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“There’s truth in anything! It’s the truth of a single moment in time. It’s… it’s as if someone made a painting of you, based on a photograph. The photograph would be an accurate picture of you; the painting would be a valid interpretation of that photograph. Nobody’s lying. But that painting isn’t you, not all of you. It’s just a picture.”
The cup of tea is an English tradition. Steeped in symbolism. Served with irony.”
“You didn’t want to go back?” Charley asked. “There is no back!” Beth-Moriarty snapped. It was the first trace of anger I had seen on the mild face. “There’s nothing. We’re not summoned from anywhere. We’re created, of pure thought and idea, from the words on a page. When we’re dismissed, we’re destroyed. We go nowhere. I had just been called into existence. I was not going to be destroyed.”
“Leave him alone,” I said. “He’s been alone his entire life, Robert. He’s been a creature of words in a land of flesh and blood. You know, don’t you, Charles?”
But that is not the point. The point is what you will do. What you could be, for the first time in your life.” She was talking to Charley, but I answered. “Which is?” “Whole,” she said.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that it is worth sacrifice to rid the world of a shadow. This threatens reality, and not only us. Those people out there are our readers. I think to die in their defense would be a far, far better thing than we have ever done.”
He sighed, and didn’t deny it. “He wouldn’t thank me. He doesn’t want to go back. I don’t blame him. I would rather die here than go back into that moment—assuming there’s even anything to go back to.” “He’s twelve. He doesn’t get to choose.” “Yes. He does. He’s twelve, and he’s not real, and he’s nothing but anger and fear, but unless he’s a danger, he still gets to choose. He’s no danger to anyone at the moment.”
I reached out and touched the shoulder of the diary Charley. He didn’t crumble into paper. He was warm and substantial, and I wished I had touched him earlier, so he wouldn’t have spent the last seconds of his life utterly alone. I wished I had caught him that day at the courthouse, when I’d felt his eyes asking for my help. I wished a lot of things. My eyes were hot then, and I blinked and quickly looked away. He deserved better than that, I know. There wasn’t time.
didn’t have time to call out this time, even instinctually. With a high, fierce war cry that carried over the battle, the man wielding the bone leaped in the air. Between one second and the next, he was an eagle, beak and claws poised to tear. He descended on the vampire like a bolt from the sun. I saw them go down, and lost sight of them in the rush.
“In your book. This book. The one we’re practically living in. It’s in the conclusion.” “You said you hadn’t read it.” “I might have been lying about that.” He looked at me in disbelief, then laughed a little. The laugh was strained, but it was genuine. “You’re horrible.”
He believes what you tell him, Eric had said. He saw himself as I saw him. “I know you,” I said. “I remember you. And you are not going anywhere.”
“Uriah,” Charley said, deliberately calm. “What are you doing?” “What am I doing?” he repeated. His limbs twitched. “What does it look like I’m doing? What am I always doing? Rising above my station. I’m Uriah Heep, Master Charley. A threat to the social order, and the truth at the heart of it. It’s what I do.”
“‘Stop it, Uriah. Keep to your place. Be umble.’ That’s what this city is, you know. You should know, you wrote about it. The darkness. The rage and pain of thousands like me, kept in our places until we die there. My place? This is my place. It’s always been my place. Not hers. Not Dorian Gray’s. Not yours, Dr. Sutherland, David Copperfield, Dickens’s favorite child. Mine. Control it? I don’t need to control it. It’s part of me. Let it spread until it devours the whole world. It’s mine.”
even a tickle that makes me think I’m starting to go, I’ll slit his throat and leave his corpse behind me. And if any of you come near me, I’ll do the same.” “And what if one of us decides we don’t care that much for Dr. Sutherland’s brother?” That was one of the Darcys. Jane Austen apparently has depths of heartlessness I didn’t suspect.
He snorted. “As I think I’ve said before, Master Charley,” he said, “I’m umble, not stupid.”
“No!” he cried. “No, you can’t, you can’t—” Beth-Moriarty tightened her grip. “If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me,” she said, but it scarcely seemed to be her saying it, “rest assured that I should do as much to you.”
“They’re with the wounded,” Millie said. “They’re all right—your father took a spear cut from a goblin, but the Duke of Wellington will patch him up. Your mother’s trying to gain control of the dragon. She made it beautifully, but it follows its own rules. Since we’re inside, though, I could—” “Don’t let them come up,” he said. “Please.”
“You weren’t this. You were my brother.” And I realized, too late, that I had said it in past tense. Charley must have noticed; it was exactly the sort of thing it was his job to notice. But he didn’t point it out.
I don’t care what everyone says, damaging books is worse than damaging people. People heal up. Books never do. The marks always show.
I barely heard them. All I could think about was Charley on a rainy day behind a bike shed, watching me walk away and leave him to his fate. I was doing it again. The circumstances were very different from his point of view. But from mine the view was the same. I was walking away, and he was watching me go. “You abandoned him,” Eric had said. “And he was more powerful on that day than he had ever been when you were at his side.”
Yet I think, perhaps, they had underestimated him. Perhaps it had very little to do with his weaknesses, and everything to do with mine.
“That doesn’t make any sense.” “It doesn’t have to,” I said. “It’s a story.”
“There’s no law against what we are,” he said, in answer to a question, “not just because there’s no precedent, but because there is no law against a person being made of ideas, intuitions, interpretations, and language. If there were, nobody could ever step outside their door. Excuse me, please, we’re expected somewhere…”
He hung up. “How did he say he was coming?” Lydia asked. She was propped up on one elbow, watching. “He didn’t.” “Right.” She yawned. “Well, you’d better go turn the porch light on, I suppose. For all we know, he’s coming on a dragon.”
“You both will,” Lydia said. “I’m sure. But I think you and he do in fact need to talk.” “We don’t need to talk,” I said. “Brothers don’t really do that sort of thing.”
Truth
And I can’t help thinking that she made me this way. Which is ridiculous, and unfair, because if she hadn’t made me, I wouldn’t exist at all.
I was jealous of them, because Charley seemed to need them so much. And when he had them, he no longer needed me.
