Nimue's Confession — Part Five
By Lorraine Schein
“Nimue, you haven’t heard a word I said!” says Merlin.
“Sorry. I’ve been remembering....” I turn from the window and look at him, knowing what will come next.
“There is nothing to do here but remember. You think you learned enough to keep me locked up here forever,” he says, glaring, his raven-sharp eyes fixed on mine.
“Enough to keep you from leaving this century. I was remembering when I cast the spell—”
“The one you learned so well from me,” he says bitterly.
“---That threw us both into the future--how far we did not know till it was over. Then I sealed your door with my final words...a protective spell...”
“After that last battle, I was happy to get away from that Arthurless era. But I wanted to retire, not be held prisoner,” he says, shaking his fist at me. “I don’t even have a TV! Only your visits for company.”
“You said you wanted your own space. Uninterrupted time to work on your experiments and studies. To watch time flow through these windows and doors.”
“I suppose you were just following your old teacher’s instructions,” he sighed.
“Yes,” I say quietly.
“You should never have listened to me. The senile ravings of an old man....” Merlin smiles, and looks about as senile as an electron about to jump to another level.
“How is the research coming along, by the way?” I ask. “Any results?”
“Results?”
“Research results, Myrr. You know that’s why we’re here.”
“No solution yet for global warming. Or the hole in the ozone layer. Or anything you could call practical. But I have found something interesting out about the 9th dimension.”
“Oh?”
“It could be a way to help Arthur. He’s stuck.”
“What do you mean? What does Arthur have to do with it?”
“I saw Arthur. I saw his face in the stars from my telescope. Then I heard him calling from behind the door I ran through today. He was saying, ‘Come to Avalon.’ That’s why I ran out-- to find him.”
“But there is no Avalon here,” I say.
“Yes, there is,” he says brightly.
“Where?”
“Look on the map,” he says.
Lorraine Schein is a New York writer and poet. Her work has appeared in VICE Terraform, Strange Horizons, Scientific American, and Michigan Quarterly, and in the anthologies The Unbearables, Wild Women and Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana del Rey & Sylvia Plath. The Futurist’s Mistress, her poetry book, is available from Mayapple Press. Her newest book, The Lady Anarchist Cafe, was published by Autonomedia and available on Amazon.
Copyright © 2025 Lorraine Schein