Mr. Morton lifted his head to look at me. His lips, I saw, were moving, but no sound was coming out. Then, slowly, he seemed to find his voice.

  “I tried,” he wheezed, his face as white as the chalk marks on the board behind him. “They can’t say I didn’t try. I did my best to bring the two of you together. But we were simply too late…too late….”

  His expression was one of the bleakest I had ever seen.

  “They’ve won,” he continued. “They’ve won again.”

  “Mr. Morton,” I said, in what I hoped was a soothing voice, “I really think you’re making too big a deal out of this. Avalon’s still got a very good chance at making the district football finals. Will and Lance’ll work it out. You’ll see.”

  I smiled at him brightly…

  …but my smile faded as he stared at me coldly.

  “Um,” I said. “You are talking about football, aren’t you, Mr. Morton?”

  “Football?” Mr. Morton looked as if he were about to choke. “Football? No, this isn’t about football, you stupid girl. This is about the never-ending battle of good versus evil. It’s about one man, born with the capability of saving this planet from ultimately destroying itself, and the forces of darkness that are keeping him from doing so.”

  I had no idea whatsoever how to respond that. Mr. Morton had leaned forward. His gray-eyed gaze seemed to hold me transfixed. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even breathe.

  “It’s about all of us being plunged once again into the Dark Ages,” Mr. Morton went on, in that same raspy voice, “and this time having no light to lead us out again. It’s about us being forced to stay there until another can be born, grow, and rise to take his place…if we can get to him before they do next time, that is. It’s about failure, Miss Harrison. My failure. For which everybody else on this planet will suffer for the rest of their lives. That is what it’s about, Miss Harrison. Not football.”

  I blinked.

  “Oh,” I said.

  Well, what else could I say to all of that?

  Mr. Morton sagged back in his seat and dragged his hands over his face.

  “Get out, Miss Harrison,” he said through his fingers. “Please. Just go away.”

  I picked up my backpack. I didn’t know what else to do. He obviously didn’t want me there. Whatever he was going through—whatever he was talking about—it didn’t have anything to do with me. It was likely it didn’t have anything to do with anyone…anyone but Mr. Morton and whatever he was keeping in a bottle in his bottom desk drawer….

  Because he was clearly unhinged, poor man. Nobody in his right mind talks about the forces of darkness taking over the planet. Nobody.

  Except that…

  Well, he’d seemed so sane up till then.

  Then, just as I reached the doorway, something that he’d said struck me—reminded me, in a strange way, of the words of another….

  I turned to look back at him.

  “Mr. Morton,” I said.

  When he glanced at me—his face still a mask of utter despair—I went on. “Does this have anything to do with…with the Lily Maid of Astolat?”

  I’ll never forget the look that came over his face then. Never for as long as I live.

  “How—how did you know about that?” he breathed—so raspily, it was clearly an enormous effort for him to speak at all. “Who told you?”

  “Um,” I said. “I’m doing a report on her. Remember?”

  Mr. Morton looked visibly less tense. At least until I added, “And, uh, Will’s stepbrother, Marco, mentioned something, too….”

  And there went the color from Mr. Morton’s face.

  “The stepbrother.” He shook his head, looking bleaker than ever. “Of course. If only…if only—”

  And then, I could have sworn he said, “If only I had stopped him when I had the chance….”

  “Stopped who, Mr. Morton?” Except that I knew. Or thought I did, anyway. Marco. He could only be talking about Marco.

  Except that I thought he had stopped Marco. Stopped Marco from trying to kill him. Isn’t that how the rumor went? That Marco had been trying to kill Mr. Morton, and Mr. Morton had stopped him?

  “Mr. Morton.” I stood irresolute in the doorway. What was happening? What was going on? It was true I had fantasized the other night that Jennifer was Guinevere and Lance was Lancelot, and that Will was Arthur, and Marco was Mordred….

  But that was only because…well, of what Marco had said about me being Elaine of Astolat. Not to mention the fact that we all go to Avalon High, home of the Excaliburs. I hadn’t thought—I hadn’t even dreamed—it could be remotely real.

  Because it couldn’t be. All of that had happened—if it had really happened at all—hundreds of years ago. As the daughter of two historians, I know better than anyone that history can—and often does—repeat itself.

  But not like this.

  And no one—no one in his right mind, anyway—would believe it could.

  Except…

  Except for a member of the Order of the Bear, the group I read about who believe King Arthur is destined to be reincarnated one day, to lead the world from the dark ages….

  But Mr. Morton couldn’t be part of something so ridiculous. He’s a teacher. A good one, from everything I’d heard. Teachers don’t believe in silly things like that a medieval king is going to be reborn and save the world.

  I was letting my imagination run away with me while Mr. Morton, over by his desk, was still suffering. There had to be something I could do for him. The poor man was clearly in need of…something.

  “Mr. Morton,” I said. “Won’t you…won’t you let me get the nurse? You don’t look well. I think…I think you might be sick.”

  Mr. Morton did something strange then. He lifted his head and smiled at me. It was a sad smile. It didn’t come easily, either.

  But he smiled, just the same.

  “I’m not sick, Elaine,” he said. “Except at heart.”

  I fingered the strap to my backpack. “Won’t you tell me why? I might be able to help, you know.” I had no idea how, of course. But I had to ask.

  Mr. Morton seemed to understand, since he spoke more kindly than he’d ever spoken to me before.

  “It’s too late, Elaine,” he said, in the same defeated voice. “Thank you all the same. But it’s far too late. And better for you, in the end, not to know. After all, your part in it was over before it could even begin this time.”

  “What do you mean ‘this time’?” I shook my head. “What do you mean by my part in it?”

  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.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  And down the river’s dim expanse—

  Like some bold seer in a trance,

  Seeing all his own mischance—

  With a glassy countenance

  Did she look to Camelot.

  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?”