“No surprise,” she says, attempting levity. “Peyt— He’s a good kid. He’d avoid the likes of you.”
“No doubt,” says O. “No doubt.”
He looks like condensation, liable to slip out of sight without solidifying.
He smells like wet pavement.
“Why do you keep coming back?” she asks, ’wind whirring about penance, guilt, forgetfulness.
He looks at her, rubs a hand along his irregular jaw. Stubble creates no friction beneath his fingers; just a silent back and forth movement as he considers the question. Euri doesn’t mind that he’s unshaven. At least he’d set his face to rights before he came this time.
“Must be the view.” The skies are thick with pamphleteers negotiating the airways around high-rises and skybunkers. They toss bundles on rooftops and lower charity packets to the sewer grates on guy wires. Balloonists touch down none too gently on army landing pads, immediately lifting off once tired soldiers have been exchanged for fresh ones. Countless lives speed past Euri’s apartment, all tucked away in windowless flying boxes. She takes a sip of grog, tries hard not to think about the distance between the edge of her balcony and the ground. Once upon a time, she thinks, the gov’t would’ve installed nets.
She drinks deep, failing to drown thoughts of what should’ve been saved, and what wasn’t.
Selfish, taunts her ’wind. So selfish …
O smiles his lazy grin, drifts closer to Euri. Seems like he doesn’t notice the deepening lines on her face, the threads of silver in her dark hair, the rattle of bomb-smog in her lungs. His ever-young hand reaches out to brush a few strands from her eyes, but doesn’t complete its action. Rain slides through his retreating arms, his recoiling fingers, puddles where his body should be.
“It wasn’t you, you know.”
(Blue and red lights reflected off puddles, illuminating the sidewalk ten storeys below Euri’s apartment. They cast onlookers’ faces in lollipop hues so at odds with the tableau. Their mouths opened; hands froze in mid-air; heads turned away from the sight at their feet. Instinctive, instantaneous, reasonable reactions. She didn’t get to the scene until after, but she still sees them that way in dreams.)
“Orfe—” Euri flushes. Feels her throat seize—she hasn’t forgotten his name, just can’t say it. There’s a short list of them now, names she can’t articulate unless fully drunk. Peyt— Armi— Carde— Orfe— She breaks eye contact with the man who, every year, gets that much younger. The latest heartbreak she won’t cry for.
(“Do you know him? Who is he? He wears a tattoo—are you his wife?” Their voices were official, prescribed, but their faces were filled with concern. And trepidation. They were afraid of how she’d react, worried she’d crumple into a wailing ball of misery there on the sidewalk. But Euri couldn’t react. She couldn’t even breathe.)
Not anymore.
He sighs, turns back to the cityscape. Euri follows his gaze. Unable to count the number of times they’ve sat here like this, drinks in hand, impossible love in their bellies, looking out on their twilit world. Across the millions of dark rooftops and cranes before them, cluttering a panorama that might once have stretched to eternity. To the west, a black-blasted desert is ringed by skeleton buildings on the edge of the CBD. Five miles wide and fifteen years dead, it’s ground that even the greys have forsaken. Another absence laid out at Euri’s feet.
The wick of the lantern on O’s side of the balcony is twisted short to save fuel. Down below, lamplighters are out in force, trying to create day where there can be none. The vista is illuminated with so many flambeaux, Euri thinks, you’d almost think the crowded streets have caught fire below us. Even so, the city emits nothing brighter than a soft, grey glow. Ten storeys up, shadows reign. Billows of steam cloud the horizon, pumped from ’stacks and pipes bristling out of ’scrapers linking one borough to the next. Ashen raindrops hang where once there were stars.
Euri realised long ago not everyone is built for such relentless dark.
Now O is beyond noticing such things. Rain pulls cold from the sky as it falls; Euri wraps a dusty blanket around her shoulders, holds it tight, enjoys the weight of musty wool stretching across her back. He flickers in and out of view until she almost loses sight of him.
Steam gives his limbs shape. He tries to lean against the balcony’s railing; his transparent hands miss their mark and he tips forward, overbalancing. He rights himself with a chuckle. It takes him a while to readjust to Euri’s surroundings each time he visits, but he can never stay long enough to really get acclimatised.
She wants to get carried away in his merriment, to giggle at the absurdity of his situation, but doesn’t know if his laughter is real.
(On good days, his smile was contagious. She could practically see through him, his joy shone so bright. Even when the fuel had dried up, and they were sunk in darkness, he seemed to reverberate with light. “How can you know the highs,” he’d say, “if you won’t let yourself swim the lows?” Happiness, and the lies that went with it, should’ve torn out his throat when he said such things. Every other day—the black days, the tunnel days, the real days—Euri knew it wasn’t about letting. Letting implies choice. Willingness. A conscious decision to plunge into horrible spaces, places of misery and death. Places where she couldn’t follow. No, there is no letting.)
“You’re the reason I stayed here so long.” She feels his gaze searching her profile, her ’wind, willing her to meet it, to acknowledge what he’s saying. Begging her to forgive him for leaving.
(“Are you his wife?”)
No. She’s heard it all before. The excuses. The apologies. Everything. The glass clinks as she places it on the tiles between her rain-spattered treaders. No more business suits for Euri. No sneaking shoes. No reason to get dressed up. She’s left that life behind, the luxury, the political intrigue. She changed, long before she met O. She has changed. Unlike him. He won’t change now. To be fair, he probably can’t.
(“You don’t need to be seeing this, ma’am. Why don’t you come with us?” the Watchman said. Euri shook her head. Her feet felt stapled to the ground. Oily rainbows swirled around them. A young man at the barrier next to her turned to his girlfriend and whispered, “I wonder why … ” He tilted his head and looked up, tried to figure out which ledge had launched such a flight; dropped his eyes back to the sidewalk behind the Watch’s barricade, following an invisible trajectory from balcony to ground. The girlfriend gave him a warning look, raised her eyebrows, gestured at Euri with her head. He left his thought unfinished.)
“Must be pretty nice there,” Euri says. “I mean, you’re not looking so bad anymore, you know. All things considered.” Her eyes flick to the left to see if she’s offended him. But he just nods. A slow, melancholic motion, as if he’s been unable to shed the sadness he tried to escape, on this night—that night—all those years ago. Nods, and scratches at his cheek. It must be a physical memory, that scratching; a leftover instinct in his fingers, like a phantom limb. Euri can’t imagine he still gets itchy.
“It’s not all fluffy clouds and home-made soup, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Well it’s kept you this long, hasn’t it? It’s not like you’ve moved on.”
(“Morning dusk’s rising, folks,” the Watchman said. He had a husky voice; part of Euri thought he must’ve been a tunneller before he got the gig doing gov’t work. “Get yourselves gone, now. Show’s over.” The crowd slowly dispersed. Euri stayed put. “Come back,” she said. “Come back,” staring at the form on the ground beyond the Watch’s tape; “Come back,” until her voice clogged with rain.)
She looks at him then, straight on. His skin shimmers in the steady downpour; the haze around his face deepens as they speak. His features waver, becoming implausible.
Won’t be long now, Euri thinks.
“Is that what you want? For me to move on?”
Picking up her glass, she buys time by draining it. The grog burns as it goes down; a raw, c
leansing sensation. He reaches out to touch her again. This time, he doesn’t hold back, doesn’t stop short. She doesn’t feel a thing.
“I can’t ask you to be with me,” he says, softly. “Not unless you’re ready.”
“And when might that be?” Her heart doesn’t beat any faster. “We could’ve stayed together, avoided all this trouble. It’s not such terrible living, you know. Not as bad as you used think anyway.” She is calm. Still, and perfectly relaxed. “They say some airships manage to break through the stratocumulus—I heard one guy even got sunburnt a few years back. Maybe I’ll get some work with them. Scope the sky-fields for greys. Stranger things have happened.”
“It’s too late for maybes, Euri. Look around you: everyone in your building’s gone.”
She looks at him. “Tell me about it.”
He turns away.
“I’m used to it now, in a way.” Clasping hands below her knees, she leans back in her seat, letting body weight pull her arms taut in front of her. “Some days, I get up and feel weightless. Buoyant, like that flier over there. Like I’ve become insubstantial just by waking up. Sometimes I think that’s what happiness is. To let all your burdens go, all your mistakes, until you can float away.”
(“Darkness snuffs the brightest of us,” his mates, those drunken philosophers, said when well into their cups at the wake. “Just ask his missus. Doesn’t pay to dream nowadays, or am I lying?” Euri plastered a smile to her face, refilled their glasses. They turned away, contemplating their loss. “Never met a tunneller with such an urge to fly. Right then, fellas: let’s pray Orfeo’s found a nice shiny patch of sky somewhere. Not that prayin’s a whit better than dreamin’, mind.”)
It was pouring in earnest now, a sure sign he’s getting ready to go back. Sludgy water plinks off the railing; off the roofs of the surrounding tenements; off Euri’s arms, her knees, her face. He balls his hands, still incapable of gripping anything in this world. Not long now. The rain passes through him: but his bare shoulders, his flimsy undershirt, his ragged trousers had all been soaked through ten years before. The wind doesn’t tousle his uneven blond hair, though it’s starting to whip hers around so much she’s forced to pull it back, trap it at the nape of her neck so she can see his departure.
“Is it cold, where you are?” It isn’t the first time she’s asked it, but something about her tone must’ve tipped him off that this time is different.
“Not so’s you’d notice,” he says. Euri can always tell when O’s smile is forced. “Like you said: it’s not so bad there.”
A door on one of the lower floors slams shut as the wind howls through vacant windows below. It resonates like a gunshot: Euri jumps, O fidgets with pent energy. The scent of ozone pouring off him, he adopts the stance of a man gauging how long it’ll take to cross a busy intersection without getting nabbed by the greys. Euri knows what he’ll say next before he even opens his mouth.
“Looks like it’s about that time.”
“I’m ready,” she says.
I’m ready… . I’m ready… . I’m ready …
Eyes wide, he gazes around the balcony. At the cracked tiles; out at the distant aerial traffic; up at the cloud drifts. As if he’s trying to record every detail of this world before he turns his back on it. He does this every time. Euri wonders if he’s still scared, but doesn’t ask.
“Did you hear me? I said I’m ready.”
He spins around, uncertainty transforming his features. Then his face breaks out in the first true smile she’d seen in a decade.
“I knew you’d change your mind! They said you could come with me, but I don’t know— What if you don’t make it? I can’t see if you’re behind me, I can’t check until—”
His mouth grows slack before he can finish. Cataracts whiten his eyes. A few seconds later they recede and leave him looking out at a different view, one she can’t see. They say separation has a way of changing a person’s perspective, and Euri has learned the truth of that axiom. It’s more than just time that keeps us apart.
(The Deposer’s voice thrummed in her ears at his funeral, reverberated in her hollow chest: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.” The congregation murmured the rote response, filling the vacant columbarium with their words. She kept silent as they led him out in front of her, eyes forward as she followed.)
“I know the rules,” Euri whispers. Her ’wind scrolls through guidelines, regulations, even though she knows O can’t see them anymore.
Deep breaths wrack his torso as he paces the length of the balcony, keeping his anxious steps close to the railing. He shudders, yanking his hair, fingers doing their best to puncture the top of his head. Mist seems to issue from his whole body now, great sighs of heat that Euri can’t feel despite the chill. He has the look of an athlete gearing up for a big race; he’s become an actor caught in a tragedy he’s executed many times before. Focused. In the moment. Oblivious.
(They said he hit the ground with the slap of a wet drumbeat. A fleshy shell, so full, made empty. An unforgettable sound, or so they told her. Before they realised who he was to her. Who he is.)
That first time, a year to the day after he’d jumped, the shock of his return was nearly enough to send Euri to the Lunar Street Asylum. A short walk would get her there, if she avoided the greys. And if there were no vacancies at Lunar, she could’ve headed over to Eclipse Boulevard. There were two Stabilisation Centres on that side of the city; she knew them both well. Surely one of them would take her in again.
She hadn’t even made it to the front door. He’d asked her not to go—and she’d listened. Just as she always did when he was being reasonable. She wished he’d given her the chance to convince him likewise, just one chance to say, “Don’t go.” Such a simple request, one that could have answered so many questions. She might’ve known what he’d planned, maybe why he’d done it. But at least, when she watched him re-enact his farewell all those true-darkfalls ago, just as she was watching it now, she was finally able to know how he’d left. And how it was she could follow.
Eyes cast down, staring over the welcoming edge, he clutches, then releases, the railing. The actions never change even though the gestures are mime-like, never connecting. He repeats the motion; the stainless steel surface would be polished to gleaming in two spots, each a hand’s width across, if he’d really been touching it. Exhaling sharply, he bends his knees and sits, hovering in the air, thighs resting on the memory of a patio chair that hasn’t been in that spot for nearly ten years. Takes a swig from an invisible glass of scotch; Euri can almost smell its fumes on the air. She steps back, gets out of his way. Not that her presence matters; he’s on cue, and the only role she has in this play will come after.
He tosses his tumbler aside. There’s still a chip in the tile where it hit the floor, sending an impressive shower of shards across the length of the balcony. The Watch reckoned that accounted for the cuts they found on the soles of his feet. He’d had a pair of genuine leather boots, only owned by a handful of people before him, that he earned on his last paying gig in the tunnels. He used to wear them everywhere, polished them every day until he could see his face reflected in their glossy black finish. Before he jumped, he polished them and put them aside. Euri has never asked why.
Unshod, he steps onto the absent chair, reaches his left hand out as if to balance against the wall. His arches settle atop the railing’s curved surface, their soft flesh embracing cool steel as if he’d rehearsed the motion many times.
“I’m—”
What could he say? He’d never been one to talk about big decisions; he always let them simmer silently until, impatient at being restricted, they forced him to act. So he stood there for a moment with his lips pressed firmly together, saying nothing. For the first year after he’d gone, Euri imagined he sobbed before he leapt, that tears had come, that he’d hesitated, changed his mind. That the fall was a m
iscalculation, an unfortunate shift in footing at the last minute. But each time she saw him jump, only rain coated his serene face.
(The neighbours said he simply leant into the night. Nothing dramatic. Arms weren’t outstretched; there was no swan-diving. Just a shift of the foot, a slump forward; leading with the shoulder, everything else following. A gentle movement and quick. They didn’t even have time to respond—he was an afterimage almost before they’d seen him.)
It was cold then, as now. His breath visible, wreathing his head like a halo, then swallowed by the darkness. Euri stands, lets the blanket slip from her shoulders.
He smells like evaporation.
“Don’t look back,” she whispers. “I’ll follow, but don’t look back.” She knows the rules: everyone does.
He slouches over the edge, just like the neighbours said he’d done; the way she’s seen him droop off the balcony nine times before. His soiled white shirt flaps gracefully in the wind, the back fluttering behind him like wings. Footprints made of steam dissolve when his feet leave the balustrade.
(“Are you his wife?”)
He smells like wet pavement.
“Don’t look back,” she repeats, then steps up as he disappears. Her cheap treaders squeak and slide in the rain; Euri nearly loses balance before she’s ready. The lantern gutters, snuffs out as she steadies herself. She takes one last look at the overcast horizon, then closes her eyes. Exhales. Leans forward until nothing but air supports her. Follows her husband’s ghost over the railing, and imagines she can see day breaking.
It is twilight in the upworld: the time of seduction, of passing thresholds, of becomings. The sun, though setting and veiled with battle smoke, is much yellower than Swan expected. The rubble strewn path is a stream of chalk mortar, russet bricks, rich charcoal beneath her bare feet. Scattered shards of glass are redder than the painted spots on her skin, bluer than the shadows beneath her eyes. Grass, which is always pale turquoise or green in the pictures she lovingly studies, is now the same rich sepia as her irises. Every colour is saturated, outlandish; even commonplace grey zings beyond her optical range. Up here, grey is so vivid it hums.
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