The Sphere

by Martha Faë

“No, yesterday’s was Jekyll. Doctor Jekyll. This other one is Doctor Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, he’s a scoundrel with hair like a madman. He created Frank and then completely shunned him.”

  I can’t believe it. They’re all obsessed with names from books here, too! Just like my parents. Well, at least there’s something here that makes this world seem a little bit more like the regular one.

  “Jekyll also gave someone life?” I’m amazed that somebody could create a living being.

  “Not exactly. He’s a double. Dorian has his portrait; Doctor Jekyll has Mr. Hyde... doubles, except that Dorian Gray isn’t misshapen, and Hyde is.”

  “Okay, I see. Beatrice told me a little bit about him. By the way, what do you think about this Creator that Beatrice talks so much about?”

  Morgan lets out a loud sigh and flashes me a conspiratorial smile.

  “Superstition. Ignorance. I try to tolerate it and say nothing. As for Holmes, he thinks you must respect the beliefs of others... well, the beliefs of Beatrice, to be more specific. He doesn’t care a bit about the beliefs of any other inhabitants of the Sphere. For instance, it doesn’t matter to him whether Merlin and I practice magic. A lot of other people in The Sphere never stop gossiping, but Holmes doesn’t care about what others do or believe. He ignores it all, except for his most beloved lovely lady.”

  “Right...”

  “It’s inexplicable!” Morgan exclaims, with sudden passion.

  “You really think so?” Finally I feel like someone shares the opinion that I’ve been keeping hidden since I met them all.

  “He thinks her ignorance is sweet!” we say at the exact same time, and then burst into laughter.

  “And it’s not even like she made him drink a love potion! I’ll never understand it,” says Morgan.

  She has relaxed so much that she seems like a different person. I even feel like I can relax a little, too. I’ve never been particularly good with people, but I have the feeling that—at least for now—Morgan can be trusted.

  “I don’t get Sherlock’s thing for Beatrice,” I remark. “She’s very kind, sure, but she’s so sentimental—it’s insufferable! Sherlock is so intelligent. How can he be attracted to someone with such intellectual limitations?”

  “I don’t understand it.”

  “What do you think about the world? Do you think there was something that put it all in motion?”

  “You’re asking me about my cosmological ideas?” A smile as wide as a slice of watermelon stretches across Morgan’s face and her eye sockets start to give off a bright light. A remarkable change is taking place right before my eyes. It even seems like the wood grain of her face is softening. “Well, there are several theories. I certainly don’t believe in any of the theocentric ones... You know, nothing with some sort of all-powerful creator who made everything.” I nod, admiring the glow coming from her empty eyes. “Personally, the theory that I find most convincing is the Big Scratch,” Morgan is getting enthused, speaking quickly, her gestures becoming animated. “That’s the theory of the Great Writing, which offers a scientific explanation for our existence. But I don’t want to bore you...”

  “You’re not boring me at all!” I say, with total sincerity. If there is one thing I have always liked, it’s science.

  “Really?” Morgan is so pleased that she moves in front of me and starts walking backwards so she can keep me in sight. Her footsteps begin to bounce and the tousled ringlets of her hair dance gracefully. “According to the Big Scratch, everything came from a cloud of ideas that exploded and gave rise to everything you can see here—absolutely everything—isn’t that incredible? The space of creation is an empty space that isn’t empty. It’s fascinating. Merlin and his people explain it wonderfully. It’s an empty space, but it’s full of potential. Just a tiny spark of energy is enough for matter to be produced, for places and beings to take shape. Some say that that happens through the word, but others doubt it. What’s clear is that everything you see here comes from the same space. But of course, we mustn’t confuse the creation space with the use space. They’re related, but they’re not the same. Remember the theory of replication?” I nod, fascinated. “In the use space is an infinite energy that puts into motion everything that has already been created. It causes copies of some of us to be printed. Printing is what some of the scholars call this strange replication process. Like I explained, we still don’t know why some are replicated more than others, but we do know that it has to do with the energy in motion. Isn’t it just amazing?”

  “It really is.”

  “The copies move through the space. They’re not here with us, but they make us strong, like I was telling you at the hospital. Whew... all right, we’re at the library.”

  Morgan lifts her arms and lets them fall loudly to her sides, letting out a big sigh. The giant smile stretched across her face is showing me a part of her I never could have imagined. The light in her empty sockets has grown so strong that they’re spitting white sparks.

  “Aren’t you going to finish telling me how this world was formed?”

  “There’s time enough for all that,” she answers, taking my hand.

  I can’t even believe it. I’ve just witnessed a metamorphosis: Morgan is friendly, joyful. She shines with supernatural beauty.

  We go into the library, where Morgan greets the librarian and two boys who are putting books back on the shelves, standing on tall ladders supported by snails. Everyone knows her. I point at the snails, speechless with surprise. Their small bodies are like suction cups that keep the ladders steady.

  “I think we should start by consulting treatises on winged beings, and maybe some on dark beings—how does that sound?” Morgan says, her voice a soft whisper.

  Did she ask my opinion? Did that really just happen?”

  “Sounds good to me,” I say as quietly as I can.

  We walk up and down the rows of tall shelves and fill up our little cart in a matter of minutes. Then we sit down at a big table by a window that looks out on the long beach at West Sands. From here it’s hard to see the line between the sand and the sky and the sea, their grays are all so similar. Morgan divides up the books so we each have half. I feel a funny sort of stabbing feeling—my pride at being taken seriously mixes with fear, a fear that has followed me my entire life. I take a deep breath. I’ve never liked books, but for some reason I can’t wait to open the ones in front of me now. I suppose it’s because boring fiction like the stuff my parents are addicted to is one thing, but information and facts are completely different. That makes sense. Anxiously I open the first book and start turning the pages, first one by one, then flipping through quickly. I look up, about to say something, but then I see Morgan sitting next to me, her finger tracing an imaginary line on a totally blank page. All the pages in my book are blank—that was what I was going to say. But what can I say if Morgan’s book doesn’t have any words in it, either? I look around. Everyone else has books with blank pages. I close my book silently and take another. As expected, it doesn’t contain a single word. I flip through the pages slowly. Morgan takes out a little booklet and begins to... take notes? But—on what?

  I lose myself in the blank white page. My mind drifts off. I remember Axel’s clear hazel eyes, and his jokes about the way mine changed color. I never thought I could miss seeing a pair of eyes. Ridiculous!

  “Look at me,” said Axel.

  We were at the library near my school. I was in the middle of exams, and he was in Edinburgh since he had a week of vacation from university. He had insisted on coming to the library with me, even though he didn’t have anything to study. To be together, he said—typical. And that was typical, too—for him to come along even though I told him that spending all our time together was incredibly sappy. I was going out with him. What else did he want? It was a little less than a month after we met in the pub. I’d even admitted to Laura and Marion that Axel was my... well, my something special. I’d never call him boyfriend, not me. More
than once I wondered why I was going out with someone so different from me. Of course, I also wondered why Axel was still staying with me—what could he see in me?

  Gothic. Yes. That was the one-word definition for what I’d always liked, the sort of relationship that would have suited me—if I had ever decided to have a relationship. The thing with Axel wasn’t romantic; what was romantic were the two marvelous years I spent secretly in love with Adrian, who didn’t even know I existed. That was really a productive relationship—or non-relationship, as Marion liked to call it. The number of drawings inspired by those hours of infinite desolation, sweet pain for my platonic love, my impossible love. Just a glimpse of Adrian’s black hair was enough to make my heart ache in a way that could only be healed by drawing. Drawing until the pain grew, until it took over every one of my cells. That was when happiness came, because I felt as if I had become one with Adrian. That sweet frustration even inspired some poems, which of course couldn’t compare with Adrian’s poems. He was so good that every month the school newspaper published at least one. I drank up his verses with desperate thirst, savoring each of his words, first all in a rush, then little by little. They spoke of loves that lasted beyond the grave, unbreakable in spite of distance and time. Their dark beauty could have convinced me in a second to give myself over to love in the afterlife with Adrian. That is, if Adrian had ever been interested in convincing me of anything, of course. I know that deep down what attracted me was the fact that my story with him was impossible. I was safe. He would never notice me, which meant I would never fall in love, and there was no chance of disappointment. The equation was simple. With Axel, though, everything was so... so easy. So fluid. Things happened and I barely even noticed. Axel was a person with so much light that it was impossible to imagine a love beyond the grave with him. A disaster for inspiring drawings. With Adrian my imagination ran away with me. During my platonic love period, the high point of every week came on Friday. I pulled up the hood of my sweatshirt so I could disappear inside it, and then I hid behind a newspaper, which in turn was hidden behind the second-floor window of a café in a music store. Down below in the street was Adrian, dressed head to toe in black, with his hair slicked down so it spread like tar over his shoulders. The most beautiful thing I’d seen in my life, never mind what my friends said. He held onto a large harp that ended in the shape of a woman’s nude torso. Every Friday he set candles out in a circle around himself. His fingers, nails painted black, plucked forth sweet laments that came from somewhere from deep within him. From under languid eyelids he watched the few coins that fell at his feet. The notes floated through the air and up to the café window, where they smashed against the glass and died. I know, not so romantic. Between the window, the street noise, and the music in the store it was impossible to even guess at the melodies Adrian was playing, but of course that didn’t stop me from closing my eyes and wishing I could turn into a harp.

  “Come on, look at me,” Axel whispered insistently. “I want to see what color your eyes are today.”

  I got up without saying a word to him, and wandered into the stacks, pretending to look for a book. I didn’t even know why I was so angry. It was just one of those days when my bad mood reared its ugly head for no reason. The bad mood that was taking over my life. I grabbed a book at random; all I could think about was how angry I was. I peered through the narrow space between the books and the shelf. There was no sign of Axel. Maybe he’d finally gotten fed up with my rudeness and had left. I felt a little frightened. I turned around, the book still in my hand, and found him standing right in front of me. He took the book from my hand.

  “Roman architecture?” he said, reading the title sarcastically.

  “Hush, they’ll kick us out!”

  Axel opened the book and started reading like he was really interested, then lifted it up to hide our faces. He kissed me with one of those kisses that erased my memory and tamed my temper. Sometimes, when I dropped my guard, Axel’s kisses could make time and space disappear, and leave me floating someplace where I felt light and free. I went back to my seat without looking up. It was not possible that a boy so unlike me could be slipping into my life that way. Making my friends jealous was one thing, bragging about going out with a college boy—that was all well and good. But this thing with Axel was starting to get out of hand.

  “You still haven’t let me see your eyes,” he said a few minutes later.

  I kept my head down, breathing slowly to try and concentrate. Highlighting entire pages. Axel blew in my ear and I jerked my head around to face him.

  “Gray!” he said, raising his voice a little. “Danger! I’m really in for it today. Your eyes are all cloudy.”

  The librarian shot us a death glare from the desk. I elbowed Axel in the ribs.

  “Ow!”

  On a scrap of paper he wrote: “See? I knew I was in for it! I can see the future.” He passed me the note with a smile. How could he be so happy all the time? I gathered up my things and got up, ready to walk out. I liked him. I liked him too much, and I knew it. According to my foolproof formula I was in danger. Besides, who was I kidding? It was already a miracle that he had been with me all that time, that he had even noticed me in the pub. A college boy! Even my friends had been surprised. Axel followed me out.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said, turning to face him.

  “That face doesn’t look like nothing’s wrong.”

  “I’m done studying. I’m going home.”

  I started walking, Axel right at my side. I thought he would get tired, or he would say something, but he kept walking along next to me, silently, for several blocks. We crossed the sidewalk, we turned into narrow alleys, and still Axel said nothing.

  “You’re taking a really roundabout way home.” I glanced at him and stopped. “I only want to see you happy.” He put his arms around my waist, draping himself around me like a cat. “One smile and I’ll leave you alone.” My cheeks rose up and my lips stretched tight. “That’s a smile?” I exaggerated my grimace even more, until my eyes turned into two tiny slits. “Now you’re smiling... Actress, what an actress.”

  Axel moved away from me but kept his hands on my hips. He wiggled me back and forth until he got a genuine smile. What was I supposed to do with him?

  “I have to go home.”

  The sadness in my voice was apparent. Right then my fear was stronger than I was. Laura had diagnosed me with galloping pessimism, but I thought it was just healthy realism. Either way, life hadn’t been too kind to me. How little I meant in my own house was enough to tell me what I could expect outside of it. Finally Axel’s expression became resigned.

  “All right. I’ll walk you home.”

  He gave me his hand and we walked silently to the place where, by tacit agreement, we always said goodbye. It was a corner far enough from my house that neither my parents nor the twins could see us. I never had to explain to Axel why I wanted to avoid being seen by them. He seemed to intuit it, like he could read it in my eyes. It was just that kind of thing that made me saddest—being with someone who understood me that well, and being paralyzed by the fear of losing him.

  Axel kissed me goodbye and then, like every other time, asked me to tell him what was making me so sad or irritable.

  “There doesn’t have to be a reason,” I said. He wanted me to tell him about my life, but there was just no way. “What, are you a psychologist or something?”

  Then we got tangled up in an argument about the point of life. We could not have more different points of view, I knew, I’d known it the moment I met him. And still I went looking for him time and time again. Maybe that was why I was permanently pissed off—my hopeless inconsistency. Axel wasn’t always the one who called or wrote. More than one night I found myself suddenly upset, and reached for the phone to send him a message. Axel would call, and as soon as I heard his voice I would feel a comfort I’d never known before.

  “I have to go.” I didn’t k
now how to put an end to the argument.

  Axel took my hand. I remember it like it happened yesterday. Our fingers slipped apart, little by little, until they were no longer touching. I walked home without looking back.

  I was falling. I was falling in love with him. I had to keep reminding myself of what, up until then, had always been my greatest truth: happiness does not exist and is not necessary. A few moments of joy are good enough. I walked slowly back to my house, saying over and over to myself: “I’m fine alone. I don’t want or need anyone.” “The world is an unfriendly place that disappears right where the lines of my own private world begin. My world of pencil and paper.”

  What would happen if I really did fall in love with him? I didn’t even want to think about it. I didn’t like feeling permanently happy. What if I started to confuse that with real life? Sooner or later the bubble would burst, and reality would punch me right in the face.

  A sudden chill pulls me away from my memories. I look up and nearly tumble out of my chair: an enormous crow is perched on one of the bookcases in the distance. Its brilliant black wings stand out crisply against the white wall; its talons curve over the faces carved into the antique bookshelf like it’s trying to rip out their eyes. Very slowly I reach out a hand to touch Morgan. I lift one finger to my mouth to tell her to keep quiet, and look. Both of us see it, otherwise I might have thought it was just my imagination. In a few seconds the shape of the bird has stretched out to human proportions. It becomes a tall, thin man, so thin that he looks like a sack of bones in black clothing. In the blink of an eye he vanishes, as if he’d melted into the bookcase.

  We leap to our feet, stunned, and run over to the place where the mysterious man disappeared. Morgan takes the books down and touches the back of the shelf. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. Our visit to the library is over—we have to run and tell Sherlock what happened. As we leave the building I feel a chill run down my spine. I look back at the windows. I’m absolutely certain someone is watching us, but I don’t see anyone there.