– The Time Waltz. – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. – Knight of the Living Dream. – Closer. –

He was floating in space, which wasn’t where he expected to wake up after falling gently forward onto the grass by the last hole. But then as someone once told him, you couldn’t always expect time travel to be simple – that was how he’d gotten here in the first place and, from the look of things, that was how he was leaving, too.

The walls of the time tunnel swirled around him, as ways opened up ahead. Now he knew how poor Alice felt when she fell through that rabbit hole.

He felt kind of sad to be leaving. He’d never gotten to say goodbye to Morgana or anyone. And now he came to look round, he was on his own. He sighed. He always seemed to end up on his own. And when he got back nothing would ever be different. It would be just as he’d left it. Or worse, it would be as if he’d never been through time in the first place, never met any time-ghost who’d shown him the way to his own personal Wonderland, a little golf course far away where the Knights of King Arthur played away the hours till they were called.

Even in a time tunnel it’s never too good an idea to get completely distracted.

Whoosh!

‘Hey, you nearly hit me!’ he called after a car that had emerged from one side of the tunnel and disappeared with a flash into the other. ‘You had to have been doing ninety!’

And then there was the ringing of that bell. A gentle bong, bong, bong …

His passage seemed to slow down a moment and, as if through a portal, an elderly man leaning on a stick peered through. ‘Hello, boyo! ’Ere, what’re you doin’ in there, look-you! Adventures to be had, heroin’ to be done! You just come along o’ old Merwyn, eh … Oh, well, suit yourself. Got to get home for yer tea, I expect …’

Why did that seem so familiar, he thought, as he resumed his flight through the time tunnel.

It seemed to take a long time, to travel through time. You’d have thought it’d be more instantaneous. Flash! Whoom! Hello, 1955 … Er. Or something like that anyway. He’d always felt vaguely disappointed that something like that was unlikely to happen to him. And then it had sort of gone and had.

Could he hear music?

As things slowed down again he saw … boogieing maidens in old-fashioned dresses with long trailing sleeves. You know, like princesses in towers used to wear when they were sewing or letting down their long golden hair or waiting for their one true love to come rescue them or some such.

One of them looked vaguely like Morgana. She twirled out and the other dancers arrayed themselves in a kind of ascending upside-down receding pyramid. She brought a magic wand up towards her like a microphone and sang: ‘Let’s do the Time-Waltz again … !’

She gestured to one side. ‘It’s just step to the light!’ She pointed towards a swirling end of the tunnel.

And then, she winked at him.

‘And then another step into the light!’

As he drifted past, time seemed to slow right, right down and Morgana stepped nearer and grinned at him. ‘Well done, Hero Boy,’ she whispered so that only he could hear her. She kept waving till he couldn’t see her anymore. A voice trailed after him, ‘Let me know if you ever feel like a chocolate malt at the diiineerr … I’ll get my mootttooorbiike!’

Time seemed to speed up rapidly again.

And another motorbike, this one with flashing lights on it pulled up in moving space beside him. ‘All right, buddy, let’s see your poetic licence …’

It receded back down the time tunnel as he passed.

The weird parts were like when he flew through a collection of glowing spinning-wheels. What was that all about? But maybe he just imagined that part.

Through all this, he didn’t see the time-ghost, though.

He almost didn’t want to leave the time-tunnel. Because then everything was back to the way it had been.

But that wasn’t going to happen, was it?

He stepped towards the end of the tunnel.

The light was a bright glow at the end of it. Or this end of it, wherever that was.

What was it Morgana had said? Just a step to the light. He stepped forward. And then another step into the light …

*

He woke up on his workshop floor.

Wait, workshop? He didn’t have a workshop … Or a time machine … With or without – had there been a hole – or perhaps a whole, but that didn’t make sense …

He was in a home. Someone’s home. But he didn’t recognise it. He felt his heart sink. He felt his head and winced. He must have hit his head at some point. This had all been some concussion-induced fever dream when he should have been getting himself to the hospital, hadn’t it.

Maybe he’d hit his head hanging a clock in the toilet … No. Things like that never happened to him.

But who cared what happened to him … Not him, that was for sure. Not anymore.

It would have been nice, just once, if he could have woken up for a change and the marvellous dream hadn’t been just a dream after all.

He wanted to cry.

There was mail on the rug by, presumably, the front door. Presumably, his front door. And then the phone started ringing. It took him several false starts to get over to it. He almost didn’t feel like answering it, by the time he got there.

He’d started the kettle boiling and had just been about to make some tea. And then he’d felt like crying again.

He lifted the receiver.

‘Boy, you’d better have a good reason for not being here.’

‘Being here?’ he mumbled, feeling like he was about to break down. ‘Who is this, please?’

There was a silence on the other end of the line. ‘Are you okay? It’s Remi – you remember, the idiot who hired you.’

‘Hired me?’

The voice on the other end of the phone started getting worried. ‘Look, why don’t you just sit there and I’ll send someone over to bring you to the studio. They can bring a doctor over first …’

‘I think I must have hit my head,’ he mumbled by way of explanation. ‘What do I do at the studio?’

‘You write pa-ges,’ said the voice very slowly, ‘for me to give to those clowns we push in front of the cam-er-a so that people can smile and get teary-eyed in front of the movie screen. Then,’ it continued, ‘each week we give you the exorbitant cheque your ag-ent ne-go-ti-ated for you and plead with you to write the next one. Honestly, how hard did you hit your head? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been in such demand, so don’t you go falling asleep with concussion or something. We need you here.’

‘Huh?’ he said intelligently.

‘Look, I know you don’t drink, but seriously, it’d be healthier than hitting your head. You’re in Hollywood now. Livin’ the dream, as they say – am I right or am I right? I know I am. Take care of yourself, and we’ll have someone over shortly. Are you going to be all right till they get there?’

‘I’ll be all right,’ he said slowly, and hung up the phone.

How had all this happened?

*

It was later. Remi turned out to be the nice director lady, a year or two older than he was, but who called him “kid” nonetheless. She took what he, apparently, wrote and brought it to the silver screen. Well, coloured silver screen, but same difference.

The studio … wasn’t what he expected. He had an image in his head of modern Hollywood being … not what it used to be.

Either he’d hit his head even harder than he’d thought or ended up in some different time stream, because the old studio system was back. And the actors … were actually human. Hardly anyone was getting into trouble or misbehaving, they were just enjoying making stories that people enjoyed. Most of them even seemed to go to church on Sundays.

One of them waved to him and smiled as he got out of the car they sent for him. She seemed nice.

Hollywood … and the movies had their sparkle back. The silver screen hadn’t turned grey anymore. And he was actually … wanted.

That took some getting used to.

*

‘She haunts your dreams, doesn’t she,’ said a voice from behind him. It was later. The end of the day. Drifting into the end of evening, actually.

‘Huh, what, who—’

‘Oh, I know,’ said Remi, stepping out from behind some scenery. ‘I watch you sometimes, when you wander around the set after everyone’s gone home. You’re here. You’ve made it. You’ve got a chance in life. There are at least three girls on this lot who smile and blush when they see you –’ he got the impression that Remi found this deeply amusing ‘– and you don’t really notice any of it. You behave like a perfect gentlemen, you treat everyone around you with kindness and decency. You even find a way to let Kara, Eddi, and Steph feel flattered when you ever so gently let them down. So what I want to know is: who was this girl?’

He felt the blurriness sparkling in front of his vision.

‘Oh, I know, you’ve tried to explain when we’ve had these little chats before. But it makes me so curious. I’ve seen your stories. I’ve seen the stories you want to tell. I’ve seen the way you light up. I’ve seen some of the ideas that you’ve let me see, and I want more of them. But the one story I want to know the end of is the one about you and the girl who you’re so confused about, and, probably, will never ever see again so long as you live – you don’t mention her, you don’t say anything much about her, but here you are. Tell Remi, kid. Who was she?’

He felt his voice going all croaky before he even spoke. ‘I don’t know. A friend. She was my friend. She was there when no one else was. And it was like I wasn’t alone anymore. She saved me. And I …’

‘Fell in love with her?’ said Remi, gently.

‘… let her down,’ finished the kid.

‘But you didn’t mean to?’ prompted Remi.

He shook his head.

‘Then why are you torturing yourself? Why you are living like a monk or some medieval Galahad, haunted by the memory of something that could never be? I tell you something, kid, someone who could weave a spell over you like that, I want to meet that someone and shake her by the hand.’ She whistled to herself. ‘Tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. You give yourself one more year of pining, then you open your eyes and realise there are people out there who care for you too. People here,’ she said softly.

He looked up. There were tears in Remi’s eyes too.

‘The last of the knights,’ muttered Remi, smiling. ‘You know, that’s part of why I hired you. I figured, anyone crazy enough to still believe in things like that, and to really mean it and be it – I said to myself, Remi, a guy like that is just crazy enough to bring magic alive – and to make it real. Something like that, anyway … Goodnight, kid.’ He liked he way Remi called him kid. It was like one of the little things that made the studio a nice place. ‘I hope you wake up one day and your dreams have come true. Because there are a lot of people out there who like living in your dreams. Me included.’ She stepped up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. ‘See you tomorrow, kid.’

For a moment he had trouble remembering her name, like, say, he’d only known it a day, and yet she appeared to have known him for months and months. ‘G’night … Remi.’

She looked at him funny a moment. Then she shook her head. ‘You know, it’s strange … I could almost swear that it’s like … Nah, forget about it …’

‘Like what?’

Remi apparently almost thought better of saying anything, but it was like she was itching to speak: ‘… Like you’ve just emerged out of one of your own dreams and here you are.’ She blinked. ‘I must be even more sleep-deprived than usual. Time for dinner and then bed. Don’t stay up too late. Security know the deal with you anyway, you’re just doing research …’

Remi wandered off past the lights towards the exits.

The kid sat looking into the semi-darkness of the sets, and almost fell off his folding chair.

There in the gentle starlit gloom of a perfect garden, where a little bridge crossed a flowing stream, a figure in outlines of light stood for a moment. It was wearing a scarf. It waved at him. It was waving goodbye. And good luck.

He never did get to say goodbye. When he blinked, it was gone.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for everything.’

He brought his hand up to his chest, and then he sighed.

He looked around and found a park bench on one of the sets, and curled up and went to sleep.

Behind him, if only for a moment, a vague and different figure, hard to see, seemed to catch the light for a moment and draw an invisible blanket over him. Then it too was gone.

Tomorrow was another day. Tomorrow was another dream. And one day, maybe they’d all come true. For someone, anyway.

It could be worse. It could have been a musical.

His breathing slowed.

Soft lights lit an area that hadn’t been there before.

There was something in the air.

As that something gathered, dancing Valkyries started clattering across the stage and, somewhere in the wings, a horse grinned.[1] Then it brought a hoof up to its throat, and started to sing. And the music rose.

As the Valkyrie chorus started to dance and join in, and the band struck up into a jaunty tune with lots of brass and strings, a lady in a sparkly blue-green dress like summer ice on the fjords stepped onto the stage and led off into the first song.

A thought seemed to float in the air:

You just had to figure it was going to go from bad to Norse …

The End.

[1] Just on general principles, you understand.

[You Are Here –> Epilogue: A Waltz in Time.]

[Previous –>Part 7, The Once and Future Swing.]

[Part 6, Find the Lady.]

[Part 5, Fairway to Avalon.]

[Part 4, The Friend of the Fae.]

[Part 3, A Knight of Course.]

[Part 2, The Missing Links.]

[Shall We Go Round Again? –> Part 1, Tea Time.]