The Stealing of Excalibur
The Book of the Emissaries
Retold from the manuscripts of the Underworld.
Three.
The Stealing of Excalibur.
Evelyn Fairchild did not come upon the sword by chance. It was a gift - a gift from the air, from the dark, and, of course, from the stone.
Time, in the afterlife, exists in the same way as a ball of unkempt yarn. It isn't neat, and human linearity, once lost, takes with it all expectations of heroism.
Humans, it seems, have a tendency to dream of glory for only one purpose: to mask the perpetual mutiny of mankind.
Evelyn supposed that religion existed for a similar reason.
Humans are ... cruel.
The first time she met King Arthur, he was preoccupied - tossing the guts of Guinevere over a telephone wire as a companion to a pair of rotting sneakers.
She paused, and asked him why.
Why not?
You living human souls. You always want an answer. Evelyn had not quite lost that trait.
Why?
She was mine.
The second time, she found him plucking out the eyelashes of his father.
What will you do with them?
Send them to Merlin.
Why?
Why not?
The third time he was carving Lancelot's heart.
Why?
Why not?
The fourth and final time she met King Arthur, he was a boy, tugging at sword in a rock.
"Does this sword have a name?" He whispered to her, but she had already seen what was to come.
"Mine," she said, and walked away with it.
Later, the tales of these meetings ricocheted back into human existence. Weaving themselves into the mythology of the living, she realised that they did not quite end up as honest as she had expected.
Or, she thought later, perhaps the living did not want to see the truth in those they loved.