Avalon High (13 page)

But just then the bell rang.

And Mr. Morton sighed tiredly and said, “You’d better get along to class, Elaine.”

“But what about Lance? Don’t you want to reschedule?”

“No.” Mr. Morton took the newspaper from his desk
and dropped it, unread, into the trash can. His tone, when he spoke again, had a knell of finality to it. “It doesn’t matter now, you see.”

And with that, I knew I was dismissed.

I told myself I was being crazy. I told myself I was being ridiculous.

I told myself lots of things.

But I did it, anyway. Instead of joining Liz and Stacy—who’d informed me my “initiation” had been scheduled for the upcoming weekend—for lunch, I did what I always did when I didn’t know what else to do: I called my mother.

I didn’t want to. But after my strange meeting with Mr. Morton, I’d moved through my morning classes in a sort of daze, feeling more and more uneasy with every passing minute.

Your part in it was over before it could even begin this
time
. Mr. Morton’s voice rang inside my head.
My
part?
This
time?

If only I had stopped him when I had the chance….
Stopped who? Marco? Stopped Marco from doing what?

None of it made any sense. It was like the ravings of a lunatic.

But I’d looked into Mr. Morton’s eyes, and I hadn’t seen a hint of insanity. The only thing I’d seen in them was despair.

And fear.

It was stupid. It was impossible.

But when the lunch bell rang, I was on the nearest pay phone anyway.

“The Order of the Bear?” my mother echoed wonderingly. “What on earth—”

“Come on, Mom,” I said. “I know you know it. It was in one of your books.”

“Well, of course I know it.” Mom sounded amused. “I’m just surprised to hear you’ve actually
read
one of my books. You’ve always been so adamantly against all things medieval.”

“I know,” I said, straining to hear her over the din in the hallway. It would die down when everyone finally got into the caf. “I told you. I need to know for this report I’m writing. Just a couple things—”

“Well, Ellie, honey,” Mom said. “I hardly think it’s fair for you to get help from an Arthurian scholar for your little report. What about all the other students who don’t have an Arthurian scholar at home to consult?”

“Mom,” I nearly shouted. “Just answer the question.”

“About the Order of the Bear? Well, it’s a group of people who believe King Arthur will rise again someday and—”

“—bring us out of the Dark Ages,” I finished for her. “I know. But I mean…isn’t that kind of like believing in aliens, or something? I mean, they seem like a bunch of kooks—”

“The Order of the Bear is not made up of kooks, Ellie. It’s a highly respected and well-educated group of men and women,” she said. “It’s a very elite organization, and extremely difficult to get into. Besides, there’s proof Arthur actually existed, and there’s no convincing proof—to me, anyway—that we’ve ever been visited by creatures from another planet. Whereas we can actually trace Arthur’s lineage. His father was Uther Pendragon, his mother Igraine, the wife of the Duke of Cornwall. Which, as you can imagine, was a bit of a difficulty, seeing as how she was married to a man who was not the father of her child with Uther. But Uther took care of that by slaying the duke in battle, and was able to marry Igraine and eventually make Arthur his legitimate heir—”

I sucked in my breath because this—slaying a guy in battle, then marrying his wife—sounded so familiar. Except, of course, Jean was just Will’s stepmom, not his real mom.

“But what about the parts like—like Mordred?” I asked. “And about Arthur having been surrounded by mystical beings like Merlin and the Lady of the Lake? I
mean, that stuff can’t be true.”

“Well,” my mom said, “most likely some of it was. Mordred did kill Arthur, in the end, in a battle over the throne. And Merlin was probably a religious mystic or sage, not a wizard, of course. And as for the Lady of the Lake, well, now, she’s a character who has always been shrouded in mystery—”

“But Lancelot,” I interrupted. “And Guinevere? They were real, too?”

“Of course, sweetie, though references to them appear much later than, say, references to other Arthurian characters, such as, oh, his dog, Cavall, for instance—”

I nearly dropped the phone.

“His…dog?”

“Yes, the legendary hunting dog of King Arthur, Cavall.” My mother, warming to the subject—which was, after all, her favorite—began to lecture, something professors can’t help doing. “Cavall supposedly possessed a humanlike ability to read situations and people—”

Cavall.
Cavalier.

No. No, it just wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t.

My throat had gone dry. But I managed to croak, “Did Arthur have a boat?”

“Well, of course, all great heroes had a boat. Arthur’s was the
Prydwyn.
He had many adventures at sea—” She seemed to remember she was speaking to her daughter and not one of her grad students, since she suddenly broke off and asked, “Ellie, are you all right? You’ve
never been interested in this kind of thing. Are you coming down with something? Do you need me to come to school to pick you up? You know Daddy and I are going into D.C. tonight for that dinner with Dr. Montrose and his wife, right? I hope you’ll be all right alone. It says on the Weather Channel there’s supposed to be some kind of storm. You know where the flashlights are, don’t you, if the power goes out?”

Prydwyn. Pride Winn
.

I remembered the way Will had chuckled the day before when he’d been explaining to me how he’d come up with such an odd name for his boat.

It had just popped into his head. And stuck there.

Like the name Cavalier for his dog.

And the fact that he liked listening to medieval music.

And thought he knew me.

From another life.

“I gotta go, Mom,” I said, and hung up, even as she was asking, “What kind of report is this, anyway, Elaine? It sounds awfully detailed for a high school paper….”

Because I’d noticed that, hanging from the booth I was standing in, was a tattered Anne Arundel County phone book. I lifted it.

I didn’t do it because I expected to find anything. I did it to prove to myself that what I was thinking was completely insane. I did it because I
knew
it couldn’t be true. I just wanted proof of that fact. I did it to wipe from my memory the look on Mr. Morton’s face—that expression of dread I’d seen written across his craggy features
when I’d told him about Lance and Jennifer.

I did it to dry up the sweat on my hands.

I turned to the W section.

Because the
A
in A. William Wagner’s name had to stand for something. It had never occurred to me to ask before, but now I wanted to know.

Generally, when a guy goes by his middle name, it’s because his first name is the same as his father’s. Will’s father’s name was probably Anthony. Or Andrew. Will probably didn’t like being called Andrew because having two Andrews or whatever in the family was too confusing—

I found it almost at once.
Wagner, Arthur, ADM
, lived at Will’s address.

I stared disbelievingly down at the page.

Arthur. Will’s real name was Arthur.

And he had a dog named Cavalier, and a boat named
Pride Winn
.

And his best friend’s name was Lance.

And his girlfriend—now ex—was called Jennifer, which was English for Guinevere.

And his dad had married another man’s wife after her first husband had died, some said at Admiral Wagner’s own hand….

I dropped the phone book. I needed to get a grip. I was being ridiculous. It was all just a coincidence, the similarities between Will’s life and the life of the king I’d just heard about from my mom. Because Jean—that was what Will had said his stepmother’s name was—wasn’t
Will’s mom, the way Igraine had been Arthur’s. Will’s mom had died when he was born, years ago. Will and Marco were stepbrothers, not blood relations. Not blood relations in any way.

See? What Mr. Morton was thinking wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. And it wasn’t.

I picked up my backpack and headed for the ladies’ room. Once there, I ran cold water in the sink and splashed my face with it, then looked at my dripping face in the mirror above the line of sinks.

What on earth was I thinking? Did I really believe that Arthur—ancient king of England, founder of the Round Table—had been reborn at last and was living in
Annapolis
?

And did I really think that I, Elaine Harrison, was the Lady of Shalott, a woman who had killed herself over a guy like
Lance
?

That thought acted like a splash of cold water to my mind. First of all, okay,
no way
am I the reincarnation of a dope like Elaine.

And second of all, people—even legendary kings of England—don’t come back. These kinds of things do not happen. I mean, we live in an orderly world, and in an enlightened and educated age. We don’t have to make up myths and stories to explain things we don’t understand like they did in the old days, because we know now that there are scientific explanations for them.

Will Wagner was
not
a modern-day Arthur reborn.

And yet…

What if it
were
true?

I gripped the sides of the sink, staring at my reflection. What was happening to me? Was I really starting to believe something so completely unbelievable? How could I? I was the practical one. Nancy was the romantic, not me. I’m the daughter of educators. I can’t let myself believe in this kind of stuff.

And yet…

And yet seconds later I’d grabbed my backpack again and was hurrying back to the classroom I’d been sitting in a few hours before. I needed, I knew, to speak to Mr. Morton, to find out if he really believed what I suspected he did, and whether that meant that he—or I—or the both of us—was crazy.

I didn’t know what I was going to say to him. That I knew? But
what
did I know? I didn’t know anything…

…except that I still couldn’t seem to get this buzzing sound out of my head.

But when I got to his classroom, it wasn’t Mr. Morton who was at the chalkboard. It was Ms. Pavarti, the school vice principal.

“Yes?” she said, when she saw me. Every head in the room—people who had fifth period lunch, not fourth like me—had swiveled toward me, eyes raking me as I stood in the hallway, clutching my backpack and looking, I’m sure, like a giant freak, with water stains still down my shirtfront, my ponytail half falling down, and my eyes all huge.

“May I help you?” Ms. Pavarti asked politely.

“I—I’m looking for Mr. Morton,” I stammered.

“Mr. Morton has gone home for the day,” Ms. Pavarti said. “He wasn’t feeling well. Shouldn’t you be in class? Or the lunchroom? Where’s your hall pass?”

I turned from her numbly.

Mr. Morton had gone home. Mr. Morton had gone home for the day.

Nice try, buddy. You aren’t getting out of this
that
easily.

“Excuse me.” Ms. Pavarti had followed me out into the hall. “Young lady. I asked you a question. Where is your hall pass? What class are you supposed to be in right now?”

I didn’t even glance back at her. I headed for the doors to the school.

“Stop!” Ms. Pavarti’s voice was loud in the empty hallway. I saw people in the administrative offices glance our way, curious about what was going on. “What is your name? Young lady! Don’t you walk away from me!”

Except that by that time, I wasn’t walking anymore. I was running.

And I didn’t stop running until I was off school property. Not that Ms. Pavarti had ever had a hope of catching me. I just couldn’t bring myself to slow down. It was almost like if I ran fast enough, it would turn out not to be true. My head would clear, and I’d realize what an idiot I was being, and it would all go back to normal.

Except that when I finally slowed down, I didn’t feel that way at all. That things were back to normal. If
anything, they were worse. Because now, for the first time in my life, I was skipping school. I had left school grounds without permission.

I was truant.

I was a delinquent.

And the worst part of all?

I didn’t even care.

Half an hour later, when the cab pulled up in front of the apartment complex, and I handed the driver almost half the money I’d had with me—eight dollars, leaving me with only that much to get back to school later—I still didn’t care.

I didn’t care about the fact that I was in a part of Annapolis I’d never been to before. I didn’t care that I had no idea how to get home, or money enough left to get me there anyway. I didn’t care about anything except that I’d found him—with the help of Information and another pay phone—and now I was going to get some answers that made sense.

I hoped.

I knew he was home. I could hear the TV blaring from behind the door I’d pounded on. Maybe he couldn’t hear me because the volume was turned up so loud. Maybe that’s why he took so long to answer.

But when he finally did pull the door open, I saw that it wasn’t that he hadn’t heard me. That’s not why it had taken him so long to answer the door at all. He hadn’t answered right away because he’d been looking through the peephole to see who was there.

And had grabbed an extremely large frying pan to hit me with, in case I turned out to be someone dangerous.

At least that’s what I assumed, since he lowered the frying pan as soon as he saw I was alone.

“Oh,” Mr. Morton said. “It’s you.”

He didn’t seem surprised. Resigned, is more like it.

“Go away,” he said. “I’m busy.” And he started to close the door.

But I was too fast for him. Before he could close the door all the way, I thrust my foot inside the doorway, the thick rubber on my Nike sole keeping the door from slamming shut in my face.

I don’t know what came over me. I had never done anything like this in my life—skipped class, left school property without permission, gone to a teacher’s apartment, stuck my foot in his door to keep him from shutting me out—that wasn’t me.
None
of this was me. My heart was pounding, my palms slick with nervous sweat. I thought I might even be sick.

But I hadn’t come all this way just to get sent home.
This was something I had to do. I didn’t know why.

Except maybe that I’d grown up in a house full of people who knew all the answers to the questions on
Jeopardy!
And now, finally, I wanted some answers of my own.

Mr. Morton looked down at my foot. He did seem surprised then. Surprised by my resourcefulness.

But he didn’t try to fight me. He shrugged and said, “Suit yourself.”

And turned away to continue what he’d been doing when I’d knocked. Which was packing.

He had his clothes spread out everywhere. But that wasn’t what he was putting into the suitcases that lay scattered about the floor. He was filling those with books. Thick books, like the kind my dad is always bringing home from the university library. Most of them looked extremely old. I had no idea how Mr. Morton thought he was going to lift a single one of those suitcases once he’d finally managed to get them closed.

I looked at the suitcases. Then I looked at Mr. Morton, who was sorting through a pile of books he held in his arms. Some went into a suitcase. The others he just threw on the floor. It was clear he simply didn’t care what happened to the things he was leaving behind.

“Well, what do you want?” Mr. Morton asked, still sorting. “I haven’t got all day. I have a plane to catch.”

“I can see that,” I said. I lifted the book nearest me. Its title wasn’t even in English, but I recognized it,
because my dad had it on his shelf back home in St. Paul.
Le Morte d’Arthur
. The Death of Arthur. Great. “Kind of a sudden trip, isn’t it?”

“It isn’t a trip,” Mr. Morton said shortly. “I’m leaving town. For good.”

“You are?” I glanced around at the room’s furnishings, which were sparse and fairly new, though not very expensive-looking. “Why?”

Mr. Morton flicked a single appraising glance at me. Then he went back to his sorting.

“If it’s about your grade,” he said, ignoring my question, “You shouldn’t worry. Whoever they get to replace me will certainly give you an A. That proposal you handed in was actually very well written. You can clearly string two sentences together, which is a lot more than most of the little cretins at that school can do. You’ll do just fine. Now please go. I’ve got a lot of things to do, and a very short time to get them done.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Tahiti,” he said, studying the spine of a book before tossing it into the suitcase in front of him.

“Tahiti?” I echoed. “That’s kind of far.”

He ignored the question, moving behind me to close the door I’d left open.

“I told you,” he said, when the door was safely closed. He spoke in so terse and quiet a tone that I could barely hear him above the sound of the television, still blaring from the next room. “Your part in this is over. There’s nothing more you can do…nothing more you’re
expected
to do. Now be a good girl, Elaine, and go back to school.”

“No.” I moved a pile of books, then sat down in the space I’d created on his sofa.

Mr. Morton blinked down at me as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard.

“Pardon me?” he said.

“No,” I said. I sounded so adamant, I surprised even myself. Inwardly, of course, I was quaking. I had never disobeyed a direct order from a teacher—or any adult, really—before. I had no idea where these hidden reserves of courage were coming from, but I was very glad to find them so unexpectedly. “No, I’m not leaving. Not until you tell me what’s going on. Why do you keep saying ‘your part in this is over’? My part in
what
, exactly? And why are you trying to get out of here so fast? What are you afraid is going to happen, anyway?”

Mr. Morton sighed and said in a tired voice, “Please. Miss Harrison. Elaine. I haven’t time for this. I have a plane to catch.” He reached for the books I’d moved from the couch. I noticed for the first time that his hands were shaking.

I stared up at him, truly taken aback.

“Mr. Morton,” I said, “what is it? What are you so afraid of? What are you running away from?”

“Miss Harrison.” He sighed heavily. Then, as if he’d given the matter some thought, he said, “Your parents are here on a sabbatical, aren’t they? They can take some time off from their research. Why don’t you ask them if
the three of you could take a trip? Somewhere far from the eastern seaboard. It would be best if you could leave at once.” His gaze flicked toward the window, through which I could see clouds had obscured the bright afternoon sunlight. “The sooner the better.”

Then he turned and added more books to the suitcase he was packing.

“Mr. Morton,” I said carefully, “I’m sorry, but I think you need help. From a mental health professional.”

He glanced at me over the rims of his glasses. “That’s what you think, is it?” was all he said, and this with a note of indignation in his voice.

I didn’t blame him for being offended. It wasn’t really my place to say all this. Still,
someone
had to. The poor guy was completely bonkers. Not that he didn’t have good reason to feel a little off-kilter about the whole thing. But still.

“I know all this stuff with Will and Lance and Jennifer seems kind of…coincidental,” I went on. “But you’re a teacher…an educator. You’re supposed to use reason and intelligence. Surely you can’t really believe in something as ridiculous as King Arthur being reincarnated.”

“And that’s why you came all the way here,” Mr. Morton said. “To tell me what I believe in is ridiculous. You’re worried about me, I suppose? Afraid I might be mad?”

“Well,” I said, feeling bad about it, but knowing I had to be truthful. “Yes. I mean, I can see how someone—even
someone who doesn’t belong, you know, to this cult you belong to—”

He looked only mildly surprised to hear I knew about his little group. His tone was mild, too, as he rebuked me. “The Order of the Bear, Miss Harrison,” he said, “is a fraternal order, not a cult.”

“Whatever,” I said. “I realize how someone like me, for instance, could look at all these coincidences—Will’s parents; his name; the thing with Lance and Jennifer; Will’s names for his dog and his boat. Stuff like that—and think to themselves, ‘Hey, yeah. That’s King Arthur, reincarnated.’ But you know, there are important differences, too. Will’s real mom isn’t Jean—his real mom is dead. Marco is his stepbrother, not his half brother. And I am most certainly not the Lily Maid of Astolat. I couldn’t fall in love with Lance if I tried. You’re a
teacher
, Mr. Morton. You’re supposed to be a rational thinker. How can a man like you believe in something so completely ridiculous as King Arthur rising from the dead—unless, of course, you really are nuts?”

He blinked. Just once.

Then he said, “Not ‘believe,’ Miss Harrison.
Know
. It’s a fact. Arthur
will be
back.
Is
back. Only—” His expression darkened.

Then he seemed to shut down again.

“No. It’s no good. You’re better off not knowing,” he said, shaking his head. “Knowledge…it can be dangerous. I sometimes…well, I wish
I
didn’t know, most of the time.”

“Try me,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.

He stared at me for a minute.

Then he said, “Very well. You’re an intelligent girl—at least you seemed to be, up until now. What if I were to tell you that my order—the Order of the Bear—is a secret society whose only function is to attempt to thwart the forces of evil that are keeping King Arthur from rising once again to power?”

“Um,” I said. “I’d probably tell you that I already knew that. Also that there are medications you can take to prevent these kinds of paranoid delusions.”

His expression grew sour. “We don’t expect the man to just come popping up from his final resting place, Excalibur in hand. We are not simpletons, Miss Harrison. Like the monks in Tibet who search the world over for the next Dalai Lama, the members of the Order of the Bear look for potential Arthurs in each and every generation.” He removed his glasses and began polishing the lenses with a handkerchief he’d taken from his back pocket. “When we find one we think might have a serious chance, we send a member of the Order to the boy’s town, to observe him, generally in the guise of a teacher, like myself. Most of the time, these boys disappoint us. But every once in a while—such as in Will’s case—the order is given reason to hope….”

He put his glasses back on and peered at me through the now shining lenses.

“And then it’s just a matter of keeping the dark
forces from destroying the boy’s chances of reaching his potential.”

“That’s where you lose me,” I said. “Dark forces? Mr. Morton, come on. What are you talking about? Darth Vader? Voldemort? Give me a break.”

“Do you think what happened with Lancelot and the queen, all those years ago, was merely an affair?” Mr. Morton asked, sounding shocked by my naïveté. “Because it was something far more insidious, and caused, not just by weakness of character on the part of those two, but by the strength of the forces against Arthur, who were looking to destroy him—not just his faith in himself, but his people’s faith in him, as well. That was when Mordred—who is, and always will be, an agent of evil—moved in for the kill.”

“Uh,” I said, staring at him. I was having a little trouble digesting some of what he’d been telling me. Well, okay.
All
of what he’d been telling me. “Okay.”

I must have sounded convincingly interested, since, encouraged, Mr. Morton went on.

“You know he was actually too late that first time. Mordred was, I mean. The Dark Ages died in spite of his—and evil’s—best efforts, because Arthur had been on the throne long enough to lead his people out of them. And in the end, it wasn’t Mordred who lived on through the annals of time as a good and just king, but his brother Arthur.

“But Mordred learned from that mistake,” Mr. Morton continued. “And since that time, whenever
Arthur has tried to rise again, Mordred has been there to stop him, earlier and earlier in the life cycle, so that the Light might never have any success at all. And so it will go, you see, Elaine, until the end of time…or until good finally triumphs over the darkness, once and for all, and Mordred is put to rest.”

I cleared my throat.

The thing was, Mr. Morton
seemed
lucid enough. He seemed as sane as—well, my own father.

But what he was saying—what he and his “order” believed…. It was just
nuts.
No rational person could think that Will Wagner was the reincarnation of King Arthur. The thing with our names—and Cavall—aside…. Well, it just didn’t make any sense.

And that wasn’t all that didn’t make sense.

“I don’t understand,” I said flatly. “If you really think Will is Arthur—and that’s a pretty big if, mind you—why are you running away? Shouldn’t you stay here to help him? Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you the guy your order put here to protect him?”

Mr. Morton looked genuinely pained.

“There’s no point now,” he explained. “Once Guinevere leaves him, Arthur is vulnerable to whatever Mordred has in store for him. We’ve seen it happen time and time again, no matter what we’ve done to try to stop it. Mordred—with the help of the dark side, of course—will rise to power, as he has in so many different incarnations in the past. Think of the most diabolical political leaders in history, and you’ll have a good idea what I’m talking
about. All of them Mordred. And Arthur will…well.”

“He’ll what?” I asked him curiously.

“Well,” Mr. Morton said, looking uncomfortable, “he’ll die.”