True Story

This comes from the very beginning of the third Imaggen book. It also has the distinction, such as it is, of being the first Imaggen scene I ever wrote. I like it because Quentin and Rose don’t get many more quiet moments together after this, and also because this theme of beginnings and endings is such a strong one throughout the arc. For these two in particular, this conversation will be replayed near the very end of the story, but in a slightly different context.

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“Tell me a story?” Rose Sherbourne asked into the dark room.

It was a familiar request to her Imaggen; so familiar, in fact, that he had begun to run short of stories that were safe to tell. Naturally, this worried him. It was an undeniable fact that when stories ran out, the only things left to tell would be truths.

He sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, being unnecessarily careful to avoid disturbing its IP. “A story about what?” he asked indulgently. “How should it start?”

“Like all good stories do,” she said firmly. “With ‘In the beginning’.”

He shifted uneasily—she’d hit upon a truth without knowing it. She seemed to be doing that more and more these days. He would call it a mark of his influence, but he suspected that most of it was just Rose. “None of my other stories start that way,” he pointed out, hoping to distract her. “Does that mean they aren’t any good?”

Her drowsy giggle made him smile despite himself. But her next words were serious, even edged as they were with sleep. “This story will. Now go on, Quentin. In the beginning…”

“In the beginning…” her Imaggen repeated, thoughtfully. He gazed absently out her window at the moon. He thought about lying for a moment, of course. She would never know it was a lie at all. She’d never catch him for this one, because there would be no way for her to tell.

But he would know. That mattered these days, for reasons having to do mostly with the little Person falling asleep in front of him.

It also had to do with their lives in the past year, and the people they’d met: Professor Annison Payne, who was even now sleeping in the room across the hall under the watchful care of her Imaggen York. York himself, who had become a real friend and confidant somewhere along the way. Lira, who had become a whole colorful knot of complications in Quentin’s head, and who he found himself missing unexpectedly, despite their rocky history. Even Mitch Sherbourne and his old Imaggen Wilfy, back in the tiny Southern town of Mill. Lies were harder for the Trickster of Imaggen to justify these days, when they should have been easier. It was easy to lie to save the ones you cared for—it was considerably harder, Quentin was beginning to discover, to lie to them.

Besides, he’d never been able to deny Rose anything.

And so, like all things do and everything must, Quentin began.

“In the beginning,” he said more firmly, turning with purpose to speak in her direction, “…well. That’s covered it, I suppose. The beginning was in the beginning. The start is in the start. The proof,” he said with evident glee, “is in the proverbial pudding.”

“Quentin!” she admonished with another giggle that quickly got smothered by a yawn. “Be serious.”

He could tell that she was nearly asleep, and maybe that was why he continued when he should have stopped. “Well, that’s right, you know. The beginning was in the beginning. But I think—and tell me, Rose, if my logic is sound in this—I have thought that if the beginning was in there, then the end must have been, too. So, in the beginning, Rose…there was the end.” Her even breathing was a relief. He shook his head and murmured, “Does that make any sense?”

“No,” she whispered, causing him to startle in surprise. “But I think, if it did,” she slurred even as dreams began to pull her in, “if it did, I wouldn’t understand it half so well.”

Quentin stood and moved to the head of the bed. His shape did nothing to block the moonlight streaming in from the window behind him, though his form was in its way. He watched affectionately as Rose’s eyes drooped one more time as she finally succumbed to the sleep all Persons seemed to need so badly.

“Oh, Rose,” he murmured with something like awe. “Rose Sherbourne. Dream about something else.” He looked out the window again. “Beginnings and ending both are subjects too old for that young heart of yours.” His hand, though it never actually touched her brow, still smoothed it of her cares. “Peaceful sleep, Rose.”

At last she obeyed, and Quentin the Imaggen was left alone to watch the moon rise in the Expanse, and to ponder the ends of Time and the beginnings of a twelve-year-old Person girl named Rose.

In the quiet corners of his mind, the two felt very much the same.

Dealing in Middles

Another Imaggen excerpt. Wilfy and Quentin are both Imaggen (Imaginary Beings) and both of them love the Sherbournes. Other than that, they don’t agree on much. They’ve known each other just a bit too long to ever really get along. The following conversation is one of my favorite of theirs so far. Lots of backstory in this, but it’s enjoyable without it.

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“There are days, Wilfy, when I absolutely do not understand the World.”

“There are more days than less when I don’t understand one thing that comes out of that gab of yours,” Wilfy retorted cheerily. He was feeling fairly benevolent to the World at large just now, and Quentin in particular, so he leaned back on the stone wall and watched the other Imaggen pace back and forth across the rocks.

It was a completely Person-like action that Quentin had always used when he was agitated. Wilfy thought it probably came from Quentin’s first Person, back at the beginning. That kind of thing happened a lot, especially back in the early days; for all the talk about Persons taking on characteristics of their Imaggen, the reverse was just as often true. In any case, it was hard to say with Quentin, because he never talked about his first Bond—not once in all the Person centuries that Wilfy had known him. Wilfy had been there just for the very end, so he understood why. Understood better than most, probably.

Some hurts ran deep—too deep to be healed or patched or touched by time. Seeing that pain in the back of Quentin’s eyes or hearing it in the edges of his voice on days like this was one of the few things that Wilfy grudgingly respected in him.

“No, I mean it!” Quentin insisted, oblivious to Wilfy’s scrutiny. “They’re so obsessed with beginnings here. And endings, for that matter! They spend so much time looking back, looking forward, that they forget to look straight in front of them and end up tripping on the moment they’re actually living in.”

Wilfy settled more comfortably on the stone, willing to indulge the other Imaggen for a minute or two. When Quentin had paced in silence for several moments, Wilfy prompted him. “They’re bound by time, you know. Of course they want to see both ends of it.”

Usually, mentioning time was a guaranteed way to get Quentin’s ego going. It was a mark of his apparent seriousness that he instead turned to look at Wilfy with sober, piercing awareness in his blue eyes. “We are all to a one of us bound by time, Wilfy,” he said softly. “If there is anything I’ve learned in all this stretch of existing, it’s that. Everything begins and ends, and wonders in the in-between.”

Wilfy’s creased brow raised a bit in surprise—a gesture he knew had come from Mitch. “Well, you’re certainly digging ‘neath the happy-textured surface today. What good’s a story if you only get the middle, but not either end?”

“Most good stories start in the middle,” Quentin retorted with a dismissive wave of his hand, pointedly ignoring Wilfy’s sarcasm. He finally halted his ceaseless pacing. His form seemed to be tightly reigned momentum, pivoted on this little patch of rock as he gazed up at the sky like he was seeing through it into the Expanse. The thought made Wilfy uneasy, for no reason he could place.

Quentin’s face was thoughtful, still turned determinedly upwards, as he continued. “I was there at the beginning,” he said absently, almost to himself. Wilfy knew he looked interested, and he couldn’t even summon up a scowl when Quentin glanced over with a grin and caught him paying attention. There were times when even Wilfy forgot that Quentin was the older of the two of them, when he believed Quentin’s more youthful appearance instead of history.

Quentin continued on with a small shrug that moved the smile from his voice. “Well, close enough to make little difference, at least. I saw the first Persons when they came down from the mountains. I helped Lyser chart stars in the Expanse. I saw Yanna walk along the shore and leave flowers in her wake, and I made her laugh, back when she still smiled. I can remember when the continents cracked apart and the Empty Shell swallowed up the east.” He waved his hand again. “Well, you know. You were there for some of it.”

“Enough to know you were a miscreant, even then.” Neither of them said the obvious—that Quentin had helped crack the World in pieces, not just observed it. Wilfy had stood with the others on the slopes of the eastern mountains and stared as the vast desert bled across the horizon, but Quentin had come out of the middle of the desolation, quieter and more reckless than before. It had been his initiation and his breaking from the other Greats, both at once.

It occurred to Wilfy that to Quentin, maybe beginnings and endings were the same. And both of them were far too important to him to ever get looked at straight. Quentin dealt in middles to avoid thinking about both ends.

So be it. In some ways, history or not, Wilfy thought Quentin was still too young to understand. He’d learn, eventually. Wilfy intended to remain silent, but Quentin watched him expectantly, waiting for the wisdom he’d once doled out to anyone who’d listen. Things had changed—he didn’t have much wisdom left, not for years.

Wilfy sighed and stood, shaking his head in resignation. “For someone so obsessed with time,” he said with wry sympathy, “you really have no idea what it’s actually for.”

Quentin’s baffled expression was the most enjoyable thing he’d seen all day. With a little grin hovering in his narrowed eyes, Wilfy left the Trickster of the Imaggen to his frantic pacing underneath the clear sky.