Chapter 13 –It’s the Blade, Boss, the Blade!!

Melehan stepped to one side, leaving me in line of sight of his snipers and muttered “Shoot the bitch” into his cufflink. Several seconds passed and nothing happened so he tried again.

“You think that you can use others to do your bidding, coward! They can’t hear you any more” I snarled “You are no better than your cheating ancestors. I can see that fifteen hundred years has not improved your bloodline. You are finished, Melehan. Tonight you will see just what you are up against. You have brought the Ancients back and they want your blood. What they did to your houses is nothing to what is going to befall you.”

He made a move towards me but I had already levitated him so he went no-where. We stepped back from him as Merilyn brought the shining disc back over the lawn to hover some way above us. I levitated Melehan high in the air and also manifested a beam of light from the disc down on to him. He was screaming and struggling but had no power to stop his rise. Nearly at the disc we created small orbs which came from the disc and cavorted around him. I think his brain overloaded at that point because he went limp and quiet and that’s when the crowd gasped. I lowered him down to lay at the intersection of the paths, putting the beam of light out and sending the power balls into a little dance before merging with the disc; while Sir Lionel and the rest of us backed away, as if in horror. The crowd was now quiet and we then finished the show by sending the disc high into the sky to rise above the clouds and there was a collective sigh as the light went out and a couple of guys raced over to the inert Melehan.

Gwen and Lance joined the others as they left the area. Merilyn and I strolled out to Maze Hill to get into the Volvo. We sat there for a while and Merilyn said “Mummy; that was awesome. If he doesn’t get it now he never will.” I drove us to a hotel where Sir Lionel had made arrangements and parked, taking an overnight bag and getting Merilyn out of the car. In the hotel we were given our room tag and went up to the room to freshen up before going down to the bar to meet the others. As we walked up to their table they all stood and raised their glasses towards us. Sir Lionel bowed and said “Young ladies, if I never believed in aliens before tonight, that display has changed my mind. I just hope that it changed another mind as well.” That evening we had a few drinks and a supper before I took Merilyn and myself up for a good sleep. The effort tonight had made us very tired.

Sunday I took Merilyn back to school and then went home for a well-deserved rest. Next weekend we would finish it, once and for all. The Sunday news was full of the ‘alien visitation’ and there was a film of Melehan being ‘abducted’. The fact that he was sent back was not lost on anyone. He had been taken to hospital where he was still in a deep sleep and, so the papers next day said, muttering about ‘The Ancients’. His party, now free of his influence, elected to eject him as ‘not being good enough, even for aliens’. The bodies of the two snipers had been found and their orders were traced back to the Office of the Secretary to The Minister. Once that had been made public a lot of previous strange orders came to light as various military officers suddenly found that they had been ‘duped’ and retreated back into their shells, covering their backs as they went..

During Monday I quietly went down to Dozmary Pool and, making sure no-one was around, brought Lances’ car to the surface and put it down again on one of the tracks some way from the shore. I rang Lance and told him where it was and to arrange for it to be picked up. I expect that he told the recovery driver that it had been stolen.

I spent much of the week tidying up around the house and quietly practising a few tricks. On Thursday Gwen and Lance came down to stay for a few days and they told me that they had decided to get married. Gwen said that they had told Sir Lionel that they wanted to retire from the security side of the government and set up a little shop here in Camelford to sell Arthurian souvenirs and plush aliens. They had set aside a fair bit of money and would be able to sell their two apartments. I told Lance what I was thinking for a finale on Saturday night and he went straight out to the estate agents and started looking for a suitable shop to rent or buy and then he set about building a website.

Saturday morning I went to the college and picked up Merilyn. The four of us had an early lunch and then Merilyn and I went through the lightshow in miniature. Tonight would be the last one as the aliens were going to make their exit. I didn’t know where my powers would run out but, as the evening was predicted to be cloudless, we would have to send the ‘spaceship’ as high as we could before turning the light out. By now, both of us had become very adept in controlling the power balls, actually able to set groups into a sort of automated loop while concentrating on something else. That afternoon we tried to find out limits, in miniature, and discovered that we could have six sets each before we could not add another without losing all control. There were a few burnt patches in the lawn after that session.

Saturday afternoon Sir Lionel and the others turned up in a Range Rover. Lionel gave me the up-to-date gossip from Whitehall. It seemed that Melehan had finally woken up and had been very agitated and angry but could do nothing about it because his doctors had expected him to be violent and had restrained him in a straight-jacket. When he had discovered that his job, his life and his future was in tatters he had broken down weeping and the prognosis was that he had flipped. Lionel said that he would be transferred to an institution until he got better. It drew a line under that chapter and I hoped that his wife would be able to bring up her children as much better for not having Melehan in their life. She would not want for much, anyway. The insurance payout on the country house and contents, the collection of artefacts, the townhouse and contents and his accounts and superannuation would be enough to keep her for the rest of her life. I doubt that any judge in the land would deny her access to the funds, seeing that it was likely that Melehan would be committed.

We took two cars to Jamaica Inn for an evening meal. I had booked us in as a party of nine. When we got there the place was jumping and the waiter told us that we were lucky to have booked as they had been chock solid every Saturday night and much of the week as well since the ‘aliens’ had landed. Before we went to the Pool we took Merilyn into the shop and Sir Lionel bought her a plush alien. When we got to the Pool it was a lot different to when we had been attacked. The farmer had removed some fences and there was parking in his field (at a cost) and the road had been cleared of sheep dung. There was already quite a crowd and it was a very festive atmosphere for most of it. One large group in long flowing robes pretending to be Druids did not look out of place. There were a lot of children running around and there was even an ice-cream van parked where I had put the Volvo the first time there. The police were there to maintain control and there was even a first-aid tent.

We got a pile of seats out of the back of both cars and took them up the slope a little way so we could have an uninterrupted view of the scene. With this many people around it would not do to lose control of any of the elements tonight. This time it all had to end positively. I looked around and saw that there were a couple of TV stations that had set up camera platforms and took note of their positioning; I did not want us to flare the pictures tonight.

As the night fell I sat Merilyn on my lap and said “Ready, sweetheart?” She clutched her alien and said “You bet, Mummy. Can we do this sort of thing when I am older? I may be able to perfect the process so others can join in. That would be fun!” We started the show by manifesting two discs out over the English Channel and bringing them towards Bodmin Moor at high speed, passing us over the other side of the Pool at slightly less than the speed of sound and then getting them to climb away to the west with the ear-splitting roar of the supersonic approach smashing a lot of the older car windows and, I suspect, every window in the surrounding farms as well as much of the Cornish southern coast. This was one night that will be spoken about for years.

From there we went to town; loops, rolls and formation flying with a number of smaller discs that had separated from the bigger ones. Merilyn was giggling every time we did something new and different. The crowd was cheering and clapping and the little ones were jumping up and down in excitement. I had designed the show around air shows I had seen but we had the added element of being able to stop the discs in mid-flight and send then off at totally impossible angles. One that made the crowd roar was a new take on the high speed pass from opposite directions. This time we had the two discs collide and everyone shrieked. When they merged we stopped them dead and then sent the one big disc into a vertical climb.

The penultimate piece was where we split the discs into twenty small ones and did a barrel roll with a ‘diamond four’ formation of the ‘card five’ groups that would have done the Red Arrows proud. Then we stopped them dead, shot them up a thousand feet and did the roll in reverse. As the formations looped out to the north-west we brought them all back into one big electric blue disc which came in facing the crowd and hovered over the centre of the Pool. “Time for your wave, darling” I whispered and Merilyn giggled again.

I tilted the disc so it looked as if it was bowing to the crowd and she manifested four glowing white plush aliens that appeared as if they had grown out of the top. They started waving at the crowd and most of the crowd waved back. I swung the big disc from side to side and then Merilyn got the aliens to disappear after a couple of minutes. We then tilted the disc so it pointed straight up and I said “Three, two, one, now!” The disc shot up into the sky, going through the sound barrier again and disappeared at a very high altitude while the rolling thunder came back down to us. The crowd cheered and clapped and then gasped as they brought their eyes back to ground level. For there, in the middle of the Pool, I had manifested a sword shaped energy mass that looked as if it was coming out of the water.

Slowly, it rose until it was completely clear of the water and held there by a hand, attached to an arm. It was very wearing holding the shapes as they were nowhere near a disc or a globe. I kept the sword aloft for two minutes with it changing colour from white to silver and then to a brilliant gold. Merilyn then manifested a halo around it for me which then shot into the sky following the disc. I was getting pretty tired now but managed to keep myself together as I lowered it back beneath the surface and then the place erupted into a roar as the crowd appreciated the show. Lionel got out of his chair and pulled me into a hug, saying “Goodness, girl. You got me believing in aliens and now you have brought the Lady of the Lake back into the twenty-first century. That is going to start a whole new cult and it will be fun to watch.”

Lance was grinning ear to ear and also gave me a hug and a kiss. I said “What about Merilyn, doesn’t she deserve a kiss as well?” By that time people were packing up and the ‘Druids’ were dancing around like mad things but we had a few bottles in the cars so sat a while longer so I could get my breath back. Lionel looked at the cars, which both had big cracks in the back windows that had faced the Pool and said “These will go into the garage at Camelot as a reminder of tonight.” Lance sat for a while looking through the pictures he had taken, especially the ones with the sword. He looked up and said “I have just realised that our shop is going to be called ‘Excaliber Rising’ and, after tonight, we had better get it open quickly.”

We packed up and Sir Lionel and his group went off to the hotel they had booked at. The four of us went back to Camelford in silence, Merilyn falling asleep in my arms, clutching her plush alien. At the cottage I carried her in and put her to bed and then the three of us sat in the kitchen having a hot drink. I looked at the photos that Lance had taken as he transferred them to his computer and there were a lot he could get printed up as posters to sell in the shop or on-line. There was one that was truly beautiful – the disc was hovering over the water which reflected its glow; the moon shone behind it and the aliens were in glowing white contrast with their arms waving. It could have been a cover of a Pink Floyd album. I told him that I wanted a poster of this one for my wall and he said “Anything for you, Morgan. You deserve a knighthood for what you have done but I think some would rather you were thrown in jail after the damage you did in the city. Mind you, a lot of things that were outdated are now being replaced with modern systems so it wasn’t all bad, just naughty.”

Sunday I took Merilyn back to the college. Before we went in she said that she had almost figured out how we worked with energy and gravitational waves and that she hoped that her thesis would lead the way to space flight. She did try to explain some of her thinking; it was based on the fact that we could now take electrical waves and alter them in pitch and form and that it may be possible to use comparatively simple concepts to change gravity waves in the way the two of us could do with our minds. I told her that now people had seen the impossible for themselves, a lot of scientists would be working towards the same thing. And that is how the future unfolded. She worked hard on the mathematics and physics of the phenomenon and published her paper at the tender age of fifteen. I say ‘published’. It never saw light of day as the government declared it Top Secret but they did give her the Doctorate anyway.

In the meantime I had met, and fallen in love with, a scientist that was working with her and he was the first one that we managed to teach some basic levitation tricks to. His bloodline may well have gone back to the times of magic as well. On our wedding night we had attempted to consummate our marriage while floating two feet above the bed, with much laughter. Back down where we had some leverage we produced the child that now grows up being very inquisitive and a little bit naughty. Merilyn has a brother called Arthur who is destined to be a great man and will likely develop some interesting powers of his own as he gets older. I already had to lay the law down to stop him flying our dog around the house.

The Cult of the Golden Blade took hold and Lance with ‘Excaliber Rising’ became the unofficial hub, seeing that the website had a few days start on everyone else. He and Gwen were now Lancelot and Guinevere and were very, very busy. The Druids that were present that night became the ‘Inner Circle’ and organised meetings to spread the word which were all outside. No four walls could contain the ‘Blade’.

The ‘Lady of the Lake’ was first given the name “Dozmary’ which was later shortened to a simple ‘Mary’. We did create a new world of peace and harmony which incorporated the notions of chivalry and service; as a by-product of fighting the powers of evil. A lot of people were now certain that we are not alone and that aliens may come back to punish anyone who was doing wrong. Members of ‘The Golden Blade’ eventually outnumbered the members of normal religions within two census periods – I suppose the reason was that some had seen it with their own eyes and millions had seen it on television, many times over – so it must be true!

Marianne G © 2021