The Writing Process
True Sight is by far the fastest I have ever produced anything of this length. For comparison’s sake, my first novel, Sanctuary, was outlined at a church retreat in the summer of 1995, and was completed in the summer of 1998. It was 75,000 words long. My second serious attempt at writing a book (which is still unfinished), Soul Music, was begun in the late summer of 1999, and continued off and on into 2003. That was 120,000 words at its maximum length.

True Sight, on the other hand, is 83,000 words long according to a new Microsoft Word count I did today. It was begun on November 1, 2004, and completed 3.5 months later, on February 14, 2005. This is a new record for me, and came after one of the longest creative dry spells I’ve ever experienced. (I had been unable to finish any story of any length for almost a year.) How did that happen?

The answer is the magical power of deadlines and of routine.

It all started when I heard about the National Novel Writing Month challenge. The moment I heard about it–the notion of writing 50,000 words in a month–I knew I had an opportunity to kick start my creative juices. The thing that had afflicted me for the past year was, more than anything else, a combination of lethargy and perfectionism. I was too lethargic and lazy to actually try to do a writing routine on a daily or regular basis at all. Every time I came home from work, I was too tired to do anything creative. And when I did write, I was usually dissatisfied with the results and doubted myself into oblivion. I’d especially agonize over plot holes and contradictions, which I often only discovered later when I was well into the story. I’d feel the need to go and rethink everything and by the time I came up with a solution, I’d lost the momentum and no longer had the desire to write.

Nanowrimo broke both of those barriers. First, it gave me a concrete deadline and word count. One of the deadly habits that I developed when I was in the creative writing program at university was the lack of solid, uncompromising deadlines, and the freedom to write however long I wished. I’d procrastinate and procrastinate and procrastinate, and eventually turn in something, but usually something I wrote at the last minute. (Sometimes this produced great work, like the second version of my short story “Grace Abounding”. But more often than not it just produced sloppiness.) Nanowrimo set very definite dates: start on November 1, and end on November 30. No exceptions.

Second, it explicitly encouraged writers to write as fast as possible, messiness and plot problems be damned. (The title of the official Nanowrimo book is “No Plot? No Problem!” That says it all, doesn’t it?) In order to meet the Nanowrimo goal, you have to write 1600 words a day for 30 days. I’d really have to rush through things in order to make that quota while working full time, so Nanowrimo forced me to swallow my doubts and just write that “shitty first draft” no matter what the internal critic was screaming about. It took several installments for this to happen; I’d say the first 7 or 8 entries still were marked by fussy self-consciousness and overwriting. But by the time I reached the last few installments, the writing had improved a lot and felt far more natural. The last time I wrote this naturally was in middle school.

Of course, I never quite made the Nanowrimo goal. I had only written 25,000 words by the end of November. But what Nanowrimo started was very important: the drive to write almost every day at a steady pace and the willlingness to plow through the inevitable inconsistencies, contradictions, questionable plot twists, and very long boring stretches of exposition. My bad habits were replaced with far better and more productive ones.

In fact, I noticed that there were only two instances where I slowed down and writing almost ground to a halt. The first was if I had another deadline to meet, like the application deadline for Duke Divinity School. For things like that, there isn’t much you can do, though I’ve got to figure out a way to write around those sorts of deadlines. I remember impending computer projects slowing me down and halting my writing during university.

But probably the times when I slowed down the most was, ironically, when I was trying to speed up production and breaking routine in order to meet an artificial deadline, like Christmas, New Year’s, or my birthday. The speedup before Christmas did do some good–I produced 10,000 words in about 3 days. But it severely exhausted me, and I found myself unable to muster the strength to write for several more days after that (and by the time I got around to starting again, I got sick). The lesson here is that slow and steady wins the race. The pace I decided upon after realizing I could never make the Nanowrimo goal was 1000 words a day. This is a perfect length to shoot for while working full time; it was often doable entirely on my commute on the Metro. It doesn’t seem like much–it’s the equivalent of 3 double-spaced pages–but it added up rapidly. Three and a half months of it, with weekends off, will get you the complete manuscript. And three and half months pass awfully quickly.

So I basically owe the speed of this project to Nanowrimo’s model. It has taught me a way of writing that I will try to practice for the rest of my writing career. The future of my other creative projects–like the space opera I started more than a year ago andthe story about the anime otaku at the convention I abandoned–suddenly got much brighter. I’ve finally found a pace that I can work comfortably at and still produce a lot of work.

TOMORROW: The genesis of the True Sight project, and the film plans

Having spent all his strength, Tom had been swimming in and out of consciousness ever since he saw the Thread of Pure Light pierce Chris. He had only vague memories of the moments afterwards. There was the glow that surrounded his brother, and Charles stepping back in fear. Darkness. Chris standing up with his head held high and his arm raised. Darkness. Whiteness. Whiteness.

Two roads, diverging.

There was light at the end of both paths. But at the end of one path, Sophie was standing there, along with Arthur. Behind them was the Weaver manor, and they were beckoning for him to come to them, to come home. Their lips were moving but Tom only heard absolute silence; it was so silent that his ears hummed.

At the end of the other manor stood Charles, who seemed to be falling or drifting in a bright vacuum, along with some red and green and blue Threads. He felt a sudden urge to go and take them in his hands, to ease the pain that had been filling his life and string along the Threads, to feel their power rushing through his fingers and arms. He knew he would no longer be able to do that if he were to join Arthur and Sophia. He knew that there would never be any more relief and in the world they wanted him to join, he would just be ordinary–no power, no talent, nothing special…

Let me show you what was happening when you weren’t awake.

Before him, at the end of the road where Charles and the Threads were, the drifting Charles was replaced with a series of moving images. There was Charles and Terrance, standing watch over a sleeping Tom. He watched as they added substances from unlabeled bottles and shakers into his food. “It’ll help him forget,” Terrance helpfully explained. He saw Terrance attach electrodes all over his head and his arms and torso–they had stripped him naked. He watched as thick white liquid flowed from his body, through a thick tube that curled from his side, into a metal canister. He saw himself twitch involuntarily as they extracted the Thread energy from him. He saw them remove the electrodes and cast spells over his body so that not a single mark from the electrodes remained, and he saw them repeat this for the three nights and days that he had been at the Weaver manor.

That should be enough information.

The macabre record was replaced again by the floating Charles and Threads. When he saw the same face that had blithely added the forgetfulness potions and extracted the very life out of him contorted in agony, Tom recoiled and turned away. To spend the rest of his days with that man made him nauseous. No amount of temporary relief could ever make him want to be by his side.

Tom shook his head, and looked at his hands one more time. Then he turned around, walked away from the path toward Charles, and strode confidently down the road until he was hugging his sister joyfully and watching the sun go down below the manor. Not once did he look back.

* * * *

For Sophia, there was no choice to make because she had not been awake to make one. The new world that Chris had called forth would simply be the one that she woke up in, and when she did awake, it was Arthur who was standing over her. His hair was disheveled and he looked a little pale, but he was definitely blinking and therefore was definitely alive. He was also shaking her rather violently on the shoulder.

“–wake up! Wake up, oh, there you are. Dear me, I’ve just been through the strangest experience . . .”

Arthur helped her to her feet. She took a look around her, and the first thing she noticed was that the sky had lost its reddish hue and was now a dark, blue-fading-into-black. The moon had risen and the brighter planets twinkled overhead. When she turned around, she saw that there were no longer any stone table, only jagged outcroppings that had never been formed into anything manmade. The wheat had grown long and wild.

“What’s happened? What’s going on?” She whirled her head about. “Where’s Chris?”

“I,” Arthur began, before pausing to take a deep breath. “I have a theory about what happened, but I’ll need to do some more research before I can verify this–thank God, the house is still there, so hopefully there can be research to do.” He pointed to the manor, in which lights were beginning to flicker on one by one, all over every floor. “I see everyone is coming out now.”

There were indeed people emerging from the manor, bewildered and looking frantically around them once they were outside to see what had just happened. Among them was Ben, but everyone else were people that Sophia did not recognize. But Arthur nodded as they kept coming out. “Yes, Ursula, Adam, oh my Lord, it’s true, Parker’s alive again! And Renee! I haven’t seen you in a long time–” And he was running toward the small stream of human beings coming out of the back door.

Sophia stared in disbelief. Did Arthur just say that someone was alive again? “What’s going on, Arthur? What do you mean, alive again?” She called after him but he had already bolted and was soon slapping backs and tearfully embracing the small crowd of about ten people that had come out. Then Arthur turned around, gesturing toward Sophia’s direction, and then he called to her:

“Come on, Sophia. Join your family!”

She approached the crowd, taking small hesitant steps, but they were warm and inviting and when reached the edge of the group they all wanted to embrace her and shake her hand. For some reason they were congratulating her. “Bravo for making it!” “Welcome to the other side!” “Glad to see you come!”

“I’m beginning to think,” Sophia said, chuckling but only half-kidding, “that maybe I am dead after all.”

“No, no.” Arthur shook his head vigorously. “Listen–I need to explain–ho, what’s this? Is that Thomas coming our way?”
Sophia looked at where Arthur was pointing. Tom was definitely there, but he was no more than a spectral presence, a ghostly figure who was translucent even in the evening light. He seemed to be hesitating, looking somewhere else, and when he did, he faded even further into the dark air. He took a few steps toward all of them, then looked in the other direction.

“Come on!” Sophia cried, cupping her hands over her mouth. “What are you waiting for?”

“Just come on out, Tom,” Arthur said. “Just walk a little further.”

“A little further?” Sophia asked.

“I’ll explain later.”

Tom seemed to be looking away at something, his eyes widening in horror. With one disgusted shake of his head he no longer looked in that other direction and he started heading toward them, less and less looking like a shimmering mirage and more like a solid human being. But only when they were almost face to face did the last patches of the trees and the stalks of wheat behind him not show through his body.

“You,” Sophia said. “You were too slow, you idiot! Why didn’t you run faster!” And she hugged him fiercely and the rest of the family behind them clapped and cheered and through the tears she was blinking back and that were blurring her vision, she thought she saw Tom look away from her and from everyone else. As if he were scanning the crowd for someone else.

“Where’s Chris?” he asked.

Sophia released him. The laughter and the cheer began to die down as the question hung in the air. There was a general expression of either confusion or helplessness on the faces of the newly reunited family members–they looked like they either did not know Chris, or if they did, they looked stricken.

Arthur cleared his throat and stepped forward. “Christopher,” he said, “well, Christopher–” He spread out his arms. “He made all this possible. And the way he made this possible–the reason why I am even alive to speak to you–that will take time to explain. But here is what I believe . . .”

And he started to talk first about what he had seen when he was hovering between death and life. Sophia did not understand much of what he was talking about, because she had not seen anything in the time between the blackout and the waking, and so she could only imagine what all the things he was saying about the fabric of the universe, the waiting room that he was locked in but promised that he, at least, would not be joining the Principality, and the long road that he traveled upon. She did not quite understand the mechanics of how what was going to happen was that the world would be set right, at least for that moment. But what she heard clearly was that the voice that guided him the whole time, the one that nudged him and gave him just enough to go on–it was Christopher’s voice. And he knew at that moment, that it had somehow been him, and that he was also hearing that voice for the last time.

“He did it.” He bowed his head respectfully. “He did what all of us couldn’t do and have been looking for since the beginning. What we can’t ever do.” Arthur stared at his hands. “And I’m glad, quite frankly. And I suppose all of you are, too, if you’re here.”

“So he’s dead?” Tom asked.

Arthur shook his head. “One of the things that you learn on the other side is, well–it ain’t over yet.” He smiled. “But for now we have to say goodbye to him. Come, let us go to the field…”

Arthur, now the head of the Weaver family, led the remnants of his clan in single file through the field. There was no longer a dirt path that led to the ceremonial ground and so it was only by memory that Arthur knew the way to the graveyard of stones–or where the graveyard ought to have been. Because it was no longer there: there were more wheat fields where there had once been a row of anonymous rocks.

“I suppose,” Arthur said, “he took care of that too. It seems many of our old friends and family have rejoined us, and those whom we should not adopted are where they belong as well. A fitting legacy for him.”

And he turned around, standing on the ground where there once were children’s bones, facing his family. “His name shall be recorded in the genealogies, and as long as there are Weavers, he shall be counted as one of us.” He bowed his head again. “He alone had the courage to fight us when we needed to be fought. But for them–” and he pointed to Thomas and Sophia–”–he did not flinch from his duty and love. And as misguided as we were, wasn’t that what our fathers and mothers wanted to teach us?”

Sophia looked at the faces of all the people who had gathered around Arthur. One old man seemed ashamed and had turned away from the rest of the crowd. Another woman had tears trickling down her cheek.

“He has taught those of us with the same blood, even though he did not even share it–and how our ancestors would have loathed this, to be honest. I suppose we could be ashamed. We certainly deserve it. But now is no time for that, nor would that be the proper way to mourn a fallen family member.” His voice fell low. “Instead, let us keep silence for a moment. Join me.”

And Arthur held up a hand, and all movement, all shuffling, all rustling but that of the wind ceased. The Weaver tradition was not to bow to the ground as an official mark of respect, but to look up to the sky, to scan their eyes for signs of the Deep Pattern–or so Arthur had been taught. But he decided to break tradition this one time. He knelt on one knee, his head bowed low. One by one, everyone followed suit. Sophia pressed her forehead to the ground, feeling the cool dirt on her face, soaking up her tears. Tom was still too numb to cry, but as the grief rushed wildly through him, he looked up and saw the sight of all the Weavers paying homage to their brother. Somehow the sight cleansed him, took away some of the confusion and anger and guilt that still flowed in torrents in his mind. In what world could this ever have happened?

At last, after a minute, Arthur rose to his feet, and with a brief wave, began to step forward.

“Come on,” he said, beckoning them toward the manor. “Let’s go back inside. Phoebe, is the house still dusty?”

“Oh yes,” Phoebe, a middle-aged woman who looked like she had just risen from the dust herself, replied. She continued more sharply: “I was quite shocked, quite frankly, just how much of a ruin you have allowed Albert’s home to fall into…”

“Well, then,” Arthur said, “shall we clean house?”

There was some grumbling from the newly resurrected family members, but eventually they began shuffling back toward the house. However, Arthur stayed behind, waiting for both Sophia and Tom, who were slowest to follow the rest of the family.

“Your time here is done,” he said. “You don’t have to stay anymore; feel free to leave. No one’s going to chase after you anymore.” He smirked. “Except maybe for the occasional family reunion.”

Sophia looked at Tom, who looked at her, waiting for her to make a decision. Then she looked at Arthur. He still looked like the same foppish, overgrown eccentric that they had met in the warehouse, with the odd way of speaking and the mannered pedantry of the intellectual snob. Even his farewell valediction to Chris had been over the top. The very thought to have this man as a father and brother?

She began to giggle. In vain she tried to cover her mouth, but it was no good. The laughter came out in ringing peals. Arthur was so much not like Chris. He was so much not like him that he would be tolerable, for the time being. And that big house looked a lot more comfortable than the apartment anyway, and less full of reminders of their old life.

“Hey Tom.” Sophia nudged her brother, who squirmed. “I bet Alison would be impressed with this new dig, wouldn’t you think?”

“I dunno about that,” Tom said. “I don’t think there are any memory wipe spells left we can use on her anymore.” He ruminated on the thought for a while. “That does suck sometimes.”

“Well,” Arthur said, “you’ll just have to tell her the house is under new management. And this new manager is not in the memory wiping, life extracting, Thread bending, and kidnapping business.” He grinned. “From now on, we will only do boring work.”

It sounded much more like a threat than a joke, but Sophia forced herself to laugh. But soon she found her mind changing and laughing for real, and even Tom joined in, and she knew that he never liked to laugh at lame adult attempts at humor.

“And the first boring task I have for you, should you choose to accept it,” Arthur said, “is to rest. Come on in. All of us who haven’t died recently are going to clean up.”

“Sorry, Tom,” Sophia said. “You were hoping for more?”

“Nah.” He yawned. “I’d like a nap anyway.”

“Lazy boy.” Impulsively she hugged him again, to which Tom protested loudly and that only made Arthur cackle like an old man. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he helps.”

“Oh,” Arthur said, “he will certainly do his share of chores, of course.” He nodded definitively. “Everyone in the family will have to.” Arthur then began to take a few steps toward the house. “Coming?”

Sophia stared at the ground for a moment, then looked behind her, and ahead, and above, as if she were still looking for Chris somewhere. For the places where they had laid down on the stones as infants, where they had fought and fallen. To take a step beyond this spot felt like saying the goodbye that had been denied to her–and yet, it felt right. It felt like that was what had to happen next. What was meant to be.

“Yeah,” she said. Thank you, Chris. “Come on, Tom.” We’ll see you again, one day, right?

Tom looked at her, and seemed to hesitate for a moment. But after he bowed his head one more time, he looked up and followed his sister and his brother up the hill to the mansion. He was tired and looking forward to seeing his room for the night.

THE END

And that’s it.

I have a hard time believing it, but that’s the first draft. The final word count is about 79,000 words, or almost twice as long as I originally planned it. That’s how things usually work for me. I’m verbose by nature.

I was going to put a genealogy here, actually, of the family tree 30 years later, but there were too many formatting problems and that would have been superfluous anyways. This is enough. I hope. There will be production notes to come tomorrow, as an afterword on the process.

And yes, yes, I can hear the complaints already. This is a Hollywood ending. I freely admit it, this is a cheesy Hollywood ending complete with a preachy speech, hugs, tears, and a stupid oneliner at the end. So sue me. This is a story that is going to become a Hollywood movie. (Right, Young? Right?)

And to all, I now bid a good night and a deep, grateful thanks for all those who have read faithfully and especially for all and any who have made any comments. You all have endured much trial and tribulation and terrible, “shitty first draft” (Anne Lamott’s phrase, not mine!) writing to get this far. But I hope you had fun as well.

Adios, farewell, and pleasant dreams.

What a long and strange trip it’s been.

See you later, space cowboy.

–Michael Huang, Valentine’s Day 2005, 1:47 AM

What do you want to do?

For Charles the world had exploded into a brilliant white light that blinded his eyes. He tried to turn to his Sight, but that proved useless–all around him was nothing but the terrifying purity of blankness. It was like being caught in a vacuum, drifting in space, and the feeling made him nauseous. For all of his love of seeing the unseen, and his desire to see the impossible come to pass, he had always liked to have his feet on the ground.

Now there was nowhere he could stand. And some force was beginning to tug him forward–pull him toward an unknown destination and unknown future.

“Help!” He whirled his head about to see something, anything, to fix his eyes upon, but there was nothing. “Help me!”

What do you want to do?

Something was posing the question. It was not a voice, from the outside so that his ears could hear, or from inside his head where his mind could perceive. It was simply a feeling, or an instinct or inner sense or spirit that knew that the next thing he had to do in the middle of this blankness was simply choose. To answer the question and to decide once and for all.

What do you want to do?

Two paths appeared before him as he was being pulled forward, the first sights since Chris had invoked some enormously powerful, unbeatable spell. At the end of one road was a shining house on top of a hill–his house, the house of the Weavers. At the end of the other road was nothing, nothing but a yawning blackness where there should have been a house or grass or a world. He was being pulled down the path that led to the darkness, and the two paths were rapidly diverging, the dark path veering away from the path to his home.

No, no, wait. I don’t want to go there! He tried to break himself away from the force that was pulling him down the path like a moving walkway, and was somewhat surprised to find that he was successful. Nothing stopped him from stepping out of the stream leading to destruction, and he soon found himself standing and walking on the path toward the house. Charles breathed a sigh of relief. Christopher had been merciful after all, giving him a choice like this. With the anger that had burned in his eyes before, he had been sure that he would not have spared him.

But he felt something strange as he walked down the road. It began as a tingling in his fingertips, a tingling that became a numbness that spread up his arms and into his body, as if a skin-tight suit was being peeled off his body. It was a deadening feeling, a feeling of loss; something was definitely being taken away from him. And it was a familiar feeling: it was the same feeling he had whenever he had used a powerful spell and needed time to recoup from the loss of his Thread energy.

He did not need to be told what was happening. His Thread energy–his ability to See–was being taken away from him.

You can’t take that with you.

“What? Why?”

It doesn’t belong there.

“You can’t tell me what I can and can’t bring with me. It’s mine.”

You’re quite right.

And he found himself back on the other path, toward the abyss.

“Do you mean to tell me–”

One or the other.

“That’s an unacceptable choice.”

Hardly. You are choosing and accepting one way already.

“What gives you the right, you–you–what are you? What do you want? Name your price.”

You only seem to want to negotiate when you are losing.

“That’s a quite rational act, I would think.And I only wanted to keep my family together. We’re Weavers, what would Weavers be without the Sight?”

You can still keep them together.

“What for? Then it’s meaningless!”

You are running out of time. Make your choice.

The yawning darkness loomed before him. He wanted to stop in his tracks and stand in the growing space between the two roads. But that he could not do; the force kept pushing him along, and the longer he waited the more effort and time it would take to cross over to the other side. He flinched from the pit, but a future without Threads, without being able to See–it made him feel so empty and incomplete. What would it mean to be a Weaver? Their True Name would no longer be true. The very idea of a True Name would become obsolete. He would be no one.

He could not live in a world where Charles Weaver was nothing but a name.

Very well. You are wrong, you know. But what you didn’t know has killed you.

It was just as he stood at the lip of the abyss that sudden terror filled his heart and he wanted to change his mind–wait, hang on, I see now, I understand, just let me talk to–and then he fell in, falling freely in the space of absolute freedom. Oddly enough, he found that he could See–when he turned on the Sight, a Grid and a Pattern appeared–of a vortex toward which he was hurtling. He tried his best to manipulate its Threads, but these Threads would not budge, and he saw the green, red, and blue Threads all converge into a blinding white at the bottom of the vortex, the white hole.

Charles fell into the white hole, his eyes forever burning blindly from the inescapable light.

And so passes the villain. Find out what happens to the rest of the cast tomorrow. The whole thing will likely be finished in tomorrow’s installment.

“Anyways, they were only half right about that fact. The True Naming spell is the only Deep Pattern spell that can be used—without cost. Without using any of your own energy.”

“How much energy do the others take?” Chris asked.

“You see,” Martin replied, “there is a law in the Deep Pattern. Not a law like the speed limit, more like a natural law, like gravity.” He paused for a moment, and looked up at the stars. “That means it’s unbreakable.”

“What is the law?”

“There is a way to use the Deep Pattern to restore a few things to how they were meant to be. At least partially, not always wholly. And only for that single moment.” He paused. “And that is to exchange one Deep Pattern for another. To take the energy in one Deep Pattern and energize the other, dormant Deep Pattern.” He looked at Chris in the eye. “You do know what that means, right?”

“It means that you use up everything,” Chris said.

“That object,” Martin said, nodding, “would be more than used up. It would cease to exist in the Deep Pattern. You can’t create anything new, after all. Not out of nothing. That’s another point where the Weavers are wrong, by the way.”

“Cease to exist?” Chris thought about the possibility for a long while. “But if that were true, then whoever could use the Deep Power would have to–”

Martin nodded before he finished his sentence. “I think you understand,” Martin said. “It is time for you to return, I am told. The time to act is approaching.”

“Wait! I still need to make sure–”

“Everything you need to know, you know now. Use your knowledge wisely.” Martin stood up and faced Chris, who was still trying to process the law of the Deep Pattern. “Cease to exist,” annihilation, the disintegration of being–the thoughts made him quake inside his shoes. He was fearful because he knew exactly what Martin had meant and had left unsaid, because it was perfectly obvious, even through the seemingly neutral language of “object” and “exchange.”

The world and the sight of all the things around Chris began to fade, to slip into blank whiteness once more. Martin was beginning to fade as well. Chris suddenly felt a panic rise from the pit of his stomach and just when Martin was about to vanish, he shouted, “Will I really cease to exist?”

There was a chuckle in the blinding field of white. “Christopher, who said that there wasn’t anything deeper than the Deep Pattern? You’ll have somewhere to go.”

And then he disappeared completely, along with the ideal world that had been revealed to him. He stood drifting in that blank slate for several moments before the darkness swallowed everything, as if a giant mouth had gulped his surroundings whole.

* * *

When he saw the normal world again, it no longer appeared normal. He was staring at a sky that was fluctuating between blue and red like a flickering television channel. He rose to his feet and saw a genuinely fearful Charles cowering from him, trying the scramble away from him. Wondering why, he looked down. He saw that his hands were glowing, his arm was glowing–his entire body seemed to be alight. Chris chuckled, feeling oddly at ease. He probably looked like a ghost to those who didn’t know better.

He looked out at the tiny patch of the world that he could see all around him. The wheat, the stones, the sky, the trees, the trembling enemy, the emerging assistant, the decaying manor, the fallen sister, the struggling brother–yes, it seemed Tom was awake, good, it looks like our brief attempt to restore him worked–this little mixture of beauty and ugliness, waiting to be reborn–

“P-please,” the distant voice of Charles–it sounded distant even though he was only two feet away. “We can negotiate. I know my power can never match–”

“Hurt you?” Chris shook his head slowly, slowly because he felt like he had all the time in eternity. There was no more need for rush. He saw the craven, cowering Charles flash in and out of sight with a different Charles–one that was standing upright and smiling, standing behind Sophia and Tom as if for a family portrait. It also flashed in with a completely inert, dead Charles. He turned around and saw the manor, where only a few lights winked weakly in the growing darkness; but he could see the fleeting vision of a house full of light, as well as the vision of no house at all.

“I see.” He said it aloud, no longer needing to keep his thoughts to himself. “Those are the possibilities.” Restoration or destruction. And he was given to understand that either choice was within his power to effect. Either would be right, and either was within the parameters of the Deep Pattern.

He looked once more at Charles. It was so hard to believe that this man who had tried so hard to destroy them all could be any different, could in fact take care of Sophia and Tom. It would take a radical change. The reluctance came not out of any malice or desire for vengeance. He simply knew it was so hard to change.

He would still give him one last chance to make that change.

“Are you going to say something?” Charles said.

Chris shook his head. “Just be ready,” he said. “Things are going to be different from now on.”

“Name your terms.”

Chris ignored him. “But you were right, you know.”

“Right about what?”

“What you don’t know can kill you,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to. You will have a choice.

“Just watch.”

A doubt flickered in his mind as he looked straight into the eyes of Charles, the doubt of whether he really did want to go through with this. He could be sacrificing himself for that man, too. But when he saw the bodies of his brother and sister, who struggled so much only to fall in this field, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to do it. To make things right for Charles–whether he lived or died in the result–would be to make things right for Sophia and Tom.

A long moment of silence passed. Chris looked to the horizon, toward the setting sun and–

Are you ready?

“I am.”

The new world flashed for one instant before his eyes before the light consumed them, the bright bright light that blinded all sight and yet felt made everything clear, the fiery sun that cast no shadows, the daybreak that would never stop breaking forth in eternal dawn.

After agonizing over whether to post this in its current form, I finally gave in and am leaving it up to you, dear reader, to determine whether this is a good ending or not. I’m positively terrified, in fact, that what was just described might have huge holes in it–though the story is not QUITE over yet. There are still a few bits of information and things to tell. The only thing I will say in my defense is that this is pretty much how the ending was planned when Young and I first conceived the story last summer. (There are some differences and twists which I’ll talk about in the “production notes” which I plan to write after the completion of the novel.) The entire story was made to lead up to this point.

Or maybe all that fear is because it’s been so long since I’ve written anything with an ending. Oh well. I’m glad to have gotten this far to begin with.

Tomorrow, the epilogue begins–the final chapter. I may very well just sit down and finish the epilogue in one sitting. Stay tuned . . . for just a little longer!

“So what does this mean, then?” Chris said. “This doesn’t change anything. Actually it makes you feel ashamed, that this is what it could have been like and then seeing how it really turned out.” He looked ruefully at the happy extended family sharing the banquet. The faces were the same, but they seemed so unlike the Weavers that he knew. “Why do we need regret on top of all the other terrible things we go through in life?”

“Nothing can change,” Martin said, “unless you know what to change into. Actually, most people know where they ought to be. It’s the getting there that’s difficult.” Martin then got up out of his seat at the table. “Come, let’s continue our talk outside.”

Chris and Martin left the great hall, and walked out of the now-empty house–empty because everyone was eating dinner. When they walked out of the back entrance, night had begun to fall. Once they had left the afterglow of the house’s lights, the brilliant blaze of the stars above made up for the absence of electric light. Chris had never seen anything like it, either in the city or in the suburbs. He stood there and marveled at how dense the field of heavenly lights was when the haze of human habitation had cleared.

“Is it so surprising?” Martin said. “The sky looked like this to all our ancestors until about a hundred years ago. But it only takes a generation to forget, I suppose.” Then he nodded approvingly. “It is good to be able see again, isn’t it?”

They found their way back to the stone outcropping. “What do I have to do?” Chris asked, sitting on one of the rocks. “This was all very nice, but I don’t see how it helps me or anyone.”

“Well, I was going to save the hard part for last,” Martin said, “but I guess delaying won’t help any longer.” He then took a seat beside Chris and put a fatherly arm around his shoulder. “First, you do realize that very few people see what you have just seen.” Chris nodded. “And the ones who do get to see it never see it randomly, or for no reason. To be able to see gives you the responsibility to guide the blind.”

“OK, I knew that,” Chris said. “Even with the Sight.”

“That Sight is different,” Martin said. “That was better not to have. Too little insight with too much power. Actually, did you know that we once could all see the Deep Pattern?” Chris shook his head. “We could all see it,” Martin said, “because what was in the Deep Pattern was the way things were. Since then it’s gone . . . deep, so to speak.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Chris asked again.

“Well,” Martin replied, “you know how when you’ve had a life changing experience–your first kiss, a death of a parent, that sort of thing–for a while, everything looks different? Things will look different in the ordinary world after you’ve come out of the Deep Pattern. You will see things that you weren’t able to see before, and whatever it is you see, you must act upon, whatever it might be. You have to act quickly, because like anything, the moment can pass and be lost forever.” He sighed. “Why people forget so quickly I do not know. But that is the way things are.”

“What do I do when I go back? Please, tell me. I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t know,” Martin said. “I don’t exist as a living man where you are. I wish I could tell you what to do, but I really don’t know.

“But you know what I think?” Martin smiled for the first time since they met again. “I think you’ll know what to do. No one will need to tell you–you’ll just know. Sometimes a change in perspective adds unexpected wisdom.

“There’s one last thing I need to tell you about all this.” Martin suddenly became somber again, dropping his eyes to the ground. “It might be important, since it’s a big clue to how everything works around here, so it’s important that you know.”

“What is it?” Chris asked. His undivided attention was on Martin’s face.

“Well,” Martin said, “it’s the little secret on how you can, in fact, use the power of the Deep Pattern.”

“What?” Chris’s heart began to beat twice as fast. “Please, tell me about it!”

“I happen to think it’s the least important, not to mention the most dangerous part of this whole business. The wisdom offered by merely seeing what the Pattern looks like should be sufficient. But here it is.” He shrugged. “Have they told you how the only spell that affects the Deep Pattern is the True Naming spell?”

Chris nodded. “They said they had no idea how it worked, either.”

“Heh, yes, that was by design. Though it really is very mundane, how it came about. Time was, every name was a True Name, including the names given to all the animals. We once called each animal by name, you know. We could even speak to them. But there’s a long story behind that, and that was a very long time ago, and I don’t want to bore you with too many details…”

The explanation part ends tomorrow and the final scenes begin. We’re in the endgame. It’s quite likely this will be done by the end of the weekend or so.

Somehow the manor looked warmer, more inviting, with the lights inside the manor shining from afar in the fading dusk. Now it looked more like a home than a tomb. Martin strode purposefully up the unpaved path. Chris wondered why he was leading him to the Weaver manor. He wondered what good he was meant to find there.

“Plenty,” Martin said. “One thing I forgot to tell you–in the Deep Pattern, everyone’s thoughts are transparent. No secrets.”

Though it did no good, Chris put a hand over his mouth. Martin turned around and laughed. “There’s nothing to be afraid of here, Chris,” he said, looking for all the world like the Martin of his memories. “Everyone knows each other so well that they just laugh about it.”

They reached the back entrance, the door through which Arthur and Martin had smuggled them out at the start of their lives. Martin took a key from his pocket and was about to slide it into the keyhole, but he was interrupted by the door opening on its own. Or, rather, by someone else opening the door, that someone being none other than Arthur.

“Oh,” he said. “Welcome home, Chris,” he said offhandedly, as if Chris had always lived in the manor and he was expected to be back. Then he tipped his head at Martin. “And you too, Martin. Come on in, dinner’s about to start.”

The two of them entered. The back foyer was flooded with light, from a chandelier that was burning in its full brightness and illuminating the stairway that Arthur led the two of them up. The pall of dust and decay that had covered everything in the manor was gone; while it was not perfectly clean, that was fine, because everywhere was evidence that people lived here. So many more of the doors in the corridors were open and revealed lit rooms with eyeglasses and books resting on nightstands and rumpled, unmade bedspreads. Arthur’s shoulders were completely relaxed and he ambled through the hallways, greeting everyone he passed along the way–mostly uncles and aunts. They all seemed to know Chris’s name, and when they passed Chris seemed to know what their names were as well.

Chris had never seen the great hall of the house, so when Arthur led them to the door and opened it, Chris was prepared to be astonished. And indeed he was. The longest table he had ever seen stretched from the end of the room where Chris stood to what seemed like dozens of feet to a far wall, where a tall, narrow window let in the emmbers of the daylight. Not that there was a lack of light–two crystal chandeliers hung down from the ceiling and hovered over the table. The only shadows that Chris could see were banished to the far corners of the room and the shadow of the chandeliers on the plates of food.

And the food—so much and so rich and full, the tables were piled with so many plates of every kind of cuisine. There were not one or two but three stuffed turkeys, anchoring the two ends of the table and its center. There were two broiled whole fishes garnished with green onions and resting on gas burning plates. In between the main meat and fish dishes were plenty of vegetables to choose from: lush green salads made of raw spinach mixed with walnuts and pears, long stalks of asparagus, tomatoes lathered in herbs and olive oil. There was a basket of Asian pears that was already half empty further down the table and the desserts had not yet been served.

Almost every seat–there were at least a dozen and a half–at the table was occupied. Everyone was busy eating or talking, either gnawing eagerly on some piece of meat or gesticulating to the person next to him or her about something. It all added up to a great roar of commotion, of ceaseless clinking of forks and knives amid the music of so many different pitches of voices.

There were two empty chairs at the table, across from each other.

“Well,” Martin said, “those are our seats. We should sit and eat.” He gestured to the empty seat across from his.

“How many of the people here are still alive?” Chris asked quietly, not moving from his spot.

“Six.” He pointed to several people, including Charles and Terrance and others who were eating and conversing happily. “Some of these people have been dead for at least a decade or more. There is Master Albert, for one.”

“Then this isn’t real. If they’re dead, and this is still earth, there’s no way all this can actually be happening.”

Martin nodded. “You are right. This was certainly not happening–at the moment in time that you came from. But do you see anything here that is actually, strictly speaking, impossible? Even on earth?”

Chris looked at the table and at all his adopted family members sitting and enjoying themselves so heartily. He noticed that not everyone was the same age, that it was certainly possible for all these people to be in the same room at the same moment in time; there were no scenarios where for a two people to be together one would have to be 150 years older than the other.

“You are beginning to understand, I see,” Martin said. “As for time–you say that this is not what is happening in reality now. But this is what would be happening at this moment. What should be happening now, had things not gone awry. You could say this is the highest possibility that could exist for this point in time.” He shook his head. “And things have gone badly awry–so much so that the world as it is looks utterly different from what it was meant to be. But our purposes and meaning were written into the deepest fabric of our existences.”

“If that’s it,” Chris asked, “why did the Weavers want to find out about it so badly? So badly that they’d kill my brother?”

Martin shook his head again. “Such fools they have become,” he said. “But this is the reason they suppose it contains such great power. They know that the world, the shape of things inside the Deep Pattern is so different from the way things are that they want to exploit that difference. They suppose that they can create the reality embedded in the Deep Pattern if they can control the Deep Pattern, and thus transform the mundane things of this world into the ideals that they were destined to be. What foolishness!” He laughed caustically. “Their selfishness and greed prevent them from even imagining what they, and everything, were meant to be.”

When Chris looked again, however, he saw that the landscape had in fact not changed. He did not see a grid or a skeletal framework of every object the way he did with the Sight. Everything looked the same as it always had with his normal eyes–the normal colors and the normal shapes. Yet he had no doubt that this was how the world appeared through the Deep Pattern, that what he saw was what was given.

He went walking through the field. When his fingers brushed against the stalks, they felt as solid and real as anything he had ever touched. For some reason, that was disappointing. The first time he had heard of a Deep Pattern beneath even the Patterns that they could see with the Sight, he had imagined something ethereal, something vague and amorphous or at least some more ghostly version of the Threads and the grid that he knew. But this looked and felt just like the ordinary world.

Is there some sort of mistake?

He came to where the stone tables were. They were little more than wild, random outcroppings of rock. Then he noticed that the stalks of wheat that were around him were not planted in straight, regular rows, but uncultivated and wild. None were diseased or chewed away by insects. Though wild and free to grow anywhere, they were somehow perfect. Each stalk was as tall as it was meant to be and in exactly the right patch of earth.

Was this meant to be what everything looked like in its purely natural state, then? Before the arrival of human beings or their agriculture? He turned around to see what lay on top of the manor hill–and to his surprise, the manor was there, as tall and proud as ever. But as he started walking toward the house, toward any sign of civilization, he began to hear voices. It was the twittering chatter of young children. Instinctively Chris headed toward the voices, which were coming from somewhere off to the side of the field, far from the path that led to the ceremony space.

The children were playing in what looked at first like a garden. There were white and black and Asian and Latino children playing together, boys and girls, climbing over stone mounds that were arranged in neat rows. Chris saw that there were seven mounds and there were seven children. He even knew their names, the names that their birth mothers had given them; he did not know how he knew the girl with the curl hanging over her eye was named Carla or that the rotund boy sitting contently atop his mound was named Pedro. And he did not need to be told that he was looking at an anonymous graveyard, and that the children that were playing were the ones buried beneath the unmarked stones, victims of the Weavers’ attempts to secure their legacy. The simple knowledge of the facts and the serenity he felt in watching the happy children play and dance on top of their graves was enough to ease any shock or horror he might have felt.

“What you do know keeps you alive, doesn’t it?”

The voice came from someone standing beside Chris. It was a familiar voice, a rich baritone that drew its words out patiently. Chris, startled, whirled about to see the smiling face of Martin Granger, his adoptive father. Martin was not smiling–he looked grave, in fact–and he was dressed not in the polo shirts that he favored in his time raising Chris and his siblings. He was dressed in the black and white butler’s uniform that he had worn when he was a servant of the Weavers.

“Dad? What–what on earth–?” Chris found himself taking a step back, almost stumbling backwards as he faced his father. Now he really wondered whether this was Heaven or not. All these dead people were here, after all, and none of them were evil.

“On earth.” A flicker of a smile played on Martin’s lips. “Yes, to answer your question, you are on earth.” Then Martin turned his gaze to the playing children. “Though I understand if it doesn’t seem like it at first. It probably seems too perfect.”

“I thought you were dead,” Chris said. Then he could no longer help himself, and he rushed forward and embraced his father, his real father no matter what bloodlines and endowment ceremonies said. Martin’s body was hard and solid and real and to Chris that fact alone was the most comforting, the living existence of a dead man confirmed by the nerves on his skin that understood that the person he was touching was in fact the one. Chris felt again like the spoiled child that he had once been, ready to be coddled and catered to and able to take Martin’s protection for granted. It was as if the emotions were so hot they were burning away the years filled with hardness and the exaggerated sense of duty and self-sacrifice, were inducing this glorious regression.

But Martin did not return his embrace. Instead, he continued to look straight ahead for a moment before, gently, he loosened Chris’s arms and released himself from the embrace. Putting his hands on Chris’s shoulders, he said simply,

“Well, Chris, I am dead.” He nodded in the direction of the playing children. “As are those children, they are dead too.”

“Then where am I?” Chris asked. “If they’re still dead, then what am I seeing?”

“Embedded in all things,” Martin–or the image of a man who looked just like Martin–”is the distant, but real memory of their original purpose. Or perhaps ‘memory’ is the wrong word. ‘Code’ is closer but still imprecise. ‘Seed’ or ‘germ’ is closer still. ‘Essence’ is good but too abstract.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Plants were made to grow wild, but still good for food. The sky was meant to be blue, the clouds white or gray or black. The trees were meant to be green.” Then he looked at Chris sadly. “Man was meant to live.

“Come with me. Perhaps a further demonstration will help you understand.”

He gestured toward the manor, and started walking through the fields. Chris followed him, as the sun began to set and the lights in the manor began to flicker on.

This is the part of the story where Michael Huang the storyteller is going to start intersecting with Michael Huang the wannabe theologian. I just hope that this works; I think I’m taking something of a risk here in making it seem hokey.

That said, science fiction and fantasy have always been excellent conduits for asking the Big Questions, more than almost any other genre of literature; cosmic themes are built into the genre itself. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve stayed loyal to the genre for the longest time.

Chris had almost given up by the time the light came. It was a startling sight, an arrow of light that shot through Charles’s chest. His enemy shouted as if in pain, but after a brief look down and inspection, he saw that it had done nothing to him. But Chris gasped as the beam of light changed its course and headed straight between his eyes. He did not even have time to put up a hand to stop it.

When the light pierced his skin it was like a dozen flashing bulbs had gone off in his eyes. The entire landscape seemed to be exploding with blinding white light, leaving only the dim outlines of Charles, the trees in the distance, and the wheat stalks. And even those outlines, mere shadows of their full-colored reality, vanished like wisps of smoke.

Chris’s feet felt solid ground, but with nothing to see, he still felt like he was floating in space. Gingerly, he took two steps forward, feeling like he was walking sideways up a wall. His feet held firm. He jumped. Up began to feel like up, and down began to feel like down again. He took a brief jog through the blankness, but it was all-encompassing and seemed to have no end.

Chris wondered whether this was the afterlife that had been promised in the years of Sunday School that Martin had put him through. But this place felt too empty to be heaven, and too nondescript to be hell. Purgatory, perhaps? Hades? It certainly did felt more like a waiting room than anything else.

It was as if a skylight had opened from above–a small square patch of blue sky. It was as if a tile from the ceiling had fallen off, and soon afterwards, many of them began to rain down. The crisscross of a white grid still divided the blue heaven into rational, perfectly congruent squares, but the Threads were growing more and more threadbare and soon, the grid faded away. There was only sky. And, like chipping flakes of paint, the whiteness around him crumbled away to reveal the same field of wheat that he remembered from his last waking moments.

The scene was, in fact, seemed the same as it had been. The wheat stalks were golden brown, the stone tables on which the three of them had once lain and lay again until a few moments were slate gray. The leaves on the trees were a deep verdant. He failed to see what was so different about this, other than the blue sky. Had he simply woken up?

He tried to switch to the Sight. But it did not work, or nothing happened. Everything looked the same as it did at that moment.

Then he turned to where Charles should have been, if this was indeed the same place. There was no one there. There was only dirt and wheat where Sophia should have been lying, and an empty stone table where Tom should have been too.
He turned around, to face the hill where the manor should have been standing, but it too was gone. There was nothing here but wheat fields and when he approached the stone tables, he saw that they were mere outcroppings jutting out of the ground, not yet formed into the bed that he would lie upon.

Where is this? Is this the past of this place?

As if in answer to his question, when he turned around, the scene had changed. There were men standing in a circle around the still unshaped rock, chanting. They were dressed in nineteenth century garb, however, and when Chris turned his head to look behind, he saw the exposed beams and half-completed roof of what would become the Weaver manor. He turned back around and watched as the men chanted, a column of red light rising from where the stone rested until it touched the sky. The red light bled over the blue of the sky, darkening it until it had all turned the color of blood. He understood then how they had made even the bright afternoon clear days so dark.

The Victorian-era men had vanished when Chris lowered his gaze from the sky and looked again at the scene. There was a flash of light, and he saw another set of people ringing the stones, in slightly more updated fashion. Then another flash, and another group. The third group of men he recognized–it was Albert, the man who had adopted them, and he was watching their infant selves upon the stones. But he only saw each of the more recent groups for a few seconds at a time, before they vanished.

Then Chris saw something that surprised him–the stone returned to its original, unhewn state once more before his eyes. And in a quick succession of flashes, the landscape and the stones and the people shifted in and out of random chronological, more and more rapidly, until their ghosts all seemed to inhabit the spot simultaneously. It was like time had no meaning in this place, or he was looking at the spot as if he were standing outside of time.

Why am I seeing this? What am I supposed to be seeing?

No sooner had he asked himself the question that the landscape changed again, and, though no one spoke any audible words or whispered anything in his mind, he knew exactly what he was seeing now. He was seeing things as they really were, as they appeared if the human eye were not so weak and the human mind so prone to error and confusion. Even the Sight with which he and his family were gifted only saw the surface of things compared to what he was seeing.

Chris was looking at the Deep Pattern.

After losing Alison, Tom also lost track of time. The days were no longer divided by nights that turned into mornings, with the sunlight filtering through the window to shine on his face. Now they kept the curtains drawn all the time, and Tom only became dimly aware of the difference between daylight and electric light. He found himself swimming in and out of darkness, with different faces appearing every time he opened his eyes. It was sometimes Terrance–he refused to call them or even think of him as an uncle–but increasingly Charles who showed up. Tom did his best to say nothing at all whenever they asked him how he felt, pursing his lips and turning away, his cheek pressed against the pillow. The bed was still soft, warm, and full, as were the blankets, even though he felt like his body was being stretched thin and knew that somehow, he was wasting away, and that they were somehow doing this to him. He hated them with all the life he had left in him, hated their condescending kindness and the pretense at civility that always seemed to accompany what he knew were their evil schemes.

Whenever he slipped out of consciousness, however, it did not always seem like a brief blackout, like dreamless sleep. Sometimes he saw things–twisting, squirming strands of white light dancing in the darkness. In the darkness, he felt stronger for some reason and had the energy to sometimes reach out and grab the strings, which would then stop squirming in his hand. They would then stiffen and straighten themselves, so that Tom was left holding what felt like a thin, glass tube that crumbled like sand between his fingers if he squeezed it tight.

These were the Threads of Pure Light, weren’t they? That was what Charles called it, he remembered. Why was it so special? He pondered these things for only the briefest of moments before he would swim back into consciousness. And he would wish that he were blacked out again, because the soothing, relaxing feeling he had whenever he played with the white Threads was akin to the times he had played with the colored Threads back home.

Then came the long darkness, which came without warning one afternoon. He knew it was afternoon, because his uneaten lunch–he refused to eat anything and only drank water–was lying on the nightstand next to him. The last thing Tom remembered was the slow revolution of the ceiling fan’s blades. The blades began to blur in his sight until they looked like they were spinning as fast as speeding tires, their motion forming a complete circle. The darkness crept from the edge of Tom’s vision until it swallowed everything except the spinning fan blades, which continued to whirl alone in the blackness. It became a flashing white ring that pulsed and glowed for what felt like hours.

You better come here quick . . .

Tom felt like he was floating in space while he lingered in the dark, his body drifting but heading nowhere, as the ring continued to hang before him. He moved no nearer or farther away for what felt like an eternity. Eventually, he felt a force pulling him toward the center of the circle of light. As he drew nearer he saw that it was not darkness that filled the circle, but a subtle network of white Threads arranged in a fine mesh grill, thin and invisible from afar.

May I assist?

The grid within the ring suddenly flared with activity, blazing with the light of all three colors of Threads–red, blue, and green–racing through the interstices in rainbowed hues. The boundaries of the circle soon passed out of the corners of his eyes as he penetrated the multicolored grid, and the moment he broke through it he felt himself hurtling forward, the colors racing forward ahead and beside him, until they all bled into one long, white beam of light surging in front of him. He reached out his hand to grasp the beam, and when he did it leapt up and he was sailing higher and higher into the darkness, into the unknown–

And then he opened his eyes to the sight of a red cloudless sky, his head resting on cold stone. He still lacked the strength to rise on his own, but as he stared at the sky he could hear noises–the crackling and sizzling of Threads being fired. Shouts–familiar sounding voices–his brother and sister–

He turned his head on the stone and saw them fighting. Or saw them losing, because that was Sophie’s body crumpled on the ground, and that was Chris falling back, stumbling, and Charles’s foot on his chest. For some reason he could see Charles’s face all too clearly, even after days of blurry vision and weakness. It was too dignified for glee and crude triumphalism–but the imperious way he did not look at Chris but stared straight ahead to the horizon still made him seem so malevolent, it sickened Tom.

What the hell can I do?

He struggled to rise, but found his muscles unequal to the task. All he managed to do was to roll over on the rock so that he was now lying on his side. Now he faced the scene of Charles about to strike his final blows, and with all his remaining strength he did the only thing he knew how to do: with great strain he moved his arm from its side, stretching it forward until his fingers were clawing the air and reaching outward like the stroke of a swimmer. He focused all the energy in his body into his outstretched fingers that pointed in the direction of Charles.

He pictured the white beam of light, closed his eyes, and then fired.

A single strand of Thread of Pure Light shot forth from his palm. It sailed with unerring straightness through the air like an arrow, slicing through the stalks of wheat and then–oh God no–why did it–

–it struck Charles through the heart, yes. But it did not seem to faze him; it merely passed through Charles unharmed, then slanted its aim downwards and pierced Chris’s face between the eyes.

Oh my God. Tom gaped in horror. What have I done?

Chris’s body began to glow a ghostly white.

Finally, I figure out a way to let Tom play an important role. And you will see what the Thread of Pure Light does to Chris tomorrow, in chapter 22–the final chapter before the epilogue. The Deep Pattern’s secrets will be revealed.

It was not simply a protective barrier, however–it began as a dome-like wall that covered Charles that grew outward rapidly, its diameter growing by a foot a second. It was moving so fast that Chris did not have time to jump out of the way of the offensive barrier and when it rammed into his shins, the jolt of energy–like electricity–knocked Chris off his feet and sent him flying back about three feet. He landed on his back, seeing nothing but the red sky and hearing nothing but the tak-tak-tak of approaching, running footsteps.

“Chris!” Sophia was shouting even though she was standing over him. She yanked him to his feet and pulled him out of the way of another barrage coming from Charles’s fingers, which sizzled only a few inches from Chris’s right side.
But Charles did not seem fazed in the least. As soon as he finished firing one battery he let loose with another. Sophia threw up a barrier, its blue Threads glowing and sparkling in Chris’s Sight. But the new round of lightning proved stronger than Sophia’s shield. Thin tendrils managed to slip through the cracks in her Thread wall and struck Chris in the shoulder, knocking him backward again.

Without thinking, he roared in all the pain and agony and flung all the Thread energy he had out of his fingers in Charles’s direction. The lightning branched out like the roots of a tree, digging not into the dirt but through the air, heading straight at, above, below, and around Charles.

Charles raised his hand to erect his shield, but there were so many electrified Threads heading his way, he only managed to block the ones that were frontally assaulting him. The rest of them found that target by hitting his side and even his back. Crying, “No!”, he fell to his knees as a bolt struck his forehead.

This time Sophia did not rest, either. Already she had her own charged fist cocked and was almost within striking distance. But even from several feet away Chris could see Charles smirking. Charles was still on his knees, but he had hidden his hands behind his back. He didn’t seem to be doing anything; in fact, he appeared to be waiting for Sophia to come and pummel him, for all Chris could tell. What was Charles thinking–

Then he saw the other bolt hurtling like a spear from the side. It did not come from Charles, but from Terrance, who had been hiding behind one of the trees that bordered the wheat field. The bolt was aimed straight at Sophia, and would hit her in just two seconds–

“Sophie! Dodge!” Chris screamed.

Sophia, thankfully, was quick-witted. As soon as she heard Chris’s warning, she strafed to the side by several steps, and the bolt passed harmlessly to her right.

But then the bolt behaved strangely. It did not simply continue on its course until it hit a barrier or any other obstacle. It turned and then started heading straight for Chris instead.

Chris stepped out of its way and fired a counter blast at Terrance. But Terrance was too far away, and had already retreated behind his tree. Meanwhile, Sophia had finally reached Charles, but he was no longer kneeling. Sophia took a desperate swing at his jaw, but Charles only laughed, grabbed her wrist, and used his free hand to punch her in the gut.

The blow stunned her, so Charles did it again, and again, like she was a punching bag. Chris ran up to Charles, firing more rounds of lightning, but they were all blocked by a barrier that either Terrance or some other agent was maintaining for Charles. By the time Chris reached him, Charles had already let her go. She crumpled do the ground like a wet rag.

“Come, Christopher!” he said gaily. “I invite you to do your worst. Perhaps you will show me your fury now?” He nodded in Sophia’s direction. “She seems all too easy to dispatch, I must say–”

At last Chris’s hands gripped the surprisingly soft flesh of Charles’s neck. Charles looked stunned, based on his suddenly widened eyes, and for second, he flailed his hands and vainly tried to push his body away. But Chris did not let go so easily. He squeezed hard, feeling the cartilage of his enemy’s neck and the lump of his adam’s apple bending, being squeezed.

Charles began to cough. But then his eyes began to blaze, and then narrow. Chris saw this and directed the flow of Thread energy into his fingers, and as it crackled into Charles’s neck, his eyes flew open again in shock, and his head began to convulse. Chris felt all the blood in his body beginning to rush into his head, the feeling of impending victory exciting him and filling him with a sudden, intense desire, to see Charles’s blood spilled on the ground. To see his eyes pop out of their sockets and his skull caved in, his brains oozing out of the cracks. To see his neck snapped in two and then severed, the red stream of blood spraying like a fountain of life that would wash away all their troubles and all their–

“What you don’t know,” Charle’s voice then said, booming not outside but inside Chris’s mind, “is going to kill you.”

The next thing Chris felt was the most powerful pummeling blow pounding his chest, ripping his fingers away from Charles’s neck and sending him reeling so far back, Charles had to run to catch up to him. This time, Chris had no energy to fire a counterattack, or even to stand up. He lay there helplessly as Charles stood over him, planting one foot on his chest like a triumphant conquistador claiming a piece of land.

“Just so you do know before you die,” Charles said, “it was the Focal Point, or more practically speaking, the virtually unlimited energy of the Principality that I am able to draw upon here.” He sneered and looked down at Chris, who was struggling to breathe. “Beat that, if you can . . .”

Whew, made it in just in time for the close of the day so I could keep my promise!

This was a HARD scene to write . . . and I’m not sure it works. I think i really could use a book or two on how to write action sequences. I’m still not used to writing them, I guess.

Anyways, in tomorrow’s installment, the turning point of the battle and the secret of the Deep Pattern will be revealed. Stay tuned . . .