The Ring of Morgana (The Children of Camelot) Read online

  And all of that pales into insignificance against the horror that Lilly’s going through now. What if they can’t fix her with their hocus-pocus? Are we druids? Is that why our parents never bothered taking us to church? I’m so confused. I had five questions at three o’clock this morning. Now I have a thousand.

  Someone is hugging me as we walk to the car, but I can’t see who it is through the gauzy veil of tears that’s clouding my vision. I blink them away and two fat drops trickle down my cheeks.

  “Where are we going?” I say, sniffing. A heavy feeling is pressing against my stomach. I think it’s fear, but I have to be strong for Lilly.

  “Somerset, to begin with, Mila,” says my father, handing his car keys to my aunt. “I’ll sit in the back with Mila, Titch. You get the car started and I’ll lock up.”

  “Dad never sits in the back of the car,” I whisper to no one, as I watch my father. After locking the front door, he walks the perimeter of Avalon Cottage, reappearing a minute later.

  “And here comes your boyfriend,” calls Auntie Titch. She winks at me and I want to throw something at her. God, I hope Rustin didn’t hear that. He has a large backpack slung over one shoulder and he’s carrying a brown paper bag.

  “I haven’t had any breakfast yet,” he says, as he slings his backpack into the trunk. “The power is still out all over the village, so old Mrs Lancelyn-Green is selling stuff cheap from the fridge section in the corner shop before it all goes off. I’ve got sausage rolls, pasties, and...”

  I place my hand over his mouth to shut him up.

  “Please don’t...” I gasp. “I get car sick. And we’re travelling to Somerset.”

  “Sorry, Mila. I forgot.”

  Rustin forget? I don’t see how he could, seeing as the last school excursion we went on ended up with me throwing up over his sneakers.

  “We’ll just take the bag then, yeah?” he replies with a grin. “Sick bag.”

  He hasn’t forgotten.

  “Is your mum okay about you coming?” I ask. I’m not sure why I’m happier with Rustin coming along, rather than my best girl friend, Katie. Perhaps it’s because I don’t want Katie thinking I’m not normal. Perhaps it’s because Rustin is just more open to the not-normal.

  “Yep.”

  I’ve known Rustin for so long I know when he’s lying because he runs his hands through his long hair and his right eyebrow twitches. It’s doing that now, even though it’s still swollen from where Dagonet hit him. Rustin hasn’t asked his mother, but I don’t tell dad. He might make Rustin go back.

  “Mr. Roth, sorry to be a pain, but I need to leave something in the house. Would you mind unlocking the door?” asks Rustin.

  My father scowls but does as he’s asked. No one follows Rustin into the house and he reappears a minute later. He looks rather melancholy. I wonder if he was checking to see if the ceiling flames were still there. Rustin thought they were cool. I don’t think I’ll ever sit in that room again.

  We settle into the car, which is way colder than being outside. The heater is blasting out dust and microscopic shredded leaves and even some bugs land on my red jeans. I look out of the back window as we drive away from Avalon Cottage. It looks dark and unlived in. The house knows we’re going away and won’t be back for a while. A house already in mourning.

  Stop it, I think to myself. Stop thinking about death.

  But it’s there. An ominous shadow that’s coming with us.

  “Arthur,” prompts my aunt as she turns onto the main road. “You may as well start now. You have to tell Mila as much as you can before we get to Somerset. Rustin, there was a map in the glove compartment the last time I drove this contraption. Can you see if it’s still there?”

  “Why don’t I just use my phone?” he replies. “It has GPS.”

  “Of course,” says my aunt. “Seventeen years and I still forget when I come back.”

  My back teeth are clenched so tightly it’s a wonder I can breathe in and out through my mouth.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” says dad. He’s sweating, even though it’s sub-zero in this car.

  “Where was I born?” I ask. “Really. Because it wasn’t Winchester, was it?”

  Auntie Titch keeps flicking her eyes from the road to the rear view mirror. She’s watching us, watching my father.

  He inhales deeply. I’ve played this moment over and over again with a million different scenarios: I was adopted. I was kidnapped. I was found on a doorstep. I’m my mother’s child but not his. I’m Nana Roth’s secret love child…

  But what my father says next is something not even Rustin would have thought of.

  “You were born in a field during the battle of Mount Badon, Mila. You were born one thousand years ago.”

  Chapter Ten

  Through the Tor

  “Seventeen years ago, your aunt, mother and I disappeared for several weeks. It made the national news at the time. What we kept secret, what we swore to never tell anyone, was where we were during that time. It was a place that all three of us went back to one further time together. And during that second visit, Mila, you were born. Your mother swore she would never go back, and until today, she never has.”

  My father’s ramblings are interrupted briefly by Auntie Titch.

  “And she did her best to try and stop you from going back again.”

  “Not now, Titch. It’s all in the past,” replies my father. “Look, Mila, I know this is all too much for you to comprehend right now, and I don’t expect you to understand or even believe. So we’ll show you.”

  Rustin is in the passenger seat, directly in front of me. His shoulders are heaving and I know why. If Lilly wasn’t so ill, I’d be laughing too. Born one thousand years ago? I’ve never sworn in front of my father, but I think today that will probably change. He’s talking out of his ass.

  I kick the seat. “Stop laughing,” I hiss between clenched teeth.

  “I thought you were looking old,” retorts Rustin.

  “This isn’t funny, Rustin,” says my father. “Titch, I told you this would be a disaster.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, Arthur. You’re a king. A commander of knights. Why do you find it easy to send hundreds of men into battle, and yet almost impossible to talk to your own daughter?”

  “You’re both insane.” I’m struggling to breathe properly. The air is getting trapped in a painful bubble in my windpipe. I swallow it down, and the pain simply transfers to my churning stomach. I’m gonna puke. I’m definitely gonna puke.

  The car suddenly swerves to the left and momentum throws us all to the side. We then all lurch forward as Auntie Titch slams on the brakes. My dad knocks into me and an object falls from his hand onto my lap.

  It’s a bronze coin. It’s bent and uneven around the edges, but it doesn’t look old like the ring. It looks newly minted, and it glistens in the weak spring sunshine. On one side is a square-faced figure with a crown; on the other side is a blob of jello with a mouth. A baby.

  Auntie Titch starts to speak, but my father holds his hand up to silence her. It’s very unlike Auntie Titch to acquiesce to anyone, but she does. My dad leans in to me and turns the coin over in my hand so the baby blob is face up.

  “That’s you, Mila. Queen Guinevere had the coins commissioned to celebrate your birth. You’re a child of Camelot, a princess, and you’ll be treated like one when we go back.”

  “Back where?”

  “Back in time,” replies my father.

  There’s a triumphant cry from the front seat. “I knew it, I knew this place could be a portal or something to another world,” says Rustin excitedly. “There are just too many ghosts and weird things that happen here.”

  “You’re all insane,” I say again, grabbing the door handle. “Let me out. I’m going home. I’m calling Grandma Scholes.”

  I rattle the car door handle, but it’s been locked from the front. I’m trapped. A captive audience to the insanity that’s breaking out all ar
ound me.

  “Your grandparents know, Mila,” says Auntie Titch, stretching around to look at me from the driver’s seat. “They’re the only ones who do, although it was years before we told your Nana Roth, and even now, she refuses to believe it. I live in the past with your Uncle Bedivere. He’s from that time, and so is Talan, although he likes to spend more time in this world than your uncle.”

  “But how...we can’t...I can’t...”

  There’s a pounding in my head. It sounds like a drum, but I know it’s my quickening pulse. My breath is getting more ragged by the second. My chest starts to constrict and I can’t breathe at all. I start to panic. Silver and blue streaks start to flash before my eyes. I won’t believe them. I can’t believe them. My arms and legs start jerking and flailing in time with the drum beats.

  The last thing I remember is being dragged out of the car by Rustin.

  When I come around, I am lying on the back seat of the car. The left side door is open and my long legs are sticking out of it. Rustin, my father and aunt are stood outside talking, but the rushing of wind is so great in my head, I can’t hear them properly. I pull myself up onto my elbows and cry out as I look down. For a split second, my right hand was shrivelled up. Then my eyes focus and the skin is smooth once more. But I can hear the laughter of a woman and wind chimes on the breeze.

  “How are you feeling, Mila?” asks my father, bending down. He’s holding a bloodstained tissue to his mouth.

  “Like puking my guts up over the inside of your car.”

  “Then you’ll be cleaning it up, princess or not.”

  “You weren’t joking, were you?” I groan.

  My father shakes his head. “I’ve struggled with this for sixteen years, Mila. Wondering when to tell you, whether I should ever tell you. Your mother was dead against you ever finding out, which was why we came up with a rushed story when you needed your birth certificate.”

  “Why didn’t she want me to know?”

  “She was trying to protect you. Your mother changed when she was in Logres. It scared her. But I have to go back regularly, and I do. When you think I’m away tutoring, I’m actually in Logres. I spend half of my life there, and half here. Your aunt lives there all the time. There’s a time portal in Glastonbury, and we travel through that. It’s very safe, and...”

  “What happened to your mouth?” I ask, interrupting.

  My father pulls away the bloodstained tissue. His bottom lip is swollen and purple, and a deep vertical line has split the left side from the right.

  “You can do Taekwondo, even when you’re having a panic attack,” he replies. “Nice front snap kick, Mila.”

  “I don’t want to go, dad. I’m scared.”

  My father swings my legs around and slides in to the back seat of the car. He puts his arm around my shoulders and I snuggle in, just like I used to do when I was a little girl. He used to call me his princess when we were alone.

  When did I get too big to be cuddled by my dad, or was it me that stopped going to him? I can’t remember.

  “You know the ghosts we hear around the cottage, Mila?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They aren’t ghosts, not really. Our home is under constant guard from the Knights of the Round Table. It was the one concession I made to Merlin and Queen Guinevere. They wanted me and my family protected at all times when I wasn’t in Logres. And that’s what Talan, Lucan and Dagonet were doing there this morning. When we hear the ghosts, we’re usually hearing them. They’re supposed to be quiet, but no one can ever shut Talan up.” Dad laughs, trying to lighten the mood. It doesn’t work.

  “They’re from the past?”

  “Yes. One thousand years ago.”

  “So they’re ghosts?”

  “No – they’re real. And anyone in the village could see them, like Rustin can. But they shouldn’t really be here, because this isn’t their time.”

  “This is so confusing.”

  “I know, sweetheart.” He kisses the side of my head.

  “So does that mean...are you...are you King Arthur?”

  I wish Rustin and my aunt hadn’t chosen that moment to stop talking. Saying the words in my head was bad enough, but saying them aloud makes me sound like I’m the village idiot.

  But my father pulls me in even tighter.

  “I won’t make you curtsey.”

  “You’ll be able to make Lilly better, won’t you? Your people, in this other time, they will be able to help her?”

  “I won’t rest until they do. And they’ll have your mother to deal with if they don’t.”

  “I’m sorry, dad. I was just showing off when I held the ring. I knew it was dangerous. But if I had known this would happen, I would have put it straight back after Lilly gave it to me.”

  My father pulls back a little, and I feel the cold air fill the gap now between us.

  “Lilly took the ring?”

  I nod. “She took it last evening. Rustin and I saw a blue light coming from the skylight when we were walking home. Lilly must have been taking it out of the wardrobe then. What’s in the ring, dad? What made it do that to Lilly?”

  “There is something very, very dangerous in that ring, Mila,” says Auntie Titch, climbing into the driver’s seat once more. “And it must never be released.”

  It takes another four hours to drive to Glastonbury. I desperately want to talk to Rustin, but I can’t. Not with my dad sitting next to me. He and Auntie Titch spend most of the journey telling me about the people in this place called Logres, but I don’t want to hear it. I keep looking around the car interior for hidden cameras. This can’t be real. There is no way this can be happening.

  But then I think back to the crazy old man and the fire burning on the ceiling, and Merlin and my mother just disappearing, and suddenly the fantastical becomes very believable.

  But I don’t want to believe. I want to be normal. The kind of normal my mother has always wanted me to be.

  Rustin loves this sort of stuff, and he’s spent the last four hours drilling my aunt for information. I think he’s a bit wary of my dad now, especially since he found out my father is supposed to be a king. Every response Rustin gives him is monosyllabic. So my dad is sitting there with a smug smirk on his face and I hate it.

  Glastonbury. I’ve wanted to come here for the music festival ever since I was twelve years old, but I’ve never been allowed. At first I was too young, and then my friends couldn’t be trusted.

  Now I know the truth. It was me and my past that couldn’t be relied upon.

  Auntie Titch parks my dad’s car and we all climb out. My legs are like jelly and I feel sick. Even having the window down didn’t help settle my churning stomach.

  In the distance, across wide green flats, is the Tor: a huge grassy mound with a ruined church tower on top. It’s late afternoon and the sky is thickening. Swirling strands of dark grey cloud are moving rapidly over the landscape. It reminds me of the old man who took Lilly and my mother.

  “Are we going to be allowed up there?” asks Rustin. He’s already slung his backpack over his shoulders.

  “It’s National Trust property,” replies my father. “Access is open to everyone at all times. But it also helps that we know a man in the village.”

  “Who isn’t really a man from this village,” adds Auntie Titch with a smile.

  “So how does this work?” I ask, but my voice is so high I can feel the strain on my vocal cords. “We get transported through some vortex or something? Does it hurt? Where do we end up?”

  How can they all be so calm about this? Even Rustin is clearly excited about travelling through some kind of dimension gap in time, but to me this is all so wrong. This isn’t normal. Everything I thought I knew about myself has been turned inside out, upside down, and put through a liquidizer for good measure. How can I exist in this time if I was born one thousand years ago? People can’t just travel through time like they live in a science fiction movie. What if something goes wrong and w
e get split up as we’re travelling? What if I get off in the wrong year? I could end up with dinosaurs chasing me in the past, or maniacal robots chasing me in the future.

  This is not right.

  “I’m not going.”

  Rustin jerks back as I stop dead in my tracks. I was holding his hand. I can’t remember doing that.

  “Mila...”

  “I can’t go, dad. I’m sorry, but I can’t. This isn’t who I am. I’m me, from now. I’m not a princess, I’m just me. I’m ordinary. There’s nothing special about me at all and I’m scared. This is your world, not mine.”

  Rustin opens his mouth as if to say something, but he doesn’t. He’s rubbing his thumb against the back of my hand. His skin is rough from all the wood sanding he does. My father makes to hold my hand, but he doesn’t follow through either. I was his little girl in the car, but now he wants me to be something I’m not.

  And he knows it.

  “You were born in Logres, Mila, and somehow, you’ve unlocked the power in a ring that your mother and I have tried to keep away from Camelot for sixteen years. You have to come with us. It might be the only chance we have of saving Lilly.”

  And that’s how my father gets me to move. Not by talking of time travel and the past, but with emotional blackmail about the present.

  There are people milling around the Tor and the ruined church tower. Everyone is staring at me. Are they from this time or the past? The sun is starting to set, but it’s so cloudy the sky just gets darker. In the village below the Tor, lights are starting come on. It’s like the world has flipped and the stars are beneath us.

  A couple with their two children walk past. They smile and greet my dad and aunt. Do they know who he is, or are they just being friendly?