“I can try,” I said.
“Thanks! Thanks,” he said, so pathetically grateful he even gave me a hug. “That’ll work out fine then. Go tell Sirin,” he said. “Go tell Sirin. Make Sirin happy.” {I needed you to leave. I was getting ready to change again, and sometimes now when I changed, I would assimilate things around me.} So I went to tell Sirin.
What had taken Duncan two months to write took me three days to edit. I simply discarded anything that didn’t make sense and tried to keep anything that hinted of a chronological history. Duncan read over the result mournfully, added a few more footnotes, changed some of my line edits, and gave me his approval in such an offhand way that I was even madder at him for the ease with which he had given up.
Perhaps I should have been more empathetic, though. In his journal from the time, I find this entry:
How will I die? Not that way, not me. For me it will be the slow decay, the failure of my senses, the graying of the world, the remaindering and misunderstanding of my books, followed by the very forgetting of my words, the pages wiped clean of all marks, and so too the wiping clean of me, my brain sinking into slow senility, utterly alone, no vestige of past family and friends left to me until, finally, when I am dust, I shall unleash a sigh of forgetfulness and leave not a trace of my existence in the world…. But until then, if the black bough taps against the windowpane, I shall ignore its brittle invitation—and in all ways and in all things I shall not dignify the name of that which will one day take me.
Rather vainglorious melancholy, and contradictory, too, but clearly indicative of the depression Duncan sometimes fell into during this period. {Janice, that whole quote is from one of the Kalif’s genealogists, who wrote potboilers on the side! Context, Janice, context. Or is my handwriting so bad you couldn’t read the attribution?}
When I brought the revised essay to Sirin, he still didn’t care for parts of it, but with his deadline approaching, he had little choice.
“Besides,” he admitted, “a little eccentricity will probably seem quaint to the tourists.”
Among those eccentricities, in that first edition, were entries in the appended glossary for both Duncan and for Sabon, alluding to what no longer existed:
SABON, MARY. An aggressive and sometimes brilliant historian who built her reputation on the bones of older, love-struck historians. Five-ten. One-fifteen. Red hair. Green, green eyes. An elegant dresser. Smile like fire. Foe of James Lacond. In conversation can cut with a single word. Author of several books whose titles I quite forget at the moment.
SHRIEK, DUNCAN. An old historian, born in Stockton, who in his youth published several famous history books, since remaindered and savaged by critics who should have known better. His father, also an historian, died of joy; or, rather, from a heart attack brought on by finding out he had won a major honor from the Court of the Kalif. I was ten. I never died from my honors, but I was banned by the Truffidian Antechamber. Also a renowned expert on the gray caps, although most reasonable citizens ignore even his least outlandish theories. Once lucky enough to meet the love of his life, but not lucky enough to keep her, or to keep her from pillaging his ideas and discrediting him. Still, he loves her, separated from her by the insurmountable gulf of empires, buzzards, a bad writer, a horrible vacation spot, and the successor to Aquelus/Irene.
…this last bit of cuteness a reference to the entries for the Saltwater Buzzard, Samantha, the Saphant Empire, Scatha, and Maximillian Sharp that lay between his entry and Sabon’s. Even here, toward the end, he could not give up on Mary, no matter how much he should. And no matter how I begged him to delete it—to delete both of them. {I also left numerous clues to the fact that I was fronting Lacond’s various misshapen theories, but I doubt the reading public caught them, butchered as they’d been by the editing process.}
The early history had been saved, but the effect was minimal. Serious journals do not review travel guides and tourists rarely remember who wrote them. More importantly, no new work was forthcoming from Sirin for Duncan or for me. And Duncan, for the first time, I think, clearly understood that there was no way back for him. He would continue to haunt the fringes of his former career, and I would be an apparition that appeared as a warning to travelers and passersby.
It was almost like a joke. Me, living on as a ghost. Do you know how ghosts manifest themselves in Ambergris? They haunt you as travel guides. They lead you to old buildings. They educate you on the history of the places they haunt.
Once I realized I was a ghost, I became much happier.
Sometimes, as I may have mentioned, I go outside at night, just for a break. Night is so different from day for me. I cannot keep the ghosts out as easily at night, and the cot I have had brought in here is somewhat uncomfortable. My leg grows cold from the fungus that enraptures it, but I don’t mind the feel of it.
On a good day, I have been averaging several thousand words. It’s true I return to certain paragraphs and pages and revise, but mostly it’s ever forward. I can’t hope to create something perfect, but perhaps I can create something that’s alive—assuming I can finish it. Right now, I see no reason to imagine I will ever stop typing this afterword. The hours float by so quietly and without event that there seems nothing else worth doing. What would I want to do? And what will I do when I’m done?
But we are getting closer to the staircase, the party, the necklace, with each word. I can almost sense the ending, even if I can’t see it yet. I’m so prolific I surprise myself—I keep filling up pages. I keep creating new sections, new chapters.
All the same, I’m tired. My prose, I’ve noticed, becomes by turns more plain, more linear, only to jump out into time as if in a desperate attempt to maintain momentum. Even if it doesn’t feel like it, I cannot be far from the end, even if I end too abruptly. It may be that my fatigue will outweigh my momentum, that it will rush the ending and send you, dear reader, out of this riveting true-life account far sooner than necessary or proper. If this should occur, I refuse to apologize. This is an afterword or an afterwards—I can’t remember anymore—and no one reads them. No one cares what they contain. By the time the afterword appears in a book, the story has already ended. Why, if I wanted to, I could write one hundred pages on obscure Truffidian rituals to offset my fear. It is not without precedence. It has happened before.
What’s left to tell? Many years passed, in much the same way as they had passed before. Sabon’s star continued to ascend. I was forgotten, although I continued on as a tour guide and cantankerous member of the Ambergris Tourism Board. On rare occasions, they called upon me to make short speeches at the rededication of certain historical buildings, or to make appearances as one of several fossils at various dinners mummifying the War of the Houses.