“We’ll need a signal if you plan to do that again. I’m thinking something like “Mr Scott, beam us up” What do you think?”

Noted. Can we make this as quick as possible, please? The outriders from the invasion force will be here shortly.

“Dude, you can stop time. Do we need to be worried about hurrying up?”

My dear, I don’t really know how else to put this in ways you will understand. I am not what I was before. At the moment of my death, most of what constituted ‘me’ - the ‘me’ with almost limitless power and capacity for such shenanigans - moved onwards to whatever lies beyond. What has been left behind has much of my wisdom, to be sure, but my ability to influence this world is finite and undoubtedly limited in scope. As we discussed, I can make use of your Qi to a certain extent, but I have already, in our short acquaintance, done more at your request than I had ever planned for. You need to understand there will soon come a time when I have nothing left to give.

“You can just ask me to stop bugging you, you know. No need to go all Mufasa on me.”

I had reappeared on the outskirts of what probably was a fairly impressive dark-age village. I mean, Fred Flintstone would probably have looked askance at the plumbing, but the huts had roofs on them, so score one for fledgling architecture.

I started to walk towards the biggest of the buildings and paused. “Any advice on how I play this? The benefit of all that collected wisdom would be much appreciated.”

You can either pretend to be Wulfnoð to deliver the news of the impending assault or change your shape to something you are more comfortable in and spread the word that way.

“I can do that?”

If you pay heed to my advice, you will soon learn there is very little in this world that you are not able to achieve. A true cultivator has no limits to their power and ambition within this world. Indeed, the gods themselves will tremble should you reach the potential I feel exists inside you.

“When you were alive, Merlin, did people tend to glaze over when you said things like that?”

Initially. But I had them flayed alive, and their children fed to my dogs. Attention spans seemed to improve after that. There was a pause. That was a joke.

“Right. For future reference, shall we try to keep the humour a bit lighter? You know, let’s function at the level of friendly banter rather than focusing on the hypothetical murdering of children?”

Everyone’s a critic.

“Okay, so shapeshifting is a thing. That’s a trip. So, am I able to make it so I look like my old self? I’m not sure I have it in me for some Freaky Friday shit with Wulfnoð’s mum.”

If you have a strong impression of how you would like to look, you can channel your Qi in such a way as to make alterations to your physical form.

“You keep saying ‘channel your Qi’ as if I’m supposed to understand what you mean.”

I know. If only I had been able to spend some time with you dedicated to helping you train, rather than teleporting you around the countryside on urgent missions. It is almost like you might start to get the answers for which you are looking if you’d take even a smidgen of advice. Some may say that shutting up and hanging on the every word a legendary expert in magic would probably be a sensible course of action if you ever want to master the art yourself . . .

“Been holding that in for a while, big fella?”

Indeed. In the spirit of moving things along, on this occasion, I will have to provide significant guidance and support to the way your Qi goes about the reshaping. This will, as I have mentioned, reduce my long-term viability in this realm. However, I can see the merit in advancing your practice in this area, and I am willing to do it.

I sensed a ‘thank you’ was being fished for here. I wasn’t biting. “And if, just hypothetically, I wanted to make improvements to the original me, would that be possible?”

All things are possible to a cultivator of sufficient capabilities. Hold an image in your head of how you would like to look, and I will do the rest. Please understand that we are going to need to spend considerable timing learning what ‘the rest’ entails. I do not want you relying on me as a . . . I think you would term it ‘cheat code’ over and over again. You need to learn these techniques yourself.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

With that, I felt a warmth wash over me like my whole body had become wax. There was probably a more technical way to describe it, but it was like Merlin had basically turned me into human playdough. Hurriedly, I considered the image of ‘me’ I had in my head and, just as quickly, discarded it.

Don’t judge, but having spent most of my life wishing that I looked differently than the face that peered back at me from the mirror, I suddenly was a touch leery about going back to that. Tell me someone who wouldn’t want to make a few improvements if the most powerful wizard in the world offered them a makeover . . .

It would help if you had a clear conception of how you wish to look in your head. I cannot work with vague thoughts of ‘me only better.’ It would be best if you hurried up and settled on an image; this is a highly intensive use of your limited Qi .whilst you prevaricate.

Various celebrities ran through my head. After all, who would know? It was not like I was going to bump into Anne Hathaway in downtown Camelot.

My dear, if you want me to do this, it has to be now.

But then I remembered one of my favourite paintings: Dicksee’s ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci. I loved that picture: a print of it had hung in every place I had lived since I was sixteen. You’d know it if you saw it, it’s the one with the woman on horseback leaning over to ensorcel a knight in armour that is walking at her side. Although Dicksee was not a pre-Raphaelite, he absolutely channels their vibe, so his Belle Dame has a flower crown atop her mass of cascading red hair, has porcelain skin that never saw a moment outside in its life and is wearing a floaty pink dress that I searched every charity shop up and down the county to try to re-enact.

Are you sure that’s what you looked like? My memory suggests different.

“You’re an old, dead wizard. Who cares what you think you remember? I know what I want to look like.”

So be it. And my body shifted.

Have you ever had a massage from someone who took your knots as a personal insult? That is what Merlin’s reshaping of Wulfnoð’s body felt like. Everywhere. All over. All at once. I would have screamed long and hard if my lungs were not being squished around within a new ribcage and my neck was not being stretched like a chicken being prepared for the Sunday table.

I’m sure it only took a moment, but I genuinely had never felt agony like it. When the shaping was over, I dropped to the floor, panting.

“Did it work?”

Of course. I did mention I was the most powerful wizard in the world. Even this reduced echo can do a fundamental physical reshaping without – oh. Bugger.

I waited for a moment to catch my breath. But Merlin’s voice did not return. ‘Big M? You still there?’

Nothing.

Considering the last time my disembodied companion had vanished, a wolf attacked me; this did not feel like a good development. I went to stand and then noticed a further new and disturbing development.

My new body was not at all like Wulfnoð. And, whilst that had been kind of the point of the torture I had encouraged Merlin to put me through, neither of us had foreseen that this might lead to … sartorial challenges.

“Who in the heavens are you?”

I turned, naked as the day I was born, to see two women standing near me. They were carrying buckets filled with water, having clearly just returned from a nearby spring.

I immediately took advantage of hair that now tumbled down to my knees to cover up what remained of my modesty. These people had never heard of Cousin Itt, and thus an opportunity for some Addams Family based humour was missed.

Maybe there would be time later.

“Hi”’ I waved awkwardly, noting my new, extremely thin arms were the colour of milk. I was surprised the moon wasn’t burning me. Damn you, Frank Dicksee. There isn’t going to be enough aloe vera in the world.

“What’s a Celt doing here?”

Ah. The red hair. That could be a problem ...

I rallied magnificently. “Take me to your leader; I come with an urgent warning.”

The two women looked at each other and then back at me. The older of them scratched her nose in contemplation. “I don’t know about any ‘leader’, but Old Dudda would probably like to talk to a naked Celt. What do you think?”

The other shook her head. “He’d like to gawp, don’t know if he’ll be interested in talking. Mind you, he ain’t been able to do anything with it for years, so she’d be safe with him. You speak true about a warning?”

I nodded, a deep red blush spreading across my face. You’d think you’d be less shy when it wasn’t your own body on display. Turns out that’s not true.

The women looked at each other and seemed to come to a decision. ‘Better wake up Ealdgyð, then.’ They started to walk away from me, then stopped to indicate for me to follow. “Come on, she’ll be pissed enough as it is, might as well get it over with. Do you have a name, Celt?”

And that was an interesting question. Did I have a name? I wasn’t Wulfnoð any longer, that was clear. But was a part of him still here? Something in me smiled in recognition of the two women guiding me through the wooden huts. There were visions of a beating from the younger one, Hild, for stealing food and of the other one laughing as I – as Wulfnoð – played at her feet. She was called Leofflæd.

She was my mother. Wulfnoð’s mother.

I shook my head to clear it. This would be a good time for Merlin to explain exactly what relationship I had with the boy whose body I had possessed. Especially as it was not even his body anymore. But, no, that voice remained steadfastly silenced.

“Did you hear me, Celt? What should we call you?”

A plethora of names ran through my head. New body. New me. But I needed something that would help me fit in. I could use the title of the poem my body was based on. Belle? But that seemed to invite a future where I’d need to break an enchantment on a tea set, and there was already enough weirdness in my life.

Anglo-Saxon names wouldn’t work – not with all the hair and the skin. They’d penned me as a Celt, so I needed to lean into that. What did I know about Arthurian legend that would help me blend in somewhat? Well, there was one name. And Merlin had suggested I was going to be his apprentice, hadn’t he?

“Morgan. You can call me Morgan. Morgan Le Fay.”