Again:
… bluer still than its body. “What do you seek in this place?”
It is unmistakable: Moffat is doing Penumbra’s voice there. This part of the book isn’t new; I remember the friendly blue ghost in the dungeon from my first reading. But, of course, back then I had no way of knowing Moffat might encode an eccentric San Francisco bookseller into his fantasy epic. And likewise, when I walked through the front door of the 24-Hour Bookstore, I had no way of knowing I’d met Mr. Penumbra a few times already.
Ajax Penumbra is the blue-eyed shade in the dungeon of the Wyrm Queen’s tower. I am absolutely sure of it. And to hear Moffat’s voice, the rough affection in it, as he finishes the scene …
Fernwen’s small hands burned on the ladder. The iron was ice-cold, and it seemed each rung bit him, tried its evil best to send him plummeting back into the dark depths of the dungeon. Telemach was high above, already pulling himself through the portal. Fernwen glanced down below. The shade was there, standing just inside the secret door. It grinned, a pulse of light through spectral blue, and waved its long arms and called out:
“Climb, my boy! Climb!”
And so he did.
… incredible. Penumbra has already earned a touch of immortality. Does he know?
I accelerate back up to cruising speed, shaking my head and smiling to myself. The story is accelerating, too. Now Moffat’s gravelly voice carries the heroes from floor to floor, solving riddles and recruiting allies along the way — a thief, a wolf, a talking chair. Now, for the first time, I get it: the floors are a metaphor for the code-breaking techniques of the Unbroken Spine. Moffat is using the tower to tell the story of his own path through the fellowship.
This is all so obvious when you know what to listen for.
At the very end, after a long weird slog of a story, the heroes arrive at the tower’s summit, the spot from which the Wyrm Queen looks out across the world and plots domination. She is there, waiting for them, and she has her dark legion with her. Their black robes seem more significant now.
While Telemach Half-Blood leads his band of allies into the final battle, Fernwen the scholarly dwarf makes an important discovery. In the cataclysmic commotion, he sneaks over to the Wyrm Queen’s magic telescope and peeks through. From this vantage point, impossibly high up, he can see something amazing. The mountains that divide the Western Continent form letters. They are, Fernwen realizes, a message, and not just any message, but the message promised long ago by Aldrag the Wyrm-Father himself, and when Fernwen speaks the words aloud, he—
Holy shit.
When I finally cross the bridge back into San Francisco, Clark Moffat’s voice in the closing chapters has a new warble; I think the cassette might be stretched out from my rewinding and replaying, rewinding and replaying, again and again. My brain feels a little stretched out, too. It’s carrying a new theory that started as a seed but is now growing fast, all based on what I’ve just heard.
Moffat: You were brilliant. You saw something that no one else in the whole history of the Unbroken Spine ever saw. You raced through the ranks, you became one of the bound, maybe just to get access to the Reading Room — and then you bound up their secrets in a book of your own. You hid them in plain sight.
It took me hearing them to get it.
It’s late, past midnight. I double-park Neel’s car in front of the apartment and bang the wide button that sets the hazard lights blinking. I jump out, heave the cardboard box from the passenger seat, and dash up the steps. My key scratches the lock — I can’t find it in the darkness, and my hands are full, and I’m vibrating.
“Mat!” I run to the stairs and call up to his room: “Mat! Do you have a microscope?”
There’s a murmuring, a faint voice — Ashley’s — and Mat appears at the top of the stairs, wearing just his boxer shorts, which are printed with a full-color reproduction of a Salvador Dalí painting. He’s waving a giant magnifying glass. It’s huge and he looks like a cartoon detective. “Here, here,” he says softly, scampering down to hand it off. “Best I can do. Welcome back, Jannon. Don’t drop it.” Then he hops back up the stairs and shuts his door with a quiet click.
I take the Gerritszoon originals into the kitchen and turn all the lights on. I feel crazy, but in a good way. Carefully, I lift one of the punches out of the box — the X again. I pull it out of its plastic bag, wipe it down with a towel, and hold it under the glare of the stove’s fluorescent light. Then I steady Mat’s magnifying glass and peer through.
The mountains are a message from Aldrag the Wyrm-Father.
THE PILGRIM
IT IS ONE WEEK LATER, and I have got the goods, in more ways than one. I emailed Edgar Deckle and told him he had better come out to California if he wants his punches. I told him he had better come out to Pygmalion on Thursday night.
I invited everyone: my friends, the fellowship, all the people who helped along the way. Oliver Grone convinced his manager to let me use the back of the store, where they have A/V gear set up for book readings and poetry slams. Ashley baked vegan oat cookies, four plates of them. Mat set up the chairs.
Now Tabitha Trudeau sits in the front row. I introduce her to Neel Shah (her new benefactor) and he immediately proposes a Cal Knit exhibit that will have, as its focus, the way boobs look in sweaters.
“It’s very distinct,” he says. “The sexiest of all apparel. It’s true. We ran a focus group.” Tabitha frowns and knits her brows together. Neel goes on: “The exhibit could have classic movie scenes looping, and we could track down the actual sweaters they wore and hang them up…”
Rosemary Lapin sits in the second row, and next to her are Tyndall, Fedorov, Imbert, Muriel, and more — most of the same crowd that came out to Google on a bright morning not so long ago. Fedorov has his arms crossed and his face set in a skeptical mask, as if to say, I’ve been through this once before, but that’s okay. I’m not going to disappoint him.
There are two unbound brothers from Japan, too — a pair of young mop-haired men in skinny indigo jeans. They heard a rumor through the grapevine of the Unbroken Spine and decided it would be worth their while to find a last-minute flight to San Francisco. (They were correct.) Igor is sitting with them, chatting comfortably in Japanese.
There’s a laptop set up in the front row so Cheryl from Con-U can watch. She’s beaming in via video chat, her frizzy black hair taking up the whole screen. I invited Grumble to join in, too, but he’s on a plane tonight — headed for Hong Kong, he says.
Darkness blooms through the bookstore’s front door: Edgar Deckle has arrived, and he’s brought an entourage of New York black-robes with him. They aren’t actually wearing their robes, not here, but their attire still marks them as strange outsiders: suits, ties, a charcoal skirt. They come streaming through the door, a dozen of them — and then, there’s Corvina. His suit is gray and gleaming. He’s still an imposing dude, but here he seems diminished. Without all the pageantry and the backdrop of bedrock, he’s just an old— His dark eyes flash up and find me. Okay, maybe not that diminished.
Pygmalion’s customers turn to watch, eyebrows raised, as the black-robes march through the store. Deckle is wearing a light smile. Corvina is all sharp gravity.
“If you truly have the Gerritszoon punches,” he says flatly, “we will take them.”
I steel my spine and tilt my chin up a little. We’re not in the Reading Room anymore. “I do have them,” I say, “but that’s just the beginning. Have a seat.” Oh, boy. “Please.”