Tears for Avalon

Carol stared at the frothing waves, churning against the jagged cliffs. Today was the day. After coming to this spot every day for a week, this was it. She was determined this time. Though to be fair, she had been committed each of those other days as well. No, today was it.

Her throat tightened as she stared at her phone. She had just one bar. Hopefully, that would be enough. Not that it mattered that much. When they found her phone or looked at its history, they would discover the message. Her last. To her children.

Not that they were children anymore, they weren't. That was the point. She had been waiting for this day. Five years, seven months, twenty-one days, ten hours, she looked at the phone to confirm, thirty-one minutes.

She felt the tears gathering in her eyes and brushed them away with the back of her hand. She had cried enough in that time. Tears got her nowhere.

Neither did time. Everyone had assured her that it got easier, that time would heal the wounds, or at least make the pain more bearable. But it did not. At least not for her.

When you lost not just your husband, but your best friend, your perfect lover, your soul mate, life was never the same. The truth was Carol had not really been alive for five years, seven months, twenty-one days, ten hours, and thirty-two minutes. She had merely existed.

Existed for two reasons: her son and daughter.

But they did not need her anymore. Her son, Matt, who had been nineteen and in college when his father died, had established his career. He had a steady girlfriend, a reliable income, and was considering buying a small house. Hopefully, he would when he noticed the windfall in his bank account.

It was the last thing that Carol had done before leaving the tiny home that she had built in the woods just a mile from this deserted West Wales beach. She had used her sometimes spotty satellite internet service to transfer her remaining funds equally to her son and daughter.

Cathy was doing even better than her brother. When she met her husband, she had decided that college was not for her. Some parents might have been upset, worried that she was too financially vulnerable. But not Carol.

She, herself, had been a happy homemaker for over a quarter of a century before...

She inhaled deeply, blew out slowly, swiped those damned tears more determinedly than before, and smiled.

She had been waiting for this moment. So long. So damned long.

The last piece had finally fallen into place when Cathy delivered her first child, a baby boy. She had named him after her father. Howard Daniel Mason was six-weeks-old now. He was thriving, gaining weight on his mother's breastmilk and attention.

When Carol had gone down to stay with her daughter a couple of weeks before his birth, she worried that Cathy might suffer from post-partum depression. But after a difficult discussion between mother and daughter about the baby's name, her daughter had overcome any melancholy and taken to motherhood as she once had.

She had been so blessed to be there as her daughter's doula for the delivery. It was one of the few happy moments in the past five years, seven months, twenty-one days, ten hours, and thirty-four minutes.

Though honestly, even moments like her grandson's birth, Matt's graduation, and Cathy's wedding were at best bittersweet. Always a reminder that Howard was not by her side as he should have been.

But soon she would be by his, as she should be. Whether Llŷr saw fit to return her battered, broken, and lifeless body did not matter. She believed to the very core of her being that something greater was out there. Something beyond this world.

Not that she had bought into religion. No, after Howard's death, she had withdrawn from even the church they had once regularly attended, just as she had from their friends.

In the end, she had even abandoned her writing. Not that it had ever been profitable or popular. Her erotic romances had a small but loyal following on the site where she had published them for over a decade.

And her blogs had never been more than a personal journal on the things she believed in most strongly: children, herbal medicine, and sustainable living as well as all the crafting, sewing, and quilts. No, they never garnered more than a handful of views every day.

While she knew that Matt and Cathy would miss her, perhaps think of her with each of life's milestones that they passed, she knew too that they would understand. They had seen her struggles these past five years, seven months, twenty-one days, ten hours, and thirty-five minutes.

She knew that after the initial pain, shock, and mourning, both of them would appreciate why it had to be this way. She had even left a stack of letters for each of them to open at appropriate moments.

She had done all she needed to do—tied up all the loose ends of her life into a nice neat little package. Not like the sudden death of Howard during the 'plague' as she and others had come to call it. No, she had been left with a mess. Financially and emotionally. Just when she was least able to manage anything.

But she had not done that to Cathy and Matt. The only thing that remained was the small plot of land that she had purchased after Howard's death. The tiny house that she had built from mostly sustainable materials. The thousands of books, some hers, some Howards, a few even belonged to Cathy and Matt.

And of course, her garden. She had given her few chickens to the young couple down the road a couple of weeks ago. The young woman was pregnant. Though they were vegan, Carol had taken special care to explain to Charity the additional nutritional needs that pregnancy and breastfeeding placed on her body. Reluctantly, the young couple had agreed that the eggs from ethically reared and free-range chicken might not be so bad for her and their child once it was older.

She was not sure what Matt and Cathy would choose to do with the land and her home, well the place she had lived five years, seven months, twenty-one days, ten hours, and thirty-six minutes.

But she was past the point of caring. She had been for five years, seven months, twenty-one days, ten hours, and thirty-seven minutes.

So, why was she still sitting here staring at another gorgeous sunset that failed to warm anything inside her barren heart?

She finally allowed those tears to spill from the corners of her eyes, over the crow's feet, and down weathered cheeks that were bronzed from the summer sun.

She cried, not for Howard. She could not begin to count the number of tears that she had shed for him over the last five years, seven months, twenty-one days, ten hours, and thirty-eight minutes. No, she cried in anger and disappointment at herself.

Would she once more sit here until the sun dip below the horizon and the cold seeped into bones and joints that had begun to ache with arthritis? Sit here until the tide went out once more, another lost chance to do the only thing that made sense to her. To end the pain that she could no longer bear.

She laid her graying head on her knees, her arms wrapped tightly about them, as she rocked back and forth on the hard ground of that cliff. Her body shook with the power of those tears. Her soul cried out as it had so many, many times over the past five years, seven months, twenty-one days, ten hours, and thirty-nine minutes.

"Why?" she lifted her head. The cool sea breeze brushed her cheeks and wiped her hair about her face as she screamed the one question that remained. The only one that mattered: "Why me?"

Why had Howard died? Why had she not?

***

Myrddin stared at the dark screen one more time. His fingers pinched the bridge of his nose as he squinted. No matter how many times he ran the calculations, it was always the same. It was close, so incredibly tight, as to be almost impossible.

Yet, the truth was that they might never get another opportunity like this. His friend Owain had noted a change in air pressure that indicated one of the superstorms was approaching. While those occurred readily enough, it was the capacity to capture their stored wind and water energy, which was relatively new.

Their world was just beginning to unlock the power of the old ones. So, little was known of how their systems worked. Until recently, their people had believed that the giant shiny black panels in the fields not far from their village were monuments to the old one's god or perhaps grave markers. He had been examining the faded writing on them when quite by accident, he had received an electrical shock. That was the beginning.

He had invested over a decade of research into the things. That was how he had finally managed to activate the magic box at which we know stared. Through it, he had begun to discover other miracles of the old ones. The high white towers that were believed to be statues dedicated to the flower goddess were called windmills. They, too, could feed the magic box.

By far, his most significant discovery was that the water wall which they had long known could be opened and closed to raise water levels or protect the village from flooding could also produce energy. Electrical energy was the term he had learned from the magic box. But that always took the might of many warriors to turn the enormous wheel.

Myrddin had discovered other things on the magic box, too. More stories of the old ones, though he was not sure he believed half of them. Little boxes that you could carry anywhere, which allowed you to talk to other people across the world? Metal birds in which to travel across the great waters? The magic box proclaimed that people had once been to luna and back?

But if any of that were true, then what happened? What happened to destroy the old ones? To reduce what they had claimed were great cities of tens and hundreds of thousands, some claimed even millions of people to small bands like his who could barely eke out their most basic needs from land that was depleted, raked by violent storms in the winter, and scorched by the sun in the summer. If the old ones indeed had such powers, why had they not stopped whatever it was that took them from that to this?

That was a question that Myrddin knew he was unlikely ever to answer, perhaps no one ever could. The one that plagued him now, though, was probably more crucial. One that he had played with for years, one that he hoped might hold out the hope of saving his people.

The dilemma of unlocking the key to safely birthing new generations and keeping those infants and children alive. Because if they did not solve that one, then his people, and perhaps those of the other scattered tribes with which they occasionally came into conflict, would die out in a hundred years or less.

He knew that the answers lay in the magic box. This maddening collection of random information that seemed to be called either the world wide web or the internet, though he was not sure what those terms meant precisely.

Nor could he seem to unlock the key for accessing the information hidden in its depths. What was worse, so much of it was conflicting. One piece would say this and another that. Babies needed structured sleep schedules. No, they could safely sleep in the bed with their parents, as for what to feed them, and when it was more confusing still. This perfect 'formula' listed ingredients that no one had ever even heard of. It was all so complicated.

They needed an expert—someone who could explain it all to them. And he thought he had found her. Carol Davies. Her entries on this internet seemed to be just what he was looking for. Unfortunately, he could not seem to access the files that she called books. Though how an ancient manuscript could be kept on a magic box, he did not understand either. No, even her sage advice was incomplete.

That was how he had come up with this crazy idea. He had read about this thing called time travel, though whether the old ones had ever managed to succeed was uncertain. But the idea had appealed to him as a game for his mind mostly. Something to distract him when...

He breathed deeply. Now especially was not the time to think about that. This time those numbers, that formula from the old one's great magician Einstein, must be his focus. But he had already checked them a hundred times or more. He could get them no closer than they were.

Now was the hardest part -- convincing their priestess that it was a risk worth taking.