Merlin’s Magic

This story comes from Judi Hertling of British Colombia. It’s a zinger!

For the past few months, Judi and her best friend, Chris, have been watching a British TV series entitled Merlin. The 13-part drama tells the story of the sorcerer of Arthurian legend. Both women are avid readers. In a phone call a few days after the series aired, Chris mentioned she would be interested in reading a few books about Camelot, King Arthur and Merlin. “This is not her usual genre, so when I was browsing our bookstore aisles recently, I thought I’d check out the science fiction and fantasy section to see if I could find titles that might interest her.”

Only a few titles caught Judi’s eye. One was The Sorcerer, another was UTHER, two books in a series about Camelot and the early years of Merlin, written by Jack Whyte. Judi had never heard of the author, but he had so many titles on the shelf, she figured he must be a successful historical fiction novelist.She passed the information on to Chris in their next telephone conversation and forgot about it until yesterday afternoon, when she was reorganizing her bookshelves.

“Having recently moved into our new house, I had taken hundreds of books out of packing boxes and shoved them onto shelves in a haphazard fashion. Being an organized Virgo, this went completely against my book sensibilities. So I set to pulling books off shelves and began rearranging them. As I was doing this, I started flipping through pages of books that I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet.One of the books was a novel that I remembered having picked up a few years earlier in a used bookstore in Kelowna, British Columbia. It was an advanced reading copy of a novel by Frank M. Robinson, Waiting. Curious as to why I hadn’t read it yet, since I enjoy suspense with a paranormal twist, I began flipping through the pages.

“In the middle of the book was a small piece of lightweight card, which I assumed was the previous owner’s bookmark – until I looked closer. It was, in fact, the torn off half of an airline boarding pass issued by Alaska Airlines departing from Seattle going to Kelowna. The name on the ticket?”

You guessed it. Jack Whyte.