Dexter had heard the words Rayburn had said to the World-builder. He knew the world he was a part of and the part he was written to hold.

Turning to face the tragic heroine, he spoke to her, and only her. "Whatever you were thinking, whatever you were about to think, stop. Your father brought you here knowing the price that needs to be paid. My advice, enjoy these last few minutes."

I stared at Dex's face, the thin line of his lips, the slight flair of his nostrils. I wanted to yell at him for being so casual. He was asking me to enjoy spending the last few minutes of my father's life.

Dex looked away, his sunken cheeks burning with the blush of his embarrassment. "I know it's a lot to ask of you," he whispered. The sand purposely avoided his words so they could find my ears.

There was nothing I could do. Memories of my father, of the times I'd watched him fail at gardening, the times he'd snuck me chocolates before dinner, the times he'd rescued me and told me he loved me before my bedtime, came into my head. At least I would still have the memories so I could treasure them, just like I always had.

"No," my father said. "The price here is not just death, it is my existence."

I furrowed my brow, weren't they one and the same?

"All of me," my father began, "My life and your memories of that life, will be erased. You will know not of who I was. Your sister, your mother, they will not remember, try as they might."

I had expended all my tears though now I wished I had more. Was this the only way? Could Gideon not be stopped--

"There is no other way," Crispen said in my ear. "To save the town, someone must be sacrificed to reverse time."

The scent of clove wafted off his clothes. I wished I could find comfort in such a thing as I normally would have, but nothing could provide me comfort.

Crispen grimaced. "To save many, sacrifice one," he spat. "An equation many use to justify someone's death in times like these. It's stupid how our world works sometimes."

I turned toward the boy who showed me he could do much. "What about you?" I asked. "You have magic to spare. You traverse the layers, manipulate the weather. Save my dad!" I yelled, clasping his shirt in between my fingers. His face remained close to mine, sand blurring his image. He stood next to me a watercolor of a person.

"Gideon's part of you," I said, my anger subsiding, my soul grasping onto the last straws of hope. "Can't you take him back? Bind him? Do anything--"

"Enough, Nep," my father spoke up. "My magic birthed Gideon. And only my magic will extinguish his life. I will not allow Crispen to be bound to any more chains than are already around his neck."

My father turned to face Dex. "Let's get this over with."

Dexter nodded.

With steady hands, my father removed Dex's aviator shades. The sand froze in mid-air. We all stood still, mesmerized by a pair of eyes most extraordinary.

Dex's left eye housed a universe, galaxies of cereluean and violet swirled around a golden iris. His pupil was a black hole that threatened to absorb the histories, the legends, the gods, into a never ending abyss.

His right eye was a crisp white, like that of snow freshly fallen and unsullied by man, interlocking cogs of brass circled a pupil made of a tiny red door. The clogs turned, clockwise and counterclockwise, ticks and tocks sounding as the cogs creaked.

Unlike the rest of him that presented itself weathered and old, his eyes were bright and striking, eternally youthful.

Staring into such eyes, I felt I was staring at everything. All the layers, all at once, sounds giving off colorful auras, colors giving us the tiniest sounds. The Shivering Tree had grown stories high and all of us were standing on a platform that kept us eye level with Dex. He had grown with the tree, though I hadn't noticed until now, his right eye in front of me, eclipsing my vision.

I could see each cog clearer now, each groove etched with a tiny number written in trembling cursive.

"They are the numbers of those who sought to change time," Crispen said. "They were erased though Dexter chose to remember. He has that ability though some might condemn it and call it a curse."

The captain gripped his sword, Chantham's claws dug into my arm, and Crispen clasped his hand around mine. Normally, his touch would send me into a panic of mind and body, but today, I couldn't have been more grateful to be surrounded by people that cared.

"It's time," Dex bellowed. His voice pierced my eardrums and made the platform quake. I freed my hand of Cripsen's grasp and hurried toward my father. I gripped his sweater tight, shaking my head.

Don't go.

Dexter's eye blinked, brown eyelashes fell around me, the power of which conjured up a furious wind that nearly knocked me on my bottom. As the eye reopened, the red door was there, larger. It stood open.

Was that all my father had to do? Walk through that door and disappear forever? I felt my body ready to collapse, felt the breath escape my lungs. I was dizzy and tired. My father held me up by my shoulders.

"Nep--"

I turned away. "There has to be another way. Don't just up and disappear on me."

My father shook his head and with a smile on his face, he tousled my hair.

"I'm sorry."

He released my shoulders, turned toward the door and started walking. His sweater slipped out of my fingers.

"Death took you from me once!" I screamed. "Don't let it do so again!"

My father stopped in his tracks, my words weaving their own magic that kept him bound. He turned around, tears in his eyes.

"Nep." His arms were outstretched. I ran to him, threw myself into his chest. He wrapped me up in his warmth.

"Nep," he began, his voice cracking. I felt his tears fall onto my neck.

"Squirm." He cooed a nickname for me he hadn't said in ages. I felt my heart break. 

"Death didn't keep us apart," he said. "My life did. And when I die-- when I am erased-- I'll finally be where I should have been for all those years. By your side. By Carmichelle. By my kind chocolate lady's side. I'll be free, and able to love you all the way that I always have. Trust me, I'll find a way to conquer oblivion."

As the last of his words fell from his mouth, he gave my forehead a kiss.

"I've asked Dex to do me a favor," he whispered in my ear as he squeezed me against him. This was the last of his hugs I would ever know. "You'll forget me but keep your notebook. Always write, always create. The layers need the purple that only you can wield."

My father let me go, a smile on his face. He waved to the others and moved toward the door. I slumped to the ground.

My reserves were full again, and the dam having been completely destroyed, overflowed, and I began to cry. As I cupped my face in my shaking hands, shielding myself from the moment my father would fade behind the door, I felt a pair of eyes glaring at me, burning into my back.

I heard a sigh and then I heard the heavy footfalls of someone walking. I looked up to see Captain Stormholden moving across the platform, toward the door, toward my father.

His hand was wrapped around the hilt of his sword, the other balled into a fist at his side. His eyes looked weary but fierce and they did not waver from the door.

I'd know that countenance anywhere. He was certain about something, a decision made up in his mind about a course he'd decided to take.

"Captain?" my father said, his wet eyes wide, his brow arched.

Stormholden remained silent as he reached up and grabbed my father's shoulders whipping him away from the door.

"What do you mean by this?"

Stormholden looked my father up and down, then the door, before he turned to face me.

"You are a cruel lass," he said at once, his attention hinged on me. I couldn't disagree. "You've taken everything from me and I'd imagine if Gideon hadn't taken me from you, you would have found ways to take more."

His shoulders slumped as he turned back and faced the door. "Nothing I've done has ever been my own."

He looked toward my father and nodded. "I'll go."

His words had me on my feet and rushing to his side. I grabbed the billowy fabric of the captain's stained tunic.

"You can't!" I yelled. "No one should have to die."

The captain shooed away my touch. He stepped toward the door. "I agree there. No one should have to die. Matilda shouldn't have had to die."

A knot of guilt rose in my throat as my cheeks flushed with shame. He got me there.

"But people die. As I'm to understand it, it is an inevitability of your world and of mine."

He undid the buckle of his belt and thrust his sword and sheath into my arms.

"I was never real," he said, sadness swelling in his eyes. "Matilda was never real." He stumbled over her name and took another step closer to the door. I gulped.

"I am now, Gideon made sure of that. Let me go in Rayburn's place." These last words the captain directed at Dex. I saw the man's eye go wide, the cogs turning slightly. Dex blinked.

My father looked toward Dex unsure. He hadn't forseen the captain's sacrifice; he'd thought for sure that today he would die.

Scratching his chin, he asked, "Is this even allowed?"

Dex's eye blinked again.

"If you prick him, he bleeds yes? A written man given his coloring and made flesh certainly counts."

"It's settled then," Stormholden said, eyeing the door not with fear, but with relief. He turned to address my father. "A child needs their father just as much as a father needs his children. Protect your daughter, Rayburn. And stop Gideon."

Then Stormholden turned toward me and flashed me that crooked smile I had given him. There was no venom, no hatred.

"And you, creator. You will forget me but I'm told you like to weave stories," he looked at my father who must have told him about me, "The next story you write, be sure to pen a different man, a better man, who's able to protect the people he loves the most."

I stared at his smile, the handsomest one I'd ever seen, one I couldn't possibly write, and watched in silence as that smile disappeared into the darkness. As the man, whose story I'd told over a decade, the man I'd fawned and obsessed over, vanished with the blink of Dex's eye.

A white light engulfed the rest of us left on the platform and I could feel the captain being erased from my mind. The last thought I had before I lost consciousness was one I had in vain, but I was hopeful to the end and I couldn't help myself:

I'll never forget you. I'll never forget your sacrifice.

****

"We are one sea, born from the waves and swaddled in seafoam, and when we die, we are returned, made one with the child of Neptune. May you continue to weather your storm. May you find the treasure you seek."

-For Ire Stormholden, Captain of The Dauntless Mistress