If I Could Tell It

The Central British Battle Camp, Britain, 647

“Everyone, this is Ellion.” I said as I stood in front of the bonfire that all of the men in the camp were sitting around and drinking ale. “He is going to be joining us.”

I adjusted the cloth sling that my shoulder was being supported by for the time being. I looked around carefully to make sure that no one was going to challenge me about my decision to invite Ellion into camp. I nodded slowly when I was sure that everyone was alright with it, granted that I had not told them that he had formerly fought for the Saxons.I judged that it was alright because I trusted Ellion and he was technically british and therefore right to fight for us.

We sat down on the hard, dusty ground next to Lancelot, whom I had told the whole story to as soon as we had gotten to camp. He handed me a worn metal cup filled with lukewarm ale and I took a long draft and Lancelot patted my thigh. I looked at him.

“Good job my friend.” He told me. “Your plan worked.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You did not hear?” Lancelot asked.

I shook my head. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“We won the battle.” He said happily. “Thanks to you and your idea.”

“Did...did they surrender?” I asked. A shred of hope worked it’s way into my mind.

He shook his head. “No, but only one of our men was killed today, and when we sent a scout to look at the damage done, there were over seventy Saxons bodies on the field.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised.

“Yes.” Lancelot said. “Arthur, any doubt you might have had should be gone now.”

I nodded solemnly and looked into the fire, continuing to drink my ale in silence.

“Y-you!”A slurred voice ruptured my thoughts.

I looked up quickly to see Gawain, practically tripping over himself with drunkenness, he wore only an under tunic and breeches with his oversized cloak mostly covering his body. I looked to his face to see the scratches that Ellion had supposedly given him. As he had said, they were there, and they resembled the wounds of a giant bear or lion claw raking across the soft, fragile skin of a face.

“Y-you are the one that-that gave me this,” Gawain spit at Ellion. He moved his cup in front of his face for emphasis but only managed to spill most of his ale down the front of his undertunic. “You are not-not-t British! You are a-a Saxon!”

“No, I am not,” Ellion said crisply and stood to face Gawain.”I am British, from the village of Ashdown.”

“Then why-why were you-”

Lancelot and I stood up together, I cupped my hand over his mouth so he would stop talking.

“I think you have had a bit too much ale Gawain.” Lancelot said loudly, probably in case anyone had happened to eavesdrop and were assuming things that they should not have.

I jerked my head in the direction of Gawain’s tent as direction to Lancelot and I heard Lancelot begin talking to him in soothing tones, leading him slowly toward his place of rest.

“I apologize for Gawain.” I said as I sat back down next to Ellion. “He frustrates all of us quite frequently.”

“Not all of your friends can be as perfect as Lancelot,” Ellion said with a slight laugh.

“What do you mean?” I asked him. We watched Lancelot help Gawain into his tent.

“Nevermind,” He shook his head. “Thank you for letting me be here.”

“This is where you should be,” I said forcefully. “And I promise that we will get your sister...I just need to talk to Kay and Bedivere about it.”

Ellion nodded and sighed sadly. “She is all I have left of my parents.”

I looked at him for a second. Then softly I said. “My sister killed my mother. My father hates me.”

I thought about what I said in the long moments that it took Ellion to respond to me. I almost wished that I was in Ellion’s position, to love my family so much that I wanted my sister back to remember my mother and father by. I think I almost felt that connection with my mother, but never with my father. My sister was evil; purely, terribly evil. And I did not know why.

Colorado Springs, America, 2010

I was forced to run errands with Miss Marion that day after football practice, which I had to sit out of because of a “bizarre shoulder injury” that Coach Johnson just could not seem to figure out. She insisted that I go with her to pick out new sneakers for school instead of going home, and she made an appointment to have my shoulder looked at by a doctor on that same day.

It never ceases to amuse me how superficial, selfish, and utterly unaware American people are.

There, where I am from, I am fighting for my life. I am organizing plans for men who do not know if they will even wake up the next morning after battle. Men whose families do not know if they will be able to afford supper the next day or clothe themselves properly. Even me, the highest rank in the most wealthy class of all of Britain, I am still fighting for survival, maybe not in the same ways but I am fighting for the survival of my people. The mere avoidance of death.

Here, where I have come to be, I have my adopted mother fussing over whether I should trim my hair short or get blue sneakers or red sneakers. And I am not even in the wealthy class here. This is average. The obsession of everything possession having to be the most perfect, luxurious item. The expectation that is embedded in the minds of American children from the day they are born. I deserve that.

And why, might I ask, is this the common morale amongst my peers in this day and age? I am afraid I already know the answer, because I too have been beguiled by this plush culture. Itis because we can. We buy the nicest things we can because we can.We buy everything because we can. Because we do not need to worry about the basic goal of survival. However, is it because we have far surpassed the man who fights for his life and whose family cannot afford supper or is it just because we have become a selfish, entitled people?

We have began to drown in our own greed like a thirsty man in water. We have wanted with such lust for so long to be able to live in luxury as american people do, yet we are just as if not more unhappy as the peasant people there who live with next to nothing.

“Arthur, can you read that to me?” Miss Marion asked as she searched in her purse for her wallet while we were waiting in line at the doctor’s office.

“Um…”I squinted at the electronic message board above the receptionist who was talking on the phone. “No. The print is too small.”

She found her wallet and looked up at the board with me.”You really can’t read that?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

She looked at me closely for a second, as if she was trying to look her way into my mind.

“What?” I asked.

“I am going to make an optometrist appointment for you while we’re here,” she told me, biting her lip.

“A what?”

“I want to have your eyes examined,” she said and began to face the receptionist who had just gotten off the phone .”I think you might need glasses.”

“I do not need glasses,” I informed her and leaned against the desk that the lady was behind.

“Quiet, Arthur, I am trying to have a conversation,” she said sternly.

I rolled my eyes. She had, out of the blue, told me that I needed to get glasses and then expected me not to talk to her about making the appointment.

“Go up to the pediatric clinic on floor two.” The lady informed Miss Marion. “During his examination the nurse will test his eyes to see if we need to make an optometrist appointment. If he needs one then we might be able to make one for today.”

I let out air through my mouth loudly and Miss Marion gave me a look. I decided to become suddenly interested in a poster on the bone structure of a human knee.

“Thank you,” she said to the lady and ushered me by my arm to the waiting area.

We sat down in rough cloth chairs, and I examined the stack of magazines on the small square table next to me.

“What was that about?” She asked me and tapped my bicep.

“What was what about?” I responded. “I just don’t think I need glasses.”

“You interrupted me and then rolled your eyes at me right in front of that lady,” she scolded. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I said, half irritated that she thought something was wrong with me.

“I can tell something’s wrong,” she said. “You seem on edge, please just tell me what happened.”

I just looked at Miss Marion for a moment. She was the closest thing I had to a mother, and for what it was worth she almost was a mother to me. A mother almost like the one that Morgain had taken away from me. The mother that had somehow managed to curtail my father from hating me as much as he did. The mother that loved me. She ripped it away from my like she cut the rope I was hanging from a cliff by.

“Nothing.” I said again. “My shoulder just hurts.”

“Arthur Ector?” A nurse opened the door and asked sweetly.

I nodded, and Miss Marion and I stood up and followed the nurse through the door.

I failed my eye examination.

Well, the nurse felt the need to say that I did not fail it; it was only that I was different, but I knew that was only the American disposition speaking. She then scheduled an optometrist appointment for right after the appointment for my shoulder, which meant that I had to sit at the medical facilities for another hour and a half, which I hated. All of the unfamiliar, fake, chemical smells made me uncomfortable, and all I wanted to do was run out the big doors at the end of the building and not come back.

“It looks like you dislocated it and then shoved it back into place…” Dr. Halverson said as he fingered my shoulder.

He had me take my shirt off and then taken my heart rate before he began examining my shoulder. I sat patiently on the table and just dutifully did as I was told as he felt my body and checked me over. Secretly I had to hold myself back from pushing him away as fast as I could. His touch, really any stranger’s touch, made me nervous. It was uncomfortable and I just wanted him to stop.

“Do you have any idea how this could have happened?” He asked me.

I looked at Miss Marion who was sitting in a chair and raking her eyes over me and the doctor, as if trying to extract the most amount of information possible from the situation. “Football practice probably.”

“But you do not know exactly when it began hurting?” The doctor asked suspiciously.

“This morning I guess,” I said nonchalantly. “It really doesn’t hurt that bad. I don’t even know why my coach made me sit out.”

“Coach Johnson said you could barely run and you couldn’t catch,” Miss Marion interjected. “Don’t try to downplay it. You don’t need to be tough here.”

I just looked at her for a moment. Obviously I needed to downplay it. I had no cause for the injury. Unless I wanted to tell the doctor that I actually was fighting in a war that happened to be held in medieval Britain.

“I know,” I said, calculating. “It just feels a lot better now.”

“Well, that tends to be a good thing,” The doctor said, running his hands like feathers over my skin from the bottom of my shoulder blade to my nipple. “Does your chest hurt at all?”

I shook my head.

“That really doesn’t give me very much to go on,” he said, distraught.

He gave Miss Marion a long knowing look and then turned to his computer. He began typing very quickly and occasionally looking back at me from over the top of his reading glasses.

“I am going to prescribe you some pain medication that you can pick up at the pharmacy downstairs,” he explained. “If it continues to hurt, I want you to come back in and talk to me about it, and please, if you do come back in, be more descriptive.”

I nodded, and then Miss Marion ushered me out of Dr. Halverson’s office.

Central British Battle Camp, Britain, 647

After I woke, I meandered over to Merlin’s and Lancelot’s tent, which was directly to the left of mine.

They were sitting upright on their cots and talking with only breeches on and sheepskin covering their legs.

“Can I talk to the both of you about something?” I asked as I came to stand between their two cots.

“Of course, Arthur,” Lancelot said and patted his bed beside him to signal me to sit down.

I complied and turned to face him and Merlin. “There is a problem with Ellion.”

“I already told Merlin,” Lancelot said quietly.

I sighed. On one hand, Lancelot’s telling Merlin made it much easier for me because now I did not have to tell him, but on the other hand, it made me a little sad that Lancelot seemed to be growing closer to Merlin than to me. I suppose that was only fair though; I had not been spending as much time with him as I used to, what with the going to Avalon to see Viviane and training with Kay and Bedivere more frequently. It still bothered me however. Lancelot and I had been best friends for as long as I could remember, and even though we were still close, he was beginning to get closer to others as well and that was only natural.

“I wanted to ask you if you might know what is wrong with my shoulder,” I told Merlin. I needed to put off asking him a favor as big as raiding the Saxon camp for a few moments.

“Come here,” Merlin commanded me.

I walked to him, and he brushed his fingers over the cloth that covered my left shoulder and my arm. I looked at Lancelot and raised my eyebrows at him, as if asking him what Merlin was doing. I felt a slight tingling everywhere that he ran his hands over. The tingling spread to all parts of my body and gave me an inherent sense of nervousness that made a proclamation that something supernatural was going on.

“It is dislocated,” Merlin said simply. “You must be in a great deal of pain.”

“I guess,” I said; it had been hurting but not so much that it was unbearable.

Merlin let his hands wander over my shoulder once more. “It seems it was dislocated more than once yesterday.” He frowned. “Like it went back into place and then was ripped out of place again.”

I swallowed. That must have been from my fall down the ravine in the forest when I ran.

“How do you know all of this?” I asked him.

“I just do,” Merlin said, looking down.

I set my glare on him. “They taught you it at Avalon.”

He gave the slightest incline of his chin that I could still make out as a nod. “There are lots of things I can do that you need not know...yet at least.”

I decided not to interrogate him about it, thinking that it would only cause another bout of Merlin’s sarcasm and judgement toward me. “Can you fix it? My shoulder I mean.”

“It is going to hurt,” He said and we made eye contact for a brief moment.

“I can take it.”

“Oh, I am sure you can,” He said sarcastically.

Then he gripped my forearm and mounted his other hand on my chest. I braced myself for the expected pain and then he jerked my entire arm up and toward my body.

I yelled with the sudden pain that was jolting through my body with a thousand lightning bolts at once in red shades of shooting pain. Then all of it was suddenly lifted and all I felt was a dull ache pulsating through my chest and arm.

I looked at Merlin. “Now what?”

“Now you be careful and not dislocate it again,” Merlin scolded me. “Unless you enjoy what you just felt.”

I nodded. “You ought to become a physician.”

He shrugged. “And deal with people like you all day?”

I rolled my eyes and just looked at Lancelot. “Amazing that you can spend so much time with him.”

Lancelot just gave me a half-hearted smile. Helpful.

“Actually,” I began, “there is another problem as well.”

“And that is?” Merlin asked, almost condescendingly.

“He has a sister,” I explained, choosing to ignore the slight edge in his voice. I rubbed my shoulder when I felt it pulse in soft pain. “In the Saxon camp, one of the reasons I convinced him to come with me was by saying that me...and possibly my friends, would go to rescue her from them. If they find out that he has come to our side, they will kill her.”

“So you want us to help rescue her?” Merlin asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes.” I said truthfully.

“Why can you not do it by yourself?” He asked sharply. “I thought you were the big war leader now.”

I ignored Merlin and turned to face Lancelot. “What do you say?”

“Arthur, going into the Saxon camp is a really bad idea, especially after our success yesterday.” Lancelot informed me. “They would kill us the moment they saw us.”

“But we have to help Ellion,” I argued. “And they are British. We have a duty to help his sister.”

Lancelot sighed and found sudden interest in the ground beneath his cot. “Let me think about it Arthur.”

“Please think quickly my friend,” I said to him. “I hate to think of what they will do to her if they find out Ellion is going to fight for us.”

“What are you doing?” I asked Kay when I walked up to him, Bedivere, and Perceval shooting arrows at a target that they had painted with deer blood on an oak tree near the edge of camp.

“What does it look like?” Kay replied with an edge in his voice.

I took a breath and rolled my eyes at him, forcing my temper down into the pit of my stomach. I clenched my fists.

“Never mind,” I shook my head and began to walk away.

“Arthur, wait,” Bedivere put his hand on my right shoulder. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Nothing worth dealing with that coward for,” I said, glaring at Kay who turned to face me.

“Says the one who ran from the battlefield,” Kay said with a mean smirk. “Your shoulder does not look so bad now.”

“Merlin fixed it,” I said through gritting my teeth. “It was dislocated.”

“Oh?” He turned to the makeshift target and let loose an arrow, I silently rejoiced when it missed the center by at least a foot. “To me it just seems like you are taking after that king of ours.”

“Excuse me?” I felt my short fingernails dig into my palms. I tried to force my feet into the earth from how the rage was coursing through my veins like a raging river. It felt like my stomach had turned into a volcano with the roiling anger.

“You heard me,” He narrowed his eyes and his thin lips formed a smile. “You are exactly like Uther. Running from battle while men lose their lives for you. I cannot wait for your turn at running our country. I think I would have almost preferred Morgain.”

That was all it took. Words. Words that should have ran off my back like raindrops.

My body was jerked forward and my hands made hard contact with his chest. He stumbled a good five feet back and then regained his balance.

I stood with my feet planted and gave him my fiercest, most steeled glare. I felt completely justified in shoving him.

“When I got here I found out my father was dead!” Then Kay came back at me, running with all of his might. He yelled. “This is his fault. At least I can be proud to carry his name with me! Are you proud to have Pendragon blood?!”

I punched him hard in the nose then. I felt his warm blood run onto my fist and I closed my eyes. I did not want to do this. Kay was more or less my friend, but more importantly he was my ally, more than my ally, my teammate.

I felt pain explode in my jaw. It made my rage turn white hot like a firecracker. My survival instincts began to fuel my moves. The years of training I had had began to shape my actions. The training to kill.

The pain in my jaw immediately went numb. The world blurred. All I could see was the direction of where my rage needed to be expelled to, a single target. I had one goal, one motive. I needed to kill him. He represented everything I hated about my family, everything that I was afraid I could not achieve. He turned into even more than that. He was my insanity. He was whatever the force that caused me to go there was. He was Lancelot telling me that I drank too much at supper when I told him. My father who laughed at me. Ty who was amazed I could make up such a story.

I spun on my heel with every burning fiber of my being. My fist drew a perfect circle around my body and my mind, at a thousand miles per hour, and I appreciated it for a moment. I loved circles because of their reliability, their perfection, the things that the world would never have. The reliability that would never come in my life. The perfection that I wanted so much for and was always disappointed at.

My fist collided with the side of Kay’s head so hard my hand went numb. He fell to the ground.

The world was still blurry. I could not make out anything. I could not hear any distinct sounds. Voices on top of voices formed a dull hum in the back of my mind.

I fell to my knees. Guilt came over me in a tidal wave. My vision was a mess of green grass and dusty earth. The pain in my jaw returned as an aching, stinging, mess of pain. I tasted blood in my mouth.

I looked down to see Excalibur hanging from my belt. I drew it from its scabbard and looked at the blade, it glinted in the dull sunlight. Its clarity formed in and out of my vision. I shifted it to my left hand. I raised up my right hand next to it. That was what I used to hurt my comrade.

I ran the blade along my palm and stared at it expressionless as a stream of blood ran down my wrist. The pain felt good. I deserved it.

Then a dark hand grabbed the hilt of Excalibur and ripped it from my grasp.

I fell onto my back and stared at the gray, seemingly cloudless sky. Faces came into my vision. Lancelot, Merlin, Bedivere, Lionel, Ellion.

Then it all spiraled out of my view and turned to velvety darkness.

Colorado Springs, America, 2010

Sadly, Miss Marion was right; I did need glasses.

After the optometrist tested my eyes with various devices that looked like something my father might use to torture criminals, they concluded that I needed glasses.

I sullenly followed Miss Marion down the hall to where we picked up my prescription for the glasses we would order on the internet and then to the pharmacy where the person in the long white lab coat gave her an orange bottle with tiny white pills that I was instructed to take whenever my shoulder was bothering me. I knew now, after Merlin’s consultation, that I would not need them here.

I tried the best I could to keep there’s events from the night before out of my mind. I woke up and had breakfast with Miss Marion and Mr. Ector before he went off to work, and he gave me another lecture about how childish my hair looked and how much I needed to cut it. I just nodded respectfully, unwilling to sacrifice my hair that I knew was a thing of masculinity there.

After breakfast I never changed out of the sweats I wore to bed because Miss Marion called Coach Johnson and told him that I was not going to be at football practice that day.

By two in the afternoon I sat sulking at my desk playing a video game on my laptop with my headphones on. I died for the fourteenth time in a row when I finally decided I needed to exit out of the game for a bit before I threw it across the room.

I stared at my desktop screensaver for a good five minutes before eventually opening the google search bar.

I typed Sir Kay into the search bar and clicked on the Go button. The little wheel spun for a moment and then a bunch of old paintings and drawings showed up under images.

The first written part under the line of images read;

“In Arthurian legend, Sir Kay is Sir Ector’s son and King Arthur’s foster brother and later seneschal, as well as one of the first Knights of the Round Table.” Wikipedia

I frowned. Kay’s foster brother was Bedivere. Sir Ector...Mr. Ector. Mr. Ector was my foster father.

I typed King Arthur in the search bar like I had done so many times recently, searching for an answer to something. The reality that always came up, my supposed future, never seemed plausible.

“King Arthur is a legendary British leader who, according to medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the late 5th and early 6th centuries AD.” Wikipedia

I suppose that was true. I decided not to dig any further into what certain legends thought I was going to do there.

I tried King Arthur and Sir Kay.

I chose the third site down.

“Sir Kay is always described as King Arthur’s seneschal (an official in charge of domestic arrangements in the medieval household and overseer of the servants). He is usually shown as boorish, mocking, and cruel. In a number of romances, Kay’s insults inspire the hero to prove Kay wrong by undertaking a quest. Despite his rude character, Kay holds…” Pace University.

I thought about this for a moment. In a number of romances, Kay’s insults inspire the hero to prove Kay wrong by undertaking a quest. Kay insulted me all the time. The closest definite thing I had done to a quest was slaying that dragon when I was twelve. And that was inspired by Kay and his arrogance. The legend seemed to know everything about me.

“Are you still playing video games?” Miss Marion’s voice startled me, and I felt a jolt go through my body.

“Y-yes.” I said, closing the laptop quickly.

She set a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk next to my arm on my desk. “I made cookies.”

“Thank you,” I said and spun around in my chair to look at her. I took a bite of a cookie and through my mouthful said. “They’re good.”

She nodded and ruffled my hair. “I am sorry about your shoulder. I’m just trying to do what’s best for you.”

“I know,” I said and smiled. “But really, I’m fine. It was just a one time thing.”

“Arthur, were you looking at pornography when I came in?” She asked with a stern look.

“What?” I exclaimed. “No! Of course not! Why would you think that?”

“Because you closed the computer really fast,” She tapped her foot against the carpeted floor quickly. “Like I said, I’m just trying to do what’s best for you.”

“I know,” I said again. “I was just looking up some stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?” She asked, she sat on my bed.

I growled inwardly. I just wanted her to leave so I could finish my research about there. I knew one excuse that seemed to always work.

“About my parents.”

“It’s not bad for you to want to look at things from before you came to us,” she said with a concerned look slowly searching her face. “You just never talk about it.”

“Nothing to talk about,” I said quickly. “You and Mr. Ector are my family now.”

She just smiled and rubbed my shoulder, then began to leave.

“Miss Marion?” I asked before she could get out the door.

“Yes?”

“Do you know anything about the Arthurian Legend?” I asked her.

“Like the sword in the stone and the holy grail?” She replied.

“Um, yeah.”

“I did a project on it when I was your age,” she said. “I was always more interested in the legend of Robin Hood though because my parents named me after his wife Marion...I guess that makes sense why you would want to know about King Arthur though then…”

I just looked at her awkwardly.

“Anyways,” She said. “What do you want to know?”

“Do you know anything about a character named Kay?” I asked, looking at her very carefully.

She looked up, trying to think. “All I can remember is that he was one of the knights of the round table.”

“Knights of the round table?” I asked, trying to look into her mind. Whenever I did my king arthur searches I usually stopped after about ten seconds because it freaked me out too much. I had read about the table somewhere.

“Yeah,” She said. “He had a table where him and all of his knights sat.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“I need to go check on my other batch of cookies,” She kissed the top of my head. “I’m glad you’re taking an interest in history.”

If only she knew.

I turned back to my desk and took a sheet of paper from the stack that I had stolen from Mr. Ector’s printer. I took out my compass - the big one - and drew a circle around a point I marked with my pencil.

I took my red notebook that I had used for some of my drawings and started listing names.

-Lancelot

-Merlin

-Perceval

-Lionel

-Bedivere

-Gawain

-Kay

-Ellion

-Me

Nine names. Nine names of the men and boys who had fought with me there. Nine was a square number. I liked this. The square root of nine was three.

Beneath the names I started to write my numbers.

9 names.

= 3.

9+3 = 12

= 9

12 + 2 = 14, 14/2 = 7

7 is fifth prime positive integer.

5 = 3 + 2, = 9, 14-5 =9

14 relates every number I have derived from 9.

14

I took the edge of my protractor and drew a diameter line through the center of the circle through both ends. Then I calculated that in order to divide a three-hundred-sixty degree circle I needed to make each section twenty-five point seven one degrees.

I measured twenty-five point seven degrees from the diameter line of my circle, drew the line in, and continued to measure twenty-five point seven one degrees around the entirety of the circle until I had fourteen equal sections. I marked each of the intersections of the line and the circle that I had drawn with my compass with my pencil.

I calculated the midpoints on each of the chords in the sectors then and marked a line from each up from the edge of the graphite circle. I calculated the sum of the interior angles from a fourteen sided nonagon then and found out that each obtuse angle would be one hundred fifty-four point two nine degrees.

I drew tangent lines from each of the sector points that I drew then, making sure that it intersected the midpoint lines at roughly one hundred fifty-four point two nine degrees.

After I drew each of the fourteen tangents from the section points of the circle I held the paper I was drawing on up to the light.

I had never drawn anything even remotely like the fourteen tangent circle, but somehow it felt familiar to me. It seemed that it would become important at some time, but just not yet.

I folded the paper in quarters and then in a half so it made a small, pocket-sized rectangle. I stood up and shoved it into my bed table drawer where I kept a flashlight and a tiny notebook with an attached pen. Miss Marion had put it there as a “dream journal.” Too bad I did not have dreams.

I would worry about what my drawing meant another time.