. . .
“Well,” Jane says. She grins gamely at all of them. “They’re going to destroy the world to get at me.”
“Yeah,” Edmund laughs.
There is a silence.
“I guess that means I can be a full member now,” she says. “Huh? Right?”
Linus’ face falls. Tom’s face is stricken.
There’s a silence.
“Of course,” says Edmund, after a bit.
Linus nods.
“. . . Yes,” Tom finally admits.
. . .
“I’m so sorry,” Tom says, wretchedly.
He’s crying for some reason. He’s probably just happy.
Rubble shifts and crunches.
“Oh, Jane, I’m so sorry!”
And that is the end of things for the house on Doom Lane; although the Doom Team would still meet, and have its science adventures,
for a little while to come.
Chapter 5: The Land of Pleasure and Happiness
Maria Souvante, by Anthony Damiani
(after the style of Monet’s classic work,
“Woman with Three Shadows (Fan Hoeng Homeworld)”)
– 1 –
Saul is halfway to the Land of Pleasure and Happiness when he stops.
It has taken him a while.
. . .
The Land of Pleasure and Happiness is a very long way from Earth. It is lucky for Saul that sugar fairies generate a pleasing atmosphere and are extremely edible or the past millennia would not have been pleasant or happy for him at all.
. . .
He stops in space — somewhere out there, you know, in space — and pulls the sugar fairies to a halt.
It’s impressive that he can do this without anything to push off against, but he’s never been the kind of kid to worry about the laws of physics very much.
He stands there in space, in a little bubble of merry atmosphere, and he sniffs the air. He smells the welkin.
“I have to go back,” he says.
The sugar fairies circle around to stare at him. One of them raises an eyebrow.
“My puppy needs me,” says Saul.
. . .
“You’re a long way from Earth,” says the chief of the sugar fairies. (You can tell this one is the chief because she’s wearing the tallest hat.) “You shouldn’t be thinking about long-dead Earth puppies.”
“It was turned to gold,” says Saul. “And then split —”
He flails his hands in the air. “It needs me.”
. . .
The sugar fairies spiral about one another. If you were looking at them from very far away you might think they were a galaxy. You would be wrong because they are actually not a galaxy at all. Please take a moment to refresh yourself on your astronomy!
They are whispering and muttering to themselves.
Finally, the sugar fairies say, “You may return, but only if you can beat each of us in single combat.”
. . .
Earth is too far away for Saul to return by sugar fairy. It is even too far away for Saul to return by boat. If he were to try to travel back to Earth the normal way the Earth would probably have been eaten or broken or polished clean by the time he made it back. Magical jaguars can only do so much, and Hans is dead.
Instead Saul suffocates there, halfway between Earth and the Land of Pleasure and Happiness.
His eyes bulge. He rotates, far from worlds and suns. He gasps but he does not breathe.
Bit by bit the stern life of a svart-elf in him drains away. It flutters out sparkling from him like powdered sugar or the sparkling of stars. It spreads itself gallantly and homeopathically throughout the cosmos, and for the rest of the universe’s lifespan there will be places and people touched for a moment by the sparkling of Saul’s life. Where it comes to rest on bits of rock and starstuff it gives forth sugar fairies, and if you should be so lucky as to get the dust of svart-elf in your eye you shall see clearly for all your life; but as for Saul, he is gone. He is lifeless. The soul of him has departed.
It rockets around the wheel of Samsara, ballistically.
It is flung at superluminal speeds to Earth.
– 2 –
And that’s why I’m telling this story, in the end. Because of Saul. Because of what he gave up, and what he’s done.
It’s not what this story is about, of course, but it’s the reason why.
His destiny gets robbed from him — probably. Whatever he’s thinking of doing, when he dies out there, it doesn’t happen. I think. It’s . . . cut . . . from him, probably, by the shadow of the kether-hat.
Or it’s one of the things that the cleaning man steals.
. . . right?
. . .
Or maybe it wasn’t?
Maybe all he’d ever planned to do here, all he’d ever thought to do here, is what he will do. Maybe he chokes and expires, in space, just to force a certain miracle, at the end of things, down Edmund Gulley’s throat. Maybe he gave up his sugared paradise just for that, and I don’t even know what good it’s done; or if it’s done, or why, then, really;
But if he hadn’t, this story would be too bleak to tell, so, then — well.
For now, a big thank you to Saul.
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