Escana (81 page)

He planted his hand on Gooseman's
shoulder without hesitation, knowing the necessity of the action and
that a lack of trust would kill him as much as unconditional
acquiescence.

The world went white.

He looked at the emptiness
surrounding him, he was lucid once more.

'There's a big decision coming
up,' the stranger said, his tone unreadable.

Jakob nodded, unsurprised to be
here once again. 'Don't I know it. Events have shifted into place and
now I have to push them forward to their logical conclusion.'

The stranger nodded back at him
in turn. 'It is time for you to take your place centre stage. You
know the decision you must take and the consequences of doing so.'

He smiled at the man. 'It's not
going to be pretty, is it?'

The man shrugged. 'Blood rarely
is, yet it is imperative that you continue.'

Jakob had watched his namesake
battle to connect with him for too long, now he was finally allowed
to take control of matters.

The first sensation Jakob felt
while surrounded in the white glow was one of coldness seeping
through his body, as per Gooseman's instructions he invited it onto
him and resisted the urge to disconnect and massage his body back to
warmth.

Then the feeling passed and a
flood of warmth surged through his limbs, again he chose to greet the
sensation without complaint and found it easier to do so with such a
welcoming glow.

He heard the voice then, speaking
directly into his mind as it had before. He only hoped that it would
instruct him on how to make this craft mobile, perhaps if he divined
that he wouldn't need Gooseman at all.

In spite of his urges and the
practicality of the solution, he couldn't shake the immorality of it.
To take a life was wrong, he would not be a willing participant in
murder no matter how justified his feelings made it seem. He flat-out
refused to do such a thing.

Grasp the sensations with your
mind and push them out toward me.

If the sensations that flowed
over him were conscious or receptive to his thoughts they gave no
indication, the whiteness continued to blind his sight and the
compelling voice sounded the same as before. Whoever was
communicating with him currently was not Gooseman, was he being
possessed by some other force?

He did as was asked of him and
imagined pushing the feelings out and away from his body. Colour swam
across his eyes as he did so and he felt the voice grow louder inside
his head, whatever he was being instructed to do was working.

Excellent, now shape those
sensations into solidity and force them outward.

He briefly heard Gooseman's
voice, previously it had been a faint muffle retreating into the
background in the face of all this feeling. Now it was a mimicry of
the words he had heard before.

'Excellent, now shape those
sensations into solidity and force them outward. You're an
exceptional source of energy, the academy will be most pleased.'

He did as was asked of him by
both voices and tried to envisage shaping such an abstraction.

No, don't use your previous
senses. Let go of the inhibitions of the flesh and wield true power.

There was no hunger in the voice
at the mention of power in spite of the way it was spoken, nothing
but careful guidance and altogether nothing that he need be wary of.
He found himself doing as was requested as if it was second nature,
freeing his senses from their fleshy imprisonment and stretching them
forth into the undulating current. He did not see the colour now as a
human mind might, more perceived it as a spirit in a detached clarity
that his previous position could not offer him. It was then that he
realised that the pulling sensation was coming from someone else
entirely.

Jakob slid into his namesake's
form with an ease that surprised him, perhaps the transition had been
facilitated by the stranger or his knowledge of the character allowed
an unprecedented intimacy. Regardless of the reasons he had now taken
on the form of the protagonist for the duration of the adventure. He
had watched the faltering tale played out before his eyes with brief
intermissions of blinding white surrounding him as the stranger would
interject. It had been an odd sensation, to witness the fruits of his
creative mind spilled out in such vivid imagery and given more
substance than his own visions could possibly imbue.

He remembered the long and
feverish nights at war with his keyboard, his former wife had urged
him to purchase a mechanical one but he knew his clattering style
would drive her mad. Instead he had fought against stiffening fingers
with a resolve that frightened him as the words spilled out with no
heed for the time of day or the steadily growing pangs of hunger.

To have it all finally laid
before him in glorious detail was wondrous, a world that he could
exist in and know everything, a place he could escape to and
construct masterpiece after masterpiece as a guiding passenger.

Still it somehow hadn't been
enough, he couldn't sit idly by and witness the plot tumble out
before him. He saw things that needed to change, alterations that
could improve the entire body of work, he needed to become the
characters and shape them in the correct direction.

The stranger had held him back
then, offering him a tantalising amount of power over the course of
events so long as they remained true to the plot he had scratched
out. Now at last he was being given a choice, the ability to carry on
under the whim of this unknown force for the duration of his plot
prior to shaping new events. Or to deny that, to leave it behind and
return to the life he once led.

A sensation kept niggling at him,
an underlying possibility that he had suppressed whilst in awe of the
landscape spread out before him. There was a wrongness about what he
was doing, none of it was real and to embrace it as such was
delusional to the point of madness. The feeling had crept up on him
over the duration of his viewing, distracting him from revelling in
the masterpiece that was his creation. To have such clarity of vision
was something that no writer had achieved, to inhabit the very world
they had constructed. It was that which the feeling challenged,
suggesting that it was ludicrous to think a mind had not envisaged
that which wasn't real to such an intensity. Those few who had were
undoubtedly wasting away in some safe place at the care of others and
oblivious to the world around them. Was that what he wanted for
himself? To retreat from his drowning body into the land of his
creation until death took him?

He knew he was drowning, to
vanish so swiftly into a realm such as this before hitting the body
of water suggested the triggering of some bizarre coping mechanism.

It wasn't real. None of this was
real and it was that thought which remained at constant odds with his
desires to embrace this fantasy until death released him.

The stranger did not appear as he
opened his eyes, there was no whiteness surrounding him any more.
This time he was not looking down upon events but witnessing them
through the eyes of the protagonist. He watched as the boat gradually
lost speed and came to a standstill, Gooseman opened his eyes in turn
and looked at him in confusion.

'Is something the matter boy? Why
have you stopped channelling your energy into my efforts?'

Jakob remained silent, he knew
the words he was meant to say. The murderous impulses were to take
hold of him now, he was destined to hurl Gooseman out into the cloudy
nothingness before the man could mount a defence. Then he would
master the craft and flow forth to Levanin.

'What's wrong? Has our connection
drained you?'

He watched as the unfamiliar
words came out of the innkeeper's mouth, by simply pausing he had
altered the course of the written work. Harold Gooseman never spoke
those words, they had never been written by Jakob's hands.

That wasn't the only thing that
had deviated from the original plot.

Jakob raised his arm and pointed
a finger forward past Gooseman's shoulder. The man warily turned
about, loathing to show his back to the potentially murderous youth.

A cloaked figure stood upon the
aqueduct, watching them intently with his sword drawn.

Gooseman's eyes bulged in alarm,
clearly he was aware of who The Hermit was. To someone who had
written their relationship this came as no surprise to Jakob. He
watched instead as the pleading began, as the innkeeper warned him
and then begged him for more power with which to face this threat. It
was most... uncharacteristic.

'No,' Jakob replied.

Gooseman stilled himself, in fact
he was completely stiff as if frozen in place.

'No?' The Hermit asked Jakob,
startling him with the sound of his voice as he approached the
vessel.

'You are not The Hermit.' Jakob
stated. 'Reveal yourself.'

The hood vanished and the
stranger was unveiled. 'You would refuse to aid poor Harold Gooseman
in his attempts to waylay The Hermit?'

Jakob shook his head. 'That isn't
how the story goes. The Hermit is nowhere near the aqueduct, there is
no way he could reach here from Sah'kel without some belittling Deus
ex Machina.'

The stranger hopped aboard the
boat, vaulting the side with relative ease. 'So that is your
conclusion to this fine body of work? The hero simply ceases at this
point with no closure for all concerned?'

Jakob smiled. 'I lied about the
notepad.'

An arched eyebrow of surprise.

'Yeah, that's right. I lied about
the contents of the notepad in my hand, furthermore I have you
figured out now.'

The stranger's easy smile had
vanished. 'And what is it, pray tell, that you think you have
figured?'

'You are the publisher, the
secret admirer from afar who lusts after my work not for the benefit
of the genre but their own pocket. All of this has been an exercise
in futility, an attempt by you to divine an ending without my notes.
Well I'm sorry to disappoint you but fuck you, there is no ending.
Not here, not in my notes, not anywhere.'

The stranger smiled. 'There is
always an ending, it may take many years to reach but all you need do
is stay the course to discover it yourself.'

Jakob took a deep breath,
mustering all his resolve.

'No.'

He launched himself off the side
of the boat and into the clouds below.

H
e was
falling again.

The wind coursed through his hair
as he plummeted into uncertainty. He didn't know how long he had
spent observing the life and times of his own characters but he
needed to put an end to it and he saw no more logical a point than
the final page of the book.

He shut his eyes tightly once
again, buffeted by the air and wondering if falling here would kill
him or send him back.

A solid impact to his chest drove
the air out of him and the freezing cold enveloped every extremity.
He sank further into the darkness, wondering if this was how death
felt and what lay beyond the black veil blinding his sight.

He opened his eyes briefly and
found that the darkness was murky and inconsistent, his lungs had
seized up from the chill and he couldn't breathe. He was floating in
water as if he had returned to the womb from that which had been his
life.

The endless night stretched out
forever in this strange place, his body finally kicked back into gear
by demanding that he breathe. He waved his arms and his hair whipped
across into his face, he still couldn't draw air and started to
panic. This wasn't some strange realm beyond the grave, he had not
exited his body and traversed the planes in spirit form, the
screaming from his brain still attached him to corporeality by a
minor thread. He kicked out and gained some traction from the water,
he wasn't the strongest of swimmers but the necessity drove him with
a frenetic energy. He just hoped he was kicking in the right
direction, his sense of balance had been shattered upon striking the
surface of the water.

He burst through the skin of the
water with a final heave of his body, it wasn't like drowning in the
movies, he had time to spare even if it hadn't felt like it.

Crawling up the wet bank he
stared up into the night at the bridge above and a piercing light
blinded him. He had come back. He stared as a spike of pain ran
through his arm, his hand was still clutching the notepad.

A weariness hit him then like
never before, he had to go back to the institute now and face the
reality of his futile escapade. Furthermore he would have to deal
with the spokeswoman for the publishing company that wanted his book,
he knew he was within his legal rights to reject their offer but he
had a suspicion that wouldn't stop them. Had all that he experienced
been a ruse to drive an ending from his own mind?

It nagged at him, the characters
had all felt so real and he had refused to give them any ending. Not
even a feeble epilogue to drum up some hope or the promise of a
sequel. He had abandoned them to their fate as if they were mere
words on a page rather than people he had spent his life with. Living
beings that had resided in the depths of his cranium for time unknown
that he had to forcibly pry out through the medium of writing.