If what Bruce was saying hadn't been matching up perfectly with everything he had experienced on this weird night, Carlos would have thrown the author out the door he had come in by, and let the monster out there have its way with its creator. But being the only one in the group who had physically touched the thing, and had also experienced Bruce's rambling, borderline-psychotic -- but equally accurate -- description of its makeup and powers, he had no choice but to believe everything the crazed man was saying.
Bruce's revelations came fast: in the book, the "Qoloni" -- a play on words, because the thing really was a sentient, bipedal "colony" of much smaller things -- was the manifestation of the fears and insecurities of the young woman it was pursuing. The connection with mirrors, then, was a necessary narrative association. Princess Ynarra saw her own imperfections when she looked into the mirrors in what would soon become her bridal suite, if the prince of the castle chose her as the one he wished to marry. Because he was royalty, the reflections were of a quality she had never experienced before, and her own faithful image messed with her head. It was her lack of faith in her own inner power that caused those thoughts to become the creature they had all seen and been chased by.
Of course, all this exposition was densely couched in Bruce's ramblings. Carlos knew the man had been coming to the Deertail for years but had never met him before, and so was unable to tell if what that author had been through had changed his mental state at all; for all Carlos knew, Bruce had always been like this. To be honest, the effect was so off-putting that Carlos kind of zoned out for a little while, even though he knew he shouldn't have. Bruce was trying to explain, by yet another slightly different method, how the fruit he had seen in his dream-orchard had represented the little sub-world that the present group found themselves spun off into. Something about the confluence of coincidences has caused this little area of the world to split off into a looped, bounded mini-universe. Or something like that.
The point was, Bruce seemed positive that they could get themselves back into the main stream of space and time if they could destroy the Qoloni... by his reckoning, once the thing they had created with their collective imaginations was destroyed, normalcy should return. "It's like, the Qoloni is the stem," he was currently blathering, "the stem that holds this poisoned fruit we're in, to the tree! If we sever that connection--" and here, he used his hand as a samurai sword, bringing it straight down to bisect some unseen foe, "--we'll be free!"
Carlos looked uncertainly around at the others, and then said, "What if the fruit just falls from the tree?"
The author whirled around, so fast that he almost lost his balance. "What's that?"
Carlos twisted his neck to crack it, then sighed. "If we're the fruit, then won't separating it from the tree just imprison us here, with it?" He spread his arms out to encompass the tiny universe he believed more and more that they were in.
Bruce didn't seem to be able to track what he was saying. "No, you don't see... We're still a part of the tree, but *it* isn't. It's something else entirely. It's the personification of internal fears, can you not see that? It's... when the..." Bruce's words began to come too fast, piling over themselves in the rush to get out of his mouth.
Suddenly, Manoj spoke. They were the first words of his own that anyone could remember speaking since they re-entered the building. "I think I understand," he said. He waited a long moment while everyone turned to him, and Kelly's grip on his arm visibly tightened. "It has to go back where it came from," Manoj said. "Even if we don't understand exactly what it is or why it does what it does, that part makes sense. It was called forth from a mirror, and must be put back where it was."
No one moved, waiting to see if there was more, and after seeming to think about it for a long time, Manoj continued, "That's what Harmon was saying." He gestured down to Kerren, lying on the floor. "He's talking with... Benny, I think his name is?" He waited for an affirming, if shocked, nod from Carlos, then went on. "They've both read your book, Bruce, and they think they've figured it out. The thing has to be put back into a mirror, apparently."
Bruce looked stupefied. "Figured it out? But that's not what happens in the book. When I wrote it, I never destroyed the creature... the princess escaped, and rescued the prince. It was meant to be a twist on the usual fairy tale ending, although looking back I now have to admit that it's equally as trite. But... putting the Qoloni *back* into a mirror?"
The author began to walk back and forth, hunching forward and clasping his hands behind his back, suddenly seeming to have the clarity of thought you might see in a philosophy professor given a juicy ethical dilemma. Manoj spoke to him as he continued to pace, "They say it's the logical endpoint, if you look past the one you actually wrote. In saving both herself and the prince, Ynarra effectively left her fears behind her..."
Bruce abruptly walking and looked up at the man, thunderstruck. "Instead of putting them back where they came from! Of course..." he gasped. "Their way makes so much more sense. I was so out of my mind when I wrote it, I was just trying to make a resolution to the story that no one would see coming. But the elements were all there. Why didn't I see them?"
"Wait a minute," Carlos said, jumping in and turning to Manoj. "Did you say that *they* figured out what the book's ending should have been? You mean Harmon *and* Benny? Benny's okay?"
A puzzled look crossed Manoj's face. "I don't know. It was Harmon speaking for them both. But there was something strange in the feeling I got when he mentioned Benny, this implied silence..."
Before Carlos could question further, Bruce spoke again. "Do you think... maybe the fact that I didn't see the ending correctly, and that others did... gives potency to the story itself?" He seemed to be starting to ramble to himself again. "That the ability of our combined imaginations to conjure it forth was magnified because I took the story somewhere other than the way it naturally wanted to go?" He took a long look at the woman lying wrapped on the floor. Kerren looked exhausted despite her immobilization, and turned her tired eyes to meet the gaze of the shuffling author.
"What do you think, dear? It was your mother that inspired the story in the first place. Consider this -- there are two people here, myself and Mr. Gough, the Lodge director, who have had dreamworld visions of her. I wrote the story after meeting her, and at least two others here have read my words. Quite a confluence, wouldn't you say? My God, you look so much like her. Is your presence here enough to cause this? Or is it everything, all these elements all at once, that has brought us to this?"
There was no answer that anyone could provide, for one reason or another. Carlos looked to each of them in turn, trying to figure out where he fit into this group. He had never read this book that some of them had, nor did he have any interest in Bruce Casey, or relation to his muse. Was he the only one who had no idea why he had been chosen to stay behind in this place?
Carlos immediately began to look around, breaking the stalemate. "Are there any mirrors in here? Anything we can use?"
This seemed to galvanize the room's occupants, and the ones who were able to started combing the two supply rooms for the Lodge's stash of reflective materials. Carlos called out to Dale, who was simply wandering with Glenda in his arms, casting his eyes over the myriad shelves, "Dale, the mirrors in the rooms must get broken every once in a while. Any idea where they keep the replacements?"
The security guard's voice came back hollow. "I don't know. It's been years. Last time, it was a fight between a couple, something got thrown. I think we had to special order a new mirror at the time. And I remember it took a whole crew to get the old one down and the new one in place. They're fastened down pretty securely."
"So we can't just dash into one of the rooms and grab one," Carlos muttered as he continued his search. "Great." For some reason, when Manoj and Bruce had been discussing the prospect of using a mirror to banish the dark Qoloni, the thought had entered his mind as something that should be easy to accomplish. But why had he thought that? There were no mirrors here, and getting one out of the rooms wasn't something he had considered. So why had he...?
Realization crashed against his mind. "In the hallway!" he blurted out, causing heads in both rooms to turn his way. "The big sunburst mirror at the top of the stairs! It comes off. I almost knocked it down when I grabbed the vases to throw at that thing!"
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