MERLIN

turally, few are so misrepresented.

The pointy hat. The long robes embroidered with stars and planetary phases. In fact, he prefers Sean Combs black velvet suits, kidskin Prada shoes, and Fendi pince-nez sunglasses. These days, he sports a red beard trimmed to his broad jaw, an onyx stud earring and, of course, a ponytail.

I first met him early January ’91 in Waikiki, on Sans Souci beach, while he was vacationing at the opulent Kahala Mandarin Oriental. Aloof at first, he pretended not to know what I was talking about after I identified him by the dragon tattoo on his thigh. But later, when he needed someone to hook him up to the local nightlife beyond the usual tourist trade, we got to be friends. You’ll recall his weakness for women led to his legendary demise.

A night of marathon debauchery concluded on the crater rim of Diamond Head, where we sipped mai tais from coconuts and watched a flamboyant sunrise. In a soft, resonant Devonshire accent, he discussed the mysteries.

His revelations flared like sunbursts across the blind ages. From him, I learned that God is female. One God, numerous angels, whom he referred to as fire lords - correlative to one fallopian egg and legions of sperm. Our universe is Her exile. The galaxies are creation engines the fire lords assembled to power their way back to the higher dimension from which She fell. Each galaxy pivots on a massive black hole; each black hole is a gravitational portal back to Her stupendous origin.

But there’s a hitch.

The lamp of his voice dimmed in the telling. Our souls washed up on the shore of Her eyes. She won’t leave without us. The fire lords constructed the periodic elements in their stellar kilns and built life out of those cosmic tinkertoys - and human brains complex enough to remember Her.

I didn’t understand most of what he said. Inevitably, I inquired about Arthur. What he confided became the source material for the four novels I set in Roman Britain concerning the origin of King Arthur's Perilous Order.

While we chatted, small blue UFOs, intense as stars, transpired across the orange sky before abruptly cutting ninety degrees into the indigo zenith. “Echoes from the future,” he told me cryptically. I didn’t pursue it.

We remain friends. When autumn rises, he sends me baskets of colorful gourds from Slavic countries. At his request, I gave my only interview. This came about with the publication in his homeland of Centuries, his favorite of my novels. I include that here, in respect for his abiding confidence.