The blackness lifted like a slow fade-up in a movie.
Artie was still on the boat, still clutching the gunwale, still on one knee. His face was still contorted in a mask of fear and urgency.
He eased his grip and relaxed his face.
He blinked.
Calmness washed over him.
He looked at the water. Its surface was weird. It was still. No—it was moving. Only very, very slowly.
The boat also moved slowly as it righted itself incrementally.
Time was almost frozen.
Artie looked into the canoe.
Kay was on her butt, her face grimacing in confrontation. Vorpal was ready to pounce into the air and attack. Thumb stood at full height. He held his sword above him with both hands. His mouth was wide with fury and his eyes were lit like exploding stars. He looked very brave.
Artie looked up, and there it was. A great green dragon. Bright and shimmering where the light hit it on the margins, dark and foreboding on the underside that rushed toward them.
Or had been rushing toward them. Like everything else, the dragon was practically stock-still.
Artie took the creature in. It was glorious. It had red rubied teeth and its golden horns were curled like a ram’s. Its wings were powerful-looking but small. They didn’t seem large enough to keep the thing aloft. It was more like the dragon swam through the air. It was pretty magical.
But most impressive were the thing’s eyes. Their black pupils were shaped like a cat’s, and the streaked iris was an explosion of color. Traveling around the eyeball, every hue could be seen, from brightest blue to deepest green to fieriest orange.
The dragon had rainbows in its eyes.
Which made Artie think of his sister, with her blue and green eyes, which in turn brought him back to his senses a little.
He was supposed to be doing something.
He recalled yelling, “Excalibur!” He turned back to the water, where suddenly he found two swords pointing straight up at the sky. Holding them were two light blue hands.
He looked into the water. A girl no older than five or six stared back, her clear, gray eyes open beneath the surface. Her lips, her cheeks, her hair—all were tinted blue. She smiled.
“My, Arthur, how changed is your visage,” she said from under the waves. Artie wasn’t quite sure what this meant. “My old friend. Take what is thine. Take both. Hold them.”
Artie said, “Uh, okay. But what about the dragon?”
“Worry not, friend. Take what is thine. All will be clear.”
She lifted the swords higher. Artie reached out and grabbed each by its blade.
Cleomede was cold and ready.
Excalibur was a revelation.
The blade was watered steel and about six inches longer than Cleomede. It had a single blood channel and was inlaid with golden intertwined serpents on both sides. It had Latin inscriptions running along the contours of the serpents: Tolle me on one side and Iacta me on the other. Its crossguard looked like marbled gold and platinum. Its grip was big enough for two hands and wrapped with fine, bright threads of red and blue. Its pommel was a perfect glass ball. Inside the ball was an orb of deepest black that looked like an eyeball.
As Artie grasped Excalibur, waves of knowledge coursed through him. The information was at once exact and confusing. He saw a young Merlin with the old Arthur. He heard dozens of different languages but could barely understand any. He saw Tom Thumb on the day of his tenth birthday, riding a goose to market. He saw Bercilak challenge any takers to a fight. He saw a young boy he didn’t recognize, in a suit of red and blue armor, his great helmet topped with terrifying horns. He saw an owl and a man with the head of a wolf. He saw an army of children and a plain copper cup. He saw a legless man sitting on the edge of a black river. He saw an illuminated blue line surrounded by darkness that went on as far as he could see. He saw Qwon, and Kay, and Kynder, and Lance, and Thumb, and kids from school—even Frankie Finkelstein. He saw Merlin trapped in his invisible tower, sometimes screaming with rage, other times broken by solitude, yet others giddy with revelation.
He suddenly knew some Welsh and a fair amount of Latin.
And he was not sure, but it felt like he knew some magic—how to make a fire without tinder, how to heal a wound. He knew the names of plants and flowers, and some of their uses as poisons or cures.
Most important to the situation at hand, he now knew a lot more about fighting with swords.
The sword’s spell was broken as the girl cooed, “Excalibur has revealed much to you, young Arthur. It will reveal more to you in time.”
Artie wasn’t sure if he was excited about this or terrified. Still, he thought learning more stuff in this way would be pretty cool. It sure beat sitting in class.
Then the girl said, “Do not forsake thy companions.”
He turned back to the drama unfolding in ultraslow motion. They had moved a little, but were basically in the same places. The only weird thing was that all four of them—Thumb, Vorpal, Kay, and even the serpent—had turned their heads toward Artie slightly.
Artie reached behind him and put Cleomede in Kay’s hand. She’d be happy for that when things sped back up.
He returned to the Girl of the Lake and asked, “What do I do now?”
“Hold high the brand.”
“The brand? What brand?”
Her hands slowly sank. She was going back under. Her smile was gone. Her last extended fingertip submerged. At the same moment she winked and whispered fiercely, “Now!”
The violence of the rocking boat nearly threw Artie overboard. He got a swift hit to the gut as he slammed against the gunwale.
Kay yelled, “What the?”
The dragon writhed above them. It gurgled a foul rumble deep in its throat.
Thumb screamed, very much to the point, “What did she tell you to do?”
“How did Cleomede—” Kay shrieked, more to herself than anyone in particular.
Artie yelled, answering Thumb, “She said, ‘Hold high the brand’!”
“Do it then, boy!”
“What’s a brand?”
“The firebrand! Excalibur! The sword!”
Of course! The sword!
He thrust Excalibur up high.
The dragon reared. A hot wind wafted from its underside like a punch in the face. It reminded Artie of getting hit by Finkelstein.
Curse that Frankie Finkelstein! Even now, at the height of peril, Artie couldn’t shake him!
Then Excalibur shuddered. He looked up. The glasseye pommel of his new sword glowed white.
The dragon extended its neck at Artie. Black, crinkly smoke began to waft from its nostrils.
Then, just as the serpent gathered itself to strike, Artie understood. He thought of light. He thought of the sun, the moon, fireworks on the Fourth of July.
Light danced off the blade in a blinding blast. Artie shut his eyes, but he still saw the light through his lids.
The dragon squealed. This time it sounded afraid. It slithered in the air and retreated a hundred feet instantly. It cried again, and the noise echoed over the Lake.
Excalibur was alive. It released another pulse of blinding light before extinguishing itself.
Artie opened his eyes. The dragon was flying away. After a few moments it stopped, turned, and looked directly at Artie. It let out a small, defeated whimper that drifted down to them. Artie knew that the creature was disappointed.
Before they knew it, the beautiful monster was gone. The air calmed, and the sweet smell of the Lake and the woods returned.
They sat in the boat for several moments without speaking, just breathing, just trying to piece together what had happened.
Finally Kay asked, “How did you move that fast, Artie?”
“What do you mean?”
Thumb said, “My boy, you were like a blur.”
“I don’t know. Everything was super slow-mo to me. I think the Girl of the Lake did it.”
“The Girl, you say?” inquired Thumb.
“Yeah, the Girl. She was only five or six.”
“My goodness.” Thumb chuckled. “She was much older than that, I assure you, lad.”
Kay let out a deep breath and cracked her neck. “Well, however it happened, that was pretty awesome, Your Highness.”
Artie was happy to hear Kay sound like her old self, but was also completely exhausted. He slumped in his seat. He’d just scared off a dragon so big it could have nested on a football field. His eyes burned and his head hurt. But Artie had to agree. “Yeah, it was pretty awesome, wasn’t it, Sir Kay?”
“Let’s get back to shore,” Thumb said as he wrangled Vorpal, who was still raring for a fight, into the bottom of the canoe. “I think we’ve had enough excitement for today. Kay, help me paddle. Artie can rest.”
Kay felt that her brother was totally whipped. “Good idea, Tommy. Take a load off, Art. We’ll get you home.”
“Okay. Thanks, guys.”
They paddled, and the sun warmed their backs. After a while the trees around the Lake shook to life again, and the passenger pigeons, free of predators, took back to the sky like a living, moving confetti storm.
The flock was so huge that, once it got going, it looked as if it had no beginning, and no end.