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I blinked.
I blinked?
What just happened?
When I opened my eyes, they stung like ice. I gasped, then choked; my throat stung, too, my tongue heavy in my mouth, and as I breathed in the cold air and felt it on my skin, shocked and disoriented, I tasted blood. My blood, hot and sharp and terrible. I shivered, felt another sting. I’d bitten my tongue.
I spat a bright glob of blood as I stiffly reached out to make sense of my surroundings, fingers crawling across the bare wooden floor. Everything was outlined in the harsh contrast of the incandescent lamps– the lamps in the bedroom, I remembered, because that’s where I still was, obviously. I raised a hand in front of my face, shielding myself from the lights, but they were still too bright. Too painful.
Without even thinking about it I let a surge of energy flow through the wires and the metal, and in an instant the bulbs burnt out with a polite pop and a fizzle, plunging the room into relative darkness. At the very least it was better than before.
I raised a hand to the side of my head, but I was surprised to find that aside from the haze clinging to my thoughts, it didn’t hurt anymore.
It was dark and quiet in every sense, now. As my eyes adjusted I looked around the room, still piecing together what had happened from what I remembered as I caught my breath. Anton was gone; I didn’t even need to see to know that. That tempest that was flowing from him had vanished as quickly as it had arisen. I flexed my other hand, working out the ache. Things were back to normal. Thank goodness.
I couldn’t sense him anywhere, anymore, and through some vague notion of shame at the thought, I couldn’t help but be relieved. Relieved that he was… gone? That I was subject to that awful thing no longer? Eugh. And now there were just a few blurry pinpricks of light outside the house, and inside…
Marcel was leaning in the doorframe when he noticed me groggily regaining awareness, feeling out his aura, now dim and subdued. He softened it around the edges as he stopped in his tracks, clutching the frame.
“You’re awake,” he said, his voice flat and hollow. Like he hadn’t figured out how he felt about that yet.
After a moment he stepped away from the door and sat down on the floor across from me, cross-legged like Valerie had been before… before all that. He shut his eyes, but as I sat up to face him, he sighed. His posture seemed to slump a bit.
“Don’t worry about the lights. I should’ve turned them off already,” he said. I rubbed the confusion from my face and didn’t say anything.
“I– we thought it would be better if you didn’t have to wake up… alone. Couldn’t move you safely, you understand. Just courtesy.”
“Oh.”
He patted his thigh with one hand, then looked around the otherwise empty room, then down at the floor. “You were only out for a few minutes. Valerie’s doctor and some others arrived and were able to sedate Anton and get him somewhere safe right after things fell apart– safer than here, that is. Val is leaving with them.”
Another small trickle of warm blood began to pool in my mouth. I swallowed and worked my jaw around my tongue, feeling the slight slur in my speech where it felt too thick. How careless. “I passed out?”
“You certainly did.”
“But everything is fine?” I asked.
“Difficult question. I’m sure Anton wouldn’t say so, nor did his brother. But… it turned out better than it should have,” he asserted. “All things considered.”
He opened his eyes to look at me, and laughed, for a moment. It didn’t sound happy. “You didn’t know what was going on. There was no way you could have, right? I know I should’ve told you, maybe even earlier, because I knew this would come up sooner than later, and I didn’t, because… I don’t know. And by the time we got word of this, it was already too late. Maybe I should’ve at least put more effort into making you stay behind, because I think I fooled myself into thinking you would listen. You had no reason to, really. I haven’t been up front. And look what happened.”
I took in the dark room. Almost would have reminded me of home, if not for looking like a strong gust of wind had shown up specifically to dismantle as much as possible. “Marcel, I’m fine. Even if whatever that was was bad, yes, I think that it may have been my fault, too. I don’t know what I did. But if everything is fine, now…”
“It’s not just you I’m thinking about,” he said. “It’s Val, too.”
Oh, I thought. And a few moments later, the sound escaped in my voice, too, again. “Oh.” The disconnect was a little worrying. Obviously that…
Something did a number on me.
“It’s just– I’m supposed to be– it was my idea even to let you inside,” Marcel floundered, quietly. He wasn’t entirely speaking to me. “He’s been under a lot of pressure, for a long time– all of us have, but him especially. And I don’t think he’s… taking this well. Not to mention that if he won’t talk to me…” He stopped himself short. “I’m sorry, I don’t expect you to have anything to say to this. I’m practically thinking aloud.”
That was good, because sure enough most of what he was saying went over my head, but I felt the spirit of it. “I don’t know if there is anything I can do,” I said, “but if you really want to talk now, we can talk. I can listen. Because you haven’t been telling me everything.” It was his turn to fall silent.
“I...”
On instinct, both our gazes snapped towards the door as one of the mortals started approaching, then strolled right into the room, barely breaking stride. She wore white, cut by the dark hair framing her face with sharp exactitude; as soon as she entered, she fixed on me. I stood up abruptly, watching her dig into a coat pocket.
“Alright,” she said. “This will only take a minute.”
“Um?”
Marcel stood up too. “Oh. Doctor, this is Adeline. Adeline, this is–”
“Doctor Isobel Rode,” she said brusquely, in what I supposed at least passed as an introduction. She pulled some kind of electrical device from her pocket, started adjusting it. Her focus was needle-keen.
Helpfully, Marcel added, “She’s a specialist, in immortal physiology. Among other things. She works for us.”
“Yes, I happen to be the best,” she sighed. “And not just because I’m the only one on the planet of my expertise. Now do us all a favour and try to refrain from blowing up this light I’m about to shine in your eyes?”
Before I had a chance to respond she held the device up and clicked it, and very suddenly there was a lot of very bright light in my face. I squinted and recoiled, raising one hand in alarm, but processing what she’d just said, I very carefully managed not to overload it like I did with the lamps. A moment later it was over, the light dropped back into her pocket, her one hand now wrapped around a small notepad and the other around a pen, sketching quick marks onto the paper.
“I suppose I’ll take it,” she said, as I opened my mouth to protest. “Does anything feel any different? Any odd sensations?”
“I– from before? No, I mean, aside from what you just did… I’m fine. It passed.”
“Right.” She made another note. “I’m aware you had some fractures a few days ago. Have those healed yet?”
She prodded me in the ribs with her pen, not heavy enough to really hurt, but I was still a little tender. I winced. “Mostly! But–”
“And have you sustained any further injuries recently? Anything when you woke up here that might have healed already? Any head wounds whatsoever?”
I tried to gesture for her to slow down; I was still blinking away the spots in my vision. “Not that I could tell, no?” I said, and turned to Marcel, still standing by near the doorway. “Marcel, she’s heard all of this about me?”
“Of course I have,” said Doctor Rode, jotting down one last note and turning to Marcel herself, though she didn’t look up at him. “Naturally, Mr. Marcel, I want an in-depth examination immediately. I would have preferred it before she was introduced to the general population, considering what pathogens she might be carrying that haven’t been purged yet, but under the circumstances I can settle for as soon as possible. I hope this is enough of an incident to convince you of that much.”
His voice was terse. “Thank you for checking in, Rode. In due time.”
Her eyes narrowed, but nevertheless, she folded up her notepad, slid it back into another pocket, and with one more lingering look at me she turned and made to leave again. Over as quickly as it had begun. I almost didn’t have time to put my thoughts in order and ask–
“Wait!” She stopped. Made a half-turn to look at me again. Her stare was… intense. “What happened?” I probed. “To Anton?”
She opened her mouth as if to speak, and then closed it again. And then she simply gestured to Marcel, and with a short “sir,” slipped out the door.
I followed her, mentally, as she left the house and faded back into the background noise. Presumably to return with Anton to wherever they were taking him, whatever they were doing with him.
When I looked back at Marcel, he seemed much less open than he had been before. He stayed standing, arms crossed, staring at nothing.
“Marcel,” I said, simply, but he knew what I meant.
He took a deep breath. And another. He started, haltingly, “I know I called it a sickness, but that’s not exactly true. If we’re starting from the beginning, with the basics, it’s more of… a gap in space, fixed to a person. Very similar to the ones immortals like us form around, but without proper integration into the nervous and sensory systems, the rest of the body. Severed and independent from the consciousness. Does that make sense?”
“A little. Mostly no.”
“Of course there’s no reason for you to have learned this… it’s an infinitesimal tether, a conduit connecting us across the ether to countless other worlds, stars, whatnot, where our power comes from. The important part is that where immortals are created in harmony with that tether, when it’s inflicted on a mortal it doesn’t seem to. To work out like that.”
“So what are you saying?” I asked, trying and, I felt, broadly failing to sort out what he was saying in my head with the little intuition available to me on the matter. “They’re like us?”
“Well, in a way. But in them, rather of granting longevity it does quite the opposite. The best we can do for now is deaden the energy output enough that it doesn’t kill them, put them under and keep them alive. Prevent them from slowly collapsing from the inside out.”
I wasn’t exactly a stranger to death, even if it was never a pressing issue in regards to my own self. Heroes and monsters died in stories. Birds and fish got sick and died in much less extravagant ways, usually, when they couldn’t provide for themselves or when I couldn’t take on that role.
They were mortal creatures, too. I probably could have anticipated the similarities. But something about that still made my stomach sink.
“We call it a skein,” he said.
“And they… don’t get better.” I swallowed.
“...No,” he said, matter-of-factly. “We’re no closer to whatever analogue of a cure could exist, let alone even knowing what it is, finding a pattern in the outbreaks, how a skein forms in the first place, or...”
He faded. “We’ve been trying, and we’re failing. There’s not much more to it than that. Whatever River told you, I find it hard to believe that she knows any more than we do. But until we figure something out the fact that we seem to have only palliative solutions isn’t reassuring.”
I silently agreed, but he didn’t need to hear that. “You think that it comes from out there?” I asked. “Another star. Another world.”
Something flickered on his face, though he must have known that I’d realized as much already. “Yes,” he finally said, “I do. We do. As long as I’m being transparent, everything else has been breaking so badly recently that I wouldn’t put it past the universe for something to have slipped through the cracks and broken Partition.”
I swallowed. “Could I really have been carrying something?” He looked like he was about to placate me, so I cut him off: “Rode said it was a possibility. I didn’t even think of it, before I came here. What if this came from me?”
“Hey, now,” he said, “by this point, any diseases you might’ve risked passing should have been purged over the course of natural regeneration. Doctor Rode is just thorough. And the skeins started almost a year ago, now; that’s even more unlikely. Anton is not your fault, Adeline.”
Right. Of course not. I was a great distance away in both space and time; it would’ve had to travel so far without direct contact. Pretty much impossible. I’d say equally as impossible as reaching the edge of the world and finding a whole new one. Surely, I was supposed to find that reassuring.
“Whose fault is this, then?”
“It’s probably no one’s fault at all, I promise you,” he said. He looked pained. “...To be clear, I meant what I said last night about where I think you came from. All signs suggest that you’ve never even been off-planet, let alone that you somehow came from beyond the Partition. Even if the circumstances are, you know, strange. So please don’t worry about that.”
“Even so, what if there is a connection, somehow? Something else?”
“...I won’t tell you I can rule it out completely, because I can’t.”
I kneaded my sleeve with one hand, thinking it over. “He – Anton – he was reaching for me. He went right past both of you after he woke up. Maybe,” I mused, “there’s more to what happened to me than you said. Right? River thought it was awfully coincidental. If I try again…” As terrible as it was, if I just had control… “I might be able to help. I just need to know.”
He paused, for a while. “We’ll try again another time. Under better conditions.”
I must have let out something like a groan, because he was quick to continue. “Even if you could,” he added, “I don’t think it’s in anyone’s best interest, right now. Including yours.” He pushed himself from the wall he was leaning against, glancing away. He felt so drained, all of a sudden.
“That connection, Adeline, if it exists? That’s what I’m afraid of.”
I didn’t really have a rebuttal for that.
“I believe you have no ill intentions, just as when you decided to follow us out here. And I believe you believe that. Until we find where you came from there’s very little we can be sure of. But I promise we’ll keep looking,” he said. “So go home; have Balancia or somebody outside take you back, and we’ll take this up some other time. For now… get some rest.” His face hardened. “Lords know all of us could use it.”
And before I could say another word he had swept out the door, not looking back.
By the time I left, Anton, Rode, Valerie– they were all long gone. The small crowd had dispersed, the air quiet, the frenetic energy gone, having left exhaustion in its wake. The walk back to the house with Balancia at my side was uneventful. Wordless. If he knew the details of what had happened, he didn’t comment on it. Then he left.
It was a couple of days before the Court sent for me again.
I didn’t keep count.
I thought long and hard about trying to visit Anton. The possibility was still clinging to my thoughts, much longer than I was accustomed to harbouring somewhat-ridiculous ideas; I had to be able to do something, whatever Marcel said. He said himself that he didn’t know everything. I couldn’t just dismiss it all as coincidence.
But I didn’t know where Anton was; I hardly even knew who he was. If the Court didn’t want me wandering around the city I couldn’t imagine they’d just let me walk into wherever they had taken him, either. The more I thought about what happened the more useless I felt. And the more I thought about it, the more my anxiety about the entire idea built. I passed out last time I tried to do something for him, and who knows what could’ve happened if Marcel hadn’t…
It was a pointless thought anyway. I couldn’t; there was nothing I could do. Unless there was, and I just wasn’t smart or strong enough to do it. Unless I was just wrong. That didn’t alleviate the weight that still sat in my gut.
I thought about seeing River, too. It already felt like so long since we’d met, and since we’d parted… maybe I was worried that something had changed since then, in me or in her, or both, and if we waited too long to reconvene as we’d promised to do it would be different, somehow. Maybe she’d already forgotten about me. That would probably have been for the best, too; everyone was always so busy. Helping.
But things happened here that were important to remember, and while I was stuck in place, I resolved to remember them. At the very least, I could resolve to remember her. I had to trust that she would do the same. I had to.
Even so, once again, I didn’t know how to reach her. I wasn’t acquainted with the city (or anywhere) like she professed to be; if there was a place I’d be able to find her, I didn’t know it. I hadn’t thought about it at the time, but I left her with no idea how to contact her whatsoever. We would find each other, though. If I didn’t know where to start in finding her, then she’d have to find me, and that was that.
In the meantime, I had little else to do but wait around the empty house.
The place was furnished, of course, with comfortable seats and cabinets and mostly-empty shelves and several objects in the kitchen I was unprepared to use. But in a figurative sense, it was also cold. (Literally, too, most of the time, but that didn’t bother me so much.) Compared to what I’d known it seemed to me utterly sterile, unstoried in a way I’d never really experienced.
The only books that laid on the shelves were once more in dense scripts I couldn’t read, unillustrated and cryptic.
I couldn’t bring myself to revisit the one book I already had, either.
If I couldn’t help, and I couldn’t read, and I couldn’t leave (which I was willing to respect for now even if I really, really wanted to), then the next best thing would be to air out my feelings on paper. Maybe not the kind of reasoning that might hold up under pressure, but what else could I do?
It took me so long to find anything to write with that I almost resorted to carving up the barren wall with the first sharp implement I saw; but it didn’t come to that. Luckily, too, for how tedious that would’ve been. Instead, buried in a drawer, I eventually stumbled across a short metal pen. It even carried its own ink.
Now I was finally on a roll with something. I thought about scribbling on the walls, but against the bare wood and plaster the ink would probably run. I could tear out a page from the book and write over that, but Valerie had said himself to be careful with it. There were other options, though, surely. Let’s see…
I tore a strip of light fabric from the bedsheets upstairs and folded it into a passable approximation of a scroll over my arm, and pouring myself into this new endeavour, I practically burst out the back door into the garden.
On the surface, mornings here weren’t that different from those at home; the sunlight through the shades, the cloying sweetness of the air and the glassy dew sprinkled across the grass. Even the songbirds were still songbirds, though their melodies were different. Less measured, more chaotic.
None of that changed the fact that this morning was as uniquely beautiful as any other before it.
With new purpose I nestled myself into the grass just beneath the edge of the porch, where the wind off the river was abated by the saplings on the hillside and where the warmth was just right.
I unfurled and stretched the makeshift scroll over my knees, clutched the pen and let it hover where I was going to begin, a dark splotch creeping through the fabric.
I realized I had no idea what I was going to write.
It used to be so easy; I’d just let the diction cascade onto the paper with as little thought as possible, scrawling a trail in looping flow to wherever my daydreams took me. Often that work dissolved into sketches, or half-formed imaginary words, driven by raw emotion alone. No need to reflect. Just to do something to fill the waking hours.
And now, as much as I tried to force myself to fall back into that flow, it was just gone. I was thinking in too many words. Too many conflicting ideas about fears and things that I’d never had to worry about before. But now that I’d seen them, they were practically ever-present.
I pushed the sharp tip of the pen harder into the fabric, glaring at it, willing it just to ignore all of that and write without me. You don’t need to put it into words. Just do whatever you feel like doing. It doesn’t matter what. It doesn’t have to be important. Just forget everything else! Forget Anton! Let it go!
Thinking about it so hard, naturally, made it that much worse. I let out a sigh that quickly transitioned into a long groan and leaned back, knocking my head against the side of the porch and staring up into the morning sky.
One more thing made so much more difficult just by being here.
Without looking down, I let my hand drift again over the fabric, feeling out the dark point where I’d half-started already. I slowly, tentatively dragged the pen across, keeping my focus on the clouds, letting it trace its own path. It didn’t matter where it went. Just give me something.
I stared at the clouds, letting deep breaths come and go.
After a long time, I looked down at the fabric.
“Dear River.”
Then an echo reached my ears, reverberating through the house, blunted by the distance and the breeze. I started and stood up, crumpling the stained fabric in one hand as I looked through the open door – I’d forgotten and left it open again, I realized – into the dim indoors. Someone was knocking at the front door.
At first, just briefly, I thought it was Marcel. That he’d finally come back to tell me about Anton, or to give me something to do to help. But it was a mortal who stood on the other side of the door, their faint light blurred into the background canvas of the city, where others were waking up and trickling into the streets. I carefully un-crumpled the scroll between my fingers to find those two words smeared in dark ink; practically unreadable, now. Something welled inside me, at the sight. I pushed it down.
The mortal outside knocked again. I gingerly folded up the fabric into a small square, taking care to keep what was left of the words on the outside so as not to mar them any further, and I stepped inside and dropped my implements on the table, next to the book.
I knew I’d recognized the knock. I opened the door to face Balancia again, his voice rough, his eyes heavy, his collar characteristically seeming a bit too tight.
“Morning,” he said. “They asked me to bring you–”
“Great. Let’s go.”
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