"Wakey-wakey… it's time for school…"
Oleandra's eyes fluttered open.
For a few seconds, she just lay there, staring at the stars above— until the memories came rushing back. If she was able to think, then didn't that mean she hadn't died? Or at the very least, that she hadn't been erased from history, to restore the cosmic imbalance she had accidentally created by meeting herself in the past?
"You've been through a lot, eh?" said Merlin sympathetically. "And yes, you are still alive, in case you were wondering. You got off lucky… or perhaps, was it your fate?"
"Merlin!" yelped Oleandra, scrambling to her feet. "Wait, where am I!?"
Yes, the man standing before her was unmistakably Merlin the one and only, resplendent in all his glory. The man, the myth, the legend: the Half-Incubus who had wooed ten thousand women and mastered ten times as many spells; the wise tutor who had taught Viviane everything she knew of human magic; and the legendary hero who had fought Morgan le Fay to a standstill.
…and also the handsome playboy that Viviane had once beguiled (and accidentally fallen in love with), tricking him into teaching her the spell that had eventually bound him inside a tree for all eternity.
Oleandra's face blanched.
Was this where she was? She knew this place— she had been here before, when Merlin had summoned her spirit after she'd stared a bit too intently into a crystal ball. Now she stood on what appeared to be nothing at all, at the very foot of Yggdrasil, in the star‑strewn void of outer space.
"Don't tell me I'm stuck here forever!" she cried, her voice trembling as she took in the towering World Tree— a sight she had glimpsed countless times in dreams, yet which now felt altogether far too real for her liking. "Is that what happens to those who break the laws of time? Are they banished here?"
Merlin started guffawing.
"This isn't funny, Merlin!" Oleandra shouted, blinking away the tears that threatened to gather in the corners of her misty eyes. "Tell me what's going on!"
Being trapped three thousand years in the past was one thing; spending the rest of eternity in the company of her past incarnation's lover was quite another. Talk about awkward…
"You should see your face!" Merlin chortled.
Oleandra scowled at him, and eventually, his laughter subsided.
"No, no, I've only taken advantage of your present state to draw your consciousness here, so that we might talk privately," said Merlin mirthfully, dabbing away a tear of laughter. "There's no need to worry; you're already on your way back to your rightful time— and for good, this time."
Oleandra let out a shaky sigh of relief.
"You probably already had an inkling about what kept yo-yoing you back and forth through time, didn't you?" Merlin added. "Care to hazard a guess at what was keeping you in the past?"
Months ago, Oleandra had accidentally been exposed to volatile alchemical reagents, the result of Theo's ill‑fated attempt to replicate the remarkable properties of the Sands of Time within the Time‑Turner he'd pinched from the Department of Mysteries— an accident that had left her untethered from her rightful era, forced to wake in one of two distant centuries each time she drifted off to sleep.
But just a few days before Christmas, she had slain the Dusk‑Elf who had been relentlessly pursuing her for nearly two years. As it happened, the Elf had been the only thing anchoring her to 1996, bound to her by a magical kinship of shared blood— for they quite literally shared the same heart. By ending the Elf's life, Oleandra had severed that bond and, with it, the final tether to her rightful era, leaving her marooned in the distant past.
So, if Oleandra's theory was correct… then what had been the anchor binding her to the past?
"Mélusine was the anchor," said Oleandra quietly. "My past incarnation, from three thousand years ago. Who closer than myself could I possibly have been bound to?"
Merlin applauded.
"Correct!" he beamed. "No prizes for guessing correctly, unfortunately."
Oleandra frowned.
That couldn't be what Merlin had brought her here to discuss, could it? No, there had to be something else at play, she deduced. Each time he had summoned her spirit to the World Tree, it had been to reveal something crucial— usually by making her regurgitate the prophecies Trelawney herself ought to have made.
"I could have guessed as much for myself," Oleandra said pointedly. "What did you really want to talk about, Merlin?"
At last, Merlin's expression grew serious.
"Do you know what caused the fall of Avalon?" he said. "And for that matter, Atlantis, the City of Ys, the continent of Mu, and countless others?"
"I have no earthly idea," Oleandra admitted. "Viviane had theories, but nothing concrete."
The idea of a storm so powerful it could uproot a piece of land and tear it away from its plane of origin was terrifying. Who was to say the British Isles in their entirety weren't next? Millions of lives, Muggle, Wizards, animals, magical creatures… wiped away, just like that.
"There is a long and a short answer," Merlin explained. "I'll get to the long one shortly, but the short answer is this: the fall of Avalon is directly linked to your travelling companion."
"That can't be," Oleandra blurted out. "I was suspicious of Wanderer's motives at first, but my Mystic Eyes never lie. He swore to me that he had no ill intentions towards Avalon and its inhabitants."
Merlin tut-tutted her, waggling his finger at her.
"You little Fairies are all alike— too confident in your inborn talents, too stubborn to admit that humans can outwit you," he said, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Surely you should know by now that magic is the miracle that makes the impossible, possible? It was common knowledge in that era that Greater Fairies could see through all lies, so do you seriously think Odin and the Aesir clan behind him wouldn't have taken countermeasures against your Mystic Eyes, had their intentions been ill?"
Wanderer, Wōden, Odin… lies within truths within lies.
"Wanderer was telling the truth… or rather, he believed himself to be telling the truth," said Oleandra slowly. "A Memory Charm? He altered his own memories? Wanderer thought he was on a diplomatic mission, when in reality Odin sought to destroy Avalon…"
"Correct again!" beamed Merlin. "Morganna and her incarnations were always the cleverest of you Greater Fairies, the least limited in their thinking— Morgause saw through the deception almost at once, which led your past incarnation, Mélusine, to punish Odin by taking one of his eyes."
But considering what had happened next… it was obvious that Morgause had failed to stop him.
"But why?" cried Oleandra. "There are no Fairies in Scandinavia! Why would Wanderer want to destroy Avalon?"
"Isn't it obvious?" said Merlin calmly. "I believe Odin's already told you why."