How Finder's Keepers would have Ended

Finder's Keepers was something of a love note to Neil Gaiman. His book Neverwhere was incredibly influential on me growing up, and there's something about the idea that we see the world not as it is but as we want to see it that always stuck with me. Not that we see the world through rose colored glasses, though certainly some do that. But that our understanding of the world and life is entirely dependent on our own experiences and the world-view they construct.

So I wrote a story about a world where dreams and ideas had a tangible solidity and were roundly ignored by most of the world. A classic adventure of a young woman dragged unknowingly by her own actions into a world she didn't even acknowledge the existence of. A stranger in a strange land, bound by magic and vows to a being that was half abstract concept. Cailyn, a girl raised on myths. Cardinal, the demi-human manifestation of the cardinal directions. Together they adventured through a vastly expanded version of the world we know in an attempt to undo the magical bond between them. All the while hunted down by living shadows, the Umbra, enforcers of the Powers that Be, the oldest and most powerful of the universe's concepts. Because the answers our heroes sought are the answers that could not be allowed to be found. It was a fantastic tale.

And looking back on it, I'm not sure I did that story justice. Though I suppose that's what the benefit of a decade of experience will do. If I were to do it over, I'm sure I would do many things differently. Definitely would have dove into the realm of the Aspects and Powers a lot sooner. But the one thing I truly regret was not finishing the story.   

Though at the time, it was very necessary for me to put it down and pursue different work. As good as Finder's Keepers was, it legit wasn't making me money. If anything it was costing me money. And passion projects are for the rich, or at least the financially stable. Which nobody was at the beginning of the recession, least of all me, a 3rd wave webcomic artist.

While the idea of rebooting Finder's Keepers is still quite unlikely, I feel perhaps it is time that I give it and myself some closure.

A not-so quick recap:

Cailyn Asher literally runs into Cardinal on her way home from a Halloween party. Cardinal, a total stranger to her, gives her a small compass and tells her to keep it until he comes back for it and then promptly vanishes into the night. He later shows up on her doorstep, torn to ribbons, his left eye gouged out, and his throat cut. He is quite dead. That doesn't stop him from demanding the compass back from Cailyn. Cailyn refuses until Cardinal tells her exactly what the hell is going on. These words, however, act as a claim of ownership over Cardinal, as the compass actually contains his soul. See, being half mortal he knew that he could bind his mortal soul to an object (the compass). Doing so, gave him a loop hole in avoiding death at the hands of the Umbra, who were hunting him down to prevent him from fulfilling a terrible prophecy. Had they successfully killed Cardinal, his Aspect would have taken a new pure-Aspect form, who would have not been able to fulfill the prophecy as he was no longer the prophesied incarnation of Cardinal. The problem is that Cardinal doesn't know why the Umbra are hunting him, and so can't tell Cailyn “what's going on” to the satisfaction of the magic. So Cailyn and Cardinal team up to unravel this particularly deadly mystery and undo the magical bond between them.   

Cailyn's initial plan is to ambush the Umbra and trick them into giving up the secret. It doesn't go as planned and she ends up stabbed. Before she can bleed out, Cardinal gets her to the Lady Scarring, the Aspect that helped put him back together after his original run in with the Umbra that cost him an eye. While Cailyn is being healed, Cardinal takes a visit to the Lady Death, a Power with whom he had prior dealings. The last time they met, Death provided Cardinal with the compass that now holds his soul. Cardinal suspects that Death has more plans at work here than he originally supposed. This second visit, Death has a gift for Cailyn: the Cutting Edge, a knife that divides the theoretical from reality. It is a very uncanny weapon.

Having healed, Cardinal and Cailyn travel to the Wyrd Bazaar in order to acquire components to enhance Cardinal's innate aspect and just straight up “find” what he's prophesied to find (they have gleaned this much from the Umbra) which will, in theory, undo the magics between them. At the Bazaar, they meet many interesting characters including Boris, the Canid Guardian of the Earth Mother, and Puck, fae trickster of legend. While meeting with Puck, the Umbra catch up to Cardinal and Cailyn. A fight ensues which causes quite a ruckus and ultimately ends in the death of an Umbra at the hands of Cailyn. A mortal unmaking an aspect as she did with the Cutting Edge is a pretty big deal, and Boris attempts to apprehend Cailyn. Cardinal ultimately winds up killing Boris to keep him from killing Cailyn or worse Cailyn unmaking Boris and further exacerbating the issue. Cailyn freaks out and runs off. Cardinal gets captured by the Earth Mother. Cailyn has a brief encounter with one of her mortal friends, only to find that she is now as quickly forgotten and dismissed as all the magical beings that fill the world.

After Cardinal is captured by the Earth Mother for killing Boris, Cailyn sets off to recover Cardinal. She does, after all, have claim over him that supersedes the grievances the Earth Mother has with him. Not that the Earth Mother gives two fucks what a lone human woman wants. Cailyn is mortal and as such is utterly beneath the cares of an Aspect as powerful as the Earth Mother. So, Cailyn gets thrown into the cell holding Cardinal, and that is where I stopped making the comic.

Here's how the story ends.

With Cailyn and Cardinal reunited, it's really not that hard for them to break out of the Earth Mother's domain. There's some good fights, and the Earth Mother is furious as only nature can be, so “easy” is a relative term, but Cardinal can find anything even a way out, and Cailyn is one stubborn lady.

Having made too many too powerful enemies too fast, Cardinal suggests laying low for a bit, retreating to a domain that they cannot be touched until they have a better idea of where to go from here. So Cardinal brings Cailyn home to meet the parents. Here's where the story would take a turn to dive into the political intrigue surrounding the Powers and Aspects and the machinations therein. Needless to say, Cailyn is something of a rough thorn among the Aspects of Finding, but is politely tolerated as one of Cardinal's “pets.” The notable exception to this is Cardinal's sister, Rose.   

I never quite figured out the transition from this segment to the next. Undoubtedly Cailyn runs afoul of the family, likely through a combination of her own bullishness and the machinations of beings that care little for the half-breed Cardinal and even less for his “pet mortal.” But one big take away from this segment was that Cardinal and Cailyn were caught up in something BIG with major players and even bigger stakes. But whatever the transition is, it would be at their own doing. One of the big things I like about prophecies is that they happen and are self fulfilling. Every action taken to prevent the prophecy pushes everyone along to its realization.

And so Cailyn and Cardinal find themselves where no one should ever be: the source of the Veil. The Veil, is of course, the metaphysical blinders that humanity wears, distancing themselves from the very concepts and dreams they put into the world. Dreams they believe with one hand and deny with the other. In my head, the Veil takes the form of a totally ordinary man in his 50s or 60s. Think the grandfather in Up, but less geriatric. He lives in a perfectly ordinary little house in a perfectly ordinary little yard in the middle of a hellscape of monsters and madness. He doesn't see any of it. Just his geraniums which are coming in nicely. He is set in his ways, sure in his entirely wrong beliefs and views. His world-view is so set that he cannot even acknowledge his own supernatural nature. So, of course he doesn't believe a word of anything that Cailyn and Cardinal have to say to him. And after a polite but totally ineffectual visit, the Umbra show up to end our dumbfounded heroes turned out on the Veil's doorstep.
 

Cardinal found the source of Humanity's blinders, the one thing that keeps the order of the world, if the Veil were to break, or even weaken, if humanity started to accept more than what their narrow view told them was acceptable, it would be chaos. And that chaos would threaten too many in positions of power. It could not be allowed. Cailyn now knows all this. The bargain fullfilled, the magic undone, Cardnal is in full possession of himself again. And now the Umbra must kill them both before they can do any further harm. A massive fight breaks out in the picturesque garden. Cardinal is slain. For real this time. Cailyn, understandably, kind of loses her shit.   

Cailyn becomes pretty fucking terrifying when she has nothing to lose and has no fucks to give. Her will becomes an unstoppable force, unlocking the fullest potential of the Cutting Edge. Too many wrongs, too many injustices, too much bullshit, and she's done with it. Belief is the tool that carves the world into what it is, and she is going to unmake this nightmare she's been in. She unmakes the Umbra. Kicks in the door of the Veil's house and makes him see the carnage across his lawn. She leaves him and his broken garden. There are bigger forces at work responsible for this, and she is going to have words with them.

Cailyn tracks down the Powers that Be, determined to make them either set things “right” or end them and do it herself. Somewhere in this process, she discovers that Death was behind the whole prophecy thing. The world had stagnated, grown content with itself, a kind of entropy that couldn't allow for new growth. Something had to change, so Death concocted the prophecy, set Cardinal up to fake his death, armed Cailyn with the Cutting Edge, all of it so that they would find and break the Veil, thus waking humanity back up to the fullness of the world. A chaos that would undoubtedly result in a lot of death and insanity, but a chaos that would permit growth, with magic back in the world.

This was far enough out that I never really settled on how Cailyn resolved the whole thing. I don't know if she successfully broke the world, and let it burn, or if she remade it better. I suspect it would have been somewhere in between. I do know that in the end, the Veil isn't totally broken, but it is weakened. It ends with a broadened world-view for humanity, but not a devastating break. Growth. Slow, but ever increasing. It ends with the next iteration of Cardinal meeting up with Cailyn. He's not her Cardinal, but he remembers being that Cardinal. Remembers her. It's a happy-ish ending. Maybe a touch bittersweet, but hopeful of things to come.