The Storm of Echoes

by Christelle Dabos

  He gazed at his hands, dotted with freckles. Hands deprived of family power.

  “I remember now,” Elizabeth said to him. “I remember why I broke our deal and left the Wrong Side.”

  She was speaking with a gentle lassitude, but the look she directed at this other her was unyielding.

  “The old humanity that I inverted, along with myself, no longer bears any relation to the one we have known. It has calmed down. Far more than the one I left in your care. Sacrificing half of the world to save the other half no longer makes any sense. And anyhow,” she sighed, almost smiling, “who are we to decide on their behalf?”

  For the first time, Ophelia detected a slight uncertainty in the Other’s stance. It wasn’t an expression of doubt, more a feeling of inferiority, a sense of dissatisfaction that Elizabeth’s words did nothing to help. He was already striving to reject this weak body that she had imposed on him.

  No question of allowing him the time to do so. Ophelia threw herself, headfirst. With all the strength in her fingerless hands, she pushed the Other into the mirror behind him. The wide-eyed stare her gave her, as he tipped backwards, was dreadful. As he made contact, the mirror’s combination of glass, silvering, and lead turned into a vortex. The path to the Wrong Side had opened up to obtain, finally, the counterpart it lacked. Not prepared to let himself be sucked in, the Other gripped onto the edges of the mirror. He struggled fiercely, he resurfaced. Ignoring his blows, Ophelia and Elizabeth pushed him with all their might to force him through.

  They couldn’t do it. They were exhausted. Even diminished, the Other was defying them.

  He was going to kill them, spill the blood, and fulfill the red pencil’s prophesy.

  Two arms surged out of the mirror. Ophelia thought it was some new metamorphosis of the Other, but the arms locked around him like jaws to drag him deep inside. They were hatched with scars.

  They were Thorn’s arms.

  He had taken advantage of this temporary breach in the in-between. Sinking behind the surface of the mirror, the Other’s face distended in surprise. He lost his freckles, his eyebrows, his nose, his eyes, his mouth, until there was no face left at all.

  He let himself be swallowed up, like a faceless puppet. Along with Thorn.

  “Not this time.”

  Ophelia plunged her hand into the mirror. She felt Thorn’s hand grabbing hers, somewhere in the in-between, but she no longer had the fingers to grip onto him. The call of the Wrong Side was as irresistible as a tidal wave. Had Elizabeth not held onto her by her scarf, she would have been sucked in herself. Ophelia cried out when her shoulder dislocated, but still didn’t let go. She would pull Thorn out of the Wrong Side, even if it meant giving up half of her body as the counterpart.

  He mustn’t let go of her.

  He let go of her.

  Reeling, Ophelia fell back onto Elizabeth, who herself fell back onto Archibald, who was just regaining consciousness. The wrinkled surface of the hanging mirror smoothed out until it was properly solid again. The path to the Wrong Side had closed up again.

  Ophelia gazed at her hand. Worse than a hand without fingers, a hand without Thorn.

  All around them, the structure of the Memorial was gradually reappearing. At first, it was but a filigree image against a backdrop of sky and sea, almost an optical illusion, and then the stone, steel, and glass solidified. The remains of the Secretarium, the great stone stairway, the main entrance, the garden with the mimosas, the transcendiums, and the circular stories were all reinverting themselves. Ophelia’s family was there once more, every one of them, all exchanging wary glances with the Memorialists.

  “Oh, no,” exclaimed Archibald.

  Ophelia saw it, too. Behind the hanging mirror, some old wallpaper was gradually losing its transparency. Sending the Other to the Wrong Side had broken the contract. The old world and the new were realigning on the same plane. The second half of the room, having remained in the Wrong Side until then, was gradually reemerging from invisibility, and with it, the second half of the Memorial; a half that Babel’s builders had entirely rebuilt, since they believed it to have collapsed. The two structures were going to clash with each other.

  Elizabeth cupped her hands around her mouth. With a new authority, she gave the order:

  “Everyone evacuate! Everyone!”

  Ophelia refused to do so. With her arm dangling from its dislocated shoulder, she watched as, all around her, the room re-created itself, one piece of furniture at a time. The wood was cracking, the stone exploding, the whole edifice roaring. What if Thorn was right there, nearby, about to reappear himself? She felt her shoulders being gripped. Archibald’s eyes searched deep into her own, behind her broken glasses. He was telling her that they had to leave. Now.

  There was a bang. The next moment, everything went dark.

  THE MIRROR VISITORS

  Pollux’s botanical gardens were just as Ophelia remembered them. The air vibrated with heat, aromas, colors, birds, and insects, but there was also a new wind in the mix. That wind came from over the horizon, and smelt of salt. Where the void had once been, beyond the last palm trees of the arboretum, there now stretched an ocean.

  There were no more arks; all was either land, or water.

  “All this will mean considerable paperwork.”

  Octavio’s eyes glowed red from the shadow of his fringe. It wasn’t the gardens he was seeing, but Second. She was playing cards on the lawn with Helen and Pollux, along with a swelling crowd of strangers, all peering over their game. Men, women, and children from the old world viewed everything with curiosity. They were in perpetual movement, flowing in from across the continent, expressing the same silent amazement, unaware of how uneasy they made the current generations feel. The void might have disappeared, but a gulf remained.

  “Two different humanities for a single land,” commented Octavio, as if he had read Ophelia’s thoughts. “I’ll be amazed if this cohabitation proceeds without a hitch. Everything will depend on each person’s choice, but I’d rather be here, choosing with them, than over there, going through hell myself. Désolé,” he muttered, almost immediately. “I shouldn’t have said that to you.”

  Ophelia gave him a smile, which grew when she noticed the uniform he was wearing: without gold braiding, without an insignia, without prestige. Apart from the wings on his boots, it was the garb of a citizen like any other.

  “You have the right to say what you think. We’re in Babel-the-New, after all, and that’s partly thanks to you. Lady Septima was hard to like,” she added, after a pause, “but she loved you in her own way.”

  Octavio didn’t take his eyes off Second’s face, with that long scar running across it. She was laughing. No need to be a Visionary to see that she was winning easily against Helen and Pollux. She had put away her pencils for good, doubtless because there were no more advance echoes to draw. She had prevented one, the most important one, from happening. If she hadn’t pushed Thorn into the cage, he wouldn’t have been able to drag the Other into the wrong side of the world; indeed, he wouldn’t have been able to do it, either, if he hadn’t been a mirror visitor himself. Second and Thorn had saved Ophelia from the red pencil. Not only her, but also plenty of other lives.

  “Will you go home to your parents?”

  Octavio’s question was detached, but Ophelia still sensed the word hiding behind it, and her heart sank. Stay. She watched, in the distance, every member of her family, busy drinking coffee under parasols that spun round due to all the animism. They had delayed their departure until she was out of the hospital. Now they were making the most of their last few hours in Babel-the-New, in no hurry to board the airship again and return to the rain. The world had changed, but the weather had remained true to itself.

  “I’m not going home yet. I’m not staying, either.”

  Octavio frowned.

  “Where are you goi
ng?”

  Ophelia answered him with another smile, disconcerting him even more.

  “And do they know?”

  “I’ve already said goodbye to them.”

  “Oh. Eh bien . . . my break’s over. Forgive me, but I’ve got enough work to last me a lifetime. If you return to Babel-the-New, you are duty-bound to knock on my door.”

  Octavio made his Forerunner wings jingle, and spared them both from any backward glance. Second stopped her game instantly to take the hand he held out to her. Helen and Pollux gazed at the playing cards abandoned on the grass, incapable of playing with them without someone there to explain the rules.

  Ophelia remained alone under the trees. After her prolonged stay in the confines of the hospital, everything dazzled her. She could still feel a painful throbbing under her turban. Her hair had had to be shaved, but it was already growing back. To be killed by a beam after surviving the red pencil, and the apocalypse, would have been too ironic. She was doing well, according to the doctors. A nasty bump, a dislocated shoulder, ten fingers less, a still sterile belly. Ophelia wasn’t sure whether it was down to her successive inversions, or the reabsorption of her echo, but she’d got her good old clumsiness back. Yes, she was doing really well.

  Not everyone had been as lucky as her.

  “You’re abandoning me.”

  Ophelia looked down. Archibald was stretched out under the tall ferns, with his top hat propped on his nose, and Twit curled up against him. His remark was all the more strange since he hadn’t visited her once in the hospital. Ophelia didn’t hold that against him. She owed having got out of the Memorial alive to him, and since they had been linked, she understood him better than she would have liked. They now knew their mutual secrets. She’d never be able to give life; he wouldn’t be able to keep his own for long.

  “I know it’s not your philosophy,” she sighed, “but take care of yourself all the same.”

  As on every day since she had woken up in that hospital bed, Ophelia couldn’t help thinking about the living, the ghosts, and especially those who had disappeared. About Fox. Gail. Ambrose. Janus. Hildegarde.

  About Thorn.

  “Stop,” Archibald told her.

  “Doing what?”

  “Thinking. Listen instead.”

  So Ophelia listened. Through the mingled sounds of parrots, cicadas, and conversations, she picked up the senseless prattling of Victoria. Close to the aviary, she was throwing a ball to Farouk, which would then bounce off his forehead. Every time, he lifted his arms too late. Victoria didn’t give up, offered him some garbled advice, and then trotted along behind the ball. Every time she stumbled, Berenilde leapt up, impulsively, from the bench she had sat on to keep an eye on her, but Aunt Rosaline gently pressed her shoulder to urge her to sit back down.

  Ophelia was missing them already. She would miss all of them. She might not be able to start a family, but the one she had created for herself, over time, made her feel as if she had several homes now. She gave a final wave to her parents, her brother, her sister, her great-uncle, to each one of them. If the gloves, which she had animated during her convalescence, gave the illusion of fingers, it was the scarf that had really replaced them. It helped Ophelia to get dressed, get washed, grip her cutlery, not because it was animated to do so, but because it had decided to, for itself. The time when they were as one was over. They were now two, separate from each other, freely together. And it was good that way.

  “I already told you,” Archibald warned her, from beneath the ferns. “If you don’t return to the Pole, the Pole will come to you.”

  “We will return.”

  Archibald lifted the edge of his hat.

  “We?”

  She moved away without replying. There was one last person she had to see. She was waiting for her in front of the gate, clinging to its bars like an old lady, her eyelids heavier than ever. An invisible clock had starting working again, along with her memory.

  “You’re not looking too great,” Ophelia said to her.

  “You’re not looking too presentable, either.”

  “What should I call you? Elizabeth, or Eulalia?”

  “Elizabeth. I haven’t been Eulalia for a very long time. In fact, my name isn’t that important. They are.”

  Together, they turned toward the botanical gardens, where the family spirits were clumsily frolicking about. Helen and Pollux were trying to grab hold of the playing cards, scattered by the wind. Farouk didn’t catch Victoria’s ball once. Artemis, looking very pleased with herself, had broken the cup of coffee that Great-uncle had served her. Giants that had slipped back into childhood. No family spirit had returned unscathed from the Wrong Side. After the great reinversion, all that had remained of them were erased Books. Elizabeth had dedicated what energy she had left to give them a new code, a simplified code.

  “The ink that I used this time for the Books won’t last forever. No immortality, no powers, I want a new story to begin for my children. It’s up to them to create what comes next without me. I would have liked to bring back Janus, but his Book was too damaged.”

  “And their own Books?” asked Ophelia. “Where are they now?”

  Elizabeth’s aged face turned enigmatic.

  “Where no one will find them.”

  Where no one will tear out their pages, Ophelia understood.

  Spontaneously, they both turned their eyes toward the distant tower of the Memorial, beyond the city’s building sites. It stood partially demolished on its island. The bookcases hadn’t returned unscathed, either, from their inversion. The pages of several hundreds of thousands of books had been erased, just as the letters “AP” had been from Ophelia’s shoulder. The Wrong Side was a world in which writing had no place.

  As for the hanging mirror, it had shattered into a thousand pieces.

  “Nothing to report,” replied Elizabeth, in anticipation of the question. “I spend half my days scrutinizing my reflection, but no sign of the Other anymore.

  Ophelia nodded. The shadow of Ambrose 1 hadn’t reappeared to her, either. He had only managed to show up thanks to the collision of Right Side with Wrong Side, where the veil between the two worlds was flimsiest, and probably by himself concentrating as much aerargyrum as was humanly possible. In one sense, no longer seeing him was proof that everything was back to order. Almost everything.

  Ophelia noticed the white hairs now entwined in Elizabeth’s long tawny braid. She and Elizabeth were linked to each other by a mirror passage. Their paths had continually crossed and re-crossed, like twin trajectories, but now they would each be going in a different direction.

  Elizabeth forced a smile.

  “You know, my return to the Right Side was horrendous. I had lost half of my identity, and of my appearance. I terrified a couple of Babelians by turning up in their sitting room, but I was even more afraid of them. I ran off, I wandered the streets, unable to remember why I was there. Perhaps not wanting to remember, either. The weight of all Eulalia Gonde’s responsibilities was too crushing, I suppose. And then your memories, Ophelia, were superimposed onto mine. An animated house, a large family. It wasn’t just my past with the family spirits; there was also a bit of your childhood. I convinced myself that I had been abandoned. When the authorities asked me for my name, it was impossible to remember it, too. I mumbled something like ‘Eula . . . Ela . . .’. They decided it would be ‘Elizabeth.’ I’m sorry I won’t be able to see what comes next in your story,” she added, suddenly changing the subject. “I won’t be there when you return from your travels. In fact, I will be dead before this evening.”

  Ophelia looked at her, solemnly.

  “I’m joking. I expect to last a few more weeks.”

  Pleased with the reaction she had got, Elizabeth went off, limping, to rejoin the family spirits, chuckling like an old woman.

  Without Ophelia, she
would already be dead. If the Deviations Observatory train had driven Ophelia directly to the third protocol, she wouldn’t have been handed over to Lady Septima at the same time as Elizabeth. She wouldn’t have boarded that long-distance airship with her. She wouldn’t have been able to resort to her animism to save her from going down in it. They would never have discovered, together, the twenty-second ark. They wouldn’t have both returned to Babel on the Lazaropter. Elizabeth would never have been in a position to regain the upper hand with the Other. The Wrong Side and the Right Side would have been off balance until that definitive collapse.

  In short, the story would have had a somewhat less happy ending.

  Ophelia crossed the bridge that now overlooked the ocean, and walked through the spice market. There were many more people here than in the gardens. The Babelians of today mingled with the Babelians of the past. They perused, sniffed, tasted everything that was within reach, much to the exasperation of the stallholders. There were many calls for the family guard. Octavio was right, cohabitation wouldn’t be easy.

  Not easy, no, but beneficial. Ophelia recalled the young girl she had encountered in that distant land, with its abandoned village. Those returning from the Wrong Side had the same look in their eyes. It was a look of total acceptance, without labeling anything, or comparing anything, affording each thing special value. A look that redefined otherness. Lazarus had spouted plenty of nonsense, but he had at least been right about one thing. We have so much to learn from them.

  Ophelia herself looked as far away as the crowd and the city allowed, taking in the ocean on one side, and the continent on the other, the new world, and the old. Her heart was racing. There was so much to see, so much to discover!