by Sean Platt
Edward blinked again, trying to clear his mind. There was no question about what he’d just seen. It was true. He’d felt it. He’d felt the magic in his very core — or, rather, the nearly averted absence of it.
“All of that would have happened if I hadn’t taken the path from the sunny clearing and into the Dark Forest?”
The Sandman laughed. “No, Edward. It would have happened if you hadn’t caused the flood.”
CHAPTER 33
SANDS TO THE TRIANGULUM
“Take your time,” said the Sandman. “We have all we need.”
Edward looked up. He shook his head. He still felt the hangover of the horror world. It made his skin creep. At the same time he felt dizzy, and felt as if he might stagger and fall. He fought to stay upright, to keep focused. Eventually, that focus returned, and he saw the Sandman sitting on his throne, smiling placidly.
“My grappies caused the flood,” said Edward. He’d spent over a thousand years learning to hate them, to divorce himself from them. He didn’t want the old wound open, but here it was because what had happened before always had a way of happening again.
“No, Edward. You did.” He tapped his head. “I have read to the end, remember?”
“The elders sensed Adam and Eve’s magic,” said Edward. Then, because he felt the need to drive the point home, he added what he’d learned after traveling to the place himself: “I sensed Adam and Eve’s magic.”
“I see,” said the Sandman. “And how familiar did that magic seem?”
Edward remembered. He’d never forget. It was like being at the haven, lying on the floor as an awkward colt, a pan of marshmallow chocolate beside him. It had felt like being inside a memory, and the familiarity of the experience was terrible in its implications.
“It was as if I was with them.”
“Or with yourself.”
Edward shook his head. “Even the elders felt their magic.”
The Sandman shook his head right back. “Their blood’s magic, Edward. The same blood that runs through you.”
“I remember how that day unfolded! I didn’t do it! I couldn’t have done it! If it could have been me, why wasn’t I suspected by the elders?” Edward delivered the answer. “I’ll tell you why: I was too young. I could barely do magic then. Even my appies’ magic wouldn’t have been strong enough. It took tremendously powerful magic to do what they did. How could a colt have done something so huge?”
The Sandman chuckled. “You did it from the top,” he said. “From the world of the sea. You did it when the worlds were fragile, and easily broken.”
Edward realized he had an ace in the hole — a way to prove it hadn’t been him. “I never traveled to the land of sea.”
“Well,” replied the Sandman. “Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
The Sandman rose from his throne, drawing an annoyed chirp from the tiny crocodile. He raised a hand to his chin and thoughtfully tapped it. He started to pace, speaking as if thinking aloud.
“It’s quite a decision, Edward,” he said. “Even more so seeing as you must still make it! I can imagine the torture of such a decision. You know what the Grand Cataclysm will do, having lived through it. You know it will kill your grappies, and you know it will flood all the worlds. You know the water will create cracks that weren’t there before as it finds its way. You know its pressure will cause the worlds to shatter. But why am I bothering to tell you? You know all of this better than most. Yet you must decide to do it, even knowing all the damage you will do.”
Edward’s mind was already churning. The Cataclysm had happened thousands of years ago — and yet in another way, it hadn’t happened yet. Time was a loop. He had seen the past and the future through the mirages where cracks were thin. If the Sandman was speaking true, he could stop it — he could stop it by never doing it in the first place, never allowing his actions now to travel through the shattered places and times of this plane, into the world of his own past. He could keep worlds from crumbling, and prevent the magic from draining. He could stop the damage that had been done by The Realm and prevent the Sands from forming. He could undo his life, and make Mead whole.
“I can stop it,” Edward said.
The Sandman shook his head. “You’ve already done it.” He spread his hands, as if showing off the blank landscape.
“I haven’t. You said I haven’t.”
“But still,” said the Sandman, “you have.”
“I won’t. You said it’s a decision.” He felt equal measures of elation and panic flood him. “If it’s a decision, I can choose not to do it. I won’t go to land of sea. I won’t fracture the ocean floor where it spills into the worlds below. I will keep it whole.” Excitement was outweighing panic. He could feel his fear, guilt, and the weighty millennia he carried with him begin to droop. He could stop it. It was his choice. His choice. It was Edward’s decision to make, and he simply would not make it.
The Sandman nodded. “That’s up to you, but ponder this: The flood separated you from your family. The flood caused you to wander the worlds. It caused you to speak with Noah, then the cat, then the dark creatures, then me. It caused you to grow up missing millennia of your life at once. The flood is the reason you came to The Realm when you did. It’s why you met David. Why The Realm was spared from Goliath. Why David’s family came to power. Why the tunnels were built, and why you fought the Seven Nation Army. It’s the reason for Realm marshals. For the rediscovery of the Triangulum. And if you don’t cause the flood, none of that will happen.”
Edward surged on, suddenly exploding with bravado. “I won’t do it! I won’t! You say I should, but I won’t! I wo — !” He stopped, realizing what the Sandman had just said. “Are you talking about the Triangulum Enchantem?”
The Sandman nodded slowly. “That comes later.” He smiled. “You’ll see.”
“But the Triangulum Enchantem’s a myth.”
The Sandman gave Edward a knowing smirk. “Humans,” he said, “aren’t the only beings who forget things when they’re given enough time.”
“I don’t care,” said Edward. “I won’t do it. You said it’s my choice, and I choose not to do it. Sands to the Triangulum!”
“Then you prefer the other world?”
“Which world?”
“The one in the glass.”
Edward shivered. The vision was horrible, but what he’d seen didn’t matter. “I don’t know that world.”
The Sandman laughed. “Don’t you?”
Edward saw what the Sandman was saying and shook his head. “No. You’re lying. That wasn’t this world. You’re ly — ”
“The world was broken, Edward, and sometimes the only way to set a badly healing bone is to break it again so it has a chance to repair. That’s what you’ll realize before you make your choice — the choice you will make because you’ve already made it … and also because you are one of the few — one of the brave — who understand that the easy path is usually the wrong one.”
He leaned on the throne. The tiny striped crocodile returned, nipping his sleeve.
“On the timeline you saw in the glass, after the time when the flood would have occurred, humans partitioned magic to the point of breaking just as Adam feared. It was a mere bubble at the time of the flood in both scenarios, but on the alternative timeline, darkness bubbled, boiled, and surged, then came out like another great flood — this one made of black oil and hatred. Joy turned to misery. The world fell into darkness. Humans abandoned their light sides, many embracing the black. The unicorns, who were pure white, never could have survived. They died off like fish flapping in a withered sea bed. That’s why you did it, Edward. You realized that given a choice between bad and worse, bad is better. You chose the difficult path because it was only difficult here and now. The burden fell on your shoulders, but the rest of the world benefitted even if it never knew. You took the path because it was the only way to move forward — no matter how frightened you were.”
Edward felt disoriented. He sighed, no longer certain. “I can’t get used to you discussing the future as if it’s already happened,” he finally said.
The Sandman raised his hands. “Oh, you could see it the same way, with enough practice and effort,” he said, “but I understand why your mind refuses. It’s like I said: a story’s best when you find it as you go.”
CHAPTER 34
MAKING SENSE AND SHAPES IN THE SKY
Clint sat on his porch deck, his mouth hanging open. He couldn’t feel his arms at his sides or his rear on the deck boards. He felt only his mouth. He was a giant mouth, shocked to the verge of drool.
“You caused the Grand Cataclysm?”
“Yar. Because … ”
“YOU caused the Grand Cataclysm?”
“It was necessary in order to establish the timeline I’d lived as real. I’d become the gatekeeper, you see. I was like the Sandman, and with one quick gesture, I could decide which version of events — the one I just told you or the one I’d seen in the glass — became real and which became a work of pure, blue-sky imagination.”
Clint stood. He pushed Edward hard in the chest with both hands. It was a testament to Clint’s riled state that Edward actually staggered back, surprised.
“We’ve ridden together for nearing a century true! How the sands could you not tell me that you caused the Cataclysm? The world has been Realm and Sands for my entire life. I grew up taking it for granted that the worlds had split. We’ve wandered through fractures and along veins, always with those breaks at the forefront of everything we did, every decision we made. You’ve talked about the Cataclysm as I did: as an unexplained tragedy in the past without reason, or no reason that man or unicorn understood. We’ve been trying to keep the worlds together — to repair the damage caused by the Cataclysm. How could you exclude me? How could you not tell me all of this years ago?”
Clint expected Edward to fight back with a bunch of obtuse unicorn verbiage, but instead he just hung his great horned head.
“I was ashamed,” he said.
“If you were ashamed, why did you do it?”
Edward looked up, and now his shame was tinged with anger’s crimson.
“I had to.”
“You had to? You had to break the worlds?” He gestured toward the void. “You had to make this possible?”
A bolt of something shot from Edward’s horn, and the old gunslinger felt himself punched to the deck. The air was knocked from his lungs. Before he could rise, Edward was above him.
“Do you have any idea what kind of guilt I carry on my shoulders?” Edward demanded. “You lost a wife. You lost friends. I lost worlds! Nobody knows my secret, except you. So have some respect, gunslinger, because as much as you complain about me concealing information, you are now the only human to know the greatest unicorn truths, but also the only being anywhere, other than me and the Sandman, who knows the reason for the Grand Cataclysm. Even the savants don’t know. Unicorns who remember those old days remember something equally horrible: that my grappies were traitors. Eve’s name was already besmirched, but now they whisper about them both. ‘Enders of worlds,’ they say. And you should hear how they say it, and how they look at me, the traitors’ grandcolt. I bear that guilt, too: allowing the memories of kind, generous souls to be sullied by this false accusation. I can’t tell the others that they were innocent, just as the others are bound not to repeat the lie of their guilt. You said we were arrogant? I said we were blind? We are fools, too. We are a nest of untruths, stitched with false pride. We were the guardians, and we failed to guard. Our greatest act to save the world was merely the lesser of evils and killed only slightly more than it saved, including my grappies. I did that, gunslinger. I killed them. I split the worlds. I tried to repair the damage humans had caused, knowing in advance that it would fail and that the Sands would still form. I had to walk willingly into the hoofprints of the traitors I’d spent a life believing my beloved grammy and grappy to be. I can hardly count the ways this is unfair. Which should I choose? That I lost my grappies early? That I lost my world and had to wander alone? That I lost centuries or millennia of my life when I grew up at once? That I had to hate those I’d loved then become that which I’d hated? That my heroic act couldn’t save their memories and that I couldn’t admit to it? That I knew the scrolls and knew that the desolation and destruction I lived back then would inevitably end in this that you see before you?”
Edward stopped speaking above Clint. He seemed spent as if he’d expelled all of his soul’s grievances at once. The unicorn would have to bear his guilt forever, but Clint couldn’t help but feel good in a way, as he lay on his deck with the great white beast above him. Edward had carried that burden alone all this time, and now, for a change, the gunslinger could carry him.
“I’m sorry,” said Clint.
Edward stepped back, shaking his head. Unicorns didn’t cry as far as Clint knew, but Edward looked as close as he could imagine. He’d seldom seen the unicorn weak, and had never before seen him so close to breaking. Clint gave him a moment then got to his rear and finally to his feet. When Edward finally seemed ready to talk, the gunslinger nodded.
“So yar,” said Edward. “I caused it. I’d seen the alternative in the glass, and it was horrifying beyond belief. Because you must understand: The Sandman is a keeper of stories, and he tells them well. I didn’t merely see images. I felt the feelings as well. It was as if I’d lived an entire life — the life of a civilization — in what had to have been seconds of time. After I left the Sandman and resumed my search for The Realm, I began to forget — not what I’d seen or felt, but the immediacy of it. The panic and certainty that what I saw and felt would have occurred had there not been a flood. As I traveled, I started to tell myself a story I’d heard. It was my hope to summon the story through magic because magic has intention. After enough time wandering — it took more and more each time I left The Realm to find it again — I finally found myself facing who I needed to see.”
“Who?” Clint asked.
“Rumpelstiltskin.”
“Why?”
“He was the only raconteur I knew. Raconteurs, like the Sandman, are keepers of secrets. But what mattered even more was that while a raconteur can spin yarns and turn one thing into something else — and while they tend to be connivers and tricksters — there is one thing they cannot do.”
“Lie.”
“Yar. So when I found him, he wasn’t surprised. He said the worlds were thin and that he’d heard me calling. It was an earlier version of Rumpelstiltskin I’d found; he’d just left me in the Grand Meadow after our first encounter. He turned when he heard me, thinking he’d found the younger me. But I told him who and when I was. He wasn’t shocked. Just nodded along. Because what I’d said unlocked the tale inside him. His face became grim. I don’t believe he knew what I was thinking of doing — something tells me that is my soul’s own story, which you now share — but he’d heard the story I’d seen in the glass. It existed in his world — the story world — as fiction. But he verified that it could have been real had there been no Cataclysm. My blood chilled. But just to be sure, I asked him straight. I said, ‘If there had been no Cataclysm, would that tale have been true?’ And he said that yar, it would have been: a world in which he wouldn’t have been able to tell me yar because he would have been gone along with the rest of the magic.
“So I walked the worlds, following my nose. I was somewhat unique among unicorns, being familiar with world walking. I encountered my old friend the mad cat. I encountered the wolf. I lost track of where and when I was. Then one day, without warning, I found myself in front of a great world made entirely of water, seeing that my wings were flapping above it without my remembering them starting to flap. I looked down, and despite the water’s fantastic, unfathomable depth, I could see — or my magic could see — all the worlds as they had once been laid beneath it, spooled with leaks one above another as if my intention could pierce worlds where they�
��d already been punctured, like a needle through a stack of cloth. I didn’t hesitate. I sent a word to Providence, asking for forgiveness, and did not wait for a reply. I knew what had to be done, and I did it. A great whirlpool formed, and events began to unspool one after another. I couldn’t watch. I recall a gap, and waking up where I’d left, back in my proper time, now past the point of decision, with the events I’ve told you now solidified and permanent. When I woke, my side gritty with hot sand, I looked up and saw the horizon glowing. I walked, and the Sands became weeds. Weeds became grass. I arrived at The Realm and walked through the gate. It was like they’d been waiting for my return. It wasn’t long after that that the gates were closed for good and the wall was fortified. We all felt The Realm break its tether. We could see the worlds below as if we were floating in the sky.”
Clint waited for a long, long moment then looked at Edward, who was again looking down. Then he said, “Is that the end?”
Edward looked up. “Almost. I stayed in The Realm for a long time, knowing I could never return to Mead. So I stayed, keeping mostly to the growing unicorn population, and watched the marshal program mature. I kept my distance. And eventually I met my rider.”
Clint met Edward’s gaze. He remembered.
“Who,” Edward continued, “was a descendent of that first marshal, Cyrus. Who in turn was a descendent of David — the first civilized human to tame a unicorn.”
Clint wanted to be irritated that Edward had never told him that he was descended from David but couldn’t summon the rage. Edward had taken a beating during their porch hours and had finally shared all he’d concealed. Well, almost all. Clint wanted to know what Edward knew about the Triangulum Enchantem, and still hadn’t learned why the unicorns had felt the need to conceal their wings, but there would be time for those stories later.