Page 108 of The Road to Avalon

My book. It’s been in someone’s house all this time. In the house of some old man. Was it there while I was growing up? Before I was born? While Merlin slept under Nimuë’s spell? Such are the vagaries of time travel.

“Who was he and how did he get it?” I ask. “What happened to it after I left Din Cadan? Did Archfedd keep it safe?” She must have. My heart does little leaps of excitement I can’t control.

“When?” Arthur asks, as interested by this as me.

Merlin shrugs. “A while since, I think, but I don’t know for sure. It’s just made the national papers. I can only tell you what I’ve read. No one seems to know how the old man came to have it in his possession. The papers are saying it had been passed down through his family for generations. They’ve interviewed the heir, a very distant cousin of some sort, and specialists are looking at the book right now.”

I stare at Merlin. “But how can his ancestors have got hold of it? Didn’t Archfedd keep it?” A thought pings in my head. “Might that old man have been descended from my daughter?”

Merlin shrugs. “We’ll probably never know. He probably wouldn’t have known himself.”

I glance at little Con, but he’s still concentrating on the important job of fishing. He’s a determined child and focuses on everything he wants to do. At the moment that’s catching a fish. In everything he does, he reminds me of Llacheu and Amhar, and sometimes of Archfedd too. A lump forms in my throat when I remember my lost children. So far away, but never forgotten.

I gather my addled wits. “Think what that means.” I lay my hand on Arthur’s. “Everyone will know you aren’t just a legend. They’ll know you really existed. You’ll be history at last and not a story.”

Merlin grins. “They’re suggesting it’s a hoax, of course, like the Hitler Diaries. That some clever scholar forged the book and planted it. That maybe the recluse himself forged it.”

I grin back, wanting to laugh out loud. “Well, we know that’s not true, don’t we?”

Arthur does laugh. “You know what? I don’t care whether people nowadays think I’m real or not. It doesn’t matter.Iknow I’m real. You and Merlin and Con know I’m real. I don’t care if no one else believes it. A load of scholars analyzing my story.Ourstory. I almost wish it hadn’t been discovered.”

I nod. “When I started writing the book, I had no idea we’d be here to see it found. I just wanted to leave a record– in the hope my father would have come across it, perhaps. He didn’t, of course, but I wish it had been him. Maybe if he had, history would have been different, and I wouldn’t have gone up the Tor on that morning to scatter his ashes. I don’t know.”

Merlin shakes his head. “No, that couldn’t have been changed. You had to go up there and I had to take you back to fulfill your destiny, and for Arthur to fulfill his. It was a fixed point that could never be changed. Every road we trod was leading here, today. To this. You couldn’t change anything, no matter how hard you tried.”

Arthur lies back down again. “Do we care? We’re here, the sun’s shining and fish are biting. Do I want to think about anything else?”

I gaze at the face I was destined to love, at his dark eyes flecked with gold, at his smile, the scars on his cheek and in his hairline. This is the man Iwillgrow old with. The thing I longed for will happen. I saved him.

“Dadi!” shouts Con. “I’ve got a fishy!”

And sure enough, a fish is dancing on his hook.

THE END