Chapter 12: Fate
Eddy’s beautiful face, the strong certain lines of his jaw and brows, and the coppery fire in his eyes all convinced me that he was telling me the truth. I glanced around Starbucks, checking if anybody could hear us.
“You were the...” I breathed. “The King. King Arthur?” The title sounded odd used in relation to somebody I knew, like doctor, teacher, taxi driver... king. It made a crazy kind of sense, though. All the times I had thought Eddy regal or commanding, were explained by this.
He tilted his head to one side. “I don’t think I was called that, that exactly.”
I took a black drinking straw from the table between us and ran it between my fingers as if it was a magic wand. “What do you mean?”
He opened his hands. The palms and undersides of his fingers shone slightly, like leather work gloves. “The language was different. We talked, differently.”
“Can’t you remember?”
He shook his head. “It was so long ago. It’s like trying to remember a dream. It fades in and out. Mainly I just have moments of déjà-vu. You know, feelings, images.”
I folded the drinking straw, turning the smooth tube into a sharp point. What he said seemed weirdly believable. “Like you knew there was a foreigner in the tomb.”
Eddy nodded. “That’s right.”
I shivered. “Who put you in the cave?”
“A man, my counsellor. In the stories he’s called Merlin.”
I held my breath, thinking about my next question. Eddy had been open, to this point, but maybe I was going to push him too far and he would shut down again. “How did he do it?”
Eddy glanced out the window, his brow furrowed in thought. The coffee shop looked onto the junction of Magdalene Road and the High Street, called Market Place. In the middle of the crossroads stood the pale stone spire of the Market Cross, like a Gothic piece of a church, dropped there by accident. Eddy examined the scenery for a moment. “I don’t know. In those days people believed his father wasn’t human. They said he was descended from a creature, a creature of darkness, something born to torment us.”
I folded the drinking straw again, making a figure four. “A demon.”
Eddy nodded.
My head spun. The story had taken a turn that I really didn’t like. If demons were real, then the world was a completely different place to the one I believed in. I dropped the straw and gripped the table edge for a minute. “He couldn’t be.”
“I don’t think so either.”
I sighed.
“He was able to do things with his mind. To change the way things look.” His eyes followed a truck outside as it pulled up, bearing a small crane on its bed. Two men in reflective vests jumped out of the cab. “There was a thing we found, as well. My men looked for it for years. One of them, a young one, discovered it.”
“The grail?” I paused in my straw-sculpture. “Really? It’s a real thing?” Now my mouth dropped open. I thought of films and books I had seen and read about the Holy Grail, the cup that held Christ’s blood and then was hidden away, keeping its amazing powers safe. It really existed somewhere? Dan Brown was completely off base?
“I don’t know what it was, but he found it, and there was definitely power in it. Merlin used it to make us sleep, without aging.”
I stabbed a toothpick into the straw. “Not only did you not age, you got younger.” I crunched my eyes shut for a moment. This was possibly the weirdest part of the whole story. Though I didn’t pay a huge amount of attention to science lessons I knew such a thing was against the rules of everything real. There was no way of checking, I couldn’t ask teachers, I couldn’t Google it. All I had was what Eddy said, and believing it or not. “How was that possible?”
Eddy turned his hands palm up. “I really don’t know. But it happened.”
Even Eddy himself was less than helpful. I pressed on, not wanting to waste his mood of openness. “What was that like?”
He smiled. “Again, I don’t know. I was asleep.”
“You didn’t wake up?”
“Not once.”
I impaled another loop of straw on the toothpick. “And when you came out you were two years old.”
He nodded. “Can you believe they’re putting up the Christmas lights already?” Out in the road the men attached a huge spool of cable to the crane and lifted it towards a streetlight.
“Who banged the gong?”
“That...” Eddy pointed a finger. “Is a really interesting question. Nobody knows.”
“Merlin put you in the cave to wake up when the world needed you.”
Eddy nodded.
I caught my breath, trying to imagine the simplicity and scale of the idea. Every time I thought about my life as an adult I wanted something different. I was like a kid driving a bumper car, careening madly in one direction after another and never actually going anywhere. In contrast, Eddy had one purpose. He knew exactly what he was going to do. He was going to make the world a better place.
“So why does the world need you?”
“I don’t know. I’m waiting to find out, and preparing myself the best I can.”
I needed contact with reality, all the crazy, grand ideas spinning in the air between us made me light headed. I ran my fingers over the smooth wood grain of the table top, catching grains of sugar spilled by whoever sat there before. I wiped my hands on a serviette.
“And what about the others in the cave?”
“I don’t know. They will come when they are needed. Maybe I’ll call them.”
I admired my straw and toothpick sculpture, a tightly coiled spiral. “You don’t think it might be a mistake?”
“What do you mean?”
“That somebody banged that gong who shouldn’t have. They didn’t bang it right, and only woke up you without the others.”
Eddy shook his head emphatically. “Nope.” He shuffled in his seat. “No. Definitely not.” He looked at his watch. “I’m sorry, Maddie, but I have to go. There’s a colt that I’m harness breaking.”
“Alright.” I threaded my napkin through the centre of the straw sculpture and stood up.
“Maddie...” His voice chided slightly.
“What?”
He nodded at the sculpture.
“Cool isn’t it?”
“Um, aren’t you going to put it in the trash?”
“What?” Suddenly I felt like I was in a coffee shop with Mum. “Oh alright,” I huffed. “I thought somebody might like it.”
In the street the mini-crane had moved to a third lamp post and two strands of lights already hung over the road.
I watched my feet for a moment, then looked up at Eddy. “Why, when we first met, were you so weird to me?”
“It’s complicated, Maddie.”
“So? Maybe you could try explaining it. I think I’ve been very understanding so far.”
“Well...”
I turned aside and looked in the window of a mobile phone shop. “Wait. I’ve just had an idea.” Eddy’s habit of rescuing me from peril deserved a reward. And just as much as he had earned a present, I wanted a way to get hold of him. I bought him a slightly retro, blocky Nokia, thinking that the size of his fingers would make using anything daintier, or a touch screen, very difficult indeed.
Outside the store I extended my arm straight out, the small bag holding the phone swinging from my hand.
Eddy frowned. “What’s that?”
“A present, for you.” I didn’t say that I anticipated getting as much benefit from it as he would.
He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
I waved the bag at him. “Take it, for crying out loud.”
“But why? Nobody...” He opened it. “A telephone, for me? I don’t know what to say. You... How can you...”
The enormity of his gratitude was embarrassing. “It’s nothing.” I shrugged, then automatically tilted my face up, for him to kiss my cheek as Amina, or my London friends would have.
r /> He turned away, walking down the street while tearing at the box. I stared after him. Was there something wrong with me? Or did he just not know what you were supposed to do when a girl you were friends with gave you a gift?
I trotted after him. “So, when we first met, why were you so distant? Why wouldn’t you talk to me?”
He cradled the phone in one enormous palm. “Um, I didn’t think you wanted to talk to me. Then, when you did, I didn’t think it was a good idea.”
We walked through Bove Town. Low terraced houses pressed their faces right onto the sidewalk. Eddy shifted sideways, onto the road. Even though he was slim he took up twice as much space as me, and there wasn’t room for us to walk side by side.
I couldn’t help glancing through windows at families watching Sunday afternoon television. An old man caught me looking and stared back accusingly through thick-rimmed glasses. I jolted and turned to Eddy. “And that was linked to what you said about fate, about believing in fate? Do you still think we shouldn’t spend time together?”
“Now that you know what you know, that would be silly. I think we can be...” He put the phone into his pocket. “Good friends for one another.”
I nodded. I had still given him no sign that I wanted things to be any other way, but this mirrored his warning on the school bus. I chose my words carefully. “And you can be sure that’s what’s going to happen?”
He looked at me for a long beat. “It’s different for me. I’ve already been who I am, once. And I’ve been woken up for a purpose. It all means that things are only going to go a certain way, and I think it involves you exactly as a friend. Exactly, precisely a friend.”
I stared, wanting to shout and rage at him, but also desperately trying to keep my eyes from glistening with tears. “Um, but you can’t be sure, can you?” I cast around for something to throw into the discussion. “What about that Mr. Neil? He seems to be a big expert on everything. What does he say?”
“I would ask him. I really would.” Eddy’s golden eyes widened with feeling. “But I can’t. He’s not here.”
“Well that’s not much good.” I smiled, trying to lighten the tone. “And what’s he doing with all this Mr. Neil business? Why doesn’t he have a first name?”
One corner of Eddy’s mouth lifted in the beginning of a smile.
“What?”
He raised his eyebrows.
What had I missed? Mr. Neil, the old crossword master, governor of Levels, and guardian of Eddy Moon. Mr. Neil the player-around with anagrams. I separated the letters of his name, rearranged them, then slapped myself on the forehead.
Eddy nodded.
“Merlin? Oh. My. God.”
He stopped at the entrance to Chalice Drive, beside Boxer’s hoof prints in the verge. “Right. Here we are. I’ll head off.”
I gawped. How could he drop something like that into conversation, and then just leave?
“I’ll see you tomorrow, though.”
I nodded. “Okay. Cool.”
“And Maddie, I’m serious about what I said earlier, about us being friends. Ask your Mum. Tell your Mum that we’ve had coffee, see what she says.”
“But...”
He turned, and with a few of his incredibly long strides he rounded the first house and disappeared. My Mum? What could she possibly have to say about an afternoon with Eddy?
At home I breezed in through the back door. “Hi Mum!” I yelled, dumping my shopping bags on the kitchen floor.
She appeared in her usual spot in the sitting room doorway. “Hello sweetheart. Oh look! What’s all this?” She bent over the first bag, from Benetton.
“It’s my stuff from Bath. Eddy brought it for me.”
She froze, still bent over, but completely ignoring the clothes. “Really?” Her voice was high and strained. “That’s nice of him.” She stood. “He’s a good friend to you?”
“Mm hmm.”
“Good, it’s nice you’ve got a friend, who’s a boy.” Each time she said the word friend it grated slightly, like chalk on a blackboard. “He’s...”
“Yeah?”
“When you first met him and I said be kind to him, I didn’t mean...”
I narrowed my eyes.
“You think you want to...?” Strain pulled the skin tight over Mum’s cheekbones.
I put her out of her misery. “It’s alright Mum. We’re just good friends.” I grabbed the shopping bags from the floor and headed for the stairs. I had lied. I shouldn’t have, but only because it was clearly such a big deal to Mum. Why did she care that I was in love with Eddy Moon?