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Mike Wheeler was comfortable living in the unknown. After all, he’d been doing it most of his life; no matter how hard he tried to relieve the uncertainty in his world, something always seemed to happen to shake the foundations of his existence. Ever since November 6, 1983, he had been running from unanswered question to unanswered question. Each time one door would close another would open, and eventually he had come to accept that there were some loose ends he just simply could not will into perfectly tied bows. He had to believe this or the incessant need to know the truth would drive him crazy.
After everything was over, after she was gone, Mike did what he was supposed to do. He went to college and got his degree in creative writing. He made new friends and kept up with the old ones. He called his family every week and visited home when he could. He got a job at a literary magazine in Chicago and stayed up half the night for over a year working on his first novel, and when he finally got it published, he celebrated with a road trip to visit Nancy in Massachusetts and Will and the rest of the Byers-Hoppers in New York.
On his first night in Montauk, when everyone else was chattering just like old times, Hopper leaned over to him.
“I’m proud of you, kid,” he said in a gruff whisper.
“Thanks,” Mike replied, “I’m just glad to be done with the story, I guess. It’s nice knowing it’s finished, that it can’t be changed.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Hopper, holding Mike’s gaze. “I’m proud of you for living, for being happy. She would be, too.”
Mike swallowed and nodded. Hopper was right, she would be proud of the life he had found for himself, or at least what it appeared to be on the outside. But she never had cared much about the outside, he thought to himself as the gathering went on around him. She always could see through his charades, and he wondered if she still would, if she were here.
He still chose to believe she was out there somewhere, living in the quiet peace anonymity afforded her, but as he got older, it became harder to let hope bloom in his heart. The unknown of it all, while comfortable, was growing a bit wearisome.
He thought about Hopper’s words again as he drove back towards Chicago a few days later. Was he happy? He genuinely thought he was, but he knew there was a hole in his life that would remain permanently unfilled.
It wasn’t that Mike hadn’t tried to move on in the romantic sense. He’d been on a number of dates, even had a short relationship or two, but they always ended for one reason or another. The women he had dated might claim it was because he was always holding back, never really committing himself fully to the relationship and sheltering truths he wasn’t willing to share. Mike always told people that the relationships just didn’t feel right, and that wasn’t exactly untrue. He just never was quite willing to admit the reason was that none of these women were her.
The world had moved on around him, but he still thought about her every day, still talked to her when he was alone in his apartment. He had no idea if she could hear him, but he kept talking just in case. Most nights she would appear in his dreams; sometimes they were good dreams, full of laughter and memories and the lives they never got to live out together, and sometimes they were the terrifying echoes of the night he lost her for the very last time. Mike had spent most of his childhood losing her and finding her again, but he really was beginning to wonder if this time there was no one left to be found.
Mike’s book was a big success, and he spent nearly the remainder of his twenties writing two more. He quit his job at the literary magazine and being a novelist became his full-time job. He wrote and wrote and wrote some more. He wrote about a mage who always had to hide in the shadows and the storyteller who was on the journey of a lifetime trying to figure out how her adventures ended. He wrote about friendship and love and the beauty of connection, all the things that made life worth living. But in his frenzy, he forgot to live his own life.
All his friends settled down without him; they got married and had kids and found joy in the mundane. He still saw them from time to time. He had nothing tying him down, after all. He’d go visit and be cool Uncle Mike who tells the best stories, but the tales he told never seemed to come to a definitive end. Occasionally, one of the kids would pipe up and ask “Does the storyteller ever find the mage? How does it all end?” and Mike would smile cryptically and reply “What do you think?” He was always searching for the truth in the answers they gave.
And so Mike Wheeler’s life continued on with very little change. He kept writing in search of an ending for characters that didn’t exist but that felt too real to be abandoned. He was stuck for an ending for his fourth book when his literary agent suggested he get away to rest and find inspiration. He thought about going to see Nancy and her husband, but that didn’t feel right. Neither did visiting Will and his boyfriend, or Max and Lucas and their kids, or even Dustin. He felt an unexplainable pull towards unknown places; maybe, he thought, an unknown place is just where to go to find an unknown ending.
He took out a map, covered his eyes, and jabbed at it with his finger. When he looked, he found he had landed on just about the most far-flung place he could go: New Zealand. He shrugged and decided that it might be just the adventure he was looking for. So, he packed a few things and bought a one-way plane ticket for a week later. He figured that an open-ended stay would give him the time to find whatever ending it was he was looking for. Besides he could work just as well in New Zealand as in Chicago, so it didn’t really matter how long he stayed.
He had to admit that New Zealand was truly one of the most beautiful places he’d ever seen. He spent the better part of two weeks backpacking all over the islands. He went to every beautiful spot he could find, and asked every local who would talk to him where they recommended he go next. It was only when one particularly enthusiastic local encouraged him to go to this little village on top of a hill (“They have the most beautiful falls!” the local volunteered.) that he realized he hadn’t done all that much writing since he’d been here. He’d been so busy enjoying the beauty of life that he forgot he was supposed to be looking for an ending.
As he was nearing the village, he couldn’t deny that it was beautiful, and when he saw the waterfalls, his heart nearly stopped beating in his chest. Three. There were three waterfalls. Her waterfalls…their waterfalls. And he had never felt more certain that if he was going to find an ending and finally quiet all the unknowns that had plagued his writing (and maybe even his life), he would do it here. This was the place where belief and fairytales would cement themselves in reality or fade into the pages of fiction.
He approached a quiet inn with a tavern in it and asked the innkeeper for a room. Once he had signed the guestbook and gotten his key, he sat down by a window and began to write. He felt as if the storyteller was so close to knowing the truth that it might jump out at him from behind the bushes or sneak up and pounce him from behind. Just as he was finally beginning to see it all come clear, a soft but wonderfully familiar voice floated over his shoulder.
“Mike?”
He turned around just in time to see the open door close behind a girl…no, a woman…with a pair of brown eyes he only thought he’d see again in his dreams. She was different and the same and beautiful and terrifying all at the same time. He stood and walked slowly towards her, not daring to move too fast for fear he might wake up and find that this was all in his imagination.
“El?” He whispered, so quiet that only she could hear.
She nodded.
At last, the storyteller and the mage found each other. They always will, even when they don’t know they’re looking. Because that was how the story was always going to finish; there never really were any unknowns in Mike Wheeler’s life, just yet to be discovered endings.