Impossible Creatures

The dryads all donate a branch, and Erato uses the branches to light a fire and heat the potion of remembering. Mal drinks the potion and becomes so sick that she vomits multiple times. She then drops into a fitful sleep, and Erato tells Christopher to watch over Mal. He embraces his role of guardian, understanding that his ancestral calling has ignited a “burning to keep watch, for that which need[s] to be watched. It mean[s] burning to keep it safe. It mean[s] a ferocious and careful love” (282-83). Christopher holds a careful vigil all night. When Mal wakes, she speaks in a stream of multiple languages and then settles back into speaking English. She repeats a series of directions—the ones that will get her safely through the maze. However, when it is time to seek out the maze, she cannot walk, and Christopher begins to carry her without hesitation.

Jacques is waiting for them at the Ever Onward. When he realizes that Christopher intends to carry Mal through the maze, he warns him that no mortal man has ever managed to survive the maze. Christopher insists that he must accompany Mal because everything, including his own world and his own family, is under threat if Mal fails. Jacques tells them that the boat can sail wherever it is told to because it is made of dryad wood, so Christopher tells the boat to sail to the maze, which is located on the island of Arkhe. The two children rest briefly beside each other, and Christopher reflects on the fact that the two of them are the only ones who can protect every living thing and place in the world. When they reach the cave that marks the entrance to the maze, Mal is able to walk with great difficulty and pain. Christopher links her to him with a rope.

They enter the maze, which has lights but is also riddled with deadly traps such as poisoned arrows. Mal uses her newly rediscovered Immortal memories to help them navigate the maze. They come to a great chasm, a hole that Sforza enlarged after he passed by it on his way to the heart of the maze. Mal’s legs are too weak to allow her to navigate the narrow ledge on the lip of the chasm, so Christopher insists that he will go forward into the maze himself, disregarding Jacques’s warning that no mortal man can go through the maze and return. Christopher knows the way by heart because he has listened closely to Mal’s repetitions of the directions. He almost falls into the darkness at one point and has to use the rope to traverse the last of the chasm when the ledge suddenly ends. He then comes to a dark, damp place of mist and stops momentarily.

The gray mist saps Christopher’s goodness and hope, and the feeling intensifies with every moment that he continues moving through the maze in the darkness. He even comes to believe what the man in the maze told Adam Kavil: the idea that hope is a useless sentiment of the powerless. Succumbing to the gray mist, Christopher finds himself caring about nothing and sees all things as being equally unimportant. Despite this creeping, invasive sense of indifference, he manages to continue following the directions that he learned from Mal. At one point, an animal attacks him, and he stabs it. The charge from the fight gives him the strength to carry on, and he finally reaches the heart of the maze.

Christopher discovers that Sforza has grafted himself onto the Glimourie Tree. The man cannot resist telling Christopher about how he found the tree and about his plans for the glimourie that he is consuming. Sforza located the tree because he found plans that Enzo da Vinci saved before taking the potion of forgetting—the one that was supposed to erase all traces of the work that he and his brother Leonardo did in building the maze. Enzo was jealous of his brother, who got all the acclaim for their work. Although the effects of the potion made it so that Enzo had no idea what the plans meant, he kept them, nonetheless. Many generations later, his descendant, Francesco Sforza, found the plans and decided to take the power of the Glimourie Tree for himself.

Now, Sforza emphasizes that he alone took the steps to find and take the tree, justifying his actions by stating that taking all the glimourie “is freedom. The only freedom is in absolute power. Without absolute power, you will always be subject to some other man. Freedom is available only to those who are willing to take it by force” (305). Christopher attacks Sforza with his blade, but this only angers Sforza, who pounds at the boy with the branches of the tree. Suddenly, Mal arrives, having flown over the chasm using her flying coat. She tosses the glamry blade to Christopher, who uses it to stab Sforza. They cut Sforza away from the tree and take him out of the maze.

They tie Sforza to a tree and rest. Christopher asks Mal to tell him what she has seen now that she is the Immortal. She explains that she now knows why Marik, the Man Who Said No, refused to be the Immortal any longer. She has seen the widespread ignorance, abuse of power, and darkness of humanity, and she is now keenly aware of the countless deaths that humans have caused. However, she has also seen beauty, love, generosity, joy, and the wonders of the world. Jacques suddenly arrives and cries out upon seeing Sforza escape from his bonds.

Sforza unleashes the same powerful, dreadful wind and mist that permeated the cave and tells the children that he has won after all. Mal rises and unfurls her coat. She whispers something to Christopher and says out loud that he must tell everyone that “the brutality is terrible. And yes: the chaos is very great. But tell them: greater than the world’s chaos are its miracles” (314). She then grabs Sforza and flies into the Somnulum.

Jacques takes the wounded Christopher to the sphinxes, which care for him and heal him. He tells them the story of what happened in the maze and what happened afterward. The sphinxes organize a funeral march to honor Mal and acknowledge the sacrifice that she made for everyone and everything. All species of creatures mourn and celebrate Mal in unique ways, and as a result, the procession is full of wonders. While all the creatures are saddened to have lost the Mal they knew, they also rejoice because they know that the essence of who she was will be reborn in the form of the next Immortal.

Christopher tells the sphinx Naravirala about Sforza’s actions in the heart of the maze, relaying everything that the man said. In response, she tells him that she is not surprised by what Sforza became. She asserts that in the end, power “must be spread, among as many good women and men as can be found; not because it is kind or polite or fair, but because it is the only way to beat back against horror” (322). The sphinxes carve Mal’s and Christopher’s stories into a mountain. Meanwhile, Christopher slowly heals. He learns from Ratwin that she harried Petroc during his entire escape on the Shadow Dancer and jumped from the ship when they got closer to land. She tells him that after Mal defeated Sforza, the centauride was able to save Nighthand from death, using soil newly replenished with glimourie. She also reports that Irian is openly and deeply in love with Nighthand.

It is finally time for Christopher to go home. Time has healed him, and the opening between his world and the Archipelago has reappeared. He flies on the back of a dragon, and before he returns through the waybetween, Jacques marks his hand with a scratch so that in the future, Christopher will not be able to deny everything he experienced in the Archipelago. Christopher knows that he doesn’t need the mark as proof of his experiences because “[h]is love for Mal had been the finest part of him […] It had made him brave. It is what is meant by miracles. And though she [i]s gone, the love burn[s] on” (329). He therefore trusts that he will see Mal again.

A new Immortal baby is born in the moments after Mal ascends to the Somnulum. It laughs and cries, like all Immortals do. It keeps saying the words that Mal said when she flew up into the sky.

Christopher returns home, where his father and grandfather have been waiting for him night after night. He tells them the story of his time in the Archipelago and describes everything that he and Mal accomplished together. His father sometimes cries, but mostly, he just listens. His father also stops trying to protect Christopher from everything that might harm him. Christopher does not reveal the words that Mal whispered to him just before she flew into the Somnulum.

What Mal said was “Yes. Yes, I say yes, I say yes” (334), referring to every part of what the Immortal must remember. With these words, she indicated that she wasn’t like Marik. The novel concludes with a bestiary (a guidebook of beasts) that describes the various animals of the Archipelago.