Mary: Curtain Call

WARNING: THIS IS THE FINAL ENTRY IN LEPORIDAE REX. NEW READERS, BEGIN HERE.






Dazed and in shock, much of what happened next was translated and related back to me in the following days.

After I rubbed my eyes and my vision returned, I looked around and saw every single Smiler in the room slumped over dead, eyes open. Emperor Komei stood in front of Hollis and the Red Lady, a pair of samurai holding their arms behind their backs, their supernatural powers now gone. His voice flat and low, he said, "With only one arm and one leg, I was wondering how Sato-san would spend his remaining years. With the two of you alive, I have my answer." The Emperor couldn't resist giving a small, malicious smile. "For you who have been so quick to deal out death to my people, I make this terrible promise: you shall live to die of old age." He nodded down to Sato, who writhed in pain from his shattered kneecap, but still managed to grin sadistically up at Hollis, who was led away, his face aghast.

Then the Emperor leaned down and placed a hand under Fukimitsu's head, the young samurai pale and coughing up blood from the stab wound inflicted by the Red Lady's dagger. At the time I was hardly unaffected by his plight, but now just thinking about his last words as they were translated to me still makes me cry as I type it:

"My Emperor... my lone regret in this life is that this samurai was cursed with such a poor master. A samurai gains honor through hardship and struggle. He proves his mettle by serving a lord who chooses unwisely- who treats him shabbily and orders him to perform dishonorable acts. Would that I have been blessed to be a vassal to another lord, but instead Fate has cheated me of the chance to reveal the full depths of my character... by forcing me to serve the finest man I have ever known."

Fukimitsu reached up then with a bloody hand to touch his master's face even as his eyes went dark and his body became slack in the Emperor's hands. With all the supreme efforts of will I had seen displayed in our struggle, never had I witnessed the resolve it took for the Emperor of Japan not to weep over the death of his descendant, Fukimitsu.

From the stage then, we could hear a groan as Yoshida woke up, apparently having been stunned into unconsciousness by the Magician's disappearance. I'm sure there are some of you reading this who hunger for vengeance against him for what he did, for his betrayal of his country and his friends, but at the time all I felt was pity. What the Magician offered was everything he could have ever wanted, and I had seen enough death and destruction already. I said, "Please, Emperor, spare his life. I know he has done wrong, but..." Unfortunately, as Yoshida and I realized at the same moment, there was no one left alive to translate for us, and the Emperor would hardly believe Yoshida.

Yoshida shook his head sadly as he looked down at me, the massive, muscle-bound Ota lumbering toward him inexorably. "I am sorry, Stroud. You know that, don't you?" He looked up as Ota towered over him, muttering despondently, "What a waste. What a waste." I turned away then, shielding my eyes. I heard a bone snap, Yoshida gave a sharp yelp and then his body hit the floor, dead.

Ota turned and picked up the chest of bingo charms on the stage, upending the box and pouring out the goo that they had been transformed into, all of them destroyed. We would find out later that the whales- every single one of them on Earth- were dead, their bloated corpses washing up on Japanese shores for months.

There were so many questions still unanswered. How had the Magician gotten the whales to serve him? Had he somehow created them all as a species? What part did the Red Lady's rabbit's foot play in the spell (despite months spent as the Emperor's "guest" in his dungeons, she never spoke a single word)? Who was the Magician really? Was he Geoffrey Gagworth, the first magician to perform the "rabbit out of a hat" trick, or was that just an identity he adopted? Was he even human at all?

We do not know and we will probably never know. This isn't some story where every little loose end is tied into a pretty knot. It's real life, and frankly we may be better off not knowing.

From the edge of the stage I heard a groan, and I dashed over to find Taras, still barely alive, his gray hair hanging down in his face and blood flowing freely from his nose, mouth and ears. Despite being in obvious pain, he smiled at me as I leaned down next to him. "I'm dying." He sounded like he just won the lottery. "And this time I shall stay dead, thank God." A puzzled look crossed his face. "How did you know?"

"That you would do it? The more I read your post, the more I suspected you'd betray the Magician if you thought it would actually work. Using the stage magic- the slight of hand Yoshida taught me- it was easy enough to get the hypo into your pocket, knowing that everyone would be busy watching my other hand carve into your face." I pulled his handkerchief from his coat and attempted to dry the blood, but it just kept coming.

He coughed, spattering my shirt-front with specks of red. "He has no blood... will the Calicivirus kill him? Will it infect whatever new world they were transported to? And the Howlands..."

I shrugged and shook my head, not wanting to think too much about it. "I didn't know what it would do, exactly. I think Doctor Yoshida, Kisho's father, had partially formulated it just for this purpose, so that it would affect him. Regardless, when Josh and I were about to destroy it down in Texas we had second thoughts. All that work he'd put in perfecting the formula... and in the end I guess it came down to the fact that the Doctor was fighting against the Magician and so were we, so we kept it around, buying one extra day from Pierce with a bogus story about not being able to get to FedEx in time. You have any idea how hard it is to find a book written in Japanese to shred in a Texas bookstore? Once the Emperor joined us we told him we still had the formula, and he agreed to manufacture it, though on the off-chance the Magician was still reading the archive we decided to keep it secret."

He chuckled, grimacing in pain and holding his stomach. After a moment, he mumbled, "I hear something."

Nodding and humoring him, I replied, "All right, Taras. It's all right now."

The old man shook his head peevishly. "I know what dying's like, woman. I've done it a hundred times. I said I hear something. From the stage."

Rising, I looked toward the dais, now hearing it as well. It sounded like someone sniffling. I wandered over slowly, peered around the floor and finally found the Magician's cape at the rear of the stage. Underneath it was a trembling lump, and I knelt down next to it and pulled the cape back, revealing a small, blond-haired boy, his face smudged, tear-stained and terrified. His blue eyes focused on me, and he spoke in what sounded like Russian.

From behind me Taras croaked, "It's the orphan. From the alley. The one the Magician made disappear."

Suddenly the boy started babbling, the words coming out in a rush. Taras translated, "He wants to know where he is. He says he has been in darkness for so very long. He asks, 'was it a dream? A nightmare? Am I dreaming now?' He asks where is his little sister. He asks again where he is."

The boy and I stared at each other for a long, long moment, and then I reached out and pulled him to me, hugging him and stroking his blond hair. He began to sob, crying into my chest with great heaving breaths. I began to cry as well, my tears falling onto the top of his head as I held him tight. "Tell him..." I tried to find the words, tried to think of a way to explain what had happened so that he could possibly understand. "Tell him..." I started again, not knowing that Taras was already dead, his face affixed with a beatific smile.

I squeezed the little boy even tighter as he clung to me with all the strength in his young body. "Tell him he's home.

"He's home."



FINAL ENTRY