The Last Page

by Anthony Huso

“So single-minded—” She tousled his hair. “I love that about you.” She bent forward, plucked at his mouth with her lips; moved her leg slowly over his waist and brushed her warmth against him.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” He pushed her gently away.

  “Nothing,” she whispered. “But I’ll tell you this . . . I know a secret about you . . . something nobody else at Desdae knows.” She made the southern hand sign for yes. “You’re Hjolk-trull. Like me.”

  Caliph frowned. “What? What does that matter? How . . .” He raised his hand.

  “I’ve fallen in love with you,” she whispered. “You know I mean it. I wouldn’t have dragged you up here so often if it weren’t true. Think, Caliph. You and I—we don’t even belong to a country. We belong to the stars. We can make things right . . .”

  “Right? The only thing wrong is you just brought up—” He stopped, sighed. “I don’t belong to the stars.”

  Sena tried to regroup. “Caliph, I didn’t mean . . . look-abrupt, tomorrow I’m gone . . . don’t . . . you love me?”

  It was a mistake. She saw it in his eyes, black mirrors that reflected her lie. He knows. He knows I wouldn’t have asked if it were true. Stupid. Stupid. But it is true! It is! I need this. For the recipe, I need this to be true.

  Now what? Would he remember her like this? Framed in the groundwork of an agenda he couldn’t begin to understand? She could feel it, silly and stupid, how her few sentences had excavated a chasm between them. But she was smart enough to know that it was time to shut her mouth. Leave. Act hurt. Give him time to think and hope that the sex had been good enough to compensate for her last impression.

  She stood up and pushed the toggles through the eyelets on her cloak.

  The clurichaun, sensing that its duties were over, whirred off on a brave expedition through the clutter.

  Yella byn, she thought and then out loud, “In two years, we’ll see. Hynnsll,3 Caliph.”

  The Old Speech formality left Caliph in the dark, listening to the sound of wind under the shingles and goatsuckers in the trees.

  In the morning, Caliph watched from an obscure rain-flecked dormer as Sena went through the ritual in her scholar’s robe. He felt sour. He wanted her to come looking for him. The ceremony made his stomach hurt.

  He hadn’t noticed her talking with anyone beforehand but immediately after the ceremony, a group of women in somber cloaks met her on the lawn. Their cowls covered their heads and faces against the rain. He wished he could hear what they were saying.

  Sena glanced over her shoulder as though trapped, looking for help. Maybe she could feel his eyes. Caliph jerked his face back from the glass. She did not look happy to see the women and Caliph wondered who they were. Sena didn’t talk about her family. It was a preclusion they shared.

  For several minutes he deliberated. Finally he dashed, nearly falling down four flights of stairs. He struggled with the heavy door and burst out onto the lawn.

  A light mist greeted him on the face, but Sena and the women were gone.

  2 O.S.: Expletive: “Mother’s shit!”

  3 O.S.: “Shade and sweet water.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Two years later Caliph dreamt the dream.

  It had been with him since memory, coming and going on subliminal cycles. In the dream, man-shaped shadows beaded and ran like black oil across machines and towers made semi-acrylic with soot. Police sabers glittered amid a chaos of searchlights and shouts.

  As always, the dream man plucked him from the confusion and carried him away.

  It was not a dream that needed interpretation, not a misty plunge into oneiromancy or egocentrism. The tatters of his childhood parted slowly, dragging like strips of heavy cloth off Caliph’s brain, releasing him to the waking world.

  Spring filmed the dormitory air with an almost imperceptible fetor, a warm moist stink that evanesced from the wood around his windowpane. The High College graduated on the tenth but Caliph had opted to stay for spring semester. It was a decision he couldn’t explain adequately even to himself. He had amassed enough credit hours to graduate early, yet he remained.

  The Council wouldn’t allow it to happen again. In Psh they would come for him.

  Caliph looked out the window at the newest crop of not-quite-alumni. No more classes. No more tests. They had nothing left but to break the code in as many ways as eight pent-up, frustrated years could help devise. They would smash it. They would trample it; crush it completely. By week’s end they would leave its smoking wreckage in their past and move on to new lives and new locations. The chancellor appeared un-announced at the frat house once or twice but everyone knew that, for the seniors, his rule had ended.

  Spring was an exodus. Caliph washed, got dressed and went outside.

  A venerable building crouched at the edge of the lake, poised in the shade like a giant toad, ready to either jump into the water or fall apart at any moment. Caliph went inside, unlocked the musty box with his number and found two letters, one from his father, the other in a familiar boyish cursive that made his stomach feel like it was falling. He opened the first.

  Tarsh 4, Day of the Sowing

  Caliph,

  I got word of your success at school today but the Council says you plan to stay another semester. Don’t do it. Come home. There’s turmoil near Clefthollow. Unfortunately I have men there to lead and will not likely be able to attend your graduation. Such are the responsibilities of serving the Council. I smile when I think that I may soon be serving you.

  —Jacob

  Caliph’s hand crumpled it and released it somewhere near the trash. It was forgotten even before he turned the second letter over for further inspection. He could feel something heavy inside. It wouldn’t be drivel. This letter would require something of him. His stomach fell again. Unable to do anything else, he tore off the corner with a flourish and shook its contents into his palm. A date nearly a month old crabbed the top of the page.

  Mrsh 8, Y.o.T. Falcon

  Caliph,

  Congratulations! I don’t have to tell you that you’re brilliant.

  I have my own place now, not far from Sandren, in the Highlands of Tue. You could be here in a week if you take the steam rail. I enclosed a map. The fact that you did most of my cartography for me is my only excuse.

  I have something to show you. Something that might put our last conversation in a better light. And no, that’s not the only reason I want you to come.

  It gets lonely out here. I bought some things I know you like. I can probably find a use for them if you don’t show up but . . .

  Don’t worry. If you decide against coming—for any reason—I’ll understand and wish you good luck. Hynnsll.

  —Sena

  There was a key, their key, tucked inside a wrecked attempt at a map. To his surprise, the key affected him profoundly like a talisman. He thought of throwing it in the pond.

  At noon he met the rest of the Naked Eight at Grume’s for a drink. Since Roric’s expulsion, Caliph had become their genearch; the one they toasted while skirting the humiliating topic that had forged their fraternity.

  With graduation bearing down, they promised to stay in touch, look each other up; look Caliph up in particular since he would be king. They joked about taking advantage of his featherbeds and the fictitious chambermaids that gave sponge baths.

  Caliph forced a laugh but he had to wonder whether it might be true that they clung to him primarily because of the power he would soon command. He wanted to believe that regardless of his distinction, there was some invisible unbreakable bond between them. They were the Naked Eight. Unfortunately it sounded cheap and mawkish, sincerity that with time would turn into the oldest kind of lie.

  Caliph left Grume’s feeling depressed.

  By Day of Dusk, his isolation was complete.

  He went to the chapel where a heavy brocade of dove-colored stone seemed to shout. Choking-sweet clouds of incense smudged the tierceron vault under which twenty-nine gradu
ates milled as though eight years of school had left them confused.

  Caliph walked in, spotted with jewel-colored light and found Belman Gorn’s eyes watching him.

  “Here for a gown?”

  Caliph felt sheepish. “I opted out of that pomp. I’m staying one more semester. There’s a class on lethargy crucibles: slow power. I couldn’t pass it up.”

  “Engineering?”

  “No. It’s an overview of how they run, but mostly economics. Impact, cost, infrastructure . . . that kind of thing.”

  Belman chuckled. “Let no one say Caliph Howl doesn’t love school. You probably won’t miss much at commencement tonight.”

  Caliph smiled but knew Belman was wrong. Suddenly he understood that this should have been his night. Belman wasn’t giving him advice. Belman wasn’t talking to him like a student anymore. Some miraculous transformation had almost taken place. Caliph imagined all the doors and windows in Desdae being suddenly flung open, releasing him—every part of him—like a startled flock of birds.

  But that didn’t happen.

  Instead, he watched his friends accept their degrees on the lawn. It was different than Sena’s graduation, an evening ceremony with an audience that included no one he knew and the occasional lacewing that fluttered like white fire through the last rays of evening translucence.

  Caliph met the chancellor in the Administration Building on the eleventh. Enthroned behind his desk in a riveted oxblood chair, Darsey looked up from his work through a set of thick, half-moon spectacles to see the clurichaun standing on his desk. He stared at it for several moments; then his eyes flicked to Caliph. He wore a sad expression that Caliph didn’t want defined. “A deal is a deal, is that it?” the chancellor asked.

  He pushed himself back, turned precisely ninety degrees in his chair and drew a roll of vellum from the great brooding bookshelf behind him.

  Caliph didn’t answer. The chancellor opened the document, examined it briefly, re-rolled it and held it out. “I think you’ll find everything in order . . . your majesty.”

  The words struck Caliph in the chest, solidly. He looked at Darsey for a moment, then reached out and took his diploma. “Be careful, Mr. Howl. I doubt the Duchy of Stonehold will be as quiet as the library.”

  Caliph nodded faintly and left the room without a word. After that, he knew he was dead. He could feel it when he went to class. The hollowness. The emptiness of the campus. He had done spring and summer semester every year, but this year was different. This year he had fallen like too-ripe fruit.

  Tarsh to Mam to Myhr to Psh. It was really only two and a half months. The class on lethargy crucibles made three hours of every day tolerable. The rest of the time he found himself coping with ghosts. Everywhere he turned he saw places where someone he used to know had done or said something. Usually that someone was Sena. He carried the key in his pocket like a weight.

  On the fourth of Psh Caliph sat up in bed.

  The cracked sink grimaced at him like a chrome-eyed creature backed against the wall. The place where the plaster had given out; the small pencil marks near his bed where he had written Sena’s name seemed sullen at being left behind.

  A pillar of antiseptic sunlight fell through the window, whitewashing his sheets.

  This morning, the Council was coming.

  Outside, silken banners curled softly in the early summer air, barely moving in a shady breeze from the west.

  Caliph had no energy. The final class had sucked him dry. His husk fell back into bed. Rather than face another day, another hour, he chose the oblivion of sleep.

  Twighlight arrived. Still no Council. Word came by pigeon that there had been a storm, heavy snow and wind that prevented any navigation of the narrow crack through the Healean Range.

  Caliph couldn’t breathe. He paced, watched the sun choke on sky as thick and bright as peach jelly. He walked to Karthl Hall and found Nihc Pag smoking in the shadows of the pitted front steps.

  Nihc was a Pandragon but had lost most of his accent during eight years of school. He had gone through graduation and stayed for spring. Unlike Caliph, he had good reason. A two-focus degree in bioscience and exotic ecologies demanded additional time in the labs of the Woodmarsh Building. Soon, he too would vanish.

  “Hey, Caph.”

  Caliph sat down. Nihc stubbed his smoke against the wall and joined him. The sun was totally gone. Naobi had crawled out of the glutinous shadows like a white beetle that had been feeding on the day. She was in her waning half-phase: slender, livid and cadaverous. From the steps they could see the lake. Blue fireflies flickered sporadically, casting double images in the water, occasionally vanishing forever in the mouth of a leaping fish.

  They said nothing for a long time. The splishing fish and the leaves that pitched and moaned around Desdae’s blackened gables were enough to keep the silence comfortable.

  Finally Nihc made the first real effort at conversation. “Thought you were leaving today.”

  Caliph envisioned the Council, the uniforms, the offices waiting for him in Stonehold. “Yeah. I am.”

  Nihc plucked a killimore weed from beside the step and chewed it. “Not much of today left.”

  “There’s enough. What about you?”

  Nihc spat. “Headed out next week. Down south. Something lined up for me in the Empire, Pandragonian, of course. I wouldn’t serve Iycestoke if it killed me.”

  “Really? What’ll you be doing?”

  “There’s hunters in Pandragor that go out and trap all kinds of things so they can entertain the Emperor—or so they’ve got something to feed criminals to.”

  Caliph mused sardonically, “Must cut long-term prison costs.”

  Nihc shrugged. “I’m not a politician. I’m just going to advise the hunters on care and feeding. Think of it! Catch me a hlohtian ground sloth or a sintrosa—one of them ax-beaks, you know? Or—biggest damn thing to walk on four legs—a norkocis!”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  Caliph glanced beyond the library at the dark shadows of the north woods. “I got a letter from Sena back in Tarsh. I think I’m going to see her.”

  Nihc stood up, indicating that good-byes would soon be in order. “Must be excited. Over half the campus was in love with her.”

  Caliph yawned and rubbed his eyes.

  “She’s different.” He doubted love was the word Nihc should have used.

  “Nobody could understand how you two never got caught . . . you know . . . together.”

  Caliph pulled the key from his pocket and clenched it until its teeth bit into his palm.

  “Anyway,” said Nihc. “If I was you, I’d be glad. A girl like that you hold on to.”

  The Council arrived at the High College the following morning. Two official representatives touched down in a zeppelin bristling with armed men and women. Caliph imagined them scouring the town, the buildings and the forest to the north, thinking immediately of abduction, ransom, assassination. It would never occur to any of them that the rational, notoriously reclusive heir might simply walk away.

  He had left shortly after wishing Nihc Pag good luck, used a black cotton shirt to cover his escape and crawled through the attic of Nasril Hall. From there, he’d gotten onto the roof and into the branches of a danson whose limbs tore savagely at the shingles every time there was a storm.

  Down the trunk and through the shadow-painted lawn, behind the lilacs and south along the pond.

  He’d gone between the chapel and the mill, feeling giddy, and crossed the stream connecting the tiny lake and Ilnfarne-lascue to the cattail marshes southeast of the village.

  At the fork a quarter mile down Grey Road he had headed through the village, passing Mim’s Grocer, the Whippoorwill and Grume’s Café.

  By morning, Caliph had left the High College of Desdae far behind. He was free.

  A tractor headed for South Oast passed him, flappered stack retching a mixture of blackness and motes of colored light. It lurched over the hill like a sick tip
pler and disappeared.

  Caliph glanced at his compass and kept on. He traveled marshland to canebrake, canebrake to holt; over smooth drumlins left from Kjnardag’s glacial reign. He saw the world as a series of textbook illustrations.

  He crossed geography he had learned in class, the Grey River by thirteen o’clock on his second day while dusk piled clouds like blue ashes on a white marble floor.

  An old stone barn with an empty loft served as a hostel for the night. In the morning he ate some of his provisions and headed west.

  The third day put him through a wide forest of danson trees and planted him on the steam rail platform at Maiden Heart. He had enough money for a ticket to Crow’s Eye, which he bought at a window fitted with brown iron bars and a bizarre perforated funnel on a flexile pipe for speaking to the hidden seller inside.

  The platform was ugly and myriad. Horses in strange barding lashed the air with their complex tails. Chickens hacked into millet bags with sawtooth beaks and forked tongues. Their bloodred eyes glared ferociously at children who stepped too close. Hairless purple dogs pulled two amputees in a pair of rolling midget thrones. Flowered hats, pipe smoke, stale booze and shit of all kinds stunk together on the platform. Bodies pressed into queues like hülilyddite waiting to explode. There were scuffles. Eventually men in uniform started getting the animals sorted.

  Steam and sound shrieked from whistles and pistons as Caliph handed a thin man his ticket and climbed aboard. Inside, the air was so close it felt infected. One couple kissed obliviously despite their proximity to a woman shaped like piled trash and a reading man who snorted every thirty seconds.

  The Vaubacour Line ran west to Woonsocket and from there to Miryhr or south a thousand miles into the Theocracy of the Stargazers.

  Sena’s map would be of no use until he reached the Highlands of Tue. It showed only a small section of country and did even that poorly.

  Caliph found room as the engines screamed. He sank into a red leather seat whose springs and stuffing erupted like fungi. Maybe I want to get lost, he thought. Maybe I want to get lost and I’m never coming back.