In the End Read Free Page A

making him feel dizzy and lightheaded. He remembered the sizzling, scorching heat on his eyes, which had been so used to the dim, flickering light of Rielat, and he remembered a young lady, swathed in white, who couldn't see the crowd of Fallen on the steps of her temple, and who, standing a ways apart from the entourage, delighted over her basket of mewling, wriggling bits.
    The cat looked away, which broke the spell. The memory of brutal desert heat faded, and returning came the frigid line of rain dripping down Lucien's spine, returned was the thin, soaked shirt clinging to his shoulders, the gray sky pressing down on the world, the squelching shoes on his feet, the driving rain, and the curls sticking wetly to his cheek. He sniffled and missed the sun and the desert, then freed one hand from around the cat so he could rub at his pinking nose and uselessly flicked the hair from his eyes.
    “ I think I'll call you 'Antichrist',” he said to the cat, as pleased with the name as any child would be. The cat had given up with his struggling and simply glowered, so Lucien carted him up to the apartment.
    Unbeknown to Lucien, the next morning was the beginning of the First Day.
    ***
    He awoke the next morning, warm and dry, to the first of several strange and scientifically improbable news reports.
    Residents of the Florida Keys, some of whom in their entire lives had never gone further north than the Mason-Dixon Line, had seen the Northern Lights without having to leave their own tropical front lawns.
    “ Scientists are researching this phenomenon as we speak,” intoned the newscaster – who was not nearly as crush-worthy as the weatherperson – as Lucien looked on in disbelief. “As of yet, they are not sure of the case – possible explanations may include a shifting of the Earth's magnetic field.”
    The report continued with a few strained jokes from the newscasters and a geologist who, called in to consult, turned out to be less of an expert and more of a conspiracy theorist than the newscasters seemed entirely comfortable with.
    After the geologist had brought up the nationwide failure of compasses as his prime piece of evidence, Lucien said goodbye to Antichrist, ruffled his ears, and went out to see for himself.
    ***
    In a shop that sold devices of a nautical nature, including compasses, Lucien stared.
    They were all wrong. Every single one of them, from the heavy-duty, highly accurate compasses designed for large sailing vessels, to a few smaller, tourist-oriented numbers with tourist-oriented pictures of local attractions and landmarks and print along the bottom of trite, tourist-oriented expressions. And they were all wrong.
    What's more, none of them agreed on the wrongness. A few pointed west, a couple more danced between south and east, while most spun hazily this way and that, as if they'd just been shaken and hadn't reoriented themselves, and one or two stubbornly pointed towards Lucien, following him as he moved back and forth among the shelves.
    Someone wearing the store's uniform appeared, quite suddenly, at Lucien's elbow. “Weird, isn't it?” the young man said. His hair, Lucien noted with puzzlement, was unnaturally blond and spiky. Before the he had a chance to answer, the be-uniformed young man began talking once more, in a rambling, fast pace which was punctuated by regular pops as he snapped his gum. “The news said it was some sort of thing with the magnetic force of the earth and that's why the Northern Lights were all like, 'Woo, let's go to Florida!'” He paused just long enough to breathe and powered on. “Hey, did you ever think that the Northern Lights might be alien holographs or something? That would be so cool! But I guess we can't call them Northern Lights anymore because they aren't northern! Hey, do you want to buy a compass? They're acting funny.” He pointed.
    Lucien, vaguely intimidated by this torrent of words, shook his head. “I just wanted to see if it was true.”
    “