The Storm of Echoes

by Christelle Dabos

  Ophelia persevered:

  “You created the family spirits with your words, and with your blood. For them, you founded a school, right here.”

  The Other suddenly stopped, at the top of the stairs, which was a dizzying height. In front of him, as imposing as a moon, the Secretarium let out deafening creaks. Affected by his many family powers, its red-gold cladding crinkled like foil, and then the globe burst open in an explosion of metal. Ophelia protected herself as best she could. A blizzard of beams, bolts, cylinders, cogwheels, vases, silverware, and punched cards came hurtling down onto the Memorial. The howling of those collections of antiques. The agony of the biggest database in the world. Countless hours of cataloguing classifying, coding, hole-punching, all swept away in an instant.

  The Secretarium was like a planet that had been gutted. All that survived, at its heart, was a second floating globe, its replica in miniature. With merely a gesture from the Other, it in turn opened, showering dust and cobwebs everywhere, and revealing the secret room enclosed within it, and in the middle of that room, the hanging mirror.

  The stairway extended even higher, pushed up by some underground mechanism in the rocks, to the level of Eulalia Gonde’s room.

  Elizabeth gazed at the punched cards fluttering down all around her. Ophelia, battling the vertigo that was knotting her stomach, climbed, one by one, the remaining steps between them.

  “You invented the code of the Books. You wrote storybooks under the initials ‘E. G.’ You made friends with an old caretaker. You suffered from chronic sinusitis.”

  “Stop.”

  This order came from the mouths of the Other. They had erupted all over him, on his face, neck, back, and belly. By stretching his flesh, he grabbed Elizabeth by the hair and Ophelia by the scarf, and hurled them, together, onto the floor of the room. Double blow, doubled pain. The hanging mirror’s surface was already darkening; the Wrong Side was reacting to the proximity of the two Eulalias, real and fake, demanding the surplus one.

  The floorboards creaked like a raft under the Other’s weight, as he advanced with his glut of legs and arms. The eyes popping up all over him were all focused on Ophelia. What she saw of him through her cracked glasses was even more multifarious.

  She leaned on her grazed elbows to crawl over to Elizabeth, who was curled up not far from her, and white as a sheet behind her freckles.

  “This was your room. You spent hours on your typewriter. From here you heard the children you had created growing up. You told me that you came from a big family, do you remember? It’s they who were your family. You weren’t abandoned at the home of strangers. It’s you who went over to the Wrong Side. You asked me to release you, I created a breach, and you returned through the mirror of your choice, in Babel, in a random house. It was your decision, so accept it. You alone can make your echo hear reason.”

  Elizabeth stared at her from under her purplish eyelids.

  “I am sorry,” she stammered. “It’s a terrible misunderstanding.”

  “All this is futile,” the Other interrupted them. “This traitor is going back through the mirror. And you, poor child, you will die here. I vole litheness . . . loathe violence, but twice you have foiled the Wrong Side, and I won’t permit a third time.”

  As soon as one of the Other’s mouths uttered something, all the others echoed it. Ophelia was no longer afraid. It was beyond that; she was fear itself, in its rawest state. The old woman, the monster, the red pencil . . . She tipped her broken glasses up at the dozens of arms raised above her. Which one would cut her to pieces?

  “Just look at me. I represent hall of temerity . . . all of humanity.”

  An enormous bang punctured the air; the Other’s skull was blown to pieces. Hunting rifle on shoulder, breathless from his ascent, Fox stood, defiantly, on the top step of the stairway.

  “You represent no one.”

  With his second shot, he didn’t allow the Other time to collect himself. Fox was smiling, savagely, between his red sideburns. Gail, who was gripping him by the waist to stop the gun’s recoil knocking him off balance, gave him a look that overflowed with pride.

  She repeated with him:

  “You represent no one.”

  Fox fired a third shot. Archibald took advantage of the diversion to slip between the Other’s many legs. He pirouetted over to Ophelia and Elizabeth.

  “The reinforcements have arrived, ladies.”

  He gave a faint smile of derision, as if he deemed himself irredeemably crazy. Ophelia was extremely grateful to him for risking death for them, but how was he planning to get them out of this? The Other’s flesh was forever re-forming, and Fox would soon run out of bullets.

  Archibald leaned closer to be heard over the thundering shots.

  “Listen carefully to me, you two. Especially you, Miss I-Don’t-Know-Who-I-Am-Anymore. I’m going to try, and I mean try, to establish a link between you. I can’t impose anything on you, but you yourselves can use me to make yourself transparent, one to the other. We have very little time.”

  A deafening silence followed. Fox had used his last bullet.

  “Correction,” said Archibald. “We have no more time.”

  Ophelia retched. With an organic spurt of tongues, teeth, and entrails, the Other lost any trace of homogeneity. Not just one, but whole clusters of heads started to appear on him. One of them shot out from an outsized neck, like a plant growing at lightning speed. It reached Fox straight on, head-butting him and breaking his nose, an appalling sound that Ophelia felt in her very bones. Fox lost his balance. Dragged by his weight, Gail couldn’t bring herself to let go of him. They fell from the stairway together, without a sound.

  Ophelia couldn’t close her eyes. They weren’t dead. Not them, not so fast, not like that.

  Shriveled up beside her, Elizabeth just kept repeating that all this was but a misunderstanding. Archibald wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “You represent no one!”

  It was Aunt Rosaline’s voice. With her glasses broken, all Ophelia could see of her was a patch of color—her old bottle-green dress—gesticulating from the top-story railings. There was an insuperable gulf between her and the small weightless floor on which the Other stood, but she was hurling any books she could lay her hands on straight at him—she who so valued anything made of paper. Ophelia’s mother, father, great-uncle, brother, and sisters added their hands and voices to hers.

  “You represent no one! You represent no one! You represent no one!”

  The books took flight. Propelled by all these animist wills, they gathered into a swarm that swelled by the minute. You represent no one! Fox’s and Gail’s words spread from story to story, from mouth to mouth. You represent no one! The Memorialists trying to save the book collections started to tip their trolleys over the edge. You represent no one! The animism spread from book to book, the swarm turned into a tornado. You represent no one! Thousands of books came crashing down on the Other, covering his faces, eyes, mouths, ears, hands in paper. You represent no one!

  Ophelia didn’t know whether she felt proud, furious, or terrified.

  “They’re going to bring his wrath down on them.”

  Archibald laid one hand on her cheek, the other on Elizabeth’s. “They’re buying us time.” This thought had imposed itself on all Ophelia’s thoughts. She had already experienced the power of the Web several times, but nothing as disturbing as this silent, powerfully personal invitation she felt quivering inside her. She was losing all notion of otherness, all distinction between outside and inside. The Memorial crowd was reverberating inside her head; her heartbeats were filling up the world. The very fabric of her individuality was becoming increasingly porous. She was acutely conscious of Archibald’s skin against hers, and of Elizabeth’s skin against Archibald’s, as if all three of them were enveloped in one and the same epidermis. Archibald was ill. Elizabeth was
old. Ophelia was infertile. She knew that the moment she gave in to the lure of transparency, there would be nothing else she could conceal from them. Needs must. There was that memory inside her that other memory that she had to return a memory full of winding corridors and secret gardens the memory of Eulalia who wanted to save her world but who hadn’t been able to save her family those souls united and then divided so that from this schism another otherness would be born that echo that took the place of her family but never was her family that was part of me that was me that I miss I miss her I miss Thorn I miss myself.

  Release me.

  Two words. Two words too many. In the Wrong Side, speaking is an unnatural act. It took Eulalia time—a great deal of time—and practice—a great deal of practice—to relearn the rudiments of language. She came up with a new alphabet at six years old, devised a programming code at eight, completed her very first storybook at eleven, and here she is, having to make a superhuman effort for three wretched syllables.

  Release me.

  At least she has finally attracted the attention of Ophelia, who dragged herself out of bed and is gazing, groggily, all around her. Her eyes slide through Eulalia, despite her standing there, in the middle of the room. They see neither her distress nor her hope. It’s the first time for a long time—a very, very long time—that an inhabitant of the Right Side reacts to her call. Eulalia only has a few moments at her disposal. It’s sleepiness that, for the moment, is making Ophelia receptive to the Wrong Side.

  Sleepiness, and a mirror.

  Release me.

  The mirror in the bedroom quivers like a tuning fork as the words hit it, and inverts their vibrations until they are almost audible:

  “Release me.”

  In the other bed, the young Agatha sleeps deeply, her red hair fanning out on her pillowcase. Eulalia suddenly notices that someone else has sat down on the mattress. A boy whose every color is inverted, like the negative of a photograph. Him again. That young Babelian has got into the habit of following Eulalia everywhere, like a shadow—which they both are, in fact. His eyes are full of both sweetness and curiosity. Eulalia knows that he doesn’t belong to the old humanity she inverted along with herself. No, he was recently sent into the Wrong Side, from the Horn of Plenty, which she thought was buried forever, and it’s partly because of him that she’s here tonight.

  Eulalia must stay focused on Ophelia, who is reeling with tiredness in front of the mirror. Mustn’t lose the contact that’s finally been made between them.

  Release me.

  “Release me,” the mirror weakly repeats, in echo.

  Ophelia looks into it, in search of Eulalia, who in reality is just behind her. Behind behind.

  “Sorry?”

  Every inverted ounce of Eulalia tightens. After an eternity of silence, finally some dialogue.

  Release me.

  Ophelia turns round, looks at Eulalia without seeing her. She’s so young! One foot in childhood, the other in adolescence, and pretty hands wrapped in the shadow of her animism.

  “Who are you?”

  With every movement, every word, Ophelia sends out vibrations of herself that Eulalia feels deep within her own vibrations. She finds giving a reply demands considerable energy.

  I am who I am.

  Release me.

  “How?”

  On Ophelia’s sleepy face, there is something of Artemis as a child. In her veins, the same blood runs; the same ink that Eulalia used to write the beginning of their story. Quivering with nostalgia, she recalls the day when Artemis passed through her very first mirror. That was in another life, in another town. At the time when her children were learning to use their powers, before turning away from them.

  Before being turned away from them.

  The Other had torn out their memories as soon as he had left the Wrong Side. Eulalia had watched the scene from the wings. She saw her own echo pretending to be her, speaking in her name, and mutilating the Book of each of her children—except for Janus, who had the good sense to be absent on that day. She had never felt so betrayed. This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen.

  Fake.

  Deep down, Eulalia knew it. She had known it as soon as the Other had whispered in her ear to take all wars with her to the Wrong Side, while he would act as a counterbalance by tipping over into the Right Side. Eulalia wanted to save her world; the Other wanted to leave his. By giving her word to an echo, she had given him the power to leave the Wrong Side, and to take her place. The power to create a way through, a temporary Horn of Plenty, in short. All that was required was a simple mirror. Eulalia delayed honoring her promise because she knew, deep down, that she should never have made it. The call of the Other had become so strong, over there, on their island, that she couldn’t go near a reflective surface anymore without feeling drawn toward it. She had thrown away all the spoons, removed all the windowpanes, even hidden her own glasses for fear of being swept away before she had finished bringing up the future family spirits. She had kept only the mirror in her room in one piece.

  A mirror that she did end up passing through, on the day that war returned to threaten the life of her children.

  A mirror similar to the one in which Ophelia’s questioning expression is reflected right now. Her lips still form her question: “How?”

  Pass through.

  “Why?”

  Because one half of humanity doesn’t know that it has lived off the sacrifice of the other half. Because now, all the wars sent to the Wrong Side have ceased. Because millions of men and women have finally laid down their weapons and left behind their never-ending conflicts. Because Eulalia, alone, knows no peace. Because the Other remains deaf to her calls. Because he brought no reconciliation to any heart, any home in the Right Side. Because they made the mistake, both of them, of taking themselves for God. And because—at this thought, Eulalia stares at the young man sitting on Agatha’s bed—others are making the same mistakes right now in Babel.

  Because it must be done.

  “But why me?” insists Ophelia.

  Eulalia isn’t a mirror visitor, she herself has never had the slightest power. She has visited the descendants of Artemis many times in the hope of finding, among them, the one who would be prepared to reopen the path for her. She doesn’t really know whether Ophelia can do that, but the important thing is to persuade her that she can.

  Because you are who you are.

  Ophelia stifles a yawn. Soon she would be totally awake, and it would be too late.

  “I can try.”

  Eulalia trembles. She exchanges a final glance with the young Babelian, who smiles at her, giving her a congratulatory thumbs-up. And yet, something suddenly holds her back. She has the duty, here, in front of this mirror more than anywhere else, finally to be honest. To Ophelia, and to herself.

  If you release me, it will change us:

  You, me, and the world.

  Eulalia fears she has let her chance slip away, but Ophelia is just deciding.

  “Okay.”

  They dive into the mirror together. Their molecules collide, intertwine, and intermingle. They merge into each other inside a seemingly interminable interstice. The pain is absolute. Eulalia senses that she is reinverting, atom by atom, but those atoms are already not entirely her own. Her ideas become confused, her identity is diluted. She will soon be out of the in-between. She must quickly choose her destination, any mirror belonging to any Babelian.

  She must, above all, not forget.

  Forget what?

  She must correct their mistakes.

  What mistakes?

  She must go back home.

  Go back where?

  To Babel.

  The link was broken. Ophelia, struggling to redefine herself as a separate entity, understood why when she saw Archibald stretched out on the floor, his top hat
toppled over beside him. He had ended up losing consciousness. She herself had come close to fainting. As for Elizabeth, she was curled up and groaning.

  In the middle of the room, the Other was nonchalantly tearing up, with his hundreds of fingers, the last pages from books still covering him.

  All around them, there were no more railings, or bookcases, and there was no more cupola; nothing but clouds rumbling with thunder and a nauseatingly salty smell. The wind made the scarf and Ophelia’s ripped gown flap as she advanced to the very edge of the floor, to the frontier between solid and void. Had the Memorial disappeared?

  Incredulously, Ophelia slowly swiveled round. An ocean, as lowering and turbulent as the sky, stretched as far as the eye could see. An armada of warships, from several centuries ago, were aimlessly drifting around. She lowered her head and squinted, bothered by the cracks in her glasses. The ocean stopped exactly where the Memorial ark had been, turning into a howling vortex around this void but without spilling a single drop into it, contrary to all the laws of nature. The planetary memory.

  The Wrong Side had regurgitated a piece of the old world, and swallowed, in its place, what little remained of Babel. It had taken the Memorial, Farouk, Artemis, her family. Her entire family.

  “I can bring them back,” murmured the mouths of the Other.

  Ophelia turned toward all the faces springing up across his body. He no longer had any molecular coherence. His dislocated arms, like a myriapod’s legs, indicated the hanging mirror, in the increasingly agitated surface of which he wasn’t reflected.

  “Everything is your fault, yours and Eulalia’s. It’s up to you to ticks fit . . . fix it. And the world belongs only to me.”

  “You represent no one.”

  Elizabeth’s voice had combined with Ophelia’s. She had got up. Her hair lengthened when she lifted her chin. Her shapeless body seemed, little by little, to thicken, and finally reassert her presence in reality.

  “Not even me.”

  All of the Other’s eyes—and there were many of them—opened wide, and then closed again almost as fast, reabsorbed, one after the other, into his skin. Then, in turn, the faces, legs, and arms all retracted, as if some irresistible force was sucking them in. His body gradually shrank, shedding its plurality, regaining a human appearance, until it became, despite itself, an exact copy of Elizabeth, even down to her Forerunner’s frock coat.