She smiled and said, “You sense what I am.” She touched my face with a tender caress as if we were lovers, and I guess we were for I’d felt her power many times in my life. “I was conceived when the first letters were formed, and I was born with the first written story. Each story and every word thereafter fed me power. I am connected to all the stories ever written, both books burned and the literature still with us. Everything written, emailed, each sent text message: all these things feed me.”
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Sophia,” she said. “I am the unified collection of human wisdom. I am story, but I am much more. Through me you create your gods, and through me your gods empower you. I exist outside the confines of physical reality, yet I create worlds for humanity through Story, and through my wisdom I make the world a better place through this physical manifestation I created for myself, what you call Destiny’s Price.”
“The Order of Chaos wants to destroy you,” I warned her.
She giggled.
“They worship me. I appear to them as I do to you and the Storytellers. I am two sides of the same coin. Watch!”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me into an embrace. The room disappeared, and the blue light we floated within turned black and murky. I looked out of Destiny’s Price—which I now knew was the globe—and I saw members of the Order of Chaos. They were people filled with evil and they had dark countenances. I saw Spenser among them—Simon had been wrong, for the Order had brought him back from the dead by rewriting his ending.
Sophia gestured and Spenser floated to us, passed through the orb, and he came inside Destiny’s Price. He glanced at me with narrowed eyes as we floated together. “Don’t be suspicious,” Sophia told him. “It is Ying and Yang. You are the darkness to Davie’s light, and you create the hell to counter his heaven. You bring chaos to topple his utopia.”
“Why?” he demanded in his gruff voice.
“For balance,” she replied.
Blue light flashed, and both Spenser and I flew from Sophia when he tried to strangle me. I felt another vibration, and Simon was thrown back where he’d been while I landed at Simon’s feet. The conical blue light faded, disappeared. I looked around and saw I wasn’t among the Order of Chaos, thank God—or I should say Sophia.
“What happened?” Simon asked as he helped me to my feet.
“I saw Spenser and he’s still alive,” I said. “And Sophia.”
“You saw her?” Simon asked amazed. “Not many Storytellers have seen her.”
“Spenser and I both did,” I said. “I have to write this down.”
He nodded and led me to a door. I found a kitchen on the other side where the rest of the Storytellers laughed and conversed. Sandwiches were on a counter, and they all held drinks. Simon led me up a flight of stairs beside the kitchen door. Down a corridor of doors, we stopped before a small room. Inside I saw bookshelves and a desk. On the desk was a computer.
Without a word I went and sat. I wrote what Sophia had told me. Then I wrote my own story—you’re almost done with it now. As a fellow Storyteller, I hope what you’ve read helps you in some fashion.
I know my story will make it into the hands of those who aren’t Storytellers (who do not have access to Destiny’s Price), but I think that is what Sophia wishes. You see, she wants us to know that we are all storytellers, and our lives are stories filled with chapters and sentences, and we write our stories through the things we do and say and think.
Is my story over?
As I finish this chapter of my life, I realize my Story is just beginning. It is in the process of being rewritten by my fellow Storytellers downstairs. Your life, too, has been rewritten many times. We are all Storytellers in our own right, editing, and rewriting our future by the actions and choices made today.
Keep on writing.
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