title: the book of sand
fandom: weiss kreuz/neil gaiman's sandman
characters: crawford/schuldig, bit of farfarello & nagi, the endless, and other surprise appearances.
word count: 12,137 (whoa, whoa.)
rating: nc-17, for sex, mild violence, liberal use of a word that starts with f and ends with uck, and ~ schuldig, in general.
notes: This is probably understandable, even if you've never read any of the Sandman comics. Basically: "There are seven beings, that aren't gods. They existed, before humanity dreamed of gods and will exist long after the last god has gone. They are - more or less - embodiments of the forces of the universe. They are named - in order of age - Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair and Delirium (who was Delight before). That is all you need to know." (Brief Lives)

part i, the garden of forking ways

Was there a Garden or was the Garden a dream?

Amid the fleeting light, I have slowed myself and queried,

Almost for consolation, if the bygone period

Over which this Adam, wretched now, once reigned supreme,

Might not have been just a magical illusion

~ borges

If the garden looks familiar, it's because you've been here before. There is some part of you that remembers those magnolias and their kind of smell, the kind you take in with your stomach instead of your nose. Some part of you that remember the colors; brilliant and unearthly and existing too briefly to be named, but then do they even exist?

There is a creek in this garden, cutting its own labyrinthine path through the hedges. You can follow it, past the groves of swollen citrus fruit, through the provinces of the invertebrates. You can travel upstream or downstream. You can double back. You can get lost. It doesn't matter. Follow it for long enough, and you'll end up in the wide courtyard that signals the very center of the garden. That's where they are.

You could say that the statues are large, but really they are spaceless. There are seven, marble-white and human, if only in the geometric sense of the word. You know them, of course, but only with the same distant familiarity that comes with seeing a childhood friend, thirty-years-two-divorces-and-prostate-cancer down the line. It's the type of memory that can be equated with instinct, hardwired into the nervous system. Especially her, she makes you smile, the pretty young girl with the nurturing face and the ankh at the base of her throat.

The boys can see the statues from their favorite trail, but only when the treeline opens and then, there they are — those implacable faces. They are not afraid of the faces, because fear is something that you learn while you're alive. These boys are not yet alive.

You see boys because you expect to see boys; one taller and stronger and dark-haired, and the other thin and quick. It is easy to get the impression that they are the same Brad Crawford and Schuldig whom we will meet again in just a handful of paragraphs, but they are only outlines. Pure, in one sense, but showing the first clumsy and crude implications of a human being. To avoid confusion. these incipient forms will be referred to using the lower-case, crawford and schuldig.

crawford wears non-existent glasses over his non-existent eyes. Both boys have their non-existent trousers rolled up to the knee. They sit side by side on a tree branch. The red-haired boy is drinking sugared rosewater, and he cleans his fingertips in his mouth, one at a time. Swear I saw him, he says to crawford. Walking around the courtyard with the statues. S'got a giant book chained to his wrist.

Liar, crawford tells him, without any conviction. It is lukewarm, his senses are disordered, and he is pleasantly bored. He tosses the pit of his fruit into the creek below them and wipes his hands on the legs of his pants. Then he stretches, and leans over to taste the sugar trapped in the rivulets of schuldig's lips. You wouldn't even tell the truth by accident.

I swear, schuldig mutters, and tugs at the down on crawford's arms, just hard enough to be impolite. You didn't believe me about the ruins, either. Not until I took you there and you saw for yourself.

crawford draws back, considers this. He remembers the smell of the place, like stagnant water, and the vaulted niche under heavy layers of spanish moss. Remembers what schuldig looked like dozing on the remains of the high altar, all thin legs and copper hair. schuldig belonged up there, with those turrets and columns that supported nothing at all.

crawford had snagged the sole of his foot on a thorn. When he'd touched the wound and brought his fingertips to his face to stare, there was red. schuldig had asked, What is that?

crawford put the liquid on his tongue, then spit it out. He had no reference for that taste at all, not like fruit or sweetwater or honey or nectar. You're leaking, schuldig had said. They'd laughed.

Now, schuldig insists: Let me show you.

Their time to leave the garden is near, although neither of them knows it. Already they are starting to feel that rebelliousness towards order, losing trust in the unnamed authority of the statues, forming human attachments to ideas and to each other, even though they don't yet have the vocabulary to express it.

A long-legged bird scuffles through the grass. crawford waits a long time before answering, and when he does, it's only because schuldig is staring at him, face full of exaggerated solemnness. Oh, all right.

schuldig isn't lying.

They crouch down behind a boulder and wait. It is early morning and it is spring, because it is always spring in this garden. When schuldig finally spots him, he throws one hand over crawford's mouth, and points wildly with the other, which is unnecessary. crawford would have seen the man with his eyes closed. Seen him and felt the same static crawl of fate over his skin, a sensation of desperate piety that he will never feel again, not to anything — not even for time itself.

The man's grey robes trail behind him; face reduced to nose and mouth by a low-hanging cowl. He is immensely tall, and must be, in order to support the weight of the chains that link his wrist to the book. The book is massive in itself, with sun-cracked leather covers and pages that make the same sound as the earth does, spinning spinning on its axis.

I told yoouuu, schuldig hisses. Seeee?

crawford can always tell how excited schuldig is by how many extra vowels he inserts.

The man destroys everything in his wake as he moves through the garden, leaving a tortured wreck of foliage, but no footprints, no shadow. crawford puts his hand on schuldig's shoulder and applies pressure with his fingertips, even though they're already sitting still.

crawford presses his mouth right up against schuldig's ear to say it, teeth grazing his earlobe. For a moment, wonders what it would be like to bite down hard, wonders if schuldig is full of red too. It doesn't even seem important, this thing that he says, not yet, not with the rhythm he notices for the first time, against schuldig's throat.

crawford waits until schuldig lets out the breath he's been holding in for too long, and then says: What do you think he's got in that book?

You're just going to let him do it?

IT'S BEEN WRITTEN.

Dream locks his fingers behind his neck and pushes the vertebrae back into his palms. He would have preferred to do this in The Dreaming, but when it comes to his brother — this brother, at least — everything has to be on his terms. Those clean surgical lights where Dream's eyes should be shift, change wavelength. It's irresponsible.

IT'S NECCESARY.

That is Destiny. A well-behaved story, purposeful actions and appropriate consequences. A quaint ending to tie it all together. These things do not matter to Dream. I don't want to be involved.

WE ALL WILL BE.

And that's written too?

OF COURSE.

At night, they sleep wherever they happen to find themselves when they decide to do so. schuldig prefers open fields, buries his fingers to the knuckle in the soil, presses his cheek against the grass. He sleeps later than crawford and wakes with dirt on his face and in his hair, but content and smelling of sap. While schuldig sleeps, crawford pads silently across the garden.

He knows the man's routine, by now. With the cirrus clouds tumbling by, Destiny walks and pages turn. crawford watches, envious.

You've had them before. The sort of idea that waterlogs your lungs. Swells up in your windpipe. Then you're coughing and sputtering and its falling out of your mouth, and why can't you stop it? That's how it happens for crawford. Something inchoate, at first. Wavering. Then, the abruptness of realization.

Let's steal it.

It's chained to his wrist, schuldig points out. This is possibly the last time he will ever be the practical one, and besides he wants to swim right now. He stands up in the creek, stretches, then shakes his head like a canine. Water droplets bounce of off his hair, land on crawford's nose, and on their clothing, which is strewn across an ornamental hedge. crawford tries not to stare at schuldig's penis or the clear musculature at his hips — but why? He can't recall ever having stared or not stared before.

Okay, he amends, let's just read it then.

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

When they first meet the boy, he communicates in barely perceptible nods. His eyes are narrow, but dark blue, and he paces the poplar grove from one end to another, rhythm deliberate and even. He keeps his hands clasped behind his back, shoulders sloped forward — and it hurts, hurts to even look at that posture.

You lost or something, kid? schuldig asks, and the boy gives a shrug so small that neither schuldig nor crawford is sure that it's a shrug at all.

You talk?

Another shrug. Maybe.

Something about the boy's silence gives schuldig the security to speak to crawford as if he were not standing in front of them. Kinda feel bad for him, you know. All alone out here. We're going to walk up to that place with all the yellow flowers. There are beetles the size of your head, I swear. You want to come?

crawford thinks he sees the boy nod. He feels something twist beneath his breastbone, but he doesn't know what it is.

Days later, crawford wakes from a nap to discover them both missing. He finds them at the creek, where schuldig is chasing tri-colored fish with fanned tails. The new boy laughing. It is the first sound crawford has heard him make aloud.

Because the garden can no more be described in terms of size than the universe can, crawford is surprised to find the red-haired man waiting for him. He wears wide pants, drawn in at the ankle, and dangles by the crook of his knees from a tree branch. The stranger says: Ah, lovely. You're alone.

crawford has to squint before he realizes that the man's head is not on fire. It is his hair, redder than schuldig's, brushing against the grass like a forest fire. crawford compulsively checks over his shoulder to make sure that the man is actually addressing him.

Of course I am, he says and rolls his eyes. I've been looking for you everywhere. He gives an exaggerated sigh, places his hands on the ground and kicks over into an upright position.

Er, crawford says. Do I know you?

The man grins. It is a casually intimate gesture. I get around to meeting most everyone in one life or another.

He gives a deep bow: Sometimes, I am a horse. Sometimes, a salmon. In the American Plains, they call me Coyote. In Spain, San Martin Txiki. I am Reynard the Fox. I am El-ahrairah. But in this aspect, I am mostly known as Sky Traveler, Shape Changer, Wrangling Foe, Loptur, Lokehall, Loki.

Lo - kee, crawford says, and the man gives a soft frenzied laugh at the sound of his own name. It makes crawford afraid, but he cannot yet understand that the man is insane, or afflicted by whatever lies past insanity, be it wisdom or treachery or death. His body is composed of inefficient lines, narrow angles. When he steps forward, crawford feels compelled to cover his mouth, the smell of smoke so sharp and sudden. The stranger sings: I know what you want.

In the distance, a raven veers across the sky, screaming hoarsely. Loki leans in. There is a toxic stink to his breath. You want to know what's in the book. His book.

crawford hears himself mumble something unintelligently, and Loki places s hand on his shoulder. They don't seem right, those palms, deep crosswork, even and geometric as a checkerboard. The man goes on. I know what's in the book, but it wouldn't be the same if I just told you, would it? No, no. You have to see it for yourself, don't you?

Don't you?

He doesn't wait for crawford to reply before pulling a glass vial from an inner pocket of his coat. The liquid inside is gold. It is a color crawford has not yet seen, and will never see again — later, he will find replicates of it on Egyptian antiquities, bulbous domes on Russian churches, the halo surrounding the virgin's head in an Italian painting. None of these colors will ever compare with the original.

crawford is reaching for it before he even realizes he's moved, but the man draws away. Slips it back into his pocket. No need to rush, now. I'll require something in return. You know how these stories go, of course.

These stories?, crawford says. Everything is given freely in the garden, and he cannot yet comprehend the concept of trade, but something unfurls in his stomach. A sensation of emptiness, weightlessness, that he does not yet know is hunger.

Meet me here in a week, the stranger tells him.

It is two days later. schuldig is pinching grass to squeeze out the sap. I'm just saying you're acting a bit obsessed.

Obsessed, crawford repeats. What does that mean?

schuldig responds with an ambiguous gesture.

Five days later, the trees look disheveled in the rain. Flora extinct to every other garden in the universe strains upwards towards the droplets. schuldig and the new boy agitate the songbirds, spooking them out of their nests. crawford watches from beneath a canopy so tightly wound, not a drop of water passes through.

You just have to say it, Loki tells him.

But I don't even know what it means.

crawford watches the gold liquid spinning in the vial.

Exactly. Can't be very important, then. Can it?

If it's not important, then why do you want it so badly?

It is what crawford says, but he cannot move his eyes away from the vial. The liquid traps and shapes the light like a ghost, caught in a certain wavelength.

It is only when Loki moves to slip the vial back into his coat, that crawford says: Wait. Hold on.

Say it, Loki tells him.

I give Schuldig to you.

The vial is warm in his palm, expanding and contracting gently like the ribcage of a living thing. Loki tells him what to do. He says, You'll have an hour. No more. No less.

Actually, Destiny is quite looking forward to being tricked.

His gait takes on a pleasant sway. His hood lowers over his face, but it cannot hide the upturn at the corner of his mouth. He is serving the future, in a certain way, after all. He walks south, to the edge of the garden; beyond this limit are mountainsides lined by miles of old wall, towers severed midpoint, unreachable to any who would try. They are remnants of past universes to whom no one now belongs, and who now belong to no one.

He already knows that the flowers are tainted; that the petals have been infused with dreadful snake poison, collected in the bowels of the earth. He knows that god-poison is not man-poison; he knows it only has to touch the bare pads at the bottom of his feet to diffuse across his skin.

AH, THIS IS LOVELY, he thinks, settling back into the shade of a poplar tree. PERHAPS I WILL VISIT MY BROTHER AGAIN.

Has he ever slept before? Have any of them ever slept? He settles the book conveniently beside his thigh, and gives the chain some slack.

Destiny is blind, so he does not need to close his eyes.

He waits.

Dream pinches the bridge of his nose. In The Dreaming, he is hyper-lifelike, with indentations beneath each cheekbone. Let me get his straight. By reading the book, he will change its outcome. But he needs to read it, because it's already been written that the outcome will change. You read a lot of Borges, don't you?

THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN CONSEQUENCES IF IT HAD NOT BEEN ALLOWED TO HAPPEN.

Consequences, Dream repeats idly. This will have consequences.

Destiny does not respond. It is his final dismissal of any further questions pertaining to the subject. In the Dreaming, a flock of translucent birds move across the sky, crying out.

Reading the Cosmic Log is not like reading any other book. Later, crawford will become familiar with the sensation — like dipping into a current of knowledge that is always unreeling, always running forward — to have this knowing delivered directly into his mind with no packaging, no precursor. The Cosmic Log is limitless, despite its covers, but its contents are finite. Volumes repeat, sometimes identical, sometimes with only slight variations. Broad patterns are never broken. There are plot lines which intersect briefly. Some which never diverge from their involvement with each other. Some which appear to run parallel, appear to ignore each other. But all stories spiral in towards a single ending. A unified point beyond which none will go any farther.

The appropriate page has already been opened to him.

The enormity of the information won't hit him until days later. He'll be walking along the creek and suddenly double over, retch dryly, and let out a wordless sob into the ground beneath him. It is a new emotion in the bundle of nerves at the base of his spine, in the little spaces in-between each eyelash. schuldig will find him and put a hand on his back and ask: What's wrong? What's wrong?

But crawford will only be able to shake his head.

crawford wakes schuldig suddenly, in the night: Don't worry. I'm going to change it.

And schuldig replies, sleepy, disorientated: Change what? What are you talking about?

We don't stay in the garden forever. We have to leave, and when we leave, we forget — No. I'm going to change it. I'm going to get us out of there.

schuldig puts a hand on crawford's forehead, incredulous. You're shaking.

I have to remember. If I can remember, it'll be all right.

Then, one day, crawford is gone.

Not now, kid, schuldig snaps. The new boy is still half-wild. He hasn't spoken yet. He responds to schuldig by lifting his upper lip, revealing blunt teeth and too-pink gums.

None of that, schuldig says, gentler this time. You stay here. I'm going to go look for him.

In the garden, the sky looks like tinfoil. schuldig walks along the creek and finds nothing in the citrus groves, in the tangled rose bushes, in the rows of hydrangea and wild orchid, in the kingdom of the dragonflies, the beetles, the bees. Finds nothing beneath the long shadows of the statues. Finds nothing in the abandoned turrets or the moss-covered fountains.

Fuck, he says. He doesn't know where he learned the word, but he likes it. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

The day passes. The fall of light is violet. schuldig sinks into the wet creek bank and feels scant and pale and weak. Tomorrow, he will look again. And the day after that. Then, he will give up.

We don't stay in the garden forever.

Why did he say that? What did it mean?

In Connecticut, a boy is born. This boy thinks he can see the future. Really, he is only remembering the past.

Five years after, a prostitute gives birth two months prematurely in the backroom of a whorehouse in Berlin. The whore was one of his, of course, all of them are — but not in the same way as the boy will be. The boy already bares his mark in the tuft of fire-bright hair at the crown of his head. Loki cradles the baby in his arms and the sound of his laughter sticks to the air.

You will be guilty, he says. Guilty like me.