The First Dragon(86)

“You realize,” Madoc said as they stepped off the new boat Shakespeare had built to be pulled by the flying goats, “the last time all four of us were together was here, on this island.”

“So many graves here,” Madoc said. In addition to Captain Nemo and Artus, they had also added markers for Kipling, Tummeler, and Samaranth. “It’s a good place to think about the future. A good place to remember the good choices, and the bad ones.”

“It’s easy to see the good and bad in others,” said Jack. “It’s much harder to see it in ourselves.”

“Is it?” asked Madoc.

“You knew about me,” Jack said. “When we first met, all those years ago, when I was still a child, you knew. You saw the shadow-side I didn’t even know I possessed.”

“I was a different man then—” Madoc began, before Jack cut him off.

“You keep saying that,” the Caretaker told him, “but that’s not actually true. You are the same man, Madoc—you’ve just been Named differently. Sometimes of your own volition. Sometimes by others. But still the same man.

“When I was young, and brash, and full of good trouble,” Jack went on, “you saw the potential in me to have a darker side. That was very difficult to accept. But when I finally did, I was able to do things others could not. I was able to restore a Shadowed Archipelago not because of my purity, but because I had faced my own shadows—and accepted them. That’s all I did when I faced my shadow-self here on Terminus. And if it hadn’t been for the lessons you taught me all those years ago, I never would have been able to do it.”

“We wanted to bring you here,” Charles said, “to tell you about the new History I’ve just begun. It’s a history that starts here, today, with the four of us—just the way the last one ended.”

“That one was a prophecy, though,” said Madoc. “It was all about the things that happened—the things I caused to happen—that only the three of you were able to stop.”

“This one is going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, then,” said John. “It’s going to project all the things we want to have happen, and will make happen, because we choose for them to happen.”

“Yes?” Madoc said. “And what are you going to call this work of fiction-made-real?”

“Rose suggested the name. We’re going to call it The Reign of the Summer King,” John said as the three men put their hands atop one another in front of him. “May you live forever, Madoc. Forever.”