The Sphere

by Martha Faë

“Does it disappoint you that you’re not the only one who uses that name?”

  Well, yes. My inner voice tells me that even though I hadn’t thought about it, I did think that Sherlock was a name that only I used.

  “Watson uses that name, too,” adds the Count casually.

  He takes out a wooden box and sits down on the chair where he was crying before. He opens the box and takes out a soft cloth, with which he begins to polish his collection of letter openers, small gleaming daggers encrusted with jewels. Can he know what I’m thinking? The Count nods, still polishing. No, it’s not possible. No one can read someone else’s mind. It has to be a coincidence... Dracula shakes his head.

  “Ah, jealousy!” the Count sighs. “Heavy burden. Unbearable. Unnecessary, too, in your case, since you’re not obligated to conform to a role.”

  “Excuse me?” I exclaim. “I do too have a role... like everyone else.”

  The Count tilts his head to one side. Who is the Count? Or rather, what is he? How can he read my mind and know that I don’t have a role?

  “You are young enough yet that jealousy hasn’t put down roots. Allow me to advise you to rip it out before it’s too late.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I try to make my mind go blank. Now I understand Sherlock’s meditative state during the first part of the visit. The Count reads minds. How does Sherlock keep from thinking about anything?

  “It’s a question of training,” the Count lifts his face and smiles at my surprise. “But let’s return to our discussion. Jealousy is the worst of weeds, believe me. It first appears as an innocent little sprout, but once it grows strong it will devour everything good around you. It’s like a climbing plant that tries to cling to the person who stirs up the feeling in us, to try and keep that person always by our side. But jealousy tangles itself around the feet of the person who feels it, and it is the jealous person who will end up strangled.”

  “I’m not jealous of anyone.”

  I don’t know if I’m just confused because of what the Count is saying, or if his words have made me angry. Jealous—me? Of whom?

  “Forgive me. Sometimes this old man is mistaken. In that case it will not help if I tell you that although this feeling is useless enough on its own, it is even more so in this concrete case. Holmes, or Sherlock, as you call him, loves nothing but his profession. He will never love anyone else.”

  “But—Beatrice?...” The question bursts out of me.

  “Is it Beatrice who worries you?”

  “It’s really Sherlock who worries me. I think Beatrice is the woman who suits him least in the world. But whatever, it’s his life. He knows best. I’m not jealous of anyone.”

  “Interesting...” the Count looks up from his letter openers and smiles.

  “I think someone less superstitious would be better for Sherlock, a more intellectually active woman... someone more like him.”

  “Morgan would be ideal. And it seems she is up to the task. More than one has fallen for the charms of the fairy-witch here in the Sphere.”

  The Count’s smile stretches out across his entire face. The skin that was wrinkled with pain when he spoke of Mina’s disappearance has recovered its elasticity. Now his face is young, smooth as wax—almost attractive.

  “What do you think of Morgan for Sherlock?”

  Morgan! That presumptuous know-it-all. Is that why she’s always trying to show off? I thought she just wanted to help with the case! I feel tiny; I know I’m nobody next to her. I feel my bad temper bubble up as the familiar feeling comes back, that feeling I know so well from my previous life: being nobody. I can’t compete with Morgan’s charms.

  “That is what we call jealousy,” says the Count. “You can learn to live with it, that’s one option. Although my advice is not to fall for it... It’s curious. Ironic, even.”

  I look at him, perplexed.

  “You punishing yourself, seeing Morgan as a rival. The reverse would be more natural. She has always been so powerful, and now an outsider arrives and dethrones her—just like that. You have the charm of being different, don’t you see?” The Count looks right at me. His empty eye sockets are two whirlpools pulling me in, I can’t stop myself. I look around for something solid to hold on to, but then the Count blinks, and the tugging feeling goes away. “Heed my words. Do not hold out hope for love with someone as rational as Holmes. As I have told you already, he will never love any woman. His only lover is mystery itself. Yes, I know how it seems with Beatrice, but in the end that is nothing more than a game to exercise his agile mind. Beatrice consecrates her life to her Creator; she will never love Holmes... Nor does he hope for her to. Do you think that if one day she decided to reciprocate, he would be pleased?” The Count laughs gently. “I cannot imagine Holmes in a domestic role.”

  “But Beatrice...”

  “No, I cannot envision Beatrice in a role like that, either. Her role is solitary, never coupled.”

  “But she does everything she can for Heathcliff. It’s almost like she’s in love with him... I think she is in love with him, even though I can’t see how she could care for someone so rude, so...”

  “So unlike herself? Why does a moth flutter toward the flame of a candle, even as it feels the scorching heat that warns of death?”

  “It can’t help it?”

  “Just so,” answers the Count. “They cannot help it. The moth flies happily to its destruction. That is the beauty of attraction. Between opposites it is inevitable. Beatrice is so ethereal that it is normal for her to be attracted by Heathcliff’s darkness.”

  “I understand...” I say thoughtfully. “But I think it could be different. Really I think it should be different.” I’m thinking about myself and about Axel. “That way there wouldn’t be suffering. You could be smart, and look for someone like you.”

  “Try it,” answers the Count.

  He gets up from the armchair and puts away the box of letter openers. He takes out a bottle and pours a small cup, which he offers to me. The color of the liquid is pleasant and familiar, though I can’t identify it.

  “Ginger,” says the Count. “Do pardon me for a moment. I have something to attend to, but I will return shortly.”

  I nod and try a taste of the liqueur once I’m alone. Ginger, yes. After one sip my senses grow clouded and I can’t keep my eyes open. The flavor of spices runs through my veins, gently lulling me. Now I remember. Now I know where I’ve tasted this before. I see lights spinning in the dark night; I feel snowflakes falling softly on my face; the heat in my throat as it flows down to warm my frozen body.

  Mulled wine with spices. The Ferris wheel. The carols of a little group singing in one of the stalls mingled with the murmur of the crowd and the raucous music of the rides. I was born in Edinburgh, but I had always refused to go to the Christmas market. Well, I had refused once I was old enough to have an opinion. I went with my parents when I was so little that I don’t have any conscious memory of it. I had a photograph of myself in my mother’s arms, with the Ferris wheel and the castle in the background. In it you could barely see my eyes, hidden between my scarf and hat—my smiling eyes. My mother used to say that my eyelashes were smiling in that photo. For years, before the twins were born, I’d ask my mother night after night to tell me about the time my eyelashes smiled. She told the story of that night with such detail—the sounds, the smells, what I did—that my little heart rejoiced. It was a story that made me feel happy, and connected to my mother. I felt lucky to share such a special little piece of life with her. Later on the twins arrived, and the photograph was forgotten, along with everything else from that period. It was as if that entire era had disappeared. The twins were too restless, needing constant attention; they were too magnetic, too alive. They left nothing unbroken around them. The little scrap of paper with my smiling eyelashes was relegated to the drawer of my night table, and my parents never missed it.

  Who could’ve imagined that I would go back to t
he Christmas market voluntarily! All my memories from the second night are firsthand. No one had to tell them to me as we looked at a photo. It was the first time I saw Axel since we’d met at the pub. When my cellphone rang I was with Marion. I had no idea who the unknown number could be.

  “The boy from the pub!” I whispered to Marion, covering the phone with my hand.

  She squeezed my arm tight and began to shake me, her other hand clapped to her mouth.

  “But he didn’t even get your number!!”

  I shrugged and waved at her to be quiet, but Marion couldn’t contain herself:

  “No way! Unbelievable! No way!”

  “To the Christmas market?...” I said, making a face at her.

  Marion urged me to say yes, nodding her head so hard she almost gave herself whiplash.

  “Sure,” I said, without much enthusiasm.

  Marion began contorting her face silently, opening her mouth wide like a fish with its face squashed against the side of the tank, then pursing it tight. She pointed frantically at my phone.

  “What?!” I asked angrily, once I’d hung up.

  “Dammit, Dissie, his friend—you were supposed to ask about his friend. Didn’t he say anything? Didn’t he ask about me?”

  I didn’t answer. My mind had gone blank. Axel had suggested going to the market—what else could I do? It wasn’t the best place in the world, and I didn’t even know why I had accepted, it was just automatic. Maybe it was Marion’s fault; she had distracted me so much I couldn’t think.

  “Geez, we could have gone together, the four of us. We would’ve had an awesome time. You know how much I like the market...”

  Marion’s voice was a distant echo mingling with my thoughts. I couldn’t remember Axel’s face clearly, only the feeling of singing with him as we made our way across the cobblestones of downtown Edinburgh, trying not to trip. It was a vague image, but a nice one. Marion’s words had lost their shape; they sounded like the distorted sound of a helicopter in the distance.

  “Are you listening to me?” she asked sulkily.

  “Oh... Yeah... No, Axel didn’t ask after you. He didn’t say anything about his friend. Sorry.”

  I don’t know why I did it, but I said yes, and there I was at the Christmas market again. Behind us old Edinburgh castle on its tall rocky hill looked down on the crowd, full of joy, and on me—full of distaste. I didn’t understand what I was doing there. I had always considered myself smart enough not to fall for the easy excitement of a holiday imposed by the calendar. I blew on my hands and rubbed them together to warm them up a little. Axel smiled much too broadly. He walked briskly around, stopping in the stalls with wooden toys and chatting with the vendors. As they talked their breath rose in white spirals, twining in the icy air, dancing past my scowling face.

  “Don’t these things bring back good memories for you?” Axel asked as he picked up a snow globe. I didn’t answer. “I know, they’re tacky, but for me they bring back good memories. My grandma had a lot of them at home. I must have spent hours watching the little snowflakes swirling inside the glass!”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know why I was there. We ought to have gone somewhere else, anywhere else, I should have insisted. On the other hand, now that we were someplace with better lighting than the pub, it seemed impossible to me that a boy like that had asked me out. He could see it, too. Before long he’d notice the difference between the girl he thought he met at the pub, through the haze of a couple of beers, and the reality. He would see it, and then our trip to the market would be over. Actually he must already have been thinking it, since he wouldn’t stop looking at me. I was about to walk out. I couldn’t stand him looking at me so much.

  “What a serious face! What’s going on under that shell?”

  I answered with an involuntary snort. I always went too far; my usual defense was my bad temper.

  “Can I tell you what I think?” asked Axel. I was surprised when my head nodded yes. “I don’t think your aloofness is hiding an empty interior, like with other girls. I think there’s a whole lot going on inside that little head.”

  “How would you know!”

  “I have a pretty good eye.”

  Months later Axel confessed that he had begun to fall in love with me that day. He told me that he liked how I was attractive in spite of myself, in spite of all my efforts not to be. He liked my long jet-black hair, my inscrutably colored eyes, and the fact that I was as tall as he was. But above all he liked the way my stern expression combined with all the little things that told him I felt at ease with him.

  We walked around the little wooden stalls while we talked—or rather, while Axel talked. My gaze paused for a few seconds on a stand of handmade notebooks across from where we were. It was only a second, but Axel noticed, and took me by the hand to lead me over to the stall. There were notebooks with leather covers, with velvet covers, with lined paper, and with completely blank paper.

  “Your skin’s white as chalk,” he said. I could feel his eyes on me as I touched the notebooks, my hands trembling with cold. I gave him a friendly shove without even looking up. “I can’t figure out if you write or draw. That black ink stain on your right index finger could be from either one.”

  I didn’t answer. I picked up a few notebooks to look at them, asked the price, and put them back. For a moment I felt happy. I looked at the stain on my finger. My hands were red and swollen with cold.

  “You aren’t gonna buy one?” asked Axel. I shook my head. “Come on, I’ve got an idea.”

  We walked to the other side of the market where the food was. The smell of fried food and cotton candy clung to our clothes.

  “Take these,” Axel said, pulling his gloves off. “Put them on.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Are you sure? Your hands are freezing.”

  “I’m fine.”

  I stuck my hands into my coat pockets and mentally told myself off for my stupid, obvious smile. What was wrong with me? Axel was good-looking, sure. The kind of handsome that my friends liked. Well, and me too, a little. But it was all going to come to an end soon, as soon as he realized I was nothing but a schoolgirl.

  “If you’re not going to wear my gloves, at least hold them for a second, okay?”

  Axel walked away. He took a few steps and then turned back toward me. I jumped: he had caught me looking him up and down. He smiled, amused, and gestured for me to put on the gloves. Shit! Shit! I repeated in my head, my cheeks burning. Busted! Eurydice, focus. It’s just going to be tonight and nothing else. Concentrate. Look, he’s a lot older than you. And besides... besides... he’s... kind-of-posh.

  “Kind-of-posh?” Laura asked the next day, her eyes wide with confusion. She and Marion burst into my room like a tornado, anxious to hear how the date had gone.

  “It wasn’t a date. Okay, it sort of was. But he’s kind of posh.”

  “What are you talking about?” Laura exclaimed.

  “He didn’t seem like that at the pub,” put in Marion.

  “He isn’t posh, just... kind of. Wasn’t that clear?... He goes to school at St Andrews.”

  “Whaaaat!” cried Laura shrilly. “You’re going there, too. Unbelievable!”

  “My parents want me to go there,” I clarified. “I still haven’t decided.”

  “But you turned in the pre-application...”

  “Whatever. We’ll see where I end up.”

  “It’s destiny. Destiny.”

  There was no way to stop Laura and Marion from chalking the encounter between Axel and me up to destiny.

  “What does he study?” asked Marion, full of curiosity.

  “How would I know!” I replied crossly. Being the center of attention was making me nervous.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” Laura’s question wasn’t a question so much as a reprimand.

  Well no, I had no idea what the boy I’d gone to the Christmas market with the night before studied. I hadn’t asked.
Was that a sin? Business, Economics, what different did it make? I was totally certain that after that night at the market I wasn’t going to see him again, no matter how much those two girls pestered me. I wasn’t going to see him again because he wasn’t going to call.

  Axel came back with two steaming cups. He had to pull the sleeves of his sweater down over his hands to keep from burning them.

  “Now I really do recommend putting on the gloves.”

  I put on the gloves and he passed me a cup full of dark, sweet-smelling liquid. I scrutinized the contents doubtfully.

  “Spiced wine,” he said, “haven’t you tried it before?”

  “Of course I’ve tried it,” I answered haughtily.

  Dirty lie. I hardly ever drank, that’s how I ended up drunk on just one pint the day I met him.

  “I thought you must have. I can see you’re very worldly.”

  Axel nudged me with his elbow and I smiled again, more broadly than I wanted to.

  “I’m not that young!” I protested, feeling small.

  “I didn’t say you were. In fact, I haven’t asked your age. Didn’t you notice? I assume you’re legal... Because you are, right?”

  I shook my head, trying not to do it too hard so I wouldn’t get dizzy. I’d done it again—drunk too much too fast. But the warmth of the wine felt so nice as it went down my throat!

  “Your eyes are shining. Am I going to get in trouble for getting a minor drunk?”

  “I’m not a minor!”

  “So how old are you?”

  Axel was whispering, but I could hear him perfectly. He was so close I could feel the heat coming off his body.

  “I’m eighteen... but not twenty-one.”

  “So you can get yourself into trouble, but you can’t drink.”

  I nodded very slowly.

  “I knew that already,” he said, coming a little closer. “That’s why they wouldn’t sell you a beer in the pub.”

  I closed my eyes. Axel was so close that I couldn’t focus on his face anymore.

  “Why does someone so sweet pretend to be so tough?”

  Snowflakes were falling on our faces, but I didn’t feel them. I only felt the ginger dancing between our mouths, still pressed tightly together even though the minutes went swirling by, even though the castle was still watching, even though there were tons of people all around us. I didn’t even know when the kiss had started. Axel hid his hand under my thick hair to protect it from the cold. The touch of his icy fingers against my neck made me shiver, but nothing in the world could have made me want him to take his hand away. I felt like I was inside a bubble of silence, in one of those artificial snow globes he liked so much. No more castle, no more people, no more stalls. The noise of the rides had vanished. The universe had narrowed to a single point where only Axel and I existed.