The Five Fold Symbol

Chapter 2: The Once and Future King

    The old man grumbled as he got up. He smacked his lips together a moment, his brow furrowed as he looked at the roadblock he’d hit. It hadn’t been there earlier in the morning. He then realized it was actually a person. A girl. And a pretty girl, at that.

    She didn’t bother to help him up-- figured-- and he didn’t offer an apology for running her over. She was already hurrying away by the time he had stood up, but he did notice a symbol on the back of her neck, just under the hairline. He’d seen that symbol before, not too long ago.

    Merlin shook his head, baffled yet unconcerned about the choice in tattoo artist of so many young people those days. It seemed that almost every way he looked, that five-fold symbol was staring back at him, sending a warning that settled in the pit of his stomach.

    Merlin picked up his bike and dusted off the seat before mounting it and riding off slowly, as most old men would. He missed being young. He knew he was old, far older than anyone would expect, but when he looked at his reflection, the face he saw was from his youth. His age was a veil, waiting to be removed-- begging to be removed.

    And so he set off towards the lake, towards the cave systems he resided in. “Shouldn’t be too hard to wait another century or millennia for youth...” he grumbled outwardly, ignoring the stares he got as he biked from the town. He was used to them by that time. It was always the same.

    Merlin remembered- albeit vaguely-- when he used to care about what the people thought. At first he had gone to school, learned what he could from the mortals. He’d gone and worked when he was too old to keep up with school, but eventually that part of his life had ended as well. Finally he reached the point in time where he wasn’t allowed to work. He was “retired” according to the rest of the world. But he didn’t have a need for a house or a car or a library card when he was so old. Eventually he sold his home and nearly everything he had. He didn’t need any of it.

    That was when he found the caves. After serious consideration, he figured he would simply rest and wait for the return of Arthur there. The caves were warm enough. If he was cold he would light a fire. If he needed a bath, he would go like everyone else to the bathhouses in the center of town. He had saved up more than enough money from the thousands of years he had already been waiting that food was never a problem for him.

    And all he ever really did was wait. Occasionally he would salvage a book or two for a little while before tossing them himself. Less often, he would pick up a newspaper, peruse the current topics of the era. It was usually just rubbish, so he hadn’t bought one in many years. All he did, and needed to do, was wait for Arthur.

    He sat down on the edge of the lake and sighed.

    “It’s been a while, Arthur...” Merlin said. “You died... You died in my arms and I still keep believing you’re alive down there... That you’re coming back.” He frowned and looked at the still waters. “Am I wrong? Are you gone? Wasted away like all this time up here?”

    Merlin scoffed, “Of course you wouldn’t answer that, would you? Even if you were alive. You’d ask me if there was anything I really could do properly. You’d tell me to muck the stables or polish your armor. You would still be wary of magic... That’s for sure.”

    “Your father shoved that into your head, you know that? Every time someone got killed for magic I couldn’t help but worry that I might be next, and yet, here I am. Alive and alone. Same future as you thought I’d have, at least. That’s one thing I can say for myself. I’m hard to change. Though, you probably wouldn’t recognize me if you saw me now. You’d sneer and walk away, and I wouldn’t be offended. That’s just what everyone does nowadays...”

    Merlin’s thought drifted back to the girl he’d seen. What if she had known who he was? What if she had seen him in his prime? What would she have done then? What would he have done, for that matter? What about her mark?

    “I don’t know what’s going on down there, Arthur...” Merlin started, “But there’s a hollowness in me... Something is wrong again. There’s a sign... A sign in my dreams that follows me into my waking hours... I can’t understand it... It’s there, always there. A five-fold symbol from the Celts...”

    He stood and hopefully looked at the waters once more, but they were as still as they always were. “You’ll be back soon; I can feel it. The time of the Once and Future King is near again...”