There was a clap of thunder, and a soft breeze rolled across the valley. Colette jumped and swayed drunkenly as she grasped the tree branch. Then she gave up and fell to the ground and sat there.
She felt very dizzy. For a second it’d been like the ground was lurching beneath her. But that hadn’t really been it, she decided. For a moment everything had stuttered, just like when Harry and Stanley performed the First Song, but… that gap where everything was gone had been so much longer. Hadn’t it? It had felt like so many seconds and years had been lost just now.
Something had changed, she realized as she looked around. The trees were no longer bent toward the valley, and the lines of leaves were not there. It was just ordinary forest floor. Someone or something had just been here, she said to herself, but it had changed things, or left something behind before it departed, yet she could not see it.
She stood back up. Then she said, “George,” and began to sprint down the hillside.
Colette ran along the riverbank, trying to find some trace of Stanley or George, but she saw nothing, only broken trees and many upturned rocks. Then she spotted a figure crouching over something by the riverbank. They were dressed in bright blue, but it was not George, or Stanley…
The person looked up. He smiled a little apologetically. “Hello, Lettie,” said Silenus.
Colette stared at him, astounded. He was wearing an extraordinarily blue sack coat and checked trousers, and a clean bowler derby sat on the rock beside him. She gaped for a moment. “Harry?” she cried.
He nodded, but he looked quite sad. “Hello,” he said again.
She laughed and ran to him, thinking to embrace him, but stopped when she saw what he was crouching over. Her happiness vanished and she covered her mouth in horror.
George and Stanley lay side by side on the riverbank. Stanley’s arms had clearly been broken, and there was a horrible gash in his side. His skin was pale and waxy, and his eyelids and lips were already turning blue. Colette had not ever seen anyone in such a state, but she immediately knew he was dead.
Silenus reached down and stroked one side of Stanley’s face, and sniffed. “I… I didn’t think it could ever come to this,” he said.
“Oh, no,” said Colette, and she walked to where George lay.
He did not look as bad as Stanley: his skin was still pink, and he had not a mark on him. But she could see he was not breathing, and when she touched his neck he was warm but there was no pulse.
“What happened?” said Silenus.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was up the hill, and… and then everything bent, and it was… Wait, what happened to you? I… I saw you die, Harry!” She reached out and took his shoulder with one hand and felt his face with the other. “I saw it.”
“Yeah, well,” he said darkly. “Let’s just say it didn’t take. I got here as fast as I could from the Founding. And I just… found them here. Stanley is… He’s…”
“He flooded the valley,” said Colette. “He distracted the wolves from us so that we could get away, and drowned them. I guess he got hurt. I’m sorry, Harry.”
Silenus nodded, but kept stroking Stanley’s face.
“What’s wrong with George?” she asked. “I didn’t see what happened to him. He’s got no pulse, and he’s not breathing… Oh, George.”
“He’s not dead,” said Silenus. “He’s just… not here.”
“What do you mean, not here?”
“I mean George, himself, is somewhere else right now. Outside of his body. Where, I couldn’t begin to say, but it must be very, very far.” He looked at the hills around them and the sky above. “Farther than I can sense. I only hope—”
But then George’s eyes flicked open, and Colette grabbed Silenus’s shoulder. “Harry!” she said, and they both looked down and knelt beside him.
George did not move or say anything. He simply stared up at the sky, seemingly seeing nothing.
“George?” said Silenus. “George, can you hear me?”
If he did, he did not show it.
“George?” said Colette. “Are you all right?”
George slowly blinked. Then, as if he was trying to remember how his own body worked, he lifted his right arm and looked at his hand. Silenus and Colette saw he was holding something, something they had not noticed before. In fact, Colette could have sworn he hadn’t been holding anything at all just a second ago.
“I held it in the palm of my hand,” he said. His voice was soft and creaky.
He opened his fingers. In his hand was a pocket watch. It looked like it had been recently polished, and it was cleanly clicking out the seconds. If the watch’s time was correct, it was just past five in the morning.
“I know that,” said Silenus. “That’s a family heirloom. How’d you get that?”
“I fixed it,” said George. He sat up more. “It will run all right now. For a while, at least.”
Silenus held George by the shoulders, steadying him. “George, what happened? Where is the song? Please, please don’t tell me it was lost with Stanley. Don’t tell me the wolves got it. Anything but that, George.”
“He saved it,” George said. “He gave it to me, just before he passed.”
“You have it?” said Silenus. He let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God.”
“He passed it on,” said George. He looked to his side at Stanley, pale and drawn and still. “From father to son, just like it’s always been.”
Silenus looked at him uncomfortably. “So… you know?”
“He told me, in his own way.”
“I… I don’t know what to say, George. I’m sorry. But we had to.”
George nodded.
“We were going to tell you eventually, when we thought you were ready. I’m sorry you had to find out just before… before he passed. He was dear to me, as I’m sure he… well, as he would have been to you. I’m so sorry, George. But the important thing is that the song is safe. It’s what he would have wanted, since that’s what he devoted his whole life to, and—”
“I don’t have the song,” said George.
Silenus stopped and stared at him. His face grew very pale. “You… you what?” he said.
“I don’t have it, Harry,” said George.
“But he gave it to you, didn’t he?”
“I used it,” he said. “I used all of it, Harry. I had almost all of the song, and the First Darkness came, and I had to use it to change… everything.”
Silenus began to tremble. “No…”
“I’m sorry, Harry,” said George.
“It’s gone? It’s really all gone?” he asked.
George nodded again.
“No. I don’t believe it. It can’t be gone,” said Silenus. “You can’t have just thrown it away! We had so much of it! We had almost all of it, George! I worked so hard to get everything! We were almost there!”
“We were there, Harry,” George said. “When Stanley gave it to me, I had nearly everything. The complete song.”
“You did?” said Silenus. “But what did you see? What did you see, when you had all of it? Did you see it? Did you see the… the Creator? Did you see anything? Can you at least tell me why?”
“Why what?”
“Why what?” shouted Silenus. “Why anything! Why all of it!”
George thought about it. He tried to speak several times but stopped before each one, not trusting his answer. Then he said, “I can’t say. I can’t say what I saw.”
“So you don’t know?” cried Silenus. “You don’t know!”
“No,” said George. And, strangely, he smiled, as if the thought pleased him. “I don’t know, Harry. I’ll never know.”
This answer gave no solace to Silenus, who grabbed his head with both hands and wailed. He stood up and staggered away several steps, and sat down on a stone and began to weep. Colette watched him, disturbed, but then George laid a hand on her arm.
“I’m very cold, Colette,” he said. “And I’m very tired.”
She gave Harry another wary look, but finally nodded. “I’ll get some kindling. It’s so wet here it’ll take me some time to find some, though.”
“That’s fine,” said George. “Thank you.”
She made to leave, but stopped. “What did you do, George?” she asked. “When the First Darkness came, what did you do?”
“What do you think I did?” he asked.
She looked around at the valley. She took a breath. The air was so much cleaner now. “You changed something, didn’t you? Everything feels so new.”
“Something like that,” said George. “I struck a bargain.”
“What sort of a bargain?” she asked.
“I figured out a way to break the darkness up forever,” he said. “To make the snake coiled around the world eat its own tail, so to speak. I threatened to make it do that, and it gave in.”
“Time,” he said. “Time for you, for me, for Harry. Time for everyone and everything. Everything will be left alone, just as it is, for a time.”
“How much time?”
He looked at her and slowly raised his eyebrows. Colette saw his eyes had faded to a very pale, peculiar shade of gray. But more than that there was something very deep behind George’s eyes, something that had not been there before. He had the eyes of someone who’d seen years and years of time. Centuries, even. Maybe more. “Do you really want to know?” he asked.
She opened her mouth, but then thought about it. “You know what, no,” she said. “No, I really don’t.”
He smiled a little, and nodded. “I think that’s very wise of you,” he said. Then he lay back down on the ground on his side, staring at his fallen father, and in his hand the pocket watch merrily pulsed along as if it had a great many seconds left to count out and it could not wait to get to them all.
Colette was right: it took her the better part of an hour to find dry ground. Once she did she began to search for the driest branches, and just when she had a decent bundle she was spattered with thick drops of rain. “Oh, great,” she said, and sought shelter under one of the tallest pines to wait it out. It did seem like a very peculiar storm, however: the dark clouds appeared to be making a straight line for the valley. Was it her imagination, or had that happened already today? It couldn’t happen a second time, could it?
The storm faded as quickly as it arrived, but before Colette ventured out she saw someone was stumbling through the underbrush. It appeared to be a girl in a bright green dress and with long, blond hair. She seemed to have come out of nowhere; Colette did not ever see her approach. The girl was apparently in some distress, as she kept attempting to charge forward, but the folds of her dress kept getting snagged on the grasping branches. When one tripped her and refused to let go, no matter how hard she tugged, the girl almost burst into tears.
“Here,” said Colette, stepping out from under the pine. “Let me help.”
The girl looked up, surprised, and stopped tugging. Colette laid her bundle aside and helped unwind the fabric of the girl’s dress from the pine branch. “There,” she said. “Probably not a good idea to wear such a fancy thing in these woods.”
“I know,” said the girl. “I didn’t think to change, I came here as fast as I could.”
“From where?” asked Colette.
The girl waved dismissively toward the west. “You’re the dancer, aren’t you?” she asked. “In his troupe?”
“His troupe?”
“Yes. George’s. The pianist.”
Colette helped the girl back to her feet. “I don’t know how you know George, but I don’t think there is a troupe anymore.”
She looked at her, frightened. “Then they’re… he’s…”
“George? He’s fine. Well, I don’t know. I think he is. Here, you can see him.” She led the girl to a small outcropping and pointed through the trees to where George lay.
The girl let out a great sigh when she saw him. “Thank goodness,” she said.
“He’s resting right now,” Colette told her. “He’s just been through a trial. And he just lost his father. So I think that for right now it’s best to let him be.”
“Oh… Oh, I’m so sorry. But is he going to be all right?”
Colette thought about it. “I’m not sure. But I think so. It feels like everything might be all right, for now.”
The girl nodded.
“You’re the one who helped him in Hayburn, aren’t you?” asked Colette. “The shepherd?”
“I’m his patron,” she said. “I sensed he was in trouble just a while ago and came running to help. He was there, and then he wasn’t. It was the strangest thing, but I couldn’t let him get hurt.”
“You do that for all the people who call you patron?”
“I am a patron to no one else,” said the girl, a little sadly.
“I see.”
“What happened here? I can almost always find George, but then he was gone… And then I felt like he was everywhere.”
“I don’t know what happened,” said Colette. “He did something, but I can’t say what just yet.” She watched the girl out of the side of her eye. She was staring at George with unabashed longing. “You’re kind of sweet on him, aren’t you?” she asked.
“What?” said the girl, startled. “Sweet? What do you mean? On who?”
“On George.”
The girl blushed magnificently. “Well, I would never… In fact, it’s unbecoming of a patron to…” Her blush intensified. “Well. Maybe not that unbecoming.”
Colette gave her a wry smile. “I see.”
The girl struggled for a moment, and finally said, “I feel very silly.”
“Don’t,” said Colette. She stooped and picked her kindling back up. “Here, walk with me. I can do you a favor.”
“You can?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll answer any questions you have about George, if you tell me something.”
“What would that be?” asked the girl as she followed Colette through the woods.
“Well, it’s like I said. I don’t think there’s going to be a troupe anymore. And you’ve been… How can I put this. You’re probably well traveled.”
“I have been in most places, at some point in time,” said the girl, a touch prideful.
“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” said Colette. “Do you know of any place where… where people would be willing to watch an entertainer like me?”
“Like you?”
“Yes. Like me.” Colette stopped and looked at her. “A colored.”
“Oh,” said the girl. She thought about it. “Well, I’m fairly sure I know of a few, right off the top of my head.”
“Interesting,” said Colette. “Come with me. I’d like to hear about those places.”
Once Colette came back and got a fire started Silenus finally returned to them. He had gone to his office door, which still stood open in the rock by the river, and fetched a large piece of canvas and shovels. “For Stanley,” he said.
George and Colette nodded. They laid Stanley in the canvas and all of them helped to stitch him up. George sometimes stopped and simply stared at the man lying within. When this happened Silenus or Colette took up his work without a word.
Once they were done they carried him up the valley to a hilltop. “I want him to see the sky,” George said.
All three of them helped to dig the grave. The ground was moist and parted easily for them. Then they laid him in the earth and placed stones over him and filled the grave in, and they made a marker for him out of branches. On it George carved:
STANLEY SILENUS
BELOVED FATHER
PATER OMNIPOTENS AETERNA DEUS
“Would you like to say something?” asked Silenus.
George shook his head.
“No?” asked Colette.
“He was my father,” he said. “All he wanted was for me to know what I was to him. And now I know. That’s enough.”
When they were done they returned to the fire. Silenus still shivered even though he was close to the flames, and eventually they realized he was not shivering due to the cold.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” said George.
Silenus simply stared into the fire.
“It was the only thing to do. It feels almost like the song was waiting for me to change it and use it all up. I’m not sure. I’m already forgetting parts of what happened. It’s like they’re too big for me to remember.”
“So we’ll never know,” said Silenus. “We’ll never know why. We’ll never be able to call the Creator back.” He looked up, and stared around at the dark riverbed. “And I’ll never be able to fix Annie. She was lost as well, wasn’t she?”
George nodded, his face sad.
“How? The symbols on her skin should have protected her…”
“Not against what happened,” George said. “I saw it, when I rebuilt everything.” He described what Annie had done, heaving the train car up the hill as it tore her apart, and then surrendering herself to the crushing tons of the breaking dam. “Even she could not survive that,” he said.
Silenus was quiet for a long time. As he stared into the fire he looked little and frightened.
“It was what she wanted, Harry,” said George. “She wanted to die. And she also wanted to help us. She did both.”
“If she could have only held on a little bit longer,” said Silenus softly. “And if you had not used up all the song… Why did you not change her, or fix her? Why could you not have done at least that?”
“Because I wouldn’t change the world just because it’d be nicer that way,” George said. “The world is what the world is. She had been through enough. She wanted sleep. I let her have it, as you should have long ago.”
“But she was the reason I did what I did. Why I sought out the song. I… I wanted an explanation. I wanted to know why she was taken from me, how this could be allowed to happen. And there was a slim hope that maybe, just maybe, I could make the Creator bring her back…”
“Aren’t you at least a little mad at her, Harry?” asked Colette. “She betrayed us. She got you killed. Sort of.”
Silenus thought about it. “No,” he said finally, his voice low. “No, I have no anger for her. Perhaps I am not surprised by her betrayal, because I, in my own way, betrayed her long ago. I betrayed her by keeping her alive, and finding a new love… but I admit that after so many years of looking for the song, I forgot why I started looking in the first place. The idea of saving my wife, who I could hardly remember, seemed a small thing in comparison to possessing the very explanation for all of Creation within my hands.” A gleam crept into his eyes again. Yet then it faded. “But now any chance of that is gone. And she is gone. Despite all my efforts, she’s really gone.”
“Have you forgotten the cost of your efforts, though?” asked George. “How many places were lost as a result of your search, Harry? How many lives were eaten by the darkness? Homes and towns just blinking out, as if they never were.”
“I don’t know,” said Silenus. “I know what I did was wrong, but it seemed the only choice. I had to. It was all I had left, and I thought if I succeeded then I could repair whatever harm it caused. She got even worse when you joined us, George. You look so much like me when I was young, and…”
“And she kept calling me Bill,” George realized. “I see.”
Silenus nodded. “And yet it was all for nothing, in the end.”
“When you showed me her gravestone in New York, you said that the thing it signified was gone,” said George. “That it had faded long ago.”
Silenus looked at him, eyebrow cocked. “So?”
“So I don’t think it’s gone,” said George. “I don’t think it ever faded. You still remember her. Otherwise you wouldn’t grieve at all. And she would not have done what she did if she did not remember you.”
Silenus bowed his head. “Perhaps so,” he said quietly.
“She was right, you know,” said George. “Creation isn’t a machine that’s thrown a few gears. I saw that.”
“Then what is it?”
George could not answer. Silenus grew grim, and he nodded. “Then it’s as I thought,” he said. “We know nothing. All the long years, all the generations of our family… It’s all been for nothing.”
“Would you tell me something?” asked George.
Silenus shrugged.
“I know that Stanley was my father. But why do you and I look so much alike? That was what made me think you were my father in the first place.”
For the first time since he’d returned, Silenus smiled a little. “The Silenus family resemblance is extremely predominant in our clan, that’s so. But not totally predominant. Stanley got lucky. He got the hair and the eyebrows, yeah, but for the rest he had the look of his mother. She was a lovely girl, Ellen. She and Stanley were the best of us.” He sniffed. “We had to make sure no one could realize Stanley and I were related. We got lucky with his looks and height, and we took care of the hair and eyebrows later. It’s amazing what you can do with only a difference in wardrobe and a dab of hair coloring.”
“Another performance,” said Colette, a little bitterly.
“Another in a long line of them,” said Silenus.
“So that makes you… my great-uncle?” asked George.
“Give or take a few greats. I have been the guardian of our line for a long, long time, George. I didn’t inherit the ability to host the song, but I carried it in my own way. Long ago I found certain… methods that allow a sort of suspended vitality, which ensured that I could always look over the song. These methods have all kinds of side effects, one of which is sterility. I knew I could never father a child, George, so I knew from the start you were not mine.” He looked at Colette a little shamefully. “And what I told you is true, Lettie. There was never any chance of getting you in trouble in a family way. I just had to pretend otherwise when George came along.”
Colette shut her eyes and turned away. “I still haven’t forgiven you. For what you did to Franny, and to me. The idea is just so… so…”
“I don’t expect you to understand,” said Silenus. “You are very young, in comparison to me. That was what drew me to you. I’ll accept whatever judgment you give.”
“Why did you pretend George was your son, anyway?” she asked.
Silenus recounted the story of Stanley’s idea. George had, in a way, witnessed this moment firsthand, and Silenus did not deviate much from what he’d seen. “Stanley loved your mother, George,” Harry said at the end. “I know. I was there. He was very reluctant to leave Rinton, and I know the look of a girl-addled young man. But we had to. We’d come searching for a very, very large piece of the song—the piece you once carried—but the wolves came much too close, and we had to flee in the night. It broke his heart, I think.”
“Why did he not remember her, or Rinton?” asked George. “I asked if you’d been there from the start.”
“You don’t understand how much traveling we did,” said Silenus. “After our first visit to Rinton we saw thousands of towns and states, and even countries. And holding so much of the First Song changes a person. It makes it hard to remember details. I’m sure you know the feeling.”
George nodded. He did, a bit. Stanley had been holding the blueprints for billions of lives within him. It must have been very hard to hold on to a memory of one, George realized, which made him pity his father all the more.
“But he remembered when you told us who you were,” said Silenus. “You don’t know how much it pained him, to have you so close and yet so far. I’m sorry for both of you, George. But at the time it seemed as if we didn’t have a choice. Stanley had to be protected. He was the bearer of such a valuable treasure.”
“I know,” said George, sighing. “But that reminds me of something… I’d always thought the song was stored in your trunk. You were always carrying that with you when you looked for it. Why was it important?”
“Don’t you remember what was actually in there?” asked Silenus.
“Restoratives, wasn’t it?”
“Exactly. And who would need restoratives?”
George remembered the strangled cry rising up from the little black island when they’d taken the last piece of the song. “Stanley…”
“Yes. Stanley often had issues after absorbing a new portion of the song. It’s common. Previous bearers have even gone comatose. The more he took on, the more extreme the issues became. It often took a lot to pull him back into the waking world. At first he only needed smelling salts, but then it took more and more, and soon I was using a whole host of chemicals and tinctures to get him back on his feet. Hence the trunk.”
“Oh,” he said. “I see. I do know more about how the song worked, but… it’s getting so hard to remember it now. I know Stanley couldn’t speak because then the echoes would come rushing out. But how was it that he performed it in the fourth act?”
“That’s right,” said Colette. “I was on stage with both of you every time, and I always thought it was you, Harry! I never saw Stanley do a thing.”
Silenus smirked. “You didn’t, did you?”
“No. How was he singing it?”
Silenus took a cigar out of his pocket and lit it with a burning branch from the fire. “Who said he was singing it?”
Colette’s brow creased as she wondered what he could mean, but George sat up. “Did he not sing it? Did he just… just hum it?”
Silenus’s smile broadened. “Very good.”
“What!” cried Colette. “He just hummed it as he played the cello? That’s all?”
“That’s all it takes,” said Silenus. “The song really only needs the tiniest opening to have an effect. That was my idea, I’m proud to say. Stanley—and several of the previous singers of the troupe—would hum as they played their instrument onstage, and I would conduct. And since I did nothing else, any agent of our enemies would assume it was all me. They’d never look at the other person at all. That’s how we did it, day after day, for decades, years on end. But now it’s gone.” His face grew grim again.
“You know I had to give it up, Harry,” said George. “I told you.”
“I know in my head that what you did seemed just, George,” said Silenus. “But in my heart there is no justification for what happened. At some level, there has to be an answer.”
“I’ve been as close as anyone, Harry, and I can tell you that you will never see everything,” said George. “You can never truly know.”
Silenus shook his head. “I can know. I will know, someday. You may have given up the First Song, but that doesn’t mean this is over.”
“What do you mean?”
“The song was sung,” said Silenus. “And what is sung must also echo. And those echoes can be collected, just as we’ve always done.”
George and Colette stared at him once they realized what he meant.
“You’re going to… to start all over again?” said Colette.
“I am,” said Silenus.
“But George used it all up! It’s all gone, Harry.”
“It may be gone, but I can find it again, in some form or another,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of practice at finding it.”
“But even if there is something to find, you won’t have anyone to carry it,” said George. “I won’t come with you, Harry. I’m done with this.”
“The ability to carry the song must surely exist somewhere outside of the Silenus line,” said Harry. “We can’t be the only ones. Some boy or girl must be able to hold the song. If I search long enough, I’ll find a willing carrier. Then we can begin again.”
“You may have to search longer than you think,” said George.
“What makes you say that?”
He looked a little guilty. “The world is… a little bigger than it used to be.”
Colette and Silenus both turned to him. “What do you mean?” asked Colette.
“When I put it all back, I put it all back,” said George. “Even the parts that were lost, both long ago and recently. The parts you let vanish, Harry, and the parts lost in the First Days. They are out there again, somewhere. If you come at them the right way.” He smiled a little at Silenus. “When I gave up the song the world might have lost a little magic, that’s true. But I think it may have gained another one. A winter traded for a spring.”
“Wait, so you just… stuck them back in somewhere?” said Silenus.
“They were supposed to be there, before the wolves devoured them,” George said. “They were in the First Song, and were waiting to be sung when I performed it again. It was the only right thing to do. And with the time I’ve bought, those places will remain unharmed for a long, long while.”
“But… but what will people think?” asked Colette. “What will happen to everyone? Those people and places, they’ve been gone for so long!”
“It will definitely be an interesting time to live in,” said George. “Think of all the stories out there, waiting to be told. I’m looking forward to it.”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” said Silenus. “I don’t care where the boundaries end, or what lands the echoes reside in. I’ll always keep looking for the song.”
“Forever, Harry?” asked George.
“Until I no longer have to,” said Silenus. “Until I know.”
George and Colette tried to persuade him otherwise, but he would not listen. “I have done this for so much longer than either of you,” he told them. “To me, it’s not a lifetime. Just another day, perhaps another week.”
In the afternoon they all went back to his office door, which still stood open in the side of the rock. “A shame,” said Silenus, gesturing to where the great black door had once hung. “But it’s not necessary. It was mostly for decoration.”
He turned to them, and said, “George, I don’t know if there’s a train station at Lake Champlain, but I’m sure there’s something. It’s just east of here, you can’t miss it. You should be safe there, and warm.” Then he turned to Colette, opened his mouth, and faltered. The two of them looked at each other, and George grew aware that there were many things going unsaid.
He left them to make their goodbyes in private. He realized now, all too late, that the two of them were very close. How could he not have seen it among all their interactions, all their business discussions? Despite their different ages, it was obvious they were lovers of a very intense and contrary sort.
George glanced back and saw they were holding hands and staring into the open door together. Silenus said something to her. Then Colette shook her head, and they let each other go.
George returned as Silenus stepped through the door into his office. He fetched their bags from behind his desk and handed them off to each of them. He said, “It’s always possible we will see each other again.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” said George.
“But unlikely,” said Silenus. “I doubt if either of you will ever visit where I am going.”
“Where are you going?” asked Colette.
He smiled slightly. “To where I must. To the far places at the end of the sky, and perhaps beyond. I’ll resume my chase, and keep doing so until I can’t.”
“Are you really sure you want to do this, Harry?” she asked.
“I have never been surer, my dear,” he said. “It’s what I’ve always done. And it may be what I’ll always do. Perhaps it’s what I deserve.”
“I was once told by someone that we must be the authors of our own lives,” said George. “Was that a lie?”
Harry grew solemn. “Perhaps it is,” he said. “And perhaps it isn’t. And then again, perhaps it is a little bit of both.”
Then, with one last smile, he stepped back. “You and I both know you’re not my son,” he said to George. “But I do think you’ve made a fine addition to the family.” The sides of the door began to tremble and the stone started to grow together. The door shrank until it was a narrow crack, and through it George saw Harry step away and sit down in the chair behind his desk very, very slowly, the groaning motions of an old man. He swiveled around and put his feet up below the broken bay window, staring out at the darkness as he had so many times before. Then the stone fused together and he was gone.
Colette and George tramped back to Lake Champlain together. It was a long hike, and they were both very filthy and ragged by the end of it. When they finally found a hotel they bathed and changed and went to find the train station.
“Where will you be going, George?” Colette asked.
“Home,” he said. “To Rinton.”
“Why? I thought you wanted to tour vaudeville and see the world, performing.”
“I did tour vaudeville,” he said. “And I did see the world. And I’ve already given my greatest performance, Colette. But no one heard it.”
“I heard it,” said Colette. “A little.”
He smiled. “I suppose that’s enough, then.”
“How did you do it, George? I thought the wolves weren’t subject to the song at all. They could be repelled by it, but not changed.”
“It was a matter of making something out of nothing, I suppose,” he said. “And of performance. When the song was first sung, the wolves didn’t hear it. They only came alive after. This time, they listened. And no one can witness an act of creation and walk away unchanged. Not even the wolves.” His smile left, and he stared ahead sadly. “I hope what I did was just. But it seemed the only thing to do.”
“I’m sure it was.”
“Maybe. All I want to do now is go home.” He paused. “You could come with me.”
“I could,” she agreed.
“It might be peaceful there for you.”
“It might.”
“But you won’t,” said George.
“No,” she said. “I’m afraid I won’t, George. You know, Harry might not have been your father, but you two are very alike.”
“He asked you to come with him too, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Colette. “He did. I wasn’t much interested in his proposition, either. But more than that, you are both very cunning and persuasive men, you know.”
“Cunning? I’m not cunning at all. Not as much as you or Harry, that’s for sure.”
She laughed. “George, have you already forgotten so much of what you did last night?” She shook her head, smiling, but the smile faded as she spied something over his shoulder.
George did not turn around. “What is it?”
“There’s a man watching us,” she said.
George put his hands in his pockets and casually swiveled a little, letting his gaze reach back as he did so, and he saw she was right: there was a man watching them from below a shop awning. He appeared to have frozen in the middle of writing in his notebook, and he was wearing a curious red coat and a black hat with a large white feather stuck in its brim. When his eyes met George’s he saluted a little, and George saluted back.
“Wait,” said Colette. “Is that…”
“Yes,” said George happily.
“But… but what is he doing here?” she said. “I thought you’d made a deal to keep them all away!”
“I did,” he said. “But I didn’t let them all go back to being wolves. Some didn’t want to go. So I let them continue on being human.”
She burst out laughing. “You did? Why?”
“Let’s just say their enthusiasm for it was infectious,” he said. “And I thought they might make good ones.”
George took his hands out of his pockets, and she reached out and took one and they walked down the street, hand in hand. “What are you going to do?” he asked.
“What I’ve always done,” she said. “Perform.”
He nodded, smiling a little ruefully. “Will the world ever recognize the Princess of the Kush Steppes?”
“No,” she said. “I’m sick of that act. I think I’ll make up a new one. In some place far away. I’m not taking the train, you see.”
“Oh?”
She pointed ahead. Standing in the town square was a slender girl all dressed in green. She smiled at George and waved, and as she did the trees on the corner shook as if brushed by a slight breeze.
“Ah,” he said, and stopped. “Where will she be taking you?”
“Far from here,” said Colette. “Far, far, far from the sticks. I want a bigger stage, George. A bigger crowd, a bigger act. But I don’t expect you to understand that.”
“Why not?”
“Well, you’ve been on the biggest stage of all, haven’t you?” she said. “And played for the biggest crowd. I’ll never catch up to you, George Carole. You’re big time, if ever there was such a thing.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Goodbye, George. I’d wish you happiness, but I think you’ll find it no matter what.”
“Oh yes,” she said. “You know, I believe once your friend has taken me she’ll be coming back here. Maybe you should talk to her. You two have a lot in common.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she said. “Trust me on that.” Then Colette picked up her suitcase and walked to the girl in green. The girl watched George carefully and waved again, and Colette looked back with a small, fond smile. George, feeling suddenly terribly sad and happy all at once, waved to both of them, and he grinned.
Colette looked up. The sky was gray with the promise of spring rain. Then there was a rise in the wind, and a smattering of drops. George had to clap his hat to his head and turn his face away from the gust, and when he looked back both of them were gone.