Sleep Later
It's four in the morning. I feel a puff of cool air against my ear as if a fly tried to land on it. I burrow under the blankets and play dead.
This doesn't work, the distant sensation of cool hands shaking me, prodding me, grabbing my ankles, tugging at the blankets just enough to make pretending to be asleep impossible.
The last Emperor of Melnibonè's back.
"Fuck off." I grumble from somewhere beneath my pillow. "I'm asleep."
"Why? Sleep later!"
I acquired Elric's ghost in my childhood, the ghost of someone who never lived.
I had forgotten this ghost until one night, years later, I found him sprawled out in the dark between the worlds, looking up at a sky that wasn't there, exhausted.
I picked myself up from ground that wasn't there – There was quite a lot of this particular ghost to trip over. He reminded me of his name, Elric of Melnibonè, and asked me to stay a while because he remembered me, though I'd changed radically from the first time we'd met.
Which was weird.
One does not forget what Elric is, or what he looks like.
But I had.
I helped him sit up. We sat there together watching the stars come out, as, surrounded by dead enemies, he reminded me while wiping blood and sweat from his pale face with a Kleenex I'd found in one of my pockets, that I was one of many and that he hadn't seen me for a long time. Alien as such feelings were to him, he was glad I'd stopped by in the waiting dark all these years later because he was lonely and bored waiting for me to reopen the books of his life.
Which explains why I put my bifocals on before sunrise last Wednesday and glared at at my spectral pest for waking me up from where he crouched beside my side of the bed.
Laundry
"Pull on a pair of pants. It's distracting!"
"The best runes are best woven skyclad." He says in a mocking tone. "You should try it sometime – not to mention dragons don't mind if you ride naked – they prefer it."
I roll my eyes. Great, my ghost's in a good mood, which means snark and mischief. I play along. "Trust me, I'm a fat little old lady; the punk answer to Aunt Bea without trying. Nobody wants to see that, including me."
The ghost gives me a slow, haughty look. "Very well, madame. A breechclout to protect what little daintiness you have left."
"Whatever."
"The weather's good for a morning dragon ride – the sky was red last night at sundown."
"Go right ahead, I have shit to do."
Slipping a long white lock of hair behind one ear, the imaginary albino prince shoots me a sardonic look of disbelief, "You'd rather fold towels than ride a dragon with me at dawn? What happened to you while I was asleep?"
"I grew up."
"Liar." Catlike, Elric emits a mocking chuckle, refusing to move aside as I grope under the bed for my slippers.
I walk through him in an act of petty revenge. He objects, there's no need to be rude!
At least on this visit he's not the usual morose, sulky version of himself, lurking behind the furnace with the velociraptor, startling me as I work the table saw or rotate the laundry. He looks about, oh, I'd say 19, perhaps 20, moody, but still optimistic.
And despite his vices, his decadence, and his occasional oblivious cruelty, oddly innocent.
I firmly close the bathroom door behind me. Imaginary ghost or not, I have my limits.
My white tornado's feeling talkative, though. He's like a small child constantly tugging on my clothes saying, "Mom-mom-mom-mooooooooOOOOMMMMMM! Watch this! Watch thiiiiiiiiiiiissss!"
Through the bathroom door I hear all about what he saw on his trip to a desert city and how buying maps from mysterious strangers in taverns is a bad idea, but he did all right in the end even though his horse died out from under him, and he met this really nice girl, ummmmm… but nothing came of it… no, not… really.
I step out of the bathroom, dressed.
"And you complain about my breechclout." He snarks.
"No," I correct him, "Your fucking lack of a breechclout."
"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" The breechclout is now a pair of loose, heavy silk trousers, black, and a long elaborately embroidered tunic, a shimmering mingling of greens and blues like a peacock's feather as he follows me into the kitchen and last night's dishes. He looks painfully young as he looks me up and down as I stand by the sink drinking the first cup of the day. "No makeup?"
Backseat Driver
"Why bother? I'll only wash it off at the end of the day."
Nursing a mug of stewed herbs that could poison an entire small town were it real, Elric mulls this over at the kitchen table while I fry bacon.
Though it's forbidden meat to his caste, he developed a taste for the stuff when he ran away from home and responsibility in a fit of romantic irresponsibility.
A fit which ended badly for all involved.
I let him hitchhike for a few minutes so he can enjoy the scent and then the taste.
It's like having a very excited backseat driver who constantly wants you to pull over so you can let them read every historical marker along the way no matter how small or unimportant.
Towels
"You know, I think I need one." He always sounds like he's singing at me even when he's not.
"What?" I'm now folding laundry. Boots off, Elric sprawls on the bed among the towels, dressed as a mercenary of some indeterminate time in a history that never happened, minus his runesword – which I refuse to allow in my house. I stack towels around him.
"A horrible old woman." He rolls over on one elbow, unsettling crimson eyes looking me over, "Your cooking isn't as nauseating as what I've encountered in my travels and, unlike most humans, you don't stink!"
"Gee, thanks." Refusing to rise to his oblivious bait, I stack underwear on his chest out of pure spite.
He continues with growing enthusiasm. "I'll put you on my pack horse along with my armor when I'm not wearing it – as part of my cook kit. You'll set up camp after I go off and have some sort of horrible but exciting adventure. Once I do whatever it was I did and return, you'll have a hot meal waiting for me."
"You have GOT to be kidding."
A Job Offer
Elric gives me a dead serious look, "Something I've learned while wandering the Young Kingdoms, is the importance of a hot meal. That, and boil water before you drink it whenever possible. That first time I thought I'd been poisoned – had to punch new holes in my belt and everything."
"And?" He's ignoring the fact that I've piled a small mountain of paired socks on his head.
"Beating a wool tunic and breeches against a rock in a half-frozen river is awful no matter how bad they smell. If you want to avoid that experience, find a washer woman, or wait until you can't stand your own smell or the river thaws out. Laundry would also be your responsibility."
"What's in it for me?" my ghost follows me to the linen closet and watches me put the towels away.
"You, madame, will get to see interesting things and be attacked by interesting people and monsters."
I turn around to stare at Elric. I can never tell if this particular ghost's being sarcastic or not when he's like this.
He continues, "As my servant, you'll keep me company, remind me to take my sustaining herbs, look after me when I forget to take my sustaining herbs and black out, swear at people for no good reason in an amusing manner whilst throwing stones at them, ask for direction and see if there's any employment for me when I don't feel like talking to people. Which is quite a lot, actually."
Oh, dear God, he's serious!
No.
Here I am in the second half of my life, and an imaginary anti-hero is threatening to abduct me because he doesn't want to ask people for directions or wash his own underwear?
Not sure if I should be laughing or calling a doctor, I ask, "Is there a dental plan?"
Elric stares down his perfectly straight nose at me, long white hair drifting around his narrow face. "When, I return to the Ruby Throne, I'll keep you on a leash and let you bite whomever you please but me - of course, you'll do something about your hair."
"What? I LIKE my hair this way! Anyway, what about your fiancé? What will she think?"
"I doubt Cymoril will mind me having a pet nobody thought of keeping in the 10,000 years the Bright Empire has existed. I will allow her to take you out on walks when I'm busy reforming everything. And you, dear harridan, will bite whomever she tells you to with no fear of consequences."
I look up into his face. It's a long look because Elric is very, very tall, and I am very, very short. "Harridan? Get fucked!"
Startled, young Elric blinks his crimson, almond eyes, clearly puzzled by my lack of enthusiasm for his very, very good idea, "I have learned much from older women. Anyway, I will have your teeth filed to points."
Points? Tempting…no. Still…
"And while I'm still traveling, you get your own rocks, knife, and iron kettle." He frowns and then brightens, "That, and you'll keep track of my money and save every receipt so I don't have to."
"You've been eavesdropping on my side gigs."
"I had no idea women do business all the time until I met you. I always thought they were gossiping." He looks puzzled, adding, "Yesterday, you and your friend made fifteen agreements in less than half an hour. You didn't even stop feeding the sheep while you did it."
"So?"
"Have women always been this way and I was just too busy to notice?"
"What do you think?"
Bus Station
Elric's like this all morning until I take off my bifocals to clean them. They fascinate him almost as much as me frying bacon.
Or me driving.
He always sits in the back. Riding shotgun makes him nauseous.
At his request, I let him off somewhere between Wally World and the chiropractor – we passed what used to be the town bus station when I felt the gentle pressure of a hand on my shoulder.
A faint whisper in my ear. "Thank you for your hospitality, but I must continue my journey."
I pull over. We stand facing each other in the cracked parking lot in the noonday sun.
"What do you think?"
"About what?"
Haute Coture
Saddlebags over one shoulder, satchel with its journals, its sketchbooks, and its dangerously inaccurate maps over the other, Elric gestures down at his clothes.
They are garish and mismatched: plaids on plaids, reds which argue, blues that glower - and that cloak! "Do you like them? I bought them myself. With my own money!"
I refrain from saying, "What, your mom let you dress yourself again?" to this emperor and his new clothes because I know his story and understand the pain that comes with losing a parent, even if you never knew them. I take a deep breath, and say, "Your choice in raiment displays your unique sense of style."
"Thank you." Elric flashes a rare, honest grin of pleasure, "I was never allowed to choose what I wore. My body servant, Tanglebones, laid my clothes out every morning. I put them on. I never thought I had any choice." His hair is pulled back in a tail. I know exactly which part of his story he's about to enter - I cringe inside on his behalf. He reminds me so much at this age of some of my kid's friends. I know what some of them have gone through: neglect, abuse, abandonment, couch surfing… molestation… addiction.
It's funny what age and experience points out to you that you should have seen all along.
Intrusive Questions
Elric stares down at me, old eyes in a painfully young face, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot, dreadful black sword slung across his shoulders. He stretches, arms wide, shadow like a crucifix, arms falling to his side, head cocked.
He looks…fragile.
"Should you change your mind about being my personal horrible old woman, let me know?" He murmurs against the background of traffic and spring birds, gesturing at his face, his delicately pointed ears, his albinism. "I know what I look like." He absently rubs at a livid bruise on one temple. It looks like someone threw a rock at him and didn't miss. "Perhaps," he says ruefully, "Had I someone like you with me in my travels, people wouldn't be so afraid of me."
Ouch.
Without preamble, he suddenly asks, "You've given birth. What's it like?"
Startled, I snap, "It's not the sacred experience everyone claims it is. It is having your body turned inside out against your will because that which is within must come out even if it kills you."
Suddenly very, very young, Elric steps back, startled by my blunt candor, eyes meeting mine in shock.
"My mother died bearing me. I never knew her." He says very, very quietly, the song out of his voice, impassive mask of well-drilled formality he'd dropped once he realized I was safe slamming into place. "Madame, forgive me for my for my intrusion." He says with a stiff little inclination of his head.
"It's all right." I shrug. "Biology has a way of ripping away all your illusions, like it or not." I add a little more gently, "You asked a question. I answered it."
There is a long, long silence, traffic whispering past us.
Finally, "You're not upset with me, then?" A cautious glimpse of the exuberant, uncertain, unstable adolescent that's been haunting my house all week, shows itself.
"Not really, you caught me off guard. It was 19 years ago." I shrug, hands in back pockets, "Not much you can do about biology, kid. It wasn't your fault."
There's the sudden sensation of a fast, hard embrace which nearly knocks me over.
Young Elric smells of horses.
Leather.
Woodsmoke.
Sweat.
Spices.
The bittersweet musk of dragons.
And the metallic undertone of someone who's been on powerful medications his entire life.
Then he's gone.
And I get on with my day.
Eat, Pray, Love - Whatever
I encounter my literary ghost once more a week or so later while wandering a historic district, a tall gaunt man in baroque black armor, white hair blowing in the wind.
There is no wind this cold spring day in Gentrificationville.
The last sorcerer emperor of Melnibonè sits upon a wrought iron bench, leaning forward, exhausted, long, slender hands lax between his knees, head down, white hair curtaining his finely chiseled face.
I know this because I too was using that bench, feet dangling, reading, drinking over-priced eco-friendly fair-trade coffee that doubtlessly began with a Folger's jar after a big change in my life, enjoying the solitude of crowded spaces, catching my breath.
Because Elric isn't real, I split my coffee with him.
No risk of cooties, there.
So here we sit; two strange children born of a strange decade, he in 1961, I in 1966. We are almost old friends, having met in 1977. We talk a bit: the weather. How this year's spring was unusually cold and dry. The river.
He verbally sidles towards the subject of his last question before he stepped back into dream, hungry for more but not exactly sure how to ask. Almost imperceptibly his baroque black armor becomes a long, fitted black leather duster with a lining of red-on-red silk brocade, loose, exquisitely tailored black trousers, a collarless white dress shirt - something David Bowie might have worn during his "Thin White Duke" phase– a moment of your time?
"Yes." I say cautiously. This is not angry, depressed, or self-pitying bratty Elric, but an entirely different breed of cat.
The Hijacker
"I've waited a long time…" The intruder pauses, enjoying a private dream, a joke only he may laugh at, "To meet you."
Battered electric guitar case at his feet, discreetly tasteful obsidian gauges, shaved temples, long white hair pulled back, sleekly flowing down between his shoulder blades, the dull gleam of well-made steel-toed boots with just the right amount of wear. The subtle hint of a band of runic tattooing spiraling up one wrist… eyeliner, a discreet eyebrow piercing in black steel… Against the garish tunics, polo shirts, and cargo shorts of the milling Boomers, the high tide line of the 1960s, this child of other centuries sticks out like a sore thumb.
It is deliberate.
"Zenith?" I stare back at myself in the pale man's round old-fashioned smoked, mirrored lenses. "Is that you?"
"Perhaps." Though his voice is low and cultivated, Zenith is not at all as I'd imagined him.
Arms languid across the back of the bench, this angel of destruction born between the Great Wars, reborn in the Age of Aftermath, studies me over the top of little round mirrored glasses in this shared half-dream of a thousand years, letting me know that his albinism means he's been stared at his entire life.
Which he despises.
So, he has made an art of flaunting it.
While deliberately ignoring it.
Fair enough.
What allows either man to function, to hold it together, is easy to get here. In little amber colored bottles. How…quaint.
Fair enough.
What was I doing here alone, un-escorted?
I reply sometimes solitude is a necessity.
I am myself when alone.
Fair enough.
Avatars
Zenith is a different face of the same creature, a daemonic encounter by accident in a book I never intended to read.
My ambusher is bored.
How gauche.
Would I allow him to come out of the dark for a little while for a bit of solitary company somewhere between dream and reality?
There is the hint of a sword cane, a slight tailored bulge beneath Zenith's left arm.
Closing my book, I put a finger between pages to save my place. "Why not?"
"Thank you." Silence upon silence in the spaces between dream and the waking world. This almost but not quite mocking hijacker of dreams currently leads a quiet life in this old new city beside a long, slow river. Plays second lead guitar at a few clubs, R&B, Industrial, Metal; it's all the same to him. Has a studio contract with Rammstein, third violin in the local symphony. Would I care to come watch him play this evening?
He knows, as I know, what that instrument really is… Come with me to the clubs down by the river… "I possess a loft overlooking the Eads bridge… The view," he pauses… "Is exquisite at dawn – it would be you, I, and idle traffic lights, barges in the mist…"
"No thank you. I'm not what I once used to be. If I ever was that to begin with."
"You could be." A dismissive gesture with one graceful, powerful hand, a conjurer's hand that could casually rip a door from its hinges as shuffle a poker deck one-handed. "If you let me."
I shake my head.
I remember me at that time of my life. "I would not suit you."
A Casual Almost Seduction
"Are you… certain?" A glimpse of red behind shimmering lenses, my aging face looking back at me. I could pass as his mother were I tall.
"I'm not some princess doomed and rare. I'm not some mysterious woman in an Army trench coat. I'm an angry ferret with a bad haircut and a worse sense of timing. They don't write stories about angry ferret women – not even as sidekicks."
"My tastes…" Zenith pauses, savoring the word, deliberately baiting me with casual effort, "…are broader than you think, madame. And ferrets," Leaning forward, pierced eyebrow quirked knowingly, accent subtly thrumming past Germany towards eastern Europe, laughing under his breath, a mingled whisper of cigarettes and something elusive, earthy, delicately floral, battered guitar case with its old bloodstains heavy at our feet where we share an iron bench in a town where once furs were traded for glass beads, "Ferrets make excellent pets when one encounters… rats."
A brief laugh meant for none but himself and himself alone. Zenith settles back, as if to smoke. He refrains, small, brown cigarettes nestle untouched in their silver Art Deco case against his heart, heavy silver lighter beside it.
Gentleman cad that he is, Zenith has old-fashioned manners, follows old-fashioned rules.
Instead, somewhere between masculine and feminine, head tilted slightly, Zenith slowly tips his low-crowned top hat to me with a chuckle, old eyes shadowed rubies in a pale youngish face. "Who." The albino murmurs with a long, slow shrug. "Would know?"
I find my small hands in one of his large, slim cool ones, book a sudden fan on the ground at my feet.
My hands are trapped in the mouth of a dragon, the distant warmth of his skin against mine, the coolness of leather fingerless gloves in contrast, closing with gentle insolence, the two rings he wears hard insistence, string calluses hard to ignore.
He smells very, very expensive.
"Tell me, messy little ferret," Zenith leans in whispering, "Who put these scars on your hands, your secret places where the world can't see? Tell me, messy little ferret, what is biology?"
I close my eyes, "Biology is life. Life is biology, and biology is the ultimate prankster, the ultimate winder up of clocks so they may wind down. Biology is the mule that sires foals. Biology is the brown buffalo that calves the white, a black crow that incubates a white fledgling. Biology is the swordtail fish that began as female which is now male. Biology is that which lurks below the navels of kings and paupers alike, as it is with queens and the fates of nations. Biology is a roll of the dice. Biology is stomach cancer devouring the careful eater while the yoga practitioner's bones crumble with age. Biology rips off all masks, upsets all pretenses. Biology is the the teeth of the wolf, the parasites in the belly of the rabbit it devours, the fine lines in the corner of the beauty queen's surgically perfected eyes – and the child who flees destiny but gives birth anyway because biology always wins."
"And?" Zenith's hand tenderly cradles mine, telling me wordlessly that he could crush them so quickly I wouldn't notice until too late.
"Biology is life. Life is biology. Life gave me scars. Therefore, my scars are biology."
"Very good, messy little one!" I feel cool lips brush the backs of my hands. Once. Twice. And then I am freed from the dragon's mouth not entirely unscathed. I open my eyes, the twin mirrors of his eyes reflect me back at myself. "Join me for dinner?" Zenith asks as if nothing has happened between us.
Shaken, I retrieve my book from where it fell. It's been a while since I've done something as stupid as follow something like Zenith into his dreamtime, rooftop world.
I wish to be alone.
Shaper of Illusions, Shaper of Realities
"I am not Una."
The sensuous mouth beneath the mirrored lenses quirks, "You would be if you let me. I am me, and he is me, and I am him, as you say, "firing on all four cylinders". Perhaps," and Zenith laughs silently, pale head thrown back, a flash of pristine teeth, "I am biology."
Easing into an almost imperceptible stretch, Zenith gives me a long, indolent look of restless silver appraisal, adding in a murmur only I can hear, "There is a place in this city with but one table, where the chef prepares but one meal for that table, pleasing himself for that table and that table alone. As with biology, fate, should you dislike his offering, it is your tragedy, not his. Will you be my guest?"
I shake my head, no. Zenith almost seems disappointed, but not really.
He always wins in the end.
Dice
Biology inexorably weaving all around us, we read his story, leaning against each other, a short, dumpy woman on the downhill slope of a mostly wasted life, an old friendship, borrowed. He, unconsciously cool, so much dwindling sand spilling downward between us. Wine tourists see only a middle-aged woman in a heavy metal band shirt, Doc Martins, a bad haircut, and woodshop roughened hands.
I should be wearing a gaudy tunic, candy-colored Crocs, and boutique leggings, my nails manicured, my tips, frosted, reading Eat, Pray, Love upon this bench, the remains of a distant storm drifting broken overhead.
But I am not.
I have few friends. Instead, I know people.
Zenith, the albino, for all his lives, is a near stranger, almost but not quite a friend.
Or am I simply talking to myself?
I read. Therefore I am.
Talking to myself. (Even as I am talking to you.)
In Casual Invitation
Shared coffee finished, book in my bag, Zenith rides off on a huge black motorcycle among the Hummers, Teslas, and BMWs of the wine tourists, guitar case jutting from the snarling bike within easy reach.
It is also a sword.
I later see him weaving in and out of twilight rush-hour traffic, white hair a banner in the red taillights, duster billowing blackly behind, a flash of crimson. Our eyes meet briefly in my rear-view mirror, his sleek leather gloved hand out in casual invitation as he roars past, Elric's question between us.
I look the other way.
Reading in the Dark
This morning Elric lurks behind my furnace, sharing space with the resident velociraptor.
He's older now, it's all come crashing down.
Because that's as far as I've read – the final novel in the official chronology sits closed on my nightstand.
I rarely make it past that final story.
Not after I read it the first time.
The writing isn't all that great. The author was learning his craft when I was learning how to walk.
But that's not the reason I put the book aside.
It's because once you read the final story, it's over.
I like to make things I enjoy last. (Whenever possible.)
Elric tried. He really did, using all the painful, hard-won lessons he'd learned as a man in his twenties as a married man in his thirties who just killed two people he loved while struggling to follow destiny on his own terms, to do the right thing.
To search for justice.
And for his efforts, despite his sacrifices, he would be forgotten, unburied, unmourned, unloved.
Betrayed.
Talons twitching, the velociraptor grumbles, farting in its sleep as I peek behind the furnace.
Elric's like a child, really.
It took having one of my own to show me that.
"Go away." He mumbles, turning his back on me in the dusty gloom, arms around knees, pale head down, rocking.
I go back to cutting inlay. Like my own kid, it'll happen when he's good and ready.
"Why did my mother have to die?" His voice whispers hoarsely from behind the furnace.
I turn off my lathe and put the chisel away. Hanging up my work apron, I step over the snoring velociraptor and sit down beside him where he is now curled up like an armored fetus among the cobwebs and cardboard boxes. "How did you do manage? How did you survive when mine didn't?"
"What do you mean?" I ask, though I know the answer, and then: "May I touch you?"
My literary ghost nods, sitting up, "I've killed my wife and my best friend. Where's the justice in that? You've given birth. You know what it's like. Just… finish the book. Let me rest."
"Why me? There's other readers out there." I ask. Sweat running down his face, my ghost pulls me onto his lap, arms hard around me, his chin resting on the top of my head. Through his armor, his entire body trembles with exhaustion. "Can't one of them let you fulfill your destiny by finishing the book instead of me?"
He shakes his head no, clearly miserable. "Not their version of me. Your version." He gasps suddenly, teeth clenched. "Me."
"You?"
Elric nods, forcing the words out. "There's a version… of me… for everyone who's ever read the books… Please… finish the last story… I'm so tired."
And then he convulses, pushing me away.
Breathe
"Relax. Relax. Ride it out. Ride it out." His head is now on my lap, long white hair matted with sweat and blood. The final battle was brutal, his revenge taxing. "It happens. Riding out the pain gives the illusion of control, but even illusion helps."
Elric's breathing is ragged, great sobbing, hesitating gulps as if the air around us is fire.
"Did you know I fell in love with you when I was 10?" I say, hoping to distract him.
A nod in the darkness. His breathing steadies.
"I thought you were amazing – even when you were feeling sorry for yourself after doing something you hadn't thought all the way through or failed to be what people expected of you, of letting the mask fall."
"I was supposed to revive a dead empire simply by being born." A ragged laugh. "Instead, I added to the world's pain by pulling it down in a childish fit of anger."
"I was sick a lot as a child." I venture for lack of anything better to say.
"Aye, as was I." Elric stiffens and takes a sudden, hard ragged breath that sounds like it was ripped from his entire body taking his soul with it.
I am drenched with his sweat.
It stinks of panic and grief.
Tumbling Backwards
"I read a lot." I tell the Multiverse. "Books were easier than people. I mean, when things get bad? Just close the book and walk away – real life? You can't do that!" I blot his face with a shop rag, "C'mon now, breathe, just breathe. Can you breathe for me? In and out. In and out… that's better, that's better. You're a trained adept, a spellsinger. You know how to breathe… focus on something else until you can think clearly again."
"Aye." He says, rising to his feet. We tumble backwards, my hands clamped in his large, armored ones, dragging me with him into a deeper darkness, into the next wave. His non-existent heart batters against his ribs, a trapped bird against a window despite the breastplate hiding it – it is deafening. "Books, ideas, are easier. People are confusing and dangerous." He half-snarls, half sobs as worlds rush past us.
"Even your first love?" It feels as if my fingers are breaking.
Elric relaxes, anxiety leaving him limp as it drains into the black.
"Aye." There's a rueful note in his voice. Panting, he releases my hands, snatching them back as we slowly pinwheel about each other. "Cymoril was nice to me even when we were children. Not many were. Her family encouraged it. If her brother couldn't be on the Ruby Throne, me as a son-in-law would do –they didn't think I'd live long. Once I was out of the way, she'd take over and give them what they wanted." He sighs, a long, drawn-out echoing sound, adding. "My father didn't care enough to make it stop."
"I think you and your father are a lot more alike than you realize." Dopplers out of my mouth before I can stop it.
"…how so?" Elric stiffens, the calm he'd managed to pull into himself gone in an instant, his hands crush mine.
Ignoring the pain, I continue: "He loved your mother so much that when he lost her, he lashed out at the last solid bit of her he had left, which was you." The pain in my hands is excruciating.
Gritting my teeth, I add, "You both push everyone away when you're in pain – the later novels showed me that like you, Sadric was capable of love, unusual for a Melnibonian. I think he passed that gift along to you unintentionally, so that it was possible, like Corum, for you to have friends, to be loved in spite of your flaws.
"Corum's a fool." Elric snarls, blood on his chin.
Me, Myself, and I
"Corum's you had you been loved more as a child and had a proper support team. Anyway, Corum stole my T.V. remote. Don't get me started on Erköse," I snarl back, "Holy shit, what a wanker!"
"He is a bit much." Elric laughs, a bleak sound. "Hawkmoon? Pompous ass… I can't believe he's a part of me, or I'm a part of him, or them… or what have you – I'd as soon as keep to myself as deal with any of that lot again, including Corum. I apologize for accidentally letting Zenith out."
"I survived your escape." I say drily. Good, he's finally getting himself under control.
Infinity whistles around us like an anvil heading for a coyote, "Zenith has a driver's license. I don't."
"So I noticed." I say, and our plummet abruptly ends. I stand and look down at Elric.
…
…
"…I really didn't do right by Oone the dream thief, did I?" Crouching, he studies his pale, blood-stained hands.
His voice is flat.
"I think she wanted it that way." Is all I can think of saying.
"I regret I never met my son by her – Had I known John existed, had been deliberately blinded as a child and was sleeping in the streets – I would have done something. My father was right, my moral failings—"
"If it's any consolation," I interrupt, hoping to derail another self-pity fueled panic attack, "His sister Una, who adores you, never stopped looking for him until she found him. So, there's that." I add, "And you were very kind to Wheldrake and the family Phatt - when you didn't have to– and they were kind to you in return. I think Rakhir and then Moonglum taught you that you could have friends when you found the right people – I mean, even when you aren't having one of your frequent meltdowns, you sir, are insufferable!"
I crouch down in the blackness so that we're almost eye to eye.
"Aye, madame, I am that. Insufferable." A little laugh. He hugs me to himself in the silence, self-admission, biology, destiny, whatever, reverberating around us.
Dawn
Overhead, the sky lightens. A bird begins to sing.
"As for me being your pet horrible old woman – nope. Sorry. Won't do it."
"Would a mule sweeten the deal? I think the two of you would get along quite well." There's a bit of dry wit surfacing, the music's back— he's pulling himself together, his tone self-mockingly sardonic: "A clothing allowance, perhaps? All the rocks you can throw at people I don't like plus a hair style that doesn't look like an accident? Bedroom privileges?"
"Because I wish to live longer than a chapter or two, I decided long ago that I didn't want to be your girlfriend. I just wanted to occupy a little corner of your world and say, "Hey." should you ever come my way." I shrug, adding, "Perhaps as your tailor, or an itinerant weaver or witch with one of those Romany style wagons, you know, a vardo, just passing through. Maybe I'd let you hitch a ride now and then. Or a market woman selling small wonders. Anyway, who wants a short warrior-woman with a touch of scoliosis mounted on a Shetland pony?" I pause, "Though, I suppose I could charge under an enemy and slice his balls off on the way through…"
The last emperor of Melnibonè smirks despite his despair. We're now in a sunrise meadow of wildflowers I don't recognize. "A reinforced steel codpiece it is, should I ever convince you to join me – incidentally, my friend Moonglum thinks you're hysterical." Elric glances with uncomfortable guilt at something in the tall grass behind us, "Well, he did… Once."
A white hare peers out at us from beneath a flowering bush and then vanishes. In the distance a hawk circles upon the wind.
"Thank you for sitting with me until I caught my breath." Elric says quietly, crimson eyes following the bird's aerial dance.
I nod. He's exhausting, always has been, but he, I, are almost there.
The velociraptor grunts, rises, and trots off into to find a quieter place to finish its nap.
The Last Page
A hummingbird whizzes past in a flash of ruby and emerald.
Elric stands nearby, I sit with a book on my lap, fingers holding my place. I look up at him, shading my eyes with one hand against the rising sun. "Ready?" I ask, though we both know the answer.
Elric nods down at me, horn of Roland cradled in both hands. Behind him in the tall grass where sparrows sing sprawls the body of his best friend, gaping up at a sky which reflects his now vacant eyes, a puppet with its strings cut.
I try not to see this as I open the the last page of the last chapter.
I remember the first time I read it.
I was about twelve. Having found the final novel Stormbringer at the public library, I was curled up in our stuffy attic reading forbidden fruit published a year before I was born long, before Harry Potter was unleashed upon an unsuspecting public hungry for movies and merch.
Before I even cracked the cover, I knew something awful was about to happen, and I was right. I didn't like Zarozinia, Elric's wife was a bore, but it still was horribly unfair the way she died.
She didn't deserve it, but that's the way life, destiny, biology, is. Bad things happen.
Sometimes you survive. Sometimes you don't.
Moonglum, I realized even at that age, didn't really understand what he did when he made the final sacrifice to avoid living in a world he didn't recognize any more.
Rapidly approaching sixty, I understand him better.
The world I grew up in, is now a song on YouTube. The toys I coveted are now collectibles.
The political and social earthquakes which meant so much then, are barely recalled.
When they are, they aren't as I remember them.
I see houses, shops, and busy streets where there are now vacant lots, empty foundations and weed strewn gravel traces.
Still, you never know what you're going to see as you tumble down the other side of the biological hill you've been climbing your entire life the second you took your first breath outside the womb.
Sometimes it's good.
Sometimes it's bad.
Sometimes it's both.
Most times, it's boring as hell.
Whatever.
Pausing at the last page, I look up once more at Elric, "Are you sure?"
Our eyes meet, "Didn't think I had a choice." He says, bringing the horn up to his lips. I interrupt him – I'm bad about that. "Hey! One of these days when my own obligations are fulfilled, I'll take you up on your offer – though I doubt for all his retconning, Uncle Mike, your real father, would appreciate having to add me to your song. That is, if he somehow outlives me and isn't hopelessly senile."
Elric nods, "I'd like that. Shall I wait for you in the dark?"
Perhaps Later
"Take your time. My people live well past their 80s. Bring a book of crossword puzzles, maybe sudoku, or whatever it is Melnibonians do when they aren't gouging somebody's eyes out for the fun of it. Pack a lunch, maybe two. I'll be the one carrying a flashlight."
Elric nods, "Pony or mule?" he says, adding: "A donkey, perhaps? A warhorse?"
"How much is dragon, I mean, Phoorn, rental? Do I need a reservation? An advance deposit? Insurance?"
Elric stares at me and then he laughs for a long time, shaking his head exclaiming, "Only you!"
"Well, let's get it over with, or did I already say that?"
"It doesn't matter." Elric returns Roland's horn to his lips and blows a long, low echoing note.
Lowering the horn, he stares upward, bruised, ruby eyes fixed upon a vision of scales looming large in the sky, of the Balance righting itself, only to fall protesting, soul devoured by his own runesword, a beautiful monster weeping blood, biology having caught up with him at last, landing hard upon the sweet, unyielding earth he's unintentionally consecrated, betrayed in the end by what kept him alive all those years and all those stories.
BLTs and Road Maps
I blow my nose, wipe my eyes, close the book, and put it away. Stormbringer, no longer a sword, sizzles off, a dirty comet with a tail of ozone and black smoke, to find another shape, another story.
I figure I have about thirty, maybe forty more years left before biology forces me to worry about what to ride when exploring the Young Kingdoms in person.
Maybe after that, I'll take a walking tour of the Multiverse in whatever shape it manifests itself in, be it Tree of Life or Mandelbrot blob replicating itself into infinity, so much spilled blood and ink on the page.
That is, if there's any truth in this story, any story for that matter.
If there is, I'll stop and ask directions when I do.
Or maybe I won't.
Perhaps I'll buy a suspicious map.
Or draw one as I go.
I will definitely throw rocks at people I dislike.
Hell, I'll probably pack a lunch to save money.
And if I let him escort me, which I doubt I will because I'm not stupid, Elric will bum all the bacon off my sandwiches, leaving me with only tomatoes and limp lettuce on soggy toast.
Moonglum will laugh at us both.
He's like that, you know.