by Martha Faë
“And, well, searching the houses was...” adds Beatrice.
“Just dreadful!” finishes Morgan. “Every time we knocked on a door it was the same story: the bell rings, we hear footsteps, then the sound of the cover sliding off the peephole, and then they run to the back of the house. We had to keep at it, yelling some excuse at them from outside, something to make it sound more appealing, or at least less threatening. Some of them opened the door...”
“Only to slam it in our faces as soon as they saw us,” Beatrice goes on.
“So that’s that, but we’re proud of how thoroughly we did our count, right, Beatrice?”
“That’s right.”
No one is missing; the investigation is stuck at almost the exact same point. We don’t have even the slightest idea to whom or to what the remains might belong.
“Dammit!” Sherlock exclaims from the back of the room.
I hadn’t paid much attention to him after our failed kiss. To be honest, I had kind of forgotten he was there. I can’t stop thinking about finding a way to restore balance to the Sphere.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“I’ve spent hours cutting up the remains, distilling them, burning them.”
“But why?” asks Beatrice, horrified.
“To study them, pretty Beatrice, to study them,” Sherlock replies angrily.
“How I miss the old Holmes!” whispers Morgan.
“We’ll just see, you simpleton,” Beatrice says haughtily. “And you hope to study them like that? Study what? What’s the point of ripping up all the pieces if they just go back to the way they were before after a little while? Anyone sensible would realize that there was no point doing that. But not Holmes, no. Mister Sherlock Holmes does it over and over again. Hard-headed, stubborn as a mule.”
“And Beatrice,” I murmur to Morgan, “I miss the Beatrice from before.”
Morgan smiles bitterly. She knows it’s only a matter of time before she starts losing her role, too.
“Just a second!” I say, suddenly realizing something important, “The remains go back to the way they were?”
“Of course,” says Beatrice.
“That doesn’t seem weird to you?” I ask Morgan. Her face is drawn, full of exhaustion and disappointment. She just shrugs. “It’s normal because we’re in the Sphere, I know,” I say. “But still, we should be wondering why they didn’t go back to their whole state after they were dismembered. If they were normal Sphereans they shouldn’t have been destroyed.”
Morgan jumps up from the couch. “It’s true!”
“Of course,” I continue, “we should have thought of that the moment we saw that someone or something had killed them.”
“It’s clear that they don’t belong to the Sphere,” says Morgan, “but then, where did they come from?”
“I think they could have come from my world, and we can only prove that with Charon’s help.”
Beatrice sags back the moment she hears the boatman’s name, blushing and lowering her gaze. Neither Morgan nor I say a word. We know how badly Sherlock berated her when he found out about all that.
“I think you should go back to looking for Heathcliff while we visit the boatman,” I suggest.
Beatrice accepts my proposal, her head hanging.
“What’s your plan?” Morgan asks quietly.
“To take some remains to Charon.”
“Shall we bring Holmes?”
I look at Sherlock. He’s still keeping himself busy dissecting and burning little pieces of the remains we found.
“Better not to,” I conclude.
Morgan and I fill up a sack with remains and head off for the river. We find Charon waiting on the same bank where I saw him the first time, leaning against his oar with his fingers interlaced as if he were meditating. When we approach he stretches his neck out slowly, like an ancient tortoise.
“It’s me again, Charon—Eurydice,” I say with a smile. The boatman seems to detect the smile in my voice, and his mouth curves up gently, too. “I’ve brought Morgan, a friend.”
“Morgan, yes,” Charon says slowly. “I remember her.” Morgan comes over to touch his hands. “I met you when you were just published,” the boatman jokes, and his body trembles with his gravelly laughter. “How can I help you?”
“We’ve brought something that we’d like to put in your boat for a moment.”
“I cannot take anything, and especially anyone, upriver, Eurydice. You know that.”
“I know. I just want to put what we’ve brought in your boat for a moment. Just a second, that’s all. Although... it’s probably best if you wait on the shore while we do the experiment.”
Charon’s entire face contracts into a single point.
“We’d never steal your boat! Please, no!” Morgan exclaims with great respect.
“So why do you want me to get out, then?”
“There’s a chance that what we put in might have the same effect that I did when I got in the boat, and I don’t want you to get soaked again.”
“Let me touch your hands,” says Charon.
I hold my hands out. The boatman takes them in his, and his fingers hold a silent conversation with mine.
“All right, I can trust you. But hurry—you know I’m not comfortable on land.”
We help the old man out of the boat and put the remains inside.
“And?” Charon asks.
“Nothing happened,” I answer sadly.
“What did you hope would happen?”
“That the boat would sink like it did when I was in it.”
“I see. And what was that going to prove?”
“That what we found—what we brought—comes from my world.”
“Would that have helped? Asks Charon.
I’m quiet for a while. “I guess not that much. Maybe all it would have done was give us the consolation of knowing what we found, right, Morgan?”
“Yes. Maybe at this point we would have been happy just knowing that.”
“May I return to my boat?”
Before we can reply Charon has already felt his way over and climbed back into the boat.
“I love the solitude of my boat.”
“Wait a second!” Morgan says. “Charon, you’re not alone in the boat.”
The old man reaches out his hands and finds the remains.
“What’s this?” he asks in horror.
“That’s what we wanted to find out,” I answer.
“It’s not from your world,” the boatman says, “but it’s not from this one, either. It weighs nothing at all!”
“Where do you think it might have come from?” asks Morgan. “Do you have any idea what it could be?”
The boatman traces the outline of the cardboard shapes. Several times he rubs his hand across them and brings his ear close to listen to the sandy sound.
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you. I could tell you a story, but it’s better not to speak of that which I do not know.”
We gather up the remains, say goodbye to Charon, and depart, disappointed. For some reason that singular man’s words keep coming back to my mind: “I could tell you a story.”
19
“I could tell you a story.”
Why can’t I get those words out of my head? It’s just something people say, but it keeps coming back to me.
As we’re walking back we run into Beatrice.
“I was at Wuthering Heights,” she says breathlessly. “They don’t know anything about Heathcliff, but the rumor is that Cathy has disappeared, and he’s gone to look for her at Fife Park.”
“Fife Park?” asks Morgan with surprise.
“I know,” says Beatrice, “it’s odd. We all know the world ends there.”
“The world doesn’t end there; there just isn’t anything beyond Fife Park. It’s a blank space to be inhabited. These ignorant Sphereans,” grumbles Morgan, “they think they could fall into the void if they come too close to the edge beyond Fife Park
. They don’t realize the Sphere is just that—spherical, and besides...”
“Have you seen it?” I interrupt. “Have you seen with your own eyes that there’s nothing there?” Morgan looks surprised. “Right,” I go on, “I guess there’s nothing to lose by checking to see what’s there and looking for Heathcliff.”
I spend the walk puzzling over the remains that we found in the little cemetery.
“You look much better,” Beatrice says suddenly.
“Actually I am,” I say with surprise.
Maybe I should take my recovery as a good sign, an indication that I’m on the right track to solving the mystery. But it still bothers me that I don’t know what the remains are.
“So do the remains have something to do with the winged creatures or not?” I ask angrily. I was only asking myself, but I seem to have said it aloud.
“Their faces are all the same,” points out Beatrice. “At least the ones we’ve found.”
I look at her in surprise. I hadn’t even noticed. I open up the bag we’re carrying and see that she’s right.
“But there’s nothing remotely like a wing in all the pieces we have,” says Morgan.
“True,” I say, still pondering the remains. “That dry material, it’s like cardboard, it’s so... flat. Maybe they dry out like that after dying. Brr—just the thought of it gives me chills!”
I look at my companions’ worried faces as we walk along. It’s hard to believe that they ever seemed wooden to me, that I ever saw them in black and white. They’re the most vivid things I’ve seen in a long, long time. They’ve given me thousands of reasons to hate them and love them all at once. I care for them, all of them. They’re so complex. But who isn’t, really? Axel. Me.
We’re close to Fife Park now; we’ve left the center of the Sphere far behind us. The ground has become a real mire, and our feet sink deeper into the mud with every step.
“How strange!” says Morgan, “It’s not like this even when it rains a lot. What’s going on here?”
Before the words are even out of her mouth a trap snaps shut on one of her feet. Beatrice and I don’t react quickly enough and Morgan goes flying, yanked up by a cord attached to the metal trap around her foot. She tries to break it with her magic, but to no avail. She swings through the air like a helpless little animal, her wild mane of hair waving back and forth. From the ground we can barely hear her shouts. She vanishes. The cord must be fastened to some kind of mechanism that I can’t see from here. We hear the creaking of metal wheels pulling the trap up and carrying Morgan off, but the sun is blinding, and we can’t keep looking up at the sky. As expected, Beatrice loses her role in the face of such a shock. That’s what has been happening lately: any unexpected little detail is enough to send her off the rails, so it’s even worse with something like this, something far beyond the comprehension of one poor little Spherean. She gathers up her skirts, tying them up with the cord she has around her waist, and races off into the mud without a second thought.
“Bice, stop!” I shout, terrified. “There could be more traps.”
Beatrice stops so abruptly that I’m afraid she’ll be yanked up into the air like Morgan. A few seconds pass, long as hours, and nothing happens.
“What do I do now?” Beatrice looks back at me in anguish.
“Try to come back by stepping in the same places.”
“Impossible! How do I know where I stepped?”
It looks like she’s about to burst into tears. She’s recovered her role.
The mud is a viscous mass that reaches up to our calves. After Beatrice ran through it the mud immediately oozed back into a smooth layer, with no trace of her footprints. She’s trembling from head to toe.
“Turn around very slowly. Try to stay right where you are, and don’t move your feet very much.”
“I can’t!”
“Yes, you can,” I encourage her, “of course you can. Turn around. That’s all you have to do, just turn around.”
Beatrice still has her back to me. She twists her head around to try and see me. Her pale, sweaty face is getting more haggard by the second. She starts to sway back and forth.
“Are you all right?”
“No, I’m very dizzy. Something really strange is happening, Dissie. Please help me.”
Could the mud have some kind of drug or poison in it? Beatrice stands there, frozen in place, wobbling more and more.
“Tell me exactly what you’re feeling.”
“It’s... It’s...” she says doubtfully, “like there’s something inside me.”
My heart turns over.
“Inside? How?”
“Yes, inside my body. Right where my stomach is.”
I’m afraid some kind of creature has gotten inside of Beatrice’s body. We don’t know what we’re up against, and in the Sphere anything is possible.
“It’s squeezing me, it’s squeezing me tight!”
Beatrice whimpers and presses her hands to her stomach.
“I feel it around my neck, too, it’s holding me tight,” she insists.
I crane my neck and squint, but I can’t see anything holding her.
“Turn around, Bice, come this way.”
“I can’t. It’s got me. I can’t move.”
I don’t see anything on her, just the little droplets of sweat sliding down her neck and glittering in the sun. Suddenly I realize that before now the sweat I’ve seen in the Sphere has never seemed real, because it isn’t real—but this is.
“Are you scared?”
“What?” asks Beatrice, bewildered.
“Afraid—are you afraid?”
“Please, don’t talk nonsense, I’m begging you. Now is not the time.”
That’s it—Beatrice is feeling fear, and she doesn’t know what it is! Real fear, not from her role.
“Bice, listen carefully. That thing you feel squeezing you—it’s nothing.”
“How do you know?” her voice trembles.
“I know, I’m absolutely sure, you have to trust me. It’s nothing. Turn around and look at me.”
“But... I shouldn’t move my feet. What if the same thing that happened to Morgan happens to me?”
“Nothing will happen to you. Turn around.”
I’m tempting fate. There’s no way to know if there are more traps, or where they might be.
Beatrice moves her feet slowly until she’s facing me. Her brow is furrowed—something I’ve never seen—and her eyes are bulging, her mouth pressed into a line.
“Look at me. Just look at me. Walk really slowly, in a straight line.”
Beatrice manages to make her way back, her entire body shaking violently from fear. The worlds are mixing: it’s the first time a Spherean has experienced a human emotion. My time is about to run out—I know it.
Beatrice trembles in my arms.
“That intensity. Do you really feel that way in your world?” she asks me, her eyes still filled with real terror.
“Calm down, Bice. It’s over, it’s all right.”
Beatrice’s eyes are round, enormous, transparent, pleading.
Dissie...
“Did you hear that?”
Beatrice looks at me blankly. She has no idea what I’m talking about.
Dissie...
A strong beeping starts to mingle with the voices.
Eurydice...
Beatrice is still shaking. I gaze at the medieval woman who has been my refuge ever since I came to the Sphere. I feel sorry for her pain, and I imagine her serene again, weightless and ethereal, like she used to be. I imagine it with as much strength as I can, and the trembling stops. Her face relaxes, and her eyes recover their usual serenity.
Dissie...
The beeping is getting louder and more ear-piercing. Images of Carl, of Axel, of the accident. The Count’s gaze floating up in the clouds like a pointing finger, reminding me that I have to find Mina, that my time is not infinite, that I can only go out the way I came in. The images keep coming, ov
erlapping at a dizzying speed. I try to focus, to think about something else, but they keep appearing in my mind. We’re not flat! ... I could tell you a story – the words of Dracula and Charon echo endlessly, forming a disturbing whirlwind. I feel Beatrice’s hand squeezing mine.
“What do you have there?” she asks, pointing to the center of my chest.
I look down again, just like I once did in the Count’s mansion.
“Where? I don’t see anything.”
“There... there’s light.”
“Eurydice, Beatrice!” We hear Sherlock’s voice in the distance.
“Over here, William!” yells Beatrice.
Soon we see him approaching.
“Judging by his appearance, I think he’s in his role,” I say to Beatrice.
“Yes,” she says softly, “he looks like himself this time. The same as always: blond, lanky, serious.”
“Lanky?” I ask, surprised.
“Yes, you know how he is. Lean.”
Sherlock’s hair changes color. It lightens right before my eyes to a dark blond. Now that Beatrice has given me a description, the image I had of Sherlock has shattered. I feel a wave of frustration. I preferred the face I’d imagined for him.
“Finally, I’ve found you two,” says the detective.
I’d always seen him as sturdier, more attractive... Now when I look at him he’s tall and quite skinny, just as Beatrice described.
“And Morgan?”
“She was caught in a trap,” Beatrice answers anxiously. “Her foot was caught and she was pulled up into the air.”
“Why didn’t she use magic to get free?” asks Sherlock.
“She tried,” says Beatrice, “but she couldn’t. I don’t know why not.”
I’m suddenly thoughtful. It’s surprising how different Sherlock is from the way I’d imagined him. All at once everything makes sense.
“I know why her magic didn’t work,” I say. “She’s been taken by someone like me. Your world is ruled by mine.”
Beatrice lifts her hands to her mouth in astonishment.
“But... what about the Creator?”
“The Creator exists, Beatrice... though it seems to me that it’s really many creators.”
“It can’t be!” she shouts.