Chapter 2 - Things get weirder.

When I got over the initial shock and read the article I just had to lie back and laugh. The reporter had obviously taken the information he had been given as a joke as the article was filled with comments from various people who ‘knew’ me; as well as totally fictitious comments from me.

There was an interview with Susan, my latest girlfriend, who said that going out with me was like going out with a girlfriend and that I was a ‘kind and gentle soul’. My boss in the insurance company said that I must have mystical powers as I seemed to be able to charm people into buying from me. The only kind comment was from the local vicar, a man who had helped me greatly at the loss of my parents but did not shove his faith down my throat. He said that I was a ‘kind and caring man with a heart of gold and was destined for greatness’. Although, he also said that this was not the sort of greatness he had thought would be my lot. There were even quotes from me, strange as they must have been written down while I was talking in my sleep. I was quoted as wondering if my situation had come about as a side-effect of my two Pfizer vaccination jabs, seeing that the technology was so new and related to RNA, the stuff that had a close relationship with DNA.

Mid-morning my favourite doctor came around and sat next to my bed. “Arthur” he said “I am sure that we will do everything we can to stop this paper silliness. The radiographer has been dismissed for his lack of discretion and the paper has been told that what they have printed will be part of a legal action by you and the hospital. It is a very stupid thing that the reporter did and I am sure that we can put an end to the comments.”

How wrong he was! It was only the leading edge of the nightmare that was to take over my life and cost the hospital more than they had bargained for. Around lunch-time I could hear noises from the corridor which carried on for some time before it went quiet again. When a nurse came in she looked flustered but smiled at me as she took blood. I asked her about the noise and she said that it had been a group of patients who wanted to speak to me. “Why was there all the noise?” I asked and she said “Well, they actually wanted to touch you and be healed of their ailments. Most of them were from the other wards and it took a few of us some time to get them back in their beds and put their visitors back outside. We now have a security firm on guard at the doors because there are a few more gathered outside, some of them want to burn you at the stake for heresy.” The fact that she did not smile when she said that led me to believe that she may have actually telling me the truth.

Later in the day a nurse came and asked if I would speak to Max Murphy, my friendly vicar. I said I would and he was ushered in. He looked at me and genuflected; I just smiled and welcomed him. He asked me how I was bearing up and then showed me the evening national paper. The front page had an old picture of me from high school next to the picture of me in this bed. The headline was ‘Is this the most dangerous person in the country?’

The article took two avenues, the first being an extension on the lines of the supposed Pfizer comment and it wondered if I was the first sign of strange side-effects and if there were more like me waiting in the wings. The other avenue was if I actually was the recipient of a virgin pregnancy and if I was the sign of the second coming and, perhaps, the ‘End of Days’. Either way, it seemed, I was a harbinger of doom who should be either locked up or terminated. It was very heady stuff and I read the paper then looked at him, asking “Who on earth would believe this rubbish?”

He shook his head and said “A lot of people, it seems. It took me a lot of negotiation with the hospital to even get them to ask if I could see you. There are about a hundred people in the street with half of them ready to hang you from the nearest lamp-post and the other half that even have a cross made which they want to put you on, quite likely wanting to see if you can be raised from the dead. It is crazy and I think it may get crazier because I have heard from some of my parishioners that they are going to march on the anti-Arthurs and save you from the mob so that they can worship you and, especially, the baby you carry.”

“There are Arthurs and Anti-Arthurs?” I asked incredulously. “Has anyone realised that my middle name is Joseph? When they discover that, plus the fact that the doctors think I am carrying a girl, it will really stir the pot! They are going to go crazy – instead of Mary having a baby Jesus I will be Joseph having a baby Mary.

He looked sad as he nodded and he then asked the one question he should have led with, “Exactly what is happening with you?” I told him that I was a hermaphrodite with a fully working female system which had finally decided to wake up and produce an egg. Then I told him that the only real difference with my body was a tiny tube that diverted some of my semen away from my penis and into the uterus. When he asked what was going to happen now I said “I think that there are doctors who want me to go full term just to see what I produce, seeing that this is interbreeding to a new level. There are none who want to take it all away now and the general thought is that I should have my female parts given an outlet to the world with my male parts getting either removed or inverted. It is something that would have kept me awake at night if they had not been putting me under with tranquilliser.”

He asked me if there was anything he could do and I said that it would be nice if he could look into my house to make sure I had not left anything on and check my post. I also asked if he could arrange for my old car to be taken away from in front of the hospital before some idiot decides to trash it. I told him where he could find clean pyjamas and a dressing gown in my cottage as I was getting tired of a breeze around my nethers whenever I went to the toilet. I called a nurse and asked if I could have my belongings and a pad and pen. She brought me the bag and I gave him my car and door keys and wrote a note saying that I was giving him access to the house. He looked at that and said that it would be handy as there was already a policeman on guard. When I looked questioning he said “Already there is graffiti on the fence denouncing you as the devil incarnate and the police are worried about possible damage attempts or opportunistic robbery.”

When he had left I had another visit from the doctor who wanted to know what I had decided. I said “Could you get a diagram and run me through what bits I would lose with the two options?” When he came back and showed me I realised that if I stayed male I would lose a great deal of my insides and he said that I would have a very sunken stomach area for quite a while. If I went female I would lose my testicles and my penis would be inverted to join the inner workings, giving me a workable vagina. I asked him about looking like a woman and he told me that it would not take a lot, maybe two or three operations, to be looking totally female. When I asked about my pelvis he said that it was already big enough to pass a baby through.

He did say that I would need to be quick with my decision because it was getting difficult keeping undesirables out of the hospital. He shook his head as he spoke about the ‘Arthurians’ that were growing in number outside, many kneeling in the road and praying. He said that the local police had been boosted by a contingent from the county seat. He did say that everyone was worried about the ‘Anti-Arthurians’ which were growing in number, mainly from the ranks of the rent-a-crowd louts who were just there to have a fight. It sounded like it was mayhem outside.

That evening that is exactly what it was. I lay in bed hearing sirens for hours with now an armed policeman outside my door. When the nurse turned on the tranquiliser I was happy to drift off to sleep. Next morning, after breakfast, they took the stents out, brought my clothes back and told me to have a shower and get dressed. I was then escorted to the administration section with my armed guard next to me. There I was ushered into a boardroom where a number of people waited for me.

I was shown to a seat and then one of the bow-tied and well suited men stood and said “Ladies and Gentlemen, we are here to decide what is going to happen with Mister Prendergast, here. We cannot operate this hospital with running battles happening in the street outside. I suggest that he be taken somewhere secret to continue his strange future.” I asked “Can’t I just go home?” That caused a ripple of sighs around the table and a nice looking woman said “Arthur, I am sorry but that is now impossible as the AA rabble torched it last night after overpowering the policeman outside. He is now in a ward in the hospital and, I am sorry to tell you, your home is now just a smoking ruin.”

She then pointed to another woman and said “Miss Smith will tell you where you stand.” Miss Smith opened a folder and looked at me, saying “Arthur, the company you work for has indicated that they cannot have you back, seeing the feelings you are creating among the populace. The manager has told me that he will pay out the insurance value of your house and also has made you an offer for the land. He will also give you a generous redundancy payout that will give you quite a healthy bank account. If you decide to follow through with being totally feminised, there is an offer from one of the magazines that has been made to pay for all of your costs as long as you sign a contract for your life story, the film rights as well as access to you and your child for as long as you are newsworthy.”

I was astounded at that. Then the hospital manager said that I needed to be spirited away as soon as possible and the news leaked that I have gone so they could carry on treating the patients in the usual manner. I stood up and went to the window, looking outside for the first time in days. The street outside was a mess with broken placards, broken glass and a line of police in riot gear holding back a line of angry louts who were shouting at the police and waving their fists around. I was far enough away and behind a double glazed window so could not hear them but it was obvious that it would be better for everyone if I was taken somewhere else.

“OK” I said as I turned back to them “I can see that I am not the most popular person around this place. What do we do now and where can I go now I have no home. Please don’t tell me that there is a nice stable conversion somewhere isolated because that would not be funny.” Miss Smith said “We have put together a plan to get you away from here. You will be travelling in a coroners’ van as a cadaver in a body-bag. You would then be taken to the morgue where you will be put in another van and taken to a safe-house that the security services have offered us. You will stay there until a slot becomes vacant for you to be given the operations. You will be taking the feminisation option; it is the best option for your future.”

Marianne G © 2021

Chapter 3 - An Arthurian Legend!

“And who decided that?” I demanded. She looked sad when she said “Just about everyone. All of those in the know want to see what the baby turns out like because you are an original case, being both mother and father. The other thing is that you cannot continue as Arthur looking the same as you do now. One way or another, your life would be taken from you, either by an excess of love or an excess of hate. That reporter really did a number on you.”

I hung my head as I said “OK, do what you have to do, I need to be somewhere quiet to become used to this. I never wanted to be a standard-bearer or figurehead. I just wanted a quiet life.” Some of the men shook my hand as they left the room and others took a wide berth, obviously worried that whatever I had could be contagious. It left me with the two women and I said “Are either of you going with me?” Both shook their heads and Miss Smith said “The only place we know about is the morgue; after that you will be in the hands of another agency, one that does not want anyone to know where you are and will also protect you from the public until after the birth. I am sorry but it was felt that secrecy is paramount.”

She gave me the folder and said “This is the records of your current and future wealth. It will need to go with you. I have been assured that there will be strings pulled that will allow you remote access. The magazine offer is there as well but I personally think that you would be crazy to take it up. Good luck.”

They both left the room and the policeman came in and told me to follow him. We went down a back staircase to the basement where I was zipped into a body-bag with the zip left slightly open for me to breath. The policeman told me to lie still and breathe shallow as I was put on a gurney and we trundled to the garage area. I felt myself being unceremoniously loaded into a van and we left the hospital grounds. I heard shouting and chanting as we went further down the road and it was a good five minutes before the policeman unzipped me to let me sit up on the gurney. “Funny mob, there” he said. “I’ve never seen the like of it since the anti-vax/anti-covid riots. A lot of fear and anger that your story has generated, all down to a stupid reporter out for a laugh, I gather.”

He stayed quiet for the rest of the short trip. I didn’t know where we were because the van only had air vents and no windows. Eventually we arrived and were backed into somewhere and I heard a roller door going down. The back doors of the van were opened by a stunning blonde woman dressed as if she was an extra in a Lara Croft cartoon. She told the policeman “Thank you for your work but now it is time for you to leave this one to us” and he shook my hand before getting out of the van and leaving the area. She looked at me as if I was a lump of meat and then said “Before we go any further, I am Gwen and am in charge. We will be getting into another van, this one with better seats, and going to a place where me and my team can keep you safe. Now, out!”

I got out of the van, clutching the file, and we got into the back of another with blacked-out windows where two burly guys were already in the front. “Let’s get going” she said and the power door went up and we left the morgue. “OK Arthur” she said as we left the town, heading west, “This is a very odd situation we have now. You may notice gathering crowds along the way. These are people, young and old, who either want to venerate you or simply pull you apart to get at the foetus you are carrying. I, and my team, work with the government and it is the government who is going to be looking after you from here. There are certain sections of the powers-that-be that fear that your baby will be elevated to the point that it becomes more important than the monarchy, let alone being more of a figurehead than the church leaders. I am sure that you have realised that we cannot let you loose with what has been done so far.”

“Is there no going back and putting the record straight?” I asked. She shook her head and said “That chance was lost the day that paper published your picture and the lies. The social media has gone overboard since then and there are more stories about you that have gone viral. I don’t believe that you would be safe anywhere in the world by now. Even I have my reservations about this job and I am a hardened professional.” The guy in the passenger seat turned around and said “If it wasn’t for the extra pay and the moniker of being one of the bodyguards to the next messiah we wouldn’t be here. I have battled any number of bad guys but I have never been up against millions before.” Gwen laughed and said “OK, Griff, enough of the bravado shit, you are just the adrenalin junky like the rest of us.”

“Griff?” I murmured, “and Gwen! I suppose the guy driving is Lance and you two are having an affair. Which one is the married one?” I felt the barrel of a gun against my side and she snarled “Right buster! How did you know that?” I looked her in the eye and asked “Have you ever read the story of King Arthur? If you had you would have known that Guinevere, his wife, had an affair with Sir Lancelot, one of the Knights of the Round Table. Sir Griff was another one of the merry band, along with Hector, Eric, Gareth, Geraint, Percival and Tristan; as well as bunch of others with more medieval names.”

At that the pressure of the gun eased and all three of them started laughing. When they eased off I asked what the joke was and Gwen smiled and said “You have just named every member of our team. I now know that Sir Lionel has a sense of humour.” I smiled and told her that Sir Lionel was also one from the legend and it started them off again. It was a far more relaxed group that carried on westward. We arrived at Evesham where we pulled into another garage, this time in the back of what looked like a police station. When we stopped I was told to get out and was taken to a store-room where I was sat on a chair and given a dark-haired wig to put on. “This is for further confusion” said Gwen as she adjusted it.

Back in the garage we all got into a Jaguar with dark windows, this time, however, Gwen was in front with Lance and I was in the back next to Griff. I should think that with a passing glance we would look like two couples out for a drive. There were sandwiches and thermos flasks in the car and we snacked as we carried on, now heading south-west. Mid - afternoon we arrived at a set of imposing gates where a couple of guys stood guard. Gwen said “OK Arthur, a little test of observation. Guess the names of the two guards.” I looked and saw that they were both brawny guys and likely brothers so I said “Gareth and Geraint, they are Welsh and they are brothers.”

Lance let out a laugh and he looked into the mirror at me and said “You should have been recruited into the service with those powers.” I smiled and told him that observation was one of the things an insurance salesman needed most. We were now in the Forest of Dean, a part of the world that is now English but once had been Welsh and, oddly enough, part of the world that was very closely linked to the Arthurian fables. The joke circle was completed when we pulled up next to the house and there, as large as life, was a nameplate next to the door that read ‘Camelot’.

We all got out of the car and Gwen opened the boot to take out a briefcase and a large X-Ray folder. In the house Griff led me to an upper room and he told me that this would be my home for a while. It was very spacious, actually a small suite with a living room, bedroom and a bathroom. He said “Would you please strip and take a shower. There is a dressing gown there for you after, along with some slippers. For the moment, that’s all you will need to wear in the house and it will be a few days before we can allow you outside again. Put your valuables into the bedside drawer and leave all of your clothes on the bed to be taken away and incinerated. We want to remove all visible traces of you so that you can move forward from here. Take your time, Sir Lionel will be here later and will take you through the events of your immediate future. When you have showered, press the bell over here next to the door and someone will take you for a tour of the house. You are not a prisoner but you are still in danger, even here. Sir Lionel will explain.”

I did as requested, putting my watch and wallet in the drawer with the folder. At this point in time I was just a body with a few trinkets and an electronic link to some money. No job, no friends, no home but with a baby inside me. In the bathroom I stood in front of the mirror and then realised I still had the wig on. Before I took it off I examined myself and saw that I was thin enough (except for the slight stomach bulge) and scrawny enough to be made over but that it would take more than cosmetics to make my features feminine. I took the wig off and added it to the pile on the bed before getting into the shower and washing away my past life up to this moment.

All of the lotions and potions in the bathroom were from the womens’ counters of the chemist. I shampooed and conditioned, body washed and creamed and then towelled dry with the softest towels I had ever used. The gown was there, hanging on the door, but when I put it on I found that it had a tie inside and was the wrong way closing. I sighed as I realised that this was the first step in my future conversion. It was only a small thing but it felt significant at the time. The slippers were pink and furry as well. When I came out of the bathroom the wig was on a wig-stand on the dresser and all of my clothes had gone.

I sat at the dresser which I now realised was a vanity with a mirror. I sat and looked at myself for a long time, trying to imprint my brain with the memory of the person I now was, just in case I forgot what I once looked like later. Finally I got up and pressed the button. After a few minutes Gwen came in and told me that I should put the wig back on and that it didn’t matter that I would not pass as a woman now, I just had to get used to having longer hair as soon as I could.

So, in a womans gown with my dark hair hanging down my back, I was given a tour of the house. It was a big place and I got to meet the other members of the team looking after me. I was not shown the kitchens and did not meet any of the cooks so I guessed that I was to be completely cut off from normal people for a while. As we were going around I heard the distinctive sound of a helicopter landing and the tour ended in the dining room where there were tureens of hot food waiting for us. Gwen showed me to my seat as an obvious Sir Lionel came into the room. He walked up to me and took my hand in both of his and said “Dear boy, it is so good to see you here and safe. The world has gone mad but, together my lad, we will put it right.”

‘Well, shit!’ I thought ‘my life in tatters, the world against me and the gods send me a bloody politician!’

Marianne G © 2021

Chapter 4 – Is it Arthur or Martha?

“But first” he said “we should have a meal. I am sure that it has been a long day for you so far.” We served ourselves from the tureens and sat down to eat. It was a pleasant enough meal if you discounted the fact that I was sitting there in a dressing gown and wig.

There was no shop-talk while we ate and afterwards Sir Lionel took me through to the library where coffee pots waited for us. He poured me a coffee and I sat in an easy chair. I could get used to this level of service! He sat opposite me and said “Arthur, you have no idea just what ructions you have caused us. I have colleagues who want you taken to be hung; others who just want to shoot you and bury you somewhere isolated. The more religious of them are happy with your appearance, even if it means the ‘End of Days’. They have surmised that we have had heat waves, floods, swarms of locusts, drought and the recent pandemic so it must be that you, and your baby, are the next step. Churches around the country are reporting huge increases in attendance.”

I said “I am sorry to have been a burden, Sir Lionel; I can assure you that none of it is my doing. It all started with that idiot reporter and the equally stupid radiographer. It all happened while I was tucked away in a hospital bed.” “That’s all right, my boy” he said “we understand what caused all of this but the basic problem is that you were a bloke with a baby inside him. You are at the start of a new journey and I want you to be happy with what is in store. My first priority is to keep you safe and well and then in a fit state to go full term. The baby is really the most important person here. When he, or she, is born, they will be the first truly virgin birth that we have recorded. I don’t go with the Virgin Mary stuff; she was a married woman, for goodness sake, out on a business trip with her husband.”

I took a sip of coffee, making sure my gown properly covered my genitals and then said “I think there are a lot of churchmen out there who would take offense at that statement.” He grinned and answered “Don’t be too sure, young Arthur, I have met a lot of the leaders of different religions and for most of them it is just a good job where they just have to say the right things to live a life of luxury. There are, I give you, a lot of people in the churches who do good things for the right reasons but, in most cases, they are not the ones in charge. Look, I will come clean here. I am doing this as a long-term project. I, and a small number of like-minded people, have realised that having you and your child as a rallying point we may be able to make some sense out of the chaos. We will look after you for as long as it takes and you will want for nothing. There will be no stories in the magazines, no film and no nagging. We just want you to go down the path to womanhood, have your baby naturally, if possible, and then we will look at the situation then.”

He poured himself a brandy and carried on. “If the child is stillborn or disfigured we will give you enough money to live peacefully somewhere. If the child is whole, hearty and able to grow up normally, we will give you a place like this to live in. There would be nannies, teachers and assistants galore if you need them. The only thing we ask is that we can then go to the people with the two of you alongside us. Yes, it is all about power, but it is, for us, the need to have power to do good things. It is only a year out of your life and I am certain that you will start to enjoy life as a woman; almost every woman I have met has said that it is wonderful to be female.”

I laughed and drank some more coffee. “What about the operations and the feminisation?” I asked. He said “All of it is in hand. There is a full operating theatre in the Army camp nearby and we can get you there and back by helicopter. There is a separate ward there as well where they look after anyone sick from the guardhouse so you will be secure. We will bring in specialists to do the work; some of them have offered their services just for the experience. When the operations are over and you are recovering, you will be here with a few more specialists, this time ones who will teach you all the things you will need to know. In the meantime we will create the paperwork for the person you will become. We will then be able to move your own savings into an account in that name without leaving a trail. For all intents and purposes, Arthur Prendergast will be no more.”

“Of course” he added, “we need you to decide what your new name will be so we can get the paperwork sorted.” I had a few seconds of thought and then said “My name will be Morgan Josephine. I would choose Pendragon as a surname but, to be a bit more modern, we can make it Pendleton.” “Right!” he said as he wrote it down, getting me to spell it out so that he got it right. “When you have the baby have you had any thought about the childs’ name?” I had an answer to that straight away. “Merilyn” I said.

“You are surely well versed in the Arthurian myth” he said “Gwen has mentioned that you twigged my little game almost immediately. I have to admit as being deep into the stories myself as there could well be some small truths back there in the third to sixth century. Geoffrey of Monmouth had a plausible story but I am sorry that Malory totally messed it up with the fanciful ‘Mort d’Arthur’, I doubt whether anyone would take the story seriously anymore. It does bring in the tourists, though. I do have to admit that it was a hell of a job finding good security people with the right names for my own knights. Gwen was a real find as she is focused and fearless as well as being so good to look at.”

We then chatted for an hour or so, he regaling me with anecdotes from the depths of Whitehall. It was all very surreal, me sitting in my wig and gown, trying to make sure that I didn’t flash my cock at him when I moved; and him in his suit pants and a cardigan drinking enough brandy to pickle his kidneys. In the end we said goodnight and I went to bed. When I got to my room I found a black nightdress laying on my bed and a note that told me to make sure that I started my new cleansing routine tonight. With a sigh I took off the wig, went into the bathroom and used the creams as advised, sat for a pee and then put the nightie on, got into bed and tried to sleep. It was eerily quiet after the constant noise in the hospital but I did manage to drift off naturally for the first time in days.

The next morning I was woken by an alarm clock beside my bed. I had no recollection of setting it myself and that question was answered when Gwen opened my bedroom door and said “Breakfast in twenty minutes, just put the gown on over the nightie and we will get you dressed for a little exercise after you’ve eaten.” I looked at the time and it was only six-thirty but groaned a bit as I got out, took my ablutions and put the gown and slippers on to go for breakfast. Again there were the tureens but this time had a range of country squire breakfast foods. There was a toasting machine like they have in hotels and I put a couple of wholemeal slices through while I got some coffee.

Gwen and Lance were there and they told me that the team had now split so that they would give twenty-four hour coverage from now on. Percival and Tristan would be the night shift while Eric and Griff would handle the evenings. Hector would be floating while Geraint and Gareth manned the gate. From today the team would take their meals in the kitchen except for Gwen, who would be at my side for most of her shift. I was not expected to be going out after six. After I had eaten Gwen took me back to my room and told me to shower and wash my hair again as today I was to be prepared for a little taste of female life. With just the gown on I was taken to a room with some salon equipment in it and then subjected to the torture of the thousand wax strips. She even used some small ones on my face. “That will hold you until we can do the better treatment” she said as she allowed me to put the gown back on “when you have your new face will be soon enough for the rest of the treatments. It’s not as if we are in a hurry.”

Back in my room she got me to put on panties and a bra which embarrassed the hell out of me until she reminded me that this would be an everyday thing from now on. No padding in the bra as she said it was just to get used to putting it on for when I really did need it. Then it was leggings and a long top which she called a tunic. Ankle socks and some walking shoes were followed by a cardigan and matching beanie. We then went outside and I had a good walk for the first time in a week. Now I knew what the odd feeling in my gut was, it did not bother me like it had so I was able to stride out without being afraid of hurting myself more. We did a full circuit around the house and it was wonderful to be there, especially with a beautiful woman by my side. It was then I realised that it was no big thing now; it would be different if it was a handsome man. I stopped and hyperventilated for a few moments with Gwen looking worried.

“Feeling sick?” she asked. I calmed down and said “No, not sick. Just realised that once I had the operation I will be a bit like you but I doubt that there would be any chaps chasing me unless they wanted to kill me.” She laughed and said “I have had a few of those in my time but it is the ones who want to take you for their own you have to worry about. Often you don’t see their agenda until it is too late. I am sure that you will pick it up as you go along but I have found that when you look at a guy and your heart lurches, it is either time to dive in head first or else just get out of Dodge and forget him.” She hooked her arm in mine and we carried on at a slower pace with her telling me about some of her experiences with men. It would have been strange just a week ago but I now knew that these were all things I had to take note of as they may be life-savers in times to come.

We did three full circuits before lunch and then she subjected me to an afternoon of lessons in walking, talking and acting like the girl I was to become. The last part was swapping the tunic for a dress and learning to sit properly and to pick things up by bending my knees. The evening meal was taken with me still in the dress and everyone was now calling me Morgan. After the meal we three went into the library again and Gwen nodded when I properly swept my skirt before sitting. Two of us were offered sherry while Sir Lionel again pickled his kidneys with brandy.

Marianne G © 2021

Chapter 5 – Morgan Emerges

Over the next week that became our routine, walks around the house and lessons in basic womanhood. One day we spent several hours on the glory of childbirth; and then some time on getting through periods. “Every woman is different” said Gwen “we will know what you are like with your first. Some women have it easy and some have some pain. All of us have mood swings and most of us become bitches for a few days.”

Every day I spent in skirts and dresses and the wig until I was getting used to being dressed that way. No-one told me I didn’t pass because that was not the point of it all. There would be time enough to brush up on making myself beautiful when I had healed. I learned about pulling on stockings so they don’t get holes, how to wear different styles of bra with different tops and, slowly, how to walk in heels. In the beginning of the second week we had a visit from a cranial-facial specialist who was choppered in along with his scanning machine. I had to sit perfectly still while he did a scan of my head and then we watched as he played with the resulting face until we had picked a feminine face that was nice enough to be considered pretty but still able to be produced with a minimum amount of surgery.

The following week I was taken in the helicopter to the Army camp where I was prepped for surgery and all of his changes were made, as well as my Adams apple being minimised. I spent a week there before going back to the house and another week before I was allowed to speak, now with a much more female tone. I just went along with it all because what else could I do? I was not looking forward to the next stage but a couple of surgeons had visited me while I was still at the camp and they assured me that my conversion was no big deal; just a matter of making an entrance to an already existing system. Also, while I was there, they did another ultrasound which showed my baby developing normally.

When all of the bandages had been removed and the bruising had faded I looked quite different and, with the wig, quite pretty. It was odd to look in the full-length mirror and see a womans face on a guys’ body but that would be the next stage. Gwen had been giving me hormones from day one and all of the effects were starting to take place. I was becoming more sensitive to the things around me and was taking a lot of notice of smell. As a guy I could appreciate a girl wearing perfume but had not realised just how men smelt different. Sir Lionel had a constant waft of brandy about him and I could tell which ones in the team smoked.

I was now well over three months into my pregnancy and it was decided that I was ready for the final operation. This time I was put on a stretcher before being loaded into the helicopter so that as few people as possible could see the new-look me. When we arrived I was taken straight into the pre-op room and given a soothing injection while they cleaned and shaved my groin. I said goodbye to my penis before I went to sleep.

They must have kept me out for several days because, when I was brought round, the orderly told me that everything was a success and that the healing was going well. After a sip of water I went back to sleep again for several hours. Next time I woke another orderly came in and I was helped to sit up and take some solid food and a sip of army tea. It was only then that I realised that I now had breasts as well. A couple of days later I was eating and drinking normally and a doctor came in to take off all the bandages to have a good look. He declared me fit and healthy and ordered the tubes to be all removed; something that I now found to be embarrassing and not a little strange, seeing that all of the nurses were blokes. They still wrapped me up in dressings which I could shower without them peeling off.

A couple of days later I was loaded back onto a stretcher wearing a hospital gown and taken out to the helicopter to go back to the house. There Gwen introduced me to Susan and Tilley, my new teachers and helpers for my next stage. Over the course of the next week they got me back on my feet and helped me in my development as a woman. Tilley was a registered nurse and looked after all of my various wounds, also showing me how to dilate, something no-one had mentioned before. Susan was a beautician and she worked on all of my nails and plumped my lips before using a machine to remove the remaining facial and body hair over several sessions.

After that she started lessons in make-up and all of the different looks you can produce by the use of colour and style. It was a lot to take in but I was now engrossed in the new me and sucked it all in like a sponge. By the time she left us I could go from the girl-next-door to princess inside half an hour. When a visiting specialist announced that all of my operations had been successful we said goodbye to Tilley and it was back to Gwen to keep me on the path; that path now being to motherhood, rather than just womanhood.

My hair had been growing in the meantime and Susan had given me a pixie-cut before she left so the person who was now Morgan was totally female and I was now appreciating just what had been done to me and for me. Sir Lionel was getting a lot more jovial as time went on and the team was working like a well-oiled machine. One odd thing that was happening was that all the men in the team were friendlier with me, especially Griff, who used his time on the evening shift to entertain me with stories from the world of the service and we would also sit in the library and chat when Sir Lionel was not present.

When I mentioned this to Gwen she laughed and told me that I was now the object of affection for the male half of the population and that some may feel more affection than others. It took me some time before I was ready to see myself as attractive. I pondered this for a while. As Arthur I had a couple of girls willing to have sex with me and I now saw that it was very much a decision that a girl makes. As Arthur I was just happy to have the sex but now realised that it was more than just that for a girl; there was also an element of trust.

We got back into a routine with my walks becoming longer and quicker. The bump was now very visible as I approached the end of the second trimester and I could swear that I felt Merilyn kicking. We were now absolutely certain that it would be Merilyn as the regular ultrasounds were very clear. Except for the trips to the army camp I had not been out of the grounds for over five months and was getting antsy but Gwen assured me that I would not be totally safe outside, even though I looked nothing like Arthur any more. We did look at the TV news every night and I knew that there were a lot of people still flocking to churches as the expected delivery date approached. The roaming bands of ‘Anti-Arthurians’ were still using me as an excuse for attacking the police and causing general mayhem.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise when Gwen suggested that I put together a ‘grab-bag’ in case I had to get out quickly so, together, we packed a case with clothing for every day wear, some new underwear and shoes. She got me a cosmetic case and we put together a range that would be suitable for several weeks, along with some new bottles of hair products. These were taken away to the garage at the back of the house and put into a black Range Rover. From that moment I kept all of my documentation in a neutral handbag which never left my side. By now I had been issued with a new passport with my new picture, a driving licence and some store and credit cards in my new name. When I looked at my bank account on-line it was doing quite nicely, considering that I was not spending a penny. The money for the house and land exceeded my expectation and there had even been a little bit back from the sale of my old car to a person who obviously thought it would be a collectors’ item in years to come, seeing what they had paid for it.

I was more than seven months pregnant when things started to look ugly. Gwen told me that there had been social media chatter about likely places where I may be hiding and one person spoken about was Sir Lionel. It appeared that he had been laying the groundwork for a campaign which I would star in, along with my child, saying that there would be a new beginning. Obviously the brandy had pickled more than his kidneys.

It was after dinner when red lights started flashing in every room. Griff was with me at the time and he said “Get a coat on, we are leaving! Meet me at the garage.” He rushed off to get his own ‘grab-bag’ and I went to my room, put on a good coat and changed from my inside shoes to a pair of sturdy boots. There was nothing else I needed so grabbed my handbag and went through the house to the garage. Griff was warming up the Range Rover and I got in the passenger seat, asking “What about the others?” He said “There is a plan in place, they are to hold up the mob long enough that we can get away and then they will escape by other routes.” He put on a set of night goggles and then we were off.

The door of the garage rolled up and he gunned the car out into the back garden and past the helicopter which was spooling up. There was a wide pathway which I had noticed on my walks and he headed for it and a frightening rate of knots in the dark. It curved around a bit before getting to a set of doors which started to open when he pressed a button on the key-fob. Out on to a road we headed north. At the corner of the wall I could see down the road towards the main gates and there was a crowd down there brandishing flaming torches. He kept the lights off until we were well away and then pulled over to take off the night vision goggles, turn on the headlights and set off again.

We went north as far as Ross-on Wye and then east towards Gloucester to pick up the M5 there to carry on north again. We stopped at the services so that I could have a pee, something I needed every couple of hours, and then he went as fast as he could until we reached the services just before Worcester. Here I had another pee while he put some petrol in the tank. When we got back in we only went as far as the northern exit to the city and we left the motorway to go into the city itself, pulling up at a posh hotel.

When he turned the engine off he looked at me and said “I don’t want to alarm you, Morgan, but I made a booking here by phone this afternoon once I thought the crowd would be coming. It is the bridal suite and you are now Mrs Jeffrey for the immediate future. It will muddy the waters more and any searches of videos along the motorway will show us heading north. Now, we need to get all of your bags out of the car and into the hotel; I have arranged for a friend of mine to take this and keep going north before torching it somewhere in Scotland. We will get something different for our further travels.” We got out of the car and unloaded our bags onto a trolley a porter had brought out for us. A younger chap came up to Griff, shook his hand and took the keys from him, getting into the car and leaving.

The porter pushed the trolley into the hotel and we went up to the counter to register. When the receptionist saw my condition she smiled and said “Was it a nice wedding, madam?” I told her it was lovely with all our families there and Griff added “Her father had a nice shiny shotgun which he kept by his side until we had signed the register.” We all had a laugh and she gave us the key-card for our room and we followed the porter to the lift and our first night as man and wife.

Marianne G © 2021

Chapter 6 – Mrs Jeffrey

When we got to the room the porter put our bags on the shelf and Griff gave him a tip as he left, saying “Enjoy your stay.” I looked at Griff and said “Griff, just so you know. I have been using the biggest dilator in the pack for some weeks now. If you want to make love to me tonight I wouldn’t mind finding out what all the romantic novels were on about.”

His face was a sight to see as he took that in. He then came to me and wrapped me in his arms and kissed me. I have to say that it was a very new experience for me but, after some seconds, I was caught up in the kiss and I put my arms around his neck. When we broke the lip-lock I whispered in his ear “I know you like me, Griff, so now we are husband and wife I expect you to take me to bed, right now!”

We helped each other undress and I saw his magnificent penis, proudly erect and it was all for me. Naked we pulled the bed covers back and he kissed me all over and licked my new pussy until I was eager for something else. I had no idea just how it would all work but I need not have worried. My new plumbing worked exactly how the doctors said it would and the feeling of him deep in me sent me into another plane of existence. I think that we must have been a bit noisy because several of the staff gave me a big smile the next morning at breakfast.

After breakfast we went out into the city and flagged a cab to go to an address that Griff gave the driver. Once the cab had left us he took my hand and we walked quite a way until we arrived at a line of lock-ups. At one Griff felt around above the door and found a key sitting in the sheet metal bend. He opened the lock-up and inside was an older model Mercedes. He got in and started it, warming it before carefully backing it out. He opened the boot and there were a couple of cases and he said “These are totally new outfits for both of us to add to our grab-bag wardrobes. You and I, my darling, are going on an extended honeymoon and, if last night was a sample, we are going to enjoy it immensely.”

He closed the lock-up and put the key back where he had found it and then we were in the car and driving back to the hotel. There we repacked our bags and checked out, all smiles and hugs for everyone. With the car loaded we only went as far as a café where we parked and went in for a snack. Sitting at a quiet table we chatted about where we were going to and he told me that the final destination was going to be a surprise but we will be taking a few weeks getting there, as long as Merilyn allowed us to keep on the road.

Back in the car we headed north-west until we stopped at a small pub outside of Tenbury Wells. On the way he explained that the Range Rover would be stopping at a number of services going north so that anyone who twigged that we had escaped in it would be looking in that direction. We would take our time going up to northern Wales and then working down the coast as happy honeymooners. I said that I was really looking forward to that, as long as Merilyn didn’t mind.

After a light lunch we picked up the A49 and went north until we reached Shrewsbury and we stopped at a nice hotel where we asked if there was a room and we were checked in as Mister and Mrs Jeffrey. We stayed there for four days, resting up after the sudden upheaval. We read the newspapers and watched TV, went for walks and took in the town sights. The news from the Forest of Dean was that an unruly mob had invaded the house of a prominent politician and had done a fair bit of damage before leaving but no-one was injured except for a couple who had been burnt by their own flaming torches. There was no word about Gwen and the team but it was reported that the politician had escaped in his helicopter.

I would like to say that it was here that I fell in love with Griff but I am sorry to say that I just loved his attentions and what we got up to in bed. What I did realise was that I loved the power that being loved gave me and I also loved the power I had over him without him knowing it. I could now sense what drove Gwen to having an affair with Lance and, oddly, what would have driven Guinevere to have bedded Lancelot. I knew that as soon as a better qualified man came along with regard to my survival, I would drop Griff like a stone.

I bought a copy of Malorys’ book on Arthur and read it through before putting it in a rubbish bin. I then left Griff for a couple of hours and spent the time in the Library searching through their books on the Arthurian legend. As Shrewsbury was the central town of the old area in medieval days and the biggest town in Powys when it was much bigger than it is today. The library had a lot of information about the different legends and songs from the early days but none really helped me except for references in the Mabinogion where Arthur was described as a solid person with wealth and power in one of the stories. For more, I thought, I would have to wait until we went south again.

From Shrewsbury we booked some time in Llangollen and then we hooked south again to Dolgellau. We then went down to Aberystwyth where we stayed in a hotel for a few nights while we found, and rented, a small furnished house on the outskirts of the town. Here we set up camp and I registered with the local GP as Mrs Morgan Jeffrey. I spent my days in the National Library of Wales while Griff took the car and went to see how Gwen and the team were, telling me that he would not divulge my position to them.

In the library I tracked through various tomes that contained old Welsh history and discovered that the name I had taken had much more meaning than I had thought. The old writings spoke about Morgan Le Fay – the Fairy – as a great magical figure; an apprentice to Merlin and a very powerful sorceress in her own right. The kicker was that it was thought that she was the daughter to a chap named Gorlois and a woman called Igraine. When Gorlois was killed in battle Igraine married Uther Pendragon and they had Arthur. Morgan was about four when Arthur was born and here the tales get a little foggy. Some said that Arthur and his half-sister Morgan married and they had a son called Mordred, who finally was the one who played a pivotal role in the end of Arthurs reign. Morgan disappeared from the narrative for a while and Arthur married Guinevere.

It was all very interesting but my life was being taken over by my baby. As I got closer to term I became more house-bound and Griff needed to stay close. He was still working for Sir Lionel but he would not let them know of my whereabouts, seeing that it was Lionels’ stupidity that nearly got us all killed. When he got back from one trip he had a different car, a Volvo Estate which would be perfect for a couple and child whenever we moved on.

Merilyn was born in the hospital at Aberystwyth and I can say that it was not the easiest of births but she did come into the world naturally and I survived; much in the way that someone from a war zone survives. Now I knew why women didn’t speak about childbirth very much and I wondered why you would put yourself through that a second or third time. By that time I was lactating so was able to feed her naturally,

Of course, the papers were full of speculation about new-borns around this time but they were still looking for a man about to have a C-section so an obvious woman who had a healthy daughter naturally did not make it into the lists of possibles. Some unfortunate women with masculine looks did get closely interviewed. I think my doctors were so enchanted by my little one they refused to think that this was the messiah or even the devil in disguise. With her chubby cheeks, blonde hair, beaming smile and deep green eyes she was loved and cuddled wherever she went. Every time I looked into those eyes, however, I couldn’t help but wonder where I had seen them before.

We stayed in the house for another year with Griff going off to do his work on the side and also make it look like he was alone. We lived as man and wife whenever he was home but I was now taking precautions and learning to live with periods. I knew that he was worried about his latest assignment when he kissed us both and gave me an envelope which he told me to only open if he did not return. It was, sadly, a correct prediction as I read in the paper that three government agents had been killed in a gun battle with ultra-extremist Anti-Arthurians. The paper gave me an interesting fact that I had not known. It said that the titular leader of the AA faction was a politician called Vincent Melehan.

Now, in the research I had done I had found out that according to legend Mordred had conceived two sons, one of them called Melehan and it was he who killed Sir Lionel of the Round Table. Supposedly both sons had been murdered but it is likely that they had produced offspring before their deaths. It was all pretty tenuous but there were compelling facts that caused me sleepless nights and sometimes these were not just getting up to look after my baby. Merilyn was now into some walking and she had an uncommon desire to look at books. Surely she couldn’t be reading at her age.

When Griff did not come home I opened the envelope. It gave me the address, deeds and keys to a house in Camelford, purchased recently for cash in the name of Morgan Jeffrey. There was a note that said that ‘If you are reading this, etc., etc. and expressing just how much he loved me and had enjoyed our time together. That went in the fire along with most of the paperwork that he had left behind. In this house, Griff no longer existed.

Now Camelford was a very interesting place to be. Not far from Tintagel or Bodmin Moor, it is a sleepy little place and, if I lived there with Merilyn it would be living in full view. I think that this was his plan, to be so overt as to be invisible as ‘the most dangerous person in the country’. It was right in the centre of Arthurian history and there was even a museum devoted to the legend in Slaughterford. There would be schools in Wadebridge or Launceston where I could take Merilyn. It was, I thought, a brilliant place to be as Merilyn grew up and would also allow me to further my research. I must say that Merilyn was a very happy child, very few grizzles and always smiling. I talked to her often and she started to construct understandable speech well before she was two.

Over the next month I disposed of Griffs’ things and cleaned out anything of mine I didn’t want any more. I took Merilyn down to Camelford and we looked at the house together. It was a lovely stone cottage with a nice garden, going a bit to weed. While I was there I heard a knock on the door and it was one of my neighbours being nosey. I told her that I had bought the place as a haven for me and my daughter, using proceeds of a payout on the death of my serviceman husband. She was rightfully concerned and was captured by my cute little one as soon as their eyes met. I told her that I would be moving in over a period of time as I had to settle the rent on where we had lived together and she assured me that she would arrange for my garden to be looked after. Before I left I had bought in two new double beds, a single for Merilyn and a dining set and sofas from a shop in Waterford and thoroughly cleaned the place.

That was the first of several trips as we made the place a home and brought our excess stuff down in the Volvo. At last I had loaded the car with our final load, Merilyn was in the booster seat and the house had been inspected. With the agents’ cheque for our bond in my bag I headed south again for the last time. It was odd to be in Cornwall and so close to the heart of the legend but it did seem right. Merilyn and I became accepted as part of the village and I became a sort of financial advisor to the older villagers with my accountancy and insurance knowledge.

It was one evening, about two years in the village, when I was trying to work out the tax liabilities of the local shop when I asked Merilyn, who was watching me closely, to move so I could have a little light. Suddenly, there was a small, glowing globe above my head and I could see the books easily. My brain was suddenly swirling with pictures and memories of someone I did not know but when the roundabout of visions stopped I looked at Merilyn and she gazed at me. I was not sure what had happened but I knew, deep within me, that it had changed my world.

Marianne G © 2021

Chapter 7 – Seeing the Light

I then said “What just happened to me and how did you do that?” Merilyn chuckled and the light disappeared. “Oh Mummy, these people today have no idea of what they have let loose” she said “If we had been able harness lightning in the early time we could have ruled the world."

"Now they can make lightning at will! Don’t even get me started on radio waves; I am still trying to get on top of those. The problem for me is that they are all around, all the time and they keep changing. What just happened is the energy ball has triggered the bits of your body that retain residual memories of past lives.” “Do you know how you came about, other than me making you?” I asked. Merilyn nodded her head and said “I do have an idea. The injections you got triggered sections of your inner body, I think it is called DNA but I have not learned enough to be sure. Your body was already able to provide a place for me and there were hidden parts of you that had lain dormant through your family line for fifteen hundred years. You must have come through the female line because you now have some of the memories of the original Morgan and you also passed to me the memories of Merlin, but from your own point of view when you were Morgan Le Fay. Together we did wonders in our time but today there is more to do because the dark forces are again swirling.”

I was finding it difficult to understand all this even though I had suspected something for a couple of years already. We went into the kitchen and poured us both some orange juice and I asked how much she knew, seeing that she would have to start school soon. She assured me that she had much of her inherited knowledge and had been reading every book or magazine I had left around. I said that I would bring home books for her and she asked me to get physics and biology books so she could hone her powers. “What about my powers?” I asked “Was I able to do anything?”

“You could move things and you were also very good at reading people and then manipulating them” she said, “You should be able to produce light or power globes like the one I did before. Why don’t you give it a go?” She took my hand and I could feel the electricity that was around us from the lights and the power supply. She told me to feel the currents and then take some from the wires and manifest it in front of me. Suddenly a tiny globe of blue light appeared in front of me but surprised me so much I lost concentration and it popped as it disappeared.

“Mummy, that was so good for your first try” she said “Do it again but take it slowly.” I concentrated again and this time the globe was a bit bigger and more stable. I willed it to move across the room and then back to us and then consciously turned it off. “Now bring that cup from the sink to this table” she asked and I tried. It did not move for a while and I tried to concentrate more and the cup then left the sink, whizzed past us and smashed itself against the wall. Merilyn clapped her hands and laughed “Mummy, Mummy, that was so good but I think we are going to have to turn the power down a bit.”

From then on I started getting books for her to look at. I went into Wadebridge to a bookshop where I told them that I had a brother going to university in Exeter and I needed to get him the basic books on electricity, electronics, physics and thermos-dynamics. Merilyn would give me a nudge when they named ones she wanted to read and we left with seven that would keep her busy for a few weeks. We went to the local school and I asked about special schooling for a very bright child. I told them that my daughter would suffocate if she had to spend years in kindergartens or primary schools and we arranged a day where she could sit an exam to see where she was, even though she had not yet started her first year.

She sat the exam while I sat with a teacher and watched her. She breezed through the first paper and, when the teacher looked at it he got her another to do. When she finished that he followed up with another. He asked us to sit and wait while he showed the papers to a colleague. He came back with another guy and they told us that Merilyn was already at a level of her general knowledge and mental ability to be in high school but that she needed to have targeted teaching that would give her the basic pass marks to get into a special school and skip primary altogether.

We asked if she could get going on that path as soon as we could and they took my contact details and said they would be in touch when they had set it up. We went to another bookshop and I picked up the primary school textbooks for maths, English and general science. Over the next few weeks we tried to show a normal existence to the outside world while we practised our powers and she absorbed all of the books we had got. All the while we monitored the newspapers and TV for stories about Sir Lionel and Vincent Melehan. One of the things that I had found in Griffs’ things that I had kept was a phone number for Gwen. I went into Launceston one day and rang it from a public phone. It went to a voice mail so I left a message, saying “Gwen, it’s Morgan, I will ring this number again tomorrow at the same time.”

The next day I went to Bodmin to call from a phone box. When she answered I said “Gwen, I know that it has been almost five years since we last spoke. Are there any changes I should know about?” She hesitated and then said that everything was as it was before and that Sir Lionel wanted to speak to me. When he came on I suspected that he was worried about something. “Dear Morgan” he said “You have really been off the radar for a while. It is as if you just disappeared and then the money that was in your account was shifted. Tell me, how is your child, is she angelic or demonic?” I laughed and said “Neither, Sir Lionel, she is much more into your special story, nothing to do with biblical stories at all.” “I want to meet the two of you” he asked “can we make it next Saturday afternoon, somewhere open. I do have worries about some of my colleagues if they knew you were still around.” I told him that I would ring this number and give him thirty minutes to get to where I would be but it would be in London.

When I put the phone down Merilyn tugged at my skirt and said “Leave quickly, Mummy, someone was trying to track that call and I think we may have some unwanted visitors about to call on us.” I gathered my bags and we walked towards a shopping centre and just got to the main doors when a police car pulled up at the phone box. We went quickly to the car, carefully parked on one of the lower floors. We sat in the car and Merilyn suddenly said “Leave now, by the furthest exit because they are going to search all cars leaving the shops but only have enough men to start near the phone box.” I drove the car away from where we had come in and went out onto a back road, getting to the corner as a police car went past me to block the exit we had just used. On the way back to Camelford I asked Merilyn how much detail she had been able to get. “When they were close to us, Mummy, I could hear their talking on the radio as if they were standing next to us. I did think that it was not Sir Lionel that was trying to track us but someone was listening in to Gwens’ phone.” As we went home she was dancing in her seat and singing along to a popular song. I turned the radio on to the local station and it synchronised with her singing.

We would have to plan the meeting very carefully. It needed to be somewhere open enough for us to see any unwanted visitors and we needed to be able to vet Sir Lionel when he arrived and before we showed ourselves. We went into Plymouth and I bought six cheap mobile phones with a pay-as-you-go plan and put twenty pounds on each one. I paid cash, something I had been doing for some years now. Sir Lionel had asked about the money that Morgan Pendlebury had and that had been shifted via a few offshore banks into an account under Morgan Jeffrey. I went to a branch, never the same one twice in six months, and took out enough cash to last a month. Griff had forged a marriage certificate and I had become Mrs Griff Jeffrey well before he died.

On the Saturday we took the train to London and made our way to Hyde Park, mingling with the crowds in the sunshine. We were both resplendent in summer dresses and I carried a big bag with a picnic in it. We stopped at the Magazine Restaurant and I made a booking for an afternoon tea with a table for four. We then strolled up the western edge of the lake and stopped at the Peter Pan statue. There was a bench which was right in front and we sat and looked around. When I was sure no-one was watching I took one of the mobile phones and a ball of blue-tack. Reaching under the seat I stuck it safely out of sight. I rang it from one of the other phones to make sure it worked and that someone sitting here would hear it.

We then wandered around the end of the lake and back down to the other side until we reached a bit of open ground opposite the statue and spread our picnic under a tree. With another of the phones I rang the number and said “Hyde Park, Peter Pan statue, sit and wait for me.” I then took the SIM card out and also removed the battery, putting them in the bag. We sat and ate our sandwiches and Merilyn acted as if she was looking at the clouds. After about twenty minutes she said “Six radios, three following and three scouting the statue area. We looked across the water and, sure enough, I could see three guys trying to act casual.

They had a good look around before moving away out of sight. I then spotted Sir Lionel, Gwen and Lance walking along the pathway to the statue. As instructed, after they had a good look around they sat on the seat. I rang the phone I had secreted and I saw Gwen reach under and pull it out. When she answered I said “Code red, you have six watchers. Magazine Restaurant at four, booking for Lancelot.” I turned my phone off and removed the SIM and battery. I saw her put the phone in her bag and speak quietly to Lance before talking to Sir Lionel. They then stood and acted as if everything had gone bad. As they walked quickly away I could see the watchers come out of hiding and Merilyn giggled as she told me that there were a lot of recriminations flying about the airwaves as they tried to figure out which one had been spotted. They certainly were now because I could see Gwen doing something with her face that required her mirror and I knew she had picked them out now. She would be on a war footing from here on, of that I was sure.

Merilyn and I just sat there in the sun, looking as calm as you like. Merilyn said that the watchers were making a sweep to see if they could spot anyone suspicious and smiled when she said “One of them just looked at us with binoculars and he said that he fancied you.” She then got up and skipped across to talk to another young girl not far away. Together they played chasee with some boys until the other mothers started calling their children to get ready to go home. She came back to me and reported that all was clear so we wandered down to the Magazine Restaurant where I told them that I had made a reservation for Lancelot and that I thought that three others would join me later.

Marianne G © 2021

Chapter 8 – But exposing only the Dark

They supplied a high chair for Merilyn and we sat with cool drinks until I saw Gwen speak to the maitre’d. He pointed us out and she came over and sat down. “It’s good to see you, Morgan” she said “And this must be little Merilyn?” Merilyn looked into her eyes and she relaxed and said “So cute!”

She waited until the waiter had brought her a drink before saying “Thank you for the heads-up this afternoon, here is your phone back. Good move, by the way.” She gave me the phone and then Merilyn said “Four watchers but some way off. They are following Sir Lionel. Oh, there are two on Lancelot as well.” I’ll give Gwen her due, she got up and told us to get going and to go and sit on the steps of the Albert Memorial and wait for a car to stop. I got up and paid the bill, saying that my companions could not make it.

Gathering Merilyn and my bag we slowly walked over the bridge and along the West Carriage Road and then followed a lawn that led to the Albert Memorial. We sat on the steps and looked across the road at the Albert hall. After about fifteen minutes the phone that Gwen had given back rang. When I answered she said “Blue Jag, get in the back. I am certain I am clear.” We stood and got to the kerb of South Kensington Road as a blue Jaguar pulled up beside us and Gwen was driving. We got in the back and she was away.

We were going east and suddenly both Merilyn and I ‘felt’ something. When it happened again I said “Gwen, this car has a tracker, I think it is under the boot somewhere. Can you get under cover so we can get rid of it?” A little further on she dived into the underground car-park at One Hyde Park and parked in a spare spot. We got out and she looked under the car and when she was back on her feet she said “It is there but it is glued tight. What do we do now, walk?” I looked around and spotted a nice new Audi a couple of spaces over and Merilyn grinned, saying “This one is yours, Mummy.” I walked up to it, feeling for the electricity and radio waves that I had been practising with and sorted out the correct one that would open the car and disable the security. I got in and started it up, pulling out of the spot and pulling up next to the Jaguar.

Gwen was looking very odd as we unloaded everything from the Jaguar and put it in the Audi. Merilyn and I got in the back and she got into the driving seat, adjusted it to her size, and we left the car park, doubling back the way we had come, until we reached Exhibition Road and she turned left to head south. She was still trying to figure out what we had been able to do but kept concentrating on the driving. At Cromwell Road we turned right and headed west. We kept on the same road as it became the Great West Road and she did not stop until we reached Heston Services where she pulled into a remote space and turned the car off, relaxing with a big sigh.

“Right” she said, eventually “You can steal cars without any tools at all and Merilyn hears radio chatter. Am I close?” I laughed and said “You are close but you don’t know the half of it. We can both ‘feel’ radio and electrical waves in the air. Merilyn can only hear radio chatter when it is close but can hear the normal radio whenever she wants. We both can harness electricity in a small way so all I did with this car was to find the frequency of the keyless entry and sent a pulse as if I was walking up to it with a key in my pocket. The car did the rest, thinking that the owner was close. With the tracker we both felt it send the pulse to the base station at the same time. That was actually the first time I had detected a radio wave.” “You did well, Mummy, it was only a short time but was pretty strong.”

“Did you identify the team that was following you?” I asked and she gave another sigh and said “Yes, it is attached to one of Sir Lionels’ colleagues.” “Vincent Melehan, I expect” I said and she started. “How the hell could you know that? Can you read my mind as well?” I said “It is a long story that started over fifteen hundred years ago and I doubt if you will believe it if I told you. Now, how are we going to cut Sir Lionel and Lance away from the watchers? They have your phones tapped and your cars tracked and I think that Melehan would not stop at killing any one of us to get his way, especially me and Merilyn.” I took the phone that she had given me back, opened it and shook out the little bug, handing it back to her, saying “Nice try but I felt it there as soon as you gave it to me.”

She thought a bit and said “He and I would meet sometimes in Saint Austell and go to the Dozmary Pool on Bodmin Moore for some sex in the grass at midnight. It was a bit of fun but we both wondered about Lancelot and Guinevere as we did it. He was living with his wife in Plymouth at the time.” “Perfect” I said “You will come home with us for a few days. Ring him from one of these burners of mine and tell him you will meet him by the pool next Saturday night but to make sure he is alone.” I put together a burner and she rang his mobile. She did not give him any chance to speak before saying her piece.

We took the battery out, snapped the SIM card and got out of the car to put the phone on the ground, stamping on it to make it useless. We did the same with hers after finding the bug in it. Both ex-phones went into the bin and the bug was tossed onto the bed of a truck parked nearby. We then went into the restaurant to have our evening meal. When we left we came off the M4, went a little way on the M25 and picked up the M3 to go west. We detoured into Southampton where we found the theatre district and swapped the Audi for a near new Mercedes. As an insurance seller my mind was aghast at the claims that would be coming in once the crooks had developed the technology to steal them, it was too easy. We left the Mercedes at Exeter Railway Station and left there in the Volvo with me driving. “This is the one that Griff had” she exclaimed “You were living with him the whole time?”

“That’s me” I said “Mrs Jeffrey ever since the day we escaped. He was a lovely man and taken too soon. Who were the other ones killed?” She looked sad when she said “Poor Eric and Tristan. It was an ambush, pure and simple. Since you have told me about Melehan I now think he had set them up. Eric had been suspicious of Melehan for some time I think, especially his involvement with the AA crowd.” I drove us home and it was after midnight when we arrived. I showed her where the spare room and bathroom were and loaned her a nightdress. We all slept soundly; it had been a very long day.

Next morning, being Sunday, we were up and showered and off to church after a light breakfast. We were all pretty stylish and I introduced her to the villagers as Gwendoline, a colleague of my poor husband. They were all properly sympathetic and we were invited to a lunch that one of my customers was putting on for his eightieth birthday. It was quite surreal to be sitting around with tea and cake after the events of the previous day. On Monday we went into Launceston and bought Gwen enough clothes to see her through the week and then we scouted the tracks that led to Dozmary Pool. I wanted to point out to her that this really was not the site where the Lady of the Lake presented Arthur with Excaliber, that pool was now in the middle of the Colliford Lake Reservoir but this would not sit well with her beliefs. I couldn’t tell her that I knew the truth because I had been there in a previous life.

We could still get to where she and Lance had met but it was a bit of a cul-de-sac these days because of all the farm development. We would need to park some way away and walk in so that we did not advertise our presence with a car. Actually, I thought that it would be easy because I could now levitate things and had been trying out with Merilyn. I didn’t tell Gwen of this as I did not want to spook her too quickly. We did, however, show her a few of the lesser tricks we could do with light and electricity, creating some balls of light energy and moving them around. Merilyn and I had found out in our own experiments that these balls of energy could also be used as weapons and there had been a few scorched remnants of old bits of furniture that had gone out into the woodshed.

On the Saturday evening we dressed in jeans and boots and went to Jamaica Inn for an evening meal; then we took the road behind it towards Dozmary Pool. The track ran up to a farmhouse which we approached with the lights off and me driving with the night-vision goggles. At the farm gate the track took a left turn and ran alongside the water before doing another left to end at a gate. I turned the car around and switched off. We walked to the place where she said they had met and she declared it to be unchanged. I spread a blanket on the ground and we sat and let our eyes get used to the dark. The sky was beautiful in the summer night and it was a joy to be there. Merilyn whispered “Just like the old days” as she cuddled close to me.

Eventually we saw lights of a car coming our way. It stopped where the track went up to our parking space and the lights went off. There was the sound of the door closing and we waited for Lance to find his way to us. Suddenly I felt a small electrical pulse and realised that he had been tracked. “Stay quiet” I whispered to Gwen “He has followers.” ”Oh shit” she said,” this could be bad if they are armed.” I patted her shoulder and smiled “Merilyn and me will protect you, never fear.”

Lance finally arrived and Gwen fell into his arms and they hugged. He said “What the hell is going on, I have had to shrug off followers all week just to do my job. The other guys in the team don’t know what the problem is but I can’t tell them anything. Sir Lionel is getting frustrated that he doesn’t have access to you, Morgan, but could not bring himself to believe that we were being tracked in Hyde Park. I saw at least three guys I had met in and around Whitehall and all of them are in the service. And then Gwen disappears and all I get is a message to meet here, of all places. This is where my life changed and my marriage disintegrated.”

“Well, hello to you as well, Lance” I said “Now if you will just shut up and let us concentrate we may find out who you brought to the party.” “What” he exclaimed “I’m sure I’m clean!” Gwen gave a small chuckle and said “You are but none of our cars and phones are. We have been tracked for five years and didn’t know it. Some agents we are!” Merilyn then said “Three radios. They must have got out of their car near the farm.” Gwen looked at Lance and whispered “Don’t fret it, lover, these two are one-man listening posts.” We tried to blend into the ground as we could hear the odd sound of someone stepping on animal crap, the road being the usual way they moved the sheep around. Then Merilyn said “They are talking to someone else but they are not near enough to hear the reply yet. Wait! One of the guys has spoken to a chap called Leeson and has told him that he had an open shot if he saw any of us, seeing that we are so far away from any sightseers.”

Gwen said “This is real war then, Leeson is a sharpshooter with an impressive record.” I pointed west across the Pool and said “Well, this is where his record comes to an end.” As the helicopter came closer I could see a guy sitting in an open door on the side with night-vision goggles on. I could also feel the heat-seeking unit on the chopper. I knew they had us cold so, when the helicopter swung to leave the shooter face-on to us, I sent a good size ball of energy his way. It would have blinded him in the goggles but that would have been the last thing he saw. The ball of energy went into the cabin and the helicopter spun out of control before hitting the water and going under in a spray from the blades before there was an explosion as the cold water flooded the turbine. Lights went on in the farmhouse but there was nothing left to see as the ripples dissipated.

Marianne G © 2021

Chapter 9 – Making Sense of the Chaos

“Now for the clean-up” I said. Lance was about to burst so I put a finger to his lips and whispered “We cannot let them report to Melehan. They all have to disappear.” Merilyn said “They have been shocked but one has suggested ringing the boss.”

“Right” I whispered “Merilyn, when I say ‘now’ put a big sphere of light over us. When I have dealt with these guys, send it north in an upwards arc as if it was accelerating. Then put it out when it gets above the cloud.” I got ready to stand and then said “Now!” I was shading my eyes when the light flared above us, seeing the three men about fifty feet away and spread from the waterside to the other side of the road. One had a phone in his hand. I sent them each a ball of electricity which hit each one in the head. They dropped to the ground. “Come on” I said “It’s time to do some work.”

“Gwen and Lance; go to the guys and frisk them for anything we can use. Take their keys and go and bring their car back here. I’ll go and get ours.” By this time the sphere of light was glowing in the clouds and then everything went dark. I got the Volvo and parked alongside the car that Lance had come in. The two of them had collected the weapons and some papers that the men had been carrying. Lance trotted off to bring back their car, driving it without lights. We heaved the three bodies into it. I then turned to Lance and said “If I neutralise the tracker on your car it will fry the electrics; that OK with you?” He nodded, obviously still a bit shocked at the events. He got everything out of his car that would identify him and locked it, leaving the windows slightly open as I had asked him, doing the same with the other car.

I said “Gwen, you will have to drive us home; this is going to take a lot out of me.” We put Merilyn in her seat and then I concentrated very hard, lifting one car off the ground and then sending it out to the middle of the lake before releasing the levitation. I quickly turned to the other, with three bodies in it, and did the same. I was right, I felt like I had been wrung out after that. We all got into the Volvo with me in the back. Merilyn said “That was magnificent, Mummy, rest now.”

On the way back we had nearly got to Bolventor when a police car passed us going the other way. Lance was asking Gwen what the hell had happened and she told him that she was sure it would all be explained in the morning. She did get him to take the back off his phone and look for the bug. When he found it he threw it out of the window and then took the battery out as well, putting the bits in different pockets. I just sat quietly and recuperated.

As it was coming up to the hour Gwen turned on the radio and we listened to the news. Much of it was the usual doom and gloom but the newsreader then said “We finish with news that an alien spacecraft has been seen over Bodmin Moor. It is reputed to have climbed at great speed before disappearing. There are also reports of loud noises in the area. Police have been despatched to see if there is any trace of their visit.”

At the house we all went in with Gwen helping me. I put Merilyn to bed and kissed her goodnight. She whispered “There was nothing else you could do, Mummy, if you had not acted we would all have been dead. I have no powers over a rifle bullet.” Gwen and Lance went to their room and I went to mine, just laying down and falling asleep. My sleep was deep but I had a dream where I was standing on a hillside and there was a guy on horseback coming towards me with a spear in his hand. Unlike the modern tales, he did not wear armour and the spear was just a spear, not a lance. He was, however, out to kill me so I levitated the horse and he was in mid-air, going no-where. Beside me an archer drew his bow and put an arrow into the riders’ heart. I then rotated the horse so it was heading back the way it had come and then let it down. When it got back to the line of warriors they gave a howl and started running away. I had beaten one foe but I knew that, by then, the battle had already been lost. It was time for me to head for other places. I knew, in my heart, that Arthur was now dead and there was nothing left for me here.

In the morning I had a long shower, redressing in a house dress and slippers. The others were already at the kitchen table finishing their breakfast. Merilyn said “Good morning, Mummy, how are you now?” “Much better” I said, giving her a hair kiss. I got myself a cup of tea and some toast and Lance held himself in check until I had finished. He then said “Now, please explain what has happened and what you are. You certainly are not poor Arthur any longer.” I thought for a moment and then said “Now there you are wrong. I am that Arthur still, transformed into a female so that I could bear my child. The differences were taking place before you first met me. We have a theory that the covid injections triggered some alterations to my DNA.”

“What it did was wake up some long lost chains from the family, far back. I did not become Morgan Le Fay but the DNA started giving me some powers that she had. I passed these powers on to Merilyn but she has much more than I could ever give her. We cannot sit you down and talk about past lives” I lied “but there are things I know come from the sixth century. The original Morgan could sense and manipulate gravity which is the power you saw last night when I moved the cars. We both can sense electricity and Merilyn can sense radio waves better than me. Last night I sensed the heat sensing gear from the helicopter.”

“Yes” said Lance “the helicopter. You brought down a Gazelle, one of the most successful choppers we have ever had like you were just swatting a fly.” “That was just a ball of electrical energy” I told him as I created a small version. “When it went into the cabin it was attracted to the systems there and fried the computers and control systems.” I didn’t tell him that it would have fried the brains of anyone wearing a headset. “It was a similar ball of energy that I used on the three guys which electrocuted them as well as frying all the electrical devices they had.” “OK” said Lance “why did we have to kill those three guys?” Gwen snarled “Because they had come to kill us, doofus! They certainly didn’t come with guns and a sharpshooter in a military chopper if they only wanted to talk about the weather!”

Gwen then asked “What I want to know is why this is happening.” I thought a bit and then said “I think that Vincent Melehan is the latest in the line that comes down from Mordred. Mordred had two sons and one was called Melehan. I rather think that he is just a nasty bastard that has decided to rule the world as he knows it. One thing in our favour is that his line has no powers. When Mordred killed Arthur, according to the legend he did it with a poisoned sword so all he had to do was give Arthur a cut. He will use anything that can help him. What does he do in Whitehall?”

Gwen looked like she had swallowed something nasty. “He is the Secretary to the Minister of Defence and is tipped to take the top job after the next election” she told me “no doubt that is how he could call up a chopper to do some wet work. He probably told them they were hunting terrorists.” I said “He probably saw me as a lightning rod and someone who would take people away from his side. That’s why he is pushing the AA mob. They would be just right to back him when he tries to take over. I think it could just be coincidence that I have powers from the same time that his forebears lived. I think that he would consider me incredibly lucky to have evaded him so far but the sudden disappearance of his assassins will make him sit up.”

We decided that the best thing now would be for Gwen and Lance to reappear next to Sir Lionel and to try and find all the bugs to prove to him that he was, indeed, under surveillance. I would stay out of the way until he was clean. Then we could try a meet again, at a neutral place, sometime in the future. For interest we put the TV on and watched the morning news. It was filled with stories about aliens on Bodmin Moor and a lot of people had sent in video of a bright light going up into the clouds. There were even interviews with witnesses who stated that they had seen aliens at the windows of the ‘flying saucer’. The police said that they had searched the whole area and had found nothing unusual.

Gwen packed a bag with the things she had bought and we went to Exeter in the car. There we found a nice new Jaguar in the railway station car park and I did my thing with the security system. I told them to dump it before someone started searching for the GPS signal and take the train. We hugged and they got in and left for London. Merilyn and I just took it easy to allow me time to recover more. We bought a Sunday paper and sat in a park having a laugh at the stupid stories but we were pleased at the way they were running with it. It was as far from the truth as possible and it would be difficult for anyone to say that the event was anything else. When the shops were open again we would need to research Melehan and his circle of friends before we did anything more.

Merilyn said “Mummy, what you did last night was way better than anything we had seen you do before. I know that we shouldn’t have to kill people but, if we hadn’t, we wouldn’t be sitting here in this park. We must not be complacent now; we must start thinking about hitting Melehan where it hurts. What say we find out what his movements are in the future and see if we can put a stick in his evil spokes?” I thought for a bit and then agreed. “We can always fry his cars, maybe if we find out where he lives we can fry his home systems. Hell, if we take down the phone towers near Whitehall that would slow him up. Good idea, young lady. However, it will not stop you going to school when the guys set it up. Also, if we do this I will need to do it alone, his troops will be looking out for a toddler as well so I think that there would be a better chance of me getting away with it solo.”

Marianne G © 2021

Chapter 10 – Making a Stand

So, over the next couple of weeks we researched our friend Melehan. We found out where his town house and his country house were located. We discovered that he had a wife and family and further research showed that it was a productive, if not a happy, marriage.

I also tried to research his family tree and what I found made me shudder. One side of his family had been active in the I.R.A. and another had been a pal of Moseley and a staunch Brownshirt. Going back further I found names that all seemed to have been involved in the badder side of politics. I did find that he had taken the name Melehan when he was in his teens after reading about the Arthur legend and subsequent events. Prior to that, the family name had been Moyahan, no doubt a change made centuries ago to detach the family from their Melehan past. Looking at video of him I could feel that he was descended from Mordred, he had the same way about him. It was like looking at my own son. That made me think; Morgan was probably his great grandmother by about sixty times. That made Arthur his great grandfather by the same number – what on earth had we let loose on the world through our love.

About ten days in, we got a letter from Gwen. I had to smile at the idea of us working with older methods of communication. She told us that they had got back to London and had managed to contact Sir Lionel by leaving a note for him at Whitehall. They told him not to use his car and to leave his phone in his office and to meet them at a café on the other side of the river. She said that he had done as they asked and that she was pretty sure he had not been followed. They had a serious meeting with him and had brought him up to speed on the seriousness of the situation. She said that he was shocked when he was told that he had been tracked for five years but he promised to get all their cars looked at by an outside garage, preferably one used by the police. We had deduced that the trackers had been put in while the cars were being serviced in the government garage so taking them there would only end up with another tracker put further out of sight. He would have been even more shocked if she had told him the details of our Bodmin encounter. I wrote back, telling her to keep low and to make sure they would be able to move around. I said to watch out for odd things happening around Melehan.

The guys from the school had organised a one month course for Merilyn, live in at a college for special pupils. At the end of the month she would be assessed again and also would be turning five. Her being away would leave me free to do the little chores I had set myself. One was to go to the country house with the Volvo and to mess with his systems; another to go into London on the train and mess with his life. Merilyn was not happy at letting me loose on Melehan but conceded that she would be a burden and I would have an easier time without her. I promised that she would be there for the finale if we could get to that.

Once she was away I looked up the country house on Google maps and saw that it was near a village and that there was a hill close by as well as a walking track. I got myself rigged out in hiking gear, backpack, boots; the lot. I drove to the village and parked the car outside the pub. I walked the hiking path but veered off to take me past his house. I knew he wouldn’t be home as the House was sitting. When I got to the gate a tough looking guy came out and asked “Are you lost, madam?” I said “I think so; I seem to have mislaid the hiking path.” He told me which way I should go and wished me good day. All that would have been all right except for the beam of a laser sight that ended with a spot on my chest. My eyes followed the beam and I could just see where the sniper was situated in an upper window. I thanked the guard and, as we both turned from each other, I sent a small ball of energy up the laser beam. I was out of his sight line in seconds but it didn’t matter any longer, the beam was out.

As the guard went into his little shelter I put another pulse of energy into the telephone line. That would fry his communications with the house. I walked quickly until I found the hill that overlooked the house and the village. I pulled out some binoculars and looked at the house. There was an array on the roof with a satellite dish and microwave transmitter aerials. I also scanned the village and picked out the mobile phone tower that covered the local area. I had only intended to do a little damage but having a sniper ready and willing to shoot me was the one thing that tipped me towards something more.

Being in sunshine it would be difficult to see my energy balls. The first I made appeared over the mobile phone tower and dropped straight down onto it, taking out all mobile services for miles around. The second, much larger ball, I manifested over the house and dropped it on their dish and aerials. I was gratified when an upper window blew out; very likely his office with all of his own communications equipment. I waited until I could see smoke coming out of several windows before carrying on to continue my walk back into the village and making my way to the car. I put my pack in the car and then went inside the pub for a drink and a meal. I was there when the fire engines raced past with the sirens and lights; no phones would have given the fire plenty of time to take hold.

I had quite a nice evening in the pub, being chatted up by a couple of locals and joining in when they started the quiz night to make up numbers in a team. I was almost part of the community when I left to go home. It had been a very satisfactory day. I was not totally happy at killing the sniper but he would have shot me had I made a move towards the guard. The story took up a bit of the morning news. It was surmised that a freak summer lightning strike had taken out the phone tower and the house. A policeman showed the cameras a radio set taken from the office and said that it would have taken several thousand volts to have caused that much damage. The house had burned to the ground and Melehan was quoted as being extremely upset that his collection of medieval artefacts and weapons had been totally lost. He didn’t say that he was happy his wife and children had made it out until he was asked that direct question.

I left him alone for a few days and then went into Exeter to take the train to London. I had a bag with enough for a week. When I got there I checked into a hotel and asked about all of the tourist sites and was given a bunch of brochures. I had now found that I could manifest the ball of power at the place I wanted it to be so did not have to be in line-of-sight when I created one. I walked around Whitehall until I could locate all of the local mobile towers and, most important, where the main transformer was that catered for the House. Of course, they would have back-up generators but the problems caused by losing the mains input would be significant.

I was on the other side of the river when I manifested a large ball of energy inside the main transformer of Parliament. It was quite spectacular as far as the fireworks went. There was quite a crowd of us as the fire engines and police arrived, several of the crowd cheering whenever there was a subsequent bang from inside the building. My next stop was Whitehall where I was a block away when I did the same thing to their main power input. Once again a crowd gathered and once again there were cheers as the firemen tried to put out various blazes. I was on a river ferry heading for the Tower Bridge when I put small balls of energy into every mobile tower I had located. What made me laugh was when more than three quarters of the passengers started complaining that they had lost their connection. Spend thousands to come and look at the sights and all you do is look at your phone? Not my idea of a holiday.

The last thing on my list was his town house. Two days later I was walking along the road when he came out and got into a waiting car. He had no servants so I waited until he was well away and then manifested a large ball of energy in the house, then turning and walking away with a map to my face as if I was lost. The newspaper on the next day was still full of follow-up stories about the damage to the House and Whitehall but there was also a significant article about the blaze that destroyed Melehans’ town house. I was not happy that a body of a woman had been found in one of the rooms. His wife had been spoken to and obviously had some idea who the woman was as she said that it was the last straw; she was going home to her mother and taking the children with her. I think I had messed with his life enough for the moment so spent the last couple of days in the British Museum, looking at artefacts from the fifth and sixth century.

Of course, the upshot of all this made him angry and there started to be reports of marches of AA followers, each getting more violent than the last. As the days passed a sort of method emerged, as well as a few names being repeated; one name that was prominent was a chap called Jack Spriggs and the marches were organised through social media with just one day notice. This meant that the bulk of the marchers were already primed and just needed the time and place given to them. I thought that it may be time to start talking to the monkeys; it may prod the organ grinder into making rash movements.

I found out all I could about our friend Jack. He lived out Bicester way and, a couple of days later I strolled into the pub where he was having his lunch-time drink with a few of his mates. I took my time to check out the room; Jack sat with four other skinheads in a secluded alcove, he was on a chair while the others sat on a semi-circular bench. It was a perfect situation as anything that happened was partially hidden from the rest of the drinkers. I expected that it was already the custom of the regulars to ignore him and his crowd. I walked up behind him, slightly levitating his friends as I went. “Hello, Mister Spriggs, I would like a word, in private” I said.

He turned and took a look at me, saying “There is only one thing I would like to do with you in private, sweetheart, and chatting is not part of that.” I smiled and said “What would your darling wife say about that, or maybe you have done the dirty on her before?” He scowled and said “Never mind that, I don’t have secrets from my mates; say what you came here to say.” I looked into his eyes and I said “What had Melehan promised you, Jack? Is it a place in his cabinet, a plum job; or is he just paying you well? You do have a fancy car for someone who is out of work.”

Anger flared in his eyes and one of his ‘mates’ said “Hey, Jack! You didn’t tell us we were doing this for that nutter Melehan!” Another one said “Yeah, we like to fight but he is something else again. He is after control of the country, as far as I can see. That is either being in charge and hated or else being at the end of a rope and hated.” Jack snarled “Bitch! How do you know about Melehan?” I laughed and said “I know a lot of things, Jack, and one thing that I do know is that you guys are in over your heads on this one. Melehan is not a man who will share anything and he would never share power. By the way, did you gentlemen read about the troubles that have befallen him? I think the papers were full of it.”

Marianne G © 2021

Chapter 12 –The Game becomes Reality?

When Gareth and Geraint joined us we sat down and Sir Lionel asked me to relate my five and a bit years since I fled the house. I spoke about Griff and I getting away and his audacious plan for us to live as man and wife until we ended in Aberystwyth and Merilyn being born. I told them that he had made a wonderful husband and it was a blow when he didn’t come home. I said that I did not want them to know where I now lived until we had put Melehan to bed.

I looked at Hector and asked “Was that you in the attic with the rifle?” and he looked startled. “How did you know?” he asked and I said “That is one of the things that have happened since Merilyn was born. Whatever triggered my female side also triggered the DNA strings of my namesake that had remained down the ages. I have gained a few odd powers; one of them being that I can see the laser beams and electrical waves. Others have been shown to Gwen and Lance. Merilyn has similar powers but can also tune into radio waves if they are close enough.”

Gareth said “Was that you messing with Melehans’ life when you burned his house down?” I nodded and he went on “And his townhouse and mistress?” I nodded again and Sir Lionel looked as if a bird had just shat on his shoulder and he said “And the outrage at the Parliament?” I nodded again and he whispered “Whitehall?” and I said “Look, yes I did these things but it was all aimed to flush Melehan into the open. He did try to kill us already so I thought that I had a good reason to act. He already has shown his hand with the AA crowd and their marches. I’ll have you know that they were planning to attack Kensington Palace last Saturday and were going to be supplied with Molotov Cocktails until I put a stop to it.”

“He tried to kill you, did he? Where and when?” I looked at Gwen and then Sir Lionel and the rest of the team finally heard about Bodmin Moor. His face was white when Gwen and Lance finished the story and he sat back in his chair. “So that is why you two have been so insistent about our security. I could never have been able to keep a normal face when I have spoken to Melehan if I had known how far he was going. A Gazelle, you say?” Lance looked at him and said “It sure was, in full attack mode on quiet rotors and the heat sensors on. They had us bang to rights.”

Gareth chuckled and said “So you are the aliens, then?” Merilyn laughed prettily and said “Did you see the films of the lights last weekend; that was just Mummy and me having fun.” Sir Lionel looked sternly at her and said “Now, young lady, that is not fun; that is creating a panic among the people.” I said “Don’t worry; I have a plan which will finish the ‘alien invasion’ in its tracks once we have sorted out the immediate problem.” Geraint said “Show us then, what can you do?” I looked at Merilyn and said “Little ones, darling, I would not want to see this house burn down.”

We manifested a half a dozen balls of energy and had them play chasee around the room. The others looked on in amazement until I said “All mine, now, sweetheart” and took control of them to bring them to a stop in the middle of the room. I then brought them together and made them go from blue to white. I then concentrated hard and formed the ball into something that looked like the plush aliens I had seen at the shop. I got it to rotate slowly, waving one arm and then made it disappear with a pop. Merilyn broke into giggles and hugged me, saying “Mummy that is soooo good. I will have to practice that one.” I then levitated Gareth and his chair and sent them on a trip around the room before I brought him back and lowered him again.

.Sir Lionel then got serious. “What do we do now, I suppose you want to kill Melehan and get it over with. You know that I cannot condone murder.” I said “No, I will not murder him, although I could do it easily enough; a ball of energy in his car would look like a terrorist bomb and no-one would be the wiser. What I want to do is stop his activities before he gets to be the Minister of Defence and uses the military to take over the country. That is something I would do murder to stop.” Gwen said “So how do we stop him, put him in jail, get him committed to a nut-house, get him to learn the folly of his ways?”

“You got it in one, Gwen. We are going to show him that he is powerless once we have isolated him. He and his kind are only powerful when they have others doing their bidding. He may have the family trait of being a sneaky, cheating, bastard but he is an educated person. I think that knowing that he has no friends would break him.” The others nodded and Sir Lionel asked “So how do we go about this?” I then explained some of my plan, leaving out some of the more deadly detail so as not to upset them.

We stayed at Camelot for a week with Merilyn being accepted into the family, almost like a favourite grand-daughter. She got to spend time with all of the ‘Round Table’ while I spoke to Sir Lionel about our time-table. That Saturday night we sat quietly in the drawing room while the others watched and recreated the glowing balls of energy over Dozmary Pool again. The Sunday TV news had a big section on it; someone had set up cameras and it seemed that quite a crowd had been camping there in expectation of seeing the aliens.

After that the two of us were treated with a great deal of deference, everyone realising just how powerful we were. Sir Lionel confessed that if Merilyn really had been the second coming of the Messiah it would have been less scary. We went back to Camelford on the Sunday and the rest set about putting the other parts of the plan into action

It took three weeks before Melehan took Sir Lionel seriously enough to agree to a meeting. I insisted that it would be at the intersection of the two main paths in the park to the south of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. The others thought I was crazy at it was against all military tactics, being open and overlooked. They didn’t know that the downsides were an integral part of my plan to show Melehan just how alone he was. In the meantime Merilyn had started school but I picked her up on Saturdays so we could put on a little light show on Saturday evenings, now the days were drawing in. We did one on Bodmin Moor but also added other places, our chosen meeting place being one. Merilyn and I had become good enough to conduct the shows separately, so having two running a long way apart. Merilyn would do Bodmin while I would pick a place I had been and could imagine. One night I put the lights over Hyde Park and had a ball of energy hover over Buckingham Palace before heading ‘into space’. The next Saturday was Greenwich and after that was over Hyde Park again. That would ensure that the night of our meeting would be among a throng of hopeful alien watchers. The papers were full of it, the TV was full of it and a number of erudite professors (who were also full of it) gave a number of theories.

That Saturday we went into London and I parked the Volvo on Maze Hill, locking it and getting into Gwens new Jaguar to go with her for a meal. In the evening we joined a crowd of people on the ferry down the Thames, all getting off at the Greenwich Jetty and walking up towards the open ground I had chosen. We had Gwen and Lance with us, Sir Lionel and the others having arrived separately. Merilyn and I walked to the front of the Maritime Museum Café and I could see a large number of people sitting out on the grass and, very clearly, two gentlemen who did not fit the assembled crowd, standing at the intersection of the two paths. As we strolled out onto the grass we looked for the laser beams and, sure enough, we spotted them.

There was one originating from the top of the Maritime Museum, another from the roof of the café. I half expected others to be among the trees either side of the park but even the most novice sniper would know that with the crowd around there would be no chance of getting clear after the kill shot. I stopped and looked around me, manifesting very small balls of energy at the origin of the beams. The beams went out and I said to Merilyn “Do a twirl for me, dear, and see if you can spot more.” She reported that we were clear and there was no radio chatter. We stayed where we were and put the show on at Bodmin, as usual. At the culmination of it there, instead of shooting off into the clouds, we had what we could now shape as a disc, head to London at a very quick pace, arriving over our heads ten minutes later, much to the awe of the assembled crowd. If no-one believed in aliens before, they would now.

We made the disc move to the south to hover over Blackheath as we strolled up to Sir Lionel and Melehan, who were gazing at the sight before them. “Hello, Sir Lionel” I said and he smiled and gestured towards Melehan. “My dear, I would like you to finally meet Melehan, an absolute shit who holds himself in great esteem and thinks that he would be the next ruler of this great land.” Melehan was totally surprised at this and looked like he had swallowed something nasty. “When I am the ruler, Lionel, you will be the first one up against the wall. Now, who is this woman?” I smiled sweetly at him and said “Why, I used to be Arthur Prendergast. You know; the one that you pushed poor Jack and his cronies into using as a rallying cry to hide your true intentions. I am here, Melehan, to make you see the error of your ways.”

Marianne G © 2021

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

Chapter 11 – Towards the End Game

Jack said “He just got unlucky; no-one can predict a lightning strike.” I let it hang for a moment and then said “Do you really think that he was just ‘unlucky’ to lose his two houses and get his offices in Whitehall trashed by a power surge. If you believe that then you would believe anything.”

“Well” he said “what else could it be?” I looked at him and said “Now Jack, you have your nice car parked outside your house and your long-suffering wife is inside eating her lonely sandwich. Why don’t you call her up and ask her to look out the window and to tell you what she sees. Put it on speaker so we can all hear.” He dialled his home number and when his wife answered he asked her to look out the window and tell him if his car is all right. We heard some shuffling and grumbling and then a shriek “Jack” she yelled “there’s a bloody big ball of blue light sitting just over it. What’s going on?” I said, quietly “Jack, this is when you find out that luck had nothing to do with it.” I dropped the ball of energy and we heard his wife screaming “Jack, Jack, your car is on fire! Oh God, I am ringing emergency, now!” The phone went dead and, in the silence I said “Now, you lot. I can do the same with your houses and your cars. I know where you all live. This is not a threat, it is a promise” and I created a small ball of energy in front of each of them. “Go now, get out of here, live quietly and you will live a lot longer. Jack and I are going to have a little chat, now.”

I allowed them back to earth and stood back as his mates all left the alcove with fear in their eyes. I combined the small balls of energy into one and dropped it on Jacks’ phone which spluttered and went dark with a whiff of smoke. I said “How about you move to the bench, Jack, and then I can take the other side – now!” He got out of his seat and slid onto the end of the bench. I took my place on the other side and looked across the still-smoking phone at him. “Jack” I said “I could have easily dropped a ball of energy in your house but I think you may have already got the message. All I ask is that you contact Melehan just the once on Saturday morning and tell him that you and your mates have had enough. I expect that today was a get-together to send out the messages on social media and don’t think you would have got round to it yet. Am I right?”

He nodded sullenly and then said “The next march was to be a riot and we were to tell the marchers to attack Kensington Palace as it is the easiest to get to. He had told me where I could pick up Molotov Cocktails on the way. I was already thinking that he was over the top. Some of us could have been shot doing that but when I asked him about that he said that he would be pulling the guards away to somewhere else. The guy is really mad, you know, but he does not scare me the way you do.” I smiled at him, saying “Jack, I am no trouble for you as long as you follow a better path in future. My aim is to stop Melehan before he plunges the country into civil war. It would be one-sided because, by the time he moves, he would control the military forces and a bunch of rebels would have no chance. I expect that he already has plans to have you killed.”

He looked startled at that and then the true nature of Melehan came to him and he nodded again. “What about my car?” he asked. “Don’t worry about that for the moment” I said “how about you write the address down where these fire bombs are to be picked up and then I will reimburse you for your troubles.” He went and grabbed a pad and pencil from the bar and came back to write down the address. He gave it to me and I put it in my bag. “The riot; I suppose that would have been for this Saturday?” I asked and he nodded. “Thank you Jack, I will get out of your life for now.” I took a pound coin out of my bag and slid it across the table to him. “You have been a good boy, Jack, for once in your life. If you take this across to that pokie machine there, I think that you may win enough to pay for your phone and get another car.” He took the coin and I sat there, concentrating on the machines electrics. I made sure that it hit the jackpot and left the pub while he was whooping and jumping up and down.

I got back in my car and found the address he had written down. It was a secluded building in an industrial estate near Aylesbury and on his way to London. Saturday morning I was at home when I materialised a power ball inside it, wondering if my powers were good enough. The lunch-time news on the radio reported a huge explosion in the industrial park so I guess I was good enough, after all. That afternoon I got in the Volvo and went to pick up Merilyn from the college.

She was bubbly and jumping when I saw her and I hugged her like there was no tomorrow. She whispered “I have been looking at the papers, Mummy; you really have been a naughty girl, haven’t you?” We sat in an office with the two teachers I had spoken to before, as well as a couple of other women. The upshot of the month was that Merilyn was now up to speed to miss much of primary school and it was noted that she was the most gifted student they had ever met. The arrangements were made for her to start at the college at the beginning of the next term as a live-in student. She was happy with that because she said that it was a wonderful place to be and that she was learning so much every day as well as having brainy children around her.

That left us three weeks to tidy up the bigger problem if she was to be part of the end game. We went home via her favourite fast-food outlet and that evening I brought her up to speed on what I had done and the new powers that I had discovered. As a trial run we both concentrated on the lake on Bodmin Moor, materialising large power balls in our minds and having them play chasee for a short time before spiralling up into the sky. We looked out of the window towards the Moor, and were rewarded with the sight of a blue glow on the horizon. I said “Three, Two, One, Out” and the glow immediately disappeared. She looked at me in a very serious way and said “That, Mummy is a very strong power. I could never have thought that either of us could have done that. Didn’t some people say that you were the most dangerous person in the country? Now, I think, we may be the most dangerous people on earth and we will have to be very careful not to get angry.”

Sunday we dressed nicely and went to Jamaica Inn for lunch. They were already selling plush aliens in the shop alongside the Du Maurier novels. The newspaper stand had the Sunday paper with the report of the bright lights of last night with one person saying that they were like ‘playful children’ and that she ‘wished she could meet the aliens because they would certainly be friendly’. The people who lived on the nearby farm reported that the lights were very bright and that everyone had their hairs bristle. I knew we had gone a bit overboard but I was sure that we were a long way from the house. They must have been a bit bigger than planned. My next step will have to be on Monday morning – the end game is coming and we had to plan it carefully, as usual.

My first part of my plan was to get Sir Lionel back into the game. I rang his office on the Monday morning and asked if there was anyone of his security team around as I had some information for them. Percival was in the office and when he came on the line I said “Percival, this is Morgan. I would like to have a meeting with Sir Lionel tonight at the last place you and I saw each other. Gwen will tell you what is needed.” In the afternoon I packed Merilyn into her booster seat and we drove towards the Forest of Dean, stopping on the way for a snack. When I got to Camelot the gates were opened and Gareth waved us through. The five years that had passed had been good for the house. Any damage had been repaired and I could see security beams running over all of the lawn areas. Merilyn said “Look, Mummy, lovely lines of light.” Halfway along the driveway I slowed down and said “Sweetheart, those are lines of laser beams. We may come across someone using one to put a sight onto us from a rifle. Actually, there is one that I can see.” She said “Yes, I can see it, there is someone up in the right-hand attic window.” “Just remember this, darling. If we ever see someone pointing a laser at us in future we need to take action” I said ”Because someone did that to me a couple of weeks ago before I burned his hide-away to the ground.”

Gwen was at the front door to welcome me and said “Sir Lionel is so much looking forward to this visit. He is like a grandfather waiting to meet his grand-daughter.” She bent down and gave Merilyn a hug and said “It is so good to see you again, poppet, I believe that you have been playing with spaceships on the Moor again.” Merilyn grinned and said “That was just Mummy and me having fun on a Saturday night.” Just then Sir Lionel strode into the hallway with his arms open so I allowed him to wrap them around me. “Hello again, Sir Lionel, may I introduce my daughter, Merilyn. She is just about to start school at a special college. The one thing none of us could have predicted is her prodigious and precocious brainpower.”

I had to smile because as soon as he looked into those green eyes he was smitten with her cuteness. He knelt down and said “Give an old but happy man a hug, precious one. We have waited far too long to meet. Your mother spent many months here while she was carrying you and I have been on tenterhooks to meet you.” Of course, she gave him a kiss on the cheek and said “Are you really a Lord, Uncle Lionel? This house is just like a castle.” He nodded and stood, holding his hand out. Merilyn took it and we proceeded to the drawing room where Lance and Hector waited for us. Sir Lionel said “We have upgraded the security around the house since you were here before, Morgan, Gareth and Geraint will set it to automatic and will join us. Now, drinks anyone?”

Marianne G © 2021