Adam? Adam, are you there? Little one?


Salut, Charles!


Otto! I can’t believe it! I heard you in my dreams, calling me. How have you been, dear child?


I’ve been here with you all the way, so you should ask yourself that question! Look at us, writing in English! You must be a true American now.


I’m as French as rebellion, you little weasel! Come out so I can lift you up and mess your hair.


I can’t!


Why ever not, rascal?


I’m trapped in the little book, you oaf! Didn’t you ever learn to read?


Well then, how do I free you?


Same as anyone ends any curse. You have to end the line!


And how do you suppose I do that?


You were so close to the answer. So close! I could almost rip my hair out seeing you cut Mauve’s thought off, in her own house! It’s Marcel! Marcel dragged me from the fire with his bare hands. He’s the one who found the book.


Ashcroft found the book before either of you. By that logic the curse should have come to him next.


Yet it didn’t. The curse went to me and it killed me, the next Otto in the line. Maman could have named me anything! Oh, well. And don’t tell me you haven’t deduced it yet, oh, wise one. The answer is right in front of your face! You’re not cursed, you never have been, for your name isn’t Otto! The same can be said of John Ashcroft. The powers the two of you have faced are residual, indirect drips from proximity. The curse is affecting one person far more than anyone else, the man who cared most about the French cause, about civilized peace and culture, both of which have been destroyed. That man is Otto Marcel Launois.


His name is Otto, too?


I thought it, at best, confusing to add a fourth Otto into my entries, but evidently it’s had the opposite effect. Yes, the curse is on Marcel now, and as long as he lives, or dies while the book can be found by another Otto, the curse survives. You must find him and help him hide, help him die in a place they’ll never find him or the book ever again.


Where is he?


Where else would he be? New York. He escaped there and hasn’t left.


New York. Here, at the end of days, back into the stomach of the whale.


You poets sicken me. Now, of all times, you choose to wax poetic to the wishes of your own brother! Ha!


Bavarian?


Yes, and if you’re polite I might allow you insight on how to get to New York, if you so choose to listen to the lowly German. Spycraft is my specialty.


Even in death your arrogance persists.


Well said, Adam! There comes a time in any German’s life, or death, when arrogance morphs into simple truth. How couldn’t I be arrogant after having named you myself? Still, they call you Adam!


There will be plenty of time to argue on the way to New York. First I need someone to tell me the best path to take, preferably one that avoids certain death. Does any such path exist?


Take the train, Frenchman! You will be in New York within the week!


I can’t say my prejudice against trains will be of much use to you, though I’m not the one traveling this time. As funny as it sounds, the Bavarian might have the right of it this time. The train is the best way.


But how can I be sure Ashcroft isn’t monitoring the railroads?


You replaced our name, Charles, but it won’t be enough. Ashcroft has all the resources of Europe at his whim now, and he’s using them all to find the book. There will be a blue coat on every train, every compartment. Who’s to say the conductors aren’t working for him? The directors? The president? No, you’ll have to find another way. Are there horses in Salinas? Any good French horses?


I’m sure the Duvals can spare one.


Good, by horse it is!


Right. I’ll slip through unseen, all the way to New York. I have a question, good men, one which will inevitably influence the rest of our mission. Why haven’t you written to me until now? Has something stopped you?


We tried, tirelessly tried. Every time you pleaded to me, or to your brother, we were there with you. I don’t know what has changed to allow us in your dreams and in your pen, so I can’t be sure when you’ll hear from us again.


Then we’ll have to make this one count. Tell me, where are you now, here as you write with me? Can you see the world around the diary? Can you see what’s happening, or only the words on the page?


You ask the wrong questions, my friend. We’ve been taken out of the illusion. Bear with me, Charles, as I explain. The world you see is a close up of a painting, a painting we’ve all painted for ourselves as our own entertainment. Our whole lives we hold our head still, keeping our sights focused on the painting until we forget how to look away, then we forget why we would want to look away at all. We forget the cycle. This is why children are born crying, they still remember what it is to be grown. Even now you stare into it, this painting, unable to remember when or where you created the character Charles Duval, how you decided how he might look at it, how he might interpret it. All that’s changed for us is that we’ve moved our heads slightly to the left. We see the world outside the painting and now we cannot interpret it anymore. This journal is as simple an object as there ever was. I write now upon the unpainted margins of the canvas where you can’t see and the journal tilts your head an inch to the left, just enough to read it, but never enough to break the illusion. We are you. You are us. Do you understand? We are one.


Then I speak now to one being pretending to be three.


You speak to yourself no longer pretending to be two, or three, or four. You write an apt metaphor, the one about the man and the body. The body - the character Charles Duval - remains, while you return home. You see the borders of the painting wobble in the corners of your eye, but you go back to the illusion without the memory. The game is too fun to spoil, Charles, but some things are more important than the game.


You’re talking about Isha. What is she, if not us?


There are no words for it. We designed the game that way, so that anything outside it cannot be described without it, not properly. Let you be satisfied with this: There are outsiders. Most don’t care for the game but don’t interfere for lack of interest. Isha is the one who seeks to end it. We’d hoped there were a better way, a path inside the game without the need to reach inside. That time has passed. This is the only way. We are alone, but we have one advantage.


What is it?


Isha doesn’t know we know. She can’t interpret the painting as we can, so she cannot see that we, as Charles Duval, know the game from inside it. The man must stay in the body at all costs. We cannot risk her finding us out. Do you understand?


Yes.


Good. We must go now. Travel by horse to New York. Find Marcel, wherever he may be, and avoid the blue coats. They are not us. Charles?


Yes?


You are our favorite. Good luck.