“Because,” the Cartographer said simply, “you had faith that they would.”
“If it’s a matter of faith,” Jack retorted, “then why wouldn’t the talismans you found, like the Spear of Destiny, allow you passage back to the Archipelago?”
“Oh, I found many other talismans,” the Cartographer said. “A dozen. Dozens. Maybe a hundred. It doesn’t matter. What matters now, as it did then, was the reason that those ‘divine’ objects wouldn’t allow me to pass through the Frontier into another world.”
“Because you didn’t believe,” said Jack. “Because you had no faith that they were, in fact, divine.”
“Exactly, my boy,” the Cartographer said. “I was searching, and acquiring, and trying to use objects that had value, worth, to other people. Not one of those things meant more to me than that. As a means to an end.”
“But if they had …,” Jack began.
“If they had,” the Cartographer finished, “I’d have crossed over easily, no bones about it. If I’d had a belief in just one of those things, I’d have passed.”
“But the sword, Caliburn, was from your world, your gods,” said Jack. “Why couldn’t you use it?”
“For exactly the opposite reason,” the Cartographer said. “I had the belief in it, but I also didn’t think I was worthy. And I refused to test myself to have that fear proven for all to see.
“Well,” he went on, rubbing his hands together, “I’ve enjoyed this, but I really must get back to work. Autunno isn’t going to annotate itself.”
“What are we to do now?” John asked.
The Cartographer blinked. “Abelard is taking Geoffrey to Paralon,” he said, “and I expect you’ll be going home.”
“How do we do that?” asked John. “We used our last means of time travel to get here—and no offense, but it’s far from when we want to be.”
“Don’t you have a talisman of your own?” the Cartographer inquired. “One that can magic up what you need most?”
“Yes,” John replied, “but we’ve all used our turn with the Serendipity Box. It won’t work again.”
“I haven’t,” a voice said, small but firm.
It was Fred.
“I haven’t opened the Serendipity Box,” he repeated. “I’ve thought about it several times but never did. I wanted to wait until it looked as if there really were no other options.”
“Animal logic again,” John said gently, kneeling to look the badger in the eyes. “You may turn out to be the wisest of us all, Fred.”
Jack and Uncas removed the box from the satchel they’d been carrying and handed it to Fred. The little animal didn’t give a preamble speech or make any dramatic gestures, but simply lifted the lid and looked inside.
The box seemed empty at first, until Fred realized that in the corner was a small silver key. He took it out and closed the box.
“It’s the key to your future, I’d imagine,” the Cartographer said.
“Is that a metaphor?” asked John.
“The future. Upstairs—the next door,” the Cartographer replied, exasperated. “That’s the problem with scholars. You always think there are layers and layers to everything, when sometimes, the literal meaning is all you need. It is,” he repeated pointedly, tapping two fingers into his other palm for emphasis, “the key, to, your, future.”
Jack and John both realized it at once. The last door in the Keep. The one always out of reach, because the stairs ended at the Cartographer’s door, while the tower continued to grow.
“Have you ever gone through it?” John asked. “Have you ever gone into the future?”
The Cartographer turned away from them and did not answer for a long, long while. Finally, still facing the wall, he began to reply.
“I have not gone through it myself,” he said quietly, “but it wasn’t for lack of desire or effort. It had opened, just the merest fraction of an inch, just enough for a single look, before it was slammed shut and placed forever out of reach.”
John realized what the Cartographer had left unspoken. “You didn’t get to look through the door, did you?”
“Not I,” the Cartographer said, turning to look at Rose, “but my brother did, and what he saw broke his heart, and he spent the next dozen centuries trying to change what he saw. And he never succeeded, because I spent just as many years trying not to. And I will never be able to erase that shame, or ease the pain I caused him.”
“That was why you were exiled from the Archipelago, wasn’t it?” asked John. “For trying to go into the future.”
“Almost,” came the reply. “I—we—were exiled not for attempting to see the future, but because we wanted to use that knowledge to shape the world to suit our own purposes. That was not permitted then, or now.”
With that, the Cartographer resumed his work, head bowed low to the paper. It was, the companions realized, the end of the conversation.
“Be well, Uncle Merlin,” Rose said, as she and Hugo stepped out the door.
Jack bowed his head. “Farewell, Meridian.”
“Good-bye … Myrddyn,” said John.
“I am the Cartographer now,” he replied, not looking up, “and that is enough. In truth, it always was.”
At the edge of the stairs, the companions found a small keyhole, almost covered over with spiderwebs.
Fred inserted the key into the opening and turned it. There was a small click, then nothing.
Suddenly, as if they were leaves of a plant breaking through soil to sunlight, nubs of stone began to appear along the wall. They pushed outward, groaning and creaking as they grew, until in moments there were several new steps extending from the stairway that ended at a just-appearing platform beneath the last door.
“Lead on, Fred,” said John. “It’s your key, after all.”
Fred and Uncas stepped cautiously up the stairs to the door, which they realized was still standing slightly ajar.
“They never closed it,” Jack murmured.
“We’ll make sure we do, then,” John stated. He pushed it open, and together they moved into the future.
It was dark until John closed the door behind them. Then, just like the door Hugo had gone through, this one disappeared.
They were in the wood, along Addison’s Walk, at precisely the spot where the first door had been. And if there had been any doubts whatsoever that they had been returned to the right place, they vanished when the companions heard the whoops and hollers from the Royal Animal Rescue Squad.
The badgers swarmed off the Howling Improbable, which was exactly where John and Jack had last seen it, at the side of the path, just along the trees.
Jubilantly the badgers embraced Uncas and Fred, and even the humans, including an astonished Hugo and a delighted Rose.
Rising above the trees was the comforting, familiar sight of Magdalen Tower, and beyond that, the buildings of the college itself.
“We’re back,” John said, hugging Jack’s shoulders. “We’re home.”
Jack didn’t answer, but just smiled a small smile and watched the badgers dancing around the clearing.
“Never doubted it for a minute,” said Hugo.
The Royal Animal Rescue Squad departed after promising to give a full report to King Artus. As the principle sped away, John also said that he had to get home right away. He looked exhausted.
“It must be nearly three in the morning,” he said. “This was quite the extraordinary adventure, wasn’t it? Quite the mythopoeia.”
Jack responded to the comment with a half smile. “It’s certainly going to make a grand story,” he said as the four companions walked back to his rooms at the college, “but I don’t think I’ll ever view the myths again in quite the same way.”
“Why is that?” John asked.
“Because,” Jack replied, “I’ve … felt them now. I’ve tasted them. They’ve become more than stories to me. And I’m going to be thinking about all this a long, long while.”
They crossed the quadrangl
e, and Jack unlocked the gate next to Magdalen Bridge. As they said their good-byes to John, Hugo remained a bit longer as they went to Jack’s rooms at the New Building and discussed what would be best to do with Rose.
“There’s a boardinghouse in Reading,” Hugo said. “It’s near the college, and it wouldn’t be any trouble to put her up there as my niece. And Archimedes can stay with me so she can see him every day.”
He wrapped an affectionate arm around Rose, who yawned.
“We’d best be going,” said Hugo. “I’ll call you up tomorrow to let you know all’s well.”
Jack closed the door behind Hugo and sat at his desk. His mind was still racing with the events that must have happened in a single night—and had lasted for a lifetime, it seemed.
Sunrise was still hours away, and there would be plenty of daylight in which he could do what he was considering. But he couldn’t wait. He had to know if they’d made the right choices, if they had done enough. If they had believed enough.
Jack took out a key that opened the hidden drawer where he kept items pertaining to his duties as Caretaker. It contained some documents, a few items of an unusual nature, and a flower, made of parchment.
He removed the Compass Rose, and with a stick of graphite scratched onto one of the leaves the small mark that would summon a Caretaker from the Archipelago. With John nearby in Oxford, and Charles still in Paris, there was only one other person who might respond to this specific summons.
A tapping at the door an hour later woke Jack from where he’d fallen asleep at his desk.
Bert—all of him, both arms, both legs, and a fully attached head—was standing outside the door.
Jack fell back, stumbling, as his mentor rushed into the room.
“Jack, lad, what is it?” Bert asked, his face a mask of concern. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“It—it’s good to see you, Bert,” Jack said, before his voice finally cracked and he collapsed, sobbing, into the old man’s arms. Bert held his friend, not talking, until the sun rose.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Bird and Baby
Utterly unbelievable,” Charles said.
He returned to England from Paris on Monday, and John and Jack arranged for a meeting in Jack’s rooms the following Thursday, so that Charles could come up from London and hear the entire incredible story of what had happened to them.
“Unbelievable,” Charles repeated, pouring himself a second glass of rum. “I can’t decide if I’m more envious that I missed out, or grateful that I didn’t have to go through it all myself.”
“You did experience it, in a manner of speaking,” said John, who was draped comfortably over the back of a chair. “At the end, Chaz had become very much like you.”
“That’s fascinating,” Charles said. “I’ve been theorizing about the possibility that different worlds, different dimensions, do in fact exist. Changing the timeline is exactly the kind of method that could be used to travel to those other dimensions.”
“Thanks anyway,” said Jack, “but I think I like this dimension just fine.”
“But don’t you see?” Charles exclaimed. “You aren’t in the same dimension you started from.”
Jack sat upright. “What are you talking about, Charles?”
“You may have prevented the Winterland,” Charles said matter-of-factly, “but you did in fact alter the past, and with that change, you affected everything that followed.
“All we knew of the original Green Knight was that he was a Crusader,” Charles explained, “but in taking Chaz back, who was from a present that wasn’t your own, you inserted a new element into a past that was. You also ensured Arthur’s rule—but it came about thirty years later than you say it happened in our Histories.”
“You can check that for yourself,” said John.
“I have,” replied Charles, “and the events happened as you told me they did, after your trip. But that’s not how I remember reading about them before.”
“You’re remembering incorrectly, then.”
“No,” Charles said. “I just remember it differently.”
“This is all making my skull hurt,” said John. “All this talk of multiple dimensions and whatnot. Are you saying you’re not, in fact, ‘our’ Charles?”
“I’m saying,” he replied patiently, “that there are an infinite number of worlds, with an infinite number of each of us in them. There are worlds where we never met. There are worlds where we never became Caretakers. And there are worlds where we might have been lesser men than we are. It may even be possible for the traits of a man in one world to be passed to his twin in another, and vice versa. That might account for Chaz’s ability to learn languages so swiftly. He wasn’t learning so much as drawing on the abilities I already have.”
“Does that mean you might start assimilating Chaz’s mannerisms?” asked Jack. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”
“I like to think,” Charles replied, “I have hope, that in all of those worlds, there would remain in each of us the potential to choose to better ourselves. And isn’t knowing that, believing in that, the most important thing?”
John nodded and raised his glass. “To Chaz.”
Jack and Charles raised their glasses too. “To Chaz.”
“I’d still like to find out,” Charles said as he drained his glass, “who sent this to me and started everything.”
He moved over to Jack’s table, where the Grail book lay, and traced the image on the cover with his fingers. “It’s a shock discovering what the true Histories are,” he said wryly, “but at the same time, it’s comforting to know that fictionalizing our adventures didn’t just begin with Bert.”
“Geoffrey was quite the tall-tale teller,” said Jack. “You’d have had a wonderful time exchanging Grail lies, I’m sure.”
“Yes, but Bert did it out of necessity, to protect the Archipelago,” said Charles. “Geoffrey seems to have done it just for a lark.”
“Speaking of Bert,” John said as he checked the time on his watch, “we’d best be hurrying along if we’re to be on time meeting with him and Hugo and Rose at the tavern.”
“That’s right.” Jack got to his feet and grabbed his coat. “It’s at that new place that Bert discovered, isn’t it? What was the name again?” he said, scratching his head. “The Eagle and Child?”
“That’s the real name,” Charles said as he closed the door behind them. “But everyone who’s a regular there just calls it the Bird and Baby.”
The fog had settled thickly around Oxford, hanging low and dense in the air. Usually that meant there would be weather—but on this particular Thursday, the Caretakers knew it meant someone needed cover to land an airship.
“I have to say,” Jack commented, “the White Dragon being an airship instead of a sailing vessel makes it a hell of a lot more versatile. I wonder if any of the other Dragonships would be amenable to making the conversion?”
“I think Ordo Maas went along with Bert’s suggestion just to give him a countermeasure to the Indigo Dragon,” John said, wincing at having mentioned their long-missing stolen ship as he checked his watch again.
“You really like that thing, don’t you?” said Charles. “What did Pris say when you told her you’d lost the other one?”
“She started to get upset,” John answered, “but I managed to distract her by telling her a story from the new book. She loves the parts with the elves.”
“Oh no,” a familiar voice moaned. “Not elves. Give me anything but elves!”
“Well met, Hugo,” John called as the professor and his adopted niece rounded the corner in front of them. “Hello, Rose.”
“Hello, Uncle John,” Rose said, kissing him on the cheek. “Hello, Uncle Jack.”
“Oh my stars and garters,” declared Charles, stunned. “You must be Rose.”
“Hello, Uncle Chaz,” Rose said as she kissed him.
Charles touched his cheek and blushed. “I, ah, I’m not
Chaz, you know.”
“It’s hard to tell,” she said, looking at him appraisingly. “I only met him once, but he is the reason I could come here. In many ways, he was you, and I think, in all the best ways, you are him. I think he was the bravest knight I’ve ever known.”
“So are you an apprentice Caretaker now, Hugo?” Charles asked, trying to change the subject before he blushed again. “Now that you know where all the bodies are buried, so to speak.”
Hugo frowned, then raised his eyebrows. “I rather expect I am, at that,” he said. “Do I get some sort of certificate or something?”
“Maybe we’ll get you a dragon watch,” John said, “as long as it’s exactly like the one Verne left for me.”
“What does it do?” asked Hugo.
“It tells me the time,” John replied, “and nothing else.”
“Oh, drat,” said Hugo.
At the tavern, Hugo and Rose went inside to secure a table in a private room, where the group could talk relatively undisturbed, while the Caretakers went to the back to retrieve the last member of the party.
They waited only a few seconds before the rope ladder dropped down from the ship hidden somewhere above in the fog. “Dratted ladders,” Bert grumbled as he climbed down from the very patient White Dragon. “We can build a ship that flies but can’t manage a way to get off it that doesn’t involve self-strangulation.”
“We’re already a bit late,” said John, “but we can spare a few minutes to unwind you, I think.”
“Remember,” Bert noted, half upside down, “in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. Chaucer said that, I think.”
The companions laughed and helped their mentor untangle himself from the ropes. Jack was rather less animated than the others and acted as if he didn’t want to miss a second of conversation with the Far Traveler, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and marching him to the door of the tavern. Bert went in first, and Jack held the door for the others.
“Chaucer?” said John quizzically. “He must be mistaken. I’ve never read that quote.”
“You know,” Charles said to John, holding him back at the door, “it used to really intimidate me how frequently Bert could quote even the most obscure lines from great works of literature.”
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