Nimue's Confession — Part One
By Lorraine Schein
Happy New Story Sunday, Daily Tomorrow readers! This week we have another something special: a second story by the incomparable Lorraine Schein. Schein is one of those writers who can not only nimbly move between “literary” and “genre” fiction, but can do the wizardry of writing stories that invalidate those categories by example. We confess to absolutely loving this one. - The Editor
Nimue's Confession
By Lorraine Schein
There’s Merlin, running past the health food store, toward the Institute, his old Birkenstocks flapping, one strap broken, the stars on his robe aflutter over his jeans, trying to escape again. But whatever door he takes will return him to the tower...
I admit it. My name is Nimue--yes, the one who locked Merlin up in his crystal cave. But only so he could find the cures for what ails Earth now ... And it was not really a cave, it was a modern, Bauhaus-style laboratory, that I hid in the suburban woods of New Jersey.
I’m forcing Myrr to do research alongside me. He’s such a lazy man. Talented, but lazy. Absentminded, like Einstein, whose old office he often visits. We’re looking for solutions to ecological problems--deforestation, the ozone layer, extinction of forest animals--and also doing experiments in theoretical physics, my specialty.
We were lovers--Merlin, Great Druid priest and I, Druid Priestess, fairy guardian of the threshold between the worlds. My reputation is unjust. I never seduced him -- he seduced me with his talk of magic and the future, his sharp black eyes and bright laugh.
I always did prefer older men. Though I admit I did steal the secret of immortality from him, which is why I’m still around.
You like my dress? Thanks. No, not from the Renaissance Faire. This velvet gown is the only thing of mine left over from the old times; I got the string crochet cap and striped knee-highs from the local thrift. There wasn’t time to pack.
I dress hippie and grunge, but in the part of town where I live, no one minds. It goes with my music. I belong to a local pagan women’s rock group -- the Nine Priestesses of Avalon. We play heavy magic metal and Celtic folk songs, accompanied by a synthesizer and a familiar.
There he goes, along the highway.
I can get him back. My magic is greater. And I can run faster in my Nikes, I’m younger. Lucky I refused to buy him running shoes.
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