Ring of Years

by Grant Oliphant

  At that point Sara emerges from the kitchen, her face a bright shade of red. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demands.

  Peter turns to face her. “Telling everyone to get in the van.” he answers.

  “I didn’t give the order.”

  “No.” Selena can hear the faint trembling in his voice and wonders if anyone else can. “I did. We’ve been patient long enough, Sara, all of us. We’ve done everything Tethys told us to do. There’s no point in waiting any longer. Now stop wasting time and let’s go.”

  Sara moves closer. “Oh really?” she demands. “Everything? Or just everything you were told? Was it you who Tethys confided in before she left? Oh no, that’s right. She confided in me. I was the one she gave her final instructions to, or did you forget that? She told me exactly what is to be done and when, and I intend to see that we follow her instructions to the letter. Does anyone have a problem with that?”

  Someone sniffles but other than that all Selena hears is the sound of shuffling feet and a couple of murmured assurances. No one wants to be associated with Peter right now, not if it means going against Sara. Even she knew that. Inside of her, the wishing space begins to shrink—a tightening in her stomach, a darkening in her mind.

  “What about you, Peter? Do you have a problem with that?”

  By this point Sara is almost nose-to-nose with Peter. Selena, scrunching down against the nape of his neck, can feel Sara’s warm breath on her hands. She keeps expecting Peter to say something, but he just stands there, all stiff and unmoving like a statue.

  “Well?” Sara presses.

  “Maybe if you just told us what she said—"

  The voice is barely recognizable as the same voice that just a minute ago was commanding everyone to get moving. Small and doubtful, it is a voice that to Selena’s ear sounds a lot like her own when she used to beg her parents for something she knew they weren’t going to give her. For the first time, she realizes how silly and grating that voice is.

  How could Peter, this stone man she’s hiding behind—her protector, her liberator—sound so abruptly insignificant?

  “And break my promise to Tethys?” Sara asks in a belittling tone. “Is that what you want me to do, Peter?”

  “No–”

  Whatever else he’s going to say, Selena doesn’t find out, because just then, there’s a scratching at the front door, the turning of the key in the lock. The door swings open, and Diana comes bursting in from the darkness outside. “Sara!” she cries. “Down on the road, a car—come quick!”

  * * *

  Stars.

  Lots of little stars, pale white, barely visible.

  Natalie waves her hand in front of her face and the stars scatter, float, regroup. Strange stars, she thinks, silly stars.

  Her fingers drift through them again—she imagines them as God’s fingers, playfully rearranging the universe—and gently float down to touch her nose, the flesh on her cheeks. She winces.

  The pain focuses her. Her stars are just the powder from the air bag, swirling on hidden currents.

  Outside, beyond the windshield but inappropriately close, is a thick fir, its dense branches covering most of the car’s hood, scrltch-scratchlng over it in the breeze. Fabulous, she tells herself, just fabulous.

  She remembers hitting the tree, although it doesn’t seem to her that she was going that fast, not fast enough to trip the air bag. Not that she’s an expert in air bags. She’s never been introduced to one before.

  It’s like having a sack of packed flour attack your face.

  And chest. And arms. Everything above Natalie’s waste is tender. Even the back of her head hurts, from where it rebounded into the headrest.

  For a moment she doesn’t remember why she’s out here, or where this road was supposed to be leading her. She just remembers being in a hurry.

  “In a state,” her mother used to call it. Yes, she was in a state.

  She swirls her finger through the powdery stars and they twirl into tiny makeshift galaxies. Watching them spin slowly out of existence makes her dizzy.

  Her mind starts playing word association games with heavenly bodies. Stars, galaxies. solar systems, planets, moons.

  “Moons” is where she stops.

  Selena means moon.

  It all comes back to her then—the Portal Guardians, her father’s hunting lodge, the butterflies. Her hunt for Selena, who needs to be found right now, before it’s too late.

  The car seems fine, that’s the good news. The engine is still running. She could probably drive it—except she keeps getting pulled into the little powder galaxies, sucked in, as if by the force of some massive black hole.

  Black, blackness, word association again. There’s such a virtue in nothingness, she thinks.

  She doesn’t even look down to find the ignition, just reaches in front of her and turns the key. The engine sputters and then goes quiet. Next she turns the headlight knob two clicks to the left and the night goes black, completely, utterly black. The tree in front of her disappears, the forest disappears, even the miniature galaxies and their tiny stars disappear.

  Gone, just like that. Like they never existed.

  Like she never existed. Just a consciousness floating in the void. God, before the creation. Or after extinguishing it all, back to square none.

  Screw this, I’m outta here.

  The night seeps into her brain, and she decides to welcome it, just let it inside. Her eyes are just about to close when, somewhere in the field of blackness, she sees a flash of silver, then a second, then a third. At first, they don’t seem to be moving, but then, slowly at first, they dance, flit, and flutter toward her.

  Like butterflies, she thinks, like beautiful silver butterflies, playing in night fields.

  And then, as they pick up speed, an alternative suggests itself, filling her mind with terror:

  Or like the ghosts of butterflies.

  Then she remembers: She hit the tree because she was distracted by a light up ahead, glimpsed through the trees. It was a floodlight, mounted on the side of the house, and lurking in its glow was an old barn, gray and battered. She remembers her father emerging from a barn, carrying a net and a clear glass jar.

  One of the butterflies seems to pause and train itself fully on her. Without warning it shoots itself across the void and burns into her eyes, a sting of pure light.

  She screams—maybe; she doesn’t really hear it—and thinks of people. There are people in the house with the barn, people with flashlights, and they are coming to find her. She wonders if she’s right about them, at which point her mind slips quietly beneath the surface of the night.

  21

  Do What’s Right

  “Natalie, it’s time to wake up.”

  Natalie tries to shut out the strange voice. She is floating in a void and all she knows is she wants to stay there, away from the pain in her head and her body, away from the pain in her soul.

  She tells herself to keep her eyes closed, that the voice will go away.

  “Please, Natalie. You can rest later, but right now you have to wake up. Natalie?”

  It knows her. The voice knows her. How does it know her, she wonders?

  “Natalie, please.”

  Something cool and moist presses against her forehead and she almost groans at the fleeting pleasure of it. A plastic tube is placed against her lips and instinctively she sucks. Her mouth fills with cool water, and this time she does groan. With great delicacy she opens her eyes just wide enough to let in some light.

  “That’s good,” the voice says, “that’s the way. Slow. You’ve had a bad shock.”

  Sitting next to her, rimmed in light, is the outline of a person leaning over her. A woman, judging from the voice, although it’s one of those voices that could go either way.

  “What happened?” she asks, not really sure.

  “You found your way home, that’s what,” the voice tells her. “A true deliverance, if ever there
was one.”

  Natalie opens her eyes wider and lets them adjust to the light. The person leaning over her is indeed a woman, one she’s never seen before. She has a wide, square face and heavy features that normally Natalie wouldn’t associate with any form of tenderness. But this woman, this stranger, is staring at her with deep fondness, and there are tears in her eyes, as if she’s known Natalie her entire life.

  “Do I know you?”

  “We’ve never met if that’s what you mean.”

  “But you know my name.”

  The woman holds up Natalie’s wallet. “I needed to make sure it was you, I hope you don’t mind. I was pretty certain, but it was just such a miracle, I had to check and see for myself.” She opens Natalie’s wallet and pulls out her driver’s license. “And there it is, in official print, Natalie Krill. God, you have no idea how happy I was to see that, how incredibly happy. You found us, just like Tethys said you would. She is going to be so pleased.”

  Tethys… That’s when Natalie’s rattled mind finally places itself. She bolts upright and her head explodes, a flash of white-hot pain that burns on after the initial blast like little bits of shrapnel embedded in the corners of her brain.

  “Oh God,” she groans, nearly vomiting.

  “Too fast,” the woman tells her. “You have to take it slow.”

  But Natalie forces herself back up into a sitting position and looks around. The couch under her is a drab brown, as plain as the room around them—three unadorned whitish walls and one paneled, an unlit fireplace at the paneled end, ugly furniture on a neutral carpet, a battered TV/VCR combo, a complete absence of photographs, knick-knacks, personal mementos. Standard issue rental, the house just reeks of it.

  Even reborn, Natalie thinks, her father’s lodge is still a place no one wants to call home.

  Behind the woman is a rotund man, medium height, kind features, although he’s scowling now, plainly unhappy. The three of them have the room to themselves, but in n adjacent room, Natalie can hear the low murmur of excited voices.

  “You’re them, aren’t you?” she asks.

  This seems to amuse the woman. “Of course,” she says, smiling. “Didn’t you know?”

  “I saw the barn.”

  “Such a miracle.” The woman stares at Natalie so smugly she could vomit.

  “What miracle?” she replies angrily, finding some of her strength again. “I was sent here, and you know it.”

  The woman appears puzzled. “Called, I could understand,” she says. “But sent?”

  “By Ralston!” Natalie snaps. “Ellsworth Ralston. You know—Father. The one you call the Lost One.”

  At this, the woman just chuckles, a loud, ugly, galumphing noise. “Oh my,” she says. “Tethys said you would be confused. You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?” Natalie asks, her hostility rising.

  “Amazing.” The woman shakes her head, an expression of utter bemusement. “Just amazing.”

  Under the best of circumstances, Natalie would find this woman’s air of superior understanding intolerable. These are decidedly not the best of circumstances. Throbbing the length of her body, all she wants is to get Selena and go home. “Where’s the girl?” she demands. “I’m prepared to give you what you want for her.”

  The woman’s eyes widen and then she laughs, a deep, heartfelt, joyful laugh, the way people do on a warm sunny day when they discover something perfect in the universe, some tiny bit of heaven in their own backyard.

  “Just as she predicted,” she says. Turning to her compatriot, she adds, “Peter, get the others. You’re going to get to see that tape after all.”

  When he’s gone and it’s just the two of them in the room, the woman introduces herself. “My name is Sara,” she says, extending her hand. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

  Natalie refuses the offer of a handshake. ‘‘I’ll bet you have. So tell me something, Sara, what is it that you’re so amused to discover I don’t know?”

  Sara smiles, withdrawing her hand. “That it’s you, of course.”

  “What’s me?”

  She laughs again. “I think that would be better coming from Tethys, don’t you?”

  * * *

  Natalie is about to make a snide and, as she thinks about it, ill-advised remark about channeling Tethys from Atlantis when Peter returns, leading a parade of perfectly normal-looking men and women into the room. Sora points them to a spot on the floor in front of the television, where they congregate expectantly. It’s the sort of group that you might encounter in line at a government office building—a socially representative mix of black and white, young and old, tall and short, fat and thin. Aunt Katie was an equal opportunity recruiter.

  At the back of the line, entering the room last is a tall woman carrying a semi-automatic rifle, which she casually cradles in her lap as she joins the others on the carpet. It’s the first weapon Natalie has seen, and she’s less struck by its presence than by its apparent singularity. No one else seems to be carrying a gun; the windows and doors aren’t all being manned by armed guards spoiling for a fight. At least on the surface, this place is no Normalville, no heavily fortified camp preparing for a siege. Natalie wonders if maybe it would have been better if she had called Scopes in after all. Even the FBI could have taken this group.

  Although you never know, she reminds herself. You never really know.

  “We don’t need that in here, Diana,” Sara admonishes the woman with the rifle, taking it from her. “No need for guards anymore, either. We’ll be out of here in a few minutes, anyway.”

  At that the small, sad group gathered at Natalie’s feet cheers. They hug each other and actually cheer. Natalie isn’t surprised—she’s seen this before—but it touches something inside her, a deep well of sorrow and anger. She doesn’t know whether to cry or to scream at these people to wake up or to join in the cheering at their blind eagerness to delete themselves from the gene pool. All she knows is that she despises them and at the same time feels a deep sympathy for them, and what scares her most is that in some twisted way what she’s feeling might be empathy.

  Sara hoists the rifle over one shoulder and leaves the room. Moments later, she returns without it, empty-handed except for a videocassette, black and unlabeled. “Everyone gather around,” she says.

  Butts shuffle on the carpet as the group scrunches in closer to the TV.

  “Make sure you don’t block Natalie’s view,” Sara says. “Natalie, can you see?”

  She nods. Yes, she can see.

  “This is Natalie, everyone.” Sara points at her. “Everyone say hi.”

  Heads turn to look at her and they all say “hi” in unison, quickly and without conviction, like students in a classroom being instructed by their teacher to greet the new kid. Natalie thinks of saying, “Fuck you” back but bites her tongue.

  “What about Selena?” she demands instead.

  “Later,” Sara replies in an abrupt, commanding tone. “Someone’s with her, don’t worry. For now, let’s just watch.”

  Slowly, almost reverentially, she slides the cassette into the VCR and taps at the buttons. A second later, the screen fills with angry snow. Natalie knows what’s coming – she’s getting used to this, the resurrection-by-technology—but still she gasps when the snow is replaced by the sharp image of an old woman in bed, gazing out from across the void of her own death.

  * * *

  Aunt Katie, barely, ferociously alive.

  The sight of her is a shock. In Natalie’s mind, Katie is someone else who has never grown older. Like all the others from Normalville—everyone except Ralston—she has remained fixed in Natalie’s memory, a woman of a certain age, a certain appearance. The woman Natalie saw on Professor Stott’s old videotape, that’s the Aunt Katie she remembers. Knowing she must have aged, knowing how sick she was, hasn’t changed Natalie’s expectations, the mental image her mind has tended so carefully over the years.

  This woman
is someone new, a stranger. And yet, in the intensity with which she stares at the camera—stares through it—immensely familiar.

  The same, only more dangerous.

  She is reclining in bed, propped up on a mound of white pillows. She has a white sheet pulled up to her chest so that only her arms, shoulders and head are visible. The camera holds her close, as if to keep the frame from betraying her true circumstances, but they are obvious nonetheless. And the irony is that the close-up only reveals more clearly how ill she is, how close to death. Her skin, a lifeless gray, hangs loosely from her neck and limbs, giving her the appearance of a half-empty sack. Her eyes bulge forward between wisps of white hair, which cling in weary clumps to her mottled, shrunken skull.

  Against the field of white, she reminds Natalie of a flick of spent ash. Another ash creature, Natalie thinks. Queen of the ash creatures.

  Katie’s followers are instantly moved at the sight of her. Several sob; some hold out their hands, palms extended, as if to touch her and receive her blessing. Many call out her name, and in their plaintive cries Natalie can hear their desire, their deep ache for her to be among them again.

  “Hello, Natalie.”

  Her voice, wrecked by illness, is another shock. Not sharp, like the Aunt Katie voice in Natalie’s head. This voice is raspier, bordering on hollow, yet somehow still compelling, in the way a pair of feet shuffling over floorboards would be compelling to a person hiding in a room down below.

  “And hello, everyone,” she continues pleasantly. She glances downward as if she actually sees her followers arrayed before her on the floor, and Natalie realizes how carefully scripted this moment has been.

  “Hello, Tethys!” They answer with the innocent enthusiasm of toddlers conversing with their favorite, pre-recorded TV character. Natalie imagines the scene and ploys it out in her head: