Through the glass breezeway, he could see guests arriving: Maid Marian, with some of Robin Hood’s old Merry Men . . . Queen Jacinda, looking resplendent, with eleven new female knights flanking her like bodyguards, the coup in her castle put down . . . Boobeshwar and his troop of mongooses, each kissed on their furry heads by Princess Uma for their work slowing Japeth’s armies . . . Caleb and Cedric and Headmistress Gremlaine, who Tedros personally visited a few days earlier to tell them the truth about Chaddick of Foxwood, his liege, friend, and brother . . . Hansel and Gretel and Briar Rose and giant-slaying Jack, old members of the League of Thirteen . . .
All made their way to the lawn, savoring cups of masala tea and plates of saffron pudding and pistachio cookies from Reena’s mother, who insisted that she and Yousuf handle the food and drink for the wedding, including the elaborate feast to follow and the twelve-layer cardamom and rosewater cake.
Then Tedros noticed Pollux slinking up the hill, his oily head atop a poodle’s body, the dog trying to keep away from Castor, who’d already spotted his brother and was giving him a rabid glare. Pollux hadn’t been invited, of course, but he always came sucking up to power when he saw the chance. More guests flooded in: the Fairy Queen of Gillikin, the Ice Giant of Frostplains, the Dwarf Queen of Ooty, mixed amongst the students and teachers of the school. Pospisil, too, had come, the old priest dressed in gold and brought to the altar, where he would conduct the wedding. Everyone was here, Tedros thought, past divisions and sins forgiven, the Woods united under the Lion, all friends accounted for . . .
Except one.
Tedros hastened towards the Gallery of Good. He would have forgotten entirely about Merlin, except Merlin’s hat was making such a fuss about being away from the wizard that Tedros had stuffed it under pillows where the nymphs were dressing his bride.
At first, Tedros had assumed Merlin was down on the lawn, but Tedros hadn’t seen him and at nineteen years old, the wizard couldn’t be expected to be a model of timeliness and responsibility. Most likely he got sidetracked in the Gallery of Good, practicing his old spells, determined to return to the master wizard he once was. Tedros hopped off the staircase, jogging past corridors to the double doors at their end, shoving through and ready to give the boy a stern talking-to—
But he wasn’t there.
Tedros glanced around the deserted gallery and its exhibits and displays, celebrating the best of its alumni. Merlin had his own corner in the museum, a tribute to the wizard’s humble beginnings as a student at the school a long time ago. But nothing in Merlin’s display had been disturbed, not the glass cases with his old spellbooks or his first-year assignments or his medal for winning the Trial by Tale, as if the wizard boy had never come here like he’d said.
Must be with the guests after all, Tedros sighed, heading back—
Then something caught his eye.
One of the spellbooks.
It was open to a young painting of a radiant beach at sunset with pink sand and purple waters, the sea leading out in calm, brilliant waves . . . where it abruptly stopped. The waters, the waves: it all went blank, as if the painting was unfinished.
But it was the title that Tedros noticed.
SAMSARA
“Where Time Ends”
Samsara.
Tedros had heard it before.
Merlin had used the word in Avalon, when the teenage wizard was annoyed with him and Agatha.
“Think I would be here, decades younger than I’m supposed to be . . . instead of basking on the beaches of Samsara?” he’d groused. “That’s where I’d like to spend my future.”
Tedros looked at the painting again, the vibrant purple waters cut short.
Where Time Ends.
Something in Tedros went cold.
“Tedros?”
He turned.
Agatha.
She was in her wedding dress, Sophie and Hort at her side. Their faces were pale, watching something in Agatha’s hands.
Merlin’s hat.
The blue velvet fading, the threads coming apart, magically aging in front of their eyes.
It hacked out a cloud of dust: “Honor Commons.”
Tedros was already running.
BY THE TIME they arrived, his hair had gone gray, wrinkles creasing into his smooth face.
He was reclined on the couch, his old, velvet robes fanned around him like a purple sea, while a fire burned in the fireplace, casting light on murals of mermaids and kings.
They gathered around him, Tedros on his knees.
“My boy,” Merlin said.
“M, what’s happening . . . you have to make it stop . . . ,” the prince begged, watching him grow older, forty, forty-five, fifty at Tedros’ best guess, his cheeks weathering, his skin loosening on his bones. “Please, Merlin.”
“No one gets to be young again for free, Tedros,” the wizard spoke. “Once upon a time, the King and Queen of Borna Coric learned that lesson when they tried to stay young forever, only to learn they were on borrowed time. I, too, was on borrowed time. Nineteen years of added life, lived in nineteen days. More years than I had left to live. And now Father Time has come to collect.”
“But surely you can fight it,” Agatha pressed. “Surely you can do something—”
“What I want to do is be right here, with you,” said the wizard, his hair gone white. He looked at Tedros in his suit and Agatha in her wedding dress, Sophie’s lips smeared and Hort’s hair in disarray. “The great things you will do. So much love between you.”
His shoulders hunched, liver spots dotting his arms.
Sixty. Seventy. Seventy-five.
Tears wet Tedros’ face. “Stay with me, Merlin . . . We can be together . . . We can see the world . . .”
Merlin’s eyes fogged behind his spectacles. “I’ve seen the world in you, my boy. Now it is time to go where time ends. To cross the line between seeing and silence . . .” His words slowed. “Tell me . . . what did you say to the Lady of the Lake . . . What did you say that made her give you her Wizard Wish?”
Tedros watched him turn bony and limp. “Merlin—”
Merlin clutched his hand. “Tell me, my boy.”
Tedros held down tears. “I told her how I proposed to Agatha.”
Merlin’s chest rose and fell.
Agatha looked at Tedros, nodding at him to go on.
“I woke Agatha in the middle of the night,” said Tedros, gripping the old man tight. “We were at Camelot. Not too long after we came from school. She was asleep in her chamber. I said that I needed her help. Naturally, she came at once. We snuck past the guards, through the gardens, and down the shore to the Savage Sea. I explained that I’d found a seer, who told me my reign could be protected from Evil by a magical talisman. A secret jewel that appeared once a year where the moon met the sea. Tonight was that night, I told Agatha, pointing to a moonlit rock far out into the waves. The waters were frigid, the currents rough. But I promised her: if we could get the jewel, we’d be shielded against Evil forever. No surprise, she dove in before I could. We swam together, through the ripping undertow, she dragging me out when I got pulled down, me chewing through seaweed that had snared her, both of us chilled to the bone and losing steam as we pushed length after length into icy water. And just when we thought we could swim no more, our lungs failing, our eyes too salt-stung to see, we were there, at the end, the surface of the rock polished by the light, the talisman in plain sight. That’s when Agatha found it: the diamond ring I’d left there. Now, she understood. The talisman was a question. Our journey to get to it the proof of our love. I was asking to be her husband and she my wife. That we would risk our lives for each other in a winter sea was answer enough. Death would be no obstacle to our love, only another challenge to overcome. Which is why I need your Wizard Wish, I told the Lady. To hold on to the love I fought so hard to find. Love that the Lady could still find herself, even without her powers. She had to give her story a chance. She had to trust the will of fate. Fate that had brought she and I together. It is not your time for death, I told her. And it is not the time for mine. We’re part of each other’s story now, the way you and I were part of my father’s, bound by love and pain and forgiveness, but most of all hope. Hope that we can all be as valiant as the Lady, to face our mistakes, to accept our weakness and keep going, wherever it takes us, not for Good or Evil, not for glory, but to find the truth of who we are meant to be.”