Inkpot Gods (Alchemical Journeys #4)

Epigraph

When last we came together, you and I, we spoke to each other of middles, which are vast and tangled and sticky.

They can cling to your feet and drag you down, such that you find yourself eternally wandering in the center of a story, trapped with no way back to where you began, and even less hope of a way forward to the finish.

We spoke of beginnings and their commonalities, and indeed, we had a beginning together, side by side as we set off into story, following a path that exists only for the reader, and not for those already standing inside.

This is only fair. They have access to roads that we do not; the world would be out of balance if they could reach for all of ours.

But that was then, in the dark and distant country of the past, where you and I can never go again, no matter how much we might desire it.

Time is a road that only runs in one direction for all save a very fortunate few, and none of us is counted in their number.

We must go onward. We must leave the middle behind, as once we left the beginning, and continue toward the high, looming cliff of the conclusion.

We are almost to the end, my dears, and once we reach it, there will be no further road to follow.

This story will be finished. You can go back to the beginning, should you desire, and begin anew, but as time will not start over with you, you will not see the journey the same way.

You will know things. You will understand things.

Only be aware that knowing and understanding may change the way you feel about the beginning, the middle, and the end.

Traveling through the same story a second time is a form of alchemy.

The story you have already experienced will never be available to you again. That tale is ending.

As we are approaching the last time we will be able to speak together for the first time, it seems like a kindness to remind you of what has come before, what obstacles we have overcome and what wonders we have seen, all in the reaching of this place.

We are still in the country of once upon a time, after all, and it would be best to remember that as clearly as we can. …

—From Under the Smokestrewn Sky, by A. Deborah Baker