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1847.
It was a long ride to Camelot and Merlin was sore in the bum.
You don’t realize how big the place is, Merlin thought, until you have to sit on a horse’s back for the better part of two days to travel from the eastern border to the central capital. Even without the short stay in Camlann, the journey had been grueling — chasing off coyotes and raccoons away from his food with what little magic he could control, trying and failing to heal his blisters with the first aid his mother taught him.
But at long last, he made it, checking in his horse with a friend of his mother. Merlin stared ahead over the crowd at the shoddy wooden capitol building, built only a handful of years ago but decaying nevertheless. A middle-aged man, balding but smartly dressed in a three-piece suit and top hat, stood on its front porch, the wood creaking under his weight.
“Listen,” the man said from his low perch on the porch. Merlin could barely hear him over the murmur of the crowd. “Judge and jury found this man guilty of voodoo and magic.”
Only then did Merlin turn to see the scaffold. It loomed over the crowd, possibly taller than the capitol itself. He saw a man with a hood over his head and his hands cuffed behind his back, led by armed guards in white Stetsons and holsters at their hips. A rope hung from the tallest part of the frame.
Hangings, Merlin knew, didn’t only happen here. He had heard of some back home. His mother taught him, though, never to see one. She even feared Merlin would see the business end of the gallows one day for his talents.
The man on the porch spoke again. “The laws are clear. Our mighty legislature passed them and as your governor, I, Uther Pendragon, signed them. Magic ain’t to be trifled with.”
The crowd cheered. The man — Governor Pendragon, Merlin supposed — looked down at the watch on his waistcoat. He nodded to the guards.
One of them ripped the hood off of the man. Another guided the rope’s loop around his neck. A third — also wearing a sack over his head, but no hat — steadied himself at the trapdoor’s lever. He pulled.
The trapdoor fell. The man’s neck slipped into the noose.
Merlin had always imagined, when he pictured himself hanged for his magic, that his death would be more or less instantaneous. The trapdoor would engage, the noose would tighten, and that would be it. His neck would break, and he would be gone.
How wrong he was. The man coughed and sputtered and struggled against the noose, but with no foothold, he had no leverage and no hope. After a few minutes, he passed out. Every few minutes after that, an aged doctor came up the steps to check his pulse — it took three checks for them to declare him really dead, just when Merlin’s knees had started to ache from locking for so long.
Once the guards began to take the man’s body down from the scaffold, the crowd began to disperse. Nothing to see anymore, Merlin guessed. But he found himself once again unable to move, despite odd looks from one of the guards in the white hats.
The guards carried the man’s body away toward a nearby carriage, the rest of the crowd gone. Merlin made to leave, but a discarded newspaper caught his eye.
*Extra: Governor’s Ball Tonight! 20 Years Magic-Free! Anniversary of Legendary Thunderbird’s Defeat!*