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Dafydd,” Lili said. “Why fight it
now?”
    “ I haven’t fought it
because you told me to do so would be a waste of effort,” David
said. “I prefer the story about the Land of Madoc,
though.”
    “ People from the Land of
Madoc are solidly in this world. They don’t have the ability to
vanish,” Dad said.
    That was unfortunately true. “I don’t like
it. I’m not Arthur,” David said.
    “ I’m Arthur!” David’s
two-year-old son gazed up at him with bright eyes.
    David put a hand on his son’s head and bent
to kiss his nose, amazed that he’d spoken so clearly, but pleased
too. “Yes, indeed you are.”
    Bronwen grinned and said with some of her
old graduate school snark, “He speaks truth to power.”
    David scoffed, though not because she wasn’t
right. He and Lili had named Arthur with an utter cynicism about
what they were doing and what it would mean to the people David
ruled. Still, he didn’t have to like it.
    The group entered the hall as the bard was
finishing his song. All conversation ceased as the entire royal
family of England and Wales crowded through the doorway. Goronwy
bowed from the dais. All of the inhabitants of the hall followed
suit. Aaron stood to the right with his son, Samuel, and David
caught his eye. He nodded gravely. Samuel was staring at his feet
and didn’t look up. They, along with a handful of other advisors,
knew the truth about who David was, and that meant they also knew
what had happened to Mom and Anna. Aaron, in particular, had seen
it before. Goronwy had lived it.
    There was no help for it, David opened his
mouth and boldly lied to everyone else. About what had just
happened, about Avalon, about who he was.
    Avalon . Lili took its existence for granted—both what she knew of
the reality and the myth. Although David used the myth to his own
advantage, what he actually wanted was to make Avalon real , not just for himself
and his family but for everyone. The poets had foretold it
centuries ago, though David’s vision wasn’t anything like what the
legends described. Avalon wasn’t a fantasy world infused with
magic. It was the place he’d been born.
    And what made that
place—America—special was what it brought to the table, namely an
ideal of freedom and justice for everyone. The Avalon David wanted
to build here was a mirror of that. More to the point, the reason
David hadn’t dared to speak about it out loud to anyone before,
even to his family, was because he wanted to start the American
Revolution five hundred years early. Against himself.
    It was a big dream. A huge, impossible,
ridiculous dream. But he’d been thinking about it for nine years,
ever since he’d quoted Patrick Henry to his father before the
defeat of King Edward at the Conwy River. At that time, David had
thought it might be possible to achieve a united Wales, even if it
took his lifetime and many generations of his descendants to
accomplish it. Instead, it had taken three years. Now, as King of
England, David had the power to make the much bigger dream a
reality, and if any dream was worth chasing, it was this one.
    He found it ironic, too,
that many generations of kings of England had fought for this dream
as well, though they’d pursued it at the point of a sword, which to
David’s mind would defeat the entire purpose. The United States of Britain. Even
King Edward, God rest his soul, might have approved.

Chapter Four
    November 2019
     
    Meg
     
    M eg
rolled down a slight incline, crunching through a bed of frozen
leaves. After two revolutions, she came to a stop at the bottom.
She breathed hard, the black abyss fading from her mind’s eye, and
sat up. Snowflakes fell steadily from the sky. The ground wasn’t
covered in white, however, so it seemed they’d started very
recently.
    Before she had a chance to panic, Meg spied
Anna at the top of the bank she’d just come down. Anna pushed to a
sitting position and looked down at her mother. “Are you okay?”
    “ I’m