Tell the Story to Its End

by Simon P. Clark

‘Maybe. But now there’s a wheelchair ramp. Swings and roundabouts, eh? ’Mazing.’

  Behind the reception desk, with a smart, white computer screen pointing up at her, an older lady was typing, grey-streaked hair pulled back into a bun, a huge, soft-looking cardigan pulled high up to her neck. She smiled at us and looked back down at whatever she was writing. ‘So,’ said Em, letting the word trail off. ‘Where shall we start?’

  I walked over to the librarian. Why be shy? I figured. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘I was wondering … I’m doing some research on stories. Like, the ideas behind them, what they mean to people. I wondered, do you know any books about that? Like, writing, maybe. About telling stories.’

  She looked at me with expressionless eyes for just a few seconds, searching for something. Her gaze flicked up to Em. ‘Nothing more specific, dear?’

  ‘You mean, like, quotes from authors?’ said Em.

  ‘Maybe. Their thoughts about stories,’ I said. ‘Storytelling.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the librarian, her gentle smile returning. ‘I can do that – that’s my domain! Here, follow me, I actually have just the thing…’

  She shuffled out from behind the desk and called us over to a bright paper display propped up against a wall. WRITERS ON WRITING, it said in cut-out sugar paper, with black-and-white photocopies of old, grizzly men, young smiling women, and all sorts of other faces stuck on around it.

  ‘Here, have a read,’ she said, pointing to a piece of text typed in deep black letters.

  The universe is made of stories, not of atoms

  Muriel Rukeyser

  The librarian sighed happily and pointed to another.

  To be a person is to have a story to tell

  Isak Dinesen

  ‘They’re collected from all around,’ she said, ‘and I can point you to a few of the books themselves, if you’d like. Ah, how about this one? “The truth is in the tale. The world is in the words.”’ She read in a soft, distant voice that made me think, somehow, of rain falling on a garden.

  ‘Beautiful,’ said Em quietly. We were alone in the library, the three of us, but we were talking as if there were others to disturb. Ghosts, perhaps, I thought.

  ‘Yes,’ said the librarian, ‘wonderful sentiments, aren’t they? So many people write books just so they can understand the things that happen in real life.’

  ‘And it works?’ I asked.

  She looked down at me curiously. ‘It’s not quite so simple, I think. The world turns, and there are new horrors and terrors every day. But it’s like … like there is something deeper, something truer, going on. And if we can just tell the right story, we might all work it out. Poets and writers have tried for thousands of years to capture in words that spark of humanity that makes us what we are.’

  Em pointed to another of the printouts.

  The shortest distance between a human being and Truth is a story

  Anthony de Mello

  ‘Is that what you mean?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said the librarian. ‘I suppose it is. But what did you want to know, specifically?’ she asked me. I thought hard, staring at the display in front of me.

  ‘What does it mean, all this?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite follow…’ said the librarian.

  I sighed, feeling them both watching me. ‘I have a friend,’ I said, ‘who likes stories, a lot. I think he needs them more than anything else. And I wanted to find out what that meant – to only want stories, nothing more.’

  ‘Ah, a bookworm!’ said the librarian, moving slightly away, keeping an eye on the desk and the entrance. ‘Oh yes, oh yes – there’s always another story to explore!’

  ‘What friend?’ asked Em. ‘Back home?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You tell your friend from me,’ said the librarian, ‘that there’s no need to worry about the books running out. As long as there’s people, there’s tales. Always has been, and touch wood, always will be!’

  She walked back to her desk to sort through some papers, the sound of her flat shoes slapping on the floor. ‘You’re a weird one,’ said Em. ‘What friend is this, who needs stories? Sounds barmy to me.’

  ‘Maybe it’s like an addiction,’ I said. ‘Some people need attention, don’t they? Some people drink. Maybe it could be like that, for a good story.’

  Em sucked at her lip.

  Raindrops started hitting the windows high above us, slowly filling the room with noise. Em clicked her tongue and asked if she should call her dad to pick us up. ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘we can wait here, right?’

  ‘Payphone’s just over there, I’ll be right back.’ Left alone, I looked up at the surly faces of the writers again, reading their thoughts and one-liners, and tried to understand. What was Eren doing? What did he want me to know?

  * * *

  The ride back home was awkward and strange. Em’s dad didn’t seem to like me, Em didn’t want to talk, and we all sat silently as he drove. At my house, he stopped near the kerb. The rain was still falling, grey and dull, and I pushed open the car door ready to run for the porch.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘For this.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Em. She smiled. Her dad was staring ahead, both hands gripping the wheel.

  ‘Thanks, again’ I said.

  He craned his head round to look at me and nodded, just once. ‘Sure,’ he said.

  Em shook her head and glared at him. ‘Bye,’ she whispered. I shut the door and stood back, letting the car pull away.

  * * *

  I went in, dripping, kicked off my shoes and climbed the stairs. Nobody else was home. I wondered, briefly, where Mum was. ‘Eren!’ I called before I was even in my room. He could hear everything in the house, even if he wouldn’t leave that attic. ‘Eren!’ I shouted. I was angry and my voice came in deep, short bursts. In the air around me something shivered, like heat haze, or falling dust. I yanked at the ladder and didn’t care when it crashed down noisily, hitting the floor with a bang. A tiny, distant chuckle sounded in the chimney. ‘Eren, now!’ I shouted again, and climbed up. He stood close to the hatch, staring down at me with a calm, fixed smile.

  ‘You’d be better watching your manners,’ he said, simply. I was panting slightly as I stood up and looked into his eyes.

  ‘That cat,’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What was … how did you…?’

  ‘Your friend Em told a lovely tale. It’s a truth that’s been twisted to magic. The best kind.’

  ‘You can do stuff like that?’

  ‘Make the cat real? Is that what you think happened?’

  I hesitated, trying to understand. Everything he said sounded too certain, too complete. He smiled at me, then grinned, and sat down, patting the floor.

  ‘I wanted to show you a wonder. Didn’t you enjoy it?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘He was for you alone, boy. A gift, from me. Wasn’t it nice? Fun? A talking cat! How many others could know what that’s like?’

  ‘You made him,’ I said.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘He was a story and—’

  ‘Is a story,’ said Eren, raising a finger. ‘Is a story. They don’t end, poppet.’

  ‘But he’s a story, and you made him.’

  Eren nodded, closing his eyes, smiling smugly. ‘Links and threads,’ he said. ‘Words and worlds.’

  ‘So he was real?’

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Eren, ‘that you are more than naturally bothered by what is real and what is not.’

  I closed my eye, sighed. I thought about my dad, about where he was, about him not being here with me.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked, exhausted. I sat down next to him, the rustle of his wings making my skin shiver. ‘I should tell Mum and Uncle Rob, I should—’

  ‘No,’ he said. I nodded. He was right.

  ‘You could do one thing for me, however.’

  ‘What?’ I aske
d, almost in tears. Something was wrong, I knew; something was terrible, but it itched in my mind without ever becoming a solid thought. Everything Eren said seemed too important to miss.

  ‘That book of local stories. The one your friends were blabbing about. I want it.’

  ‘Go and get it, then.’

  ‘Manners, Oli,’ he growled, so low the air seemed to move as he did. I nodded again. ‘Why would I go and get it myself, when you could go and get it for me?’

  A tiny half-thought tugged at my mind, but Eren leaned over and pressed one finger to my temple. ‘Do it for me, eh?’

  ‘I just want to know what you are,’ I said in a whisper. He looked at me with pity and patience, a teacher struggling with a slow student.

  ‘Quite right, too,’ he said, and twitched his head towards the ladder. I stood up to leave when he stopped me with an outstretched arm.

  ‘I’m growing, you know. First the dreams, then the whispers, then the sights and the sounds. Oh, the things I can do when I’m strong, child! You’ll get to see such wonders.’

  ‘Are you real?’ I said. My mouth was dry. Eren raised his eyebrows and laughed.

  ‘Think you’re mad, do you? You made me up? I don’t think so. Here,’ he said, moving forwards, ‘how much proof do you want?’

  He raised one talon, its sharp point glinting in the thin light, and he pulled it across my cheek. I cried out, backing away, a cold-hot pain bursting up where he’d touched me.

  ‘Real enough for you?’ he growled. He spat on the floor, shook himself.

  ‘Kids,’ he said. He turned his back on me.

  ‘That hurt!’ I said, holding my cheek. I could feel a thin line of blood.

  ‘Truth hurts, don’t it?’ shouted Eren. ‘Am I real, indeed? Boy, I am older than everything you could dream of! I am the very essence of stories and you and all your human world are nothing but mist, nothing but vapour, as far as I’m concerned!’

  I clenched my jaw, my fist. ‘You say that,’ I said in a quiet, steady voice. ‘But you need me, don’t you? You keep on needing me, and the others, to tell you stories!’

  Eren turned, very slowly, and his eyes flashed a dangerous red. Something made me step back again. The hair stood up on my neck. I was facing something truly, truly bad. I made myself breathe slowly and stared right back.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ I said. ‘You do need me.’

  ‘You,’ said Eren, ‘are so interesting.’

  ‘You what?’

  He cocked his head. ‘You’re so special, Oli. So different. Maybe it’s truth that I need you! But did you think that I waited for you?’

  I stood my ground, watching his eyes, his feet, his shuffling wings.

  ‘There’s darkness and power in you, child,’ he said, ‘that call to me like blood in the night. You think you’re the only one in this world? Pah! I could hear stories every day for a thousand years if I wished it. Your friend, Emma! Isn’t she fine? Doesn’t she know such lovely things? But you’re better, Oli. You have something rarer. You’ve got heart. You’ve got darkness.’

  My cheek stung. I touched my fingers to it.

  ‘Don’t ever doubt me,’ said Eren. ‘Don’t ever think you can wish me away by pretending I’m not real.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Em’s stories?’ I said.

  Eren shook his head. ‘Nothing! Stories are good. Nothing wrong with her, either. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it’s the things that are wrong that I need. You have that, boy. That magic. That truth. Now,’ he said, ‘enough prattle. Enough breath. Tell me a true thing. Tell me a story. Your choice – but tell me something good.’

  I blinked, tried to argue, opened my mouth, but something stopped me. If that was what he wanted, I’d show him. I’d show him how good I could be.

  ‘There … there was a girl,’ I said, ‘who was searching for a baker. Every day she rode around, trying to find this one man, ’cause she had heard that he knew a secret. He was a baker for money, but a magician for power, and people said that he had found a way of contacting faeries. The girl only knew two things – that the man was a baker, and that he was her father. It had taken her all her life just to find out that much, but now she was hunting for him, just to know his name, just to see him. One by one she worked her way through all the bakers in a town, and then she moved on. The town she came to next, she thought, might be the one, so she’d never stop until she found him. One day, she was in a new town, to find the next baker on her list. The air in the bakery smelled like it always did – nothing special to her well-accustomed nose. Though the other customers were drooling, the girl had been in a hundred shops before that one, and she was immune, by now, to the temptations of fresh bread or perfect pastries.’

  ‘This,’ said Eren, ‘is not something I ever worry about. You people have weird ideas of hunger.’

  ‘The girl went to the counter, and asked to meet the master baker. It was always quite easy to get just a quick word, using her pretty looks, or a sad story – or even a lie, if she had to. Finding her dad made it seem OK to bend the rules a bit. In this bakery, the girl asked just to talk to him, and like in so many other places, the staff said it shouldn’t be a problem – he was always happy when he baked, and a pretty girl could only improve that. Sure, they said, just through this door, but don’t disturb him too much! Lunch orders had to be made. The girl went in to the kitchen, where a man was busy kneading bread. He wore a big white hat, with flour all over his chest, the usual. The girl decided to be blunt. “Excuse me,” she said. He turned around and smiled, waiting to hear what she had to say. “I’m looking for a man who knows the faeries. Is it you?”’

  ‘Direct, indeed,’ said Eren, but he lay back and kept listening. He seemed to enjoy it. I smiled.

  ‘The man’s face turned into a frown. “I’ll have none of that monkey business in here, please,” he said. “If you’re selling potions, be off. It’s an honest business, here.”

  ‘The girl nodded and apologised, and turned around to leave. The baker frowned again and opened his oven to pull out the rolls. The girl froze, stopped dead in her tracks, and stared at him. “What is that smell?” she asked. “It’s amazing. Like heaven, like every perfect meal I remember as a child, like liquid gold. I’ve been in every bakery north of this place, and never … never … it’s out of this world! It’s…”

  ‘She stopped. When she had said those last words, the baker’s face had turned sour and dark. “Go on,” he said, holding a large rolling pin in his hands, and he looked at the girl very strangely.

  ‘“You … you cook bread beyond anything this side of dreams…” she said. “That bread has been cooked with spices from beyond our world. You are him who speaks to faeries. You’re the magician.”’

  Eren was watching me with a cold, animal hunger. If he had licked his chops I wouldn’t have been surprised. As I stopped talking, he only raised his head, just slightly, like an old man being roused from a nap. ‘That’s not the end,’ he said, no question in his voice, just a distant, icy certainty.

  ‘I can tell you the rest later,’ I said.

  ‘Oh? Hmm? What’s that? Are you out of ideas?’

  ‘I don’t want to tell you any more now. I’m going downstairs.’

  There was a cold, vicious fury in his words as he spoke next, something ancient and terrible and deathly. ‘Maybe I will tell you a story, child, about the boy who played with fire, and then tried to run away. I could tell you how he burned.’

  ‘Please—’

  ‘Go, then. But come back. And I want that book, too, the book from that society. Bring it, hmm?’

  His face seemed to warp then, pulsing and distorting until he looked almost, just barely, like a cat, purple-black fur and sly slits of eyes.

  ‘Let’s see how thin the curtains are, shall we?’ he said, with a lick.

  Oily smoke again, thick and heavy, and then nothing. I was alone in the loft, my whole chest beating, thu-thump, thu-thump, as my heart raced and ra
ced.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘It’s all so good,’ says Eren.

  ‘Hmm?’ I feel so dazed. I can’t tell if I’m sleeping, if I’m dozing off, if I was ever paying attention. Only when Eren wants me listening, I think. That’s the only time I’m wide awake.

  ‘It’s all so good,’ he says again. ‘You’ve got a knack. A skill. You’re a natural! Well … you’re getting there, with my help.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I mutter. A stupid, thick-lipped thing to say. I’m not thankful. I don’t feel anything. ‘A dullness,’ I say, out loud.

  ‘Yes,’ he says slowly. ‘It’s to be expected. Now! Let’s just check. Do you know what a lie is?’

  Oh, this again. It doesn’t ever bore him.

  ‘A lie is something that hasn’t happened.’

  ‘And when did it not happen?’

  ‘Just the once.’

  ‘And what,’ he says, dark voice, dark eyes, dark shadow in my mind, ‘is a story?’

  ‘Oh, it’s everything,’ I say, exhausted. I could cry, if I had that much strength.

  ‘Go on, go on.’

  ‘They’re the truths that didn’t have time to happen,’ I say. His eyes are wide amber moons in the dusk.

  ‘You might have got it…!’ he says, and there’s actually a note of awe in his voice. He’s impressed. ‘You might have actually got it. Which means, of course, that I am truly winning.’

  I smile, then forget why I’m smiling, so I stop. On and on and on. The moon passes across the sky.

  I WANTED TO tell someone. Anyone. Mum, Uncle Rob, Bekah, or Em, or Takeru. But I couldn’t. I hadn’t thought about this, it wasn’t something I had worked out was true, like a maths problem or an essay or a riddle. It was something deep and obvious and natural, that I could never tell anyone about Eren, that I could never give a reason not to sleep in the house, in that room …

  That night I dreamed again, dreams of a lime-green forest. The trees were tall, silver bark pulled tight across the trunks and ripping like clothes that are too small. The leaves were small and sharp, pointed little streaks of pale green, mint green, and all other greens, making up the sky. The air was yellow with the power of those branches. I walked along a path, or what might have been a path, or the idea of a path. Bracken, brown and coiling, crunched, and something moved underneath. Somewhere behind me laughter rang out. I span around. Nobody was there. I heard it again, high, musical, hard to place. Leaves as bright as tropical frogs danced on a breeze as I searched. Where was it coming from? Somewhere just beyond. Just a little further …