The Silenced Tale, стр. 48
Gil looks to Juan, who shrugs, clearly having no idea who Elgar means.
Good. That is . . . that is good.
Elgar’s a little drunk when they get back to the hotel. Juan stops at the concierge desk to make arrangements to extend their stay by a few days, while Elgar makes his tipsy way up to their suite with his cop-chauffeur shadow. The shadow heads for the vending machines as soon as Elgar is settled. Knowing that he won’t have the place to himself for long, he shuffles into the bathroom with his phone, sits on the edge of the tub, and calls Forsyth.
“Forsyth’s phone, his super hot wife speaking!” Lucy Piper says as soon as the call is picked up.
“Lucy,” Elgar says, and he is proud at how sober he sounds. “I have to . . . can you guys video-call? Do you have the time right now?”
A crash and a baby howl in the background answers the question better than anything Lucy could have said.
“Ah,” Elgar says softly, instead of waiting. “Guess not?”
“Hold on,” Lucy says, and the sound of the phone being set down is unmistakable. There’s an unintelligible conversation further away, and Alis is sobbing unhappily, and then the phone is picked up again.
“Elgar?” Forsyth says. “Pip says you want to talk?”
“I’d like to talk to both of you, if I can. But if it’s a bad time . . .”
“No, no, it’s just . . . more teeth. You understand. She hurts, and she can’t express herself well enough, and we can do nothing, really, to help and . . . everyone here is at their wit’s end. But perhaps a bit of face time with her Uncle Gar Gar will help soothe her. Give us a moment to set up?”
“Sure,” Elgar says, and hangs up. He nips out into his bedroom for his computer, then heads back into the bathroom. He hasn’t heard Juan come back yet, nor his shadow, but the bathroom is the furthest from the suite’s front door, just in case.
He sets the computer on the counter, and nearly as soon as he’s opened the program, Forsyth is calling. The video opens on Forsyth seated at his desk in his upstairs office, Alis on his lap, swollen-eyed and miserable, and chewing on what looks to be a small frozen plushie. Both of them are a little swollen-eyed and miserable, actually. Forsyth knuckles his eyes and grins weakly.
“We look a fright, I know,” Forsyth says, sardonic and exhausted. “It’s been a . . . a long few weeks. What can I help you with? You sounded slightly desperate.”
Elgar nods again, and then swallows hard, considering his next words carefully. He can feel his pleasant wine buzz evaporating with each moment that passes in silence. “I’d like your . . . your permission, I guess?”
Forsyth sits up, intrigued. Alis jams her plushie further into her mouth, gagging a little, and without taking his eyes from the screen, Forsyth pulls it back out. Alis whimpers and kicks.
“Permission for . . . ah.” His eyes go a little rounder. “You’ve been asked to write something.”
“Yeah.”
Forsyth ponders for a moment, gray eyes skipping over Elgar’s face, down to his clothes to root out whatever clues he seems to read there, then back up to meet his creator’s eyes. “You don’t want to.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t know,” Elgar admits. “I don’t know if I should, and if I do say yes, I don’t know what I should write, story-wise. I don’t . . . I don’t want to change things. I mean, I don’t want to make things worse, you know? I don’t have any power here, no way to write something and make it happen in the real world—the Overrealm—” More’s the pity, he thinks, or else I could write this stalker away. “But whatever I write about there might . . . I don’t know, it can . . . you see where I’m coming from, right? I’m . . . it’s a legitimate worry?”
“Certainly,” Forsyth says, petting Alis’s sweaty curls away from her forehead as he thinks. “But consider, Elgar, that you are a Writer. In the same way that I was created to be clever, and learn quickly, and to be addicted to spying and bettering the world, so too you are created to be a teller of tales. Do you follow?”
Elgar nods dumbly, uncertain of what his heart is doing right now, or why his eyes are burning.
Forsyth sits forward, as if he can arrest Elgar’s fidgeting with his gaze through the computer screen, his gray eyes pinning him in place. “Elgar, you cannot spend your whole life living in fear of your pen. Write respectfully, and thoughtfully, and there should be nothing to be afraid of.”
“I . . . I don’t want to hurt people,” Elgar admits softly, and the confession costs him more than he thought it would. It tastes like ash and bile. “I don’t know how to write without hurting people. Conflict causes pain, but how do I make a story without conflict?”
“I see.” Forsyth says. “Elgar, let me put your mind at ease. I have been watching you slide deeper and deeper into your misery. And I have been pondering. And it seems to me that it is only Hain and its denizens that are, well, ‘real.’ Your Shuttleborn trilogy contains no magic at all, and it is the magic of the Deal-Maker Spirits that has birthed our realm into reality, yes?”
“. . . yes,” Elgar says, feeling the knot in his chest starting to loosen.
“Then it is conceivable that, without the magic of the Deal-Makers, any other realm you invent will be just as dormant, just as imaginary as those of any other Writer.”
“Maybe,”