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(Continued)
"That
crazy
old bat," the father said in an admiring tone, fumbling to
put on his glasses. "It’s all here! All of it! Fifteen,
sixteen… eighteen versions before she finally wrote ‘the
end’ and went on to something else!"
In
the next room, Daniel breathed a sigh of relief he hadn’t known
he’d been holding in and slumped backwards into a chair. Then he
landed on the floor with a thump because the chair was not, in
fact, there. Meg did turn around at this, and Daniel glared around
the room until it was quiet. Beside Meg, her father went on
chattering. "It’s all in here… character profiles, story
outlines, notes about the worlds she was creating… she wrote
everything down! Everything! I don’t think she tossed any of
it!"
"Dear,
shouldn’t we keep this private, maybe erase the disks?"
"Are
you kidding? This is … this is incredible! And it’s all so
neatly archived…"
Meg
walked very quietly, almost tiptoeing, into the other room while
her parents debated back and forth. She knew her father would win
anyway; he always did on things like these. She wanted to find out
what that thump in the other room had been. The young girl
squinted around the room, her eyes adjusting to the dim light.
"I know you’re in there," she said softly so as not to
alarm her parents. "I heard you."
Seline
stepped forward, to the shocked and terrified (though some
approving) glances of everyone in the room. "Shouldn’t you
be with your parents?" she asked the girl gently.
Meg’s
eyes widened. "I know you," she said softly.
"You’re Seline of the Bear Clan." Seline nodded.
"You’re in the Outcasts of Deep Glen trilogy." Seline
nodded again, and Meg’s eyes grew even wider. "But… what
are you doing here?"
"We’re
all here," she said, gesturing around the room at the
assembled figures. "We came to say goodbye to her."
"So…
you’ve said goodbye. What happens to you now?" Meg asked.
Daniel
stood up slowly, sighing heavily. "Well, that’s the real
question we’ve all been asking. See, the thing is, we don’t
really know. Best guess is that if we’re not remembered, if our
memories died with her, we just fade away."
"It
has already begun," said one young man Meg didn’t
recognize.
Meg’s
eyes widened. She looked almost afraid. "But… but you’re
all so… that’s not fair!"
The
tall, almost elfin blonde man in the corner chuckled. "That
happens a lot."
"I
mean it," she said with the sort of righteous indignation
only a fourteen-year-old girl could muster. "It’s
not…" Then she seemed to think of something, and looked
back to where her father, having predictably won the argument, was
busily packing up disks and notebooks. "But the notes…
you’re all in there. And I bet some of you that didn’t get…
well, you’re all in there."
"Well,
yes." Daniel agreed. "More than you might believe. But
if they don’t ever get read, no one will know about them."
Meg
looked furious. "Well, that’s just…" she stalked
into the other room and grabbed the box of disks from her
father’s startled hands. "That’s just… stupid!"
"Meg,
honey… it’s what she wrote," her father said, utterly
confused.
"No,
not that… oh, never mind," she told her father
exasperatedly, and stalked back into the room with the box
clutched to her tiny chest. "I’ll write. I’ll write and
I’ll write and I’ll write. And somehow, I’ll make it all
work out."
Daniel
stared at Meg with an expression of disbelief warring with
amusement. After a long silence he began to chuckle. Then he began
to laugh. And then he was leaning back against the wall howling
with laughter, with some of the others joining in as they saw the
joke and others just staring at the rest of them as though
they’d all gone mad. "You know," he said finally, when
he could speak again. "You sound so much like your
grandmother."
"I’ll
take that as a compliment, thank you," Meg said waspishly,
making Daniel burst into giggles again.
"Yes, I think you might make it
work," he said thoughtfully. "You just might.”
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