You by Austin Grossman Page B

great, tangled, supremely lazy serpent that had fallen asleep and would never rise again. He could see the stars. He was probably, literally, farther off the ground than he had ever been in his life. At the back of that labyrinth was his future, the college he’d go to if he could afford to, the faces of the friends he’d make, a made-up world where people would be glad to see him every day—everything that would happen to him when he left Newton. He tried to picture it and couldn’t. Something would come along—he’d take up smoking or learn a foreign language—and it would make him a new person. Or would it? All he could see from here was a kind of tunneling into himself, an excavation of more and more chambers full of skeletons and gold and magic, lands of kings and queens and monsters. It was the thing he was good at, and what was to stop him doing it the rest of his life?
    He was less popular than ever, but he’d also discovered a fact even Darren hadn’t, which was that they were not the only ones playing
Realms
. There were about thirty players now from around the school, and together they’d played more than a thousand times. They weren’t just making
Realms
for themselves now; other people believed and other people cared. That was going to matter.
    I saw Simon, leaving, which I remember distinctly, even though it was the first night I ever drank enough to throw up, and it may have been the night of my first kiss—I never quite got it straight. But I remember that Simon walked off and got on his bike without talkingto any of us, seemingly immune to the lure of alcohol and the glamour of a Friday night party. He biked home in the warm air with his Walkman on, listening to the Violent Femmes on cassette, which he listened to every single day.
    In the dawn of time, way back in what Simon called the Prime Age, the great Powers of the World came together and created Endoria. They were a multitude—the Power of Fire and the Power of Earth, the Power of Lightning, the Powers of Mercy, of Calculus, and Last Resorts. They made the world and its many wonders and riches, working alone or in combination. Just before they left they made the Firstcomers, a mighty race of humans whose wondrous works fell scarcely short of the deeds of the Powers themselves. So began the First Age, with generosity and measureless hope, but that’s not how it ended.
    It ended with a little boy. This little boy lived in the great palace Chorn, at the heart of the nation of Hyperborea, built on a mountain atop the remnants of an old palace, where they say the twin Powers of Memory and of Change once lived.
    The boy’s father was dead, but the boy was too young to take the throne. His mother ruled as regent, so in the afternoons the prince played idly in a walled garden at the heart of the palace with Zara, daughter of the castle blacksmith. His mother soon married again, to a much younger man who despised the young prince. To be fair, he didn’t look like much of a prince, just a boy dressed in a set of cut-down royal robes.
    One day his mother came to him and explained that he would have to leave. His stepfather could no longer stand the sight of him, and wished to put his own son in his place. The following day he was to be sent away to a castle on a far coast.
    But that night, in the single bravest act of his life up to that point, Adric ran away. He found his way by moonlight down the mountain and rested among the rocks by the side of the road while his stepfather’s men searched.
    Where Adric went next no one knew. Some say he became a bandit and assassin; some say a wizard; some say a simple fisherman who married and had many children.
    Adric’s stepfather was the one who stole the Hyperborean Crown, a simple silver circlet with a huge emerald set in it, and sold it to a dark Power who lived under the mountain. The crown dated from the time of the first Powers, and no one knew what its significance might be.
    Not long afterward