Giles Hammond looked with dread at what he might do to save the world.

Just before he began telling this final story, his mother’s ghost had appeared to him as he stood onstage. She had looked desperately sad.

She had looked like mother whose only son has died before her.

He understood now. He and Jasmine had saved the world. Jerry had walked him onto the stage and he had told audience how it happened.

But they hadn’t liked it enough.

He had defeated the demon too easily. It didn’t work that way, not in any movie they’d seen. They’d been primed to know that if the demon seemed defeated before a certain orgasm of plot twist, it wasn’t over.

He had reached the end. And the audience had sent him back to deal with the loose thread.

It seemed to take forever for his eyes to raise to Tiffany’s dark ones.

Did they still stand in the little room? Or were they now both on the stage in front of the audience?

She gave him a wan smile as Killington reached for them, with nothing like the power and radiant confidence she had once had.

The instant before Killington’s heavy hand could close on his arm, he spoke to Tiffany the words that he must say. Fast, before he could feel the terror.

“Do it.”

Killington paused, his feverish breath on both their faces as Tiffany raised her eyebrows, confused. From the edge of the room where he still tried to escape, Jerry turned. Somewhere far away, waves of breathless dismay came from Hiyako’s flute and Jasmine gasped.

Because the story demanded it, Giles made himself say, “Reach through me. Find her. Go to her.”

Tiffany’s eyes were as big as Silver Mary’s teacups. He had astonished her, the all-powerful demon reduced to a child.

“I mustn’t.” Her voice had no breath. “She, she wouldn’t wish…”

“I know. I know.” In his vision, Mary shook her head. I don’t want my beloved this way. “Believe me, I know. But you have to.”

He grabbed Tiffany’s hand and had the glove halfway off before she could snatch her hand away again.

Killington’s thick hand closed over his arm. Giles had only time to brush a fingertip across Tiffany’s partly ungloved hand…

It was enough. Weeping with gratitude and crazy with love, she vaporized the glove in her haste to reach through him. Her hand touched his chest like an electric arc.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Mary Hammond, strong and lovely in healthy old age, looked up at the hole that appeared in her wall. She’d always known her beloved would come someday. There behind her was the waterfall. The hand reached out and touched her heart and she leaped from her body, young and black-haired and singing, ready to make love at long last by that moonlit pool as perhaps they had in a dream long ago.

The beloved long mourned as lost… is found again.

Killington stepped back in rage and shock, all his self deception swept away in the nakedness of Giles’s sacrifice. Giles fell to his knees, barely breathing.

But it had been worth it. He heard the audience breathe a satisfied sigh. The healed sky would have been vibrant with stars if the night had been clear, but at least it was wreathed with lovely dark clouds.

And then the applause began.

From Killington’s icy surface, motes flew off like swirling dust. Roaring and raging, he shrank like a melting statue. One of the beefy guards muttered comically, “Seriously, dude?” as his boss finally flew apart into wheezing gasps.

Jerry, freed at last, walked into his happy life with his Dilyéhé, who wept tears of joy at being off the endless loop at last.

Carmen Pilar Ortega, in the corridors, heard at last what Grandbanks had been calling to her for so long. Mount Tamalpias, he cried. Come to me on Mount Tamalpias where the train switchbacks up to the Inn at the top. I never kept my promise of the night ride in the gravity car as it swishes on flashing rails with no motor, nothing but gravity to pull it down the winding track. Come ride it with me, come!

As if it had never happened any other way, she stood by his side, there on the mountain to the north of San Francisco, beside the train track in her own time. Starlight glinted on the rails. Her husband Seward held her other hand.

A rushing metallic hiss whispered toward them like an excited ghost. It was no demon but a midnight open railroad car filled with happy excited excursioners. No roar or puff of engine as it whisked past: this was one of the famous gravity cars, rushing passengers through the cold night with only a brakeman to slow it, pulled by gravity all the way down the mountain.

Side by side, she and Grandbanks and Seward watched it round a curve, switch back and forth on this stretch of track called the Double Bow Knot, and dwindle out of sight.

She squeezed his hand, these two men she loved equally. Joseph Grandbanks who she had saved from besotted slavery to alcohol and who had now saved her from her endless wanderings. And Seward who delighted her so with his love of automobiles and his dashing face.

They watched rushing car disappear into a summer night that smelled of sweet sage.

And Jasmine was back at the little house under the looming red rock mountain under a desert sky singing with stars, so dazzling they made you cry. With her stood an old, old woman with her hands on the climbing set with the flaking paint and the rust.

Jasmine’s mouth started to curl into an “Oh” of sorrow, but she saw the solid, joyous peace in the old eyes as they gleamed in the rich yellow light that streamed through the window.

“We had all our years together and the kids is grown and gone and my man, he went at last too, and now you know everything, child.”

Jasmine thought about that. She couldn’t see anywhere anymore except right here but Yako and Popster were probably sobbing and Giles was… Giles was…

“I should call Yako and Popster,” she said slowly, trying to tease out what she knew about Giles. “They’re probably gonna have to drive out here and get me. Can’t walk any magic corridors anymore.”

“Payphone down at the general store. I’ll take you there tomorrow. Come on, supper now.”

The old woman and the little girl walked into the house together.

And Giles Hammond, the final applause still ringing in his ears, found himself once more floating in the emptiness beyond the end of a story.

This time he held no gnarled lemon to bring him back.