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She had to see him. It wasn’t fair of Fjord to lock him up like this. It was unkind, after all they’d been through. And for the rest to go along with it—well, she would deal with them later. After. She couldn’t sleep, so she she prayed on it, instead. At first, she wasn’t sure there was anything she could do. She wasn’t the strongest, or the smartest. And it wasn’t exactly like she could beat him into submission, as Beau had half-heartedly offered. But then she heard that whisper in her ear, the Traveler’s familiar, steady voice: “Go to him.” And, well, then she had to, right? “I would have gone anyway,” she said stubbornly. An inky chuckle was all that met her in response. Okay, then, she thought, taking a deep breath. Okay, okay, okay.(It wasn’t, not really. But okay. Okay.) She slipped out of her room on the upper floor of the Lavish Chateau undetected and tiptoed down to the end of the hall. The door was locked, of course, but only mechanically. You really think we’re all on your side no matter what, don’t you, Fjord? Jester drew a lockpick from the pouch on her hip. Do you think we’re afraid of you? For a moment she was transported back to her childhood, stealing Nadine’s ring of keys and sneaking into rooms to pocket trinkets and spy on mid-afternoon romps. She had done this before, and it came back to her like muscle memory. She unlocked the door and stepped inside. It was the smallest room available, little more than a broom closet with a bed. The air was thick, dust beyond measure suspended in the humid air. The darkness made Jester’s heart ache. With a wave of her hand, the battered shutters that covered the tiny window flew open, letting a sliver of moonlight into the room. The chains, she thought, were cruel. He was kneeling in the center of the room, hands resting on his thighs. His head was bent, rust-colored hair falling into his wan face, shoulders slack, as if he had collapsed into himself under the weight of the iron that wrapped around his body, his legs, his wrists. At a glance, he would have looked as though he were in the midst of penitence, or devotion, but Jester knew better. It was sorrow. Jester had spent her life filling the silent void of her loneliness with color, chatter and noise. She had driven the Mighty Nein half mad on every long journey, extolling the virtues of worshiping the Traveler or reading aloud from dirty novels to make Fjord blush. She had drawn on every surface, danced to every song, told every story she knew.She could not find the words to break this silence, though.She stood staring at him, her lips moving in vain for a greeting that wouldn’t come. C’mon, Jester. You’re a real good talker. You can say something to him, can’t you? What would you want to hear from him if it were you, you know? Say that. Then: I can’t say that. A rough clearing-of-the-throat tore through the unbearable silence, startling Jester from her thoughts. “I … could dispel this with a blink, you know that, ja?”Caleb raised his head. He seemed weak, in the way his voice faltered and the exhausted limpness of his neck. His eyes were tired. And sad, Jester thought, so sad. I wish you weren’t so sad. She nodded.“Yeah,” she said quietly, “I know.” She ground the tip of her toe into the floor, unable to raise her eyes to his. “Why don’t you, then?” Caleb gave a dark chuckle, then swallowed hard. His lips looked painfully dry. “Common courtesy?” He raised his arms slightly, and the chains that bound them clanked gently against each other. “If it gives Fjord peace of mind.” “Who cares about Fjord? He really shouldn’t have done this,” Jester said. “It wasn’t right, Caleb, I didn’t want him to—” “I know,” he said, and his voice was kind. Finally Jester forced herself to look at him, and his eyes were soft, and heartbreaking. “I know, Jester. You have always seen the best in me.” “Caleb—” A ragged sob escaped Jester’s lips. She shook her head hard against it all: What he wanted to do, the state of them all, everything. “Please, don’t cry. Don’t cry, Jester, I cannot bear to see you cry.” “How can you do this?” she asked. His face crumpled like a piece of her drawing paper. “This is … not how I would have wanted it to go,” he said, his voice breaking. “This is not what I … this is not what I wanted. I was not supposed to—meeting you all was not—it was not part of the plan.” She heard it, then: the steadfast rage that she knew, she always knew, simmered just beneath his skin. It scorched him ceaselessly. It smoldered in the back of his mind at night. It burned her now. “So, what, then? You wish you had never met us?” she asked. Hysterics were tightening her voice, making it high-pitched and squeaking. Stop it, Jester, you sound like Sprinkle, she thought, and the absurdity almost made her laugh in spite of herself. “You wish you had never met me, Caleb?” “That is not it, at all,” he said, fists clenched against his legs. “Jester, you must believe me. I … treasure having known you, kleiner Saphir.” Her ears were ringing, her body numb with shock and anger. You don’t get to be cute now, she thought, blinking back the stinging tears as fiercely as she could. That’s not allowed, not anymore.“Then how could you erase it all?” she asked. She wrapped her arms around her own waist, to steady her and warm her and contain her own fury, and the ache, the horrible ache that crashed against her insides like a wave. “I would not do it if it wasn’t necessary,” Caleb said, staring at the floor. “If it wasn’t … Now that I know I can do it, I must do it, you see? Because not to do it would be to … kill them, all over again. To choose to do it. Every day, to choose to do it.” “And choosing to leave us all is better? That’s okay, Caleb?” Jester asked. The air was cold in here, in this makeshift cell. Goosebumps rippled across her arms, and she shivered. “You would be alive, at least,” he muttered. “And you would not know the difference.”“How do you know?” she asked. She scoured his face, looking for … well, she wasn’t sure what she was looking for. A sign, perhaps, that he felt what she did. That his heart was breaking against the same fault lines as hers. “How do you know I wouldn’t remember, somehow?” “Jester, think of what we know of time,” he said, with the patience of a teacher speaking to a schoolchild. Still, he would not meet her gaze. “Everything that has ever happened or ever will happen has already … happened. Somewhere out there, you are already back at home with your mother, safe and warm and no worse for not having known me.” Think of what we know of time. Jester did not know as much as Caleb, but she did know some things. The time I thought you died, but really you were just playing, what a dick move, Caleb. The time we watched Kiri and Frumpkin play, you and I sitting on a hill, dewy grass beneath our fingertips, and and the sunlight on your face made you look a little like one of those guys on the cover of those smutty novels. The time we waltzed, your hands warm and rough but your touch so soft, and the way my heart sank when you said a different name than mine. Finally, finally, he looked at her, and when their eyes locked Jester felt that same thrill, only this time it hurt, it hurts so bad, Caleb, and it was all she could do to keep from falling apart. “But Caleb, I am here. I am now,” she said in a whisper. “And I really, really don’t want to forget.” “I … do not want you to, either,” he said weakly. “But is it forgetting if it never happened at all?” “But it did,” she insisted. “It is, it’s happening now. We are happening now. Isn’t that enough?” “My family—” “Aren’t we your family, now?” she asked. Then, quietly: “Aren’t I your family?” Her question was punctuated by another violent shiver. Caleb’s head tilted. “Are you cold?” he asked, as gently as if he were approaching a lost child. Jester shook her head vigorously. “No,” she lied, “I’m just really really mad, is all. You don’t shiver when you get mad?” Caleb fought a smile with a sigh. “Reach into my pocket,” he said, gesturing with his chin to his left side. “Come.” “What are you doing?” Jester asked. Hesitantly, she stepped towards him. “If this is some weird sex thing, I—”“Don’t be a silly goose, it’s phosphorus. You’re looking for phosphorus. The middle pocket, at my side.” She knelt next to him, close enough to hear his breath and take in the warm campfire-and-frankincense-and-old leather smell of him. Not stinky, she thought, her hands finding the pocket in question. Not stinky at all. Her fingers identified the soft deerskin pouch in which he kept the red powder. She removed it and opened the drawstring, reaching inside for a pinch of the faintly garlic-smelling substance. “In my hand,” Caleb said, struggling to rotate his left hand upward against the chains. It looked painful, but he flexed his fingers, indicating she should continue. Jester scooched herself over to the front of him and deposited the powder in his palm. Her fingertips skimmed his skin as she pulled away. Like teeny-tiny unicorn kisses, she thought, then blushed just a little at that last word. “What are you going to—” With a strained twisting of his right palm against his left, Caleb pulled his hands apart, sending the phosphorus particles into the air, mingling with the dust. In an instant, they transformed, each individual speck of powder beginning to glow from within, then coming together to form four perfect, softly glowing globules of light. Jester unwittingly sighed in delight. Watching Caleb cast never grew boring. With a subtle nod of his chin, he sent the orbs to stand sentinel around them, two close enough to Jester to warm her with their residual heat. In the light, she could see him better, and he looked even worse than she had thought: There was something haggard in his face, something so bone-tired that it aged him from within. He looked as though he had lived a thousand lifetimes inside of his few fragile, human years. Without thinking, Jester raised her hand to his face, resting it against his gaunt cheek. Jester saw something inside Caleb break at her touch. He turned his face towards her cool palm and it was as if he could lay down his burdens, now, safe in her hands. And if she knew anything about him, she knew that the tears came unwittingly and without his permission and guter Gott, how they burned him. “Caleb,” Jester whispered. “Caleb, please. You don’t have to do it, you know? You can call the whole thing off and go to bed and we’ll all forget it ever happened, okay?” She brushed a lock of hair off a tear-marked sticking place on his cheek. “Beau might kick you in the balls—actually, Nott might too—but I really do think we could all go on. We could go on.” She wanted to say it differently: we could go on. But if she tried to say we, if she said we and acknowledged we and therefore how badly she wanted a we … something inside her would break, too. Something she couldn’t afford to have broken, not now. “Liebste, I am still … sullied, by what I did,” he said, taking a deep, shuddering breath. Then, so quiet she had to lean in to hear: “I will never be clean of it, not even … after. But it is my penance, do you understand? I don’t want to do it, I have to do it. That is the difference." He’s so determined, she thought, still reeling from seeing him cry, she had never seen Caleb cry, Caleb, stoic Caleb, awkward stuttering perfect Caleb, crying as she stroked his cheek. He’s not going to change his mind. Okay, she thought, trying desperately to find something, anything else she could say to stop him.
Okay. Okay. Okay, okay, okay.
“But what about the rest of us? You just get to erase all of our lives and send us back to whenever the fuck and we don’t get a say in it?” Jester reached up with the hem of her dress and wiped his eyes and nose. “Well, guess what? It doesn’t even matter if you do, because I will find you.” She said it so matter-of-fact, as if she had a plan. As if it were possible. “Jester—” “No, it doesn’t matter, because I’ll find you.” “Jester, you can’t—” “I will find you,” she said fiercely. “I don’t know how yet but I will. The Traveler will help me, or something. But I can’t just not know you, Caleb. I can’t do that. I don’t know how to do that, anymore.” The sobs were sneaking up on her, the waves crashing down upon her now and oh, Caleb, remember the first time we all saw the sea together? It was on her lips, The Thing, that thing she wanted to say more but couldn’t say, couldn’t say it, how do you tell him something like that just for him to go, what if he still goes—“I don’t know how, okay?” she said, the tears flowing freely now. He was holding both her hands in his, fighting against the pull of the chains to keep them there. “My life before you was—and now you’re here and I — please, just … please, don’t go.” His impulse was to go to her, but the chains— So she went to him instead. Her lips collided against his, and it was messy, not at all like the perfect passionate spittle-less kisses from her books. Her hands landed on either side of his face, her knees a jumble over his and the chains, his hands bound and unable to hold her. It was desperate and pleading and wild. And the last, the fleeting thought darted through Jester’s head in a sole moment of clarity, then: No, no, it can’t be. Fuck you. It can’t be. It was futile to pull him closer but she tried anyway, wrapping her arms over his shoulders and tightening their kiss. When they pulled apart, just barely, she found him looking at her as if she were sparkling gold.
As if I’m a hundred million bookstores just for him. As if I’m time itself.
“Will you remember?” she whispered, eyes closed, forehead resting against his. He nodded. Her stomach twisted as though he’d sunk a dagger into it. She fought back a new storm of tears. “Will you find me?” “You won’t know me,” he said. “You will think I am just another stinky hobo.” Jester choked out a laugh. “Find me anyway,” she said. “Find me anyway, and tell me. Tell me about all the things we did, okay, Caleb? And I will believe you, I promise.” “How can you know that, kleiner Saphir?” Caleb pressed a kiss against her cheek, the soft patch of skin before her ear, the spot beneath the crook of her chin, the small of her neck, breathing in her sugar-sweet scent. “In all the stories I read,” she said, still quiet, “there is a handsome prince who comes from a far-away land to wake up the princess, steal her away from her tower, and take her on a beautiful adventure.” She opened her eyes and pressed a kiss against his forehead. “I would know you anywhere.” She leaned back and touched his hair tenderly. He watched her every move as if memorizing a spell. “If you were to recognize me, then,” he said. “Where would we go? What would we do?” We, Jester thought. There could be a we. A beautiful we, a real we. She swallowed the heart that had risen in her throat and hummed, thinking. “Well,” she mused, “first, you would have to meet Mama. She’d be a little confused when we explained that you’d actually met before, but she’d be really cool about it I’m sure. And then we’d get a little cart and a little horse named Buttercup, and we’d go to Zadash and find Beau, and Caduceus outside Shadycreek, and we’d definitely have to find Nott—or Veth, I guess she’d be, then—and say hello.” “Buttercup, ja?” Caleb chuckled. Jester smiled, then suddenly blushed. “And then, I guess, eventually, we’d find someplace nice, with lots of cool people, and get a house with a view of the sea, and we could live together and maybe get married or something, and have lots of little blue babies,” she finished. Caleb’s eyes searched her face. “Is that what we’d do, meine Leibe?” Jester nodded emphatically. “We’d have a family,” she said softly. “We’d be a family.”Caleb felt dizzy. He looked at Jester in wonderment. “I didn’t know you felt … how I felt. I didn’t let myself believe—and if you—if—Jester, why on earth would you want a future with me?” he shook his head in disbelief. Jester looked down shyly and twisted the hem of her dress in her hands. “I know it’s not the same, Caleb. I know it can’t erase what you’ve been through. But we could have something else, something different, and it would still be good. It could be really good.” “Really good,” he repeated. “I didn’t know … I didn’t think you would ever … I didn’t know—” His face crumpled again in anguish, and Jester blinked away cold understanding. Oh, Caleb. Oh, no. “You already cast it, didn’t you?” she whispered. He nodded. “Can you undo it?” she asked. “Can you undo it, Caleb?” Her voice rose in urgency but fell like lead when she saw his body slump. “No,” he replied. “No, I cannot.”
Okay. Okay. Okay, okay, okay.
“Jester, look at me,” he said, and she could hardly see him through her tears. “Look at me. I will find you. It will be just as you said, do you believe me?” “Yes, yes, I—Caleb—” Out on the streets of Nicodranas, through the crisp, clear night, the bell tower began to ring. Once, twice, thrice. “I will find you, liebling. There is so much time left for us. I promise, I—” “Caleb, I—”“There is so much for us to—”“No, no, Caleb—!” “Remember me, Jester, I—” The chains fell away, and the orbs dissipated in an instant, and for a heartbeat’s span she thought he did it, he said he could dispel it all with a blink and he did, he’s free, it’s not happening, not tonight not ever, but then he was gone, and the room was empty, and her heart was pounding and the wail that was wrenched up from deep inside her was subhuman and then:
Okay. Okay. Okay, okay, okay.
She crawled to the space on the floor where he had been and collapsed, trying in vain to feel him there through the warmth he left behind. Any second now reality would be pulled apart at its seams. Any second now, she would—A deafening rumble ripped through the air, the city, the world, growing into a roar. She opened her eyes and saw a bright white light through the window, on the horizon, racing towards her —
I would know you anywhere.
She closed her eyes and waited to see him again.