She watched him struggle to make a living at farming, ultimately giving up and moving his family, now two daughters but no wife, into the town at the end of the road. He employed himself as a tinker and handyman, making a modest living, until his eldest daughter succumbed to the black death. He mourned until he sat down one day in the corner of his small tinker’s shop and slipped into eternal slumber. Still, Baba Vedma watched.
She saw his consciousness become…something else, and the secrets of the universe splayed out before her, not the universe she had known before, but something completely new. She saw possibilities that she had never considered. She saw fabric choices she had never known existed. She got to her work in earnest then.
She pulled a swatch from the heart of creation. It was fabric unlike anything conceived by human thought. At once, it was beautiful and terrible to behold. She turned the fabric over and over with her trembling fingers, setting it flatly in the palm of her shaky hands, and she wept for all that she could now accomplish.
She tentatively pulled from her own life, a small bit of string, barely enough to thread the needle. It was as course as the fabric of the earth, more twine than thread, and she made a stitch, just one small stitch, barely notable in the grand scheme of things. What she saw changed her, made her…something else.
Baba Vedma continued to sew. She is sewing now. Her eyes have seen everything that will ever be. She knows the past, she knows the present, and she knows the future. And she knows more than that. The entirety of everything that has ever been or ever shall be is splayed out before her, not just things that can be imagined, but everything unthinkable as well.
Chapter 26
Matt awoke with a start, sitting straight up in his bed. He didn’t remember getting home or going to bed, but here he was nevertheless. He paused a moment, allowing his breathing to return to normal. The nightmare, one of loss and pain, had been a series of feelings and flashes of people and places in no predictable order. It had been unnerving, disquieting, but it was fading quickly. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and hurried to the bathroom. A quick shower and change of clothes later, he was heading downstairs.
The smell of warm bread floated to him from the kitchen, and his stomach ached for the food. He looked at the front door but decided he did need something to eat. In the kitchen, his grandmother greeted him with a pleasant smile.
“Grandma?” he asked, just a little confused.
“Hello, dear,” she said in a grizzly voice full of friendliness and love.
“What are you doing here?”
“Your mom had to run into the office for just a bit,” his grandmother said as she dropped some eggs into a skillet on the stove. The sizzle, combined with the smell of toast caused renewed pangs in his entire body. “You like scrambled, right?”
Matt nodded and sat at the table without intending to. Soon, a plate of scrambled eggs and toast with jam and a glass of orange juice were sitting in front of him. He ate ravenously. A strange halo of dingy red glowed everywhere he looked, but he wolfed down the food just the same.
“If you like,” his grandmother said, “I can drop you off at the hospital. Your mom said you might like to wait there for her.”
Matt nodded briskly, a mouthful of food preventing him from saying anything. After breakfast, they drove to the hospital. The waiting room was not as empty this morning. Several people were littered around the rows of chairs, and someone had taken his chair. He had a momentary flash of possessive jealousy that made him wince from the silliness of the thought. He walked straight for the nurses’ station.
“I’m here for John Hensley,” he said to the man in the scrubs behind the desk.
The man, who looked about his own age, typed on his keyboard, and Matt worried that the young nurse wouldn’t offer his friend the best, most competent care. It was a thought he had never entertained before. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever noting anyone’s age before. Why would this guy’s relative youth affect his ability to do his job? Matt didn’t know the answer to that, but he still wished the nurse were older.
“He’s in recovery,” the young man said, and Matt realized that he just looked young. He was probably much older than he looked.
After a list of directions and a brisk stroll through the lobby and a trip on the elevators, Matt made his way to John’s room. “It’s a good sign,” he whispered as he approached the door. “He’s stable enough for a regular room. That’s a good sign.” He knocked gently on the door, which was ajar and floated open. He stepped inside the dimness. Mrs. Hensley was sitting in a chair by the window. She was looking out, her hand under her chin, her elbow on the radiator underneath the blinds. She didn’t move as he walked in, and Matt realized she was sleeping.
The room was eerily quiet; only beeping and mechanical whirrs filled the space. The lights were low, except over the bed where John lay, his face pale and ashen. A tube running from his mouth to one of the machines that were making all the noise. His entire head was wrapped in gauze that seemed far too large for what he remembered to be the size of his head. Matt stood there—for how long, he didn’t know—and tried to reconcile the image before him with the friend he knew. It was an impossible task. He finally just accepted that the weak, colorless thing before him that everyone seemed to think was John, must, in fact, be John.
“It was a rough night,” Mrs. Hensley said suddenly in such a weak voice that it didn’t even seem to disturb the silence. “But we think he’ll be okay, if, uh,—”
“What?” Matt stepped closer to Mrs. Hensley. She turned her face away toward the window and then back again. She took a long time preparing her words or maybe bracing herself for actually speaking them out loud. “He’s going to be okay, right?”
She nodded rapidly, too rapidly, and took one more breath. “If he can wake up.” The words hung in the silence like a fly caught in a spider’s web and would not, could not leave. She continued before the other words had a chance to free themselves. “There was a lot a bleeding, y’know, internally, on his brain,” she spoke in a weird half-voice that was like trying to listen to the breeze. “There was a problem in the surgery too. It was…well, something happened, and they had to—I don’t know—they did something. It was a lot of talk. A lot of medical stuff.”
Matt looked at the scrubs she was still wearing and wondered again why she chose to wear them, but the thought was a ruddy brown color that didn’t sit well with him. So, he let her words hang in the air with the others and with new ones and let them swirl into a mix of redundancies and useless platitudes as she continued to speak. All the time, he looked at his friend, bathed in this gray aura that threatened to swallow him whole.
“The doctor said that the next twenty-four hours will be crucial,” Mrs. Hensley finished speaking with a sob and turned back to the window.
Twenty-four hours, Matt thought. That’s not so long. That will go by fast, and then John will be awake and… He couldn’t conjure the necessary lies to make any of his thoughts brighter. They were as gray and dark as John’s skin. He looked around and couldn’t find a clock. Red shot through him, and he walked out of the room with an intensity he didn’t know he possessed.
Chapter 27
An Appointment with the Dottore
Frau Iver wafted through the forest, humming because she could and touching every tree with gentle fingers that left not even a trace of ice behind. Her heart was warmer than she could easily remember it ever being before. She smiled.
“I don’t feel any different.” Frau Iver stopped walking and looked down at her feet, barely touching the ground. Her eyes, bright glints in the shadows of the trees, seeing much more than a normal woman would be comfortable with. “My story has changed. My voice is evidence. What does it all mean?”
She sighed heavily, the sound a pleasant whisper in her ear. She smiled again and resumed her walk.
“I…” Frau Iver spoke out loud because she now had a voice, and sparkling droplets fluttered around
the glints where her eyes most likely were. “I really don’t feel any different.”
A chill wind blew, whistling through the bare branches. The twilight grew darker. The Dottore stepped from the darkness between the trees. He stood, his birdlike mask a grotesque parody of life, and stared. The glass portholes, black and lifeless, focused on Frau Iver and would have made her blush and turn away were she anyone else.
“Bow.” Frau Iver reminded herself as she curtsied and averted her misty eyes, trying hard to hide her smiling face from the Dottore’s gaze.
The leather-bound hand of the Dottore appeared from beneath his cloak. He motioned for her to sit as a table and chairs appeared just out of the corners of her eyes. The Dottore, in a moment of awkward politeness, pulled the chair out for Frau Iver.
“What do I do now?” Frau Iver whispered as she settled in. “Quiet,” she chastised herself. “I wait, patiently and quietly.” She nodded and forced her new-found voice to still itself.
So, that was why the Toy Peddler suggested that I come, thought Frau Iver. He knew I would break protocol and probably be wiped from every storyline. She suppressed a weary sigh as she placed her hands on the table. She then focused all of her attention on her mouth, trying desperately to keep from speaking. Her attempts failed miserably. “We need help!” she said far too loudly.
Frau Iver’s hands went unbidden to her mouth, but she found that even though she tried with every iota of willpower she could muster, she still spoke, “I’m sorry. I know I’m supposed to wait for something, but I am not the most patient Aspect. In fact, my entire story is about impatience, really; at its heart, that is what my story is about. I can’t just sit and wait for something to happen. I make things happen. Usually, they’re the wrong things, but I still make them happen. That’s all right, isn’t it? To be who I am? Even in the presence of the Duality?”
The Dottore’s exaggerated leather bird’s nose turned toward Frau Iver, and then his entire masked head tilted as he listened to the ranting of his visitor.
“Please, be quiet,” Frau Iver begged of her voice, but she could feel the desire to speak building. “I truly am sorry to be speaking so much. I don’t know what has—”
The Dottore’s leather-gloved hand rose, demanding silence. Even Frau Iver’s disobedient voice found it impossible to speak. The chill wind blew angrily all around them. The night became impossibly dark; the Gloaming retreated for just the briefest of instances; and when the meager light returned, and the wind died down, the Dottore was no longer with them. Frau Iver removed her hands from her face.
“Am I going to be erased?” she asked while looking at the stones she was now sitting on and the fallen tree in front of her that had a moment before been a table.
“I don’t think so,” she answered herself and wished she could just stop speaking. “Where’d the Dottore go? Did he leave? Should I wait? I’m suddenly so unsure.”
The light was wrong , she thought, without verbalizing the idea. It wasn’t a true gloaming anymore, but she couldn’t quite…
“Was he erased?” Frau Iver’s head jerked in several directions, nearly at once, and surveyed everything around her. Her indistinct features mimicked fear far too plainly. “I shouldn’t even think that. If half of the Duality was…”
She continued to look around nervously. The trees seem to point quizzical limbs at her. The Gloaming, no longer a true gloaming, taunted her, begged her for answers.
“I don’t know!” Frau Iver shouted and then held her hands over her mouth again. Ice snaked from her feet. It shot out in crystalline swirls that danced eerily over the newly frozen ground. She took a deep breath and forced her mind to calm. The ice receded.
“He was erased, wasn’t he?” Frau Iver turned her eyes to the trees. “Are the Woods…different?”
She stood and touched a tree that was, curiously, far too close. “The clearing has shifted,” she said, pointing to the open space between the trees where she and the Dottore had been sitting.
“It’s not just the clearing,” Frau Iver said, her mist-like features turned toward the sky. “The world has shifted.”
The wind whispered a question.
“I think,” Frau Iver said, obviously choosing her words very carefully. “It means what I think it means. The Dottore is…”
The trees bristled a warning.
“We have to face it.” She pressed a steady hand on the trunk of another tree. “And I have to get back and tell the others.”
Frau Iver walked quickly along the path through the Woods that she knew led to the Inn at the Edge of the Woods. She kept walking, faster and faster, nearly breaking into a full run before something stopped her.
“The path.” A sudden realization rocked Frau Iver as she pointed toward a thick stand of trees. “That’s not the path, but the path is there.” She touched one of the trees directly in front of her. “What do I do now?”
Frau Iver tried to fit her insubstantial hand between the trees, but there wasn’t space. She searched for a way around the stand, but the Woods had grown too thick. The only path was to her left, but it was the wrong path. She hesitantly turned to face it. It looked harmless, just like a normal path through the trees, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the only choice she had would turn out to be the wrong one. “I will see where this takes me,” she said as she stepped forward along the only path offered to her.
She walked among the strange trees, following the unfamiliar path until she heard an odd noise. She came around a bend, and sitting nearly dead center in the road was a woman. She was dressed in an easy garment that merely draped over her body and was not fitted at all. She was sobbing softly, her face hidden in her hands. Her auburn hair, pulled back in two tight braids, fell heavy on her shoulders in rope-like form and curled gently around her neck.
“There’s a woman in the path,” Frau Iver told the trees, and when they didn’t answer, she observed, “She’s crying.”
Frau Iver looked at the trees, but they offered no advice. Finally, she shook her head, attempting to dislodge the very new need she had to voice her every movement and thought, and directed a question at the woman. “Are you all right?”
The woman’s sobbing stopped short, and she turned her whimpering face toward Frau Iver. Her eyes, the color of freshly turned earth, fluttered open against the torrential presence of tears. She stared blankly.
“Maybe she didn’t hear me?” Frau Iver announced and realized she could have just thought the words, and she did not have to say them out loud. She tried to grab hold of the woman’s hand, but the woman was having none of it. She pulled her hand away and huffed. Frau Iver was unfazed and voiced her inner thoughts again, “Is she an Aspect, an Element, what?”
Frau Iver thought for a moment, and realizing she had no way to determine what this new person was, she leaned toward the woman. “What’s your name?”
“I am,” the crying woman said, her voice scratchy and worn like old parchment, “Paroxysm.”
Frau Iver straightened her back and looked down at the weeping figure who had demurely looked up at her. They exchanged questioning looks, each delving the depths of their memories. Frau Iver stepped a bit to the side and concentrated hard. “Who is Paroxysm?”
Chapter 28
Paroxysm
The tearstained bride lay on the soft bed alone in the small room. She waited for a reprieve; she waited for mercy; she waited for kindness, but she received nothing. The cold stones encased her as completely as the grave. The heavy wooden door kept her sealed in, and the bars on the window filtered the bright sunny day outside her room through a lens of captivity.
The hour was approaching. Time was fleeting in its indifference. She counted the beats of her heart, knowing soon it would beat no more. How odd, she thought, to know that one’s own death was near. It was at once terrifying and freeing. She looked at the bars, the furtive shadows they cast and knew that she would be free of them very soon.
He came to her at ni
ght, her unwanted husband, every night and offered her food. She was indeed hungry, and the food looked exceedingly delicious, but she desired only her freedom. The bright day outside her window became dark, forbidding, threatening. He was coming back, her most hated husband.
The sound of the key turning the lock had once caused her heart to sink; now the sound was meager, unable to penetrate the haze of coercive imprisonment. Still, she tried to rise, but she was so tired, so weak that she settled for turning to face him. The smell of the food entered the room before him.
“Will you eat tonight?” he asked, holding the luscious-smelling tray of food before him. Her stomach tightened as the smell of fresh baked goods greeted her, her breath coming faster and more forceful with each intake of the warm, inviting, bread-scented air. Her mouth watered at the sight of the fresh fruit: strawberries, sliced pomegranate, melons from every corner of the world, peeled grapes, and she thought she spied a quince before a tear flowed down her cheek, and she struggled to turn away and face the wall.
He sat beside her on the small bed. She felt his weight, the heat from his body. He was kind, she though. Would it be so bad to stay with him? But he had stolen her, and he did not deserve her devotion or even her presence. Her heart grew firm, cold as he gently touched her arm.
“Won’t you even look at me?” he asked, tenderly gripping her shoulder, pulling her toward him, lifting her to a seated position.
He is handsome, she thought. Would it be so bad to have such a gentle, handsome husband? But he had taken her against her will, taken instead of asked. He hadn’t even attempted to woo her. He had seen what he wanted and never even entertained the thought that she might not want him; he had taken her as a prize, as a spoil of war, as a thing. She hated him for that. He was everything that she could hope for in a husband, but he had ruined it all. She used what remained of her slight strength and pulled away from his touch.
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