This was only the beginning. After scores of tellings and retellings, each more elaborate than the last, the Legend of the Spice had matured into an intricate imagined world, perpetually threatened by war and upheaval. For four years, Ivan and Richard had worked together on plot ideas and character arcs, geography and cultures, legends and histories, flora and fauna, poems and songs, religions and pantheons. Channeling the Brontës, who had created the world of Gondal purely for the sake of enjoyment, the Legend grew into Ivan and Richard’s own private mythos.

They had planned to document the War on all fronts—the sacking of Branway, the rise of a Golglothian tyrant (“Hordrigar,” “Zorth,” “Morvannig,” and “Aghak” were a few of the names they were toying with), and the eventual return of Portnoy and Rosalind as messianic peace-brokers. But then something happened that squelched their collaboration: Richard turned sixteen. Almost overnight, the quiet, attentive child had metamorphosed into that most curious of insects, a young man, sullen and hormonal with unpredictable appetites, flitting from stimulus to stimulus, single-mindedly distracted. Those sessions in which the Waters males would sit ensconced in the darkened den, Ivan at his worktable and Richard sprawled on the floor or curled up in the wingback chair, their only light source the green table lamp, laboring over the Legend for hours at a time, became less and less frequent until they had ceased altogether.

Next Chapter: Part Three: Disversions, Digressions, Discoveries, Chapter VI