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Something was afoot in Gold Crown Town.
No, that's not the way to begin it, is it? You already know that something is afoot in Gold Crown Town. After all, you watched the series Princess Tutu, and perhaps you read the related comic book, or wrote some stories of your own, or drew some pictures. But you already know of the town, else you wouldn't be here, reading this, and you must know that there is some new conflict, a new foe, or you'd have no reason to read this story.
So, to return to my original point: Something was afoot in Gold Crown Town, and the only one who noticed was Autor.
This should not surprise you. Autor is, after all, a very bright boy, and in another lifetime--a different story--it was he who solved the riddle of the spinners and told Fakir the answer. He figured out, all on his own, that the town was controlled by Drosselmeyer, though the book men wouldn't confirm that for him. It was only natural, therefore, that he be the first to notice that the birds flocked each morning, puzzled, to the window of an unoccupied dorm room, that the instructor of the ballet division often miscounted the students in his class and behaved as if there were more of them than there really were, that he himself often thought, remember that time when. . .? and then had to stop. There was no past or future here in Gold Crown Town, what had happened yesterday would happen again today, and it would happen again tomorrow. Autor would have found this much more disturbing if he could hold onto that thought for more than a minute at a time, but he always ended up thinking over, under, and around the matter, as if his mind refused to acknowledge that it really existed. And then, when he thought it again, it was like the first time he'd ever discovered a mystery in Gold Crown Town.
It's quite possible that he might never have solved this mystery if he hadn't gone to the library and met Fakir.
He didn't actually meet Fakir there, and it was not improbable that Autor--a student of the Music Division, if you'll recall--would know him, or at least of him. Fakir was infamous for being a gifted and talented dancer, equally gifted with poor temperament and talented with scathing words. For whatever reason this garnered him quite the female following, whose motivations could only be understood by like-minded members of the fairer sex.
Which was why Fakir was in the library, actually, where Autor was doing meticulous and fruitless research, which had borne nothing; in the library at least, Fakir's fans were compelled to be quiet.
When Autor looked up and saw Fakir proceeding up the staircase, his breath caught in his throat. He was appalled to find himself flushing, and he felt himself overwhelmed with--with what? What was the meaning behind this? But he couldn't stop watching Fakir out of the corner of his eye, until he disappeared behind a bookshelf. He was mortified not that he might be attracted to another boy, for there's no reason the world of Princess Tutu should see or care about homosexuality the way ours does, but more that he might now be one of Fakir's mindless sycophants.
But more than that--well, really, it was less than that, but it was more than that--was the name that echoed in him as if from the bottom of a well: Drosselmeyer! How or why Drosselmeyer was concerned with Fakir he did not know, could not know, but he felt it all the same, and his heartbeat quickened when he thought of Fakir and Drosselmeyer in the same breath. The easiest thing to do would have been to simply ask Fakir, but the very thought filled with with a trepidation instantly familiar to anyone who has ever harbored a crush.
So instead, Autor fled into the stacks. He sought out Drosselmeyer's books--he was not an obscure author, on the level perhaps with the Brothers Grimm in your world--and found that the connection between he and Fakir was that they both read the same books. There was his very own name written on the borrowers' slip on the inside pocket, dated last year, and below it, Fakir's name, dated a week later. Book after book was like that: Autor's name, then Fakir's, dated within weeks of each other, last year. But what did this mean? What significance had Drosselmeyer to the both of them? And how on Earth did Autor not remember checking these books out so recently?
So began Autor's long days and weeks in the library, reading anything and everything by Drosselmeyer. He might have appreciated the parallelism to a previous story--a previous life--had he recalled any of it, but he did not, and so he labored over books he had already read, painstakingly recreating notes he had already written. The stories had, unsurprisingly, an unsettlingly familiar air to them, like old friends encountered after a long separation, and yet their endings were new and unfamiliar creatures, not yet tamed, and he discovered them with something very much like pleasure.
One day, when Autor went to the circulation desk to check out that day's books, instead of the large-eared girl with the inexplicable accent there was an old man that Autor had never seen before. He was tall and thin, with a long, sharp nose and small eyes set close together in his face, and pale. The effect was not dissimilar to a stork.
"Ah, Drosselmeyer," he said, smiling at Autor with both sets of teeth as he stamped the books. "It's that I've come to warn you about."
"Warn me?" Autor said. "Warn me about what? Warn me why? I've done nothing wrong."
"But you will," he predicted. "There are forces at work in this town of which you know nothing."
"I knew it! What are they?" Autor asked eagerly. "Tell me all about them! No, first answer me, let me see if I have come to the right conclusions. This town is trapped, frozen, because of something we've forgotten. Of that much I'm certain. That something may well have to do with Drosselmeyer. Well? Am I right? Am I close?"
"I won't answer that, because I'm here to warn you," he said, shutting the last book with a final-sounding whap. But he kept them stacked before him on the counter, hands perched possessively on top like wary falcons. "Stay away from the likes of Drosselmeyer. You're a child, and we forgive the mistakes of children. But continue to meddle, and we'll not be so lenient again."
Autor's mind whirled. This man seemed to be part of some group. A conspiracy, then? But what group was this? What forces were at work in the town, and what did Drosselmeyer have to do with it? Some drama had gone on in the background of Gold Crown Town all this time, and he had never suspected. A pity, wouldn't you say, that he was not aware of the irony.
"Enjoy your books," the old man said cheerily, and pushed Autor's books across the counter. Autor took them and fled.
Autor read all through the night. He had worked his way through Drosselmeyer's bibliography more or less in order, beginning with his first few short stories--awkward little fledglings, to be sure, but in them you could see the shapes of his later works in all their tragic, gruesome glory--and meandering his way toward the final works, which became increasingly fantastic and mad until Autor could no longer tell if Drosselmeyer was brilliant or insane or both. And now, at last, he came to The Prince and the Raven, a tale with which you're already familiar, I'm certain. Autor, too, knew this story; it was Drosselmeyer's famous unfinished opus magnum, or tour de force, or whatever such buzzwords are used to describe an artist's greatest work. But, like Mozart, Drosselmeyer died before the end, and so the raven and the prince fought on forever within the pages while academics debated how Drosselmeyer might have ended it. Autor opened to the first page and began reading, for once he began a task he intended to see it through to the end.
But the story was finished.
Autor could not believe his eyes. Princess Rue appeared on the scene, a heretofore unknown character, and together she and the prince defeated the raven with the purity of their love and the strength of their combined wills. This ending, never mind its not existing, was so uncharacteristic of Drosselmeyer that Autor had to examine the binding, looking for some trace of forgery or plagiarism. Save for a few of his early works, Drosselmeyer had been uncommonly fond of tragedies, particularly ones involving irony, and an ending of such--to be frank--rank sentimentality could not possibly be his work.
But the binding was sound, and on the final page, after the words "The End," Autor discovered an engraving of Prince Siegfried and Princess Rue, set up as a wedding picture, framed by ribbon-bearing doves. They had their arms linked, faces turned toward each other. Rue's hair, as dark as Siegfried's was pale, was pinned up in the picture, different from the day Autor had first met her--wait, what?
Rue! How could he have ever forgotten her? He'd been so in love with her then. She'd been so dangerous and fragile, so badly in need of protection from herself. But she'd been in love with the prince, and they. . . they had returned to the story. . .
Autor dropped the book. Princess Tutu, the raven, Mytho, here, in the wedding picture, even if the caption gave his name as Prince Siegfried. And now, too, he knew who would have the answers to all his questions, and he snatched up his coat and went at once.
Fakir lived in a cottage not in the town proper, but rather out by the lake. Autor did not question how or why he knew this, although he did wonder why no one noticed that this boy lived alone instead of in the dormitories. (But then, no one save Autor had even noticed that it was always spring in Gold Crown Town, either.) But this was not the time for petty questions; Autor pounded on the door.
I could tell you that to say Fakir was surprised when he opened the door was an understatement, but this would be untrue: in fact, Fakir was surprised, no more and no less. Autor was a perfect stranger to him, and he had no idea what this odd-looking boy could possibly be doing here.
"Yes?"
"Fakir!" Autor declared triumphantly. "You're the writer, aren't you? Then write!"
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Fakir, and he shut the door, or he would have had Autor not cleverly insinuated his foot.
"Why bother hiding it from me?" Autor demanded? "You needed my knowledge before, and yet you spurn it now?"
"You're talking nonsense," said Fakir, who was by now fairly certain that this boy had either mistakened him for someone else or was just completely mad. Either argument would have had more weight if the boy hadn't known his name, which by itself was fairly strange, or it would have been if--as I said earlier--Fakir hadn't possessed a certain amount of infamy. Still, Fakir was not so arrogant that he thought someone from another division entirely might have heard of him, and he did his best to dislodge Autor's foot from its place.
"And what have you done to the town?" Autor ranted on, pushing against the door even as Fakir pushed against him. "Everyone's forgotten everything, and everything has stopped! I thought you intended to be better than Drosselmeyer?"
Drosselmeyer! The breath stuck in Fakir's throat like a bone, and all his annoyance and carelessness was replaced with panic, like a boy who's sure that his parents have discovered that he cut his baby sister's hair while they were out. Autor took advantage of Fakir's momentary shock to bull his way inside.
"Well?" Autor demanded.
Fakir backed away. "I don't know what you're talking about." He sounded a lot more frantic than he would have liked. He looked for something to throw. If he could get this boy to leave his home, then he could return to his life unhaunted by this strange, anticipatory fear.
Autor, meanwhile, only rolled his eyes. "Give it up, Fakir. There's no need to play games with me. I already know--" He halted, confused by the absence of something, though he knew not what. He looked around the house--which was decorated in a haphazard and yet spartan sort of manner, as if by someone who had little use for furniture but found himself in need of some nonetheless--and then asked, "Where's Duck? She can't be very pleased that you've let the story stagnate like this."
Fakir's hand, which had been reaching for the fireplace poker, suddenly faltered. "I don't know--" what you're talking about, he was unable to finish.
"You don't know?" Autor repeated, astonished. "How can you not--oh." He gaped for a few moments like a stunned goldfish. "You really don't remember. But how can you not remember? You wrote the story."
Fakir's head ached, and his heart raced, neither of which were comfortable sensations, but he determined not to show it to the boy who'd so rudely forced himself into his phone. He gritted his teeth and said, "Get out."
"Not until you do something." Autor sighed. "Which you can't because you've forgotten, which still makes no sense. Listen: do you trust me? No, of course you don't trust me; you don't remember who I am."
And even if he did, it was unlikely that Fakir would trust him anyway. But Fakir was a little overwhelmed at the moment.
"Sit," Autor said, directing Fakir into a chair before he could do more than verbally protest. Autor dug in the drawers until he came up with a ragged quill and a bottle of ink that had already started to discolor. He shook it vigorously before unscrewing the cap.
"What are you doing?" Fakir demanded, trying to rise and nearly spilling ink all over them both in the process, which would have been disastrous.
"If this doesn't work, then you'll never see me again," Autor said, firmly. It was a lie, but Fakir was not to know that. "Just do me a favor, all right? Write one sentence. Just one simple sentence."
"All right," Fakir said. If the boy did not comply and leave promptly afterward, he could always toss him out on his ear. He was quite strong enough for that. He dipped the quill and blotted it against the top of the paper.
"'Fakir remembered,'" Autor said. "No, that's it. Write that down."
Fakir remembered, Fakir wrote obediently.
"'Princess Tutu,'" Autor continued.
Fakir hesitated, his hand stayed by some nameless dread. Such a silly name, to hold such power.
"'Princess Tutu,'" Autor repeated, urgently.
Princess Tutu, Fakir wrote.
There was no flash of light, no dramatic swell of music. If you must imagine it in visual terms, like the original work, then imagine this: A silence so absolute that you hear Fakir's pen fall to the desktop. Then a great cry of anguish and sorrow, such as you've never heard before, one that strikes you with sympathy to the very core. Fakir, curled in upon himself, his face hidden by his hair, and then suddenly bolting, overturning the chair in his wake. Ambient sound returns when Fakir reaches the outside, his bare feet slapping against the weathered planks of the pier.
"Duck!" he cried. "Duck!" And no reader shall ever know or understand the anguish in that name.
There were always ducks in the lake, dozens of them, big and small, male and female of several species. They paddled, they napped on the shore in the shade with their feet tucked neatly under their bodies, they dove and bobbed for a tasty morsel here or there. Fakir stood at the edge of the dock, searching and searching, his heart filled with despair, for nowhere did he see her.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"I didn't know what I was doing." This confession came later, much later, after Autor gathered Fakir up and took him home, and even from somewhere produced a kettle with which he made tea. Now Fakir sat on the couch, while Autor sat in the chair of the writing desk, between Fakir and the dreaded and dreadful pen, and suddenly Fakir spoke. He said all this without prompting; perhaps he felt that he owed Autor an explanation, or perhaps his explanation serves only the reader:
"I only knew that I wanted to make things right. I wanted to put things back the way they were before, before Drosselmeyer built his infernal writing machine. And I did--but at the expense of her."
"What do you mean?" Autor asked, because it was his role to ask, though you and I--and he--must know what comes next.
"What do you think?" Fakir cried. "What was she, before she was ever in a story? A duck! A plain, ordinary duck that never danced en pointe or saved a prince, that wouldn't even know what a prince is." He bowed his head in defeat. The gesture didn't suit him.
"But can't you undo it?" Autor was perplexed. Fakir's attitude toward the power had never made sense to him, as one who coveted that power. "Just--write another story, or--"
"There are rules to these things," Fakir said patiently, heavily. "When Mr. Cat is once again a cat, when Anteaterina is once again a girl, what can Duck be but a duck? Anything else would be foolishness. Nonsense." Here he sighed.
Now, Autor had no special investment in seeing Duck restored to a girl. He'd hardly known her, and what he'd known, he'd found highly annoying, noisy, and intrusive. But he recalled that graceless, hopeful figure dancing for a happy ending (and he'd never even seen it except in his mind's eye, but it had left a powerful impression), and he could not but feel some marked injustice in this. This was no fitting end for a heroine, and he knew Fakir must have felt this as well. "Didn't you try--"
"Weren't you listening? I can't." FAkir sat back and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. "And she--she didn't want me to. She was content as she was." Every word rang with sorrow. "She would rather I found a way to free the town."
"And instead you forgot."
"Trapped in my own story." Fakir sounded bitter and amused. He let his hands fall back to his lap. "Some Drosselmeyer I make."
Fakir did not speak again, and at last Autor announced that he would go home, but he would return tomorrow. As Autor laid his hand on the doorknob, however, Fakir said: "I wish you hadn't come." Autor turned his head, but Fakir would not look at him, though he continued, "I was happier, not knowing. Not remembering."
Autor stood with his hand on the latch for what felt like a long time, though for a reader these moments pass quickly, as the eye skims over the words. The writer compensates, or attempts to compensate, with more words, and perhaps some white space.
At last, Autor said said, "We need you."
"No, you don't," Fakir said, staring into his long-empty mug. "You need a writer. For that, anyone will do."
~*~*~*~*~*~
Fakir did not sleep all that night, which should surprise no one reading this. He sat by the window and brooded, and when it grew too dark to see he lit a candle and continued to stare out the window. When gray dawn began to stripe the sky, he blew out the flame and stepped outside, still in yesterday's clothing, and made his way to the dock.
Dawn was a prime time for duck activity, and they took no notice of him save to keep a respectful distance from the pier. Fakir sat on its edge, feet dangling over the water, his breath puffing white into the air. He remembered, vaguely, long blue days where he'd sat in a chair on his very pier, a fishing pole anchored by his side and a notebook in his lap, and Duck dabbling in the water below. He felt numb and cold, and hoped, desperately, that Duck had not been taken by a hunter, or a hound, that she was still in this lake, though he no longer knew her, or she him.
Then, from over the ridge, there came a grim, implacable march: the book men, who of course had not left Autor unwatched. Fakir did not hear them come, so preoccupied was he with the ducks on the water, until the first footfall sounded hollow on the boards. Then he turned, still seated.
What an ominous sight they must seem to be a boy--and no matter how old his manners, never forget that Fakir is still a child. They numbered six or seven, all of them towering in height, all of them garbed in identical rough brown hooded cloaks like monks. Deadly monks, for two of them carried axes, and the rest of them bore chains.
Fakir looked up at the book men, and the book men gazed down at him, and some silent understanding passed between them. Fakir bowed his head and bent his back, hands stretched before him like stunned birds upon the wood. One of the axe men stepped forward and raised his weapon.
"Stop!"
The axe hesitated; the book man turned to look. Autor pelted across the grass and didn't stop even when he collided with the book man, nearly knocking them both into the water. The book man dropped his axe, and Autor kicked it into the lake. The ducks, upset by the commotion on shore, paddled away, a few of them taking flight. Fakir watched them go with something like despair.
"What were you thinking?" Autor struggled back onto his feet. "What good would giving your hands to them do?"
Fakir bristled. "What good? I--"
"Need to stop dwelling on the past and see what you can do now! This town has no future without you." Autor glared at the other book men. The one he'd knocked down had crawled his way back to the others, with some difficulty. None of the book men are young, and one wonders where they find their successors, if they are always old and childless.
"You don't want to make an enemy of the book men, boy," one of them hissed. Autor could not see him under the hood, but it was the stork man that he'd met in the library.
"Why not?" Autor replied with what he hoped was cavalier indifference. "I killed one of you once, I won't hesitate to do it again."
Fakir's head jerked up. The book men muttered amongst themselves. None of them really believed that Autor was capable of fending them off with his bare hands--especially with how badly outnumbered he was, and Fakir could not be counted on--but even so, none of them were eager to test this.
"Writers cause nothing but suffering," one of them said darkly.
"He saved this town from ravens!" Autor exclaimed.
"What happens to us, when the story ends? Better that it not end. . . things are pleasant as they are now. . . we'll live forever. . ."
"It's not like I enjoy it, either," Fakir muttered, and indeed he would be quite glad if he never had to write again. Stories, you see, are not salves to the writers; writers are slaves to their stories as well. Rare is a writer that has never wished that they were something else; writing is a thankless and unglamorous occupation. You come to love it eventually, but only as a prisoner comes to love his captor.
"What if he'd found a way to free the town from the story?" Autor asked, quite cunningly.
This interested the book men, who after all did not really enjoy being book men and would rather no longer live their lives in Drosselmeyer's shadow.
"Can this be done?" said one of them, voice trembling with barely concealed excitement.
"Give us one day, and it can be done," Autor rashly promised.
"Autor!" Fakir exclaimed.
But the damage was done. "We will not forget," the book men promised, and they drifted away one by one, like pebbles eroded from a shore or bank.
"I'm not one for promises that can't be kept," Fakir said in a low voice.
"Then you'd better keep it," Autor said airily.
Fakir said nothing. He supposed he ought to be grateful to Autor for saving his life--or at least his hands--but in truth he was mildly resentful. What right had Autor to meddle in his affairs? Autor, on the other hand, had come to view Fakir in a proprietary sort of manner, and had Fakir known, they would probably have come to blows, and the rest of this story would never have happened.
"Did you really kill one of them?" Fakir asked.
Autor did not say anything for a moment--half a moment, really--and he would not meet Fakir's eyes. He said, "Yes. On the day the ravens came. You were writing."
"Oh," said Fakir. "I think I remember that." Mostly he remembered his frantic desperation when he'd lost his pen, and how he could feel Duck faltering.
Autor looked at him now, and his bitter expression is one that I hope you never have to see. "I once killed for you and your precious Duck. The least you can do is write."
~*~*~*~*~*~
But Fakir turned out to be at least as temperamental a writer as he was a dancer. Autor watched as Fakir paced, stared blankly at a sheet of paper, paced, made them both breakfast (a bizarre sight indeed, and even stranger was that it turned out to be very edible, but then, Fakir did live alone and was obviously not wasting away), stared out the window, paced, and then returned to staring blankly at a sheet of paper.
At last, when Autor could take it no more, he burst out: "What's the matter? Why aren't you writing?"
"Stories don't just spring out from the ground like mushrooms," Fakir growled. "What am I supposed to write?"
"Well--anything!" Like so many students before and after, Autor's mind went blank when confronted with too much freedom. "You could--you could write a sequel, another grand adventure of Princess Tutu--you could write a story about you--or me--or--"
"And face the consequences, if it turns out to be the wrong story?" Fakir shook his head. "I can't unwrite what's been written. I must be cautious."
"Caution is not the same as inaction."
Fakir made no response; he'd returned to gazing at the paper. Autor stifled a yawn and let his mind turn over this new information, meticulously examining it from all angles. He thought about the girls that tried to speak to a third that wasn't there, the puzzled songbirds in the morning, the borrowers' slips in Drosselmeyer's books.
At length, he said, "But isn't that what you did, to set the town to rights? And now Mr. Cat's a cat again, and Anteaterina a girl."
"I obviously failed," Fakir muttered, "seeing as how you and I recall past events concerning the raven. As do the book men," he added with a small frown. There really is no good explanation for the book men save that they have always existed on the border of stories, in the space between letters and the gray land of the margins.
"If that's the case, then isn't it probable that Duck is not merely a duck? Which is to say, that she really was Princess Tutu, and that she's only forgotten?"
Fakir's frown deepened, then passed into something more thoughtful.
"Write it," Autor proposed eagerly. "Write, 'Duck remembered Princess Tutu.'"
"No," Fakir murmured, sounding faraway.
"Why not?" Autor demanded indignantly. "'Fakir remembered Princess Tutu' worked fine, after all."
"It's not a story," Fakir replied absently. He placed the quill back in the inkwell and began to pull on his boots.
"Where are you going?" Autor asked, alarmed. He clattered to his feet as well, though he didn't know what Fakir planned to do, only that he intended to follow.
"To see the tree," Fakir said, snatching up his coat. "You don't have to come with me. It will be very boring for you."
"Are you mad? The Book Men are after your hands. You shouldn't go anywhere alone." Autor looked around, hands grasping, but saw nothing more useful than a fireplace poker. "Didn't you have a sword or something, before?"
Fakir watched him with apparent indifference, but a smile betrayed him by twitching one corner of his mouth. "What, you think yourself a knight?"
"If that's what you want to call me," Autor said, not at all certain what was so funny and not liking how Fakir appeared to be mocking him. You'll recall, reader, that he has no knowledge of Fakir's previous associations with the knight figure. I suppose you could call it dramatic irony, used for humorous effect.
"After you, then," Fakir said, even more mocking now.
We are used to thinking of dramatic events happening at night, especially ones that involve travel. The pair stumble through a dark wood, tripping over tree roots, jumping at the slightest sound, branches clawing at their faces and hair. It was late morning now, though, the sun still ascending in the sky, and they knew the clearest route to their destination, and so took it. Autor still felt rather nervous without a weapon, but Fakir was calm and rather far away. When they reached the field where there'd once stood an oak tree of some importance, Fakir went immediately to the stone that marked its resting place, leaving Autor to his own devices. Autor selected a rock not too far away against which he could rest his back, far away enough from Fakir that he wouldn't be caught in some vortex of power but close enough that he could help.
Fakir knelt and lay one hand on the stone.
Down, down, down Fakir went, into the dark. But this was not the darkness of the lake of despair; this was a warm dark, a joyful dark, a familiar dark that you longed to return to.
The end is the beginning, sang the tree. The beginning is the end.
You always say that, said Fakir.
Because it's true, and truth is what you seek to uncover, rustled the muse. See what has no shape. Hear what makes no sound.
Not anymore, said Fakir.
Stories cannot exist without writers. Writers cannot exist without stories, Calliope crooned. Neither can exist without readers.
No one reads my stories, said Fakir. I burn them all. They always go wrong.
Stories start from nothing, whispered the tree. Fear nothing. Do not fear everything. Fear is the gate through which all stories must march. Go with them.
Fakir opened his eyes.
It would be easy--too easy--to describe that though he opened his eyes, it was as if they were still closed, because he saw nothing. But that would give you an impression that he opened his eyes into total, utter darkness, as if he'd woken up underground. This would be misleading because it wasn't like that at all. Fakir opened his eyes onto a vast, empty world of white; not the white of a winter wonderland or even the white of a holocaust. This was the white of a blank page, before the first word is written. This was the land before stories.
Fakir didn't know any of this, of course. Fakir was terrified of this empty, accusing void, and rightly so, because a writer's greatest fear--besides that he will write something and no one will care to read it--is that he will someday run out of stories. Also, there is simply something very terrifying about nothing, especially if you--as Fakir was--are still somehow standing on something. Fakir's mind had, in its inability to conceive of nothing, created what I could only call an illusion of solid ground beneath Fakir's feet, which he could neither see nor feel, but he stood on it nonetheless.
Well, he could either stand here, or he could move. And since there was nothing to be gained by remaining in one place--except that he might eventually go mad--he walked, though there was nothing to see and nothing to walk toward.
But then, as if his very thoughts had summoned it--and in this place, they most likely had, but you and I will never know for certain--something was here, with him, in the land before stories. He saw it as a speck in the distance, but it was actually very close (and very far, and I will leave it to you to decide which is the metaphor), as he discovered when it loomed before him a dozen steps later.
It was a gate, nearly as pale as its surroundings, and there was very little else to be said about it. I could describe its plainness, or its ornate decorations, or the material out of which it was made, whether it was wood or bone or ivory, or even clouds or unicorn horn. But that's best left up to you, and in any case what Fakir saw is not necessarily what anyone would would have seen. What I will tell you, however, is that through the gate Fakir could see blue sky, trees and grass, and himself in yesterday's clothes, sitting in a trance in the grass. Not far away, Autor also sat, somehow managing to look both bored and anxious.
Beside the gate stood a Watcher, who was either dwarfed by the immensity of the gate or simply very small; it was difficult to tell. He was clad from head to toe in armor, his face hidden from view by a mask. He had a sword as well, unsheathed, with its point between his feet, so that he resembled nothing so much as an armored statue, such as the kind you might see in any museum.
Fakir stared. "That's my sword."
The Watcher said nothing.
"What are you doing with my sword?" Fakir demanded.
"You were the one who threw it away in favor of the pen," the Watcher sneered in a voice that was neither young nor old, or perhaps it was both. Here was a place--you may have noticed--where distance, shape, and size simply had no relation to one another, or even to themselves. "And you're not even very good at that, are you? Of course, you were never a very good knight, either. In fact, you might as well cut off your hands yourself and spare the world the trouble."
Fakir took half a step back, then held his ground, fists curled at his sides. This was nothing he hadn't said to himself in the past, but it's very different to know something yourself than have someone tell it to you in such plain, unadorned terms. "Who are you, and what affairs of mine are yours?"
"Why, all of them" the Watcher said carelessly. "I'm the Watcher at the gates of fear."
Fakir suddenly recalled the tree's words: Fear is the gate through which all words must march. Go with them. He hadn't thought the tree meant that literally--and perhaps neither did you. But such is the way with fairy tales. Things can be metaphors and also actually happening. It's confusing, to be certain, but I don't believe that reading should always be easy.
He edged toward the gate, which seemed to be the only way back to his word, if he could but get past the guard. (For he couldn't but help but think of the Watcher as a guard, at first. So would you, if you came upon this armor-clad person by a gate.) "Do you guard, or do you merely watch?"
"It matters not." Even as the guard spoke, Fakir made a lunge for the portal and smacked into an invisible barrier, like a jay flown into a window. He staggered backward a few steps with a startled cry. If the Watcher found any of this funny, he didn't show it.
"What manner of sorcery is this?" Fakir cried, clutching his nose, which fortunately did not seem to be bleeding.
"No sorcery, only fear," said the Watcher, sounding bored.
"Fear? Fear of what?"
"Ask yourself. But generally it is all the same: What if no one reads this? What if no one likes it? What if I'm not good enough? Or no, I am not good enough; I'm nothing but a hack, and I will never amount to anything, so why even bother trying? Or, I fear that I will be old, and I shall wear my trousers rolled, and I will never have written that novel I was always talking about." Through the tirade the Watcher's voice grew steadily more mocking, and more bitter.
Many of these fears were not Fakir's, or even ones that he was familiar with. But he felt their truth nonetheless, because everything the Watcher says is true, and that's the problem. "You're not only the Watcher, you're the Judge," he accused.
"What need have I to judge when you do such a fine job of it yourselves?" The Watcher sounded bitter again. "The words crowd here even now, and on the other side their writers feed their cats, or launder their clothing, or clean their homes, and always they say: later, I will do it later. Or they trap themselves in mires of their own devising, saying, I cannot write this until I have researched such and such, or I cannot write this, because it would never sell. And meanwhile, the stories suffocate, here at the gate. Or, if they do write it, they never show it to anyone due to their perceived inability, and then the stories must return here, because what is a story that has never been read? Does it still exist?"
"But aren't you the voice of that fear?" said Fakir. "All that you've said--they're my own fears, voiced. You know them; you're the one that whispers them in our ears." And yet, he reflected, from the Watcher's bitter tone, he took no joy in it. Perhaps the Watcher himself had once been a spinner. . . but no, he could not let himself be drawn in by sympathy. Through the gate, he saw the book men approach with their axes. Autor had noticed, and presently he crouched over Fakir's unmoving farm, unable or unwilling to touch him, but also unable or unwilling to leave. Where could he go, even if he fled and left Fakir to suffer? They were surrounded.
Fakir needed to get back.
"You're not like them," he said, gesturing to the book men. "They fear. They fear the story's end, the spinners' power. They fear that we'll become like Drosselmeyer, mad with power. Why, then, do you do this? Why stand at the gates of fear?"
"You're wrong," said the Watcher. "I do fear."
Fakir was so startled that he had to ask what was obvious: "What could you possibly fear?"
"That you will fail," the Watcher replied.
Fakir rested his forehead against the gatepost, which felt neither cool nor warm to the touch. "I think I know your face." He did not turn to look at the Watcher, though he heard the whisper of the mask being removed.
The Watcher bore Fakir's face--but Fakir as a boy, just after his parents' death, still freshly scarred from beaks and claws.
"What do I need to do?" Fakir asked, still not looking. He felt something cool and hard brush against his fingertips; he looked down and saw the sword's hilt now pressed into his hand. He still could not bring himself to look at the Watcher, but his jaw firmed and he nodded. He wrapped both hands around the handle, stepped back, and brought the sword up to cleave the gates in twain.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
What happened next, Autor would never be able to fully recount, and Fakir would not enlighten him. He was fairly certain there'd been a flash of light, and that Fakir had reappeared--despite never having disappeared in the first place--clutching a sword in one hand and a journal in the other, with a sound much like the fluttering of pages in a gust of wind. The sword he'd all but thrown to Autor, who hardly knew what to do with it. But it couldn't be that difficult, could it?
The book men recoiled in horror more from the sight of Fakir writing than Autor wielding a weapon. This might have damaged Autor's ego had he not been busy realizing that using a sword really was more than a matter of making sure the sharp end went in the enemy. Actually, for that matter, it was quite difficult making sure the sharp end did not go into his own person.
"He writes!" moaned one of the book men. "The story moves!"
"Quick, then, cut off his hands!" One of them stepped forward and raised his axe.
Autor quickly interposed himself, wielding the sword as best as he could. His grip was entirely wrong, but his determination was enough to give the book men pause.
"It hasn't been a day," Autor said. "Wasn't that the terms? You agreed to give us a day."
"We changed our minds," said one of the book men.
"We like things as they are now."
"You know where you are in a story. . . your life has purpose, because a writer gives it purpose. . ."
Autor goggled at them. What silly old men! They feared nothing except change, that is all, and in a sense they were but pale imitations of the Watcher at the gate, for the Watcher speaks all your own fears and makes them seem perfectly reasonable. The point of Autor's sword wavered, his wrists unaccustomed to the strain, and the book men teetered forward. Autor brought his sword up again, quickly.
"I'm no coward who fears the unknown," he said through gritted teeth.
"But you don't know. . . you don't know. . ."
"What happens after the end?"
"What will happen to us?"
"I don't know," Autor replied, honestly. "But I trust the writer."
"Shut up!" Fakir cried, standing in a rustle of paper and spilling ink on his trousers. "I can't write in all this commotion. I'm going home." And with that, he marched through the ring of hooded men--and they, stunned, let him pass, for he was the Writer. Autor, after a few moments, followed him.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"What are you going to write?" Autor asked, repeatedly, on their way home. The sword still had no sheath or scabbard, and carrying it was very cumbersome, but Autor wasn't about to leave it in the woods somewhere.
"A true story," Fakir replied at last.
Much to Fakir's relief, Autor was quiet for the rest of the walk because he was trying to figure out what Fakir meant by that.
You know what I mean, don't you? Surely you have read stories that--though they were shelved in Fiction--were nonetheless true stories. They spoke of some universal condition, or contained feelings, reactions, events with which you were familiar, or they told the history of some alien world that you could be quite certain existed. This is what I mean by true story, because something can be true without being real.
Fakir headed straight for the writing desk as soon as they got home, and soon the silence was filled with the scratching of Fakir's quill. Autor stood and watched him for several moments, then headed into the kitchen. Several moments later a kettle squealed, quickly muted. Fakir did not even look up. Autor came out to the sitting room with two cups of tea, one of which he set by Fakir. Then he went back in the kitchen and retrieved a plate of toasted bread and cheese. He ate one slice, then left the rest for Fakir, who still had not acknowledged the existence of the tea.
Then Autor stretched out on the couch and fell asleep, one hand on his sword.
Now would be a good time for a symbolic or prophetic dream, but actually, Autor slept the dreamless sleep of the weary and much-deserved, and his dreams, if he'd remembered them, would have been the usual chaotic jumble, not all of which had to do with the events of the last several days. When he woke again, the room was dark, and Fakir was a dark, snoring mass at the writing desk. The quill had slipped from his fingers, leaving a messy splotch on the paper after the words The End.
Autor levered himself off the couch with a creak. If he'd been a different sort of person, he might have said, "I'm getting too old for this." But he wasn't that sort of person, so he said nothing at all as he clumsily slung Fakir's arm over his shoulders and hauled him into the bedroom. He pulled off Fakir's shoes and, too exhausted by the effort to do much else, pulled the covers over the young writer. Then he returned to the sitting room, shutting the door behind him, and lit the lamp. Fakir had drunk the tea but not touched the bread and cheese, he noted. He gathered up the pieces of Fakir's story and sat on the floor with his back against the bedroom door and the sword in his lap, and read.
It began this way: There was something afoot in Gold Crown Town. . .
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
No, Fakir did not dream either--or, more accurately, he did not remember his dreams, none of which were remarkable in any case. When he woke, it was in a dark and unfamiliar place, and for a few unreasonably panicky seconds he was convinced he had failed and was now back in the land before stories. Then he recognized his bedroom, though he couldn't recall how he'd gotten here.
He staggered out of bed and groped for the door. It hit something soft when he opened it, something that said, "Ow."
Fakir blinked blearily and looked down. Early morning sunlight now crept through the windows, and on the floor Autor rubbed his head and glared up at Fakir.
"What are you doing down there?" Fakir asked.
"Reading, what's it look like?" Autor snapped, and now Fakir could see that Autor was surrounded by papers covered with his handwriting. An old, instinctive anger flared up in him--how dare he!--and then died away. He wasn't that writer anymore.
"What did you think?" Fakir asked.
Autor frowned. "What do you mean?"
Fakir gestured to the pile of papers around them. "Was it a good story?"
Autor stared at Fakir as if he'd lost his mind, which was perhaps not very far from the truth. All writers must be a little mad, and the good ones tend to be a little more mad than most. "It was. . . all right, I suppose. Though I fail to see how it helps, if anything. What difference does it make, if everything in this story has already happened?"
"It makes a difference because you read it," Fakir replied, finding a clear place in which he could sit next to Autor. When Autor only gave Fakir another blank stare, Fakir explained, "Now the story does not belong only to me. It belongs to you as well, and anyone else who reads that story, and you can do what you like with it."
Autor worked through this slowly, in his mind. It took him a long time, but eventually he concluded, "So we control the story now?"
"Yes."
Autor stared down at the story in his hands. "And that's it?"
"The story goes on." Fakir stood and began to gather his tools: pen, paper, ink.
Autor turned this over in his mind. "And what will you do now?"
Fakir paused in the doorway. It was a glorious spring day, and there wouldn't be many more like them now that the seasons turned again. "Now I write another story." And with that, he left the house and went down to the lake, where Duck floated patiently on the water, waiting for him.
But that is another story, and shall be told another time.