Night was upon the house so quickly the room soon became too gloomy to work in. She went to the door and switched on the light.
His reflection appeared in the window, hanging in the glass against the darkness outside. She left him staring at it while she went for the comb.
There was something in the void ahead of him, though he couldn't see what. The wind was too strong, and he, as ever, was dust before it.
But the shadow, or whatever it was, persisted, and sometimes - when the wind dropped a little - it seemed he could almost see it studying him. He looked back at it and its gaze held him, so that instead of being blown on, and away, the dust he was made of momentarily stood still.
As he returned the scrutiny, the face before him became clearer. He knew it vaguely, from some place he'd gained and lost. Its eyes, and the stain that ran from hairline to cheek, belonged to somebody he'd known once. It irritated him, not being able to remember where he'd seen this man before.
It was not the face itself which finally reminded him, but the darkness it was set against.
The last time he'd seen this stranger, perhaps the only time, the man had been standing against another such darkness. A cloud, perhaps, shot with lightning. It had a name, this cloud, but he couldn't remember it. The place had a name too, but that was even further out of his reach. The moment of their meeting he did remember however; and some fragments of the journey that led up to it. He'd been in a rickshaw, and he'd passed through a region where time was somehow out of joint. Where today breathed yesterday's air, and tomorrow's too.
For curiosity's sake he wanted to know the stranger's name, before the wind caught him and moved him on again. But he was dust, so he couldn't ask. Instead he pressed his motes towards the darkness on which the mysterious face hovered, and reached to touch his skin.
It was not a living thing he made contact with, it was cold glass. His fingers fell from the window, the heat-rings they'd left shrinking.
If it was glass before him, he dimly thought, then he must be looking at himself surely. The man he'd met, standing against that nameless cloud: that was him.
A puzzle awaited Suzanna when she returned to the room.
She was almost certain she'd left Cal with his hands on his lap, but now his right arm hung at his side. Had he tried to move? If so it was the first independent motion he'd made since the trance had claimed him.
She started to speak to him, softly, asking him if he heard her, if he saw her, or knew her name. But as ever it was a oneway conversation. Either his hand had simply slipped from his lap or she'd been mistaken and it hadn't been there in the first place.
Sighing, she set to combing his hair.
He was still dust in a wilderness, but now he was dust with a memory.
It was enough to give him weight. The wind bullied him, wanting its way with him, but this time he refused to be moved. It raged against him. He ignored it, standing his ground in the nowhere while he tried to fit the pieces of his thoughts together.
He had met himself once, in a house near a cloud; he'd been brought there in a rickshaw while a world folded up around him.
What did it signify, that he'd come face to face with himself as an old man? What did that mean?
The question was not so difficult to answer, even for dust. It meant he would at some future time step into that world, and live there.
And from that, what followed? What followed?
That the place was not lost.
Oh yes! Oh God in Heaven, yes! That was it. He would be there. Not tomorrow maybe, or the day after that; but someday, some future day: he would be there.
It was not lost. The Fugue was not lost.
It took only that knowledge, that certainty, and he woke.
‘Suzanna,' he said.
3
‘Where is it?' was the only question he voiced, when they'd finished with their reunion. ‘Where's it hidden?'
She went to the table and put Mimi's book into his hands.
‘Here,' she said.
He ran his palm over the binding, but declined to open it.
‘How did we do that?' he said. He asked the question with such gravity; like a child.
‘In the Gyre,' she said. ‘You and I. And the Loom.'
‘All of it?' he said. ‘All of it, in here?'
‘I don't know,' she told him in all honesty. ‘We'll see.'
‘Now.'
‘No, Cal. You're very weak still.'
‘I'll be strong -' he said simply,' - once we open the book.'
She could not better such argument; instead she reached across and laid her hands on Mimi's gift. As her fingers laced with his the lamp above their heads flickered and went out. Immersed in darkness they held the book between them, as she and Hobart had once held it. On that occasion it had been hatred that had fuelled the forces in the pages; this time it was joy.
They felt the book begin to tremble in their custody, growing warm. Then it flew out of their hands towards the window. The icy glass shattered and it disappeared, tumbling away into the darkness.
Cal got to his feet, and hobbled to the window; but before he'd reached it the pages rose, unbound, like birds in the night outside, like pigeons, the thoughts the Loom had inscribed between the lines spilling light and life. Then they swooped down again, and out of sight.
Cal turned away from the window.
The garden,' he said.
His legs felt as though they were made of cotton-wool; he needed Suzanna's support to get him to the door. Together they started down the flight.
Gluck had heard the sound of breaking glass, and was half way up the stairs to investigate, a mug of tea in his hand. He'd seen wonders in his time, but the sight of Cal, telling him to get outside, outside, left him open-mouthed. By the time he'd found a question to ask, Cal and Suzanna were already half way down the second flight of stairs. He followed; into the hallway, and through the kitchen to the back door. Suzanna was unbolting it, top and bottom.
Though there had been winter at the window, it was spring that awaited them on the threshold.
And in the garden itself, spreading even as they watched, the source of that season: the home of their joy forever; the place they'd fought and almost died to save:
The Fugue.
It was emerging from the book's scattered pages in all its singular majesty, defying ice and darkness as it had defied so much else. The months it had spent amongst the tales in the book had not been wasted. It came with fresh mysteries and enchantments.
Here, in time, Suzanna would rediscover the Old Science, and with it heal ancient breaches. Here too, in some unimaginable year, Cal would go to live in a house on the borders of the Gyre, to which one day a young man would come whose history he knew. It was all ahead, all they'd dreamed together, all waiting to be born.
Even at that moment, in sleeping cities across the Isle, the refugees were waking and rising from their pillows, and throwing open the doors and windows, despite the cold, to meet the news the night was bringing them: that what could be imagined need never be lost. That even here, in the Kingdom, rapture might find a home.
After tonight there would be only one world, to live in and to dream; and Wonderland would never be more than a step away, a thought away.
Together Cal, Suzanna and Gluck left the house and went walking in that magic night. Ahead, there were such sights unfolding: friends and places
they'd feared gone forever coming to greet them, eager for shared rapture.
There was time for all their miracles now. For ghosts and transformations; for passion and ambiguity; for noon-day visions and midnight glory. Time in abundance.
For nothing ever begins.
And this story, having no beginning, will have no end.