The Endless Song


 
 
 
 
 
 Also by Joshua Phillip Johnson
 Tales of the Forever Sea
 THE FOREVER SEA
 THE ENDLESS SONG
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Copyright © 2023 Joshua Phillip Johnson
 All Rights Reserved
 Jacket design by Katie Anderson
 Jacket illustration by Marc Simonetti
 Edited by Leah Spann
 DAW Book Collectors No. 1937
 DAW Books
 An imprint of Astra Publishing House
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 DAW Books and its logo are registered trademarks of Astra Publishing House
 All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
 Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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 ISBN 978-0-7564-1705-5 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-7564-1706-2 (ebook)
 First Edition, January 2023
 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 
 
 
 
 For Agnes and Rachel, my favorites.
 
 
 
 A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; 
 How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
 I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
 —WALT WHITMAN, “SONG OF MYSELF”
 
 
 
 
 The storyteller sits in Twist-that-was-Arcadia and listens to a scream cut the early morning air.
 “Sing,” he whispers to the darkness, to the chains heavy against his papery skin.
 He is silent and still as questions are asked around the city, as disbelief turns to shock, as decisions are made. The shifting of power from one set of shoulders to another long ago lost any interest for him.
 A woman has died, her body become an empty relic. Another will take her mantle and dream her dreams. A race without beginning and marked by endings. A race that, if run, can only be lost.
 He packs the book carefully, giving the last half-filled page a final look before stowing it in his bag.
 While Twist reckons with the change, the storyteller prepares himself for the end of the tale, the flowering of history into present. He lets the memories rise from where he has buried them, hidden from the slow forgetting that takes more and more of him every day.
 Until now, he has told a story that is not his own. No more.
 “Sing,” he whispers, for himself now. “Sing, memory.”
 A home on the edge of the Sea. A family broken and broken again. A secret held across generations, hidden behind an archway of stone.
 All of it returns to the storyteller, but the battles and the struggles and the myths and the magic mean so little to him now. He sifts through it all, an old man letting dirt and detritus fall through his loose, cupped hands to find the few grains mixed in.
 A young boy, shoulders hunched against the night and all its terrors, creeping along a hallway, looking for shelter.
 That same young boy, head full of stories and eyes pulled to the horizon, dreaming of adventure, of glory, of finding and taking his place in the world.
 And later, much later, a voice full of new-dawn hope, saying, “I’ll see you after.”
 This, the storyteller dwells on, letting the words weigh on him, as if they might hold down the loose tatters he has become after all this time. He fills in the timbre and melody of that voice, piecing it together slowly. Rediscovering every fragment and facet, relishing the pain as he cuts himself on the jagged edges of remembering.
 Here is his gift, the memory becoming as fresh and clear as ever it was, painful and pure.
 And here, too, is his penance, riding close behind, payment for a bargain made long ago, yes, but in some way, payment for all of this. For the world this world has become.
 Once, he sought the peace Kindred found in all of it, but such peace was smoke in his hands. Gone with the barest breath of hope.
 When Praise comes to get him, the storyteller has resurrected teeth and lips and face and eyes and hair—pulled them back and given them life again in his memory.
 A new First walks with Praise now, a tall man, young and wide-eyed. He might live into old age. He might not.
 Praise says nothing of the change. Death is a close friend here, always nearby. To be surprised by it is weakness, stupidity.
 “Did you sleep all right?” Praise asks, a nervous question. Last time, he did not ask, and perhaps it is this change, so slight and unimportant, that helps the storyteller decide.
 Penance, he has come to learn, is not something paid alone.
 “Of course,” the storyteller lies. They’ll know the truth soon enough, and have forgotten it soon enough, too. No need for complications.
 “Are you hungry?” the new First asks, his voice like an echo of one the storyteller has heard before, and though it takes him a moment—a long, long moment—he finds its source.
 “Tae. Twyllyn Tae. Does that name mean something to you?” he asks this new First, whose wide eyes grow even wider at the sound of his voice. “A father? Grandfather, maybe?”
 The First swallows and casts an anxious look to Praise before responding.
 “My grandmother’s grandfather.”
 Had the storyteller air in his lungs to sigh, he might have. He could have shaken his head and looked about, noting the passage of time like a river running ever on or a plant growing ever up. Shock and vague sadness might have curled his lips and darkened his countenance.
 So long. It had been so long.
 Instead, he nods and says, “A good man. A wonderful sailor.”
 I’ll see you after.
 Now