Last Exit to Camelot

by Emmyllou

Arthur finds himself in the strange and hostile land of Roger Zelazny's Roadmarks. The Road has always been there for those who can find it, and it always will be.

A/N: This takes place sometime after the season 3 finale and before 4.3 "The Wicked Day".

The first thing Arthur remembered was smell. It hung in the air and caught at the back of his throat, heavy and acrid. It was familiar; it was smoke. You're supposed to cough when you smell smoke, his body helpfully reminded him, and the act of coughing made him remember sound. He could hear a gentle thrumming roar, almost but not quite like the wind. Like the wind that ruffled Arthur's hair, and then he remembered touch. He could feel leather against his cheek and against his back through the rips in his clothing. It was moving, vibrating almost, not in individual places but all together as if he were lying on the skin of a great drum. The drum beat twice in quick succession, and Arthur remembered pain. He didn't notice much else for a long while after that.

The next time he awakened, he managed to open an eye just enough to make him wish he hadn't. He lay in a metal cage with two leather-covered benches, one in front of the other. The cage had holes on all sides, but when Arthur reached out his hand towards the sky visible through the opening, it bumped up against a transparent barrier. His first thought was magic, but no, he could see smudges on the barrier from his hand, still coated in sweat and blood. Glass then, but flawless, so much more perfect than any master glazier could produce. Arthur tried to sit up but quickly thought better of it. He instead cast his gaze around again, peering through the windows of the cage.

A dark-haired woman stood outside the cage facing Arthur. She leaned against a small beige house bearing a sign of what looked like a stylized carriage, except it had no horses. Arthur recoiled as sensations flashed across his mind's eye: Morgana with her hand raised and her eyes gold, the sky falling away as hundreds of stars swirled around him, the smell of ozone and blood and the bones of the earth. But the woman outside the cage wasn't Morgana. She was too old, her forehead too broad. Her hair was different: inky black but straight under a hat with a wide brim. They had the same eyes though: piercing green and intelligent, and Arthur was afraid. The woman wore tight black pants and a dark green canvas shirt that lay open on the front, revealing a black undershirt. Her boots were black and heavy. A belt was slung low around her waist, and from it hung a long knife on one hip and some kind of club with a curved handle on the other. She reached into a pocket and withdrew a short, slender white cylinder and a small metal box. She opened the box and a tiny candle flame sprung forth, which she applied to the end of the cylinder. It smoldered, and she held it to her lips and inhaled. The box clicked shut and the flame disappeared. A man came into Arthur's view, bearing a bucket and a lopsided funnel. He approached the cage and fit the funnel against it—into it?—and poured the contents of the bucket through. Arthur briefly wondered what was in the bucket and where it was going, for it certainly wasn't going into any part of the cage that he could see, but the same smell as before, the first thing he remembered, hit him again, and it took all his focus not to retch.

The man and the woman conversed, and several small green stones changed hands. Arthur couldn't understand the speech, but the tones were universal. The man was pissed off and the woman was dismissive, but they both turned to fondness and embraced. As the woman strode back to the cage, she noticed Arthur's new state of reluctant consciousness, and she smiled around the white cylinder. She opened the side of the cage and slid onto the leather bench in front of Arthur. The smell intensified, and Arthur saw smoke coming from the end of the white cylinder stuck between her lips.

"Hi there," she said without turning around.

Arthur only looked at her in askance, and she turned to look at him over the back of the leather bench when his silence continued for more than a few seconds.

"Kalimera?" she tried, and Arthur tilted his head.

"Salve?" and that was something Arthur understood at last. "Salve," he replied.

"Latin's not my strongest language, but I'll manage," the woman said slowly. "I'm going to take you to a friend who will loan me something that will let us speak with each other more easily, and then I'm going to take you back home. My name is Leila. How are you feeling?"

Arthur quickly took stock. His head throbbed, but he wasn't bleeding out, nor did he have any broken bones or missing limbs. He told the woman as much, and she nodded once, sharply. He didn't mention his dizziness or nausea or the weakness in his limbs.

"Where am I?" Arthur's Latin was less fluent than Leila's. Studying took valuable time away from training and hunting and patrolling and doing everything else that Camelot required of its prince.

"Long story, that." Leila said. She brought the cylinder to her lips again and inhaled, then turned her head to blow smoke out of the hole in the cage. "And we've got a long ways to go. Can you sit up?" Arthur nodded carefully, but Leila continued on without waiting for a response. "Why don't you come up to the front and we'll talk while I drive."

Arthur sat up slowly, gripping the backs of the leather benches as leverage. He tried to crawl over the top of the front-most bench, but the ceiling of the cage was too low and he hit his head. He throbbed, and Leila laughed. She opened the cage next to her again and stepped out, then circled over to the side nearest Arthur and opened the door. Arthur almost tripped getting out, but Leila steadied him, still laughing. He took the opportunity to scan his surroundings. The cage sat by the side of a road unlike any road Arthur had ever seen before. It was long and mostly straight, though a few twists lay far in the distance. A black stripe ran down the middle, broken up into equal segments. The landscape was utterly alien and comprised almost entirely of loose stones and gravel. No plants were brave enough to eke out a living in such a forbidding environment. A few blue-grey mountains loomed in the distance, stretching up into a barren sky. Arthur made his way around the cage, trying not to let Leila see how he was using one hand to support himself, and as soon as he had put as much distance as possible between himself and Leila, he made a break for it.

Arthur didn't get very far. Leila caught up with him in just a few strides, but she didn't need to. The ground tilted beneath Arthur's feet, and he had only moments to curse its treachery before he found himself with his cheek pressed against a road of something that reminded him of the grout between flagstones. Leila gave a heavy sigh above him, and then he felt arms circling him at his shoulder and knee, and he was abruptly airborne. He heard a loud whoosh as something heavy passed by very quickly, and Leila stumbled and swore. She quickly regained her grip though and bore Arthur back to the car.

"'M not a damsel," he muttered, and he struggled weakly.

"Sorry Goldilocks, I don't speak Gaelic or English or whatever it is that you're speaking," Leila said in Latin. ("Goldilocks?" Arthur muttered to himself.) "I'm trying to help you, so quit wiggling. Merlin sent me."

Arthur paid attention to that. "How do you know Merlin?"

"Again, long story, long drive. Let's get on with it."

Arthur allowed himself to be propped against the front bench. The mention of Merlin calmed some of his fears but aroused others. This Leila was obviously a witch: the fire in the metal box proved that. But she had had ample opportunity to kill him while he was unconscious, and she wasn't threatening him or sacrificing him, so she was probably alright.

A wheel was affixed to the cage in front of Leila, and she reached down next to it and turned a lever. Arthur flinched as the cage hummed to life around him. This was the same drumbeat vibration as before. Leila noticed his alarm and glanced over, amused. "Relax," she said. "This is called a car. You'll see all kinds of cars along this road."

"Where are you taking me?" Arthur asked after a pause. The cage—car, Arthur reminded himself—gained speed, until the arid, almost desert-like landscape was whizzing by.

Leila inhaled from the cylinder again and blew smoke out of the opening next to her before answering. "We're going to see an old friend of mine. He'll let me borrow something of his so we can talk better. Then we'll try to find your way home. Camelot, right?" She turned her head to look at Arthur for a moment. He nodded, bewildered. "Good," Leila continued. "There's plenty of exits to Camelot. I'm sure we'll find yours, easy."

"What—exits?" Arthur stumbled over his words, not sure what he wanted to ask, but Leila seemed to understand.

"We're on a road. The Road, really. It leads"—inhale, smoky exhale—"Well, everywhere, I guess. Or not quite everywhere, but most places. Most times, too. Reyd—that's the friend we're going to see—described it once like an infinite spine. It goes from the beginning of time to the end of time, only there's no real beginning or ending I suppose, and you can get off on any of the side roads. That's the ribs in Reyd's analogy. But the ribs aren't always there, see. Sometimes they disconnect if they're not used too much, and new ribs can grow in. So I suppose it's not much like a spine at all, is it?" Leila paused to think. "You know, I think Reyd was drunk when he said that."

Arthur's head spun. "So… Camelot's connected to the Road? And I was somewhere else along the Road, not in Camelot?"

Leila gave her sharp nod to each of his questions. "Merlin reached out when he saw the aftermath of the spell that your sister—Morgana, is it?—cast. It propelled you through time, dumped you right around C twenty-seven. I happened to be in the area, lucky for you. You left a great smoking crater. I probably would have found you even if Merlin hadn't said anything."

"How do you know Merlin?"

Leila tapped the side of her nose. "Merlin and I go way ahead. You'll have to talk to him about it in"—she paused to give Arthur an appraising glance—"oh, just a few years. He doesn't know anything about it right now. Poor dear," she chuckled, mostly to herself. "I'm sure he's worried sick."

It was strange, Arthur mused as they passed what looked like a horse-drawn carriage hovering three feet above the Road. He had calmly accepted the notion of time travel and being trapped in a very swiftly moving cage—car—with a witch who couldn't speak his own language but somehow knew, or would know, Merlin in the future. He didn't know where he was or where he was going or what was happening in Camelot in his absence. But what worried him most was where his sword had gotten to.

Arthur stared out of the glass-covered opening for quite some time before Leila made a small noise and pushed a button on the car. The glass slowly retracted into the car, and Arthur automatically turned his face into the wind. It blew strong enough to ruffle his hair, stronger than on horseback, even stronger than it blew when Arthur leaned out of the tallest tower of his castle, surveying his land and his people. He laughed then, and Leila laughed too. "How fast are we going?" he asked. He almost had to shout over the roar of the wind.

"A bit more than twice as fast as a horse can gallop," she answer-shouted back. Arthur laughed again, almost giddy with the feel of the wind through his hair, and stuck his head further out the window. A sudden wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm him-the aftermath of Morgana's spell, no doubt, but it disappeared quickly enough. He stared down at the road beneath him, then at the arid landscape, then up into the sunless sky. The speed was heady, and Arthur wasn't sure how long he stayed like that, his shoulders hanging out of the car, drawing the strange air deep into his lungs. They overtook a few other travelers, and Arthur stared at their strange vehicles in fascination for as long as he could before they disappeared behind the horizon. The land outside began to change as Leila pushed the car faster. A few windblown trees forced themselves through the inhospitable stones, and shrubby sage had sprouted in patches along the side.

Arthur settled back into the car. "Where's my sword?" he asked.

Leila shook her head. "No idea. You didn't have a sword when I found you. Must have dropped it somewhere. Not that a sword is going to be of much use here, but I know how you boys are with your swords." She smirked at Arthur sideways, and Arthur felt the tips of his ears grow warm. He resumed staring out the window.

They came upon another pair of buildings, light blue this time but weathered almost to grey. Leila guided the car off the Road into a large open space next to the building, and stopped it alongside other contraptions which Arthur had to assume were different kinds of cars. He stepped out after fumbling with the handle on the inside of his door and nearly fainted from the pungent, familiar odor of horse wafting from the smaller, nearer building. It could only be a stable in desperate need of mucking, and it was the best thing Arthur had ever smelled in his entire life. Leila grabbed his arm and gently guided him towards the larger building. It too bore a sign: a picture of a house, a bed, and a knife and spoon and plate.

"We're going to meet Reyd here," Leila said. "He's probably less than a C away now, so he should be here soon." She opened the door to what Arthur assumed was an inn, and a wave of laughter, music, and cooking oil washed over them. Leila ushered Arthur to a table in the corner and instructed him in no uncertain terms to stay put. She made her way to the front of the crowded bar, and Arthur took the opportunity to look around.

He was in the main room of a tavern. It could almost be any tavern in Camelot, but the clientele set it apart. Men and women wearing all kinds of outlandish clothes drank and diced and ate and kissed. Barmaids bustled in between the worn wooden tables, bearing trays laden with food and drink. Women whispered lascivious things to their men. A musician strummed something that looked like a lute but had some kind of rope leading from the body of the instrument into a black box at her feet. The entire scene was totally familiar and yet utterly alien at the same time.

Leila chose that moment to re-appear, laden with two plates of food and a pitcher of something dark brown and foamy. She plonked one plate in front of Arthur along with a mug and poured him a generous helping of the drink. Arthur eyed his food suspiciously. "What is this?" he asked, poking at his plate.

"That's called pizza," Leila answered. "It's flat bread with cheese and sauce made out of tomato. You don't have tomatoes where you're from, but they're good." As if to prove her point, Leila lifted her own slice of pizza to her mouth and took a huge bite. "Gluk!" she choked before swallowing down a mouthful of her drink. "Careful, it's hot."

Arthur took a cautious nibble and found that it was indeed hot but also delicious. He devoured the rest of his slice as quickly as he could without scalding the roof of his mouth, washing it down with what proved to be an excellent ale.

"Trade me positions," Leila said after they had both finished their pizza. "I want to see when Reyd walks in." Arthur was loath to relinquish his seat facing the door, but he had to admit that it would be better for Leila to see the incomers, as uncomfortable as it made him to sit with his back towards the entrance. His discomfort must have showed, because Leila topped off his drink and instructed him to relax. "Tell you what," she said as she handed him a green marble. "Why don't you go tell Isolde over there to play my song? You'll like it, trust me. Just say it's for me." Arthur nodded dumbly and stumbled over to the woman with the almost-lute. He handed her the green marbles and she smiled at him as he tripped over Leila's request in clumsy Latin. He realized belatedly that she might not even understand him, but she started the opening chords to a song, so he supposed she understood well enough. He sat back down at Leila's table just as another man with a mop of thick red hair dropped into an empty seat next to her.

"Reyd," said Leila.

"Leila," said the man.

They stared silently at each other for a few heartbeats until Arthur cleared his throat and spoke in Latin. "I'm Arthur. I understand that you're lending Leila something to help me on my way home. I want to thank you for that." He held out his hand for the man to shake, but the man just looked at him in confusion.

Leila said something to him in a language that Arthur didn't recognize, and the man's face cleared.

"I'm Red," he said to Arthur, and gripped his hand.

Arthur felt his face break into a smile. "You speak—"

"Yeah," Red cut him off. He reached into a bag at his feet and pulled out a book. "This is Flowers of Evil. I usually just call it Flowers." He tapped the cover. "It's very precious to me, so you take care of it." He aimed a glare without heat at Leila, who smiled back angelically even though she couldn't follow the conversation.

Arthur stared at the book. He didn't see how it could help him communicate with Leila. Perhaps it was a dictionary of some sort?

Red was still talking though. He asked something of Leila in a questioning tone, and she nodded reassuringly. He turned then to Arthur. "Alright, I don't really know how to explain this," he started slowly. "You don't have certain machines or any robots or electricity in your time, so this will be difficult." Arthur opened his mouth to ask specifically what kind of machines, and what were robots and electricity? But Red held up his hand for silence. "Flowers isn't just a book, see. Flowers can think and talk and do all kinds of things. It's what we call a robot. Not human, but not just a book, either. It's got artificial intelligence." Red huffed out a breath of air and seemed to consider his next words. "Imagine if you were God. You do believe in God, don't you?" Red helped himself to a gulp from Leila's tankard. "Anyways, imagine being God and creating these little funny things who can talk and think and worship. Talking and worshipping, those are easy, but thinking's the tricky part. Have you ever thought about how we think? It's a fascinating topic. Imagine being God and having to teach your creations how to think. Not telling them what to think, but how to go through the process of thinking, how to use logic and reason and creativity to arrive at an answer. That's kind of what robots are like to us. Humans created them, built them, and then taught them how to think. Now they talk and think but they don't worship. Which is fine with me; we're not gods, and some of us would do well to remember that." He settled back in his chair and almost slipped into reverie before rousing himself. "Flowers is a robot, and one of the things it can do is listen to the words you say, translate them to a different language, and then project them again. Let me show you."

Red tapped gently on the book once more and said something that Arthur didn't understand. A voice emanated from the book, like Red's and not quite. It was flatter and the cadence was all wrong, but Arthur understood the words. "This is a test," the not-Red voice said. "I am speaking foretalk lingo and I would like Flowers to translate into the form of Brythonic I was speaking before. And don't you get all smart on me, Flowers, I know you were listening and you know exactly which dialect I mean."

Arthur stared at the book, amazed. Surely this was sorcery? But no, Red had made no mention of magic, just creation and machines and other things that barely eluded Arthur's understanding.

Red spoke again. "Now you try," came from the book—no, the robot.

"Well, I guess you already know my name is Arthur," Arthur began haltingly. "Where is this from? And why are the flowers evil?"

Red laughed at that. "Flowers is from one of the later Cs. Centuries, I mean. I had another one, Leaves of Grass, I think. Where has Leaves gotten to?" He looked around, slightly bemused, but Leila put her hand on his arm.

"You gave Leaves to your—" Leila began saying, but Red cut her off.

"Right. Damn. I didn't think I'd forget that."

Arthur watched the whole exchange with minor annoyance. Surely they could discuss Red's memory problems at another, less pressing, time? He had duties he needed to get back to, people he needed to rule. He thought about issuing a command, but out here, his power was meaningless; his princely authority seemed to pale to nothing. He had no doubt that Leila would laugh the way she seemed to laugh about everything, and Red would just obstinately settle himself further back in his rickety chair and maybe drink from Arthur's mug this time, just to prove a point. So Arthur waited as Leila and Red were drawn into a small conversation. Flowers kept translating their speech, but Arthur found it easy to tune out the flat metallic voice. He closed his eyes and let the bustle of the tavern wash over him. He couldn't understand any of the conversations, which made him anxious and relaxed in turns.

Leila raised her voice and roused Arthur from his pleasant reverie. "What I can't work out," she said, "is why you're here in the first place."

Arthur grumbled under his breath and opened his eyes to see Leila looking over at him. He opened his mouth to indignantly inform her that coming to the tavern was her idea and if she didn't want him here he could find his own damn way back to Camelot but she had promised to help and it was really rather ignoble to just strand him here but Leila waved her hand and cut off his arguments.

"I mean here, on the Road. It seems like a very inefficient way to kill someone. That's what your sister wants, right? To kill you?" Leila looked at Arthur expectantly.

Arthur shrugged, mollified. "Maybe she expected the spell to kill me. Or maybe she did something wrong. Morgana was never exactly praised for her intellect."

Red seemed unconvinced. "Still though, it's such a clumsy assassination attempt. There's much better ways to go about magical murder. Like strangling him from a distance."

"Or enchanting a sword to run him through," suggested Leila helpfully.

"Liquefying his brain."

"Filling his innards with acid."

"Replacing his bones with bees."

"Teleporting all the blood in his body three feet to the left."

"I get it!" Arthur broke in. He was no stranger to bloodshed, but the nausea he had been ignoring ever since awakening had reared its head again at the casual discussion of carnage. "I think I'm lucky that Morgana lacks creativity."

Leila nodded understandingly. "We'd best be heading out anyways. Reyd's carrying the kind of cargo that would make it unfortunate if we were seen being overly friendly with him."

Arthur nodded and followed Leila out of the tavern. He ended up by her car, but Leila and Red lingered a while longer, talking quietly. Flowers didn't translate their speech.

Later on, as Leila sped down the Road, Arthur realized that no one had answered his question. "No one answered my question," he said. "Why are the flowers evil?"

Leila laughed long and hard when Flowers finished translating. "It's complicated," she managed in between giggles. "The flowers themselves aren't evil. It's a metaphor."

Arthur panicked. He had had quite enough metaphors during his study of the Bible. Metaphors were for scholars and monks, people like Gaius or Geoffrey. Metaphors required him to think. Not that Arthur didn't enjoy thinking, or that he thought of it as a useless pursuit. He thought plenty, but mostly about tactics and training and how to be a good king. Concrete things—things that produced tangible results. Metaphors weren't concrete. He wasn't sure how to think about a metaphor.

Leila noticed his distress, but she must have misinterpreted it as embarrassment over being laughed at, for she quickly stifled her merry chortles. Arthur almost wished she hadn't. It was comforting to hear laughter, so familiar in such a strange land, even if it was directed at him. "Flowers of Evil is a collection of poems written during a time of extensive rebuilding and restructuring of a city called Paris. Paris was overcrowded and filthy and disease-ridden, especially certain neighborhoods close to the center of town. A man named Haussmann came in and knocked a bunch of the old buildings down and rebuilt them in a more modern style. Conditions improved, but many people, including the author, felt that Haussmann had done Paris a disservice. Paris wasn't home anymore. It used to be, but it changed in the way that cities aren't supposed to change, and the people felt lost."

Arthur waited patiently while Leila fumbled one-handed in her coat for another white cylinder and the same metal box as before. She held the cylinder in her mouth and lit it from the flame in the box. She inhaled and blew the smoke out of the open window before continuing.

"The heroes in the poems aren't heroes like you and your knights. They aren't brave and strong in the way that you think about bravery and strength. They're people like me, like how I was before I found the Road." Leila didn't seem forthcoming about what exactly she was like before she found the Road, so Arthur asked. "Not someone you'd deign to save, Goldilocks," she answered without venom.

"Why do you think I wouldn't save you?" Arthur retorted, genuinely stung this time. "Because of your magic?"

Leila froze. "How do you know about my visions?"

"What visions?" asked Arthur, befuddled. "I meant the fire in the box."

Leila blinked at him for a few moments and then she was laughing again, laughing so hard that the car's position on the Road wavered momentarily. "You're too precious," she gasped when she had gotten control over herself again. "Can I keep you?" She didn't give Arthur the chance to respond. "That wasn't any more magic than tinder and flint. It's called a lighter."

"What's that called then?" Arthur pointed to the cylinder.

Leila took a drag before answering. "It's a cigarette. It's filled with leaves of a plant called tobacco. Camelot doesn't have it yet. It grows in the same land that tomatoes do, sort of."

"Why do you light it on fire?"

"Smoking tobacco makes you relaxed. It's a habit for me by now."

Arthur tilted his head, considering. "Can I try?"

Leila laughed but handed over the cigarette. "Just put it in your mouth and inhale gently-no, not through your nose, just through your mouth. That's it. What do you think?"

Arthur coughed so hard that his entire body shook. "Ugh, why do you do that?" he managed to ask in between violent coughing fits.

"It's kind of an acquired taste. You don't cough once you get used to it."

"Well yeah, but… why? Is it worth it?"

Leila spoke slowly, as though she were weighing each of her words against a feather. "Everyone's got to have a few vices, yeah? Something to indulge themselves in, so they don't do anything worse. Some folks just have one vice, but I'm not that good of a person. I need a few, and smoking's one of them. Drinking too, I guess. But at least I don't steal or kill or cheat when I gamble, and I keep myself afloat."

Arthur stared at the infinite Road outside for a while and thought about metaphors.

"I would save you, you know," Arthur said abruptly, much later. He wasn't sure how much later, since the sky seemed to be steadily bright with no sun or clouds, but he was starting to feel a bit hungry again and the trees alongside the Road were more numerous and bore more foliage, so it must have been several hours at least.

The sound of his voice startled Leila. "Hmm?" she said without looking over.

"I would save you," repeated Arthur. "I don't care if you're not a hero like—like me. I'd save you. I'd save any of my people. I'd give my life for them."

Leila sat in silence for a moment. "I'm not one of your people. And besides, I don't need saving. Never have." And for once, the choppy, inhuman translation that Flowers provided sounded close to her tone. She sighed. "Are you getting tired or hungry?

Arthur nodded. His back was stiff and he had a hard time keeping his eyes open against the monotonous drone of the Road. Food and rest would be welcome, and he told Leila as much.

"There's an inn up ahead. I know the keeper; he'll let us stay for cheap. We can get some sleep and head out when it's—well, it's always light here. We'll start driving again when we're ready."

"How much farther do we have to go?" Arthur asked as the inn came into view on the horizon.

"We're right around C fifteen, so about another ten Cs to go. It'll be just a little bit less than what we traveled today. It might take some extra time to find your specific Camelot though. And we'll need to go on horse for a while. Camelot doesn't have any roads for cars, so the exit to Camelot won't be for cars either."

Arthur turned that over in his mind until it made sense, and by that time, Leila had guided the car into a gap in the crowded car stable and stilled its vibrations. He silently got out, only fumbling a little bit with the handle this time, and followed her inside.

This tavern was different from the other. It was smaller for one, and cleaner. The inside was shiny white and silver stone instead of time-weathered wood, but the sound was the same. Arthur supposed that the sound would be the same everywhere.

"Leila!" A roar arose from a table in a far corner. "Have you heard the news? Corwin and Bleys are planning to attack Eric." Flowers picked up the words easily enough, distant though the voice was, and whispered the translation to Arthur as he followed Leila to the table.

"And I suppose you'll be joining them, won't you, you happy few?" Leila said as she plopped herself into a chair.

"We band of buggered," muttered one man in response.

Arthur couldn't find a chair, so he stood next to Leila, awkwardly clutching Flowers to his chest, until Leila noticed his plight and dragged over a chair from a nearby table. Arthur sank into it gratefully and considered placing Flowers on the table, but the surface seemed rather sticky.

"Shove over," she instructed the man next to her. "This is Arthur. He made that pillar of smoke in the sky earlier today. Be nice to him. I'm getting food and a room."

"There's room in my bed for another," shouted one of the men with a leer. Arthur's cheeks turned pink, and the other men guffawed.

Leila turned around slowly and leered right back. "I might just take you up on that. Depends on how many drinks you buy me." Arthur's cheeks turned even pinker.

Most of the men crowded around the little table went back to talking about men that Arthur didn't know and a battle that Arthur wouldn't fight. Normally Arthur would have been interested in that kind of tactical conversation, but Flowers was having a hard time keeping up with all the interruptions and the talking-over, so Arthur mostly tuned the babble out and instead stared around at his table companions.

They were all dressed roughly the same: crisp white shirts with buttons that went all the way down the front and collars that folded over and tapered to points on either side of the line of buttons along with trousers made from some kind of dark blue, thick-looking fabric. The man sitting closest to Arthur had rolled his sleeves up, and a wide cuff made of braided leather was wrapped around his wrist. He noticed Arthur's examination and smiled, opening his mouth to speak, but a voice called what seemed to be his name through the idle chatter, and he turned away.

Leila reappeared, her arms full with drinks and two plates laden with several dozen thin golden-brown square tubes, each about as long as Arthur's index finger. "These are called fries, though I suppose by the time they get to where you live, you'll call them chips," she said to Arthur. "They're made out of potatoes, which come from the same place as tomatoes and tobacco."

Arthur picked up one of the fries and stared at it suspiciously before gingerly biting off the end. He stared at the fry, shocked. It was almost better than the pizza. Leila laughed at his reaction and shoveled a handful of fries into her mouth. "I hope these lackadaisical buffoons haven't been too uncouth for you."

"Those are some fancy words, Leila," said the man with the leather cuff. Flowers's translation was as jarring as ever, but Arthur could still hear his lazy, drawling tone. "Where'd you learn to talk pretty like that?"

"Just a few Cs up the Road, there's a bar with a redhead who whispered such lovely things in my ear," Leila retorted. "Want to know what else she said? She told me that Stefan"—she reached over Arthur and poked the man in the chest—"had such a tiny prick that she couldn't even feel it when he fucked her, and he barely lasted two minutes from getting his trousers off!" The table erupted in laughter, and Stefan laughed with them.

"Utterly crude, aren't they?" came a prim voice from Arthur's lap. Arthur looked down, shocked. Flowers had stopped translating and was apparently speaking for itself.

"Oh, um, well, I suppose…" replied Arthur, still too surprised to form a proper sentence.

Flowers didn't seem to mind though; it kept talking. "Really, I'm surprised Leila brought you to this kind of place. She ought to be more responsible with a young thing like you. You shouldn't be hearing this kind of talk."

Arthur was about to reply that he had heard plenty of this kind of talk from his knights, thank you very much, but his words were lost in a massive yawn. Leila noticed and passed him a key. It was made out of the same white stone as the table and some of the chairs were, but at least it had a familiar shape. "You're in room 12, just up those stairs," she said, gesturing to a staircase in the corner of the room. "Feel free to take your food up with you. You can leave the plate outside the door when you're done; someone will come pick it up. I'll be in later." She paused, and her hand disappeared under the table and into the lap of the man on her other side. She giggled. "Or not."

Arthur cleared his throat and averted his eyes. He grabbed his plate of fries and balanced it carefully upon Flowers before making his way up the stairs and into his room. It was blessedly quiet but a bit too dark, and he fumbled around the lamps, looking for a way to light them.

"Prbll th plthm," said Flowers from beneath the plate of fries. Arthur hastily removed the plate from the book and laid it instead on the small white nightstand next to the single bed in the room. "Press the button," said Flowers more clearly, almost sounding annoyed.

Can a book be annoyed? mused Arthur as he fumbled around for a button.

"On the wall, next to the door."

Apparently so.

Arthur located the button and pressed it, and the lamps immediately flared to life. He huffed out a breath. Magic, maybe, or some kind of lighter like Leila's that could be activated with a button? He would have to ask Leila when she came in. Or tomorrow, he thought, blushing. As much as it can be tomorrow in a place without a sun.

Arthur found that he wasn't hungry anymore, even though he had only had a few of the delicious fries. He had no clothes for sleeping in, so he stripped off his boots and outer layer of clothing and lay on the bed in just his underthings. He was tired, but he wasn't quite ready to go to sleep. "Flowers…?" he said uncertainly. "Red explained how people made you and taught you the process of thinking. Does that mean you think like a person? Can I talk to you the way I'd talk to a person?"

Flowers was silent for a while, and Arthur suddenly felt very small and very alone. When the book spoke, it sounded almost offended. "You've never been on the Road before, and you're from one of the earlier Cs," it said. "I heard that you don't even have electricity, so I'll forgive your rudeness. It isn't your fault, really. Yes, you can talk to me the way you'd talk to a person. And I can even talk back. It's amazing what robots can do these days."

Arthur wasn't sure how to apologize, or even if he should. "Can you tell me more about the Road?"

"What do you know?"

Arthur shrugged before realizing that the book probably couldn't see him. "Not much, just what Leila's told me. It's infinite and it leads to a lot of different places. And times, I guess, but I don't really understand that."

"Sounds like Leila's covered most of the bases. There isn't much else to say. The Dragons of Bel'kwinith built the Road, but no one is sure why, not even them. Not everyone can get on it either. You have to have the right kind of blood. Traveler's blood. The people you met, they're all travelers. They all have the right kind of blood." Flowers's voice became almost wistful. "I don't have it. I don't have any blood at all."

Arthur didn't quite know what to say to that, so he remained silent. Flowers took his silence for permission to keep speaking.

"I heard you asking about me earlier. Well. You know. The book that I'm in. Flowers of Evil. I could read it to you, if you like. It's written in French, but I could translate for you."

Arthur nodded out of habit. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'd like that." He got up and turned off the lights then lay back down as Flowers beeped and hummed quietly. He didn't feel tired, but he closed his eyes anyways. He fell asleep, almost by surprise, to the sound of Flowers quietly murmuring:

In a burnt, ashen land, where no herb grew,

I to the winds my cries of anguish threw;

And in my thoughts, in that sad place apart,

Pricked gently with the poignard o'er my heart.

Arthur wasn't sure how long he slept. It must have been at least six hours though, for he felt well-rested and content and rather hungry. He grinned, thinking of how Merlin would tease him for his endless hunger, then felt a sharp pang next to his heart. Yesterday had been too hectic, too much of a whirlwind of newness and strangeness and Road, for him to worry much. But now that he lay in bed with the curtains blocking the omnipresent daylight, uncertainty sank over him like an unpleasantly heavy blanket, pinning his limbs and restricting his breathing. But no, panic wouldn't do anything to help his situation. He took a deep breath, forcing the air into his tightened lungs. He could tell that he was still weak from the spell, and Leila had shown him nothing but kindness. He would stay with her until he reached his home, as strange as the journey might be. Arthur took another breath and smiled. He always felt better when he had a plan, even if the plan was just to go along with whatever was already happening.

Arthur fetched the mostly-uneaten plate of fries from where he had left it the previous night and stuffed one in his mouth. He made a noise of disappointment upon discovering that the fries were not nearly as good cold as they were warm.

"You can put that in the microwave," piped up Flowers. Arthur jumped and nearly knocked the plate of fries off the bed.

"The… microwave?"

"That large black and silver box," explained Flowers with an air of patience. "Open the door, put the plate inside—it's not made of metal, is it? Good—then close the door, press one-aught-aught, and then press the button with the green triangle on it."

Arthur followed the instructions carefully, but he wasn't prepared for the loud beep that the box emitted when he pressed each button. He sat down carefully on the bed, his eyes wide on the microwave as the inside lit up and his fries began to rotate. "What's happening to them?" he asked anxiously over the hum of the microwave. Everything seemed to hum here along the Road.

"The microwave is heating them up," replied Flowers. "Basically, your food is being bombarded with electromagnetic radiation, which causes the water in your food to move more quickly, thus imparting a sensation of warmth."

"I… oh." Arthur swallowed with difficulty. "I see." He didn't, but the microwave gave another loud beep and the light inside turned off. He assumed that meant that his food was done heating, and he opened the door and reached inside gingerly. When his hand wasn't burnt off by electromagnetic radiation, whatever that was, he quickly grabbed the plate and brought it over to the bed with him.

Arthur polished off about half of his fries before he heard a gentle knock. He opened the door to reveal a slightly-disheveled Leila, her black hair rumpled and her hat askew. He raised an eyebrow. "Had a fun night?" he drawled before he could think better of it. Flowers was still on the nightstand, but evidently it had picked up Arthur's voice anyways and assumed he was addressing Leila, for it translated his words if not his tone.

Leila made a noise between a snort and a giggle, the sort of thing that the ladies of Camelot would rather die than utter before their prince. "Better than I've had in a while," she replied. She was wearing a different outfit than yesterday: trim pants in the same dark fabric as the men had worn the night before and a black button-up vest that left her arms bare. She still wore her belt with the knife and the curved club. Arthur blushed when he remembered his own state of undress and scrambled to put on his rumpled clothing from the day before.

Leila eyed him critically. "If we were any longer on the Road I'd have to get you some new clothes, but since we should arrive in Camelot sometime today I don't think I'll bother. You'll last for another day." Arthur nodded and gathered up Flowers and his fries. He stuffed a few more handfuls into his mouth before placing the almost-empty plate outside the door. Resting in a comfortable bed and eating his fill had restored some of Arthur's strength, but he still felt shaky, and he subtly trailed his fingers against the wall for balance.

"Flowers read to me last night," Arthur said as he followed Leila down the stairs and through the tavern. It was just as crowded as it had been when Arthur left, though the faces were mostly unfamiliar.

"Is that so? Did he read you the one about the prostitute? That's my favorite," said Leila with a smirk in her voice.

"No," Arthur spluttered. "It sounded lonely. I liked it."

Leila lit up another cigarette before starting the car and guiding it back onto the Road. "A lot of those poems are lonely. Baudelaire was lonely when he wrote them. I think that's why Reyd likes Flowers to stay in Flowers of Evil. He could put it in a different body, you know, but he's lonely, and he likes to be reminded that he isn't the only one."

"I'm lonely too sometimes," started Arthur. He expected Leila to scoff, but she didn't, just took a long pull from her cigarette. He almost didn't continue. How could his isolation at the heart of his own castle compare to the feeling of wandering the Road alone, of being swallowed up in its uncaring infinity? But Leila was silent, so he thought he might as well keep talking. "I'm still just a prince, but everyone expects me to act like a king. My father can't—well, he can't do much of anything nowadays. It's too much sometimes. Sometimes I'm listening to someone talk and I have to wonder what they'd be saying to me if I weren't the prince, or what they'd be saying to me if I were the king. It seems like so few people talk to me. They talk to their prince, you know? But they don't talk to me." Arthur fell silent once again, uncomfortable that he had shared so much, yet wanting to share still more. He thought about continuing; he thought about saying how he felt lonelier and lonelier as the years passed. He thought about saying that he didn't want to be as alone as his father, saying that he threw himself into his training and his quests and his princely duties and he never wanted anything from the people he saved other than love, because that's all he's ever wanted from anyone. Not power or gold or glory, but love, because he hates feeling so alone. There's only room for one upon the throne. The crown only rests upon one head.

Leila blew smoke out the window. "We're all lonely. The travelers. That's usually how we find the Road in the first place, and that's why we stay on it. It's hard to connect out here though, since so many travelers are just moving from one lonely place to another. They're only on the Road for a short time. The rest of us though, the ones that stay on the Road… most of us don't have a home, like me, or we can't find it or don't remember it, like Reyd." She paused for a moment. "Reyd's my only friend, I think. Those men back at the bar, they're fun for a while, but they only love war and bloodshed. Reyd loves the Road, but I think he loves me a little bit too, and that's enough for me." She shook off her melancholy. "But surely you must have some friends? You have a home, at least."

"I have knights, and I have servants, and I have my father. I suppose I had Morgana, too, but she's. Well." Arthur cleared his throat. "My father always said that a king had to remember that his subjects are not his friends." He smiled then. "If I had a friend, it would be Merlin. He's my servant, but he's… More, I guess. I trust him as much as I trust any of my knights, and he never even had to take any vows for it. He's irritating and insubordinate and just a terrible manservant, but I wouldn't trade him for the world." Arthur shocked himself with his own declaration, but he felt lighter, as though an invisible weight had lifted off his back, or maybe like someone was there to help him carry it. "I guess I'm not lonely with Merlin around."

Leila nodded and let the silence continue. A series of strange rock formations came into view on the horizon and approached rapidly. As they passed, Arthur asked, "So what's out there?" Leila looked over at him, and Arthur waved his hand out the window. "Next to the Road. What happens if you just get off somewhere and start walking?"

"I'm not sure," said Leila slowly. "I've never known anyone who's done that. For most people the Road is just a means to an end. They've got somewhere to be, and the Road will take them there, and that's all there is to it. For me, well. The Road is my end I suppose. I don't see anything out there, but I do see the Road, so I stay on it. Maybe if I ever get tired, but I don't think that will happen anytime soon. Besides, the Road is dangerous. It's entirely possible that leaving it that way would be deadly."

Silence filled the car once more, until Leila broke it. "Would you like to hear some more poems from Flowers of Evil? It won't be written until C nineteen, so you'll never have another chance to learn about the criticisms of Parisian modernism."

"I suppose," Arthur said doubtfully, "but I'm not sure I'd understand it very well in Latin, and you don't speak—Brythonic, I think?—whatever it is that Red called my language."

"Oh that's all right," said Leila with an airy wave of her cigarette. "I've read all of Flowers of Evil multiple times in about five different languages. Ask for Brythonic. Enjoy."

Flowers recited:

I'm like some king in whose corrupted veins

Flows aged blood; who rules a land of rains;

Who, young in years, is old in all distress;

Who flees good counsel to find weariness

Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred

Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird;

Whose weary face emotion moves no more

Even when his people die before his door.

His favorite Jester's most fantastic wile

Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile;

The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good,

Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood

No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom

Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb.

The sage who takes his gold essays in vain

To purge away the old corrupted strain,

His baths of blood, that in the days of old

The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold,

Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains,

For green Lethean water fills his veins.

"That was the one about the king, right? I recognized a few words. A little on the nose, Flowers, don't you think?" said Leila dryly when the book fell silent.

"Just a warning to our prince." Flowers sounded as prim as possible. "A reminder to not allow himself to get too lonely."

Arthur swallowed. "I appreciate it, I think. But maybe for the next one… Leila said something about a prostitute?"

Leila laughed.

"Is it possible to get lost on the Road?" Arthur asked after Flowers finished a poem about a sterile maid. The proud trees had thickened until Leila drove through a proper forest, all arrayed in autumnal splendor. It was summer in Camelot, but apparently no one had informed the Road of this, for the trees wore crowns of gold and copper.

"I suppose so," answered Leila after a moment of thought. "No one can know exactly how the Road lies, because it's infinite. It's impossible to ever travel the full length. But there's plenty of signs in most places. I've heard that there's a bit of a dead zone somewhere in between C seventy and C eighty where there's no signs or exits or anything along the Road. But it's pretty much a straight shot. I mean, it bends a bit every now and then, but it doesn't fork or anything like that. It's hard not to know where you are, but sometimes it's hard to know where you're going. Is that what being lost is?"

Arthur shrugged. He had only been lost once, and that was when he was very young, before he knew the forest around Camelot as though it were the back of his hand, before he had spent weeks on end deep in the wilderness, ranging and hunting and breathing the land. Even when going on far-flung quests, he had always had maps or intuition or a lordly sense of purpose to guide him. He wasn't sure what it was like to be lost, but he imagined it might be something like how he felt when he stared too long at the Road in front of him.

"You can get lost when you leave the Road," Leila continued beside him. "It goes all the way back to the beginning of time, see. It goes back before it was built. So if you take an exit that leads to a time before the Road existed, you can't get back on. Bit of a paradox, I suppose. How can you take the Road to a time where the Road isn't there, you know? Or sometimes the exit you take disappears and you can't get back on. I'm not sure what happens to those places. Maybe they still exist somewhere, just detached. Maybe they fade away like their exits do. That's what happened to Reyd's home, he thinks. Something changed in the past, and it changed how his home was, and now he can't find it anymore. He keeps trying to recreate it. Giving guns to the Greeks at Marathon, that sort of thing. It hasn't worked so far, but he's been trying as long as I've known him, so I guess he'll go on trying until he gets it right."

"Do you ever feel lost?" asked Arthur, just to hear Leila keep talking. She had a nice voice to listen to.

Leila rolled her shoulder in what was almost a shrug. "I suppose I used to, back before I met Reyd. I don't remember much of a time when I didn't know him. But I do remember when I first saw the Road, I felt so small. It was like falling into the middle of the ocean with no ships in sight. It could just swallow me up and never even notice. Now though… No. I don't think I feel lost now. I feel more… intrigued. Compelled to travel. It's like that song from the book about the hairy midgets." And Leila chanted in a low, almost musical voice:

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can .

Arthur shook his head. "I've never heard it."

"Well of course you haven't; it was written in C twenty. It's too bad that you'll be missing a lot of the stories that stand the test of time. Though I suppose some of those stories are about you, aren't they?" Leila mused.

Arthur was pleased. "They'll still tell stories about me? For how long?"

"I'm not sure," said Leila, shaking her head. "I don't exactly go around looking for stories about King Arthur, you know. The latest I've personally heard you mentioned was maybe C thirty-one, though thousands of books had been written about you at that point, so I'm sure you're still kicking much further up the Road."

"Huh." Arthur slumped back against the leather bench to process that. He knew that he would be a great king; everyone told him so. And Merlin would sometimes mumble something about destiny, which always made Arthur roll his eyes, but maybe he should have paid more attention. Maybe Merlin was onto something. "That's. Um. That's a really long time."

Leila nodded. "I can't tell you what the stories are about, obviously, because that could mess with the timeline. But they're favorable. You're sort of the king that all the other kings aspired to be."

Arthur felt very small. This wasn't quite what he had wanted. He didn't need to have even more responsibilities heaped on his shoulders. Wasn't a kingdom enough? Did he really need to bear the weight of twenty-five centuries of greatness?

Leila must have noticed how he shrank against his seat. "Cheer up, Goldilocks," she said merrily. "Think of the stories as proof that you'll live up to the stories."

Arthur thought about it until they came to a sign that read CAMELOT: NEXT THREE EXITS.

"Here we are," said Leila. "Your home will be one of the next three turn-offs." She pulled into an empty lot next to a long building with a picture of a horse on it. Arthur followed her out of the car just as a woman with a long sandy blond plait down her back came jogging from behind the building. The familiar musk of horses hit Arthur again, and he was abruptly so homesick that it hurt.

"You're wanting to trade for a few horses then?" the woman called to them.

Leila nodded. "I'll be back in a few hours with both horses," she told the woman as she handed over the small lever that made the car start to vibrate along with a small handful of green marbles.

The blonde eyed them both up critically and vanished back into what must be a stable, for she reappeared moments later with two horses' reins clutched in one hand. Arthur's was tall, much taller than any horse he'd ever ridden, but he scrambled up just the same after handing Flowers to the woman. He was a prince; a master horseman in hunting, racing, and jousting. He didn't need help. Leila as well seated herself without much difficulty—with less difficulty than himself, Arthur tried not to notice as he took Flowers back—and they were off down the Road once more. Leila set the pace to a gentle canter, and Arthur felt freer than he had in a long time, long before he had come to the Road. The familiar rhythm of riding soothed him and allowed him to focus more on the journey. He could smell the air better too, now that he wasn't constantly surrounded by Leila's smoke. It smelled a bit like ancient stone and a bit like lightning, but mostly it just smelled like autumn. The temperature was comfortable though. Even moving at a canter, Arthur didn't shiver, even though the wind cut through his multiple layers of cotton.

By the time he noticed Leila abruptly rein in her horse, he was several lengths ahead of her. Arthur looked back in confusion, but Leila didn't seem to notice. Her eyes were far away and dreamy, pupils dilated wide.

"Are you alright?" Arthur called back, and Leila's face transformed from serene blankness to panic in moments.

"Something's coming after you. We have to run," she said in a low, tense voice.

Arthur's heart jumped into his throat. Surely Morgana wasn't powerful enough to summon something to kill him in this land between lands? She had sent him here in the first place though, so she was obviously stronger than he had thought. "What? What's coming after me? How do you know?"

"I don't know what it is," said Leila as she pulled her horse next to Arthur's. "It looks sort of like a tiger made of smoke and shadow. I saw it. No, not here," she added irritably as Arthur stood in his stirrups and looked around in alarm. "I had a vision. Lucky for you the vision included us escaping, but that part's not going to happen unless you make your horse run ."

Arthur gulped and did as she said.

They ran the horses for as long as they could, Arthur twisting in his saddle every few minutes to check the horizon. "Leila," he yelled over the rush of wind and pounding of hooves. "There's smoke behind us."

Leila's only response was to spur her horse on even faster. Lather was beginning to form on the horses' coats, and Arthur wasn't sure how much longer they could keep galloping. The smoke was closer now, and Arthur could see the source of the smoke, a dark smudge against the Road. Leila slowed down just enough to bring her horse parallel with Arthur's, and he heard her let out a steady stream of curses. "Here," she yelled as she pulled the long knife in its plain, slightly scratched scabbard from her belt. "Don't try to fight it; you're still too weak. This is just in case." Arthur indignantly opened his mouth to argue, but she made a shushing gesture. "No, listen. If it keeps gaining on us, I'm going to dismount and you're going to get as far away as you can. Don't worry about returning the horses; that stable's got plenty. You can leave Flowers by the side of the road. It will send out a distress call and get back to Red eventually."

"I'm not hurt, I can fight!" Arthur insisted. He hoped Leila didn't notice the way his hand shook on the knife grip.

"No, you really can't. Not this." Leila smiled sadly. "I already told you, I don't need saving."

Arthur looked back again, and his breath caught in his throat.

"We can't outrun it," stated Leila firmly. "Take my horse and go." Her horse skittered to a stop as she pulled its reins back. Arthur followed suit. "Get out of here," she shouted as they both clambered off.

Arthur shook his head. "I'm not leaving you." His heart pounded in his chest, and his breath came fast enough to sting the back of his throat, but he stood his ground. Finally, something he knew how to do . He held the knife in a defensive posture and willed his knees not to give out.

"Idiot." Leila cursed him under her breath. She pulled her club from its scabbard on her belt and gripped it in steady hands. Her face betrayed her nervousness, but she took a strong stance in the middle of the Road and waited. Arthur wanted to scream to her not to plant her feet, stay light so she could dodge, but the creature was streaking towards them at a supernaturally fast rate, and there wasn't any time. Arthur prepared himself to leap between Leila and the charging creature.

The creature was about 20 yards away when a peal of thunder burst from Leila's club. The beast cried out and fell, its momentum carrying it forward along the Road. Leila walked steadily closer, and thunder sounded again every few steps. Arthur dropped the knife in favor of covering his ears. Blood spread across the Road, and tiny flickers of flame danced across the viscous puddle. Fire emerged from the wounds as well and began to consume the creature's flesh. It turned its head as Leila approached. It opened its mouth, and Arthur expected a growl, but instead it spoke.

"Why do you slay me?" it asked in a voice too high-pitched to be human. "My instructions were only to kill the man, most mortal. You would not have been harmed."

Leila aimed her not-club at its head, and one final clap of thunder sounded. The flames devoured its face and body, leaving nothing but ash which had already begun to blow away. She slid the weapon back into its scabbard with a shaky sigh and turned to Arthur. "At least there's no corpse to clean up." And then she laughed, and Arthur laughed with her, and they sank to the Road with their arms around each other's shoulders.

They didn't get up until Arthur could feel the rumbling of an approaching car. The horses had been spooked by the thunder, but they must have been well-trained, for Arthur saw them standing nervously not twenty yards down the Road. He stood first and helped Leila to her feet before returning the knife. She buckled it to her belt once more, and they strode to their horses and mounted without a word.

For the first time since he had woken up in the car, Leila led Arthur down an exit. The path changed. The solid grout-like material gave way to loose gravel embedded in dirt, and the leaves gradually gained their summer coloring. It was almost familiar, but not quite. Something was just a bit off. The trees were too far apart, perhaps, or the nearby creek babbled in the wrong pitch. Arthur desperately sought any sign that this might be his home, but he had to turn away eventually, disappointed. Leila and Arthur pulled their horses around dejectedly and set off back towards the Road.

The next exit was similar to the first in that it was almost home, but not quite. Arthur had to go a bit further before he convinced himself of it though. The feeling of homesickness and desperation increased, and he fought the urge to spur his horse to a gallop. Leila seemed to share his anxiety, and a horrible thought struck him.

"Leila?" he called. "What if the next exit isn't my home? What if I'm lost like Red?"

"Don't be silly," she said, sounding as though she were trying to convince herself just as much as Arthur. "You'll get home. I know you will. I dreamed it." Her voice grew stronger. "I didn't know it was you, obviously, not until I saw you half-dead in a crater, but I saw you. You were a little beating heart of light at the center of a dark castle, or a candle flame in a hurricane. You were a tiny star, pulling other stars to you and making them shine happier in your presence or some poetic shite like that. I don't know." Leila pulled a cigarette out of her pocket but reconsidered. "But I do know that you make Camelot a brighter place."

Arthur slowly absorbed that as the third and last exit came into view.

They turned down the exit, the horses' hooves clip-clopping gently on the path that turned quickly into packed dirt. Arthur felt giddy with relief as they pressed onward. The trees were right, the creek was right, the air was right. He didn't even need to see the white towers of Camelot gleaming in the midmorning sun to know that he was home.

The road slowly disintegrated, and Leila reined her horse in just before the proper path wheezed its dying breath and gave way into what was barely a game trail. "It's too dangerous for me to keep going," she said. "I'm not much of a woodswoman. I might not be able to find the Road again. Can you get home from here?"

Arthur looked around. The sense of lost that had draped him like a shroud for the past few days had dissipated. He knew exactly where he was, and he reveled in the security of being in his own land. "Yeah," he said with great satisfaction. "I can get home from here." He dismounted and passed the reins to Leila, who looked at him wistfully. "Goodbye Flowers," he said as he handed the book up to Leila. "Thanks for the translations and for the poems. I'll remember the one about the king especially."

"Goodbye, Arthur," said Flowers in its own voice. "I look forward to hearing new stories about you."

Leila didn't say anything, but she lifted her hat to him as she dipped her head. Arthur watched her pull her horse around with one hand, leading his horse with the other, and pick her way slowly up the path once more. She disappeared from sight in just a few moments, and Arthur heaved a sigh and set out on his own for Camelot.

He didn't make it very far before running into a familiar black head bowed over a familiar faded blue shirt. "Merlin!" he shouted, and then he ran as fast as he could. He trampled the undergrowth without a care, not heeding the rips of his clothing and the scratches on his skin. He didn't ask why Merlin was picking herbs instead of looking for him or where the knights were or what had happened while he was gone. All that mattered was Merlin. Arthur crashed into the other man, ignoring his splutter of surprise and his half-formed questions, and held him tight. He tucked his cheek against his friend's sun-warmed neck and finally he didn't feel alone. Finally he felt home.

A/N: Poems referenced:

wiki/Beatrice_(Baudelaire)
wiki/Spleen_(I%E2%80%99m_like_the_king%E2%80%A6)
wiki/With_her_pearly_undulating_dresses%E2%80%A6
wiki/The_Road_Goes_Ever_On_(song)