Another three days pass in the domestic familiarity of Turn Hall, in which none of the household really rouses themselves much further than toward the kitchens or the nearest privy. I am quite content that Kintyre and Bevel’s rooms are in a different wing than our own, for there are noises that a man does not need to hear coming from his own brother’s quarters. Nor have him hear from his own.
On the fourth night, Caerdac, Bradri, and the Pointes come to dinner, demanding a recounting of the adventure. Dorthi spends an inordinate amount of time remarking upon how much Alis has grown since she was last seen, and how many new words the little lady has added to her vocabulary, and Alis absolutely delights in the attention.
We are all dressed in our best, and I feel quite myself again in my Turn-russet trousers, a matching waistcoat of floral brocade, and a mustard-yellow frock coat the color of Forsythia, a blossom from Pip’s world which she says does quite well for my complexion and gray eyes. She is dressed in another of my mother’s old gowns, a gold similar to the thread of the embroidery on my waistcoat, but with more flowing, swirling fabric in the skirts than Pip really knows what to do with.
It is now warm enough to take our meal outside, and so we all crowd around a table in the rear courtyard, beside the kitchen garden, and watch the sun set as we regale my friend and his family with the tales of our adventure. Bevel has a small stack of parchment with him, and makes notes in pencil as we talk, making sure to get all the details correct. He can probably never publish this story, but he can at least record it for posterity. For the Shadow Hand who succeeds him, if no one else.
No additional lights rise in the sky, as they have not since the night the last star went out, and when the sun sinks behind the horizon, we all watch the veil of the heavens for several silent moments, waiting . . . hoping . . . but no. Nothing appears.
The moon, solitary, lonely, is the only light.
Pip remembers the stories, perhaps not as well as I, but that has not returned the stars to the sky. The realms, the books, are still destroyed. We may never get them back.
That puts a somber shade over our merrymaking, and Pointe and I excuse ourselves to take a turn about the fishpond, watching the fireflies and the fairy lights dance above the water. Moonflowers speckle the boundary between the lawns and the covey forest with a soft, yellow-white glow.
At least here, below, the little lights of the world still twinkle and shine.
“Is it selfish of me to be pleased that you didn’t just vanish at the end of this adventure?” Pointe says as we wander close enough to the forest for a pair of foxes to stop and chatter at us with laughs that sound almost human.
“And a good evening to you, too,” I tell them, for one can never be sure which animals have human comprehension or not. Then I turn to Pointe. “It is not selfish. Did you think I would?”
“You did the last time.”
“And for that, I am sorry.”
Pointe shrugs and says nothing for a while.
“Are you leaving, though?” he asks.
“Pip would like us to.”
“And you?”
I look up at the starless sky and wonder if this is the beginning of the end for Hain. Without Elgar writing new tales, will this world fragment and collapse, like an old book falling to dust in the back of the returns bin? I fervently hope not. And yet, I cannot help the selfish thought that if it does, I do not want to be in it. I do not want Pointe and his family, nor Kintyre and his, in this world when that happens, either.
But no, these books are too popular, too well-known. If books live on in the hearts and minds of Readers, then this world, my world, will live on for another thousand years.
“I think perhaps I would like us to go, too,” I venture gently.
Pointe nods as if this is no surprise to him.
“It is only that, with the heir in the family seat, what is there for the spare to do?”
“There’s lots,” Pointe says, and he doesn’t mention charity work, or my free school, or work as one of the Shadow’s Men, or how King Carvel sent a letter to Turn Hall the moment he learned I was out on an adventure, and that his messengers have daily been nagging me to move to Kingskeep and take up an official post as his advisor, or any of the other opportunities and good works that I would surely find to fill my day should I stay. But we are both thinking about them.
“All the same,” I say. “I think it is important to raise my daughter in Pip’s kingdom.”
“You mean the Writer’s realm?” Pointe asks, and when I shoot him a startled look, he grins and gives me a little shove. “Yeah, I would want my kid raised there, too, if I could swing it.”
I am about to reply that it would also be my dearest wish when a sharp flare of light above my head catches my attention. At first, I think it is a fairy speeding across the field, but then I manage to pinpoint the source. It glimmers and twinkles, and is soon joined by a second bright, popping flare, which condenses into a dazzling, diamond-like glow, a pinprick of white light far above our heads.
“The stars . . .” Pointe breathes.
“The stars,” I agree. And then, a sudden thought occurs to me. “Oh, god, Pip!”
I turn and dash back toward the house, Pointe hard on my heels. Pip is already halfway to us, Alis clutched tight in her arms, and the rest of the dinner party, servants included, are not far behind her. We collide in the darkness with a deliberate, joyful embrace, followed by a swift kiss.
“The stars, bao bei!” she crows. “It must be Elgar!”
“Do you think?” I ask, cautiously delighted.
“Yes!” Pip shouts. “See? Look!”
And there, not five paces away, the sky fills with the sound of the world shattering and a flare of light so brilliant that we must all shade our eyes. After-images dance in my vision, and Alis is giggling and clapping.
“Is it safe, do you think?” I ask, as Pip leans toward the rip in the fabric between the realms. “Does it lead back to Victoria?”
“Only one way to find out!” Pip enthuses.
“And if it’s not?”
“Then what’s one more adventure, bao bei?” Pip asks, windblown and grinning, and by the Writer, do I love my wife.
Caught up in the current of her enthusiasm, I can only let myself drown in it, and grin. “What, indeed?”
She leans up to kiss me, and as we part, she meets my eyes very seriously, asking without words.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, of course I’m coming with you.”
“Then, this is goodbye then?” Pointe asks, sticking out his hand. I bypass his arm and hug him instead.
“You could come.”
“What, and leave the dragon and the kid in my place? No. Lysse would be on fire within the hour.” He says it with joviality, but it is forced. He blinks, hard. “Take care of yourself?”
“Yes,” I say. “I will. And you take care, too. Fare well, Rupin Pointe.”
“Fare well, Forsyth Turn,” Pointe says, his voice tellingly thick beside my ear. “Thanks for taking the time for goodbyes this time.”
“Thank you for being here for it. I am so glad you got to meet my family.”
I fear the portal will close quickly, so the rest of our leave-takings are swift and, though tear-filled, also triumphant.
I hug Kintyre last, and he squeezes me tight, lifting my feet off the ground as he grunts, “Be well, brother,” in my ear. When he sets me down, he dashes at his eyes and turns away. I therefore cannot see his face when he says: “I’ll miss you, bookmouse. I . . . lo-love you. Go’wan.”
His confession raises such a lump in my throat, so that I can only croak: “I’ll miss and love you too, you oaf.”
Pip and I are going home. As one, we stand before the rip, and clasp hands.
And then, through the portal, the whole of the crowd can hear the thud of someone dancing triumphantly, the sound of a proud Writer crowing: “I did it! Ha ha! I am a genius! I did it!”
Laughing, filled to the brim with bubbling joy and a sort of desperate relief, Pip and I step through.
✍
The light flares and fades, and I open my eyes to find myself flat on my back in my living room, wedged between my coffee table and my sofa. I touch the back and sides of my head, but I seem to have fortuitously missed both surfaces on my way into my swoon.
“Did what?” Pip asks, as soon as the vertigo has cleared enough to allow us to sit up. Pip climbs to her feet and makes such a muddle of her skirts as she does so that she nearly falls down again.
“Look! The books! The books are back!” Elgar Reed says, pointing with pride at our bookshelf. “And I’m the one who did it!”
“How?” Pip asks, depositing a startled Alis in her playpen and wobbling over to where Elgar has thrust a much-inked sheet of paper at her.
All around my reading chair, there are balls of paper and the corpses of used-up pens.
Pip takes the paper and reads aloud:
And though the author did not know why the other works of fantasy and science fiction literature were vanishing, he was confident in the great workings of his own world, that the magic inherently perfect within it would bring them back. He toiled to find just the right words to invoke the magic and reverse the slow drain of wonder in his own realm.
Then, having found the perfect Words, the author invoked the spell which brought all the stories back into the world.
The pleasant side effect of which was that a portal opened between the realm of his imagination and the realm of his reality, allowing Forsyth Turn, Lucy Piper, and Alis Mei Turn Piper to return to the author’s world. This portal opened a mere five feet away from them, and was bespelled to remain open until all three had come through. It was exactly the same as the portal which had taken them there in every respect, except for the direction it traveled.
When the erstwhile travelers had returned home, the portal closed, and every book, poem, play, screenplay, comic, fan fiction, or other sort of writing and story that had vanished from the Writer’s world were restored to their proper places. And no one in the author’s world ever remembered that they were ever gone—except for the author, Forsyth, Alis, and Pip.
The End.
“Well then,” I say, coughing, a little choked up. “Bravo.”
“What were the Words?” Pip asks, eager.
“That’s the beauty of writing,” Elgar crows. “I have no idea. But I don’t need to know. I can just say that they were perfect, and they are.” He laughs, spreading his arms. “I tried to find the perfect words, and then I remembered that you said that Readers can’t hear Words of Power, and bam! Nothing I could come up with would be as good as just saying they were perfect.”
“That’s some lazy-ass storytelling there, Elgar Reed,” Pip says, but she does so with a smile, and embraces my creator with an enthusiasm that startles both of us. With a wide-eyed glance at me over my wife’s shoulder, Reed tentatively returns the hug.
“How long were we gone?” I ask Reed, when Pip pulls away, and he shakes his head, still startled.
“Uh . . . about eight hours? Maybe nine?”
“About the same amount of time as it would take you to read a Kintyre Turn book,” Pip says, voice breathy with awe. Then she blinks, and looks back down at the paper. “Wait, it took you nine hours to come up with three paragraphs?”
“Hey,” Reed says, shifting, defensive. “Writing is hard, okay?”
Pip laughs, and hands the paper over to me so I can read for myself the spell that has brought us home. I have never seen Elgar’s handwriting before. It is cramped and scrawled. No wonder he preferred to compose on a typewriter. Or, now, a laptop.
Pip wanders over to our bookshelf, hugging her elbows, looking pensive.
“I can’t believe I forgot all of these stories,” Pip whispers, staring in worshipful awe at the books. It is once again jammed near to overflowing. It is evidence of our success, and the dusty jumble that usually fills me with consternation at its disorganized tip, fills me instead with pride and the satisfaction of a quest well completed.
While it is the books that mesmerize my wife, I cannot stop staring at the paper in my hands. So easy a thing, so small a gesture, and so profound a change it has wrought in its Readers. Is that what being a Writer means? Not the creation, but the way that others are affected when they are done reading what you’ve toiled to create?
If so, I cannot fault Reed for his drive to create, to write me and my whole world into existence.
“Do you want to go back?” Reed asks, breaking into my little daydream, voice small. “Did I . . . are you mad at me?”
For a moment, I consider it. Mad? Perhaps a little. I would have liked a better leave-taking, but at least this time, I was able to see Pointe and his family one last time. This time, I did not vanish from the lives of those I loved dearest with no warning, and no explanation.
But do I want to return?
No.
No, my life is here now. What the Deal-Maker Spirit did not understand when she taunted me with my own fears was that now that Kintyre is Lord and Bevel the Shadow Hand, all the meaning my life once held has been stripped away. True, I have my family still, and my friends, but I cannot stand to be idle. And to be the spare to the heir is about as idle as a person could be in my realm.
“No,” I answer, and for the first time, I feel the whole truth of it in my heart.
Elgar deflates, a tension I didn’t realize he was carrying dissipating. “Well!” he says, clutching his hat. “That’s . . . ah. That’s it then. Yeah? Day is saved, and all of that. I should . . . ah. I should go.”
“No!” Pip says, turning around suddenly. “No. No, we still have that wine you brought at Solsticetide. Come on, we’ll open it.”
“Going to tell me another story?” Reed asks, alluding to the first time I met him, in the bar of a hotel at a science fiction and fantasy convention. His face fills with a hope that I hadn’t ever expected to encourage in him again.
“Yes!” Pip calls as she gathers up her ridiculous skirts and goes into the kitchen.
We both watch her go.
“That’s a pretty dress,” Reed says tentatively.
“It was my mother’s,” I explain.
“Ah. I guess . . . you don’t want to talk about . . . um, family? With me.”
“On the contrary, actually. While I was there, I realized something,” I say, reaching out and offering my hand to my creator. “I should like to forge a peace with you, if I am able. It will be . . . shaky, to start. But I think, perhaps, in time . . . we could be friends. We could be family, if that is what you want. I will shut you out no more.”
“No more?” Reed echoes, hopeful, his hands tightening around mine.
“No more,” I say. “You see, I always wanted my father to . . . well, to be short-winded about it, with you, I have shut out the very thing I have been longing for, and I regret it. I hope you will forgive me, as well.”
“Yes! Yes, of course!” Reed gasps. Delighted.
“And you will work with me to attempt to mend this rift between us?”
“Of course!” Reed says again, and begins to pump my hand. “It’s a deal!”
“Ah!” I say, and draw my hand back quickly. “Maybe . . . perhaps, we should not use that particular phrase.”
“Oh. Oh,” he says, jamming his hands into his pockets, startled and worried. “Right, yes, of course. No deals. Of course.”
“Of course.”
“Though I . . . you must understand that I have to draw the line at calling you fa-father,” I caution him.
“Right,” Reed says, sweating, nervous. “Right, you already had one of those.”
“But friend,” I say softly. “Th-th-that I can call you, if you l-l-like.” I hold out my hand again, a truce.
And cautious, hopeful, but still nervous, Reed takes it.