag was handed to me.

  “Present,” announced Arthur. “You like books, and I thought you’d like this one.”

  “How thoughtful, Arthur,” said my mother, rising with her plate of untouched food in her hand. “Now eat up, Natasha,” she added.

  Natty, and the pretences that came with it, were dropped once we left Wales.

  I took the bag from Arthur with one hand, and continued to roll a butter-coated potato around my plate with the other.

  “Well look inside, you ungrateful wench.”

  My mother exclaimed her shock at Arthur’s language from the kitchen, but it actually made me grin. The knotted muscles near my earlobes ached, as they were finally put to use after months of inactivity.

  “It’s been a while since anyone called me that.”

  “Wench.”

  “I thought I was a knight.”

  “Wenchly knight then.”

  “Supreme knight.”

  “Still not as cool as king.”

  “A king who got captured by a girl within ten seconds of going back.”

  “Look who’s talking. And how many times did you get kidnapped?”

  “That was
different.”

  “Because you were a wench.”

  I kicked at him, but this teasing was the most fun I had had since…Logres. It was normal. I longed for my kind of normal.

  “Well, look inside the bag, Sir Natty of Nutsville.”

  I peered inside. It was a small book, leather bound, with one of those frayed string bookmarks that no one ever uses.

  “This had better not be anything to do with grammar text or the death of the adverb,” I said. My enrolment at a new school had not gone well. The batteries in my freak beacon had been well and truly recharged by another stay in hospital. Fitting in is impossible when you’re a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, and already I felt the weight of eyes watching me, marking me out as different, without knowing why.

  “You are the world’s worst recipient of anything,” exclaimed Arthur. “Honestly, if you ever won an Oscar, they would take it straight off you again for being so utterly crap at saying thank you. You’re like a fatter Kate Winslet.”

  Ignoring Arthur, I pulled the book out. It was surprisingly heavy for something so small. The smell of thick paper, real stuff like old parchment, wafted up from the plastic.

  Arthurian Legends: Magic, Myths and Men.

  “No way.”

  Arthur’s voice dropped to a whisper.

  “I know we don’t talk about it much anymore, but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. I thought you would like reading this and correcting the myths about the gang until we find a way back one day. Beginning with how awesome I am in real life.”

  My fingers were already sliding down the index, searching for one name. They didn’t go far. The contents were in alphabetical order. I went straight to page eight.

  “Read it,” I instructed, handing the book to Arthur.

  “You read it.”

  “Just tell me he doesn’t marry that Lady Puke creature. Or any girl for that matter.”