by Daniel Diehl
The interior of the tent was surrounded on two sides by makeshift shelves laden with identical white plastic trays. And thanks entirely to Beverley’s practical approach to organizing their work, the two long, folding tables were set up in an ‘L’ shape that offered an orderly progression of recording and cataloguing from one end to the other. At the end of the table immediately inside the door, were a washing bin, a stack of soft towels and a pile of clean plastic trays. In the middle of the cleaning area rested the tray Jason had shown Dr Daniels earlier in the day. Now, in addition to the random collection of pottery shards, the comb and the piece of window glass, there were three small, opaque glass beads which undoubtedly originated from the Roman era. After the Romans pulled out of the British Isles in the middle of the fourth century AD, the knowledge of glass making disappeared with them, hardly surprising considering that the Britons had far more urgent matters to attend to than making glass ornaments.
Jason washed the multicolored beads carefully in a bath of distilled water before giving them a cursory examination through a lighted magnifying glass and laying them aside in a clean plastic tray lined with a soft towel laid in the bottom to act as a cushion. The beads were attractive enough - deep blue glass highlighted with bright yellow and red swirls running through them – and since they were virtually identical it was probable that they had come from the same necklace or bracelet. But they were very much like thousands of other beads that had been excavated all over the English countryside, and because they were of Roman origin they held little interest for Jason. Likewise, the pot shards appeared to be from the Roman period; sophisticated in design, thin-walled and decorated with a richly mottled brown glaze highlighted with touches of dark green; they were nice but they were neither particularly rare nor did they serve Jason’s agenda.
Saving the best items for last, he held the section of antler comb over the wash basin and gently cleaned bits of accrued soil and chalk from its surface with a soft brush dampened in the water. He did not immerse the comb in the water for fear that even a brief emersion could adversely affect the centuries-old antler. Holding the cleaned and dried comb under the lighted magnifying lens he marveled at the workmanship. Certainly not as sophisticated as a Roman comb, it showed that someone, working with only the crudest tools, had taken the time to cut a piece of antler to a thickness of scarcely more than a quarter inch, smooth its outer surfaces and make dozens of narrow cuts into the material to form the teeth. Amazingly, not a single tooth had been broken out of the surviving section of comb; each tooth was less than an eighth of an inch in width and the spaces between them were only half the width of the teeth. Finally, the long-ago comb maker had carved an intricate design at the apex of the spine. Still surviving in one piece, the delicate design depicted a recumbent female deer with her legs curled delicately beneath her and her muzzle tucked comfortably between her front legs. There was no doubt that this finely worked piece came from the period between the time the Romans pulled out and the Saxons moved in – exactly the period Jason was looking for. He stared at it for a long moment, gently stroking the tiny deer’s back again and again, before laying it aside and reaching for the last item in the tray.
The window glass, like the beads and broken chunks of pottery, was definitely from the Roman period. But because of its location immediately outside the post-Roman addition, Jason hoped to establish that the Britons had removed it from a window in the villa and re-used it in the addition they built along the southern-most wall of the villa’s main building. The best he could hope for was to find more pieces of broken glass near the same location. This would both affirm that the addition included material taken from the original villa and give him an approximate location of the new window.
Handling the fragile, ancient piece of glass with the utmost care, Jason held it over the wash basin and brushed clean water across its face again and again. With each pass the glass became cleaner. Finally, he blotted the water from both sides of the glass and held it in his hands, studying its makeup. Vaguely blue-green in color, it was full of flaws, ripples and tiny bubbles. As he moved it one way and another, examining its surface texture, a vague distortion moved across – or through, or behind – the glass. Jason looked again but at first saw nothing. Then, in a matter of seconds, the shadow came again, moving in exactly the same right-to-left direction it had moved the first time. Jason blinked his tired eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose to clear his vision, acknowledging to himself that Beverley was right; he really needed to get more rest. When the cloud moved through the glass a third time, it moved slowly enough for Jason to make out the blurred image. Somehow, impossible as it sounded, buried inside the glass was the image of a man’s face. The man was obviously elderly, with a long white beard and hair, and a great hawkish nose set between a pair of piercing blue eyes. Beyond any doubt, the man in the window was Merlin.
Fumbling, terrified and excited, Jason nearly dropped the palm-sized piece of glass before he regained control of himself. With shaking hands he set the glass down on a clean towel, afraid to touch it. Peering intently at the object in front of him, he lifted one edge of the towel to move the glass under the light. The next time the face appeared it moved, turning from one direction to another, before moving away toward Jason’s left, finally disappearing from his line of vision.
“Bev.” Jason’s voice was calm and level but not nearly loud enough to be heard inside the camper. Then he lost control. “BEVERLEY! BEVERLEY! JESUS, COME HERE! QUICK!”
Chapter Three
Merlin felt more relieved than disturbed when Vivian came pirouetting into the room, throwing her arms around his neck and laughing, tugging him to his feet. He had no idea how long he had been pondering over the ancient scrolls which were stubbornly protecting their mass of arcane information on how the time gates operated. He could, quite literally, not determine how long he might have been sitting in the room; it could have been hours, or days or even months. The normal certitudes of time and space seemed to have no more hold on Vivian’s home than they did on the water sprite herself.
When they first entered Vivian’s tower, the main room had appeared like exactly as it should. Given the fact that the tower was roughly fifty feet in diameter, and the exterior walls appeared to be about ten feet thick, there ought to have been a thirty foot diameter area which could be used as a single large space – as the room directly inside the entry door proved to be – or it could be subdivided into several smaller units. In point of fact, however, with the exception of the great hall, the building seemed to follow no known laws of space or physics and changed in the most astonishing manner, seemingly at will. Beyond the great hall, and on the levels above, a mind boggling number of rooms were connected by passages and hallways that proved as winding and elusive as a basket full of snakes.
After thoroughly disorienting Merlin with a tour of her house, the room to which Vivian had finally taken him was obviously a library. She had helpfully grabbed an ancient, crumbling scroll from one of the endless series of shelves that lined all four walls, unrolled it on a table, kissed Merlin on the cheek and wafted out of the room. Since that moment Merlin’s sojourn in the library had only been interrupted by occasional periods of exhausted sleep. During their initial tour Vivian had shown him to a sleeping chamber of his own, and sometimes he slept there, alone, and sometimes Vivian joined him. On other occasions he followed her to her own bedroom – a space which never seemed to remain in the same place for more than a few hours at a time. On several occasions he had followed her to her bedroom in one part of the ever-changing house and awakened in the morning only to find that it had moved somewhere else entirely.
The library, where he spent nearly all of his waking hours, was as belligerently vague and inconsistent as the rest of the tower. When Vivian unrolled the first scroll on the long table, Merlin had pulled up a stool and immediately started to pour over its mysterious contents, anxious to begin unravelling the secrets of the gateways. Only when he turned
his head to take a glance further down the unfurled length of parchment did he realize that only the lines directly in front of him remained legible. The endless lines of cramped handwriting extending in both directions appeared to be soft, vague and unformed, refusing his best efforts to bring them into focus. The unreliability of his vision extended far beyond the confines of the scrolls. The table at which he worked appeared to be quite long, but he found it impossible to determine exactly how long. It might have been ten feet in length, or it might have been thirty feet, or it might have been somewhere in between. Sometimes it even appeared to extend into infinity, vanishing into the distance with the curve of the earth.
Similarly, the library itself refused to stay fixed in three dimensions. His first glance into the room had been enough to know that it was graced with a wonderfully high ceiling, but determining its exact height remained infuriatingly impossible. He was certain it was more than ten feet high, but whether its richly carved beams hung majestically fifteen, twenty or fifty feet above his head remained open to question, and the answer seemed to change with variations in the soft light filtering through the four, or five, or six, or more tall narrow windows ranged above one wall of bookcases. Every inch of the tower apparently expanded and contracted at will, following some unknown and unknowable rhythm of its own devising.
Even browsing through the bookshelves for new books and scrolls proved to be a herculean challenge. Although all four walls were lined with shelves, and every shelf appeared jammed to overflowing with books, scrolls and bundles of manuscripts of incredible age, as soon as Merlin approached a specific shelf the items directly in front of him faded out of existence, leaving only a vacant section of shelving, mocking him with its emptiness. As was the case with the exterior of the tower, only by looking out of the corner of his eye could Merlin capture a book or scroll before it escaped into the nothingness of this unsettling place of limitless unreality. Even for someone who was accustomed to the most unnatural physical phenomenon – indeed, someone who regularly caused the impossible to happen – the sheer level of weirdness present in every facet of life on Ynys Enlli left Merlin perpetually confused and disoriented.
Now, however, he turned away from the scroll, stood up and embraced Vivian. No matter how unconventional their surroundings might be, life with this amazing creature always had a salutary effect on Merlin. Just as she had healed him after Vortigern had ordered his throat cut when he was nine years old, being with her now seemed to heal the fatigue brought on by the sheer weight of a life lasting more than a millennia and a half. Holding her in his arms, his lips pressed to hers, he thought of the time they spent together in Vivian’s wandering bedroom. After so many centuries alone he was amazed at how good and natural it felt to be with this tiny, delicate creature. Most surprising of all was the fact that even at his actual, physical age of something in excess of seventy-five years he could still perform with startling regularity. Obviously being with the Lady of the Lake had more benefits than learning the complexities of traversing time and space.
“What are you thinking about?” Vivian’s mouth broke contact with Merlin’s and she pulled her head back, smiling up at him with pale blue eyes.
“Honestly, my child, I was thinking about you.”
Pressing her head against his bony chest and snuggling into him, she murmured “That’s nice.” After a moment she pulled her head back and smiled again. “Would you like to come for a walk in my garden?”
“I would love to walk with you, dear lady.”
Together – Vivian always in the lead – they wandered through passageways Merlin was certain he had never seen before until, at last, they descended a spiral stone staircase that led to a doorway nestled into one corner of the circular great hall. Walking toward the outside door, Merlin glanced over his shoulder toward the doorway at the foot of the stairs. It was no longer there. In its place stood a large, solid looking wine cabinet made of dark, heavy oak. Shaking his head in wonder, Merlin stepped through the outside door and into the soft, warm sunshine of Ynys Enlli. Lifting his face to accept the gentle warming rays, Merlin’s brow suddenly creased and he dropped his head to look at Vivian.
“How is it that it never rains here? I’ve been here for…,” having no idea how long he had been on the island, he continued in a more vague tone. “…for some time and I’ve never seen it rain.” Grinning now, he added “This is Wales, it always rains in Wales.”
Releasing his hand and skipping a few feet toward the inner edge of the low boxwood maze, she turned, offered a deep curtsey and smiled. “Of course it rains here. You can see how green my garden stays.”
“But I’ve never seen it rain.”
“That’s because it only rains some other time.”
Laying his hand on top of his head and scratching at his hair furiously, Merlin replied. “Other than what?”
“Other than when we are. Don’t you see?”
“No. I’m afraid I don’t see at all.”
Giggling, she grabbed the old man’s hand and pulled him forward, toward the knot garden. As he moved away from the tower Merlin turned to look back. For a fleeting moment he watched as the tower wavered and slowly vanished, leaving only the heavy oak door and its stone frame visible, until that, too, winked out of existence.
“Would you tell me more about your house?”
“I’d rather go down to the water and play with the fish. I promised them I would come today.” He sighed and followed her for a few steps until she stopped, turned and tugged gently at his beard, stopping him in his tracks. “But I know you are here to learn about the gates, so we can talk while we walk.”
“Thank you.”
Swinging her arms like a happy child, the naiad skipped and talked, as casually as though she was discussing the most mundane topic in the world. “You want to know if my house works like the gates, don’t you?”
“Does it? Is that why the inside is so different than the outside?” then, after a short beat, “And is that why it keeps changing?”
Wending her way through the maze, Vivian placed the tip of an index finger between her teeth in concentration, as though the knee-high hedges presented a major challenge. “Yes. The front door is actually a gateway. It’s the only part of the house that stays anchored in space and time. The outside is just a projection of what I think the perfect house should look like. You do like it, don’t you?”
Smiling and following close behind her, only a step or two to the rear, Merlin smiled. “Yes, my dear, I like it very much.”
Vivian grinned brightly and nodded before continuing. “The interior stands on the edge of both time and space. That’s why I can change the rooms any way I like. Even when I sleep and just dream about changing them they rearrange themselves. No matter how big I make it, it doesn’t really take up any room at all. Do you understand?”
“No, but that’s alright.”
“And since it is between times – neither now nor then – time has no effect on people living inside the tower.”
“Rather like my crystal globe kept me from aging all those centuries.”
“Yes. Rather. But it’s actually a lot better. If you stay long enough you start to age backwards.”
Merlin’s shaggy eyebrows shot upward, nearly disappearing into his hairline.
“Really? You mean get younger? How long do you have to be inside the tower before that starts happening?”
“Silly. There is no ‘how long’ in my house.” Stepping off the edge of the well-tended lawn onto the pebbly shingle, headed toward the lapping waves beyond, she lifted the hem of her dress and held it out to the sides before calling back to Merlin. “Look at your beard.”
The sorcerer picked up the trailing end of his whiskers and held them at arm’s length. The last time he had looked at it, it was as white as snow. Now it appeared like very, very dirty snow, flecked with dots and strands of black and gray. As he stood there, mouth open in amazement, she called again.
“You hum
ans always assume that time is your enemy. It can also be your friend if you just make the effort to treat it nicely.”
More excited than he had been since arriving back in his own time, Merlin began to ply Vivian with endless questions about the workings of the dragon gates, which he now thought of as time gates despite the fact that they seemed to manipulate geography as well as time. But Vivian refused to discuss the subject further, demanding that he join her in the surf to play with her fish friends. Reluctant, but determined not to force her beyond whatever point she felt comfortable with, Merlin stripped off his gray gown and strode boldly into the lapping waves.
Here, in the ebbing water beyond the edge of the mystical island known as Ynys Enlli, time seemed somehow more real, more normal. Each minute followed the previous one in a more familiar, natural way and by the end of the afternoon, as they strode arm-in-arm, laughing, back to Vivian’s tower, Merlin felt healthier and more relaxed than he had in many normal lifetimes.
It was only an indefinable amount of time later, after he had spent a vague assortment of days, or weeks, with the scrolls that Merlin again felt comfortable broaching the subject of how the time gates worked. On this occasion they were sitting at a large table in the circular great hall, a bowl of summer fruits and berries within reach. While Vivian spoke, she ran her finger around the edge of a cup of wine as Merlin took a great gulp from a tankard of ale.
“It’s like I told you before. There are two kinds of gates. The big ones - like the one in the cave by the river that you sealed with the stone - are locked between two specific points. The one you closed only goes between the place the dragon-things live and the cave.” A tiny scowl creased her magnolia-white forehead. “I suppose, since it’s locked in place, you could use it to access any point in time, but time only has any meaning on the end in the cave. Time does not exist in the dragons’ world.”