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‘Astonishing,’ said Farfal.
‘It matters not that the sun has gone out, that in a matter of hours, or at most weeks, all life on Earth will be dead, for here and at this time I am Balthasar the Ca
‘Your servant?’ said Farfal the Unfortunate. ‘Why can I not be your son?’
‘For various reasons,’ stated his father, ‘too trivial and minor even to warrant discussion at this time.’ He hung the black box from a nail in the corner of the room. Farfal thought he saw a leg or head, as if of some beetle-like creature, waving at him from inside the little box, but he did not pause to inspect it. ‘Also because I have a number of sons in this time, that I have fathered upon my concubines, and they might not be pleased to learn of another. Although, given the disparity in the dates of your birth, it would be over a million years before you could inherit any wealth.’
‘There is wealth?’ asked Farfal, looking at the room he was in with fresh eyes. He had spent his life in a one-roomed cottage at the end of time, at the bottom of a small hill, surviving on the food his father could net in the air – usually only seabirds or flying lizards, although on occasion other things had been caught in the nets: creatures who claimed to be angels, or great self-important cockroach-like things with high metal crowns, or huge bronze-coloured jellies. They would be taken from the netting, and then either thrown back into the air, or eaten, or traded with the few folk that passed that way.
His father smirked and stroked his impressive white beard like a man petting an animal. ‘Wealth indeed,’ he said. ‘There is much call in these times for pebbles and small rocks from the End of the Earth: there are spells, cantrips, and magical instruments for which they are almost irreplaceable. And I deal in such things.’
Farfal the Unfortunate nodded. ‘And if I do not wish to be a servant,’ he said, ‘but simply request to be returned to where we came from, through that casement, why, what then?’
Balthasar the Tardy said only, ‘I have little patience for such questions. The sun has gone out. In hours, perhaps minutes, the world will have ended. Perhaps the universe also has ended. Think no more on these matters. Instead, I shall procure a locking-spell creature for the casement, down at the ship market. And while I go to do that, you can order and polish all the objects you can see in this cabinet, taking care not to put your fingers directly upon the green flute (for it will give you music, but replace contentment in your soul with an insatiable longing) nor get the onyx bogadil wet.’ He patted his son’s hand affectionately, a glorious, resplendent creature in his many-coloured silks. ‘I have spared you from death, my boy,’ he said. ‘I have brought you back in time to a new life. What should it matter that in this life you are not son but servant? Life is life, and it is infinitely better than the alternative, or so we presume, for nobody returns to dispute it. Such is my motto.’
So saying he fumbled beneath the casement, and produced a grey rag, which he handed to Farfal. ‘Here. To work! Do a good job and I shall show you by how much the sumptuous feasts of antiquity are an improvement over smoked seabird and pickled ossaker root. Do not, under any circumstances or provocation, move the casement. Its position is precisely calibrated. Move it, and it could open to anywhere.’
He covered the casement with a piece of woven cloth, which made it appear less remarkable that a large wooden casement was standing, unsupported, in the centre of a room.
Balthasar the Tardy left that room through a door that Farfal had not previously observed. Bolts were slammed closed. Farfal picked up his rag, and began, wanly, to dust and to polish.
After several hours he observed a light coming through the casement, so brightly as to penetrate the cloth covering, but it soon faded once more.
Farfal was introduced to the household of Balthasar the Ca
The maidmen resented Farfal, with his pale skin, for he was the only one apart from their master permitted in the Sanctum Sanctorum, Master Balthasar’s room of wonders, a place to which Master Balthasar had hitherto only repaired alone.
And so the days went by, and the weeks, and Farfal ceased to marvel at the bright orange-red sun, so huge and remarkable, or at the colours of the daytime sky (predominantly salmon and mauve), or at the ships that would arrive in the ship-market from distant worlds bearing their cargo of wonders.
Farfal was miserable, even when surrounded by marvels, even in a forgotten age, even in a world filled with miracles. He said as much to Balthasar the next time the merchant came in the door to the sanctum. ‘This is unfair.’
‘Unfair?’
‘That I clean and polish the wonders and precious things, while you and your other sons attend feasts and parties and banquets and meet people and otherwise and altogether enjoy living here at the dawn of time.’
Balthasar said, ‘The youngest son may not always enjoy the privileges of his elder brothers, and they are all older than you.’
‘The red-haired one is but fifteen, the dark-ski
‘They are older than you by more than a million years,’ said his father. ‘I will hear no more of this nonsense.’
Farfal the Unfortunate bit his lower lip to keep from replying.
It was at that moment that there was a commotion in the courtyard, as if a great door had been broken open, and the cries of animals and house-birds arose. Farfal ran to the tiny window and looked out. ‘There are men,’ he said. ‘I can see the light glinting on their weapons.’
His father seemed unsurprised. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Now, I have a task for you, Farfal. Due to some erroneous optimism on my part, we are almost out of the stones upon which my wealth is founded, and I have the indignity of discovering myself to be overcommitted at present. Thus it is necessary for you and I to return to our old home and gather what we can. It will be safer if there are two of us. And time is of the essence.’
‘I will help you,’ said Farfal, ‘if you will agree to treat me better in the future.’
From the courtyard there came a cry. ‘Balthasar? Wretch! Cheat! Liar! Where are my thirty stones?’ The voice was deep and penetrating.
‘I shall treat you much better in the future,’ said his father. ‘I swear it.’ He walked to the casement, pulled off the cloth. There was no light to be seen through it, nothing inside the wooden casing but a deep and formless blackness.
‘Perhaps the world has entirely ended,’ said Farfal, ‘and now there is nothing but nothing.’
‘Only a handful of seconds have passed there since we came through it,’ his father told him. ‘That is the nature of time. It flows faster when it is younger and the course is narrower: at the end of all things time has spread and slowed, like oil spilled on a still pond.’
Then he removed the sluggish spell-creature he had placed on the casement as a lock, and he pushed against the i
‘We all go to our deaths,’ said his father. ‘And yet, here you are, a million years before your birth, still alive. Truly we are all composed of miracles. Now, son, here is a bag, which, as you will soon discover, has been imbued with Swa