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She nodded to herself.
“Let’s get back downstairs and fix up Lund. And then maybe we can talk about the future, all of us.”
Cassie smiled. “I’d like that. And I’d love to stay here. This place feels like home to me. But I need to go do a couple of things first.”
She looked around the room, at the numbered cupboards. “Can I borrow another one of your books?”
The Joy at the End
The room was in darkness, and heavy with the smell of sweat and blood and death.
This was Cassie’s home, a place that had become alien to her. She had come back to this place using Drummond’s copy of the Book of Doors—having to prove to herself that it worked, that it was the same book as her own.
Her grandfather was in the bed, a skeletal shape, moaning quietly. Another Cassie, a younger Cassie, sat slumped in the easy chair in the corner, exhausted. Through the drapes dawn was coming, light creeping into the day.
Cassie walked to the window and pulled one of the drapes aside. She saw the workshop out there, the spring wildflowers growing in the long grass along the side of the building, vibrant colors in the morning light.
“Cassie.”
The word was a croak of agony. Cassie turned at the window and saw her grandfather looking at her. He smiled, hollow cheeks and the rictus of a corpse.
She sat on the bed and held his hand.
“I hoped I’d see you again,” he said.
She nodded and smiled. “I wanted to be here,” she said. “I was asleep the first time.”
She looked over her shoulder to her younger self. Her grandfather looked there as well. “You’re exhausted. I don’t mind.”
“No, but I do.”
Her grandfather winced then, his eyes rolling in his skull. She remembered how even the morphine wasn’t helping at the end.
“I wanted to be here, and I wanted to give you something,” she said, not even sure if her grandfather could hear anymore. She pulled out the Book of Joy. The cover was a bright collage of many happy colors, like flowers in full bloom. She placed it in her grandfather’s hands, feeling the clamminess, the ferocity of his grip. “I want to give you joy.”
As soon as he held the book, his demeanor changed, his face relaxing as the agonies left him, and he looked at her with clear eyes. The Book of Joy sparked brilliantly like a firework in a dark sky.
“Cassie,” he said.
He smiled and rolled his head to the side on his pillow. For a moment he just gazed out the window.
“My workshop,” he said. “So many memories. I loved you sitting there reading while I worked.”
Cassie felt tears in her eyes as she watched him reminisce, as joy dawned on his face like the most beautiful sunrise.
“Look at the flowers,” he said, the words almost a gasp of delight. “Look at the colors. So... bright and colorful. Isn’t it beautiful! Look at how they’re blowing in the breeze.”
She sat with him for a few minutes more, as morning dawned on an amazing world, as he slipped away, leaving the world in joy rather than in pain.
And then he was gone, and the colors of the Book of Joy died with him.
Cassie stood up, taking the Book of Joy with her, and she walked around the bed back to the doorway. The other version of her was still asleep in the chair, but she would shortly awaken and findher grandfather gone, and that moment would haunt her for years to come.
But no more, Cassie thought.
This was an ending, but it was also a new beginning for her, for Cassie.
She opened the door and left her house for the last time. She had one more place to go, before returning to the Fox Library and her friends and her future.
