The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [179]
“We’re here to fix things,” said another shorter Watcher, in a matter-of-fact fashion.
“I was an Everborn until I became a Watcher again about ninety-seven years ago,” said another, reaching out to help usher Simon along. “An unfortunate accident, really, involving a mob riot and some hairless ostriches. Oh, humanity!”
“It’s okay, Henry, you’re not a part of humanity,” George hushed him.
And with one touch of his hand, Simon succumbed to him and the other Watchers about him, and they together directed him out of the diner terrace and towards their ship in the canyon.
The remaining Watchers approached Bari, finally, alone.
“You’re certain this will turn out all right?” Bari asked one of them.
“Don‘t worry, dear Watchmaid, we‘ve got it covered from here on out. Oh, and thank you....” replied a Watcher directly before her as the others encircled her, crowding about and pressing against her; to her astonishment, she could tell her skin was ever so slowly becoming a coppertone brass once again, and it occurred to her that she would endure, at least until her beloved Everborn’s next life’s end.
“Follow me now.” Another Watcher spoke.
And Bari followed.
EPILOGUE
Max & the Watcher, In Parting
It was supposed to happen this way, all of it, after all.
It was supposed to happen this way, because the story is now told.
I scooted myself away from the desk, or, rather, wobbled my chair from leg to leg backwards across the carpet until I was at a reasonable distance from the desk to flex my hands and fingers. I stretched my arms. I wondered how instant it was, the transmission of this manuscript I was now completing to the hands of Andrew Erlandson back in time to the previous August. Then I realized it was as instant as yesterday; as instant, perhaps, as a lifetime.
I wondered how different the story would be if the story itself had not been an influence on its events, and had neither I nor the Watcher collaborated to tell it and transmit it through time, where would circumstances take us?
This thought gave rise to another: in many ways, a book has already been written for all of us. It’s just that it’s not every day you’re going to come across a copy.
I looked over my shoulder and I saw the Watcher sitting upright in his robe with legs crossed Indian-style upon the center of the bed nearest me.
He smiled upon me wearily, languidly, but he was very much pleased.
Our task was at an end, and, for both of us, it had been a long night.
“I suppose it’s about time I rid myself of the addiction to these wretched things,” the Watcher then remarked, and exhaled his last breath of cigarette smoke, crushed the butt into an ashtray memorial graveyard of the last of his mortal vices.
I sighed, and thought to myself the same thing, although many more questions plagued my mind aside from this resolution.
I wondered, but what now? My quest for knowledge was essentially at an end, or at least to the extent of my career, and although my life had apparently ended months ago, it had begun anew last night.
And then again, just this morning.
There came a knock at the motel room door.
“Go ahead,” the Watcher said, “open it. Dawn has come, you know. For all of us.”
I stood from my chair and without hesitation abandoned the typewriter for the door. My expectations fluctuated between a number of possibilities as to who I might find once I opened the door. In my lifetime, if you count the moment of my birth up until now, I’d opened a boulevard of doors, so to speak.
This would be no different, the opening of this one, than any other. And just as exciting.
I opened the motel room door to the outside dawn which blinded me at first, being that my eyes had been accustomed to only a mild degree of light amidst a night time of what seemed like ages.
And before me I beheld my wife. She carried in her arms a newborn son wrapped in several layers of knitted