The music beckons. She takes a deep breath and decides she will improvise as she goes. She lowers her feet off the bed and feels smooth wood planks. Each step makes the wide floorboards of the old house creak beneath her bare feet.
The hall is shrouded in shadows. She pulls open curtains as she passes, letting in the morning. From a vestibule surrounded by windows, she sees the sun peeking up from behind the mountains to the east, while the side of the city near the horizon to the west is still sheathed in darkness.
She treads lightly down the stairs, trying to keep the squeaking to a minimum. The parlor, with its shiny mahogany-paneled walls, is empty. She walks to the back of the house, toward the light and the music.
In a room surrounded by walls of windows and lacy-leaved Cyathea ferns, she finds Metis. In front of him is a shiny black piano. Pencils and pieces of paper lay scattered on its top. Steam rises from a green cup. It smells of bergamot and cream. Earl Grey. His serious face is bathed in the pale light of the dawn.
She watches him, studying the contours of his face. Her eyes go to the deep etched lines between his brows. She wants to reach out and trace them with her fingers as she did in her dream.
He looks up, sees her, and smiles. It brightens his face, making him look devastatingly handsome. She cannot help but return it. She hesitates briefly before making her way to him.
“What’s this?” she asks when she gets to the piano.
“A new piece. Do you like it?” Metis says.
“I love it.”
“Doesn’t it remind you of something?” he asks, looking at her with the usual intensity that makes her heart flutter.
“Luce,” she says.
He looks back on the keys. “It just needs something more optimistic. So I’m changing it slightly.”
She thinks of her dream.
“Metis?” she whispers.
He looks up. “Yeah?”
“I—I . . . umm . . .”
His hands stop moving. “What is it?”
She feels a tingling in her flesh. “I don’t want you to think I’m crazy.”
A small smile touches the corner of his lips. “I won’t.”
She breathes in a deep breath. “Last night . . .”
She feels blood rushing to her cheeks. He looks at her with curiosity.
Only a month left.
She sighs. “It’s nothing.”
She turns away and looks out the window. The trees in his backyard are gray and bare. They stand dark against the pale February sky.
He reaches for her hand, his movement tentative, unlike the way he commands the piano.
“Tell me.”
What would Benja do?
Be brave.
“I had a dream with you in it,” she says in one breath.
She feels a squeeze on her hand.
“What was it?”
She looks at him. “We were in a cottage on a beach. I’ve never been there before, but it felt so real.”
She watches as blood drains from his face.
“It was real, wasn’t it?” she whispers.
He nods.
“You know?”
“I’ve always known.”
“How long?” she asks.
“Almost from the beginning.”
“So, at the concert, you knew it was me?”
“I thought you were a mirage,” Metis says.
His eyes dig as if trying to read her mind.
“Are you upset?” he asks.
She searches her feelings and shakes her head.
“It’s surreal and strange. And I’m a little freaked out. But no, I’m not upset. I’m actually . . . happy. It’s weird.”
She feels his trembling hands on her waist. She places her palms on them, and the quivering subsides. In one quick movement he pulls her onto his lap. He circles his arm around her and holds tight.
“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” he says. His face is buried in her neck, breathing her in.
He pulls away and looks at her. His eyes drink in her image, satiating the thirst of a man who had just survived a trek through the desert. His hands reach toward her face. The movement is tentative but becomes more assured once he touches her skin.
A kiss. Soft at first, like the flapping of wings. The pressure intensifies and leaves her breathless. It feels just as she remembers from her dream. Butterflies flutter inside her stomach. But there are so many questions swirling inside her head.
She breaks away. “How?”
“Dreams since the beginning of the cycle. Feelings. I thought I was going insane. But one day on the subway, I saw red graffiti on the wall. It triggered something in me.”
“The one that looks like a flower?” she asks. “What does it mean?”
“I rode the train back and forth so many times like a madman. Then it became apparent to me.”
“What is it?”
He takes her hand and puts something in the middle of her palm. A silver ring. She picks it up and studies it. The familiar design looks like a flower. Except it is more than a flower. It’s a shape within a shape, entwined as one. The outer design is of interwoven lines that form a nine-point mandala. Inside its center is a square with indented sides.
She hands it back.
“It’s yours,” he says.
She looks at him.
“Please,” he says.
She eases it onto her left ring finger.
“That’s where you used to wear it,” he whispers.
“Why do you have it?” she asks, staring at the foreign object on her finger. She is afraid to look at him.
He clears his throat. “I’ve always had both rings. We must have decided in the last cycle to keep them together. I found them hidden in a chair cushion in the living room. I knew what they were as soon as I saw them.”
“How do you know so much?”
He takes in a deep breath. “Absinthe.”
She feels the wind knocked out of her.
“You’re a Dreamer?”
He nods.
“You knew Benja, didn’t you?”
He looks down. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want you to hate me.”
Aris searches her feelings. Once she may have hated all Dreamers. She blamed them for enabling Benja’s obsession—for giving him drugs that propelled him into madness. But all the dreams Benja had of his old lover were his. The unlawful behaviors were his too. Metis did not break into her house or threaten her, and he was a Dreamer.
“I don’t hate you,” she says. “Tell me more about what you remember.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How many cycles?” she asks.
“I don’t know. At least one. Maybe two or three. I’ve seen many memories—several were of us inside this house—but we were always similar to the way we are now.”
She finds it strange to have a man who only a few months ago was a stranger to her tell her they once had a life together. He remembers a lot. She can tell by the way he looks at her with the possessiveness and longing of a lover.
“What was I like?” she asks and realizes the bizarreness of the question.
“You had the same mannerisms you do now. You were often surrounded by trees. Gardens. Parks.”
She imagines them walking hand in hand on a path with green trees arching above.
“You loved to read,” he adds.
“I still do,” she says.
“And I often dream of us on a beach,” he says.
Her face feels hot. She looks down, trying to hide the smile that she cannot suppress.
“You smiled like that in my dreams.”
“I must have been happy,” she says.
“This is strange, right?” she asks.
“Such is the paradox of Tabula Rasa. To have to rediscover things we’ve already discovered. To remaster what we’ve already conquered. We live in the present while unearthing the past, unbeknownst to us.”
“Enough to make your head spin,” she says.
“Tabula Rasa does get a few things right,” he says.
He looks at her as if trying to arrive at a decision. Then he gets up and comes to stand behind her.
She holds her breath, unable to predict what he is going to do. She feels his hand at her temple. He sweeps up a section of hair and tugs it behind her ear. The gesture elicits a familiar warmth in her.
“You will never take anyone for granted, because you will lose them,” he says.
He moves her hair over one shoulder.
“You’ll treasure all your experiences as if they’re your last.”
His hand is on her neck now, caressing it.
“You will fall in love over and over with the same person.”
She tilts her head to the side and closes her eyes.
“It’s the reality of it that kills you. Every time you wake, realizing it was just a dream, a piece of you dies,” he says.
Suddenly she sees Tabula Rasa as a black cloud—a storm in the distance, moving closer as each minute passes.
She feels his breath at her earlobe. He kisses it, and she manages to hold a moan in her throat. His lips glide along her jawline, and down her neck.
“The Dreamers are dangerous, so I’ve been told,” she says.
He snickers. “Are we?”
“You have the power to rip through the fabric of our society trying to get at the past. There’s nothing in the past but the Last War,” she says.
“There is so much more in the past than that,” he whispers and pulls the loose neck of her blouse to the side, exposing her shoulder.
“And besides, I don’t want to rip anyone’s fabric but yours,” he says.
He kisses the tip of her shoulder and runs his hand along the edge of her blouse, like an animal searching through grass for its burrow.
His hot palms move down the curves of her breasts. Lower and lower. A moan escapes her lips. She hears the loud scratching sound of her chair dragging against the wood floors and feels the wind stirring her hair. Metis is standing in front of her now.
He lifts her easily off the chair. Air whooshes past her as he carries her up the stairs. The next thing she touches is the soft mattress. The faint lavender scent of the sheets caresses her nose.
He comes to her with the hunger of a starving man. Her head whirls. Bright dots dance in her vision. She becomes nerve endings, feeling her way like a blind person through the tunnel of his desire. Her body is malleable in his hands as he changes its shape to fit his mold. She is reminded of the concert, of the feeling that she is about to lift off into the sky. She grabs onto him for anchorage as they soar into oblivion.
She does not know where her body ends and his begins. Their legs and arms are intertwined with the sheet, like caterpillars spinning silk to become chrysalises.
Aris hears a sigh. It came from her.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “That was unexpected. You’re not upset, are you?”
She turns to look at him. “Don’t be sorry, I’m far from being upset.”
“I had planned to woo you before we, you know,” he says.
“Define wooing,” she says.
“Dinner, music, flowers. Maybe a play. You love plays.”
“Quite a plan,” she says.
“Then I might steal a few more kisses good night.” He leans over and presses his warm lips on hers.
“And?” She glides her hand down the hard line of his back muscles, feeling its dampness.
“And maybe after you feel comfortable enough around me, we can take it to the next level.” He peels the sheet off her. Her hands automatically move to cover her bosom.
“I’m sorry we ruined your plan. It was a really good one,” she says.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m far from being upset,” he says with a sly smile. He pulls her hands off and replaces them with his face.
She feels his palm caressing her inner thigh. It moves dangerously higher and higher. She grabs it.
“You’re not—already?”
“I’m afraid I am,” he says.
“But we just . . .”
“Well, you can’t blame a starving man for wanting to gorge himself on the most beautiful meal in front of him.”
“You’ve been starving?” she asks, surprised.
“This cycle, yes.”
“But it’s been almost four years.”
“Umm-hmm . . .” he says as he nibbles his way through the courses.
“Seriously?” she asks, pulling his face up.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he says and goes back to what he was doing.
“Wow.”
“Is that a bad ‘wow’?” He looks up at her.
“You just made me feel like I’ve been unfaithful.”
“It’s okay. I forgive you,” he says, “You didn’t remember.”
“So, you never thought of being with other people?”
“No.”
“Not even once?” she asks.
“No.”
“Oh, wow.”
“You keep saying that like it’s a bad thing,” he says.
“No, it’s just . . . I’m honored, I guess.”
“Don’t be. I didn’t do it for you,” he says.
“Oh?”
She sits up and draws her knees to her chest. He comes to the same position. She looks at him for an answer.
He says, “Unlike you, I remember. I started remembering early on. I’ve been searching for you all this time, and I thought I wouldn’t be able to live with myself once we found each other if I didn’t stay faithful to our memories. So I just never had the urge.”
“Never?”
“Well, yeah, but not, you know.”
“It’s just not natural.”
“Pardon me?”
“Humans are naturally polyamorous. It’s a scientific fact. We are promiscuous. We get bored. We get restless. We like to sample different tastes. That’s why I’ve never understood marriage. Why chain your instinct?” she says.
“Monogamy is a decision you make every single day. You decide that the person you’re with is who you want, and you remake that decision every day,” he says.
He takes her hand and kisses it. “It’s a promise.”
“But isn’t that work?” she asks.
“It’s never been work for me,” he says. “I just think of your face. The wanting of you is like breathing, living.”
So this is why.
“What are you thinking?” he asks and straightens.
He regards her with a long side look. “You seem . . . bewildered.”
“I’m just feeling this . . . It’s this . . .” She searches for words to describe it.
She touches the area between her chest and stomach. “You know here, where you feel like you’re falling and at the same time filled to the brim.”
“I know that feeling well,” he says and leans closer. His nose touches hers, and she smells the sweet scent of bergamot, sweat, and him.
She feels his hand behind her neck, his fingers winding around her hair at the nape. Then the softness of the pillow.
“It’s the reason we Dreamers spend our lives searching, trying to bring it back within our grasp, even if just in dreams. And for the l
ucky few who find it, we will never let go,” he says.
She understands.
Chapter Twenty
“It’s lavender oil,” Metis says as he pours the liquid into the hot bath. He sits behind her, one arm around her waist. He leans back and pulls her against him. The scent rises with the white steam, and Aris breathes it in.
“You like this scent,” she says, “I smell it on your sheets too.”
“Only because it reminds me of you.”
“I don’t know if I can ever get used to the idea of this,” she says. “It’s strange to hear you speak of me like we’ve known each other for a long time.”
He picks a piece of damp hair off her face and moves it behind her ear. “It’s only in your mind that we’ve known each other just a few months. Or that you’ve been in this house with me for only three days. In reality—the ultimate reality, or whatever we can call it—we’ve had years. Your mind just hasn’t realized it.”
“Has it been three days already?” she asks. Time is a blur when she’s with him. They have barely left the bed except for necessities. “How do you reconcile that? When your mind and your memories can’t agree on what’s real and what isn’t?”
“It’s best to just follow your heart,” he says.
Follow my heart.
Aris is not even sure what that means. She has always been rooted in logic and the scientific method. First you ask the question, then you carefully gather and examine the evidence, and finally you combine all the information to arrive at a logical answer. But what do you do with ethereal evidence that disappears with the sunrise?
“I can almost hear the gears in your head turning,” Metis says. Aris feels warm water trickling down one shoulder.
“‘Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were,’” she says, quoting Marcel Proust. “Memories aren’t simply retrieved from a box whenever people try to remember something. They’re reconstructed. Different parts of the brain draw information from various corners, then build the memory we’re trying to recall.”
“You’re questioning whether your memories are even real?” Metis asks.
“It’s just not logical,” she says, “Not in the traditional sense.”
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