After one last feast, Xio and Kelwas once more heaved their ship into the greeting tide, Wolf and Goldenrod already aboard, the ravens circling overhead. Mother Silence and her Sisters stood on the shore, ghostly figures standing among a tangle of old trees and raising their hands to them in farewell.

And so, they turned homeward under plum colored skies, amid schools of flying fish gliding over and alongside The Spindle. As they sailed away from the island, away from the ends of the earth, they hastened across the water as if their prow was cutting across the slope of a wave. After adjusting the sail, Captain Xio took the tiller.

"One more story should be enough, then," she said.

"I know who has a good one," Kelwas said, giving Goldenrod a sly glance.

Her response was to not meet his eyes, instead hugging her key-hand closer, which forced Xio to steer the conversation back to her. "She cannot speak of what passed between her and the Stone, lest she dilute whatever miracle it bestowed upon her. Come now. Come and heed me, now for this happened to someone my mother's mother knew, in a land far and more than far away."

Battered, bruised, a soldier hears the faint cries of victory from where he lays panting against an embankment. He cannot tell whether it is his army cheering, or the rival lord's. Ah, but the chill, cold fingers spreading over his limbs tell him that who won was perhaps not so important. His breath is a sparrow battering its way out of his chest so he knows something is broken inside of him. And the sky, oh the sky seems so big. So heavy. So, so heavy.

As a last resort they had opened the floodgates. Which side did not matter any longer. What matters is the rush of water punching through them, mid-charge. He had not been in the front line - poor wretches. It is on them so fast. First, barely a hiss, then a roar and - nothing. After his first gasping breath shudders through him, dull disappointment.

Then pain like a river jumping its banks, washes him away.

Gasping, he hears the quiet sounds of someone behind him, climbing down the embankment. Why could he not turn his head? Stories of battlefield scavengers come to him, picking their way through the wounded and dying to cut purse strings, steal boots, even cut fingers too swollen to pry rings off them. He wants to tell the thief to move on, that he has nothing. His one thing of value - a wedge of cheese his wife had pressed into his hands as a reminder of home - has been taken by the flood. He wants to shout that he (who is not among the dead) will not be easy pickings.

What he manages is a low groan, tasting of copper: Turn aside.

Are you certain? They ask, calling down from the embankment. I am here for you.

No, the soldier says, or thinks he does. A shadow falls across his sight and once it lifts, his skinny, bedraggled boy stood before him, eyes like bruises and a crooked smile thin as winter sunlight. He had looked like that before they pulled him out of the river. By now, he would have been old enough to take the nag by the reins, while the soldier guided the plow. He would have been old enough to join in the dances at next year's Spring Festival.

The stories say Old Gaunt always appears to you as your most beloved, offering you their hand.

No, no. It cannot be you, the soldier says. He raises a hand, perhaps to shield his eyes, perhaps to fend off a blow, but when he looks up it is not his boy standing with the blaze of the setting sun behind him. Instead, a man so thin it seemed the last rays before dusk shone through him, and so commonplace in appearance the eye slips off his features.

Who else might I be, he says to the soldier.

You are supposed to be on a horse.

Oh? And what kind of horse? The soldier found it difficult to know if that unremarkable face was gently mocking him or not, and he grits his teeth when the thin man kneels to examine his wounds. When had it gotten so cold?

A familiar one is what the stories tell, the soldier says. It's why they warn against letting your horse wander. It will return with Old Gaunt as its rider.

I have not heard that one.

See? See why it cannot be you? The soldier tries to laugh, but can only cough up flecks of blood before continuing. You would know all about the king who lost his palfrey on the eve of a great battle, who called and called for his prized stallion to return. You would know his ashen-faced fear when it returned bearing a new rider.

Oh dear. What did the king do, then?

If he surrendered to Old Gaunt, it would plunge his kingdom into chaos, perhaps even into civil war. He was far too important to allow that to happen, so he commanded his knights to shield him.

Ah, of course, the thin man says. Did he succeed?

As well as it did for the merchant whose mule spooked on the way to market.

What did the merchant trade?

If you were truly them, you would know he sold many, many things we are willing to pay moons-kissed silver to have: furs, cave-shark livers floating in brine, polished amber, salt. When his mule returned, laden with more than merely his wares, the merchant offered Old Gaunt heavy gold coins stamped with the faces of kings and queens, he plucked the bejeweled rings off his very fingers and tossed them at his feet to convince him to pass him by.

Seems quite tempting. Did it work?

About the same as it did for the cleric whose donkey wandered into the desert.

Which order did they belong to?

See? The soldier says, the shadow of a smile lengthening across his face. If you were truly them, you might have known her orisons were well-favored and she was indeed the proper vessel for the All-Father's wisdom, which flowed through her to water the parched ground of her congregation. When her donkey appeared again out of the shimmer of heat, she clothed herself in righteousness, and called upon the All-Father and all his saints to command Old Gaunt to turn his gaze from her.

I imagine that did not convince.

The soldier does not reply. He cannot. His breath is a stone he had been carrying, now crushing him under its weight. When had it gotten so dark?

I do not have a steed. That much is true, the thin man says. He is now standing over the soldier. His eyes are in shadow, but his voice is like a clear sky after rain, or the first trill of birdsong after a long, dark night. But that is because before you were ever a soldier, you were a farmer and walked ahead of your horse to guide it.

Old Gaunt offered the soldier their bony hand

By the time she finished, the moons had risen ahead and the Eyes of the Sea had fixed their eternal glare upon their backs. Captain Xio fell silent, leaning into the tiller to keep them on course. Had her eyes lingered on Kelwas while she told her story? If so, it was because Goldenrod kept staring into the middle distance and had avoided looking at them. The ravens and Wolf, however, she allowed to intrude upon her silence. Their attempts at preening her their attempt at comforting her in the language they knew best.

Unnoticed, the stars winked out overhead. One by one, darkness swallowed them, and a cold wind gusted westward, tousling their hair. Wolf raised his head, scenting the wind with a low whine.

Too late, Captain Xio jumped to furl the sail, calling for Kelwas to help her, but the storm was upon them. Drenched, Kelwas pulled the talespun cloth down, hands slipping off it. Somewhere above Xio's shouts, a wrathful song was kept aloft by the punishing winds. The wind howled, sending sea spray lashing across their vision. Struggling to secure his knot, Kelwas could not see the errant wave dash across the beam until it swatted him overboard.

He teetered on the very edge for what seemed long enough that he almost believed he could feel Old Sirzei's fingers plucking at his destiny, and Kelwas envisioned himself both in the water, being dragged into the inky depths and also tumbling forward, back into the boat, safe from the waters for the moment, but moving to shelter Goldenrod and the ravens huddled near her until the storm passed and they drifted into the port city of Okhaym--so named because their bay was once one of the All-Father's footprints, made when he still walked these lands--to great fanfare, and were greeted as heroes before being escorted to the very northern borders of the Wildwood, where—

None of these things happened. You know this, of course. Kelwas arched like a bow, heaving up seawater his idiot body had so desperately tried to breathe. That old meddler Sirzei had torn him from Goldenrod, from her brothers, from knowing whether he had fulfilled his promise he had made to her all those months ago. From thanking Captain Xio.

From Wolf.

A black spell came over him, then. He could not know how long it lasted, but when it at last flowed over and through and past him he realized he was lying under the old apple tree amidst the fields near home. And there, tossed against the roots of the tree was Wolf, his gray pelt nearly black with wet, but his side rising and falling as steady as the tides. Kelwas threw himself onto the ground beside Wolf. He placed a hand on his pelt, gentle as a sparrow settling on a branch. Then, he let his tears flow.

By the time he pulled himself to his feet, it was at Wolf's urging. He had shaken off what maladies he had been afflicted with to push past Kelwas, loping towards the cabin before stopping to look back.

Groaning, Kelwas followed him to find the door ajar, and the hearth almost cold. The embers were phantoms of ancient wood haunted by their own memory of fire, the morning air prickled with frost. Glad for Wolf at his side, Kelwas' heart shriveled like one of those embers as he walked, step by step - slowly, oh so slowly - to pull aside the curtain to Mother's bed.

You can imagine what he found, but know that Kelwas took his mother's hand, and there was still the faintest spark glimmering within her. Her eyes rolled towards him, showing too much white, and he realized she was drawing on pure animal strength to stay alive long enough for him to bid her farewell. All he could do was hold her cold, cold hand in both of his and croon an old shapeless song he was certain she had sung to him as a lullaby.

"I am here, Mother." He gulped back a sob. "I came back."

At his words, she closed her eyes again, and a faint blush of color had returned to her ashen features. He sat with her, watching the dawn spread golden over the tops of the Wildwood until the first rays streamed in through the unlatched door and struck the opposite wall. Still humming, Kelwas found his eye drawn to how the cracks in the mortar aligned with a knot in the wood, and--

You have no doubt stared at a bank of clouds, or perhaps the side of a far-off mountain and with a shock notice the shape of a face staring back at you. So it was for Kelwas. There, in the slant of sunlight and cross-hatching of shadows, coalesced into a bland and gray figure standing vigil over Mother.

If Kelwas had been wealthier, he could have ensured her body sailed past the Gates of Paradise, to beach upon the shores of the All-Father's Garden. He would have arranged for her to be draped in fine cloths, dripping with amber and pearls, and given to the nearest river, surrounded by grievers he would have paid by the tear.

But for all that Kelwas was rich in many things, he was not wealthy.

So it was that Old Gaunt had come at last for Mother.

"You!" Kelwas found himself standing, Wolf bristling at his side.

Yes, came the answer in a voice like the skittering like a knife's edge along a bone. I have come to see who sang of me with such beauty. Did you not call to me with every song you sang, with every story you told?

His stomach a yawning pit inside him, Kelwas understood Old Gaunt had been with him all along. Even so, he squared himself against the other and said, "You cannot take my mother - she's all I have left!"

Oh, Old Gaunt blinked, glanced at Wolf. A thin smile spread across his features. Will you play a game with me, then? Wager her life? I fear it has been a long time since last that happened.

Kelwas knew as well as you or anyone else there was no tricking Old Gaunt. They await everyone, even--it is said--the gods themselves, at the end of our journeys with an eager embrace, ready to soothe away that first and most grievous wound we all suffer.

"No," Kelwas said. "No wagers, no games."

This is new, Old Gaunt said. What do you offer?

"Half," Kelwas said, remembering how he had survived in times of want. Not every belly may be full, but few were ever empty. "I offer half my life in return for her living that much longer."

Old Gaunt looked upon Mother for a long time before offering Kelwas his hand.

And so, when the snow geese return from their nesting grounds on the shores of Paradise, when bears stumble out of their caves to shake the snow from their fur, when it was time to sow the fields, Mother knew to expect Kelwas at her door. Wolf never far behind, for even Old Gaunt could not shutter the ways to the Night Lands to him. Once the harvest was done, and the first frosts spangled the ground, it was time for Kelwas to return.

Eventually, it was time for Mother to also travel the Night Road but was glad to see Kelwas and Wolf waiting to accompany her and help her over that low wall separating this world from that of the dead.

But what of Goldenrod, you ask. Yes, well Kelwas never saw her again, never found out if she was able to free her brothers and herself from that long-ago curse her father had placed upon them in a moment of anger. Know then that we need not worry overmuch for her. Ever does fortune or fate favor her, as if Old Sirzei plays favorites. If you have any doubts, ask anyone for stories of Iralessa the Beautiful, or Iralessa the Wise, or even Princess Goldenrod, of which there are scores upon scores. In Iralessa and the Seven Ravens she breaks the curse by shedding seven tears over her father's ailing body, though there is no mention of Kelwas, nor how he helped her.   

And so, here we all are at the end of our story, just as I am before your eminences at the end of mine. If the grave tidings from holy Mirdhras are to be believed, so we all stand before the ending of a larger story.

Perhaps your eminences can feel that ending approach like a patient on their deathbed can. Mourning our holy city – lo, its lamp snuffed out in a single night – and what seems as inevitable as the tides. I understand now why sent an escort to insist - quite firmly, may I add – that I speak before you all and not to the unwashed and the hungry on the outskirts of Khaimesatz. The hand that shapes becomes the hand that grasps, as the Storyteller told Prince Daneel at the gallows, and we all know what end befell that Prince.

Everything ends, your eminences, even our All-Father. Even the faraway power of our Heirophant and Holy Mirdhras, its mountain brought low. This is what stories help us do, after all: inure us against the tiny death of hearing the end as part of the whole.

Was this simple truth what your eminences – following the decree of the Heirophant himself – were trying to prevent me from doing? From telling the old tales in the old ways? To stopper the mouths of those who defied their wishes?

Know then that I can see the hour of my death lingering like a shadow in the doorway. My death, but not my end. For if your wish was to prevent the return of Kelwas, to put him in his grave at last, know that your scribes have ensured he – and I as his teller - live on.

Do not mourn Kelwas overmuch, nor shed many tears for him – or I, for that matter. If anything, be glad for the life that is given, however long it may be – for what is life but a sun-warmed cloak we borrow for a time?

Go on then; do what you must. You send me back to the waters that brought me here, and I can see a familiar face waiting for me upon that far shore.