At the first note of the Song, Big Whoop shrieked. The ground trembled. Chariset's face was a perfect blank as she advanced on him, singing all the way. She was holding a sword composed of blue fire, concentration evident in every line of her body. The lava monster retreated a pace or two, snarling his rage, but he was clearly unsure how to respond. He bellowed, causing the cavern to tremble and shake. A dull rumbling underlay all.
Guybrush quickly backstepped to the far side of the cavern, next to Elaine, who had come to life and now clutched his arm, pale with anxiety. He had no idea how much she knew of the past few months, but the cavern was a scene to terrify anyone right now. The floor and ceiling were shaking in earnest now, and pieces of rock cascaded down from above. One by one, the lights went out as skeletons toppled over and fell to the ground, leaving them in increasing darkness. Now only the combatants could be seen clearly--Big Whoop surrounded by gold light and Chari haloed in bluish-white.
He blocked two more pieces of rock with his arm, took a glancing blow on his shoulder, staggered, and pulled them back into the shelter of an overhang. More rock fell past them as he held her close, watching the fight.
Elaine shivered, her eyes dark pin-points in a white face. "Guybrush, what's happening?"
"No time to explain. We've got to get out of here."
She was made of sterner stuff than that. "No. We need to help...somehow."
Still more of the ceiling fell past them. Her courage completely won him over (all over again), but there was nothing she could do. All he wanted was to know that she was safe. "Elaine, run for the exit. Get out of here. Chari and I will come out later."
"I'm not leaving you, Guybrush," she insisted, though her hands were white and cold.
"You can't do anything here. Run."
She pulled herself together and gave him the look that even LeChuck didn't dare ignore. "Guybrush Threepwood. You're not any more prepared for this than I am. If you're staying, I'm staying."
At that instant, the rock around the entrance finally shook loose and cascaded down, mostly blocking the exit. "We're both staying," he declared, cautiously inching forward.
No more projectiles fell from the ceiling, but both Chari and Big Whoop were singing now. The Songs had taken the form of visible winds, blue and red, battering against one another, howling around the cavern. A wisp of red brushed Elaine, and she shuddered--Guybrush quickly placed himself between her and Big Whoop.
"Chariset!" he called.
She looked up, unable to break off singing. The red wind flowed at her, but she raised the blue sword and parted it in two. Murray, sitting dazed on the ground, stiffened, but she sidestepped to stand between him and the monster, just as Guybrush was guarding Elaine. She lost her note, faltered, found it again, and pressed forward. Big Whoop redoubled his efforts, trying to force her back. For an instant they stood still, stalemated.
Murray, standing behind her, suddenly broke into song--in perfect harmony with her melody line. Elaine gasped. Guybrush was no musical judge--Chariset might have been a virtuoso soprano or tone-deaf, for all he knew, ( thought he thought she had a nice voice)--but not even Elaine's sea-chanties were as lovely as the duet that ensued between Chari and Murray. His tenor, her soprano, the Song of Awakening, all combined to create a flood of bluish-green light that poured out towards Big Whoop. As for Chari, if she was surprised at her love's vocal abilities, she didn't show it, but she linked her free hand with Murray and sang out stronger than before. Big Whoop howled but now was clearly losing the battle.
Another forward step. At the very edge of the pool of lava, Chariset walked forward fearlessly. The instant her foot touched the magma, it hardened into an oblong block of rock. Crackling sounds echoed sharply on the walls as streamers of rock spread out into the pool, like fast-forming ice. Murray joined her on their island of rock--they stepped forward as one. Another rock-shape, connected to the first, appeared. Two smaller pieces of the pool also solidified, cutting down on Big Whoop's running space.
Forward, and again. Sharp sounds, gunshots reverberated. The blue-green wind swept across the surface of the pool. Spurs jutted out into the side-channels, sealing them off.
They stood at the throne now. She and Murray flanked it, one hand on each armrest. Big Whoop snarled in helpless rage as Chari raised her sword in her hands, point downward, and drove it into the rock. The hilt remained visible, but now the blue glow encircled the throne, scouring it, breaking it down into sand. Two skeletons lay on the newly-formed rock, skeletons in pieces. No, there were three...one was a bird.
She recovered her sword and pointed it at the bones. "Be what you were meant to be," she chanted, still on the melody line. Murray picked up the phrase, in harmony. "Be what you were meant to be."
Green-blue smoke hissed, coiled, surrounded the bones in large masses. They dwindled into human-sized figures, hesitated, lifted-
-and revealed two astonished men and one overjoyed green parrot. Largo. Horace. Polly. Guybrush and Elaine shrank back involuntarily from the sight of the bird. Chariset didn't appear to even see them.
The two men ran to the other side of the room, cowering against the walls. They never even looked at their savioress, but Chari still stood between them and their master, guarding them from the red wind. Polly took flight, shrieking. Elijah, who had been perched on Chari's shoulder for the entire battle, launched himself into the air as well, flying circles around her, glowing a little from the light of her song. "Be what you were meant to be," he sqwaaacked. "Be what you were meant to be," echoed back the song.
"Be what you were meant to be," Guybrush whispered. "Be what you were meant to be," replied Elaine. Strange yellow light danced at the edges of his vision, flowing--it could only be from them--past them and toward Big Whoop, who now stood revealed in a shrinking circle of red. "Be what you were meant to be," chirped Polly and Elijah, and the song responded. A sibilant chorus resounded in the cavern. "Be what you were meant to be."
All chose the exact same moment to step forward, closing the ring tighter around Big Whoop. Blue and green, yellow-gold, purple from above, all-enclosing, a deadly rainbow. Eyes hard, Chariset stood less than ten feet from the lava creature, who twisted away. He hurled lava-drops at her, but she held up her hand and they stopped at the edge of his sphere of crimson light and fell.
"Be what you were meant to be," she sang, twisting the words into a curse.
"Stop...please. Have mercy," begged the demon-creature.
"What mercy did you show us, fiend?" Her tone was rough and cold. "You lived by the sword, now die by the sword."
She raised the blue flame above her head and drove it into the creature's 'chest' with all her strength, using both hands. He screamed with enough volume that Guybrush clapped his hands to his ears. Polly and Elijah scattered to either side of the room, Murray and Elaine winced and covered their own ears. Chari stood like a stone, but her teeth were obviously clenched tight against the sound.
The lava-monster stiffened, solidified, then slid beneath the surface of the stone without a splash. The millisecond he went under, the scream cut itself off, and lava slid over the hole where he had vanished with a wet slurp. Instantly, it froze into stone. Breathing hard, Chariset and Murray faced Elaine and Guybrush across the lip of a depressed circle of dead black rock. Overhead, the two parrots still circled, creating the only real light in the room--a dim purplish light which cast odd shadows over everyone's faces.
The hilt of the blue sword burned dimly, flickered, and faded as the Amulet's power slowly died away. Chariset, completely spent, sagged on her feet. Murray put an arm around her.
"We did it," she managed hoarsely, looking at Guybrush.
"No, you did it," he said, stepping off the ledge to embrace her, Elaine on his arm. Horace and Largo were dim shapes just beyond them, creeping cautiously closer to the light. Elijah whistled a warning as he touched gently down on Chari's arm. Polly did likewise, landing on Elaine.
The red parrot leaned in, rubbing beaks with his green counterpart. "Polly. Sister," he explained.
"Then she'll have to live with us from now on," said Elaine. Elijah looked to his mistress, leaning on Murray, who nodded. He uttered one squeal of joy and both of the parrots 'went out,' leaving them in utter darkness.
They stood in total silence for perhaps a minute. Then Chariset, slowly, quietly, began to laugh.
It spread. Guybrush and Elaine leaned on one another and laughed until tears came to their eyes--Murray whooped shamelessly somewhere in the darkness--the parrots cackled with their own form of hilarity. Even Horace and Largo were rolling on the stone floor. It was one step short of hysterics, this release of tension, but they all needed it--and indulged in it until most of them had to sit down.
It was also the kind of laughing fit that takes a long time to die out...they would recover, then move or try to say something and set each other off again.
Elaine finally recovered, wiping tears from her eyes (Guybrush knew this only because he was sitting next to her). "So..um...anybody got a light?"
More snickers from the darkness. "I think Chari does, right s--?"
He spoke too soon.
The ground opened beneath them, and out sprang a monstrosity of mixed molten and hardened rock, bursting up so quickly that he flung the members of the party outward in all directions. They flew into the walls, sliding down to land in bruised heaps, or hitting the ceiling, or rolling helplessly across the floor. But as the creature whirled about in a tossing sea of molten rock, his eyes searched out two of the humans, fingers flinging out tiny arcs of lava. They flew like darts in two directions, snapping into the rock around the limbs of two figures in mid-slide down the rock face.
Guybrush and Chariset, pinned to the walls on either side of the reformed lava-pool, struggled for wits and air. Elaine, Murray, the two former henchmen, and two parrots lay in pitiful heaps all around the room, but they were of secondary interest. Big Whoop actually climbed up out of the pool and marched toward Guybrush, his enormous back hiding all sight of Chari.
"Count yourself fortunate," he snarled at the trapped pirate. "I have decided to spare you."
With a single mighty shove, the creature pushed into the section of rock on which he hung, spinning it completely around. The manacles released, dropping him onto a black circle of solid rock. The wall vanished. All around him was a sea of glowing red magma.
Chariset hung on the rock face, wind completely knocked out of her, head spinning. She fought for a full breath of air as the monster crept towards her.
"Don't even think about begging for mercy," he began.
"Oh don't worry," she managed to croak. "I wasn't going to."
He burned with white-hot rage. "I should kill you right now. You defied me. You deserve to die."
She struggled for enough breath to sing. "Then do it. What are you waiting for?" The Amulet's power was creeping up, slowly. All she had to do was buy time.
"I should. Maybe I will." She continued to regard him with flat eyes. "But I have something else in mind for you. Something for the whole family."
Something about his tone..or his wording....she felt a chill for the first time since gazing on the entrance to Big Whoop's lair. He laughed, satisfied, and gave her slab of rock a shove. She dropped--
--into a large box of some kind. A lid fell into place over the top, and a sudden rush of cold air made her shiver.
She was in a rectangular cage made of solid ice.
Big Whoop appeared before her, magically untouched by the frigid air. She pressed into the bars of the cage and jerked back in surprise at how cold they were. Already she was shivering, and her breath steamed.
"Welcome to your new home," he said grandly. "I hope you'll like it here."
"You can't p-p-possibly intend to keep me here," she snarled.
"And why not?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
"Why...no. No it's not. Why don't you tell me?"
She would just show him. With all her will, she invoked the Amulet....and nothing happened. Not a whisper of power.
"Oh, did I forget to mention that your little toy won't work here?" grinned Big Whoop ingenuously. She drew a breath to sing and nearly coughed most of it out--the air was cold. " And don't even bother trying to sing your way out. Conditions really aren't good for that."
"And how do you mean to keep me in a cage with such flimsy bars?" She whirled and kicked at the thin pieces of ice, shattering them with a satisfying crash.
But at that same instant, she was stricken with a wave of cold that snatched the breath from her body. She gasped, losing even more heat to the air, as her fingers and toes burned, then went numb. Her nose and face tingled.
"And one other thing," added the demon, grinning insufferably at the ice magically reformed. "Every time you break a bar, you lose more of your body temperature. No need to speed up the inevitable."
"So this is the plan," she growled thickly and indistinctly as her lips went numb. "You're going to freeze me to death."
"'Death' is such an ugly word. I'd prefer to say I'm sending you to join your ancestors. Oh, and don't mind that--" he added as the cage seemed to contract slightly. "All part of the procedure."
The bars continued to close in around her, slowly. "You do remember this part, don't you?" he continued. "You've seen it before."
"I don't know what you're talking about," she replied, though an insistent memory lingered just out of recall which insisted that she did.
"I believe I once put your brother through the same thing."
Guybrush--frozen into a block of ice.
No. Anything but that...
In mad panic, Chariset attacked the bars, hoping to smash them apart and flee--all but two held firm. She fled for the opening she had created, but her body was now numb to the neck and could not obey her. She fell clumsily to her knees, losing even more heat to the icy floor. The ceiling began to close in on her. Panting, she gave Big Whoop her best glare, but her vision was failing. The air was icy agony in her lungs. One more time she struggled to get to her feet and fight.
Then she was surrounded by comfortable warmth. All was peace and rest. The ice-floor was her bed, calling to her. A strange voice warned her that this was wrong, that she shouldn't listen, but she was so tired...
The darkness seduced
her consciousness away, out of the cold, into paradise...
Big Whoop left her where she lay, after arranging her arms properly over her chest. She was even smiling a little when the ice finally engulfed her.
He stood on the edge of the black disk, feeling trapped and lost. Molten rock bubbled around the edges--not real lava--real lava would have incinerated him long ago. He had yet to even break a sweat. Even so, as a prison, it was effective. He had never wanted to pace so badly in his life.
"Well? Aren't you coming?"
Guybrush spun around on one foot and saw Big Whoop standing in the sea of magma. Beside him, a long path wound in serpentine curves across the roiling surface, leading ultimately into a deep opening in the cliff wall.
Where did that wall come from? "Forget it. I'm not following you in there."
"Have it your way." The black circle bobbed and tilted slightly under his weight, threatening to sink. "If you want to stay here and fry, that's your business. I just thought maybe you'd like to hear what I have to say."
"And why is that?" Guybrush was in no mood to listen to this guy.
"Because I understand that you've spent most of your life searching for something. Your parents. Your identity. Who you are..." Big Whoop waited for a reaction, while Guybrush tried to suspend the strange hopeful interest which rose inside him. It must not have worked, because the monster's eyes lit up. "Ah, so you do wonder. Come with me, and I will show you everything you always wanted to know."
"Not interested," Guybrush lied.
"Oh? Are you equally disinterested in all secrets? Even perhaps the Secret of Monkey Island?"
He lost his pretense of apathy. "You know the Secret?"
He chuckled, very softly. "I created the Secret."
"The Secret is in there?"
"Not precisely. But only there can I tell it to you."
Guybrush felt skeptical. "How very convenient for you. Nothing doing."
The creature seemed to sigh. "Look, this is my domain. I control everything here. If I wanted you dead, all I would have to do is tip that piece of rock you're standing on. Are you really in that much more danger there than here?"
The pirate didn't answer.
He did sigh. "You have my word as a creature of magic that you will leave the cave alive and in good health. But this is my last offer. Will you come with me, now, and finally have some answers, or will you stay out here and die ignorant?"
"You gave your word," Guybrush reminded him, stepping gingerly onto the path. It held firm. Within the cave opening ahead, a thin blue light was shining.
"Ah...you may have wondered," began Big Whoop conversationally as they wound back and forth along the path, "why there seems to be a curse on the Threepwood name. Why your family seems unusually lucky yet tends to have many enemies. Why you always seem to be off on adventures."
Guybrush had wondered that, actually.
At the opening in the rock face, Big Whoop climbed out of the lava river and walked along beside him. "Well, it all goes back a long ways, to the very first Threepwood, actually." His voice echoed off the walls of the cave as they walked in, headed towards the light. "He was young, but resourceful--like you--and he eventually married a beautiful woman and settled down to live happily ever after."
The source of the blue light was a small opened door, just large enough to admit Big Whoop. They were very close to it now, as the monster continued his story.
"He also had a voodoo spirit to assist him, much like your friend, the Mailer-Daemon. Without his help, the first Threepwood would have died several times over, but this spirit was loyal and helpful, and he never complained, even when his master nearly killed him through overwork."
Into the door, into a room of unbelievable crystalline beauty.
It was a room of ice, filled with crystals cut like diamonds, sparkling and shining in a way he had never seen before. His breath caught, and he would have stopped to stare, but Big Whoop was already leading him on. "You haven't seen anything yet."
A single black-stone path lay through the garden of rock-ice, along which Big Whoop threaded. "The spirit fled his harsh master at last, coming here. He came to a remote island called Monkey Island and made his home down here, deep in the bowels of the island." They passed under a crystal arch through a shining wall into yet another room. "And when he had enough power, the spirit returned to his former master--and brought him here."
Directly in Guybrush's line of sight was an ice-crystal cut like a coffin, with a faceted top. And inside rested the body of a tall man with red hair, frozen inside.
His delight turned to horror. He leaped back, recoiled into a solid wall which instinct told him was once the door. "What is this?" he demanded of Big Whoop.
The monster only laughed. "This? Why this is the Secret of Monkey Island, Guybrush!" Rank upon rank of crystal coffins stood in the large room, arranged in semi-circles. "Do you see my little collection, gathered up all these centuries? Do you know who they are?"
Row after row of cold, dead faces, trapped for all time in beautiful coffins.
But there, in the front row.....was that--?
"Every Threepwood who ever lived--man, woman, and child--is here," thundered the spirit. "Including your parents."
"Mom? Dad??" Guybrush shoved past Big Whoop and peered deeply into the faces of a man and a woman in the front rank. Tears fell unnoticed down his face as he realized that his parents were here...had been here all these years..captives of the monster. "I thought you abandoned me.." he whispered.
"They came here as soon as they could leave you and your sister by yourselves. They were going to destroy me....ha ha. Now the circle is complete. You have come to destroy me as well..."
"You were the spirit," said Guybrush, comprehending.
"I was. And the day your first ancestor drove me away, I put a curse on the Threepwood name! I vowed that I would have my revenge on every man, woman, or child to bear that name. And I have. I have. Look at them, Guybrush. I have your entire family. I have your entire history, here....buried in Monkey Island where no one will ever find them."
With a hard lump in his throat, Guybrush stared at his parents, remembering their hands, their voices, their smiles. He had never known they were adventurers.
He locked gazes with the monster, eyes glittering with hatred. "I swear to God, Big Whoop, I will find a way to destroy you, once and for all."
"What, like you destroyed LeChuck?" laughed Big Whoop. "He was mine, too."
"What?"
"Didn't you know? From the moment you and Chariset were old enough to oppose me, I was there. I took and trained a younger Threepwood, an uncle of yours who thirsted for power, and when he was strong enough, I set him against you."
"LeChuck was my uncle?"
"Yes. But even though he was your relative, he was my creature the entire time. For I have always been your worst enemy."
"But why?"
He looked hatefully pensive (a hard thing to imagine). "Because we are bound to one another. Your family, my curse, is my only reason for living. I cannot rest until I have all of you, all that there are. Only then will I be satisfied."
"You will never be satisfied."
"On the contrary. Only two Threepwoods are left to oppose me. I have you now, and I have plans for the other."
"What are you going to do to Chari??"
"'Going to do'?" Then the monster laughed, heartlessly. "Turn around, Threepwood. Turn around and see your beautiful sister."
And then he knew. The world dropped out from under his feet as he knew what he would find when he turned around. "No." He denied the truth. It couldn't be. It wasn't. He would turn around, and it would not be-
-but it was. The cold and the blue light turned her hair and lips to black and her skin to blue, but the woman in her glass coffin was none other than his sister. Chariset Threepwood. The latest victim of the curse. Around her neck, mocking him, was the Necromancer's Amulet.
Guybrush stared, frozen. But shock gave way to rage--he screamed something without words and slammed both fists into the ice crystal that held her imprisoned. It held solid, though his hands throbbed from the blow. "You're lying," he half-shrieked at the crystal, but Big Whoop answered from behind him. "I can never lie."
Guybrush fought the crystal with hands, feet, teeth, fingernails--and couldn't scratch it. "Let her out."
"I know of nothing that undoes this ice."
"You lie."
"I can never lie."
"Then you tell me--is she dead?"
"She is with her ancestors."
"Damn you, monster! Tell me!"
"You know all you need to know."
In mingled rage and frustration, Guybrush tore himself away from his sister's side and flung himself into the air directly at Big Whoop, meaning to tear him to pieces or die trying.
Big Whoop stood immobile, making no attempt to block the attack.
Three feet away.
Two feet.
one.
Two inches away from magma skin, Guybrush stopped dead. It was as though the air had turned to water and solidified around him--he was suspended in mid-leap.
"My second greatest regret is that I am unable to break my word," snarled Big Whoop, regarding him. "But I promised you should leave this place, and so you shall. So hear me. I banish you to the ends of the Caribbean. You shall not return to Monkey Island. If you do, I will shatter every block here, starting with hers. You will have your chance at revenge only on the bodies of your entire family." Big Whoop smiled thinly. "I do not think even you are that obsessed."
And then Guybrush, unknowingly, asked the question which was to break his heart completely. "What about Elaine?"
"Ah, yes...Elaine." An slow mist gathered into a bank, which lighted and displayed an image--his red-haired wife, wandering slowly and painfully in the dark cavern, searching for him. "You remember I said there was another Threepwood to deal with beside your sister?"
"You--you're not going to turn her to ice too...." He fought the air, but it held fast.
"Actually, no. For you see, I was not referring to Elaine..."
He waited.
"Your young wife Elaine is two months pregnant. With your daughter."
"I'm a father?" Guybrush struggled for thought against an overwhelming emotional tide of rage, grief, despair, and joy.
"Theoretically, perhaps. But you and your little girl won't have much time with one another." The image swirled, reformed into a tall girl of perhaps seventeen, with long black hair and piercing blue eyes which resembled Chari's too much for comfort. "For you see, she will be born here. I will be her father. I will raise her, and teach her all she will need to know about the outside."
He choked. "No...you can't..."
"I will teach her to hate the father who abandoned her here. And I will name her 'Odia.' Do you know what that means?"
"No! I won't let you do this to my daughter!"
"I will name her 'Hatred.' Because she will hate you more than anything in her life. She will hate you more than she ever would have loved you."
"You can't do this! It'll never work!"
"And, when she is old enough, I will send her after you. She will track you down with all of my hatred in her heart. What a sweet reunion that will be. The last of the Threepwoods will murder the second-to-last...and all out of love to me. And then I can rest."
Guybrush was all but incoherent. "You...you curse! All the pain I've ever known in my life has been from you, all along! You destroy all the happiness I've ever known!"
"And what about me, you rotten brat?" Big Whoop cut in. "Your family is the curse on my demonic soul! You don't think I tried to escape you?" He spit fire at the rows of ice coffins. "You brought this on yourselves!" he shrieked at them. "You get what you deserve! And don't you ever forget it! You earned this!!"
Guybrush's eyes opened wide in sudden realization. 'We are bound to one another'....of course!
"Now, as for you...."
He had one chance to end this.
"Big Whoop! Wait! I need to tell you something before I go."
The demon looked sour but relented. "You have three seconds, Threepwood. What do you have to say?"
For an eyeblink and a half, Guybrush gazed on the image of his future daughter. This is for you, he thought.
"Big Whoop, I di--"
The air opened under him and the world went black and gray. He was lost-and falling-
-and he landed on his stomach on something gritty.
"--ismiss you." The words rang hollow and empty in the still air. The black sand beach beneath him was deserted. The sky was clear and hot, streaked with clouds. No sound but the echoes of his lost, defeated voice over the listless waves.
In the dead calm, another voice laughed, "Feast on defeat, Threepwood. I have your Elaine. I have your sister. Now, I have your daughter. And you will have a long, long lifetime to think about what you have lost."
Then the laughter came, cruel and mocking.
In the dead of the night, the air was rent with a wailing cry that was not a shriek and not quite a howl, a sound so full of desolation that even the animals who heard it cowered shivering to the ground. Again and again it sounded, for as long as the sufferer had voice, then gave way to sobs, then silent tears. It was the sound of Ultimate Suffering, as S.S. Morgenstern so accurately described the horrible sense of agonizing emptiness and loss felt by the lone mourner, last of the Threepwoods, the latest and most horribly scarred victim of Big Whoop's curse.
He cried alone in the depths of the jungle and wanted only to die. But he was cursed with life, and death would not come for him, not for an eternity of dark and lonely nights, no matter how devoutly he might pray for it.
In the dead of the night, a shade of a woman opened her eyes on a forest which was blacker than death itself. She stepped out unsteadily on ghost feet, walking among a crowd of men and women among the trees, her blue gaze puzzled and lost. Where was she? What was she doing here?
Who had she been?
Why was she here and not at rest? She had always been told that the dead slept. Who was keeping her awake?
Two shades approached her. She could see that they were a man and a woman. Why did they look so sad to see her?
They touched her and she recoiled at the flood of memories which streamed through their substance and into theirs. Images of a brown-haired girl with a blond brother. Why did the image of the brother fill her with such sadness?
Who are you? she asked.
:We are your family.:
Why am I here?
:You are our family.:
I am a Threepwood, she realized. I am Chariset Threepwood.
And I am dead.
Because of Big Whoop's curse, I am dead.
Yet I live.
Yet I am dead.
She wanted to flee the horror of the moment. Let it be a dream. Let me still be alive. I'll break out of the cage this time. I'll sing the Song. I'll use the Amulet. Just let me live.
Mother, Father, tell me I can go back. Tell me I can make it right again.
:No, child. For us, there is no more going back.:
Then what can I do? Where can I go?
:Wait, dear child. All we can do it wait.:
For what?
:For the end.:
No. I refuse to believe it.
:Dear one, you will learn. Our story is over. The tale belongs to others now.:
As long as Guybrush is out there, I will not learn. It can't end this way!
:My child, perhaps for Guybrush it will not end this way. But for you, it has. It has.:
She fell into their
comforting arms and cried without tears--the only weeping a spirit can
do. But whether she cried for the story, for her family, for her
brother, or for her own lost possibilities, she could not say. The
tale which started so brightly with Murray had turned into a tragedy, with
no way to set it right. For this most of all, she cried.