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have brought you from your time—”
    “Are you comfortable standing there like that?” she blurted, abruptly uncertain that she was at all ready to hear what he had to say.
    “Quite comfortable, thank you. Now as I was say—”
    “Are you sure? Because you can have this chair. Or maybe whip up another one?” Why did she want to put off his explanation? If she was so confident all this was the product of an injured mind, a hallucination or simply a bad dream then why this overwhelming reluctance to listen to him?
    “Very well.” A chair similar to her own popped into the space beside her with the figment already seated in it. “Now, may I go on?”
    “I suppose,” she said in a weak voice.
    “As I attempted to explain earlier, I have removed you from your time and brought you to mine.”
    “Okay.” Why did his words strike fear into her heart? Why did she want to cover her ears, curl into the corner of the recliner and hide from him and his whole world? A world she’d made up. A world she’d invented in the deep recess of her mind. A world that couldn’t possibly be real.
    But what if it was?
    He studied her, as if he knew her thoughts. But of course he knew her thoughts. He was one of her thoughts. And absolutely nothing more.
    “Why?” she said with a sudden resolve to face this illusion or whatever it was head on. “Why did you bring me here?”
    “Then…” his words were slow and measured, “you believe me?”
    “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you exist. In fact, I don’t believe you ever existed.” She snapped the chair into an upright position and bounded to her feet. “If any of this is real, and I still question that wholeheartedly, there’s no way you can be Merlin, Wizard whatever and counselor to anybody.”
    He reclined in the chair and gazed at her idly. “Oh, and why not?”
    “Because, there never was a Merlin. There never was an Arthur. There never was a Camelot. There’s no evidence, no proof and nothing that you can touch or see. There never was anything but a make-believe story. A myth. A legend.”
    “What if…” An emery board appeared in one hand and he casually filed the nails of the other. “You’re wrong?”
    “I’m not,” she said with far more confidence than she felt.
    “But what if there was a Merlin—”
    “There wasn’t.” Was there?
    “—and an Arthur—”
    “There couldn’t be.” Could there?
    “—and everything else that goes along with your so-called legend?” He held his hand out in front of him and eyed his nails critically.
    “Never.” Maybe?
    “And let us further suppose…”—his gaze drifted above his hand to meet and lock with hers—“that Merlin, who is quite accomplished in the ways of magic and what you think of as science—”
    “Wizard Extraordinaire,” she whispered.
    “—wanted the world yet to come to believe that which he had nurtured and helped create and loved with his whole heart and soul was nothing but a fairy tale. A story. A myth. A legend. And worked his magic to make the world so believe?”
    His eyes held her spellbound, her question was little more than a breath in the still of the chapel. “Why?”
    “To save it from the denigration of history. To preserve what was, for one bare moment in time, the best man had to offer. Not of his science or his knowledge but of himself. His loyalty, his gallantry, his honor.” His gaze burned into hers with an intensity that reached inside her and chilled her very soul. “It did not last long. The nature of flesh-and-blood men predestined it to certain failure. But for a moment, it was man at his finest and he has never reached such heights again.”
    “Sounds swell.” Her voice squeaked with fear and a growing acceptance of what she already suspected. This was no dream, no coma-induced hallucination, no fantasy. “So…what does that all have to do with me?”
    “You? You!” Merlin rose out of his recliner like an avenging spirit and her heart