Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(8)

Merlin felt himself heating, sparks gathering at his feet. His body became an engine, burning itself up. He rose at a speed that was equal parts thrilling and terrifying.

He passed through a layer of mean gray clouds and emerged, damp as a trout. He opened his mouth and could only manage a gasp. The atmosphere was growing thin; soon his breath would give out. He couldn’t die—the cycle had proven that more than once when he’d been skewered or burnt or thrown out a window—but he could spend the rest of eternity spinning in space like a broken top.

“Not ideal,” he muttered.

He flicked the moisture off his fingers and hummed a bit of an old ragtime song. A second spell formed a protective layer around him, sealing him into a sort of invisible spacesuit. Ice skittered off of it as he passed the highest, coldest reaches of the sky.

With a violent pop of the ears, he breached the atmosphere. He spun around, still hurtling backward, to say good-bye to the planet where he had spent so many ages. “You gave me toast slathered with jam,” he said, starting with the best things. “You gave me magic, and some very nice views.” He probably should have kept it to happy memories, but the not-so-happy ones elbowed their way in. “You let Morgana exist. You let Arthur die. Forty-one times.”

Earth stared at him, unapologetic.

“I’m not going to miss you very much, either.”

He turned, moving toward a gray fingernail in the distance. The moon grew larger and brighter as he approached, and though he didn’t see the spaceship that took Excalibur, he hummed and felt that the sword was close. He saw long-dead seas and the skeletal remains of a rover that had landed on the moon. The flag with its faded stars and proud stripes, which made him think of Arthur 37.

Glass domes stood across the landscape, drawing him in. There were lights and sounds—civilization, even if it looked a bit crude at the edges. The new Arthur was down there waiting, whether he knew it or not. It was time for him to find the greatest hero that ever lived.

Again.





He landed in the chalky dust outside of one of the moon’s many domes. He didn’t see a way in, and the bit of Earth’s atmosphere he’d brought along was all used up. Merlin wheezed the last of his exhausted magic to create a door through the glass, which dissolved the second after he’d walked through it. He got a few wide-eyed stares from people walking past, but they blinked the strangeness away and kept moving.

That told him a great deal. These people weren’t necessarily used to magic, but they were willing to accept it as long as they didn’t have to move their mental furniture around too much. He wondered if this was a side effect of leaving Earth: humans also had to leave behind the certainty that they understood the universe.

He left the spaceport and entered the moon proper, which was like a dusty version of Las Vegas in its heyday, sealed under a glass dome. Bright lights, big city, terrible music. He found himself drawn by the temptations of several diners, all of which claimed to serve the best and truest versions of Earth’s comfort food. Tacos. Cheese fries. Pork buns. But not even the promise of a club sandwich with slightly burnt toast and actual bacon was stronger than the hum of Excalibur. He was getting close, and his excitement hummed to match.

It came to a fever pitch in front of a black-painted building with a sign that rose from the door in black letters. DARK MATTER. When the door opened, people in skimpy outfits stumbled out, releasing the thump of too-loud bass. His Arthur had taken refuge in a nightclub. Was he apprentice to the owner? Being made to wash dishes and sticky floors? Perhaps Arthur had been adopted by someone on the moon. Was Kay—Arthur’s boorish brother—here, too? The cycle did vary things up a bit, just to keep Merlin on his toes.

He walked in and found people of all descriptions huddled at a bar. It was a familiar sight, rows of shiny bottles gleaming down, though nobody seemed to be drinking. They all had tubes up their noses. He noticed a neon sign that declared PREMIUM OXYGEN.

Come to think of it, Merlin wasn’t breathing much better than he had been outside of the glass dome. He thought about trying the wares but had more important matters to attend to. Looking over the dance floor, he hoped to find Arthur and get out as quickly as possible. His eyes met a veritable orgy, people wearing little more than a few atoms stitched together, pressing up against each other in twos, threes, and larger clusters.

In the center of it all, swinging dark hair like a mace, dancing with the fervor of a dying sun, was a teenage girl. Merlin wouldn’t have noticed her, except that she was gyrating near a sword that had been stabbed into the heart of the dance floor. A sword that he would have recognized on any planet. He looked around for a smaller person in her company. Eight to twelve years old was the normal range for a new Arthur. And definitely, always, a boy. Merlin waited as patiently as he could, but no one fitting the description materialized. Arthur couldn’t have gone far. Only he could lift the sword; certainly he would come back.

Merlin took off his glasses, rubbed them against his robe, and shoved them back up his nose. Everything danced into focus—and the girl was staring him down with dark-browed eyes.

Perhaps he should just ask her where Arthur was hiding.

He dance-walked toward the girl. His body felt different than the last time he’d been awake, which made dancing a minefield of new sensations. His limbs were looser, and not in a helpful sort of way. His hips jerked more than he would have liked. For some reason, he kept fist-pumping the air. It felt like stuttering the same word over and over.