Finally

4 August, in the year of our Lord 2022

Up, but a very poor sleep and feeling a great ague come upon me, and when I rose, a chill that caused a little shiver when I went from a warm room to a cooler; so, though yet without cough, precautioned a Laterall Flough upon myself.
  Thus after these two and a half years in which I escaped it, though Lord knows how, did I confirm — finally! — that I have been brought low by the Covey plague. All day with neither energy nor motive, save to consult the magick screen for what is expected of a victim, which is to keep to my house for five days, as much as I am able, and report my result to the Gouvernement, if there is one these days. After a meagre dinner, lacking appetite, tried to write a little in my Journall, but found few words come, and they poor, so set it aside, which I have done more these past weeks, and all the rest of the day listless with a fever that come and went.
  And so to bed betimes, but the air hot and very stuffey, and restless with a fever and akeing in my arms and legs, and a horrible feeling in my head that I can not distinguish my true self from the storys my mind makes, so that it seems that though I have an awareness of my bed, and my arms, and my legs, I am somehow dreaming at the same time, with my identitie, my imagination and my memorys dissolving in the solvent of night.
  At one point in the darkness a feverish illusion takes me, that I am on the deck of a structure like the prow of a ship. I cannot see behind me, but before me is a meadow, and what seems to be a lake, and mountains, all in a fine sunshine. And in my hands I hold a strange object the size and shape of a letterbox, of a metal alloy, I think, set in a thick frame of wood, and along its length a sliding device that should move along a metal wyre from end to end, only it is all corroded so it must be forced if it moves at all; and in the rust at one end can be made out the embossed word Fiction, and at the other, Fact. But now the scenes switch at such a pace that in my Delirium I can barely keep up with my own mind. I seem to pass with the object in my hands through my kitchen, where rests by the sink my new novelty pie whistle, and out on to my lawn, and see beyond the little garden wall the same meadow where should be a flat, cropped field, and beyond that the same stretch of water I dreamed before, and beyond that the same mountains, and the sun hanging low in the sky as if it is late afternoon in a land I do not quite recognise, but which draws me toward it. And I turn to a companion who is waiting there, and feel with him the deepest bond I ever felt with any, though we say nothing to one another, and side by side we walk a while, till we find ourselfs at the waters edge, and we sit at the shoreline, where in the stillness and warmth we watch the sun lower itself into early evening. He takes the ancient object from me and examines it, and tries it to see if it will move for him, but finds it still jammed.
  ‘We have had a good couple of years, have we not, you and I?’ says he.
  ‘We have,’ say I. ‘You and I, and the Physician — ’
  ‘ — and Gerard Small — ’
  ‘ — and my mother and father — ’
  ‘ — and Banjo — ’
  ‘ — and Mr. M. Jones — ’
  ‘ — he most of all, I think, for he hath been a good sport — ’
  ‘ — and all the others, too many to list.’
  And we sit awhile in the stillness until he realises he hath something he should do, and says, ‘I have a gift for you, for your Journall hath given me new life and for that my gratitude is boundless. You will find it a model of its type, I think. I have read it voraciosely from cover to cover.’
  ‘Oh!’ say I, surprized and touched. ‘How kind you are. The Life of Thos. Cromwell by the Rev. D. MacCulloch.’
  There ensues a little more time for thought, and then —
  ‘Do you think we have said all there is to be said?’ says he.
  ‘There is always more to be said in the world, and no shortage of folk to say it. But I think I have wrote all I have to write.’
  ‘I know that feeling,’ says he, putting a hand gently upon my shoulder. ‘But do not worry. You have joyed my life.’
  ‘And you mine,’ say I.
  And then he hands back to me the rusted device. ‘Do you think each of us hath one of these?’
  I squint into the lowering sun. ‘I think we each have something akin to it, which we alter according to our needs, to make sense of the story of our lifes.’
  ‘If you have accomplished that, it is work well done.’
  ‘So speaks a master of the craft,’ say I.
  And there we pause until he breaks the silence with the one question that remayns.
  ‘What are you to do with it now?’
  And I think I know, and I think he knows what I think. I take my forefinger and idly circle a little hole in the sandy earth. ‘I am not sure what I shall do without you, Sam.’
  ‘You will do well,’ says he, smiling and squeezing my shoulder. ‘You have always done well. But this is yours, not mine, to do with as you wish.’
  ‘Well, it will either float by virtue of its wood or it will sink by dint of its metal,’ say I, as I weigh the ancient instrument in my hands, passing it back and forth from one to the other.
  So I stand, and I help him to his feet, and hold his hand in mine. And using my free hand as if preparing a flat stone to skim upon the water, I tense my muscles and release them like the string of a longbow, and send the little device spinning across the lake.
  But we cannot see if it hits the water for we are blinded by the reflection of the sun, and we cannot hear a splash for it flies too far.