Goddess of Legend

Isabel took that as a yes. “Were you the one who saved me?”

“Yes.”

“How? As soon as I hit the water and couldn’t get free, I knew I was in trouble.” She held up her hand and wiggled her fingers, wiggled the toes encased in silver slippers. “All better, just like that. I was a goner for sure. And then I got this feeling of, I don’t know, a second chance.”

“Goner? You were, I think I’d say, a finder. And yes, this is another chance to fulfill some desires.”

“Well, that clears things up.” Isabel glanced around at the lush greenery, at the dense forest beyond this rocky beach. “We’re not in Oklahoma anymore, are we, Toto?”

“Toto?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that as a slight. You seem to know my name and other kinds of creepy things about me. May I ask what your name is?”

“I’m known as Coventina. But you may call me—”

“As in the Lady of the Lake Coventina? As in the mythical Goddess of Water?”

The woman shined with a triumphant smile. “So you have heard of me in your times! Merlin assured me I’m but a long-lost myth.”

Isabel sat stunned. The shimmer that surrounded the Lady, her long, golden hair, the blue eyes that seemed to reflect the purity of the lake behind them. “You’re kidding, right? Am I being punked?” She glanced around. “Where are the cameras? You’ve done a great job of hiding them, because I can spot and smell one from a mile away.”

“I assure you, I am indeed Coventina. And none of those camera things exist, not in my knowledge.”

“I’d love that beignet now. And may I have them drizzled with—”

“—dark chocolate. Of course.” That snap thing again, and then Isabel was staring at a feast. The beignets, yes, just the way she wanted them, but also fried ham, over-easy fried eggs and potatoes with onions, peppers and bits of bacon, just how she cooked them herself. This was too good. Too perfect. Too crazy.

Then again, she was too hungry to actually be rude enough to decline.

“Do you mind if I’m freaked out?” Isabel said after licking her fingers? She started to get to her feet. That’s when she noticed that, with a wave of the woman’s hand, her slippers became glued to the earth beneath her. She tried to free herself from them, but they were definitely superglued to her skin as well.

“Please hear me out,” said the woman who, if the tales were true, didn’t really need to ask.

Isabel sat back down. “You’ll excuse me if I’m just a little . . . dumbfounded?”

“I understand.”

“You saved me from Grand Lake.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I have need of you. And I have hopes that this will all turn out so that one of your—how did you put it?—shouldas will also come true for you.”

“I’m alive. I’m not just in another world?”

“Oh, I am afraid you are definitely in another world. But it’s of this world, Isabel. Just not of your time.”

“Where am I?”

“If you’ve been taught about me, you’ve been taught about Camelot?”

Isabel again just stared at her. “Surely you jest.”

Coventina laughed, a sound that was so lyrical that even the lake seemed to respond to it. The lake bubbled here and there as if something beneath couldn’t help but enjoy the joke with her. “I enjoy a good jest, as do many of the men and women of the castle. But I assure you, beyond this forest is the castle of Camelot.”

“You mean like King Arthur and Lancelot and Guinevere and Mer—Oh. He really is your Merlin.”

“Or was,” Coventina said, and her eyes immediately turned from a stunning blue to a stormy gray. “But he has forsaken this world, too devastated by the destiny he fears is in Arthur’s future.” The Lady grasped Isabel’s hand. “I must bring him back. I must. I fear that eternity will be an eternal misery without him.”

“Why me?” Isabel asked, even as she tried not to show watery eyes. She was so not a crybaby, unless it was over the tragedy of a sweet and heroic man in Afghanistan or the birth of a kitten.

Coventina squeezed Isabel’s hand even more, although strangely it didn’t hurt, but felt like energy being exchanged between them. “Because you were the woman I was looking for. I asked the gods for one who was beautiful, smart and, I’m sorry to say, about to die. And what was a must for me was a woman who had an, as you put it, ‘shoulda.’ One who mourned in her last moments that she’d never found true love.”

“What makes you think I’ll find it here, Cov—”

“Call me Viviane. Merlin is the only one who ever has, but I’d like if you would as well. Because I believe you will be the one who brings him back to me.”

“Okay. What makes you think I’ll find it here, Viviane? And how do I bring Merlin back?”

“I cannot be certain. But if I do not try, I have not done enough to win back the man I love. And this isn’t acceptable to my heart, or my waters. I fear what will happen if my unhappiness roils the waters that sustain me.”

Isabel glanced over at the lake to see it suddenly making waves when moments ago it had been calm, clear and as blue as Viviane’s eyes. Now it was uneasy, gray, unhappy. And it churned in her the memory of Grand Lake, which had seemed angry at her just at the moment that she and her car had taken a decidedly ungraceful dive into its unsettled depths.

She looked back to the woman, wondering just when she’d wake up from this dream. Until she did, she’d try to help. “My camera equipment?” she asked.

Viviane shook her head. “There’s nothing like that in this time. This place.”

“Okay,” Isabel said, but mourned that she couldn’t capture the beauty all around her, the beauty of this woman . . . who’d make her rich were she to sell the Lady’s pictures to People magazine . . . the amazing truth of Camelot. “Who, pray tell, am I supposed to fall for? Or who do you hope might fall for me? What if I accidentally fall for, say, the court jester?”

Again that musical laughter filled the air, and it seemed that the birds in the trees joined in. “Hester the Jester? I pray you have better taste than that.”

Isabel grinned. “Then who, my lady?”

“Why, Lancelot, of course.”

“You’re kidding, right? If I remember correctly, Gwen almost burned at the stake for getting involved with him. I didn’t almost drown to live to see fire in my future.”

“But you shan’t. You are Lady Isabel, come to Camelot as Countess from Dumont to discuss the sharing of land for mutual benefit of all of Briton.”

“So I’m just dropping in? Uninvited?”

Viviane hesitated a moment, then pulled a necklace from what must have been a pocket in her gown. It was a stunning piece, what at first appeared to be a sapphire to Isabel. But as she fingered it, she realized it was more a heart-shaped droplet, made of some kind of glass, with a blue liquid inside. It was amazing and would have brought a pretty penny at Sotheby’s.

“Oh, Viv, I may call you Viv?”

The Lady sniffed. “No, you may not.”

Isabel shrugged. “I just figured that Viviane’s a mouthful, but fair enough. This is so lovely! What is it?”

The Lady put it around Isabel’s neck, and it fell right above her heart and barely confined boobs. “This piece is somewhat magical, Isabel. Upon seeing it, those who would be suspicious of your arrival and your motives will no longer. Inside are my tears, dropped when I had no choice but to allow Merlin to leave me.

“It does contain abilities, but I’ll not let you know what they are. For there is a price to pay for any use of it. Be wise with it and it will be your ally. Use the powers foolishly, and you will pay the price.”

“Do you have any rules written down? A cheat sheet? Like could I use it to suddenly make plumbing and real toilets available?”

Viviane laughed as it seemed so did the lake. “You could indeed. And then you might find yourself not being able to use the facilities.”