The Forgotten Tale

by J. M. Frey

  “And sha-arp,” I say instead, as a warning. His free hand, which had been inching upward, drops to curl around his mug instead. He turns to face me.

  “Where did we go wrong?” he asks, voice low and, for the first time, not filled with conceited self-importance. He sounds small. Sad. “We started off fine. Didn’t we?”

  I have no answer for him. I very much want to say: “We did not,” or “You are too much like Algar Turn,” or “It terrifies me down to the smallest atom to be in the presence of my creator,” or even “You are an arrogant elfcock and I wish very much that you would go throw yourself into the jaws of a kraken,” or, lastly, “You embody everything that is abhorrent about my brother.” But I cannot say that to him. Not after I have asked for his help.

  Instead I take the coward’s way and gesture to the list of books I have taped to the wall. “What is your opinion of this?” I have had to write several more titles in red during the seventeen hours between my calling Reed and his arrival.

  Reed sets down his tea on my desk—beside the coaster, not on it! He is just as boorish as Kintyre!—and steps closer, eyes narrowed. When he steps back, his eyes widen in shock, and I am glad that the tea is no longer in his hands, because he surely would have dropped it.

  “These are . . .” he begins, and then seems to lose his words. “I thought—”

  His reaction is both a relief, for it means it is not just me, and impossibly infuriating. Because if it is not just me, then what is happening?

  “You are not the only one who has noticed,” I say softly, reassuringly. For a strange, sideways moment, I feel almost paternalistic, worrying that he is taking this news badly and is about to take a turn. Reed flaps his mouth shut and gropes his way to my chair. He sits blindly, eyes stuck on the papers, and manages to both find and bring his tea to his mouth without looking or spilling, which is a point I must count in his favor. “Perhaps . . . have you spoken to other authors?”

  Reed shakes his head, then nods, then shakes his head again. His white hair flies around his ears in small clouds of wisps. I wait for him to elaborate, and instead, he just takes another scalding drink. Finally, red-faced and coughing, he says:

  “No one else remembered. I was at a convention last week, and I just . . . casually mentioned Cinderella—”

  “No one understood the r-reference, I ta-take it?”

  “Not one.”

  “Shoes, rings . . . magic lands,” I say, pointing at the red titles with my own free hand.

  “Fantasy.” Reed gulps.

  “This is both satisfying and terrifying to hear,” I admit. “I had asked you here to evaluate my mind, to decipher if I was . . .” The words stop up in my throat, suddenly clumping together in a sticky mass. “Be-beginning to dis-disintegrate.”

  Reed swings his gaze up to me, eyes wide with shock and concern. I had thought that if I made my confession casually, the fear would not . . . would not. . . . Ah, but it has, and I will not give in to the childish urge to punch the wall.

  “But perhaps we have stumbled upon another answer,” I say, turning away from the damnable fear I see in Reed’s eyes. Not for me; surely not for me. He doesn’t even know me.

  An answer, I tell myself. Focus on this other answer. Though what it may be, I cannot even guess yet. Only I, my creator, and my daughter remain unaffected. So what could the connection be, beyond the obvious? If it even is something beyond the obvious.

  With no data, I feel as if I am thinking myself into helpless, irritating circles.

  Eventually, Reed’s shock dissolves enough for him to say: “You . . . disintegrate? What?”

  I set down my tea and cross my arms over my chest. It is a defensive gesture, but I cannot help it. His genuine surprise unsettles me. I do not know how to handle it. I did not expect Reed to . . . genuinely care as much as he apparently does. Which, in itself, is an idiotic assumption, because why else has he been pestering but because he cares?

  I do not like being made to feel an idiot, and my defensiveness deepens.

  “I noticed the stories starting to disappear shortly after Solsticetide,” I say brusquely, hiding my annoyance behind my mug. “Thus far, I have not been able to account for it. They are not on the Internet, nor in libraries or in video rental shops. They are not on Netflix, nor any of the many social media sites. It is like they simply ceased to be. At first, I feared that it was my own mind that harbored the problem . . .” I have to take another moment to unstick my confession from my throat. “F-for this realm is entirely de-devoid of magic and Words. But then I realized that Alis remembered some of the books too. She asked for The Wizard of Oz.”

  “Toto,” Alis adds, obligingly and with great gravitas. She pets Library’s head gently, running her little fingernails through his matted mane. “‘Ook.”

  “Yes, sweeting,” I say to her. “The Toto book.” I turn back to Reed. “But if it wasn’t my memories, and it wasn’t this realm, then I decided that I must speak to you.”

  “But what would I possibly know about this?” Reed asks, voice thready with dawning horror.

  “If it was something to do with me, I thought you might know what. If it was to do with this realm, I thought you may be in the position to explain it to me. And if it was something to do with . . . with my presence here—” I swallow hard against the new clump trying to form. My heart is fluttering against my ribs. “Th-then perhaps you may kn-know of it. Per-perhaps you might have gotten wi-wi-wind of it f-f-first.”

  “And if it’s none of those things?” Reed asks. He has gone still. Not like a predator, waiting for his opportunity to pounce, nor like prey tense and listening, but like all the life in him has utterly stilled; like every cell has paused while he struggles to decipher what could be happening.

  “The-then, if I am honestly a threat to this realm,” I say, and my voice is cracking, the backs of my eyes burning, the lump in my throat now so large that I can scarce take a breath around it. I long to go over to Alis and scoop her into my arms, bury my face in her neck, banish my creator, and weep. But I must say it. I must speak it out loud: “If the barriers are collapsing, if something is making all the other realms of fantasy literature disintegrate because of the actions I took to cross into this realm, if it is my fault, then I thought that you . . . you could . . . you w-would be able t-t-to wr-wri-wrii—”

  I can’t say it.

  Forsyth Turn, spymaster and coward. I can’t say it.

  It takes a moment for him to grasp what it is that I mean to communicate, to request. But when he does, he gulps and whispers: “Would be able to write you back into Hain?”

  Oh, how shameful.

  That I could not even beg this boon for myself. Instead, I can only nod miserably.

  Of course, I have no desire to leave my wife and return to the world of fiction from whence I was birthed. I have even less desire to leave behind our child—or, more terrible still, be forced to bring her with me, leaving Pip with empty arms and an empty home. But the most terrible of all would be to force Pip to watch me die.

  I expected to die here, of course; I am aging. The scar that Bootknife left on my cheek is a thin, white diagonal line. It is pointing, it seems, directly at the first small cluster of white hairs that have started to appear at my temples like Starflowers in a meadow. I am thirty years old now. In my world, I would have been considered very much middle-aged. But here, I’ve barely scraped past a third of my life expectancy. I’m not certain if the genetics—if I can be said to have genetics—and the nutrition of my former existence will play out in a negative way in this realm, but here, I at least have access to foods and medicines I had never even dreamt of in Turnshire.

  So I expected, yes, to die as an old man: wrinkled and loved and surrounded, I had hoped, with grandchildren. Not at thirty years old and crumbling from the inside out, while my wife clutched my hand and sobbed. I would much rather return to my world, never to see her again, than put her through that.

  While I am wall
owing in my misery, Reed stands. He looks as if he is about to embrace me. And that, perhaps, is one step too far, even for me. Instead of allowing it, I brush past him and scoop up Alis instead. Hugs I want, yes, but not my Writer’s.

  Reed clears his throat and has the decency, at least, to turn his attention to the list on the wall while I pull myself back together. Alis drops Library and pats my face slowly, clearly affected by my melancholy mood. Her repeated “Daa daa”s are gentle and quiet.

  When I am prepared to face my maker again, my breathing is even and my tongue sits still in my mouth, my eyes dry. I set Alis against my hip. Reed clears his throat and gestures to the list, pretending that he is not trying to stare at her from the corner of his eye.

  “So, there’s three of us, that we know of, who remember what’s missing. Clearly we’re . . . connected.” He doesn’t say family, which I appreciate. “And I honestly have no idea if any other authors have ever met their own, ah, characters, or I’d ask them.”

  “Let us assume that they have not,” I say, pleased that the sentence has come out without the terrible stutter that only seems to plague me these days when I am around Reed, or when I am dismayed by upsetting my wife, or when I must use a phone. “So, what else is unique about your world? What sets it apart? What might . . . have made this a possibility?”

  “Everyone’s got elves, and dwarves, and fairies . . .” Reed muses. He scratches his chin through his beard, thinking, eyes flicking as he does his mental comparisons between tomes I cannot see. “Some of the magic, I guess?” he hazards after a moment.

  “Words?” I ask.

  He brightens, sitting up straighter, eyes alight. “Yeah,” he says. “Words. No one else uses Words.”

  “And Deal-Makers?” I ask. “Is it possible that the magic of the world you created was unique in that it is only there that Deal-Maker Spirits exist. Yes? Unless . . . ?”

  Reed puffs up, his belly thrusting out when, I’m sure, he meant for it to be his chest. “I didn’t steal that idea from anyone,” he says. Then he deflates a little. “Though, it’s sort of based on the idea of the genie.”

  “Ah, but djinn must grant wishes,” I say, the frustrated circles spinning in my brain, the twisted paths of serpentine logic that have refused to shake out suddenly slowing, becoming clear and straight. “And Deal-Makers must make exchanges. There is a very particular set of rules to the exchanges as well, which Pip’s thesis says is singular among fantasy books.”

  Reed scrubs at his eyes, the usual ruddy color of his cheeks draining into a strained, disbelieving pallor. “Wait, wait . . . are you telling me that I wrote . . . that I accidentally invented a kind of magic that has such perfect and powerful rules that I inadvertently caused it to exist?”

  I expected ego in the question, and find only stunned fear instead.

  “Essentially.”

  He sits down again. Hard. “I . . . whooboy,” he wheezes. “Okay, I . . . right. Okay. I can . . . I can handle that.”

  He does not, in fact, look as if he can handle that.

  When I first met my creator, I felt pity for him. The shock of meeting me certainly leveled him. That night at the convention bar, he had spent the entirety of the hours it took me to relate my tale to him simply staring at my face. For my own part, I was unsettled by how much he looked like my late father, so I had instead stared at my hands, or my then extremely pregnant wife, or at my drink.

  But his existential panic had radiated out of him in waves while I spoke. Had he been a ghost, the whole bar would have been filled with spirit lights and chilling fog.

  And it was a feeling I knew well. I had suffered my own panic at the state of my existence, what it all meant, the legitimacy of my life on the whole when I learned that I was created by a Writer to serve merely as a human-shaped prop for my elder brother’s heroic adventures. I am not so out of touch with my own emotions that I cannot admit that the shock of the revelation pushed me to tears. Something which Reed did not do as he listened to me recount my story. Instead, Reed had seemingly decided to come to terms with our situation by becoming a demanding, arrogant arse whose self-congratulatory narcissism drove me to finally banning him from the lives of my family entirely. But here, again, I see the vulnerable, concerned, confused man I first met at FantaCon; a man who is unsure, and scared, and real.

  “I really, really think this isn’t what I was expecting when I won all those worldbuilding awards,” Reed mumbles, and tries to put his head between his knees.

  His substantial belly gets in the way, however, and rather than watch him struggle, I say: “There is Winter Sherry downstairs. Or rather, the closest thing I have found to the Pointes’ excellent Winter Sherry. I would much rather have Drebbinshire Whiskey, but . . .” I let the invitation to partake and the change in topic pull Reed away from his panic.

  “Drebbinshire Whiskey,” Reed says thoughtfully, and when I put out the hand that is not holding my daughter to help him stand, he stares at it for a moment. Then he raises his eyes to mine, verifying that I am really inviting him to touch. When I nod slowly, he takes my offered hand, and together we lever him onto his feet.

  He follows me down to the living room, as I knew he would, and plops right back down onto our sofa. I put Alis on her blanket and move to the liquor credenza.

  “I will admit to missing Drebbinshire Whiskey,” I say, conversationally, as I pour us two cut-crystal glasses of sherry. Small-talk ought to pull us both out of our heads, and fears; small-talk masks all manner of social and emotional turmoil. “It had the unique property of making one’s stomach tingle warmly. I theorize it is because the grain was grown in fields fertilized with dragon ash.”

  “Ah, yes, the Dire Dragon,” Reed murmurs, and obligingly taps the rim of his sherry glass against my own when I proffer it. I wonder if I should tell him about the rogue and the dragonet that our little adventuring party met in the Stoat Forest, about the truths the lad had shared, and about his connection with the drakeling. About where dragon-hoards really came from, and how I had paid for this house with the drakeling’s tears.

  No, that is a story for another time. If, indeed, this fragile peace between my creator and me lasts, and there is another time. Instead, I say: “I wonder . . . if the magic that is making the other books vanish is coming from inside, well, yours.”

  “Mine?” Reed asks, startled, spluttering as he nearly chokes on the sherry. “I wouldn’t . . . I would never . . . I haven’t written a thing since I met you.”

  That confession, in turn, startles me. “What? Nothing?”

  “Not a word of fiction,” Reed says, and it sounds like an oath. A promise. “Honestly, I’m too scared to, now. I keep thinking about Tristan and . . . and the other characters in the Shuttleborn trilogy. My editor has all three books—it’s too late now—but if you and Kintyre and Bevel are real, then even just contemplating what I put Tristan and Vana through on Grimrock . . .”

  I want to offer him reassurance, but I have none to give. If, indeed, I have siblings in creation, and if they know that they are creations, then anything I say to Reed now will either distress him further or harm them. And, as Reed has said, it is all written now. It is too late.

  “Then the vanishing books are because of nothing you’ve done,” I say softly, when his guilt has smothered the rest of his sentence, and, it seems, the desire to continue.

  “But it makes sense if it’s coming from The Tales of Kintyre Turn,” Reed says softly. “That’s why only the two of us”—his eyes cut to Alis briefly—“I mean, three of us remember.”

  “Remember what?” my wife says from behind me, in the direction of the front door. I actually physically jump. Sherry splashes against the back of my hand.

  I feel my blood run cold, to the accompaniment of Alis’s delighted, “Ma ma ma maaa!”

  “Blast and drat,” I hiss. I meant to have Elgar Reed out of our house before my wife got back. Send him off on a walk, break the suggestion to Pip, have time to soothe her
before Reed returned. . . . it is too late, now.

  I turn, feeling an absurd swoop of dread in my gut. My wife is no creature, no gorgon, no monster who will strike me dead, nor turn me to stone with her basilisk glare, and yet I cannot help but fear what I will find in her eyes.

  Worse than anger, or confusion, or betrayal, Pip is blank. She has shuttered herself off, closed up her gaze in a way that I have not seen her do since she shook off the Viceroy’s control. This is the same protective mechanism she used then, to keep her emotional turmoil hidden from me. She is hiding once again.

  “Welcome home,” I say softly.

  Pip blinks at me, slow and empty, and then sheds her boots and coat, leaving them right there on the floor as she crosses immediately over to Alis to scoop her up. Our daughter gives out a few more pleased “Ma ma maaa!”s, but then quiets when she realizes that nobody is tickling her, or cuddling her, or talking to her. Her eyebrows furrow in a miniature version of my own confused scowl.

  “Pour me a glass of wine,” Pip says, and I know the order is for me, so I set down my sticky glass of sherry and obey. If nothing else, it gives me time to get over my startlement and formulate an excuse. Or an apology. Though I am not certain if Pip will accept, or desire, either.

  Pip sits on the armchair, furthest from Reed, Alis dandled on her knee. She goes through the motions of a game of giddy-up, but Alis is too busy craning her head around, staring at the three silent adults, to be having fun.

  I hand Pip her wine, and sit on the loveseat. That leaves Reed alone on the sofa.The three of us are seated around the coffee table, out of touching range, in an awkward triangle.

  With one hand around Alis’s back to keep her steady, Pip takes three deliberate sips from her wine, and then says, her voice like gravel: “Explain.”

  Reed looks to me, uncertain how to begin, and so, with a silent sigh, I say: “I feared for myself. I needed to be sure that I was not . . . disintegrating.” Pip winces, but still does not look at me, still does not unfetter her expression. “I had no wish to distress you, so I—”