Previous: Chapter 18 | Next: Interlude V
Incidentally, the flow of time wasn’t really a fixed point, as Renee and I moved outwards to the reaches of our rather subjective landscape. There were times I was adrift, my consciousness flickering and skating across stretches of land that I’d never seen before, and thus were drawn straight from her memory and projected onto mine; where the dream-logic took over and our journey seemed bound more by its purpose and its destination than by any path.
So, with that in mind, instead of looking back over the landscape we travelled, I might instead mark our progress by its events.
We travelled along a row of shallow, rolling hills, staying a moment ahead of the rising silver flood beneath us with every step– the hills, defined more by our ascent than by anything else. Following Renee’s course we skirted the far outer edge of Roan, the one I’d never seen awake.
The buildings were scattered thinner out here, the low, sleepy rows of houses along the main streets of the town broken up by long distances of overgrown fields, tiny groves of unkempt trees spreading from the deeper woods in the distance. The stone roads gave way to dirt tracks, and then to nothing at all; the houses I did see, hazy and indistinct as they were, were hung with a kind of distant, sentimental sorrow over their bending eaves and empty windows.
The trees sheltered us from the rain, at times; and though the grass was often soaked into mud we didn’t slow. Neither of us seemed to grow tired, when our journey was more an exercise of will. For a moment, though, looking back, I saw the view from our vantage through the sheets of rain.
The static-grey sky had descended to envelop everything, blanketing Roan in fog, but the lowest rooftops still rose just barely above the flood, chimneys and shingles protruding from the silver surface like ancient ruins lost to the sea. The trees dotted through the town that were tall enough to be seen swayed and quivered, their leaves fractal smears. On the far side of the long main road, through the blur, I could even see the train station.
Standing on the ridge of the hill, the wind biting through my skin, the tide below seemed to wax and wane, its surface creeping up the hill towards my feet before sliding back down, leaving clawed tracks of quicksilver behind. The reflections of the world around us were captivating, despite everything.
The water rose again, broken by countless ripples, threatening finally to spill over. As heavy as the rain was, it held itself in restraint. It seemed to be waiting for something.
I was momentarily struck by the thought that it might have been. I still didn’t know for sure what exactly I was… doing, here. Something might have been pushing us forward. The same might’ve been holding back the tide.
As it rose again, spilling through the grass, I felt something tugging on my arm. And then again, more insistent. I turned and met Renee’s stare. Right there with me. “Let’s not get caught up, shall we?” she said.
I blinked, and the trees around us and the ground beneath us sharpened into focus again. The silver flood rose higher. And she had my hand in hers; I hadn’t even noticed. But she was grounding.
She was the reason I was here, after all.
She let go, and we kept on.
The place she was looking for was a cluster of buildings, out on Roan’s furthest roots. So far removed that I’d have expected it to have faded, in the state this place was in; but it was almost as keenly focused as Renee’s own home. The cracked flagstones rising up the hill, the broken roofs and battered walls. It was less cared for than the rest of the town, I thought, but she remembered every piece of it.
The houses were scattered haphazardly across the slope, some clustered together in their own little neighbourhood in the centre, others with long, ethereal tracts in between, traced with winding streams and the serpentine road itself.
There was a barn there, so deep into the edge of the town that it threatened to be swallowed up by the hazy expanse on the other side of the ridge. It was empty; nothing but flaking, bleached paint and the pool of darkness inside its open threshold. It passed in our periphery, Renee sticking to a course that took us well past it; there was something there, though, I saw for just moments through the fog.
It was a thin, rusted metal sculpture; a facsimile of a bird perched at the apex of the building. A weather vane, drifting back and forth by the will of no wind. Each time it turned on its axis, there was that sound again. The gentle shriek of rust.
The sound kept following us as we went. A warped melody played across the airs.
While it echoed over us, Renee moved through the mire of old houses, and she found the door she had brought us here to reach as the tide clipped our heels. With a tired look cast in my direction behind her, she opened it and stepped inside.
The room on the other side was small, and dim, and the shimmering rainstorm still threshed against the boarded windows. But when I shut the door behind me, it was as if we’d been enclosed in the calm within the storm. The noise of the rest of the world was dampened by the threshold, the chaos made gentle. Though I couldn’t just un-dream the quicksilver weighing on my clothes and my hair, the house was even warm.
I turned around and put my eye to a crack in the door; everything out there, from inside, was… washed out. Without us to drive down on, the rain was muted.
Without a word, Renee had already rushed off somewhere else in the house, but I could still hear her footsteps – carrying down the hall in a way that was practically so normal it was startling – and for the time being, I got the impression that we’d reached our safe haven. She’d be alright.
For the first time, I tried to figure out where we had actually ended up. The place was otherwise unremarkable; the kind of low, cozy house I’d almost grown accustomed to. But I had no idea why she’d chosen it. The walls and floor were almost bare, eroded to the bones. There were rectangular patches in the peeling, blanched wallpaper, the kind that happened when something that had been hung there, a fixture for so many days and nights, was taken away, the wall behind it forgotten in the meantime.
I realized, after noting that, how much easier it was for me to put together those details. Of course, it was all Renee Weaver’s memories that were being shown to me, here. And in these halls she shaped, I saw every chip of paint, every broken board and every patch of damp and earth in the corners. Every detail, every piece of it, they had weight and vibrancy. They were important.
She was on the other side of the house, inspecting the warding windows, like I suspected. Her fingers lingered on the sill, and she breathed, deep. Whatever she smelled here, I didn’t. It was comfortable, though, so quietly I leaned against a wall across the room from her. “...It’s a sanctuary,” I said.
“It really is, isn’t it?” she sighed. She had that sad look across her face again, but she was smiling. “I don’t remember it having changed a bit.”
“How did you know to bring us here? How did you know we’d be okay?”
“I didn’t, really. But I did believe it.“
I found myself snorting. “Easy to say in the midst of all this.”
“Also a fair point. It’s not exactly a generally applicable solution. But sometimes it’s enough.” She brushed a finger along the windowsill again, leaving a clean streak through the dust. “...I don’t know what I expected, really. This place… it’s one of the things that connects me to Beau. If she couldn’t pull me out of this alone, I don’t know why coming here would have.”
“At least we haven’t been swept away,” I shrugged. She nodded again, but clearly she wasn’t satisfied. “I still can’t say I understand this either. I suppose we shouldn’t blame ourselves for trying.”
“Mmm.”
“...This house, though. It’s as clear as anything’s been since I ended up here. You I can– well, I can feel it. I can touch it,” I said. It was absurd. “...So why did we come here?”
Renee slowly walked over to the door at the other side of the empty room. And when she slid it open, the white light pouring in across the floor, the downpour didn’t start bombarding us again. We were still inside that bubble of calm. She just gazed up into the sky, for a moment, and then gestured for me to follow her outside.
Nestled between this house and the next, enclosed by crumbling walls on all four sides but exposed to the open air above, there was a courtyard– a ring of grass, with worn wooden benches pushed up against the walls.
A lone tree was growing in the centre. It’s roots pushed upward through cracked flagstones and creeping moss, coiling together under the soft earth. Above them, rooted in place but swaying measuredly, its trunk towered higher than the rooftops, splitting apart into an umbrella wooden veins and arteries, all gnarled, creaking with age. The leaves fluttered, dripping silver droplets down across the courtyard with each breath; they were verdant green, so clear they could’ve been cut out of the sky.
It was obvious, that the crux holding our surroundings together couldn’t have been anything else, but… “This tree?” I asked.
“Yes.” She stepped out into the pale sunlight, brushing her fingers against the bark. “The meaning of a place like this is sort of a measure of the memories woven into it,” she said. “Everything that’s shaped it, mortal hands and immortal ones, nature, time.”
It was hard to imagine that here. But I tried. I slowly lowered into one of the benches, watching the light fall through the leaves.
“Tell me about it.”
“...Roan’s been declining for a good while. And even that’s natural, I suppose. The people go on to better things. The industry all gets eaten up. But Beau and I, we’ve lived here our whole lives. We could’ve moved to Solace, or Ludeande, or almost anywhere else, if we wanted, but we stayed. I’ve never regretted that less than right now.
“I’m sure you don’t know the details, and I shouldn’t waste whatever time we have together by explaining it all, but even when the two of us were children this branch of our home was dying. So sometimes, we’d climb through the empty buildings and imagine our own stories for them. We were adventurers. Or one the hero, and the other her damsel. Didn’t matter much. Eventually, though, we found our way to this tree, in this yard. By all accounts I’ve heard it’s been growing here longer than any living mortal recalls; and we thought even the immortals couldn’t have known or cared.
“So…” Renee said, “...and I don’t know why we were drawn here, but we claimed a special affinity for this sanctuary. It was our secret. We spent every day we could here, together. Lots of nights, too. Every time we were too afraid of everything else out there, every time we overheard that some other part of our home was breaking, every time we hurt, we kept each other safe here. And it protected us, too. In that respect, it’s the only place I imagine you and I could have gone.”
She sat down next to me, her eyes glassy. I could tell how hard she was fighting to keep herself present. “I don’t ascribe to fate, but for my part, at least, it’s where I realized how deeply my life was bound together with Beau’s. The first place we could believe we were in love.”
I watched her, wide-eyed, and she returned my gaze. “So what happened?”
“We grew up,” she chuckled, “and we got married, and after many more years, here we are. She’s worrying herself to death and I’m half in a coma, or close enough to it, stuck here with you. Not that I’ve found you to be bad company.”
“Well, thank you. ...That’s beautiful.”
“I think so, too.”
It was hard to grasp what I was feeling, then. Probably impossible. But when I breathed, even through the dreamy air, it was shaky. A pluck at the heartstrings that I didn’t entirely understand.
Slowly, the expression fell from her face, and she asked, “Have you picked up any favourite ghost stories, Adeline?”
“Ah.” I wouldn’t call them favourites. “I don’t think you’d know them,” I said wryly. “And I believe you’re a better storyteller anyway.”
“I appreciate it, though I’d say that I’m far too results-minded for that. I don’t usually enjoy them. But sometimes they’re rooted in an idea I appreciate. That something haunted isn’t fixed, just a space that’s accumulated enough wear from the lives of all the people who’ve passed through it. No happiness or tragedy is the beginning or end, just a single moment plucked from a continuous history.”
With that, she plucked the air with a finger to illustrate. “Transformation happens in the present. This – the tree, everything you’ve seen here – it really is just a dream. A snapshot of my perspective that I suppose… I’ve been clinging to,” she sighed. “I do love this place. But I’m not sure how true it is anymore; and retreating hasn’t stopped my world from changing. It sure hasn’t woken me up.”
I looked down at my hands, clasped in my lap. I focused on the feeling of my fingers against my palms. “I’m sorry, Renee. I’m sorry. For all of it.”
“Please,” Renee said, her tone sharp. “Nothing’s on you. I hope you won’t be offended, but I’m not even certain you’re real. For the most part I’ve been riding out our little journey waiting for the moment it ends, and I’m pulled off to some other dream. Maybe all my worries were just a vivid nightmare after all, hm?”
“Several times, recently, I’ve entertained the same thought. Sometimes I wish I’ve been dreaming everything that’s happened to me. And– well, it is a little confusing to talk about, in this case specifically, considering, you know–”
“Don’t worry. I understand.”
“Yes. Right. But ultimately I think it has to be real. Like you said, no beginnings, no endings. Even if it… really feels like an ending. We’re just here, in the present, a single moment. And I just don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do next. I never do.”
“Oh, of course you do. You’re cursed with a long, long life. Even if your experience can’t guide you here, you… you’ll be just fine in the long run.”
“I used to think that,” I said. “And maybe I will wake up. But it’s not just me! It’s you, too! And Beau, and lots of other people, now, who I never even knew existed before. I used to know what the world was, who I was, and now I feel like I know nothing. Less than nothing. And if I’m stuck as just a spectator, sitting here, useless, watching things fall apart when I should be able to stop it. It’s like… like I’m hollowed-out inside.”
She didn’t say anything, and my shoulders slumped a bit. “I’m sorry. If it’s all a continuum of cause and effect, there has to be a reason why I’m here. But I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.”
“Hm,” Renee said, and then was quiet for some time. “Hmm. I… what happened to you before we met? You said… the skein reached out to you, didn’t it?”
“...I gather it’s been different for me than it has for the others. I didn’t realize until I started dreaming, but I thought it might have been trying to communicate something,” I said. “Me and it aren’t an ideal pair for conversation, though.”
“If only it were that easy to reason with nature,” she said.
“Yeah.” With one last look to see that she was still there next to me, I closed my eyes. And suddenly, it was as if I was alone again. I couldn’t see her, couldn’t hear her, couldn’t feel the warmth of her presence. Just the gentle rainfall. I took a long, deep breath, rubbing the side of my face with a hand, lingering on the traces left across my cheek. “There’s a reason. We just need to find it.”
“We’re going to be alright. We– I– I just–”
Renee trailed off, and my eyes snapped open.
Her face was blank, her stare fixed through the middle distance, and before I could stand up she practically slumped over into me. The texture of her clothes was wavering. The light through the tree was suddenly not right at all.
My head… my head was swimming. The fog was coming back, descending over us and smearing the landscape in every direction. Oh. Shit. We’re losing it. We…
I didn’t finish the thought. Because–
There was a shadow painted against the wall. A figure of smoke, prowling through the courtyard. Not asleep and dreaming, not yet, but soon. He could feel it inside him, too. It wouldn’t be long before it overtook him. He was afraid, not just of that, but of the others searching for him. He had to get out of Roan. He wouldn’t have the chance.
–I was snapped out of it by a roaring crack of thunder.
When I regained my bearings, reeling from the vision – the specifics were fuzzy, but that had to be it – my face was drenched. It took precious moments to realize that the rain was bearing down on us again; clearly our temporary sanctuary had been broken. There was quicksilver flowing and pooling all around, beneath my feet, against my back, rivulets coursing down through Renee’s hair.
As soon as I thought to, I started shaking her, grasping her hands, trying to bring her back. She looked at me, but I couldn’t tell if she knew what she was seeing or if she’d fallen even deeper.
I willed myself to carry her weight, staggering to my feet and hoisting her from the bench, her limbs slack. “Oh, no, no, no. Not here. Renee. Renee!”
She didn’t answer, but after a few seconds she stumbled, gripped my sleeves and leaned against me. At least she wasn’t fading. She was grounded. “Renee, come on. Please. We have to leave now. We have to go.”
“Yes… yes,” she mumbled. “Goodness, Beau. Let’s get out of here.”
“Uh-huh. I’m– it’s Adeline. But as long as you can move.”
She clutched my arms tighter, but there was a spark in her eye again, through half-closed lids. “Adeline,” she said. “I can move. I can go.”
“Good. Okay. Like before. Just hold on to me. Don’t get lost again.”
“Naturally.”
The mirrored surface of the water was already halfway up my legs.
As fast as the two of us, uncertain as we were, were able, we waded through the empty house, past the walls now bleached of detail and memory as they faded into the background. I tried not to be too frantic, though I still wanted no part of whatever drowning was going to bring. This was Renee’s home; I was already losing my sense of direction in the flooding streets.
I did the only thing I could think of, and started running uphill, Renee close beside me, holding on admirably. Up the street, through a tight briar of alleys between a blur of ramshackle buildings. To the peak of the ridge.
It kept going up, and up, and up. Higher than it should have. I slipped through a patch of grass that wasn’t quite there, barely managing to keep myself and Renee afloat, and for a moment I saw it all laid out below us; the entire town, the entire valley, vanished beneath an ocean without edges. The tops of the tallest trees crested the water like distant islands; beyond that, I could hardly see a thing.
No matter how I resisted, it was all shaped from my own memories, too. Things were blurring together more and more between all of us, now.
Eventually, we were swimming upwards through rolling stormclouds, flashes of stark white lightning and echoes of distant thunder repeating all around us. The storm kept coming, rising behind us, but we couldn’t keep going forever.
We wouldn’t have done it anyway, though. Because we did reach the top of the hill, after a stretch of endless time. And something else was waiting for us.
Renee noticed them first, stopping and slipping her hand from my grasp before I saw, too. A person who looked human, maybe, face inscrutable, features indistinct and indecipherable. Standing there, in the middle of the grey sky.
“Renee,” I whispered. “Just… stay still.”
My visitor was back. The person-thing in the mirror.
They watched us with their head cocked to one side almost imperceptibly, rocking like their limbs were pulled by strings. And of course, they didn’t have a thing to say.
She struggled to hold them in her focus. “Do you… know what that is?”
“Maybe. Might be the skein. Might be my imagination. I don’t know how much I care. But it’s definitely part of all this.”
“...Right. Not really a conversationalist.”
I took a step forward towards them, and the rain just continued to fall in sheets and veils across their face. I demanded the same thing as before.
“Why are we here.” No reaction.
I was about to take another step when I heard the faint gasp behind me, turned around, saw Renee. Fading. Fading fast. Before I could reach her, try to pull her back–
“Renee–”
“I… I’ll be…”
It happened in slow-motion. She swayed and hung, momentarily, in mid-fall, the silhouette of her body already blurring, before she collapsed into me. Instinctively I wrapped my arms around her to hold ourselves up, her weight almost enough to knock me over; and then the weight was gone. She was gone.
The sensation of a person disappearing in my arms was not one I had ever wanted to experience.
They seemed to be looking intently at the place she had been standing next to me only seconds before, their gaze a detached, empty stare, their eyes as dark as if they’d been carved from stone.
I slumped to the ground even as the clouds, the grass, the landscape all around us was smeared and distorted into swirling, unrecognizable waves. The silver was finally starting to pool around me again. Whatever had connected her to me– I couldn’t find it again. Lost it. Right back where I started.
“Why Renee. Why me.”
No response at all.
“Why can’t you let me go.”
The weight of the ocean was pressing down on me. I could’ve screamed at them if there were any point. I might’ve cried if I had tears to shed.
“Why can’t I fix this.”
I had…
I had to be asking the wrong questions. I had to make myself think.
The first vision they showed me was Renee. And then… someone else I hadn’t recognized.
“What…” I started, barely above a whisper. “Who is that other–”
Peter Vienne. I didn’t know how I knew his name, but I did. He was ducking past the windows, avoiding the streets. He didn’t know what was happening to him, but he felt the thing growing in his chest. Tendrils and coils weaving through his veins and the electricity of his heart. He knew it was the skein because Em had warned him. His first thought was that he was being targeted, somehow, because he was paranoid and more than a little self-centred. His second thought was about just how terrible his luck was.
He was trying to find something, left behind in the old house. The door had been locked, and it must have been locked for a reason. He hadn’t found anything yet– it’d been swept clean days ago. But there was something else that must have been left behind.
His head was spinning, half-unconscious, his breaths coming sparse and shaky, and his hands felt so, so hot–
“–shadow?”
Vienne.
I didn’t know him, but I understood. There was someone else in Roan the skein was digging its roots into; it just hadn’t been Beau like we’d feared. At least, not yet. Not if I could stop it before it reached her too.
Three of us, all right next to each other, on the grand scale. Three knots all bound to the whole. To… whatever the face in the mirror meant.
I only spared their blank visage, unchanged, a momentary glance as I pushed myself to my feet. I didn’t care what they wanted, if they wanted anything at all; they had given me what I needed, and that was good enough. I had one more person to find.
I took a deep, deep breath, steeling my nerves before I could dissuade myself; and I surrendered myself to the water, diving back into the dark.
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