The Seventh Slice

13 Ken felt as if he were waking, but he couldn’t quite open his eyes. He felt as if he were still dreaming. He was sure he had actually come to the Glastonbury Abbey parking lot, and that it had started to rain, and that he had seen on his screen a suspicious wave signature at around 100 hertz. He had told Atilla to go towards the Tor, but then it seemed he had dozed off. Surely he was not sleeping. What if the whole night were a dream, what if he had gone to sleep despite his anxiety that this was the time his years of work and speculation had hopefully come to fruition? He opened his eyes. He was in the Hyundai, but not in Somerset, unless he were in King’s Castle Wood. Nonsense. He was certain he had told his car to go to Glastonbury, that it had, that it had started to rain. He remembered the trip. Of that he felt sure. But what if he had dozed off, and somehow the Hyundai had driven itself to Wells instead of towards the Tor. He didn’t feel certain, really, of much of anything, except that it seemed no longer to be raining and that he really wanted to wake up. It was still night when he opened his eyes, a moonlighted night, with the trees around him and their shadows seeming to dance a taunt. He glanced at the gps display: ‘no signal found’. Had the clouds brought not just a bit of rain but lightning? Had his car been struck? He scrolled down his Galileos. ‘No signal found.’ ‘Open door’, he told Atilla. It did. At least something still worked. He looked around to find himself in a Halloween party. He found himself surrounded by grown men in very realistic medieval soldier costumes. 14

Ieuan Wyn found himself waking. He had had such a strange dream. He, the one the French called le Poursuivant d'Amour, Continuing Love, and a few faithful others, had followed Owain, against their better intuitions, into a huge storm, pursuing the English betrayers. It had seemed very real but very unnatural, and now he wondered if they had been bewitched. There were stories around that the new King, Richard, would hire witches and wizards to carry out the tasks his grandfather’s assassins had failed to accomplish. Maybe they were true. If it were true, if he and his companions were bewitched, none of them would be in any position to help Owain now. Hopefully some of the men who had been more awed by the storm would mount a rescue. Or he might just wake to find that after the  dream they were all still in Poitou with the English in control of the Mountain.

Ieuan looked around. They were in some sort of cave, thirteen men in all, counting young Aidan who was just coming in with his breeches half-belted. He was not surprised that Aidan had followed Owain into the cloud. He might not be expected to do much in a fight, but that would not because he lacked bravery. He was convinced that he could do more with his poetry to deliver Cymru from the English than had been accomplished with swords. So far, he had done as much.