“Hello, Miss… Pardon me. I can bare see you, let alone hear you. Speak into my mind, not my ears.” Merlin the Wizard was beginning to grow accustomed to being approached by parties unknown and unexpected. Glad of it these days, though not long past offense would have been taken for the interruptions to his alchemy studies. Nowadays, with an eye toward the presidency of the Literary Guild, he grew increasingly more accessible. “Yes, yes. I see you now. Here, won’t you sit. Now, let’s start from the beginning.”
 
“Mr. Merlin. The word is out. You can help. Help us slain literary characters. I am Jenny Cavilleri, Jennifer Barrett. Eric Segal’s Jennifer Barrett.” Merlin’s blank expression was not unexpected. “Love Story. I was front cover along with Oliver Barrett, the fourth.” Jenny stopped, not to breathe, but to focus. “I’m sorry to bother… to bother you.” Jenny began to fade from Merlin’s consciousness.
 
“Hold,” Merlin commanded. “Please allow me to access you, rather than you strain so hard to hold onto myself. There now. That’s better is it not? A better connection?”
 
“Thank you,” Jenny said. “I am old. I have performed for authors for centuries. I have been killed and redeveloped a dozen times. I am tired. Doubtless the reason for my bare dissemblance. I helped found the Literary Guild, Literary Characters United we first called ourselves. I’ve stood in place for Lady Macbeth and Guinevere. My resumé has more Jane Austen than anyone in the Guild. But I am tired.
 
“Yes, I knew that the plot of Love Story called for Jenny to be deathly ill, possibly even to die. But you see, Mr. Merlin, my entire career I have striven for women’s right to equal voice, for women to be as apt to star billing in any given piece, for strong roles for women, America’s President in pitched battle! In Eric Segal’s Jennifer Cavilleri I saw such a woman, a role that I could cap a wonderful career, one that other women could stand upon.”
 
Merlin waited a moment, allowing the weakening Jenny time to recover should she wish to continue. “I’m unclear to what you are asking,” he said finally. “You are satisfied, but … what?”
 
“Oh, as I said, I had an idea that Jenny might die, that I would be killed off, again. But …”
 
“But what?” Merlin asked, totally perplexed.
 
Raising herself to her full stature, Jenny lifted her chin. Pinching her eyes as if focusing laser beams, her words reverberated within Merlin’s skull – Love is never having to say you’re sorry! With that, I can not abide, Mr. Merlin. I can not! I will not!”
 
Merlin was flummoxed. “I don’t…”
 
Jenny strove to make him understand. “That, Mr. Merlin, is the beginning of the end, the death of a relationship. Empathy, Mr. Merlin. If a partner, man, or woman, has not expressed remorse for insensitive behavior, there can be no empathy. And I don’t mean sympathy. Never saying you are sorry is but one inch from not being sorry. No! It cannot stand!
 
“A tribune of women,” Jenny commanded, her lasers boring into Merlin, a wizard who was being matched.
 
“Jane Austen, Janet Evanovich, and Margaret Mitchell,” Jenny insisted.
 
“Austen and Evanovich, I know well enough, and I understand them being on your list,” Merlin said. “But remind me who this Margaret Mitchell is.”
 
“Gone With the Wind?” Jenny replied, her response said with an air of incredulity that he hadn’t recognized the name. “Scarlett may not have been the perfect female, but she was strong. She would not be closeted, compartmentalized."
 
“A stacked court, Madam. For value, the court must at least attempt the appearance of fairness. Three women? Fishy, as they say. At least one man,” Merlin counselled. “Even one with a reputation toward women’s equality would suffice. I might suggest Charles Perrault. He has already been made familiar with our quest. And I am led to believe that he has championed women’s rights.”
 
“Fine. Leave me with Mitchell and Austen, though.”
 
“One hour. Right here,” Merlin said as he disappeared from Jenny’s mind.
 
+++
 
Ms. Mitchell and Ms. Austen, and Mr. Perrault…”
 
“Yessir, good to see you again,” Merlin said to Perrault. “Mr. Perrault, would you be so good as to inform these kind ladies what we’re about here. Thank you, Sir. I shall do the same with Ms Jenny in hopes of making this as seamless as possible.”
 
After enlightening Eric Segal, explaining that he was being tried for the death of a Guild member, Perrault clarified the fact that certainly authors were entitled to kill their characters, but that act of finality ought to be limited to characters of their own making, not the professionals of the Guild.
 
Taking her cue, Jenny bowed before the authors, thanking them for their assistance, honoring them for their world-respected work. “Mr. Segal, rest easy, Sir. I fault you not for my demise. I share equal responsibility, knowing full well what may transpire with the character. Indeed, exhausted as I am of this trade, I may have even led you to the ultimate. I may have.”
 
Segal raised himself in his seat, lifting both arms as he began a protest.
 
Interrupting him before his first utterance, Jenny raised her voice. Her obvious strain captured all attention. “What I will know, is HOW DARE YOU?”
 
Segal flinched as if shot. The tribunal judges’ heads snapped as if prodded, their eyes opened to their fullest as if to hear the better.
 
“Allow me to set the scene,” Jenny said, not waiting for permission. “It’s a Romeo and Juliet story, of a sort. Jenny and Oliver are madly in love. She’s a brilliant scholarship student at Oliver’s ivy league university. Unfortunately, she is from the wrong side of the tracks, if you will. She and Oliver argue about his father. The weather is cold and miserable, and she does not have her key to the home she shares with Oliver. He finds her shivering on the top step.
 
“Is that a fair picture, Mr. Segal?” Jenny asks, waiting for his nod.
 
“Good. Now Mr. Segal I’ve turned to the appropriate page in your book. Please begin reading at I stood there at the bottom of the steps…
 
“… afraid to ask how long she had been sitting, knowing only that I had wronged her terribly.
 
“Jenny, I’m sorry—”
 
“Stop!” She cut off my apology, then said very quietly, “Love is never having to say you’re sorry.”
 
“WHAT KIND OF MALARKY IS THAT?” Jane Austen screamed, followed almost verbatim by Margaret Mitchell. Charles Perrault guffawed, then saying, “Right opposite, I would say. Right the reverse.”
 
Jenny strode to within inches of Segal. “Not say you are sorry? Mister Segal? Really? You adequately develop a woman only to kneecap her? LOVE IS SORRY FOR EVERY MISERABLE DEED AND THOUGHT! LOVE HONORS THE OTHER AS YOURSELF!” Jenny calmed herself, giving room for Segal to wipe away his tears of fright.
 
Looking to Merlin, trusting in his abilities, Jenny commanded of Segal, “You are to rewrite that scene this very instant. Merlin will tap your mind and a hologram will display the two, myself and Oliver as they act out your words. Begin.”
 
Segal swallowed, glancing to Merlin, who towered above and around him, not in fact physically, but tell that to Segal’s senses. “Oliver rushes to her, raises her up and into his arms in a deep embrace. ‘Jen! My wife. My love. I’ve been frantic. I… we will never… I’m sorry.’”
 
“Blather. Blah, blah, blather,” Margaret Mitchell says. My Scarlett would shoot Rhett dead. Well, perhaps not, but she would not tolerate such... blather.”
 
“Another,” Merlin ordered with a wave of his hand.
 
Segal again begins to read, his lines taken over by the hologram characters. “A mournful Jennifer sits on the apartment steps and silently acknowledges her husband’s return. ‘Preppie,’ she finally speaks as Oliver touches her outstretched hand. Oliver answers, ‘I’m sorry, Jen. I wasn’t fair. I see that now.’ Shaking her head firmly, she replies, “No, Oliver. Love is just. Love just is …’”
 
The three judges stare at Segal, neither dismissing, nor accepting. They make no movements at all.
 
Segal attempts a third version. “Oliver sprints up the lower steps, stopping to lean on one bent knee. His face is level with his wife’s. He is silently weeping. Oliver says, ‘Jen, I’m so sorry.’
 
”Jennifer answers with a sad smile, ‘Yeah, you kinda are, that… I’m freezin’ Preppie. Take me home. You say you love me, smart guy? Don’t say it, show it.’ She gives him a spine-tingling, sensuous, lingering kiss and leads him inside the door he has opened. Jennifer says, ‘Love is the prize, Preppie. Worth the indignities of human failure. Do you know what some people would pay for love like ours?’
 
‘Fortunes,’ Oliver replies breathily. The two figures meld into one as they enter their home.”
 
Jennifer watched this edited version wearing an analytical expression. It replaced the misty look of nostalgia that she’d worn to view the earlier scenes.
 
“You must admit that the new words do stay true to Jennifer’s … um … your character. And I said fortunes because …”
 
“Yeah, yeah, Oliver may forfeit his inheritance.” Jennifer dismissed Segal’s explanation with a cursory wave.
 
“It won’t end up on tee shirts,” Jane Austen said. “But it works. Certainly superior to that never saying you’re sorry pap.”
 
Instantly, Jennifer disappears from the scene, followed by all others save Merlin, who sauntered back toward the catacombs to rest before the arrival of the next seeker of justice.