The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

it all.
    “You’ve been here the whole time,” his housekeeper had sworn.
    But he hadn’t believed it. How could he? This wasn’t some illness that had befallen him. It wasn’t.
    It was real (another four-letter word that often led men to disaster).
    Eventually Thom had convinced himself that they were right and he’d dreamed it all. The land of Merlins had only existed in his mind. Where else could it have been?
    And so he’d returned to his old ways. He’d gambled, he’d fought, he’d wenched, and most of all he’d drunk and drunk and drunk.
    Until that night.
    It was a night (another noun that was five letters in English and four in French. There were times when the French were greatly astute). Thom had wandered off to his favourite tavern that was filled with many of his less than proper friends. As the night passed, and they’d fallen deep into their cups, Geoffrey or maybe it’d been Henry or Richard had begun to place a wager.
    He who told the best tale would win a purse of coin (note the four letters here).
    No one knew how much coin was in the purse because they were all too drunk to care. Instead they had begun with their stories before a small group of wenches who were their judges. Thorn, too drunk to notice that a man had drawn near their table, had fondled his wench while the others went on before him.
    “That’s all well and nice,” he’d said as Richard finished up some retelling of one of Chaucer’s tales (the man was far from original). “But I, Thomas Malory . . . Sir Thomas Malory can beat you all.”
    “Of course you can, Thorn,” Geoffrey had said with a laugh and a belch. “You always think you can.”
    “No, no, there is no think . . .I’m too drunk for that. This is all about doing.” He’d held his cup out to be refilled before he’d started the story. At first he’d meant to tell the story of a farming mishap his father had told him of, but before he could think better of it (drinking usually had this effect), out had come the whole matter of the King Arthur that Merlin had told him about.
    Or at least some of it. Being Thom, who liked to embellish all truth, he’d taken some liberties. He’d changed a few things, but basically he’d kept to the story. After all, what harm could come of it? He’d dreamed it all anyway, and it was an interesting tale.
    And the next thing he’d known, he’d won that wager and taken home a purse which later proved to only contain two rocks and some lint. A paltry prize indeed.
    Then, before he’d even known what had happened, people had starting coming up to him and speaking of a book he’d written. Thom, not being a fool to let such fame bypass him, had played along at first. Until he’d seen the book himself. There it was, in all its beautiful glory. His name.
    No man had ever destroyed his life more quickly than Thom did the instant that book became commonly available.
    One instant he’d been in his own bed and the next he’d been in a small, tiny, infinitesimal cell with an angry blonde angel glaring at him.
    “Do I know you?” he’d asked her.
    She’d glared at him. Out of nowhere, the book had appeared. “How could you do this?”
    Now at this time, self-preservation had caused Thom to ask the one question that had been getting men into trouble for centuries. “Do what?”
    And just like countless men before him (and after him, is this not true, men?) he learned too late that he should have remained completely silent.
    “You have unleashed our secret, Thomas. Doom to you for it, because with this book you have exposed us to those who want us dead.”
    Suddenly, his dream returned to him and he remembered every bit of it. Most of all, he remembered that it wasn’t a dream.
    The Lords of Avalon were all real... just as Morgan was. And as Merlin led the remnants of the Knights of the Round Table, Morgan led her Cercle du Damne Two halves fighting for the world.
    But that left Thom with just one question “If you had all that magic, Merlin, why didn’t you know about the book that would be written if you returned me to the world?”
    With those words uttered, he’d learned that there truly was a worse question to ask a woman than A) her age, B) her weight, and C) do what?
    “Please note that here I rot and here I stay until Merlin cools down.”
    Thom looked down at the PDA and sighed. Time might not have any real meaning in Avalon, but it meant a whole hell of a lot to him.

In Sheep’s Clothing
Meljean