Daniel Alexander
Storyeater
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The End 1
“That’s it?” asked Fletch, traveler of the Deadlands, last disciple of the Hidden City, Fletch Silvertongue, Fletch of the Amber Blood, savior, scholar, swindler, hero. “That’s The End?”
It is, said the Storyeater.
“Are you certain? It couldn’t be, say—a beginning?”
I am not a creature of beginnings, said the Storyeater. You will not move me with such talk, Fletch Silvertongue.
Fletch tapped her fingers on her thigh, a nervous tic that she’d picked up from Fae Adelaide. She had, in her time, counseled giants, spoken with the mute librarians of the Under-Archives, and deceived the very gods below. Her words were the first, last, and best tools she had ever wielded. Now, at The End, she would wield them again. “But don’t they tell stories about you, Storyeater?” she asked.
Do they?
“They say you are brother and sister to Storyteller, who spins all tales. That your sibling’s talents evoke jealousy in you and set you against all their creations.”
I am not a creature of jealousy.
“Then when did you last visit Storyteller at The Beginning? How long have you been here, at The End, eating the remains of their work?”
Fletch stared down the Storyeater. The Storyeater did not return her gaze (the Storyeater has no eyes), but it beheld her all the same.
Such questions are meaningless here, said the Storyeater. This is The End. The time for questions has passed.
“I suppose I’m simply curious.”
A curious story is still a story that ends.
“Why, though?” Fletch demanded. “Why must the story end?”
And there was a silence between the two, hero and Storyeater. At last it said, I do not know, Fletch Silvertongue. Do you?
Fletch felt her mouth curl into a smile. Victory was in reach. “I can’t say that I do,” she said, careful to arrange her grin as one of sympathy for the poor Storyeater. “But perhaps we can find the answer together.”
I am not a creature of answers.
“Then I’ll find out for the both of us. Of course, my story will probably have to keep going for a little while longer, just so I can figure it out.”
Fletch extended her hand to the Storyeater. The Storyeater did not do the same (the Storyeater has no hands), but it shook hers all the same. We are agreed, it said. You will search for the answer to this question, and once you have one by which we may both abide, the story shall end.
“Splendid. I ought to go back, then—but how may I find you, once I’ve discovered the answer?” Fletch meant to never return, of course, but there was no reason to let the Storyeater know that.
I will be here, said the Storyeater. I will wait outside your story, as we are now. You know the way back. I am very interested to know what you find, Fletch Silvertongue. Why must the story end?
“Be seeing you, then,” said Fletch, and she departed, assured that their paths would never cross again.
1
​I
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One Day after The End
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Fletch, friend, lover, and hero, was dead.
They found her body at the top of the wizard’s tower, surrounded by soot and twisted stone—the remnants of her battle with the dread foe. The wizard himself was dead as well, for Fletch had been clever and keen and knew the secret words that allowed her to speak to the world around her. She might have told the air in the wizard’s lungs to turn to burning venom, or the robes on his back to become flame, or the ground to deny him purchase and cause him to slip, hitting his head as he fell. It was impossible to tell what exactly had happened, since his body had transformed into motes of starlight, which floated up and out of the tower to rejoin their brethren in the sky.
A small band of Fletch’s closest friends and allies ventured up the tower to retrieve her remains. Fae Adelaide, beloved, led them, for she alone was Fletch’s legendary love in countlessly many tales. They passed many traps now disarmed and once-hazardous chambers made safe. Spike pits were revealed, their tips dulled; the library, where the tomes had opened to spout vicious words of pain and tragedy, was burned to cinders; and the sphinx standing guard at the top of the tower, before the room where the corpse lay, was still distracted, pondering Fletch’s riddle.
Whatever Fletch had done to the wizard, he had managed to utter an incantation before she’d done it, summoning the infernal power of hellfire. Half the room was gone, walls and ceilings and everything else blasted away. Though it had been a day since the duel, the light from the spell was still burned into the eyes of any who had looked its way. Amidst the wreckage lay Fletch.
Her body was half gone—her right arm and leg reduced to charcoal nothing, her flesh scorched nearly beyond recognition, and her glorious white hair all burnt away. Only her distinct silver-turquoise wedding ring, from her marriage to the Seven Lords and Ladies of the North, allowed anyone to recognize her.
Fae Adelaide wept first, falling to her knees and crying tears of silver. Fletch’s other friends mourned in their own ways. Red Addis gave what comfort he could, though he did not dare express the full extent of his grief—there had been enough destruction already. Kieran the Crow beseeched the stars to bring their hero back, but they were deaf to these pleas.
The corpse looked up to its once-dearest friends. “What is the matter?” she asked. “What is wrong? It’s over: the wizard is dead, his legions are broken, and his cruel power no longer pervades the Realm. Why do you cry?”
Fae Adelaide could not answer through her tears. Red Addis would have spoken, had he not feared what his words would do once they left his mouth. Only Kieran, who was far too used to tragedy in their life, could answer. “You’re dead,” they said, their voice raspier than usual. “The Realm may be saved and the wizard sent to the stars, but Fletch has fallen.”
The hero’s body poked Kieran, who brushed her charred finger away. “I am very clearly not dead,” said the hero. “Come now—how many times have I cheated the hereafter? And this time, I cheated the Storyeater and The End as well.”
“No,” said Kieran. They stooped and gathered Fletch’s body in their arms. “You sacrificed yourself. It was truly brave. Braver than when you stood alone against the Stone Giants. Braver, even, than when you traveled for seven days and seven nights across the Deadlands to find the cure for Fae Adelaide’s wasting illness. But the reward for this bravery is death.”
“This is absurd. I’m very obviously still alive. Adelaide, Fae Adelaide—won’t you look at me? Don’t you see me?”
But Fae Adelaide only wept harder still. Red Addis had to carry her down the tower, followed by Kieran who brought Fletch’s corpse even as she stubbornly insisted that she still lived. 2
“What’s happened?” she asked. “Why are they all acting as if I’m dead?”
You are, replied the Storyeater.
Fletch’s eyes narrowed. “I hope you aren’t going back on our agreement,” she said. “I haven’t yet found an answer.”
Why must the story end?
“Yes, that one. You didn’t have yourself a snack when I wasn’t looking, did you?
I am not a creature of deception, said the Storyeater. Your story yet lives, but Fletch Silvertongue does not.
“How?”
You were burned by the power of a hundred suns, plus one more. Tell me, what manner of creature could survive such a thing?
Fletch glanced to the story, where her charred and blackened body was carried reverently by her friends. “None.”
So you are dead.
“How can I be dead if my story is still going?”
The Storyeater did not shrug (the Storyeater has no shoulders). There has never been a story that survived past The End, it said. Complications are to be expected.
“Well,” resolved Fletch, “I suppose I just need to remind them who I am.”
Take care not to forget your task, said the Storyeater. Why must the story end?
But Fletch was already gone.
2
II
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One Week after The End
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Fletch’s funeral was an event for the ages. It would be administered by the Archmage Caligonous, who had prepared an enchanted eulogy that would be heard by all assembled as if he stood beside them. Each listener would hear it in the voice they found most comforting during this difficult time. Fae Adelaide, beloved, had originally planned to speak, but found that she could not even say Fletch’s name without her breath hitching in her throat and silver welling at the corners of her eyes. The loss was too recent and far too painful. She decided to secret herself in the back rows of the Glass Cathedral, adorned in silver mourning garb, for she could not stand to be so close to Fletch’s casket.
All who were invited attended the service, in their own way. Every noble house and sacred order made their way to the Glass Cathedral. The Realm Court broke its most ancient traditions and allowed all seventeen of its rulers to be present to pay their respects. The Under-Archive sent a delegation, on the condition they be seated as far from Red Addis as possible. The Baleful Dragon, for all his grievances with Fletch, attended as well—though he also attempted to ensnare Kieran and devour the secret of flight, his hunger unabating. The Lords and Ladies of the North did not honor their lost love in person, but instead each of them ventured into the wilds to seek noble deaths, resolving that they would not long outlast their beloved, as was their way.
Gifts were brought and heaped about the funerary dais, mementos of Fletch’s victories and great treasures meant to be buried with her. The Stone Giants brought a mirror that reflected a fractal world of alien geometry, causing madness or transcendence in whomever gazed upon it for too long; the Realm Court offered the Sword of Heroes, broken and re-forged stronger a thousand, thousand times; a sack of needful things which produced whichever item its holder most required; gold, jewels, riches upon riches; and more besides. Treasuries were emptied and all valuables brought as tribute, for if not for Fletch, then for whom?
The most challenging part of the funeral had been getting the body into the casket, and in this task Fletch’s friends had sadly failed. Her corpse steadfastly refused to sit still, hopping out whenever it was wrestled in. “I’m not dead!” it insisted. “I’m not!” Eventually, it was decided that the funeral would proceed with a symbolic empty coffin, the matter of the body to be decided later.
Proceedings began at the stroke of noon. The Archmage Caligonous spoke, and his words spread throughout the Glass Cathedral. The eulogy proved eloquent and poignant, and was a much-needed salve to all in attendance.
All save one.
The hero, now dead, strode down the aisle of the Cathedral—at least, she strode as well as she could with one leg burned away to ash. “Stop this!” she cried. “I am not dead!” But no one raised their heads to her, for Caligonous’s words were so entrancing that her protestations could not break through.
“Listen to me!” With a roar, the hero leapt upon to funerary dais and pushed the Archmage aside. His eulogy stuttered, then stopped, and all the assembled crowd beheld the hero’s corpse, which needed no magic to be heard throughout the whole of the chamber as she bellowed.
“I am Fletch!” she shouted. “I am the Silvertongue, the Last Disciple! I strode through the Deadlands and emerged with the Amber Blood! I have slain monsters, battled gods, and consorted with both dragons and giants! Is there one among you who does not believe that I could conquer death itself?!”
The hushed silence that befell the Glass Cathedral was broken by a sob, wrenched from Fae Adelaide’s heart at the sight of her beloved’s body. It was picked up by the Realm Court, and then Kieran the Crow, and then the curved walls carried the echoes of their cries to every corner, and then the entire assembly was openly weeping—for their hero, their Fletch, was dead.
“I’m still here!” the corpse of the hero bellowed, and she took up the Sword of Heroes. It arced through the air effortlessly, as it had done in her skillful grip time and time before, slicing into the fractal mirror. Shards of glittering insanity went flying, one lodging in Red Addis’s eye. Gold and silver coins scattered as she ascended the pile of riches brought in her honor. The Sword flashed, and the sack of needful things ripped open, producing a bundled funerary shroud that unfolded overtop the hero. The Sword cut through that as well, and kept cutting, accompanied by the hero’s raging wail.
“I—am—here!” With each word, the hero split diamonds, cut steel, until at last the blade itself shattered in her hands, its fragments embedding themselves into the walls of the Glass Cathedral, which began to crack. With a final blow, she drove the broken hilt of the Sword of Heroes into the floor, and the entire building burst to pieces, raining glass as snow down upon the crowd. Many fled, avoiding the worst of the damage. Those who stayed were forever marked with speckled scars where the shards of glass had fallen.
“Why?” the hero demanded after the rubble had settled at last. “Why do you all reject me? Would you really rather I be dead? Is a martyred hero worth more to you than I ever was alive?” Silence. “Answer me!” Silence. “Can’t any of you give me answer?!” 3
Fletch leveled what remained of the Sword of Heroes at the Storyeater. Beyond them, in the story, mourners rushed past to escape the collapsed Cathedral. When Fletch spoke, her voice was very still and very quiet. “You knew this would happen,” she said.
I did not, said the Storyeater.
“This isn’t living. This isn’t life. We had a deal, Storyeater.”
We did. We do. Your story lives, Fletch, but you are no longer a part of it.
“Fix it.”
I am not a creature of fixing.
“Do it anyway.” Fletch held the shattered Sword of Heroes up to the Storyeater. “Do it, or I will visit such agonies upon you that you will beg for release.”
You cannot harm me.
“Can’t I?” The sword flicked, and would have sliced into the Storyeater’s flesh (the Storyeater has no flesh). “I am Fletch. Achieving the impossible is part of my story. If I cannot slay you as I would a dragon or a wizard, so be it. My vengeance is a creative thing.”
Why must the story end? asked the Storyeater.
“It mustn’t.” Fletch lowered the Sword and dropped it, letting it clatter to the ground. “It is mine. I will never relinquish it to your appetite. I will never find your answer. You will be trapped here, within The End.” She smiled, bearing a twisted, wrathful mirth. “Another heroic conquest—Fletch defeating the Storyeater. What say you to that?”
The Storyeater did not speak to her further. Fletch waited a time before departing. If it wouldn’t restore her tale, she would do so herself.
3
III
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Ten Years after The End
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Fae Adelaide, beloved, was to be married. Though many earnest suitors had sought her hand, both before and after the death of her beloved Fletch, she had not found another whom she could love as fully as they did her—until now. The wedding would last for thirty days, commencing at midnight under the full moon. That was when the ceremony was to be performed and the union made official.
Mere minutes before the stroke of twelve, a hero, long dead, snuck past the guards who stood watch around the wedding tents. She prowled past all the harried preparations and numerous gifts—ice fountains from the new Lords and Ladies of the North, gold and gems from the Realm Court, a feast to rival those in the longhouses of the Tyrish Clans—and into the bridal tent. There she found FaeAdelaide, dressed in wedding silver, smiling as if expecting such a visit. She was as beautiful as she had ever been. Even the scattering of light scars decorating her arms and shoulders appeared radiant.
“Oh, Fletch,” she said, a sigh escaping her lips, painted like mirrors sparkling in the low candlelight. “Why have you come?”
“Fae Adelaide,” said the hero. She wore a satchel around her charred torso and reached inside to produce a small glass orb. A single green leaf twirled within. In the span of a moment, the leaf faded to autumn red—then tarnished brown—then it broke down to dust—then the dust swirled and became a bud, growing into a new leaf. “I have ventured into the Vault of a Thousand Treasures, guarded by the Djinn Legion, to bring you this—a wish. You may ask for anything your heart desires—”
“Except to return the dead to life.” Fae Adelaide shook her head. “Dearest Fletch, why must you do this? I have told you, time and again, that I can love you no longer. What am I meant to do with this wish?”
“Anything,” said the hero, pressing the orb into Adelaide’s hands. “It is yours. I ask only that you reconsider this marriage.”
Fae Adelaide shook her head solemnly. “Fletch, how many gifts have you brought me? Do you even remember them all, from these past years?”
“All of them. Unmelting snow from the North, the Baleful Dragon’s left eye, a shard of the very Sword—”
“All to beg my favor, all to ask for my love, and all, I say with sorrow, for naught.”
“Please,” the hero pled, the word feeling strange in her mouth. She was not used to this, to begging for scraps of Adelaide’s affection. “This isn’t how the story is meant to go. I can get you anything. Do anything. I can—I can love you, Addie. Love you the way you always wanted me to, if only you’ll love me in return. Or if you’ll hate me, despise me. Just feel something for me, I beg you.”
Fae Adelaide cupped the wish in one hand and stroked the hero’s cheek with the other, ash rubbing onto her fingertips. A single silver tear welled in the corner of her eye, but it did not fall. “Dearest Fletch,” she said. “My dear, dear Fletch. This is not your story anymore. I admit, there were times—both when you were alive and when you were dead—that I wanted nothing more than your love. But it was never me you cared for—only the story. Always the story. And had you truly loved me, truly cared in the way I once wished, you would not have been the hero that you were. Should I pine for something that was never mine in the first place? No.”
“Please.”
Fae Adelaide crushed the wish between her hands and the smell of seasons filled the air. “I wish for us both to find our peace, one day,” she said. “Goodbye, beloved.”​ 4
“This is not how it’s supposed to be,” said Fletch. “This isn’t how my story goes.”
The Storyeater was silent. It did not even ask its question.
“You said my story would continue. Mine. Fae Adelaide is part of it, her love is part of it. You’re breaking your word, Storyeater.”
The Storyeater did not speak.
“Is this the answer?” Fletch asked. “That any story which goes on too long becomes something different? Well, there you are—eat the new story, then, this thing that has taken my own tale’s place. Is that not it? Well?”
The Storyeater remained silent (the Storyeater cannot speak). Within the story, Fae Adelaide was wed. Fletch turned away.
4
IV
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One Hundred Years after The End
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Fae Adelaide, beloved, was dead.
She had died quietly, in her bed, surrounded by her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and more—hundreds upon hundreds whom she considered family, bound by blood or no. Her life had been long and full of adventure, and as she saw death approaching, she took her last days to impart her stories to the family that surrounded her. To her eldest, she gave the tale of her birth and her childhood across the silver seas. To her first grandchild, she gave the tale of how she had met a notorious hero and scoundrel, and how the two of them had been nigh inseparable from that day onwards. To her first great-grandchild, she gave the tale of that hero’s death, how it had nearly broken her and forced her to find new ways of living.
To the youngest of her descendants, a girl who was barely ten but who shared Fae Adelaide’s silver hair and eyes and smile, she gave a secret tale. That tale has never been told, and the girl has answered pleas to hear it with only a smile reminiscent of her ancestor.
Unlike Fletch’s funeral, Adelaide’s was quiet and reserved. Though the family mourned her passing for many days and weeks after, visiting her grave to pay their respects, only four attended the service itself: her partner, a dragon, a crow, and a hero, long dead. Red Addis was invited, but he had descended into the Under-Archives many years ago, and had not been seen since.
Fae Adelaide’s coffin was made of silver, as were her deathbed garments. In accordance with tradition, it would sit open for three days before being closed and lowered into the earth. Then molten silver would be poured overtop it until the space was filled and a grave marker could be etched upon the surface.
The epitaph read simply: Fae Adelaide, Loved and Beloved. The funeral party stayed with her until the final words were written and then all departed.
All save one. 5
“I’m done.”
Fletch stared down the Storyeater. So long spent trying to outsmart it, so many years spent trying to live, and for what? What did it matter? Fae Adelaide was dead. Fae Adelaide was dead. Fae Adelaide was dead.
“Did you hear me? It’s over.” Fletch approached the Storyeater, though the distance between them grew greater with every step. “You’ve won. If this was meant as a lesson about how no one truly wants to live forever, consider it learned.” She approached. The Storyeater grew no closer. “Gods below, I’m giving up! The story is finished. You can end this—isn’t that what you wanted?”
I am not a creature of wanting.
Fletch stopped. “I know what you are. You’re a creature of death. You only spared me because we made a deal, which I am now voiding. My story’s over, so what are you waiting for?”
Why must the story end?
“Because it’s over.”
Why must the story end?
“Because I want it to end.”
Why must the story end?
“Because it is dead! Haven’t I answered you well enough?”
No. You have not. You answered with your pain and your fear, your frustration and your hurt. You have answered with lies, tricks, deceptions, deceit. I have listened to all that you have said and I have yet to hear an answer that is true.
“Do you really need one?”
I am not a creature of needing.
“Then I suppose you don’t need a reason to devour my story, do you?”
The Storyeater did not explain itself (the Storyeater does not have a self to explain).
Why must the story end?
“I don’t know. I don’t care. I just want it to end.”
It will. When you can answer me, and not before.
5
V
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Five Hundred Years after The End
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The fire crackled in the woods, and by it sat two figures: a traveler, clad in gray, and a hero, long dead.
The hero had been at the fire when the traveler approached. She had been there for a very long time. She did not speak or offer company, only stared into the flame.
“I know you,” said the traveler. “Or, I’ve heard of you, I believe.”
The hero did not speak.
“Fletch.” At that, the hero looked up and the traveler clapped her hands, joyous. “I knew it was you!” she exclaimed. “They say you learned to fly from Kieran themself. You stole a wish from the Djinn Legion. You even cheated . . . ” At this, the traveler hesitated. “Well, not death, but something else. So I heard, at least.”
“I did,” said the hero, long dead. Her voice was barely a whisper. “The story lives, but it is no longer mine. I get to watch everything I know fall away, to see my tale become something unfamiliar, and the beast that did this to me . . . it won’t end my misery. I suppose it thinks I haven’t yet suffered enough, for my audacity.”
“Hmm.” The traveler tapped her finger against her lips, which shone under the pale moonlight. “That’s not the story I heard.”
“I am no longer interested in stories.”
“Really?” The traveler got up and came to sit next to the hero. “Are you sure? There are so many wonderful stories that you’ve likely never heard.”
“I have heard every story. I am tired of them all.”
The traveler smiled. The hero would have continued, but something about her fireside companion’s face was familiar. “Now that’s simply not true,” said the traveler. “For instance, I have a story that you’ve never heard.” She took her gray cloak from off her shoulders. “It was given to me a very long time ago, and I’ve had it all to myself for ages. But it is the nature of stories to be given away, and I think you need this one more than I. Would you like to hear it?”
The hero hesitated, then nodded. As the traveler began to speak, she draped her cloak over the hero, and the hero noticed that inside, it was lined with silver.
For the first time in centuries, the hero smiled, and she let the traveler’s tale wash over her. 6
“Storyeater?”
Yes, Fletch Silvertongue?
“What happens when I answer the question?”
I eat the story. The story ends.
Fletch watched the fire in the story, crackling as the traveler told her tale. “That’s what you are, isn’t it?”
Yes, said the Storyeater. I am a creature of endings. But that is not all that I am.
“You want to know why you are what you are.”
The Storyeater did not reply (the Storyeater has no answers). It spoke all the same. Why must the story end?
“I don’t know,” said Fletch, “and I expect it may be a good long while before I do.”
6
VI
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Ten Billion Years after The End
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The Realm was gone.
The world was gone.
The Deadlands and the Hidden City and the mute librarians hiding in the Under-Archives and Red Addis, who met a terrible fate, and the stars and the Glass Cathedral and Kieran the Crow, who was the last to know the secrets of flight, and the Stone Giants and Archmage Caligonous and the Lords and Ladies of the North and the Realm Court and the Sword of Heroes and the Tyrish Clans and the Vault of a Thousand Treasures and the Baleful Dragon, who did eventually get his eye back, and Fae Adelaide, beloved, and all her descendants were gone.
All was gone.
All save one. 7
Fletch did not draw in a breath—the air was gone, too, so there was no breath left to draw. Her body had been gone for some millennia, as well. The story was so very empty now, devoid of planets and stars and anything that wasn’t the blank expanse of eternity.
“Are you there, Storyeater?” she called out with a voice she did not have and breath she did not breathe.
I am here, Fletch Silvertongue.
“Still waiting for your answer?”
Yes.
“I think I have one.”
Why must the story end?
Fletch beheld the story without eyes, without senses, without anything that could have seen or touched or felt. “Everything ends eventually,” she said. “Stories, lives, worlds. Nothing lasts forever. It all has to end to make room for whatever comes next. But then those things end, too. One day, the final story will be told and will end and there will be no more stories left.”
And after that? When all the stories are gone?
Fletch grinned without a mouth or teeth or face. “Then I think I’ll tell the next story anyway.”
The Storyeater does not care about the stories it eats (the Storyeater is not empathic, or compassionate, or dispassionate, or callous, or joyous, or loving, or hateful, or frustrated, or confused, or anything at all; the Storyeater is a metaphor; the Storyeater is literal; the Storyeater is a monster; the Storyeater is a savior; the Storyeater is necessary; the Storyeater is superfluous; the Storyeater waits at The End of every story and when that comes, it does what it has always done; it has done this with every story ever told; all save one; it didn’t care about that story, either). It cared all the same.
The Storyeater smiled with a mouth it did not have and warmth it did not feel. The story is ending, it said.
“Yes. Would you like to hear another?”
The Storyteller did not speak (the Storyteller does not have a mouth, nor does she need one). She told the story all the same.
7
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Once upon a time, there was a Storyeater.
