"Take it back," he said to me, "and you do it. I'm no Bedivere."

I wanted to ask why, why, why. Why would he give this task to me? Why would anyone choose me, rather than him? He was athletic. He sailed. He would accomplish it better. His hands were dirty, and dirty hands were what it would take to do this.

Yet he handed it to me.

He was the "leader," if we had one. I was expecting him to be a leader still. But his eyes were small and set harder than they were before; gone were the wide eyes of the hero. The hero had been cut down, had bled out through a romantic, tragic wound to the heart. Davideus was dead.

So he handed it to me, and I tried to pass it off on someone else.

"What do you expect me to do with it?" he asked. "You think you're too good for this? You're the dumbass that put all the work into it."

You talk too much, you big dumb white guy. There are times where I think he's never going to learn. He'll make one more offensive joke that he won't be able to take back and get himself killed. I could see it now, a movie screen flashing in my head. The comedy quickly turned to murder mystery, and he couldn't even back up all that talk with some fight. What a coward. What an amateur.

Yet he passed it back to me.

And though our hands didn't touch, the connection was made, and a light turned on in my brain, the sickly glow of Boston Market heat lamps. More than I knew - more than any of us - he had grown. Something about sharing near-death experiences will do that to a group of people. He could smile like a normal person. He could keep a level head about his parents' divorce. He could punch a neo-Nazi in the face. He didn't need the other strength.

So he passed it back to me, and I tried to give it to someone else.

"Don't make me do this, Jalil," she whispered. "I don't know if I'm even ready."

Alone among us she clung to our time on the other side. It struck me as weird, out of character for her. It didn't fit my pattern. She saw so many things, did so many things that tainted or disrupted her faith. I would have thought she'd be the most anxious to dispose of every scrap of sacrilege.

Yet she gave it back to me.

Had a part of her enjoyed it all? A secret little figment - some part of the actress side of her - that defied her faith and longed for an escape from the real world, that was in no way fantastical or miraculous any more. It was a sorry, sordid state to be in. I pitied her for it.

So she gave it back to me, and I kept it, swallowing my pride along with the lump in my throat.

"This is where it all began," I murmured, "and this is where it will end."

"Just chuck it, Jalil," Christopher said. "Don't make a big deal out of it."

"It is a big deal," said April.

"Stop arguing," said David. "Just be glad we made it out alive."

"Did we?" I said.

There was silence as I looked down at the object in my hands, turning it over to see the work that I had done. Every stroke in every letter was exactly the same width and darkness, traced over and over again to perfection. I couldn't find a flaw, at any rate; no human is perfect.

The morning air was cold like the day it had begun. The area was silent, save our breathing, like the day it had begun. The pier was deserted, and it swayed a little, and we were alone, like the day it had begun.

The pocketknife was cold in my too-clean hands. I turned it over. Take me. I turned it over. Cast me away.

"Farewell, Excalibur."

I threw it back into the lake.