Sunlight winked through the tall pines, casting long shadows on the lawn in front of the library. It was late now, but the boys were still out, playing in the woods that covered the south end of the island. Catherine, standing on the porch, listened a moment, hearing their distant shouts, then shaded her eyes.

“Can you see them?” Atrus asked, stepping out from the library, his pale eyes squinting in the sunlight.

She turned, the hem of her dark green dress flowing over the polished boards.

“Don’t worry so,” she said, her green eyes smiling back at him. “Anna’s with them. They’ll be in before it’s dark.”

He smiled, then came across and placed his arms about her.

“Have you finished yet?” she asked softly, wrapping her own arms about him and pulling him closer.

“No…” Agrus sighed wearily. “I’m close though.”

“Good.”

He kissed her gently, then, releasing her, went back inside, taking his seat at the desk that he’d made for himself. For a moment or two he looked out through the brightly-lit rectangle of the doorway at Catherine, drinking in the simple sight of her, then, taking his pen, he looked back at his journal and began to write:

It is strange now to conceive that I could have doubted her, even for a second, and yet in that moment when my father surprised me in the cave, I was certain beyond all doubt that she had betrayed me. Certain, yes, and at the same time heartbroken, for I had transferred to her person all of that love, all of that natural affection that my father had so unnaturally rejected. Love given freely and without hope of repayment. Yet how was I to know how kind, yes, and how cunning, too, my Catherine could be. My savior, my partner, yes, and now my wife.

Atrus paused, recalling the shock he’d felt, that moment when Catherine had revealed to him that Anna was behind it all; the feeling, the overwhelming feeling he’d had, of having stepped into one of Catherine’s dream worlds. But it had been true. Without Anna’s forethought he would have been trapped on Riven still. That was, if Gehn had let him live, after what he’d done. He dipped the pen and wrote again:

Only a remarkable woman would have done what Anna did, following us down through that labyrinth of tunnels and broken ways, into D’ni. She had known, of course, that Gehn would not keep his word. Had known what I, in my innocence, could not have guessed—that my father was not merely untrustworthy, but mad. All those years I spent on K’veer she had kept a distant eye on me, making sure I came to no harm at my father’s hands, while she awaited the moment of my realization.

Atrus looked up, remembering that moment; feeling once more the weight of his disillusion with his father. Such things, he knew now, could not be passed on like other things, they had to be experienced. A parent—a good parent, that is—had to let go at some point, to let their children make choices, for choices were part of the Maker’s scheme, as surely as all the rest. He dipped the pen then wrote again, faster now, the words spilling from him:

Anna saw me flee K’veer and sought to find me in the tunnels once again, but Gehn had got there first. Even then she would have intervened, but for the mute. Seeing them carry me back, unconscious, to K’veer, she had known she had to act. That evening she had gone to K’veer and, risking all, had entered my father’s study, meaning to confront him. But Gehn was not there. It was Catherine she met. Catherine who, after that first moment of shock and surprise, had chosen to trust and help her.

So it was that Catherine had known me even before she met me in the hut on Riven; like an Age one has first read in a descriptive book and then subsequently linked to.

I should have known at once that Myst was not Catherine’s. But how was I to know otherwise? I had thought Anna lost. Lost forever.

And how was I to know that, just as I made my preparations, so the two of them made theirs, pooling their talents—Anna’s experience and Catherine’s intuitive genius—to craft those seemingly cataclysmic events on Age Five, in such a way that after a time they would reverse themselves, making Catherine’s former home, now Gehn’s prison, stable once more.

…And the Myst book?

Briefly he looked about him at the room he’d made, pleased by his efforts, then, picking up his pen again, he began to write, setting down the final words. The ending that was not a final ending:

I realized the moment I fell into the fissure that the book would not be destroyed as I had planned. It continued falling into that starry expanse, of which I had only a fleeting glimpse. I have tried to speculate where it might have landed, but I must admit that such conjecture is futile. Still, questions about whose hands might one day hold my Myst book are unsettling to me. I know my apprehensions might never be allayed, and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written.

MYST

THE BOOK OF TI’ANA

RAND MILLER

with david wingrove