Link here to a general overview of the novel
Prologue, Chpt 1, Chpt 2, Chpt 3, Chpt 4, Chpt 5, Chpt 6, Chpt 7, Chpt 8, Chpt 9, Chpt 10, Chpt 11, Chpt 12, Chpt 13, Chpt 14, Chpt 15, Chpt 16, Chpt 17, Chpt 18, Chpt 19, Chpt 20, Chpt 21, Chpt 22, Chpt 23, Chpt 24, Chpt 25, Chpt 26, Chpt 27, Chpt 28, Chpt 29, Chpt 30, Chpt 31, Chpt 32, Chpt 33, Chpt 34, Chpt 35
Epilogue
Daav
Sir Tristan Crane,
As in your own long ago letter to my father, I will introduce myself. I’m the son of Carl Harkness, to whom you sent all of your journals hoping that Staltz could make something of your experience at a time when Orreance’s future wavered. I’ve read the letter and your journals, and it’s taken a while, but I found I wanted to reach out to you, even if it’s only to your ghost.
I hope you found your peace after death, because if those words to Harkness were about anything, they were about despair and regret. Maybe those qualities are the natural state when a person faces their own end, although I’d like to believe that’s not the case. Part of me wants to reassure you that the worst never happened now that we’ve reached the other side of the prophetic dreams you wrote about.
Although if you do continue in some life after death existence you’re probably in no need of this letter to tell you. And maybe it’s my own hubris to think I was the figure in those dreams of yours about building bridges to save the magic, or that I have any business taking responsibility for the outcome. I’ve certainly wrestled with the dark and light you saw in your visions. But if I’m being honest, even if my fellow mages might name me that figure, I think it’s my partner Sebastian who was the one walking in your dreams.
After considering your worry, your cautions, the problem I found was the false dichotomy you described, like the battle was between the wisdom of science or magic, light and dark. There’s no dichotomy at all. Sebastian reminds me every day that the mysteries of creation can’t be tied up in a neat bow where only one thing can be true. Although he says it in a much cruder manner involving analogies about body parts.
What you didn’t understand was that saving magic and the conflicts that played out across our world had nothing to do with the stability of the mechanics or physics of the Verse, or the rigors of applying scientific study and technological development.
Truthfully, this letter has more to do with where I’ve landed than contacting the dead to give reassurance. I’ve found the peace I claim wanting for you.
I get up each morning lucky enough to do what I love. Dance, cook, study the stars and Cosmos. Love my partner, love his brother who we’re raising together. I have a family now who care about me and who I love back.
Looking over these words, I realize this letter is a way to tell you and a few other men from my life that you all were wrong. The secret really is–
Soft lips press my neck, then teeth close gently around my earlobe to interrupt my thoughts. Arms wrap around me from behind where I’m tucked feet up on one of the sailboat’s bench seats now that we’re at anchor.
Sebastian’s warm breath and sexy whisper in my ear do more against the chill of the brisk sea breeze than the extra blankets we keep on the vessel. The noise of his low rumbling skitters down my skin straight for my groin.
“I just got Tuck down for his nap. You’re not working on an astronomy assignment are you, Prince? We’re on vacation. Now that he’s sleeping and we’re anchored with sails down I’m having all sorts of nasty fantasies about you tying me to the mast. We can’t let all this rope go to waste.”
“It’s not an assignment, I’m journaling.”
“Ooooh, so sexy. You’re turning me on with all that processing of your feelings and thoughts. You deserve a reward. Why don’t you tie me up and make me scream, get us both off, and then finish the afternoon making us a gourmet meal in the galley for us to picnic under the stars later.”
I wind my hand behind me to wrap it around the back of his neck where he’s leaning against me.
“That sounds like more of a reward for you than me.”
“Mmmmh. Probably, but you’ll like it too if I know you. I think you get a hard on when you’re cooking anyway. I can tell because each time you come home from one of those cooking classes you corner me in the bedroom and get that wicked gleam in your eyes. And I know you’ll like me lashed to that mast, so this is as much a treat for you.”
“We’re here for a purpose. I was just waiting for you to get Tuck to sleep.”
He crosses in front of me and plops down on the bench seat next to me, pushing my legs away as he groans in frustration. My Angel is a devoted fan of being restrained and tortured. Although I admit I’ve become as much a devotee of wringing every last drop of anguish from him until he’s a sweet, floating mess. We visit the Stem and Thorn together to take thorough advantage of their larger selection of dungeon essentials, although his former club partners have only now stopped scowling at me since he shut down their access to him for play to be mine exclusively.
Sebastian blows out a breath in dramatic surrender. “Fine.” He must see something on my face. “You know this is important to me, too. I’m ready. It’s time.”
“I know, Angel. Would you get the container from below?”
“Sure. Be right back.” He throws me a grin and, Verse, that smile, it almost always sends my body into meltdown.
Sebastian ducks down the ladder at the center of the boat to the cabin below deck.
In the far distance I can see the shore and the forests which thicken the further north we sail. We’ve had this sailboat, the Viva la Vida, for three months now, long enough to get the hang of her and be competent enough to follow through on our plans. Sebastian taught me to sail, another passion he’d found the last eight years apart from me. And there’s nothing better than the look in his eyes under full sail with his face turned to the wind. The joy, the abandon.
“It’s the closest I get to subspace without kink,” he tells me.
We’re sailing with Tuck up the coast of Orreance to where it borders Staltz, and by tomorrow evening we should reach the main harbor of Staltz’s capital, Freilla. Six months after the disappearance of the Verse and settling into our new reality, I’m finally ready to see my sister and little brother in their home and not just on video calls. It’s the first time I’ll walk the soil of my birth nation since age five.
“Working on new excuses to avoid the trip, Daav?” Sebastian chided me over the last few months. “Might miss an episode of Dangerous Treasures when it drops? Or do you need to wait for the new fall fashion line to be released?”
“Angel,” I warned that final time he nagged. But he saw I was on the verge of surrender.
“Just rip off the bandage, I’ll be there to kiss the boo boo, Prince.”
So I started planning the trip.
And he’s right, I need this visit. To heal. Although there’s a strict time limit on our stay.
Hanna and Deidre’s fitness studio for youth opens about the time we plan to return and I’ve promised her I’ll teach dance classes to the kids for them. Sebastian and I created a space in our home for me to do ballet, but my hunger to join a troupe and perform is gone. Between Sebastian, Tuck, those cooking classes he teases me about, and working on an astronomy degree, the life of a professional dancer is no longer for me. I’m too selfish of my time for the sacrifice it takes. While my guilt prickles over exploiting Isolde’s connections to take distance astronomy classes with Staltz’s University of the Sciences, it’s not enough to decline her offer.
The stars…my hunger for them is too great, and maybe they keep me connected to my Verse, like looking at photographic images of old friends who are no longer around.
My Angel’s also singing Isolde’s praises over her generosity, and the sculpture he’s made for her which waits below decks for our arrival was lovingly crafted over the last month as his thanks.
When she offered to bring Jellisia and Kevin’s wife, Dorothy, over to Staltz to be treated at their premier hospital, Sebastian broke down into tears. Broke down again once she told him about her plans to sponsor Frederick at their medical school at my request. My Angel rarely asks for anything for himself, but I’m working on him.
So in our new life I dance on my own time, and Sebastian makes sculpture in our home studio crammed full of a raven hoard’s worth of collected items that draw his fancy. His gallery, established four months ago, is thriving because of his talent, although his friend Osca manages it. In Sebastian’s hands it would go under within a week after he gave away everything for free to anyone walking through the door.
But the most important reason to return to Orreance by our deadline is Nuée and Ravel’s wedding. I’m not sure who Nuée would kill first, me or Sebastian, if we missed it. Probably Sebastian. Good luck to Ravel trying to keep tabs on that wild one. But he’s a lovestruck fool ready to pull down the moon for her, and I know the feeling. I’m looking forward to dancing at their reception. Ravel’s written music for the small orchestra they’ve hired and even wrote their wedding march. Love’s fed the fire of his creativity and it’s a joy to hear him perform.
With the closing of the Verse, the Conclave has no more power to prevent official partnerships between mages. I expect Nuée and Ravel’s wedding to be the first of many.
My Angel finally comes up the ladder holding the container Colleen left with us. The blue ceramic vessel with its tightly fitted cap is in the shape of a Nautilus seashell with intricate spirals.
I remember her visit.
We’d invited her over to our home for dinner the last afternoon before she left for her travels. When Sebastian and I discuss it, we can’t quite name our feelings about her. They’re a strange, ambivalent lot. Something part disgust and anger, part gratitude and compassion, part grief.
On our deck after our meal she drew out the ceramic shell. It’s beautiful and even Sebastian appreciated the pearlescence of the blue glaze on the design. Colleen stroked her hand over the bend of the surface as she spoke about it that evening.
“Astrid and Asher used to tell us their tangles appeared to them as seashells. This is something like the general shape they described. They never hesitated to talk about their Verse, like the very private nature of it that mages usually kept secret was of no consequence. Maybe it was because, as in everything else they shared, they both experienced their Verse the same way so never considered it that secret.
“I thought Victor would appreciate a vessel like this holding his ashes, a way to be close to them even if he couldn’t in life. His remains came to me after the ceremony following his death.” She held out the shell to Sebastian. “You hated him for good reason, and I don’t know what value it is to the two of you, but they should belong to you, to do with whatever you want. Give them away, keep them, flush them down the toilet. Your decision. You had little of those when he controlled your lives, so you deserve a choice now.”
At first Sebastian didn’t take the shell, staring down at it where she held it out. I understand why she offered it to him and not me. He’d been with Victor longest, placed at three years old because of his unusually early manifestation of gold. Two years all alone in that place with the man, and Victor’s rejection of him at seventeen was the second time a father figure threw my Angel away. If anyone deserves a choice, it’s Sebastian.
Finally, he took it from her. “Thank you.” No more conversation beyond that.
When she left us, she asked permission to hug us both. I’m fairly sure she held Sebastian just that much longer, squeezed him just that much tighter.
The seashell sat on a shelf in the corner of our home, tucked behind one of Sebastian’s carvings after that night.
Only now are we ready to face the contents of that shell. And floating on the watery border between Orreance and Staltz in our boat, these are not just Victor’s ashes, but as much symbolic of the remains of another man who was buried with high honors in Freilla half a year ago. This is a moment to face dead fathers.
The waves roll the sailboat up and down where we’re anchored, although we’ve long ago gotten our sea legs and can manage the motion. We make our way down the side deck to the bow of the boat, past the mast with the sails pulled in and secure, holding onto the guardrail as we go.
We reach the bow and stare out onto the ocean together. Sebastian’s gripping the ceramic tightly, keeping it pressed against his body to avoid dropping it.
My Angel looks lost, unsure of what we do next. There’s no right script for this moment, for losses which brought us freedom and relief, heartbreak, anger and the awareness that even in hatred there’s always love mixed in somewhere.
“Do you want to say anything?” I ask.
He opens his mouth, closes it without finding words, shakes his head. His hair whips in the wind, fire strands escaping the tail into which he’s pulled it back for sailing. His long fingers, ever a favorite of mine and reminding me of butterflies with their lithe grace, push aside the strands blocking his vision. Then his free hand drops to flick against his thigh. He’s clearly full of emotion he wants to dismiss.
“You do it.” He hands the container to me. “I…want to do this, but…”
I take the seashell and face the endless ocean. The boat’s pointed away from the distant shore, so it’s only green gray waves ahead. I drag in a breath and hold up the blue ceramic to begin, my gaze latching onto the spirals of the design to avoid thinking too closely about the fine dust inside.
“Victor, a long time ago you were given gifts, an amazing opportunity to share something precious. Two little boys. Not perfect, but pretty damn great kids. But you made the ultimate mistake and turned away from them, from us. And it fills me with rage and sadness, what you’ve done to us.”
My throat constricts with the size of these words spoken into the wind.
Sebastian wraps his arm around my waist, pulls us together to stand against the motion of the vessel and help brace us for everything, anything.
“But….” I swallow hard. “But Sebastian and I, when we received the same gift, when we met one another, we saw what we had. We knew not to waste that gift. Maybe we forgot for a little while, but we remembered when it mattered, and we’re doing everything in our power to embrace each other and live a life filled with love. I know awful things happened to you to lead you to your mistakes, and I’m sorry that you didn’t know how to handle it. But we do. We know…that in order to see the love in between all that awful takes hope. Sebastian taught me about it first, and now I can keep reminding him when he needs it.”
I realize I don’t have to finish that letter to Crane afterall. We already learned everything we need to. Our lessons are our own.
My gaze finds Sebastian’s, we exchange a look, and I press my lips into the side of his head with a firm kiss.
I think of our new home together, and the framed picture hanging above our shared bed. Only after we’d settled in and made it our own together had Sebastian pulled out that drawing he’d hastily sketched six months ago the night at the beach house, the hour before our world changed. In the time afterward he’d used paint to give it color and finish his vision, until he was finally ready to unveil it to me.
The image is of a doorway. In the background behind the open door is a swirl of color and motion. Possibility, and an unknown portal to the future hinted at in the design. Standing inside the entrance of the door with the portal behind him is a boy, hand outstretched to another one standing in front of the entrance. The second boy has a face full of hesitation, uncertainty, but he’s leaning forward and his arm is outstretched, too. Reaching to take the offered hand.
Verse, but I’m so thankful I took that hand that far ago day.
Next to me now, my Angel pulls away from my press to give me space.
And lets me rub my thumb a last time over the blue glazed surface.
“Goodbye, Victor. Goodbye, Father,” I say.
Sebastian sighs, reaches to take the ceramic seashell back from my hands. Then turns, holds it up in the air, pulling back with his arm.
“I hope you find your peace,” he says, then raises his voice yelling into the wind. “Fuck. You. Victor. Fuck. You. Carl. We’re here. We survived.”
And Sebastian hurls the thing out into the ocean as we watch the waves swallow our past.
It’s only moments later that we spot it.
In the distance beyond the seashell’s plummet into the waves, a geyser of misty water shoots up from the sea. Moments after that, a large shape breaches the surface. A head, followed by a larger body, as a huge whale propels its way through the air, splashing back into the depths. Then another leap and splash.
“Fucking amazing,” my Angel exclaims. “It’s the Cosmic Whale.”
My bark of laughter escapes me. “I think the reference is to a Cosmic Turtle.”
“No way. Whale.”
“If you say so.”
“It’s here for us.” He gestures out to the ocean as the sea creature leaps again.
“Huh?” I’m transfixed by the whale, I admit, and pleased it chose to join us.
“Here for us, to remind us.”
“Remind us of what, Angel?”
“That our Verse are still out there, and still inside us. Haven’t forgotten us. Like they’re a guest at the memorial service slash send off to hell we just held, showing support. They started us down this path after all, the whale swimming through space and breaking open those universes.”
“You, my dear one, are quite mad.”
“Just the way you like me, Prince.”
True. I crave all his madness. His puddle stomping, borrower-sale bargain hunting, humanity loving, hands dug deep in clay, legs pumping on swings, beach bum, kinky begging boy, messy monster madness.
I nod. “Just the way I like you, Angel.”
“Just the way I like you, too.”
We know the darkness, so we can know the light. The magic’s woven in our bones with threads of both.
Tangled and perfect.
We turn from the past, from swimming whales, and sinking seashells, and I go collect the rope.
I have a man to lash to the mast after all.
For the sake of love.
The End
If you have reached the end, I would very much appreciate a comment letting me know what you thought, some detail which grabbed your attention, or anything else you are moved to share. If you believe this story is worth sharing with others, please restack from the opener. It’s a strange thing to offer up an entire novel chapter by chapter once a week for 37 weeks.
I wrote the epilogue to be a circular piece with the prologue, including the call and response to the journal/ letter format of the prologue. I love that format, but does anyone have preferences? Many skip prologues completely which means this structure has less context or power. Ah well.