by Daniel Diehl
“You mean Arthur and the queen? Of course I remember…”
“No. Not the king. Do you remember my other two friends, a young man and a young woman?”
The water sprite smiled vacantly, a bit more certain of how she should answer. “Oh, you mean the red haired human girl who wanted to know about the keys in the golden box with the birds on the lid.”
Merlin let out a great, long sigh of relief. Thank God, he hadn’t gone suddenly mad, experiencing visions and hallucinations the way he had after King Uther and his army were destroyed by the dragons all those years ago. He had, indeed been in the sphere for a millennia and a half, spent the better part of a year in the far distant future and had, presumably, sealed the dragon gate and been a party to the long overdue death of Morgana le Fay. But how did he wind up back here? Only moments ago he was…where? Suddenly his mind refused to work again and his knees started to feel weak and watery.
“Would you like to sit down, my love? You don’t look at all well. In fact,” she giggled, “you look slightly green.”
Gratefully, Merlin allowed Vivian to help him to the ground where he laid back amid the tall, soft grass, letting its dry, ripe scent wash over him and fill his lungs with its sweetness. He let out another long, slow sigh as Vivian lay down next to him, pillowing her tiny head on his chest and combing her delicate fingers through his beard. Finally, after long minutes spent in a mutually comforting silence, broken only by the sounds of the breeze and their breathing, Merlin spoke.
“When in time are we, my dear?”
She lifted a strand of his beard, giving it a playful tug. “You know I can’t answer that.”
“Yes, but…wait. Did you say we just arrived here a few moments ago and that we were about to bury my sphere?”
“I believe so. But, of course, I could be wrong.”
Now, more to himself than to the water sprite lying peaceably next to him, Merlin continued. “If you’re right, that means this is the year four-eighty-six, Arthur is already dead and the kingdom is lost but Morgana is still alive. Or is she? If I just killed her…no, she died in the twenty-first century, so she must still be alive now.”
Inches from his chin, Vivian giggled and rubbed her cheek against the rough cloth of his gray gown. “Now you sound like me. You can’t remember when it is any more than I can.” After sharing a few more moments of warm silence, she patted him on the chest. “Do you still want to put yourself into the orb and have me bury it?”
Merlin reached across his chest with one hand and stroked her long, soft hair. “No, my dear, I don’t think I can go through that again.” Suddenly he hoisted himself onto one elbow, disturbing Vivian and forcing her to sit up next to him. Laying his free hand on her shoulder he smiled. “I believe I’ve been given an opportunity to rectify at least some of my past mistakes and this time I’m going to find a better way to approach things; one that won’t take sixteen centuries.”
“That’s nice.”
Merlin smiled a sly, secret smile. “Yes, it is, my dear. But if I now have the chance do it all over again, then I have to do it right. It’s going to take some time to figure it all out and I think you might be able to help me.”
“Oh, good.”
“Tell me, my dear, what do you know about the gateways that lead into and out of anwyn?”
The girl-thing’s eyes grew large and awkward looking, heavy with an uncomfortable knowledge. “How did you find out about the gates?”
“So you do know about them?”
“Yes, but humans were never supposed to have such knowledge. It’s too dangerous. How did you find out about them?”
“I just came through one.”
“I see.” Vivian shifted her eyes nervously away from Merlin, staring at the grass, the sky and a passing insect, anything to keep from letting Merlin see what she was thinking.
“Do you know how they work?”
“We all knew how to use them.”
Leaning forward until he was almost nose-to-nose with the girl, he lifted her chin gently with one hand, forcing her to look him in the face. “Who is ‘we’?” Merlin was well aware of the stories and legends about the naiads and other fay folk; that they had once been angels but when the war in heaven broke out they had refused to take sides, backing neither Lucifer nor God. When Lucifer had been defeated and cast out, those who had remained neutral were not deemed evil enough to be sent to hell, but not good enough to remain in paradise. Consequently, they were sentenced to the perpetual half-life of fairies, eternally trapped between what they were and the world of humans, living forever but denied an anchorage in time, remembering the future as well as the past and unable to tell the two apart. In all the years he had known Vivian she had never spoken of what she was or from where she came. When her answer came it was typically cryptic.
“Myself and the others used them in the before time.”
“I don’t quite understand, my dear. The time before what?”
Vivian let out a huge, defeated-sounding sigh redolent with the weight of unimaginable sadness and loss. “Before I became what I am. Before those things became what they are now.”
“You mean the dragons?”
Her eyes grew large and round like a startled animal’s. Shifting her gaze away from Merlin’s, she nodded; the movement of her head pressing gently against his fingers. “Yes. But they had not become dragons when they were allowed to use the gate.”
“What were they?”
“In the before time they were very beautiful.”
“You mean before the rebel angels were kicked out of Paradise, don’t you?”
Vivian pulled her head from Merlin’s hand and offered a single, tiny nod before turning her attention to a small fingernail which apparently needed chewing.
Laying a hand on her shoulder and pulling her against his chest, Merlin nodded to himself. His friend, his lover, the water sprite and naiad know as Vivian had, indeed, once been an angel. When Merlin spoke again it was little more than a whisper.
“Tell me, my child, when you were all angels did you use the gates?” Again the nearly imperceptible nod, now felt rather than seen. “And where do they go to?”
“Everywhere.” Vivian’s tiny voice was muffled, filtered through the cloth of his gown. “They go from everywhere to everywhere. They connect all times, all places and all dimensions and universes.” Then, after a long pause, “But humans are not allowed to move through time. And now I’m not allowed to use them either.”
“But you do know how they work?”
“Oh, yes.”
Merlin gently pushed her back from the comforting warmth of his chest, easing her away just far enough that he could look at her when he spoke.
“In that case, my dear, I’m afraid I have to ask for your assistance again. You remember how you restored my life when Vortigern had me killed and how you gave Excalibur to Arthur?” With great, round eyes she looked up at the old wizard, nodded and offered a weak smile. “Well, sweet lady, I’m afraid I need yet another favor from you.”
Vivian pulled away, turned her back on Merlin and wrapped her arms around herself protectively before answering. “Why is it that you humans are always doing things? You find questions and look for answers to them and then take the answers and go places and do things that will probably change the way things are. But nothing ever changes, not really, so why don’t you just leave things alone and enjoy your lives?”
Merlin moved to where she was standing, positioning himself beside her but not quite touching. “My dear, I wish I had an answer to that. Maybe it’s just that we think some things need to be done no matter what the cost, or maybe it’s because that’s just the way we were made. I don’t know. But I do know that there are things which I have to do and I will need your help to do them. Will you help me?”
“If I help you with this thing, you will have to protect me from the dragons.”
“That’s part of what I have in mind.”
The naiad snuggled
close to the old man and looped one tiny arm through his. “Are you going to come live with me on Ynys Enlli and be my lover again?” When she smiled her pale, watery blue eyes lit up like those of a happy child.
Merlin smiled and hugged her close. “Yes, my love. After all these years I am finally free to live with you again.” Then, after a pause, “And while being with you has always been my greatest joy, do understand that I am now very old and old men are seldom the best lovers.”
“Are you still old?”
“Yes. I’m afraid that once a human becomes old there is no reversing the process.”
Vivian looked at him with a curious, uncertain expression on her face and giggled quietly, turning in a gentle circle on the tall grass. Having no idea how to respond to this, Merlin said “I suppose we had best get started, it will take us weeks to get from the Tintagel Headlands to Ynys Enlli.”
Lunging toward him and digging her fingers into his ribs until he winced, she skipped away, motioned for him to follow and shouted “No it won’t.” Dancing toward the steep cliff she called again. “Come.”
Together they walked among the huge, ancient formations of broken rocks and twisted, weathered stone fingers that made up the exposed edge of Cornwall’s primordial cliffs, winding their way downward toward the pebbled shingle and the sea beyond. As they neared the narrow swatch of beach Vivian paused long enough to gather up the translucent sides of her dress and hold them out as far as far as her arms would reach. Cavorting in tiny circles, the balls of her feet twisted small circular depressions in the sand. Pirouetting, she returned and took Merlin’s hand.
“How do you think I always come to you so quickly when you call me?”
Merlin creased his forehead, raised his shaggy eyebrows and mumbled “I never really gave it much thought, I…”
“Silly.”
Grabbing his hand she led him to the lapping edge of the water. Pausing, she removed the circlet from her head and tossed it toward the sea. As the shining s object reached the height of its arc it broke apart, the tiny, slivery fish that had encircled her head twisting and leaping, splashing into the ocean and swimming away.
Looking at Merlin and laughing, Vivian murmured “I am allowed to use the gates between places, just not between times” as she placed one small foot after the other in the water.
Merlin followed suit, lowering the first of his Doc Martin hiking boots into the sea. When his second boot followed the first, he found himself stepping back onto land. But they were no longer in Cornwall. Ahead of them was a gently rising, grassy slope leading toward an intricately tended maze of hedges that must have covered fifteen or more acres. At center of the circular maze was a large open area, making the entire garden look like a huge donut. Oddest of all was the fact that the box hedges forming the maze were clipped to slightly below knee height. Whereas the purpose of a maze was to challenge, or confuse, the visitor as they tried to find their way to the center and back out, here it was impossible to get lost. All a person needed to do to escape the maze was step over the top of the hedges.
Pointing toward the open area at the center of the maze, Vivian asked “Do you like my house?”
“My dear, you know I can’t see your tower. No one can.”
“Here.” Stepping to where Merlin stood she turned his body ninety degrees, so the open space in the maze was aligned with his right shoulder. “Now try.”
“Now I couldn’t see it even if it was visible. I’m not facing the right direction.”
“Of course you can, silly. That’s the whole point. Look straight ahead and you will be able to see my house out of the corner of your eye. Don’t move your eyes; look straight ahead.”
Staring across the grassy plain, toward the churning fury of the Irish Sea, at the peripheral edge of his vision Merlin could just make out the blurry image of a stone tower. It must have been nearly fifty feet in diameter and four stories in height, giving it a pleasant, if nearly square, profile. Around the building’s uppermost edge stood a row of crenelated battlements. Here and there, scattered across its face, were tall, narrow windows. When he instinctively turned his head to get a better look at it, the structure was no longer there.
“That’s amazing, my dear. However do you do that?”
“You know how you make yourself disappear?”
“I don’t really disappear. I just divert people’s line of vision so they can’t see me.”
Taking his hand and pulling him into the low maze, she smiled and nodded. “This is kind of the same thing except that I divert my house in time. It’s always there, just a few seconds in the past.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You wanted to know about the gateways. This is how they work. They allow you to displace time.”
“I’m afraid I still don’t understand.”
“You will.” Giggling again, she added, “It’s just going to take time.”
Chapter Two
Seventy miles west of London the gentle sun that epitomizes the English summer hung in a cloudless sky, shining down on the chalky soil of the Wiltshire countryside, warming Jason Carpenter’s lean back as he squatted in one corner of a rectangular pit fourteen inches deep, twelve feet wide and slightly more than one hundred feet in length. Around the dig the low, scrubby grasses struggled valiantly to grow in the dry, inhospitable soil while a battalion of wandering sheep worked with equal dedication to keep the grass trimmed to an even one inch length. In three directions from the spot where Jason knelt the landscape was nearly flat, but four hundred yards to the north rose a circular, manmade hillock covering more than a dozen acres and rising almost three hundred feet above the surrounding plain. Constructed more than two and a half millennia earlier, the Iron Age hill fort known as Barbury Castle was an outstanding testament to primitive technology. It was also a public park, and although the plot of land encompassing Jason and Beverley’s dig was clearly marked by ropes and police tape, the occasional clutch of tourists would gather at the edge of the cordoned area, staring inward as though the lone archaeologist might, at any moment, hold up something amazing and shout “Eureka”. Of course, in the real world of archaeology, amazing finds only occur on the rarest of occasions, and even when they do they tend to appear inordinately disappointing to the casual viewer.
Jason raised his head, pressing one hand into the small of his back to work out an annoying kink; the result of remaining twisted at an odd angle for nearly an hour. Glancing past the small spot where he was working, Jason looked across the exposed section of ancient mosaic tiled floor which ran away from him in two directions. From his low angle the design was indistinguishable but he knew virtually every inch of it by heart, having spent the better part of a month exposing it to the light of day, one painstaking inch at a time, for the first time in fifteen centuries. Viewed from above the tiny tiles depicted an aquatic scene richly populated by waterfowl including ducks, geese and great herons wandering in and out of a stand of tall marsh grass. Compared to other Roman-period floors in Italy it was slightly above average quality work, but judged against its few surviving contemporaries in Great Britain, it was not only artistically masterful but spoke of a major estate that had been owned by a family who were cultured, educated and impressively wealthy. Despite Beverley’s enthusiasm over this extraordinary find, Jason’s real interest lay not in the Roman floor but in the shallow trench in which he was now digging.
Leaning back down to his work, Jason discarded the paint brush he had been using to remove bits of dirt from an area of earth the size of a dinner plate. Turning to his left and reaching for a small trowel, he spotted it resting ten feet away near another in the series of postholes he was currently excavating. With the casualness that comes from long practice and familiarity he extended his right hand and opened his fingers. Obediently, the trowel slid effortlessly along the ground before rising slightly into the air and coming to rest in his hand. Without once considering the physical impossibility of what he had just done – or
the strange gift of magic that Merlin had imparted to him during his last seconds of life - Jason turned his attention back to the indentation in the ground.
The shallow hole had once held an upright post – long since rotted away - which had been one in a series of more than twenty such posts that were the main support beams for a small addition to the extensive Roman villa. Here, in the area encompassed by these postholes, he hoped to find evidence of post-Roman occupation dating from the period popularly referred to as the early Dark Ages.
As he scratched away another thin layer of accumulated sediment Jason heard his name being called from the direction of his and Beverley’s campsite. Laying down the trowel and straightening up with a grunt, he twisted around to see what she wanted.
Beverley was dressed in a khaki tee shirt and matching trousers, her ginger hair tied behind her head to keep it from falling across her eyes while she printed the photos from yesterday’s dig and collated them with her on-site sketches. She was accompanied by a slightly stooped figure Jason did not immediately recognize. As the pair approached the trench the smiling face and shining, hairless scalp of his former professor, Dr Carver Daniels, came into focus. Wiping his dusty hands on his trouser legs, Jason stood up, smiled and waved. Picking up his pace, Daniels approached the dig and extended a hand.
“It’s good to see you Dr Daniels. What brings you all the way out here to the wilds of Wiltshire?”
They shook hands enthusiastically, grinning, before the old man answered.
“It’s good to see you, as well, Mr Carpenter. Although I guess I should say Dr Carpenter, now, shouldn’t I?” Turning his head and nodding toward Beverley he added “Oh, dear me, I guess we are all Doctors, aren’t we? Dr Daniels, Dr Carpenter and Dr McCullough. My goodness, that’s become quite a mouth full. I think we had best dispense with the formal titles now that we are all academic equals or we may never make any progress.”
Jason motioned toward the grassy edge of the trench, inviting their guest to have a seat. When Daniels hesitated, Beverley stepped into the trench and extended a helping hand, which the old man took gratefully, easing himself down the slope and onto the low shelf of earth. As she helped him find a comfortable spot, Beverley grinned and spoke. “Actually, Doctor, it’s not McCullough any more, its McCullough-Carpenter, but I think it will be a lot easier if you just call me Beverley.”