Chapter 1The War

“To come to this war: despite the known disposition of the actors in a struggle to overrate its importance, and when it is over to relapse into their admiration of the past. . .”

Thucydides,History of the Peloponnesian War

I call it a war, for a war it was. It’s battlefields were the hearts of those that once were friends, and the victory longed for was a redemption those hearts had forsaken. The actors of this sad struggle, who would oft relapse into their admiration of the past, were but four friends, according to some, or four fools according to others, who each lived yearning on this cold earth for the lost times. For food they ate their memories and quenched their thirst on each other’s tears and they waited for what they had lost on the eve of forever.

He picked me up in New York, alongside an empty road heading west. Said he was on his way to California, and I guess it seemed better then than trying to hitch a ride with the trucks. He told me many stories, many tragedies of lost days, about a place called Troy and friends long severed by time. This is his story, the story of an old friend who couldn’t let go; a story of tragedy, of hope, and of sacrifice. I am no writer, but I made Horatio a promise when he died in my arms.

. . .

“When are you going to get some direction in your life?” My father’s words still rang in my ears, “Will you always be such a failure?” And nothing, not even the rolling hills of green trees that stretched out into a blue oblivion could blunt the sting of those words.

Spring had arrived early in central New York with it’s usual abandon. The sun rose and the last chill of winter grudgingly released its hold and retreated from the encroaching green. Soon the sun was blazing as though it wanted to make up for all the winter months in a single day; radiating through the thick humid air with an almost tangible light. Within a few moments I found my once cozy coat unbearably hot and suffocating in the sticky heat. Taking it off I folded it and used it as a pillow on the sharp gravel next to the road where I had been sitting for hours. If you had asked me I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what or who I was waiting for by that lonely road, but it certainly wasn’t who I met.

“Need a ride?” Startled from my daydreams I shielded my eyes from the sun to see who had spoken. A faded orange car was parked beside me with the windows rolled down and it’s tired engine running with a stubborn rumble. He sat there smiling faintly at me, one arm hanging listlessly out the window, with a bemused look on his face. “Where you headed?” I replied at last. “Out west, going to pick up a friend in California then heading up north to Washington. My radio’s broke so I could sure use the company, besides it’s way too hot to be sitting out on the road.” As I look back now I realize why so many were drawn to him from those first few words. There was certain openness about that smile, an honesty that my hard heart did not at first recognize. It was

as if with one greeting, with one bemused smile, it was possible for him to bear the essence of his being.

The green hills of New York rolled by in all their verdant majesty as we drove south on Highway 17 through the Catskills. Under fallen leaves old rocks jutted out from the cool depths of the earth. Old stone walls, whose origins had been long lost to time and treacherous memory, wove in and out of the faded tree line; now standing proudly among the trees, now crumbling among the falling leaves. The age of those forests seemed to cry out to me as we raced by them, and the ease by which we passed them was almost appalling; how we fly past stones and stories that stretch back century upon century and never even bother to stop and listen to the stories they have to tell. I wondered then if perhaps the sheer age of a story, or the simple sadness of it’s tragedy, didn’t somehow demand that it be heard by someone. . .somewhere. He must have been watching me then, and somehow guessed my thoughts as so often Horatio did. “There are too many stories in this world to ever all be told,” He said “don’t you think?” “So why don’t you tell me yours?” I replied gamely, “About why you’re going to California?” “I'm not at all sure if I can describe it in a way you can understand, not because I think you are incapable of understanding what it was, but because I doubt the ability of these mere words to portray it. Let me begin by saying that, in truth, all stories are the same story - sure the context and characters change but the struggles those characters face, in whatever context, is always essentially the same. This thing I'm trying to talk about, this place, has been described a thousand times before. . .to some it was Ilium, to others it was Camelot, to us it was high school. There we held our own high courts, there we set up our own dramas mirroring the great stories you read about in old, dusty books. There we fell in and out of love, forged friendships and wrote our tragic destiny in our own fateful choices. And just as Arthur’s Camelot and Priam's Ilium our own tiny world fractured and fell apart, our hopes dashed, our small construct of paradise inevitably undone by fate. . .because every story is, in reality, the same story, thus every such story must always end the same. The golden kingdom must fall, and a new age begins, bereft of the glory of the old. The last character returns Arthur’s sword to the lake, the last of Ilium's princes flees across the sea, and with this act the tragedy ends. Fate is fulfilled." "So that is how your story went?" I asked him. "Not exactly." Horatio replied. "What do you mean?" "I didn't end it." "What?" "Our story, I was supposed to end it. . .and I didn't." "I don't understand." "Just think about what would have happened if Bedevere had never returned the sword when Arthur died at Camlann." "Bede-who?" "Damn man are you kidding me? Arthurian legend, ringing any bells?” "Won't that kind of mess things up with fate then?"

"Yeah, she's pretty pissed." "So what the hell are you going to do?" "Their choices sealed their fates. . .so I will give them those choices again." "I've got no friggin idea what the hell is going on." "Of course you do friend, you've read this story a thousand times already. . .what you need to know now is what character you are." After a long and not particularly comfortable silence I ventured another question. “Why did you pick me up?” I asked him, though I still don’t know why.

“At first I just felt sorry for you, but you have a part to play in our story. . .a character to fulfill. . .and I needed someone to remember.” “Remember what?” “What will happen. . .in Ilium.” “But, I’m only going as far as Cali. You’re not really making much sense you know.” “Chances are friend,” He spoke in a low tone as my head started to spin, “you’re going to come across a lot of things that don’t make sense on this journey.” “You mean this journey of life?” “No, I mean this journey right now. You’re not in the ordinary world anymore where things like your original destination matter. You’re in the special world of the journey, the same rules don’t apply here and you have to follow this to your goal. . .your dream. . .and it’s not in California, it’s in Ilium.” “I told you, I’m only going as far as California.” “Hmmmm, well the choice is yours, but I would wait to make my final decision until after we pick up Romeo.” “And where is he?” “Where else but Fair Verona?”

Chapter 2

Romeo

It was late afternoon by the time we finally made it to Tennessee, dusk when we pulled into Fair Verona, and evening when we stopped at last across the street from what looked to be a condemned building long abandoned "Whatever happens, stay close to me." Horatio growled as he got out of the car "What are we doing here?" I asked uneasily eyeing the vacant surroundings. "I already told you why, I'm looking for Romeo." "'Looking for him'? You mean he doesn't even know you're coming?" "On some level, I suppose, he probably does know. But if you're asking me if he thinks I'm coming for him tonight then the answer is no." "Great" I muttered and stumbled after Horatio who was already half way across the street heading towards a shadowy figure standing next to what I took to be a door. As we drew closer the shadow growled at us. "Show's already started, get lost."

It was one of those moments that I realized just how big Horatio actually was. Somewhere in my mind I always knew he was tall, and he certainly wasn't thin, but something about the way he carried himself made you not notice his size. . .until one of these moments came along. Horatio lifted the doorman into the air with what seemed to be ease. Once out of the shadows the light revealed a pale, scraggily figure with tiny scars covering his arms. Without a word he scrambled off into the night and Horatio and I walked through the rotting entrance.

Somehow the inside of the building looked worse than the outside. The dimly lit room was filled with a cheering crowd and a ragged looking band playing on a rickety wooden stage. They seemed content to punish their instrument with as much abstract sound and distortion as they could possibly evoke. Yet out of this fiasco of sound a wailing guitar rift caught my ear; so raw and imperfect yet containing something, some longing in its sad melodies, that called to me. Horatio did not need to tell me we had found Romeo. He stood back from the rest of the band as if while they played for the crowd he played only for himself. The wailing song ended and the band was engulfed by the crowd who rushed to them as if they were demigods in some sad pantheon of the fallen. I followed Horatio through corridors and rooms steeped in darkness and lined with grim-clothed and gaunt-faced onlookers whose eyes seemed to cry out to me as we passed them, 'you do not belong here'. We found him at last, sprawled out on the cold concrete floor. Around him his band mates drank and smoked and laughed but he remained silent, staring off into space. He could not have been more than twenty feet away but he seemed so distant, as if he were on the other side of the world. It was as though this one called Romeo was separated from all those around him to a degree that the limits of physics could not contain. And as I watched his eyes began to wander dangerously far, seeing things the rest of us could not see. "Romeo," Horatio whispered softly as he knelt beside him, and I could see even from where I stood that there were tears in his eyes, "what have they done to you?"

Then, curling his arms under his friend’s inert form, Horatio lifted him into the air as if he were nothing more than a heavy bag of groceries. As we headed back towards the door the room fell eerily silent, the gaunt-stares contained something as they watched us carry him out of their midst. It wasn't shock or surprise or even ignorance, but a kind of longing that I did not understand.

The cool night air roused Romeo as we stepped into the night. "I'll curse you for this in the morning Horatio, but thank you. . .I knew you would come," Romeo whispered as he began to drift off again, "I knew you would come. . ." "We need to hurry," Horatio spoke as he laid Romeo carefully in the back seat and closed the door, "she'll know what I'm doing now, and we need to find the rest of them before she does." "What the hell are you talking about man?" I asked, starting to feel uneasy, "who are you talking about?" The wind changed. It seemed like such a simple thing; a cold breeze that found its way into your very bones. Horatio stiffened and turned to look down the street. A girl was walking towards us down the center of the road. Her hair, darker than the sky, blew weightlessly in the cold breeze. Her feet made no sound as she moved.

Horatio slammed the door shut and turned the key and like a beaten to death cliché the weary engine sputtered and died. Cursing viciously he raced to the rear of the car, the old Supra shuddered and then began to creep forward. Looking back I saw the girl walking towards us, the clouds billowing above for the coming storm, while Horatio strained to get his ancient vehicle into a roll. And as we began to pick up speed I heard a name floating through the wind that could have been my own. "Away from me Atropos!" I heard Horatio roar, and the winds answered him. "This was not the part chosen for you Horatio, nor was it your friends' fate to leave this place." "Then you were a fool for choosing! You were a fool to believe that I would let it end this way!" The car finally began to roll, leaping into the driver's seat Horatio popped the clutch out from second gear and slammed the gas as his ancient engine roared to life. Yet even as we sped away from her I heard the wind calling, "The end has already been written, you cannot change what they have become." "What the hell was that?" I yelled as we roared away. "Atropos, one of the three sisters of the Moirae. . .the fates man didn't you make it through any of your college courses?" "You're insane!" I yelled over the whine of the Supra's struggling engine and the racing wind. "I told you," he yelled back, "you are not in the ordinary world anymore, the rules of the journey are different now." "This can't be real." I mumbled. "It couldn't have been real where I found you, but here, in the special world of the journey, there are many things which can be real, which can happen, that could not happen anywhere else. All stories are the same story, remember?" "So why is she chasing us?" "Because fate wrote the story!” "So what?" "I changed the ending!" He yelled, motioning toward where Romeo lay unconscious in the back seat.

Chapter 3

Horatio

I awoke with a start somewhere in Georgia. I lifted my seat back upright with a groan for my aching neck and noticed that Horatio was gone. The sun was rising over the squat cinderblock rest stop, turning the sky a light blue of Van Gogh quality. Romeo stirred from the backseat and rummaged around until he found an open bag of beef jerky, which he offered me as a stale breakfast.

“Romeo will be back soon,” he spoke through a mouthful of rock hard jerky, “he does this sometimes.” “Where is he?” “Out there,” Romeo motioned towards the wooded hills that gently sloped up from where we had parked, “in the hills somewhere.” “He’s really a strange one.” I remarked cautiously, to which Romeo turned and looked long and questioningly at me, as if seeking some sort of boon of loyalty before talking to me about such a friend.” “One of the strangest.” He replied at length, seeming to have found whatever he was looking for. “So why do you think he’s doing all of this?” I asked, having at last managed to bombard the jerky in my mouth with enough spit to soften it. “I don’t know. . .I’m not even sure what he is trying to do, or how much of this is coming together because of him. Of course, this all must have been his idea, it’s just the thing Horatio would try to pull off. Horatio always has to be sacrificing himself for something. Back in Troy he was the common bond between us all; the one friend that we were all friends with. “I see.” I said, though I didn’t really see at all. “Horatio thinks he will be happy if he can make us all happy again. . .it is. . .a beautiful dream he has for us. . .a beautiful memory. . .but you need to know that it won’t work, it can’t work. No matter how much he wants to believe in it, even he can’t undo all the things that have been done, and all that we have done to each other. It will break his heart in the end, if he has any heart left to break.” “Then why are you still here?” I asked. “A fools hope,” Romeo smiled wistfully, “and because, in the end, I would rather tag along on one of his damned dreams than follow my own fate alone.”

We sat in silence for about a half hour with the sun seeming to hover just on the other side of the hills, as if afraid to rise. “I’m going for a walk, stretch my legs.” I called to Romeo as I stepped out of the car and started walking down the small deer trail into the woods. “If you find Horatio tell him to hurry it up,” Romeo called after me, “we’re almost out of jerky!”

I wandered into the woods and suddenly the tiny trail I was following became a clear and seemingly well worn trail. Winding up to the top of the nearest hill where old rocks pierced the soft earth, jutting into the sky as if thrust upwards by some primeval giant. That is where I saw Horatio, and as I stood, partially hidden by a giant oak, I heard a silver voice float out from the shadows. "I often wonder why, out of all the tormented souls of this world, I find myself so drawn to

you? I think there must be something about your sadness that calls to me, something in the way they laugh at the salvation you offer that lurks, hauntingly, in my memory." "Hello Priam," Horatio replied, "or would you prefer 'Arthur'?" "Bahh," the old man exclaimed with a wave of his leathery hand, "Arthur was always a bit too romantic for me. 'Priam', I think, fits best of all. Priam at least knows to stay dead when his city has been destroyed and his armies beaten." "I think that I liked 'Arthur' best, regardless." "You would." The old man scoffed. "So what brings you from the Island of Apples this morning Arthur." The silver-tongued stranger winced, visibly, at the name. "Arthur died at Camlann Horatio, just as Priam burned with Troy. And for all your wishful thinking we both know that each of them welcomed their fate, for that was their fate, with open arms. That each wanted only to close their eyes and forget this world that had torn their dreams asunder. That each of them and the thousand others that had gone before had wanted only oblivion at the end of their days." "Whatever you say old man." "You know who sent me, as do you know the fates written for all of Troy's sons, prodigal as they may be. They have made their own choices Horatio, and all of them have fallen, all of them have forgotten Troy. All but you. . .and even in your mind the dream is fading. Your king gave you one last command, why did you not obey? Why haven't you returned the sword?" Horatio stood silent. "They want to rest Horatio, they want to be able to forget what was and what they were. Who are you to deny them the peace they seek?" "It can't end that way." Horatio muttered darkly. "It already has ended that way Horatio, the story is all but done. You cannot change a thousand pages simply by refusing to turn the last one. They chose this. . ." "No!" Horatio shouts, "A tragedy was written, absent of all their fateful choices. Theirs was to choose but the details. . .not their destiny." "So all great stories are written Horatio. Yours is to know their fates not to change them. Why do you linger here? You of all of them must see it. The fates have spoken an end to your story but you will not end it. They are afraid of you, afraid of what might happen the longer your prolong this. The sword must be returned, the lingering strands of a dead age must be undone if a new story is to begin." "When something has gone well Arthur, it deserves a fitting form of closure. They deserve a better ending than the wone written for them. . .even if they were the ones who wrote it." "Your story can end only in tragedy Horatio, no matter how hard you try you cannot re-write that." "I know." "She will find you eventually Horatio, there is nowhere in this world you can escape her." "And when she does Arthur, will you be there as well?" "I am only a ghost now Horatio, only a ghost who longs for rest." "Then leave me ghost, go back to your golden apples and your crown of oblivion."To which the old man turns to leave, but pauses long enough at the edge of the darkness to call back over his shoulder, "You are strong, Bedevere, but you cannot change how this will end.." "I know Arthur," Horatio replied as the old man walked alone into the night and then added just to himself when the silver-tongued stranger had gone, "but you can."

Horatio returned shortly I had silently made my way back to the car smelling of fresh earth and

dew. I was struck by the impression that he had not slept that night. “We’ll stop by and see Ophelia on the way up to the border,” he spoke to Romeo, seeming to have forgotten me. “Ah good,” smiled Romeo, “it will be good to see her again.” “What? Where are we going now?” I asked. “To the middle,” Horatio mumbled quietly and with a strange smirk, “to bring him back around.” “What?” “Middletown, just over the Canadian border. There’s been a slight change in plan; we need to go pick up Tristan, and we need to be there in two days.”

I never asked how he knew this by talking to some old guy in the forest all night, but then he probably wouldn’t have answered me even if I had. . .at least, that’s what I told myself. Romeo seemed

content to take the new turn of events without question and I decided it would be best to do the same. Three hours later when we arrived at Ophelia's house she ran out to greet us, an ordinary girl whose plainness was somehow beautiful. Her hair was a dark and slightly curled American brown, her jeans fit loosely and her sandals not at all. Joyously she embraced Romeo with a hug that betrayed a history then turned to Horatio with a knowing gaze and took him in her arms. It seemed to me to be something more than just a hug, not the embrace of a lover. . .but perhaps the closest thing to it. And for a moment I saw his great shoulders sag and his long arms tighten around her, and I could almost hear her as she whispered something to him I did not hear. We came into her apartment, lazily furnished with a southern drawl, for dinner. Once again they told their war stories, their legends of each other, and I watched. In my all too silent way I began to see behind their words. There was a bond between Horatio and Ophelia, a kind of common understanding of the world. It was the sacrifice that was alike in them – that they would give all for those they loved, or even just cared about. We didn’t stay for long, Tristan was in need of a ride several thousand miles away and Ophelia had her own nameless task to undertake. She and Horatio spent a long time saying goodbye as Romeo and I waited in the thick Georgian air watching their shadows. And then, in an instant, we were on the road again heading north.

Chapter 4Tristan

We found him near the door to an apartment building that couldn't have been more than five feet wide. Downtown Middletown was a disturbingly cramped place; it was as if it's citizens felt some undeniable need to demonstrate how valuable their real estate was by cramming as many buildings as possible into a square mile in the middle of the endless frozen nothingness. He sat motionless as we slid to a stop and Horatio stepped out of the car. His stiff blue fingers stuck out of the holes cut in his mismatched wool gloves and clung desperately to an old guitar. It seemed almost as if he were asleep, but it was something more. . .complete than sleep. It was as if he had been sitting on that frozen stoop, waiting, for a million years and with every snowflake that fell around him he lost a piece of himself. until, at last, there was all but nothing left. . .a hollow shell wrapped in coats. A sacrifice, that's what the image he presented reminded me of, a forgotten sacrifice; a dead animal or some broken pieces of pottery left atop a hill or alter for a god that paid no heed.

"Tristan." Horatio whispered, and the figure wrapped in coats stirred. "Wake up Tristan, it's time to go." "Horatio? I wasn't sleeping. . .I wasn't. . .I was just. . ." The coats replied, as if it was nothing out of the ordinary for an old Supra full of old friends to pull up with no forewarning. "I know, come on. . .get in the car before you get frostbite." "What? No. . .no you don't understand. . .I can't leave. . ." Tristan fell back, almost as if he were trying to escape. "She's not coming back Tristan." Horatio spoke quietly. The figure in the coast seemed to quiver. "What?" "I know why you stayed here, why you waited. . .and who you waited for." "I lost the moment Horatio. . .the moment I waited for for all those years, she asked me. . .she actually asked me. . .If I wait long enough maybe the moment will come back to me. . .maybe. . ." "Maybe she will come back and ask you again. Maybe she will still see you, despite all that you've done to yourself because, in the end, all that you did was so that she would tell you to stop." Horatio replied knowingly and the figure wrapped in coats collapsed to the snow covered ground. "God, I am such a fool. . .such a fool for believing. . ." Tristan cursed. “. . .Where did it all go so wrong Horatio? How did we become like this?” "I'll find you another moment Tristan," Horatio whispered as he steered him towards the car, "I promise."

"Oh hey Romeo, what's up?" Tristan greeted his old friend as he jumped in the cramped back seat as if this situation was the most ordinary thing in the world. A change had occurred between the conversation with Horatio and the entrance to the car. . .a change I did not understand but through which these friends seemed to be able to move with ease. It was their nature, I suppose, to be able to transfer from alien situations & contexts as if they were changing clothes. Some vestige of their shared memories of which I was not a member. There was something they all held common that I could never hold, and no matter how close we became I always understood that theirs was a bond I stood outside and could only look in upon. Perhaps this was why I did not dwell on such disturbing transitions. . .in the

end it was probably for the best. Had I understood everything from the onset I never would have made it to the end.

Chapter 5Pacific Sun

Two days after we picked up Tristan Horatio pulled off I-80 onto a runaway truck ramp where we stopped for the night. We had crossed the peak of the Rocky Mountains shortly before and now, from the cliff where we made our makeshift camp, the sprawling lights of Salt Lake City beckoned to us. We stood at the edge together and watched place where sun and earth and sky converged and the world turned from blue to orange to red to pink; setting fire to clouds casually strewn accross the sky. I could almost hear Horatio sigh with relief as the last chill that had followed us from Middletown was shrugged off. As I look back on it now I remember a change in them, as if by crossing these rugged mountains that had once separated east from west they had left behind them all the tragedy and gloom that so haunted the lives they had lived. Gone were the cities and their course anonymity, gone was the noise of an endless humanity, gone were the cares and worries that so haunted the minds of these. There, on the top of America, there was room enough only for good friends and the setting Pacific sun. Horatio told me once that in Mexico they say the Pacific is no wide and so deep that it has no memory and so the sun forgets the troubles of the past when it dips below her horizon. I there must be something to such stories, and I don't care what the psychologists or geographers say. Standing there, with those three friends, gazing out towards a falling sun and journeying towards a redemption that each of them had forsaken. . .I believed in the dream they had left behind. Maybe it was simply the magic of the moment, maybe it was simply knowing that we were nearing the end of Horatio's quest, but in the failing light of that Pacific sun I believed.

Horatio built a fire in a small clearing near the cliff and while Romeo and I got out what blankets we had Tristan set a small pot of water on the coals to boil. After a hearty meal of Ramen noodles and eggs they made a curious tea - brewed in miniature intricate tea pots with servings of rough cut tea and sugar measured in shot glasses in which the finished product was later served. Three rounds progressed from that first batch of tea intermingled with strange third-world significance. With caffeine from the obscenely strong tea surging through our veins we settled down around the fire. Tristan and Romeo busied themselves with opening a hidden bottle of Run Royale saying something about "two thirds" while Tristan wandered off in the direction of the cliff. I'm not sure if I actually meant to follow him. . .but nevertheless I ended up not far from where he eventually stopped and stood silently, as if waiting for someone. I remember he was already talking when I saw her and that I had the same sensation, when looking at her, as I had with the strange girl in Fair Verona. It was like I was looking at a bad TV that displayed three different images in different colors all superimposed on top of each other but just slightly out of alignment. She was different than the girl we had seen when we had picked up Romeo, she was brighter and somehow inexplicably more alive than her surroundings which had the effect of making her look like she was somehow superimposed onto reality. All in all it was incredibly disturbing. ". . .what are we if not for our memories?" Horatio continued, though what he had said before this I did not hear. "You, at least, have the hope of a future Horatio. . .if only you would let go of the past." She

spoke with a voice that seemed to curl through the air as it tumbled from her lips. "And what of the cost? What of my friends? Should I leave them to the fates you wrote for them?" Horatio replied motioning back towards where Romeo and Tristan sat. "They wrote their own fates Horatio, I merely gave their choices context." "It wasn't fair!" Horatio yelled angrily, "They deserved better than this!" "What did they deserve Horatio? A happy ending? A perfect sunset to ride into? Why should they receive the redemption they rejected? Because they are your friends or, at least, once were? Or is it you seeks redemption for allowing what happened? They each of them wrote the sad endings to their stories in their own choices a long time ago." "Then I will change their endings, I will change everything." "What you speak of is an impossible thing, what you speak is heresy against the fates." "I don't give a damn for your heresy." "How can you, of all of them, not see how this will end? You cannot change their endings Horatio, all you can do is become consumed by them. You can have a future Horatio, you can be happy again. Only give back the sword and let them go one more time." "I'll give it back when I'm done." Horatio growled. "Then I must bid you farewell and collect the one I was sent for." "Which one?" "You have tarried Tristan too long from his appointed time and I cannot return to my sisters empty handed. The sad knight was never supposed to get up off that cold ground you found him on." "What will you take instead?" "Only three gifts can the Moirae accept Horatio; your name, your heart, and your memories. . .though only one would suffice to end all of this." "Then take my name." "Are you sure you would so easily give up your name, and not those haunting memories lurking in your head?" "No. . .besides, nobody ever really used it anyway." "You have purchased naught but wasted time with your sacrifice Horatio. She will just keep sending more of us to find you, and soon you will run out of gifts to appease Fate's messengers." "But not tonight." "No," The strange womans smile softened, "not tonight." He turned to leave them, but the strange woman called out to him, "Horatio?" "Yes Lachesis." He answered. "Why are you doing this?" "They are my friends." He shrugged. "They would understand. . .if they knew all of this. . ." "Yes. . .but I would not." Horatio replied as he walked back towards the fire.

By the time we all came back together around the dwindling fire the moon was high in the sky and Romeo and Tristan had actually managed to consume two thirds of the rum. Their words slurred a call went up for Horatio to tell a story - it seemed oddly fitting to end the night with a tale. . .as if we were living in an age before all the technology that would so separate human beings from one another. So we settled down around our fire and sipped warm rum as Horatio began to tell the legend of Bedevere. "There was once a knight of King Arthur's round table named Bedevere. He was not Camelot's greatest soldier, nor was he it's wisest sage, nor was he it's wealthiest citizen, but Bedevere was strong and he was loyal to his king. So when Arthur summoned his remaining knights for his final battle at Camlann against Medrout. . ."

"Wait a misnut," Slurred Romeo, "wasn't the bad guy named Agamemnon or something?" "Same character but a different story." Horatio smiled. "No, I thought it was Mordred." Tristan roused himself from staring into the flames. "Same story, same character, but a different name." Horatio's smile widened. "All right fine what then?" Romeo attempted to motion towards Horatio and promptly fell backwards. "Anyway," Horatio continued, "Bedevere rode with Arthur to Camlann where they fought with Medrout. In the battle that followed Medrout's armies were slain as were all of Arthur's knights save one; the brave sir Bedevere. It was Bedevere who, wandering the battlefield, stumbled upon the mortally wounded Arthur. The king, knowing he would die and with him his kingdom, commanded his last knight to take the sword Caliburn back to the water from which it came and return it to the Lady of the Lake. Twice Bedevere goes to the waters edge but cannot bring himself to return the sword but the third time he casts the blade into the water." "The story's over then?" Tristan asked sloppily, trying heroically to keep his eyes open. "Some people say it ended there, that Arthur died at Camlann and was buried at a nearby church, other legends say that the three sisters carried him off to the Island of Apples and there healed his wounds and gave him the iron crown of oblivion so that he could forget what had happened to his dream and live in peace. But there is another story that tells of how Bedevere lied to his king and did not return the sword. Instead when the sisters had taken Arthur Bedevere went in search of the one knight who had not fought at Camelot, Lancelot. Lancelot had been banished to a monastary for his adultery with the queen and had remained there, a broken man, when Arthur rode out to his doom. But the Lady of the Lake was not to be denied the blade she had so coveted. Bedevere's journey was filled with danger for though he carried with him Arthur's great sword that could destroy any enemy only Arthur could draw the magical blade. With great sacrifice Bedevere found Lancelot and together they journeyed to the enchanted island where Arthur was kept forever forgetfull of his past. But when they arrived they found that they had to fight Arthur himself, wearing the crown of oblivion their king had forgotten them and was controlled by the Lady of the Lake. Unable to bring himself to fight his king Bedevere allowed himself to die at Arthur's hand, but with his last strength he grabbed the iron crown from Arthur's head as he leaned close and threw it into the sea. His trance broken, Arthur remembered his most faithful knight, in a rage he drew the sword Bedevere had carried so far and smote the demons sent against him by the Lady of the Lake until. . ." Horatio must have noticed then that Tristan and Romeo were snoring and that I was desperately trying to keep my eyes open. The rum had done it's work. He smiled and chuckled to himself and started rolling out his blanket. "Wait," I spoke groggily, "how does it end?" "Don't worry," Horatio smiled sadly, "you'll find out soon enough." "But. . ." "Get some sleep. After all it's just a story. . ."

Chapter 6The Watcher

"Have you figured it out yet?" Horatio asked. We had been driving for three hours in silence across the salt flats with Tristan and Romeo asleep in the back. "What?" I asked, confused. "You remember the day we met? When I told you that what you needed to figure out was what character you were not what the story was?" "I'm not sure yet. . .maybe. . ." a long pause, "I'm here to remember all of this aren't I? I am the watcher. . .I mean, I watch you guys, I watch your journey, I. . .”

“You ground us in reality,” Horatio smiled.

“I have these feelings, these terrible fears that something bad will happen when we get to Ilium." "Yes." Horatio answered quietly, his eyes never leaving the road ahead. "And there's nothing I can do to change it is there?" "Not really." Horatio smiled sadly. "Then what the hell is the point of me even being here?" "Because you. . ." Horatio replied wistfully, ". . .are the only one who will ever really understand what happened. The actors each play their parts and those parts are all they know but you. . .you are the watcher, and you see the whole."

Chapter 7Quixote

We were standing just outside a small pub in down town Seattle. Romeo had yet to arrive from some undisclosed errand, Tristan was saving us a table inside, and I was standing in the door while Horatio stood on the sidewalk waiting patiently for the meandering stroll of a young man to eventually cross his path. At which point the meandering stroller stopped abruptly and looked up with clouded eyes, having halted his ceaseless muttering about the saints this world had forgotten. "What are you doing here Horatio?" A low, uncertain growl of a voice asked. "Hey Quixote," Horatio replied with a smile, "didn't you get my message?" "Of course I got your message, I just didn't think you'd actually try to pull this off." "Let's grab a beer. Tristan's saving us a table and Romeo's on his way."

We sat for what seemed like days at that table, draining pitchers of unfiltered beer and enjoying old bonds suddenly renewed. It was dark before Romeo burst through the door. "Damn you Horatio!" He yelled, "You had no right to bring her here!" "Juliet came on her own." Horatio replied without turning. "Juliet is here?" Tristan asked, mystified, while Quixote simply looked long and questioningly at Horatio. "I knew it, I knew you would try something like this!" Romeo continued, "I came along on this half-ass adventure for you Horatio! Because you asked me to and I never questioned why but I knew you would pull this bullshit!" "Maybe," Horatio spoke quietly and with a sad gleam in his eye, "that is why you really came." "Christ Horatio, open your eyes! It's not going to work! You can't just bring us all back together again and expect us to overcome what we did to each other. When are you going to understand that nothing and no one, not even you, can help us? We aren't the people you see us as, we never were." "Yes, you are." "Damn you!" Romeo screamed again, "Why? Why couldn't you just let go like everyone else? Why do you alone cling to hope in us. . .in me? If it weren't for you I could forget the way it was, I could have forgotten already." "I can save you Romeo." "I don't believe," Romeo whispered, his eyes distant and cold, "I don't believe anymore Horatio, in hope or love or even in you. How could you do this to me? To presume to save me? I don't want your salvation Horatio." "Then what do you want?" "I want the world to forget the boy I once was! I want to tear from my heart the pieces she stole with the innocence that was my hope! I want to never have loved, to never have felt, to never have had such happiness that haunts me! I want you to let me go, to stop expecting me to become what you once

thought I was and to see me for what I am! So that maybe, for once, I could sleep at night and not see her face and remember her smile and. . .I want you to stop caring!" Romeo screamed at last, tears streaming down his face, "so that I could stop caring too!"

His tirade complete and his eyes bleeding tears Romeo turned and stormed out into the night. Horatio stood for a long time staring at the door in silence, his great shoulders slumped and eyes downcast. Slowly he laid a handful of bills on the table along with a scrap of paper with a scribbled address on it. "I need. . .I need to take care of some things." He mumbled to me, as if his mind were a million miles away. "Make sure Romeo and Tristan come to this address with you tomorrow evening. . ."

I made to follow Horatio as he left the bar, but as he walked through the door a familiar voice from a darkened alley stopped me. Hidden by the doorframe, I listened in my all too silent way. "Did you really think?" The silver voice floated from the darkness, "that there wouldn't be a price?" "Is that why you are following me Hamlet? To gloat?" Horatio replied. The figure in the darkness seemed to recoil. "I do not know that name!" "What name shall we use today then? Arthur? Or is it still Priam?" "What is it that you think you will be able to change Horatio? Who among them do you think you can save?" "All of them. . .even you." Horatio whispered. "You tried that once before, remember? 'You will not win this match' you said. You always could see just past the present. You failed then and you will fail again here. . .I have no heart left to save Horatio, and you. . .you don't have any heart left to give." "So you have made your choice then?" Horatio answered. "My choice?" The shadowy figure growled, "my choice was made for me; it was determined the accursed day that poisoned sword pierced my flesh. The fates have spoken. . .let us go. Your salvation is just an excuse for the purpose we once believed we had, a hollow substitute for the hope we once held. There is nothing left, Horatio, to save us from or for." "It cannot end this way." Horatio replied. "Who are you to choose their ending? Who are you to force your meaningless redemption upon them? They want to be forgotten, they want an ending to their suffering!" The one called Priam yelled, "Who are you to deny them?" "I am the watcher!" Horatio roared so loud I stepped back and pressed my back into the wall. "I was their oracle! They knew their parts but I knew the whole!”

Chapter 8

The Eve

The address Horatio had given me was defined by a low white wall that, while not tall enough to seem truly imposing, nonetheless managed to completely obscure its contents. We had driven for thirty minutes to the sprawling suburb of Seattle known as Ilium that no one, it seemed, had ever heard of. When we arrived Romeo, still fuming, went for a walk with Tristan while I waited for Horatio and Quixote to arrive. As I stared at the long lines of parked cars that seemed to clog the street I tried to shake the feeling that this journey was nearing its end. I tried briefly to make sense of some of the things I had seen over the past few days but, not wanting to fully deal with their implications, I took my cue from my new companions and simply accepted the strangeness without trying to fully comprehend it.

Gradually I became aware that Horatio and Quixote were walking slowly down the street towards me from the opposite direction than Romeo and Tristan had gone. They were too far off, really, for me to have been able to hear their conversation but somehow I caught their words. Maybe it was the wind that carried them to me, or perhaps it was some other agent I could not see.

“I don’t want it to end like this Horatio. . .” I heard Quixote say with a grieving tightness in his voice. “I wish. . .I wish that I could just have them all together again, just for one moment. Not like we are now, awkward and distant, but the way we once were. I wish I could tell them everything I held in so tightly all those years.”

“All of them?” Horatio asked gently, “or just Dulcinea?”

Quixote hung his head, “Just her. . .it was always just her.”

“What would you give for that moment?” Horatio asked.

“Anything. . .anything in the world.”

“And what,” Horatio continued in a trembling voice, “if it wasn’t even for you. What if it was only for the rest of them?”

“Everything,” Quixote answered without pause, “even if were only for one of us. . .everything.”

“As would I,” Horatio answered in a whisper, “as have I.”

They were now close enough for me to see Quixote turn to look at Horatio questioningly, but just then they arrived at the entrance at the same moment Tristan and Romeo appeared from the shadows.

“Well,” Romeo muttered, his anger still evident, “what is this Horatio?”

“This.” Horatio smiled as he opened the gates revealing a well lit house from which a small crowd immediately began to stream towards them followed by the subtle beats of a strangely familiar song, “is your moment.”

The crowd drew closer and suddenly the night was shattered by shouts of joy. A sea of old friends engulfed Romeo, Tristan, and Quixote as their incredulous expressions gave way to disbelieving smiles. I had never before met any of the crowd that greeted us that night, other than from the stories I had heard along the way. They surged and ebbed around me like the faintly familiar harmonies of a song you’ve been told about a thousand times but are at last hearing for the first.

Slowly we were drawn in towards the house, pulled by the song that echoed out across the grass like the heartbeat of some sort of common memory. Multiple French doors opened into a vast high-ceilinged room filled with a whirling mass of dancing forms, and up above their heads at the other end of the room I saw Horatio partially obscured by an obscenely large speaker, composing the song he had carried with him so far. Even now it is hard to describe what it was like. . .it was a million things at once, almost more felt than heard. . .like the sea; building upon itself into soaring crests that tumbled down to crash and build again. It was almost as if he were weaving his very blood into the beats he caressed from the worn vinyl records in front of him; a waning lonely calling out like a great fog horn to the lost ships before him.

I watched them shyly enter, hanging back in small groups at the edges of the dance floor, but soon Horatio’s song began to take its toll. Pearl Jam and Radiohead, County Crows and some cheesy 80’s song all strung together in an impossibly driving melody that beat at the air as if trying to break free of some invisible prison. As I watched I could almost see the memories attached to those songs begin to surface behind their eyes, and I began to catch glimpses of what Horatio had always seen. It was Romeo who reached him first.

“How?” He yelled over the rising music to Horatio, “How the hell did you do this?”

Horatio smiled, and I realized just how few times I had actually seen him smile. When he had done so before from the day he picked me up off that country road in Binghamton, there had always been a certain sadness in it. But this smile. . .this smile was somehow pure.

“It’s not how Romeo,” Horatio laughed, “it’s why!”

“I don’t understand!”

“Don’t you?” Horatio replied and looked past him, out toward the dance floor. Romeo, eyes wide in disbelief, followed his gaze until he saw her. Even I saw her, though I did not know what I was looking for.

“They’re all here aren’t they?” Romeo called to him, his eyes never leaving her twirling form. “Juliet, Dulcinea, Isolde. . .you brought them all back here didn’t you. Why Horatio?”

“Because where once there was the strength to stand,” Horatio smiled, “remains the strength to stand again.”

For a moment Romeo hesitated, then he walked with long straight steps across the dance floor towards were she waited. The music rose at Horatio’s command. Romeo called her name once.

“Juliet.”

She turned and he kissed her before the crowd swept them both out of sight.

I felt her coming before I saw her; a kind of coldness that cut through the warmth of Horatio’s song. It was the same kind of coldness I had felt in the moonlight of Fair Verona when Horatio had brought Romeo out of his self-made prison, the same unsettling notion I had felt on the roof of the Rocky Mountains. Turning towards it I saw a woman passing calmly through the crowd, her hair darker than night, her eyes sadder than tragedy, her skin more pale than the coldest moon. She walked just above the floor, passing gently through those around her who moved to let her pass though their eyes never met. Her gaze was locked firmly on where Tristan and Isolde stood on a balcony that overlooked the writhing dancers.

“Stop her!” Horatio’s roar jarred me from my stupor.

“Wait. . .” I held up my hand to catch hers as she passed by, but it slid through her arm as if she were made of smoke. The girl turned sharply and looked at me with her cold sad eyes.

“You can see me?” She spoke with a voice burdened, it seemed, by centuries. “You are not one of them, what part do you have to play in this?”

“Wait Clotho!” Horatio called, suddenly by my side, “Not yet!”

“Horatio,” her voice floated across the space between us like a faint breeze on a cool night that now stirs your hair and then is gone, “you have taken this one far enough from his appointed place. It is time he went back.”

“Please, not yet.” Horatio begged.

“The memories you seek to make, poor Horatio, cannot be. These choices have already been made, it is not for you to unmake them. See for yourself.” She said as she pointed to where Tristan and Isolde still stood. As I watched I saw Isolde ask Tristan a question, the kind of question a boy would wait a million years to hear, and Tristan bowed his head and looked away, unsure of how to answer. Abruptly Isolde began to walk towards the door, away from where Tristan remained frozen with his head bowed low. Somewhere I realized the music had started to build.

“You see?” Clotho smiled, as if she pitied Horatio, “The end of your story was written when it began in choices too far away now to change.”

“Not yet.” Horatio repeated, his eyes never leaving Tristan’s motionless form. “My heart, take my heart instead.”

“He has made his choice Horatio. . .” Clotho replied and turned to go when Horatio gently grabbed her arm where mine had simply passed through it.

“Release me!” She demanded, but Horatio was still staring at where Tristan stood.

“Move Tristan.” Horatio whispered, as if he was trying to will his friend into action.

“It is over Horatio.”

“MOVE TRISTAAAAAN!” Horatio yelled, his desperate roar lost in the rising music.

“Your dream. . .” Clotho started, then stopped suddenly and snapped her head upwards, for on that fateful balcony Tristan moved.

“Isolde!” Tristan called to her.

“Don’t stop.” Horatio whispered. “for once do not stop.”

“I lied Isolde,” Tristan cried, “I’ve thought about kissing you ever since that day, and every day before that. . .”

“This should not be, this cannot be!” Clotho whispered fiercely as she struggled to pull free from Horatio’s grasp. The music crested and rolled into an ocean of sound. The lovers embraced as they always should have, and the Moirae stood unhindered; a tear rolling down even her cold cheek.

“You’ve done it Horatio,” Clotho whispered as she looked at the ground. “I will not stop you, but my sister will come for you now. She will undo all of this, and even you cannot escape Atropos.”

When Clotho had gone I looked up at Horatio with what must have looked like puzzled terror. Horatio laughed.

“One more to go.”

When I finally found Quixote he was dancing alone near one of the darkened corners of the floor, eyes closed tight he threw back his head and through the flashing lights I could still see the tears streaming across his face. Until I heard her voice; the only voice that could ever had made him move, the only voice he ever truly wanted to hear within all the others he drowned himself with, calls to him.

“Quixote!”

He opened his eyes in disbelief and there she stood, one hand twirling in the air the other outstretched towards him. Stumbling awkwardly through the writhing dancers he made his way towards her. Closer. . .closer. . .step by step one dream approached reality.

I watched them dance, I watched them smile, I watched them laugh and embrace. I watched the years of sadness and regret shudder and slip away. I watched their fates change. I saw Romeo find again the hope he had lost, I bore witness to Tristan’s redemption, I saw poor Quixote hold again his Dulcinea, and I saw Horatio, composing his opera of memory, laughing at the lost fate had given them.

Chapter 9

The Price

The Party now in full swing and the music set on autopilot Horatio quietly made his way outside and began to close the doors leading into the dancehall.

“You should be in there celebrating with them,” I said.

As he closed the last door Horatio smiled at me sadly. “There are still a few loose ends to wrap up.”

“One thing I don’t get though,” I asked as Horatio closed the last of the doors and the joyous noise within at once became a muffled rumble, “you told me that you couldn’t actually change the story.”

“Yes.” Horatio answered.

I shrugged, “Your story was a tragedy. . .how did you give it a happy ending?”

“I didn’t.” He replied. I felt It then, that kind of piercing cold that I had come to expect from those Horatio called the Moirae, only this was a deeper and somehow darker cold than I had felt before.

“Did you really think,” An icy voice pierced the darkness from the shadows beyond the white wall that surrounded the house, “that there wouldn’t be a price?”

“Do not follow me.” Horatio said to me as he turned to go. I watched him walk alone towards the white gates leading out into the night which seemed now malevolent and cruel. I watched, in my all

too silent way, wanting so desperately to follow him but knowing so completely that he wanted to walk this path alone.

Horatio stopped in front of the two white pillars which stood on either side of the open gate. From the seething shadows just beyond the reach of the light I saw a form emerge. As before it was as if I was looking at several images superimposed over each other; a tall and coldly beautiful woman holding a slender golden thread, a Greek goddess seeking vengeance, and a shimmering nymph only just emerged from her watery abode all somehow compressed into a single form. Behind the woman/goddess/nymph the darkness seemed to seeth and surge with great and foreign forms. Horatio did not move, he remained in the light fists balled and jaw clenched tight.

“It is done Athena, you cannot enter here.” He spoke quietyly.

“I have come for them,” the woman hissed, and it seemed as though the goddess became more distinct than her other forms “come for this blasphemy you have created. So much was given to you Horatio, you alone were chosen to survive them, to truly understand their lives. The entire royal court fate lays low but Horatio alone remains, Troy falls with all its sons save one Aneas, Camelot’s knights were all slain at Camlann, all but you!”

“You cannot enter here.” Horatio repeated.

“Dearest Bedevere,” The goddess voiced suddenly softened, “you have fought for so long. . .so much longer than even your own king desired of you. It is not too late to return what is mine, as your king commanded you, return the sword.”

“They are not yours!” Horatio yelled, and as he did he seemed to shift slightly, almost as if going out of focus for a moment before snapping back into clarity.

“There choices made them mine!” The goddess hissed and raised her arms. Around her strange forms surged forward from the darkness and rushed towards the open gate.

“Then I will unmake them!” Horatio roared and lept forward to meet them. It was when he moved that I saw it, and having seen it I marveled that I had never before noticed that when I looked at him I saw not one form, but several; I saw a knight taking his last stand against an army arrayed before him, I saw the last of Troy’s sons defending Ilium’s gates, and I saw a weary boy with wild hair trying to save his friends for their terrible past.

A huge giant wielding an impossibly large stone hammer thundered forward, swinging his weapon in a long arc. Horatio ducked under his gnarled arms and drove upward with both fists catching the giant in his bearded chin. A blur of green snapped past him as a knight in green armor lunged with a cruel looking verdant axe. Horatio caught his arm, stepped forward and swung his left fist in a long arc that caught the green knight squarely on his crooked nose. They came at him unceasingly, those denizens of the darkness from beyond the white gates; a giant frog tore at his hands, an archer hidden behind his brother’s giant shield wounded his leg, a dark-clothed monk with insane eyes wounded his shoulder with a jagged obsidian blade; but he did not fall. Instead he waded into them streaming blood

and tears. I caught myself believing that he would beat them all. . .until I heard the half-hearted popping sound echo across the yard.

Looking back to the gates I saw the goddess lower what was at once a sling, a bow and a still-smoking pistol. Those around Horatio abruptly melted back into the night, leaving him standing motionless with a dark crimson stain spreading slowly across his chest. Yet somehow he didn’t look surprised as you would expect someone who has just been shot to look. Instead there was that same calm, almost haughty, look in his eyes as if he had always known it would come to this. He took one step back as if to catch his balance and then, in a moment that seemed to stretch into years, Horatio fell.

“Priam,” The goddess smiled with satisfaction as she stepped over Horatio’s motionless form and began walking toward the house, “take what is left of him to the boatman. . .and bring me the sword.”

It was then that I saw him emerge from the shadows as if ashamed, that same silver-tongued stranger I had seen in the woods in Georgia and outside the bar in Seattle. The light revealed a hunched figure draped in molding tattered robes, a pitted iron crown encircled a head of this wispy gray hair that tumbled down over a weathered and wrinkled face. He knelt next to Horatio and wiped away his tears with a leathery hand. Horatio gave a long wet cough and held up a great sword, still undrawn, to him.

“Oh foolish knight!” The old man cried out in anguish, “This was not your destiny! It needn’t have come to this!”

“Yes, it did. I needed it to come to this. . .to make you remember.”

“Priam!” The goddess yelled as she continued toward the house, “Finish this now!”

“I know that you think all the suffering caused from Troy’s fall was because of you, that they fell because you dared stand. I know what she promised you, the cold peace of oblivion that she would grant – that you would no longer have to suffer the memories of your broken dreams, that your heart would no longer burn for the choices that slipped from you.”

“Kill him now, bring me the sword!” Pallas Athena shrieked.

Horatio grabbed the old man’s neck and pulled him close, his neck straining forward. “Have you truly forgotten what we once were? Is that iron crown so strong that you have forgotten even her?”

“I drove her mad!” Priam yelled, his eyes filled with tears, “My dreams have killed even you!”

“Our choices drove us mad, every one in different ways, and from our madness we made our falls. You didn’t damn us. . .we damned ourselves. . .don’t let it happen again. . .”

“What?”

“Draw the sword that only you can draw. . .save her this time.” Horatio trailed off, his grip loosening.

“Hamlet?” A confused voice called out from the crowd that had begun to gather around where Horatio lay, and I saw a girl step from the onlookers. She was dressed in purple with long dark hair that was a deep American brown.

“Ophelia?” He whispered, then turned to where Horatio was smiling faintly. “It’s not possible.”

Horatio smiled weakly, “It couldn't have been possible where I found you old friend, but here, in the special world of the journey, there are many things which can be real, which can happen, that could not happen anywhere else. “

“You win Horatio. . .you win.” The old man sighed deeply and rose to his feet with a quickness I had never before seen. As he stood the fog of sadness that had always enveloped him slipped away until he stood a young man, a Danish prince, a bearded king. He walked to where Ophelia stood waiting for him, taking her hand he kissed it tenderly with trembling lips.

“Fool!” The woman/goddess/nymph screamed as she rushed towards where Horatio was slowly rising to his feet, “I will pry that sword from your cold hands!”

“I always knew I couldn’t change the central theme,” Horatio coughed, “but I could shuffle the characters. Fate declared a tragedy and a tragedy fate will have,” He continued with a sad smile, touching his chest where the crimson stain on his shirt continued to spread. And the sword will be returned. . .but not to you.” Horatio smiled and held up his hand, the sword was gone and in its place was an old iron crown.

“So you would bring back your king, and bring back his dream, and thus you think you will make your friends whole? Thus you seek to save them? They fell once, they will fall again! What do you think you have given them by your sacrifice!”

“Tomorrow.” Horatio replied, “I gave them tomorrow. . .that is enough.”

With a shriek of anger the apparition disappeared in a white blur, and only then did I see Horatio’s shoulders slump and his legs give way. I ran to him as I shouted for help, my trance finally broken.

“Not like this,” I cried, cradling him in my arms, “it cannot end like this.”

“No,” he gasped, “this is the way it must end Ishmael and you will end it. Promise me, end our story where I could not. Absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story. Promise me. . .”

“I promise.” I whispered. He smiled then, a smile in which all the sadness great and small that had always seemed to haunt his eyes was absent, a peaceful smile. They rushed to his side, all those he had brought to this place, and Horatio was gone.

Chapter 10

The End

Horatio’s funeral was a small affair. We stood on the edge of the Pacific he loved so much and watched the ashes float away into the wind. They all came, they told their stories – their legends of each other – and there were more smiles than tears. I stood still and watched them come and go, and I smiled to see them leave in pairs; holding hands and smiling into the sun just escaped from the scattered clouds until at last I stood almost alone.

“You did well.” A silver voice floated in my ear and I turned to see a familiar stranger.

“Was this his plan all along Hamlet? Did he know how it would end from the beginning?”

“Probably.” He replied.

“There are so many things about what’s happened that don’t make sense. . .so much I don’t understand.”

“Not as much as you think,” Hamlet laughed, “you’ve heard it before, after all, many times. Within all the strangeness and the unexplained, all the foreign characters and strange names, when you

strip away all of that you are left with that there is no greater love than this – that a man will lay down his life for his friend.”

“What will happen to them?” I asked, motioning toward where the last of the cars were disappearing over the rolling hills.

“Life.”

“And me?”

“You will remember. You will record their story and carry it on beyond the reaches of their lives and a new age will begin, bereft of the glory of the old. You will go back to where this began; to New York where he first found you and you will reconcile with your father. And then you will go back to school where you’ll learn all about archetypes , Greek mythology, Arthurian legend, and English literature. And one day you’ll write a story about a dream you once had with strange characters and an ill-defined plot about old friends, loyalty, love, and sacrifice.”

A distant car horn caught his attention, Hamlet shielded his eyes from the now bright sun and looked toward the road where Ophelia stood next to an old grey Honda Accord. Flashing me a wide grin he started walking down the path towards where she waited, smiling.

“Will I at least sell a lot of copies?” I called after him.

“Doubtful,” He laughed, “but it will make you feel better.”

I stayed on the hillside and watched them drive off until they disappeared over the horizon. I waited until the sun began to dip below the horizon, into the vast and forgetful expanse of the Pacific, where it’s dull red reflection played out across the waves.

“Thank you.” I whispered. In the fading light I made my way down to where the last car waited for me. It’s dull orange paint matched the color of the sky as I turned the key and waited for it’s tired engine to rumble to life. Pulling onto the road I headed east towards home.